A Thursday Before the War: 28 May 1914 in ViennaMAUREEN HEALY Q1

ON 28 MAY 1914, the Viennese press reported that a young man from the sixteenthdistrict in Vienna had attempted suicide.1 Sitting on a bench at the Pezzlpark,twenty-one-year-old laborer Karl P. shot himself in the head with a revolver. “The

motive,” one newspaper reported, “was said to be unrequited love.” By chance, the samepark bench would see more action later that day. Pregnant twenty-three-year-old laborerMarie B. was on her way to a birthing clinic when she went into labor. Sitting on what thenewspaper now deemed the Selbstmörderbankerl, with the help of two nearby watchmen, shegave birth to a girl. The headline “Death and Life on a Bench” highlighted one extraordinarycoincidence in an otherwise ordinary day in the city.2

28 May 1914 was most ordinary. It was a Thursday. The weather in Vienna was fair, if a tadhumid. The daily press reported on the comings and goings in this vibrant city of two millionresidents. “Nothing special” was going on, nothing of apparent interest to the historian 100years later. It was average, uneventful, routine. 28 May paled in comparison to its futurecousin, 28 June, the day on which Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, wasassassinated and the diplomatic wheels of war were put into motion. But what if we were topull this random day out of historical obscurity and use it as a prism through which to readwhat was ordinary and expected “on the eve” of World War I? The phrase “on the eve,”ubiquitous in English-language historiography on the war, connotes more than its Germanequivalent, vor.3 It carries an impendingness, a something-about-to-happen.

This article offers a snapshot of 28 May 1914 as it was recorded in eight German-languageViennese daily newspapers and three weekly newspapers that appeared on Thursdays.4 What

1Thanks to Dana Bronson andMusa Jamal who, with support from a Lewis & Clark College Mellon Student-FacultyCollaboration Grant, contributed signi!cant research to this article.

2All newspapers cited in this article are from 28 May 1914. Here, Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 9.3A quick search turns up thirty-two journal articles on World War I with “on the eve” their titles. Historical

Abstracts http://web.ebscohost.com.watzekpx.lclark.edu (accessed 14 September 2013). The Oxford EnglishDictionary de!nes “on the eve” as “the time immediately preceding some event, action” http://www.oed.com.watzekpx.lclark.edu (accessed 23 August 2013). The German term am Vorabend is used less commonly.

4The eight daily newspapers include: Neue Freie Presse, Reichspost, Arbeiter-Zeitung, Deutsches Volksblatt, NeuesWiener Journal, Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, Wiener Zeitung, and Neue Zeitung. The three weekly newspapers appearingon Thursdays were Illustriertes Österreichisches Sportblatt, Das Interessante Blatt, and Danzer’s Armee-Zeitung. Oneselection criterion for this project was digital availability on Austrian Newspapers Online (ANNO) at the Austrian

Austrian History Yearbook 45 (2014): 1–16 © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2014doi:10.1017/S0067237813000647

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Viennese people read, bought, ate, watched, imagined, feared, and wanted can be gleaned from aclose reading of the enormously vibrant press in the capital city. This “day in the life” approachyields a number of !ndings: First, it allows us to see—contrary to accepted wisdom—that dailypress coverage to a large degree transcended the Lager politics that characterized twentieth-century Austria. Second, many of the themes we associate with World War I are thereexplicitly or in subtext before it all began—dead bodies, destruction, centrality of themilitary, confusion in the center about political contours in the Balkans, even ersatz goods.Finally, highlighting what was ordinary at a moment in time before the war usefully smudgesthe dark and de!nitive line that historians re"exively pencil in at August 1914.

Before sketching the contours of life on this ordinary day, one must address themethodological objections that can easily and obviously be made to such an approach. Asone writing in the vein of Alltagsgeschichte, I have argued elsewhere for the necessity of awide source base to write history in a way that plumbs the depths of politics beneath andbeyond parties and printed sources. Newspapers are a useful but limiting resource. HistorianRobin Okey criticized an antiquated mode of historical inquiry in which “several leadingViennese papers would be taken to ascertain the Viennese press’s view of speci!c episodes inthe later history of the Monarchy.”5 This approach presents myriad problems ofinterpretation: Viennese newspapers did not represent life in the monarchy as a whole; notall residents of Vienna read German-language papers; not all Viennese could read; of thosewho could, some likely did not pick up a newspaper on 28 May 1914; newspapers tell usmuch about their editors but little about their readers; newspapers, as public documents,shed little light on the intimate and private realm of historical experience. And the list goes on.

But let us historians stray brie"y into a different discipline, one that plays more freely andeasily with texts. To take the day as a discrete unit of time, a bounded frame through whichto explore the temporal and spatial patterns of the city, is to borrow an established techniquefrom literary modernism. Here the day has been used to good effect. James Joyce’s Ulyssesrecords the life of Dublin on a single day, 16 June 1904. “That day was very much like anyother,” writes Stuart Gilbert, “unmarked by any important event and, even for the Dublinerswho !gure in Ulysses, exempt from personal disaster or achievement.”6 Virginia Woolf, too,uses the device in her single-day novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The day imposes a “predeterminedtime frame and structure” on the stream of consciousness of its protagonist. Literary scholarJames Schiff notes that the technique “allows the particular (a single day) to reveal the whole(an entire life).”7 Unlike the !ction writer, for whom the whole is as deep or shallow as theimagination, the historian can make no pretense of completeness. If there is a whole, readingthe newspapers can at best bring into focus some of its pixels.

National Library, where all but the Arbeiter-Zeitung are found. On the latter, thanks to Alfred Pfoser at the Wien-Bibliothek for making digital copies available. For the authoritative history of the Austrian press, see Kurt Paupié,Handbuch der österreichischen Pressegeschichte 1848–1959, vol. I (Vienna, 1960); see also Joseph Desput, “Diepolitische Parteien der Doppelmonarchie und ihre Presse,” Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur mit Geographie20, no. 5 (1976): 316–31; and Andrea Orzoff, “The Empire without Qualities: Austro-Hungarian Newspapers andthe Outbreak of War in 1914,” in A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public Opinion, and Newspapers in the Great War,ed. Troy Paddock, pp. 161–198 (Westport, CT, 2004).

5Robin Okey, “TheNeue Freie Presse and the South Slavs of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914,” Slavonic and EastEuropean Review 85, no. 1 (Jan., 2007): 79–104, at 81.

6Stuart Gilbert, James Joyce’s Ulysses: A Study (London, 1952), 3, 16.7James Schiff, “Rewriting Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway: Homage, Sexual Identity, and the Single-Day Novel by

Cunningham, Lippincott, and Lanchester,” Critique 45, no. 4 (2004): 363–82, at 363.

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For this study, newspapers are read not as party organs, as voices of the familiar Lager ofAustrian politics, but with an eye toward identifying themes that transcend the Lager modelof Austrian society. Despite our assumption that most newspapers represented the views ofone particular camp, close reading of them reveals that much of the day’s content wasreprinted, often verbatim, in newspapers from across the political spectrum. For they alldrew content from the same common source: the news agency K.k. Telegraphen-Korrespondenz-Bureau.8 A brief example here will demonstrate the sameness of “news”across Lager boundaries. Consider the death of an Austrian in Albania, the hot news spot on28 May: readers of the Catholic Reichspost read that, “Among the dead was found a certainRudolf Berger, apparently from Silesia, who was sojourning in Albania as a tourist. He waspromptly buried.” The identical story—with the “apparently,” the sojourning and the burial—appeared verbatim in the Arbeiter-Zeitung, the Neue Freie Presse, and the DeutschesVolksblatt.9 To be sure, newspapers took potshots at each other; the Arbeiter-Zeitung and theReichspost sparred on this day over the Pope’s recent speech on modernism; the latter calledthe Neue Freie Presse a liberal Jewish rag and the Arbeiter-Zeitung a purveyor of “Hebraicjokes.”10 This entrenched Lager partisanship is well known. But let us also consider that thedaily papers were all part of a shared media landscape, engaging with each other and fedtheir content by the K.k. Telegraphen-Korrespondenz-Bureau.

In what follows, the newspapers are read on this ordinary day. Each section roughlycorresponds to a section one might read in the newspaper: weather, front-page headlines,international and domestic news, sports, technology, culture, advertising, obituaries.

The Weather Report

Historians have often fallen back on metaphors of weather and natural disasters to describeEurope in the summer of 1914. Michael Neiberg depicts the Sarajevo assassination as a !rstclap of thunder, but “[c]oncern about the thunderclap passed quickly when the skies seemedto grow no darker as a result.”11 David Fromkin asks of a Europe abruptly plunging,crashing, and exploding, “What tornado wrecked civilized Old Europe and the world it thenruled?”12 Europe was “buffeted by high winds.” Europeans were “hit by a bolt they wronglybelieved came from out of the blue.”13 Mustafa Aksakal detects “the gathering clouds on theEuropean horizon.”14 One publication likened the war to the slipping of the earth’s crust.“It was an earthquake which had been silently maturing for centuries.”15

8Heinrich Scheuer, 75 Jahre Amtliche Nachrichtenstelle, vormals K.k. Telegraphen-Korrespondenz-Bureau (Vienna,1934). The K.k. Telegraphen-Korrespondenz-Bureau had exclusive news distribution rights for Austria-Hungary. NewsAgencies: Their Structure and Operation (Paris, 1953), 141.

9Reichspost/, 28 May 1914, 4; Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 3; Neue Freie Presse, 28 May 1914, 4; DeutschesVolskblatt, 28 May 1914, 3.

10Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 2. For examples of the newspapers engaging each other directly, see Reichspost(Abend), 28 May 1914, 2; Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 6.

11Michael S. Neiberg, Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I (Cambridge, MA, 2011), 10–11.12David Fromkin, Europe’s Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? (New York, 2004), 4.13Ibid., 14.14Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (New York,

2008), 11.15Cited in Ross F. Collins,World War I Primary Documents on Events from 1914 to 1919 (Westport, CT, 2008), 26.

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Weather and natural disasters !gured differently in the newspapers of the day. Weatherwas shifting in the prewar period from a locally experienced condition to a scienti!cphenomenon that could be tracked and reported across time and space.16 But the weatherreports for 28 May were patchy. The day would be a pleasant one; the sky was to be“hazy” and “humid.” Or would it? The Volksblatt predicted a high of 21 C, whereas theNeuigkeits-Welt-Blatt listed a temperature in Vienna of 30 C.17 Although all newspapersrelied on numbers from the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG),some reports were of weather past while others predicted what was to come. We canconclude that the printed data from the modern science of meteorology did not necessarily(yet) correspond to the daily experience of heat, precipitation, wind, and the general feelingof being outside.

Weather reports from 28 May are one small way to gauge a geographic consciousness ofempire. Readers in Vienna could follow weather in Galicia and Bukovina (sunny), theAdriatic (scirroco), and the Alps, where recent rains had caused considerable "ooding. Partsof the Gastein Valley were underwater.18 Curiously, weather in Hungary was less reported inthe Viennese press, but weather reports did allow Viennese readers to imagine a widerconnection to Europe. On this day, they were conjoined in a “very narrow trough of lowpressure” that stretched from Italy through Germany to Finland.19

Tectonic rumblings below ground also connected readers to Europe and the world. Theearth was moving on 28 May. In a “rare case,” a geological vibration somewhere else inthe world was causing smaller earthquakes around the Habsburg monarchy. The originof the distant quake was unclear; it was thought to have come from as far as 11,000kilometers away. The Arbeiter-Zeitung speculated that the shaking could have originatedin the Himalayas but had more likely been generated in the Gulf of Mexico.20

Wherever its origin, the Reichspost surmised, “it must have had catastrophic effects[elsewhere].”21 Such coverage relied on the seismograph machine, !rst installed inVienna in 1904.22 Newspapers were simultaneously reporting the event and educatingreaders on the new science of seismography. “The quake waves moved from the pointof origin to the outer edges of the earth’s crust.”23 Residents of Lemberg and Przemyslfelt motion for two seconds. In the Hungarian town of Homonna, terri!ed residents "edtheir homes and spent the night outdoors.24 The earth under Vienna shifted elevenmillimeters.25

Patterns above the earth, and rumblings below, tied Vienna to the wider world. Socialist,Catholic, liberal, and nationalist readers all found virtually identical (if equally imprecise)coverage of atmosphere and earth. In short, there was no Lager-weather.

16See Deborah R. Coen, “The Storm Lab: Meteorology in the Austrian Alps,” Science in Context 22 (2009): 463–86.17Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 7; Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, 28 May 1914, 6.18Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 9.19Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 7.20Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 8.21Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 8.22William Hung Kan Lee, International Handbook of Earthquake and Engineering Seismology (Amsterdam, 2002),

1299.23Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 8.24Neue Freie Presse, 28 May 1914, 13.25Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 8.

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Headline News

Although Vienna was not yet militarized in the way it would be during the war, military themeswere laced through its daily press “on the eve.” Splashed across the day’s international headlineswas a military entanglement in the Balkans. All eyes were on Albania. A con!agration wastaking shape there, but Viennese readers were clearly not up to speed on the intricacies ofAlbanian politics and needed a primer—the who/what/where of the story. Two newspapersoffered this in visual form. Under the headline “The Albanian Civil War,” the InteressanteBlatt gave a full-page drawing of the “Albanian” royal family !eeing from bands ofapproaching Young-Turk rebels. The “Albanians” were in fact the German Prince Wilhelmand his family; Wilhelm had recently been installed as ruler of Albania by the Europeanpowers (see Figure 1). The Neue Zeitung featured a full-page drawing of bewildered refugees,!eeing this way and that, lugging their worldly belongings in crates and sacks. The visualmessage was striking: Chaos reigned in one corner of the Balkans.26

Beyond the illustrations, newspapers tried to sort out for their readers the major playersin the Albanian drama, a sequence of events that historian Fredric Morton later calledan “of"cial, political, real-life costume party.”27 There was Prince Wilhelm’s minister of war,the recently deported Essad Pasha, who may have been plotting a coup against his new boss;his energized clan members; thousands of landless Muslim peasants; Serb intriguers; andbehind them all, Young Turks. Several newspapers reported that "fteen men “in Turkishclothing” had been rounded up among the insurgents.28 And, as we already know, the ill-fated tourist Rudolf Berger, “apparently of Silesia,” had just been buried in Albanian soil.

In some reporting, Italy was singled out as the villain in the “Albanian commotion.”29 BothAustria-Hungary and Italy had been the major supporters of an independent Albania; both weredetermined to prevent Serb access to the Adriatic.30 Despite the Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt’scontention that the two countries were “steady and uni"ed” on Albania, the Neue Zeitung saw“mutual suspicion” driving the action.”31 The Neue Freie Presse stepped back from thespeci"cs of the moment to indulge in a bit of colonial prospecting. Despite its “most primitiveconditions,” it would be possible “to bring culture to Albania. The fastest way would certainlybe through decisive seizure by a great power. As a colony [Albania] could pose considerabledif"culties, particularly if one imagined only a Pénétration paci!que.”32

Even such a peaceful seizure would necessitate arms. To that end, as the Deutsches Volksblattreported, Prince Wilhelm had ordered a large cache of weapons from the Skoda factory in Pilsen.A contingent of Austrian of"cers had been sent to teach the Albanian gendarmes how to use thenew equipment.33 Where the German nationalist newspaper saw business, the Socialists sawmilitarism and capitalist exploitation. The Arbeiter-Zeitung decried the deployment ofHabsburg of"cers in the service of a private arms manufacturer and put the unbearable

26Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 1; Neue Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 1.27Frederic Morton, Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 (New York, 1989), 160. For the Great Powers’ 1913

establishment of an “independent” Albania under the control of a six-country commission, see Owen Pearson,Albania and King Zog: Independence, Republic and Monarchy 1908–1939 (London, 2004), 44–45.

28Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, 28 May 1914, 3.29Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 4.30Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 99.31Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, 28 May 1914, 2; Neue Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 1–2.32Neue Freie Presse, 28 May 1914, 26.33Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 3.

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suffering of the Albanian peasantsfront and center, warning, “TheAlbanian farmers will keepEurope very busy!”34

News of the Soon-to-BeEnemies

Although they did not yet knowthey were “on the eve” of a greatwar, newspapers at the end ofMay charted the militarymaneuverings of Austria-Hungary’s foes. Most newspapersincluded a brief column inch onthe Serbian parliament’s passageof a war credit bill.35 FromRussia, too, military rustling wasreported. The tsar had ordered“exercises” (the Arbeiter-Zeitungcast doubt on this term) for up toa million Russian soldiers. TheNeue Freie Presse tallied withalarm the high, “never beforeseen” number of Russian menwho would be “in uniform bySeptember,” and the NeueZeitung concluded that the movesignaled Russia’s preparation fora “great war.”36

But in coverage of culture,sports, and business, the Viennese press was unabashedly admiring of the accomplishmentsof Austria’s soon-to-be enemies. On 28 May, the greatest sensation in the city was theperformance of Russian ballerina Anna Pawlowa. In her second night of a visitingperformance of the ballet Giselle at the Theater an der Wien, the St. Petersburg prima was a“great success.” The Deutsches Volksblatt pronounced her “magni!cent.”37According to theNeue Zeitung, “The lean lines of her lithesome body, the unsurpassed technique on the toes,the grace of her movements and her dramatic artistic style drew the whole audience underher spell.” She was “showered with ovations.”38 The Reichspost, not to be outdone, pantedthat language itself could not capture the essence of her performance.39

Fig.

1-B/W

onlin

e,B/W

inprint

FIGURE 1: “Albania makes headline news.” Interessante Blatt, 28 May1914, 1.

34Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 2.35Neue Freie Presse, 28 May 1914, 2.36Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 5; Neue Freie Presse, 28 May 1914, 2; Neue Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 3.37Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 10.38Neue Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 4.39Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 10.

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Pawlowa’s grace on stage was matched by British prowess on the football pitch. Newspapersreported that the Wiener Athletiksport Club had played Celtic, the visiting team from Scotland,losing 6–2. There was wide admiration for the team referred to as “our English guests.” TheIllustriertes Österreichisches Sportblatt noted that Celtic had played a match “the likes ofwhich...we have almost never seen in Vienna.” The Scots’ abilities “both in regard to tacticsand techniques” represented “the highest form of achievement in the art of football.”40 Moregenerally, England seemed to rule the sport world when it came to equipment.Advertisements for English soccer balls, tennis rackets, bicycle parts, and shoes—“originalEnglish make”—illustrate Vienna’s high sporting regard for its soon-to-be enemy. Twotennis racket models, the “Conqueror” and the “Defender,” were on sale in May.41

In business, too, visitors from the West were eagerly anticipated. Vienna was preparing tohost a large delegation of French guests at the International Businessmen’s Day, scheduledfor the end of June. French registration for the event had been so robust that one chartertrain had been arranged; a second was being considered.42 This was one of many business,sporting, and cultural connections that would be severed with the outbreak of war.

Domestic Politics

While Austrian of!cers were peddling Skoda armaments in Albania, the Austrian andHungarian Delegations were meeting in Budapest.43 With the Austrian Reichsrat havingbeen inde!nitely adjourned in March as a result of nationalist gridlock, the meeting of thesixty delegates was one place where formal party politics were on display. Military matterscrowded the daily calendar of the Austrian Delegation. The most extensive treatment of theday’s events came in the of!cial Wiener Zeitung. Poor treatment of Slavs in the army,assignment of Slavic troops to undesirable locations, and various protests about language usein the military all came to the fore. So, too, did reform of military pay and the allegedinjustice in the selection of of!cers.44 Questions about of!cers’ behavior also came before theDelegation. One of the more sensational, widely covered stories coming from Budapest wasChristian Social delegate Josef Schlegel’s appeal regarding a long-standing military tradition:the duel. Schlegel found support even among political foes. The practice of dueling hadcontinued in the prewar period despite consistent opposition from the Catholic Church,Social Democrats, and bourgeois liberal parties.45 Recent news of a Hungarian of!cer’s duelprovoked Schlegel’s ire, but his loyalties were torn; he and other Christian Socials detestedthe duel but were loath to be seen criticizing the military. Prefacing his appeal with thewords of the emperor’s hymn, “What the citizens diligently created, may the emperor’s

40Illustriertes österreichisches Sportblatt, 28 May 1914, 11.41Illustriertes österreichisches Sportblatt, 28 May 1914, 14 and 2.42Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 9.43The Delegations met in Vienna and Budapest in alternate years, with each deliberating separately and

communicating with the other only in writing. For overview of the work of the Delegations, see Lothar Höbelt,“The Delegations: Preliminary Sketch of a Semi-Parliamentary Institution,” Parliaments, Estates & Representation16, no. 2 (December 1996): 149–54.

44Wiener Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 4, 5, and 9.45István Deák, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Of!cer Corps, 1848–1918

(New York, 1990), 132.

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power protect,”46 Schlegel stated: “If it comes to war, God forbid, we don’t want to be the ones totake responsibility for having denied the military” its support.47

Newspaper readers who were not following the headlines on Albania or the deliberations onthe military in Budapest would nonetheless have felt a military presence around the city. Threenews items for 28 May called to mind the Habsburg military past. On a somber note, theReichspost reminded readers of obligations stemming from the monarchy’s previous militaryexploits. A number of elderly “Radetsky veterans” were reportedly living in direcircumstances and in need of assistance.48 More happily, several advertisements alertedreaders to a celebration at the Prater, where an earlier military victory was beingcommemorated. “Anno 1814,” a Festspiel that hailed the defeat of Napoleon and thecentenary of the Vienna Congress, drew wide public participation and dozens ofpersonalities from the Viennese stage. Participants dressed, danced, and ate in the spirit of“Alt-Wien 1814.”49 In light of events to come, perhaps the most poignant military reportfrom 28 May 1914 was of the !ag consecration ceremony for the Infantry Regiment 99 thathad taken place in Vienna that week. Several newspapers reported that passersby couldwitness “a brilliant military parade” as the I.R. 99 maneuvered in front of the Votivkirche.The old !ag, which had !own over the battle"eld at Solferino, had been placed at theMilitary Museum; with sables drawn, of"cers now swore to honor and defend the newlyconsecrated !ag.50 I.R. 99 would go on to suffer enormous losses in the course of WorldWar I.51 By the end of August 1914, its regimental !ag !uttered over Stary-Zamosc inRussian-Poland where the 99th was suffering heavy casualties. The parents of the deceasedRichard Freschl, a Lieutenant in the 99th from near Vienna, were assured in a condolenceletter that their son had ful"lled his duty and helped “to bind laurels to our !ag.”52

The war would bring distant place names like Stary-Zamosc into the Viennese consciousnessas residents tracked the whereabouts of loved ones in the "eld. World War I brought the empirehome; for those in the capital, it changed the geographic awareness of the Habsburg lands and ofthe territory of neighboring states.53 It brought nearer what had been distant. In addition to theweather reports, mentioned above, the empire came to Viennese readers in the form of politicalscandals, employment ads, labor disputes, and above all, sporting events.

In two stories, domestic news from beyond Vienna served as entertaining political spectacle.The Reichspost eagerly detailed the downfall of a disgraced Social Democratic Reichsratrepresentative from Galicia. After incurring large debt, and borrowing sums from his partycolleagues, representative Semen Wityk had !ed to America. Comrades in the RuthenianSocial Democratic faction had tried to expel him from the party, but he could be foundneither in Lemberg nor in his home district. Declared “missing,” Wityk had dodged his debtsand embarked on an Amerikareise.54 Meanwhile, closer to home, the trial of fallen CzechNational Social Party member Karel !viha was underway in Prague. In March, the Praguenewspaper Národní listy had outed !viha as a paid undercover police informant. The accused

46“Was des Bürgers Fleiß geschaffen, schütze treu des Kriegers Kraft,” Kaisershymne (1854).47Wiener Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 8.48Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 5.49Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 11; Neue Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 7.50Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 9.51Josef Mayrhofer, ed., Das Infanterie-Regiment Nr. 99 im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Vienna/Znaim, 1929).52Auf dem Felde der Ehre, 1914–1915, vol. 2 (Vienna, 1915), 27.53See Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I

(Cambridge, MA, 2004), chap. 5.54Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 8.

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sued for defamation. In its 28 May edition, the Interessante Blatt published photographs ofwitnesses on their way to the Prague courthouse and promised readers that the case offered“deep insight into the inner mechanisms of Bohemian politics.”55

Goings on in Bohemia similarly made the Arbeiter-Zeitung on 28 May, and here we can seelabor unrest mapped geographically across Austria-Hungary. Workers at a paper factory in theBohemian village of Holaubkau near Pilsen were in a dispute with management. The AustrianSocial Democratic Party, fearing that the !rm would import workers from elsewhere,admonished readers of the Arbeiter-Zeitung in Vienna that an “in"ux of chemical workers toHolaubkau” was to be strictly avoided. Identical warnings to limit movement of incomingworkers were given in the case of a lockout of workers at a Hungarian wagon-making !rm andstrikes of barbers’ assistants in Slovenia and tailors in Moravia.56 These admonitions—do nottravel to strike zones—served to prevent the detrimental movement of laborers across picketlines within the monarchy. Here labor unrest sharpened geographic consciousness: distance,movement, and the consequences of crossing lines—spatial and economic—came to the fore.

Sports

The empire “comes together” most organically in newspapers’ sports sections. Here the crossingof lines was the norm; teams met, players were traded. The Illustriertes Österreichisches Sportblattfor 28 May reported scores from football matches in Galicia, Hungary, Bohemia, and Styria.Vienna Rapid had just played a match against DFC Prague, defeating the visitors 6–1.Prague’s star striker, Robert Merz, was pro!led as “a true child of Vienna” (ein echtes WienerKind).57 The Sportblatt explicitly promoted the geographic literacy of the monarchy with acontest: “Do you Know Austria?” challenged contestants, for a prize of 1,000 Kronen, to !ll ina blank map with the names of thirty cities and towns.58 Auto racing, too, allowed readers tofollow events around the Habsburg realm. A grand, multileg car race—the Karpathenfahrt1914—was underway in late May.59 Organized by the Hungarian Automobile club, the seven-day race covered 2,500 kilometers. On 28 May, a report !led from Czernowitz noted that apack of automobiles had raced through the spa town of Dorna-Watra. After dinner, localhosts and the racers, who numbered thirty-three at the start of the race, drank a toast to theKaiser.60 The Deutsches Volksblatt added that the high performance of three Austro-Daimlercars offered “the latest proof of the excellent quality of this domestic brand.”61

Technology

Automotive culture in Austria was in its infancy, and the racers of the Karpathenfahrt were anelite few. Yet there are hints that the experience of car travel was expanding to wider circles. The!rm of Goldman & Salatsch was advertising to readers of the Neue Freie Presse a complete

55Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 7.56Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 10.57Illustriertes Österreichisches Sportblatt, 28 May 1914, 25.58Ibid., 26.59For route of the Karpathenfahrt, see “Horseless Age,” The Automobile Trade Magazine 33 (1914), 972.60Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 12; see also Wiener Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 16.61Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 1.

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apparel kit for automobile excursions (windbreakers, caps, goggles),62 and for sale in theInteressante Blatt was an actual car, the “Little Wanderer,” billed as “the ideal automobile fordoctors, businessmen, and sportsmen.”63 In reports of spectacular car crashes, we !nd afascination with speed.64 On 28 May, readers were drawn to Trieste, where a Baron EdmundCnobloch and his young chauffeur drove headlong into a canal and drowned.65 Thechauffeur, reported the Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, had been possessed by the “devil of speed”(Schnellfahrtsteufel). Viennese readers were transported to the scene of the accident andgiven details that would allow them to imagine the event !rsthand: unable to open the doors,the two men had been trapped as the car !lled with water. “The Baron’s watch stood still at11:15, the moment the catastrophe occurred.” The newspaper offered a moral: on unfamiliarstreets one ought to drive slowly.66 The love of mechanized speed and acceleration is evenre"ected in a report from the Vienna horse track. In the “maiden race” for two-year-olds, thewinning horse was !ttingly named: Motor.67

Next to cars, airplanes featured prominently in the day’s news. Sprinkled through thenewspapers are a number of stories that show an interest in "ight and the thrills and dangersit entailed. The 3rd International Flugwoche, set to take place in Vienna at the end of June,promised to dazzle. Domestic and international contestants would compete for a wide rangeof prizes for fastest speed, ascent, and landing.68 Projected for September were a series of"ights deemed “Zuverlässigkeits"üge” around Austria-Hungary.69 The event had pilots "yinground-trip from Vienna, through Bratislava, Wiener Neustadt, Linz, and Gmunden.70

Readers were reminded, however, of the harrowing risks of "ight. The Interresante Blattcovered, with photographs, the unveiling of a stark “pilots’ memorial” in Herzegovina. Themonument honored Hauptmann Deotatus Andrich, the commander of the Mostar air!eldwho a year prior had “met his death in a crash.” The monument itself resembled a crash site.A towering, angular stone was surrounded at its base by strewn rocks and rubble, a grimlandscape of heights and sharp pitfalls.71

One who hoped to follow Andric’s soaring career path, but whose life ended in a verydifferent way, was of!cer cadet Artur Stampach. The youngster committed suicide in May1914, and several newspapers recounted his end: Stampach was found dead in his room,revolver and note by his side. He had aspired to become a pilot, but saw his dream of "ightextinguished when a doctor deemed him un!t because of a heart condition. In his farewellnote, Stampach declared that he “lived with heart and soul” for "ight, and without aviationhis life promised “no joy.”72 Literary historian Paul Fussell would surely !nd Stampach’sdeath an instance of the cultural trope that he used to characterize World War I: irony.

62Neue Freie Presse, 28 May 1914, 6 (Abendblatt).63Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 26.64For prewar press reporting on deadly car crashes, see Wolfgang Sachs, Die Liebe zum Automobil. Ein Rückblick in

die Geschichte unserer Wünsche (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1984).65Neues Wiener Journal, 28 May 1914, 10.66Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, 28 May 1914, 7.67Neues Wiener Journal, 28 May 1914, 9.68Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, 28 May 1914, 4.69Modeled on the competitions started by Prussian Prince Heinrich, such "ights were meant to test the newest

airplanes and afford pilots a chance to show their skills. See Christian Kehrt, “‘Das Fliegen ist immer noch eingefâhrliches Spiel.’ Risiko und Kontrolle der Flugzeugtechnik von 1908 bis 1914,” in Kalkuliertes Risiko. Technik,Spiel und Sport an der Grenze, ed. Gunter Gebauer et al., pp. 199–224 (Frankfurt/New York, 2006).

70Deutsches Volksblatt, 28 May 1914, 7.71Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 2 and 7.72Deutsches Volksblatt Mittag-Ausgabe, 28 May 1914, 3.

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A young pilot kills himself for the love of !ight just before the World War in which scores ofAustria-Hungary’s airmen would be killed in battle.73

The Interessante Blatt worried that the fascination with the new technologies of speed—carsand airplanes—had overshadowed a “forgotten” marvel of the modern age—trains and thebridges that supported them. It reported on the "nal safety testing of a new rail bridge forthe Westkrainer Bahn in Slovenia. Featuring a sketch of three massive locomotives traversingthe new structure, the newspaper hailed colossal bridges “that just a few decades ago wouldhave been completely unfeasible,” but that were now considered unremarkable “even to theeveryman.”74 The Reichspost meanwhile touted the geopolitical wonder of the sameWestkrainer Bahn. Extension “to south and east for our half of the empire constitutes a quietconquest,” a de"nitive reply to Hungarian resistance to a rail network linking Austria toCroatia and the Dalmatian coast. With the new bridge, “two lands, standing under onescepter” but separated by political distance, now faced a rosy future together.75

Advertising

The most revealing information about what Viennese readers’ consumption patterns may havebeen in the months preceding the war comes from the advertising sections of the newspapers,which in some cases numbered a dozen or more pages per edition. Ads for businesses, takentogether with the want ads (Kleine Anzeigen), constituted a signi"cant portion of the day’sprint. Anything and seemingly everything was for sale in Vienna on 28 May 1914. The mostcommon ads were for clothing, shoes, and fabric. The Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt offered gardenhoses, sausages, and automated rat traps (“catch up to 40 in one night”); the Reichspost,pillows and pianos; the Interessante Blatt, raincoats, harmonicas, and “American” suitcases;the Arbeiter-Zeitung, a gravestone (“in good condition”) and 45,000 record albums(Schallplatten) from a merchant going out of business. And everywhere there was furniture,furniture, furniture. Only the of"cial Wiener Zeitung was virtually ad-free. Modernadvertising gimmicks were on full display in prewar Vienna. “Are you astounded by thecheap prices?” asked one purveyor of clothing.76 One "nds products for “no-risk” "ve-daytrial periods, free travel guides for loyal readers of a particular newspapers (“mention yousaw the ad here”), free catalogs, service guarantees, and of course price reductions.One detects the class orientations of these offers. More than any other newspaper, theArbeiter-Zeitung’s advertisers promised affordability in the form of down payments (aufRaten) and installment plans (Teilzahlung).

The many products and themes in the ads defy easy categorization. But we can conclude afew things from them: "rst, the Viennese were captivated by appearances—their own andothers’. Readers of the daily press were bombarded with ads promising to improve theirexteriors. The following products, among others, were on sale: hair thickening crème; anti-dandruff soap; facial hair removal paste; hair coloring products for him and her; mouthwash;

73An estimated 20 percent of the naval and 36 percent of army pilots died during the war. Martin D. O’Connor, AirAces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1914–1918 (Mesa, AZ, 1986), 8. For remarkable aerial photographs taken byAustrian pilots, see Fitz Baur and Joseph Brunner, Wir Flieger, 1914–1918. Der Krieg im Fliegerlichtbild (Vienna,1930).

74Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 6.75Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 8.76Neue Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 7.

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crèmes to whiten the skin, combat freckles, and age spots; and even a lotion that would reshapethe nose. A whole host of products for the breasts were to be had: plant extracts to !rm breasts,miracle preparations to enhance them, brassieres to lift and shape. An unattractive exteriorcould doom an unlucky person. The Reichspost ran a classi!ed ad seeking donations for a“poor Catholic man” suffering from “chronic lupus vulgaris.” He was unable to earn a livingbecause his face “provoked shock everywhere.”77 Rosa Schaffer’s long-running ads forcosmetics and beauty treatments sum up the spirit of the day. Schaffer, the turn of thecentury Viennese cosmetics magnate who claimed the honori!c title of “of!cial cosmeticspurveyor to the Serbian royal house,” admonished readers on 28 May 1914: “Beauty iswealth. Beauty is power.” (Schönheit ist Reichtum. Schönheit ist Macht.)78 These products toimprove physical appearance may have been the luxuries of the middle and upper classes.The Arbeiter-Zeitung ran comparatively few beauty ads; it did, however, feature more ads forcondoms than other newspapers: “Parisian Specials,” “Carnival and Hercules brands,”“lasting protection for men,” free price list, all to be mailed “discreetly.”79

A second observation from the day’s advertisements is that the food “substitutions” that theViennese would be forced to adopt in wartime were already in effect, but for reasons other thandire scarcity. The marketing of Ersatzmittel was robust. Margarine as a butter substitute wasadvertised in several newspapers. First introduced to the Viennese market by a soap factoryin Liesing, the city government had permitted the !rm Sarg to sell the new fat made from oxtallow under the name of Prima Wiener Sparbutter.80 The promise of “saving” was nottargeted only at the working classes; Unikum, a brand of margarine that appeared in severalnewspapers, was marketed to consumers rich and poor.81 The housewife was promised a costsavings of 50 percent by switching from butter to Unikum. Alterations, if not directsubstitutions, were made in other products as well. Coffee, for example, came in a number ofadulterated forms. The König factory in Schwechat advertised Sparkaffee Moretti made of“ground and mixed vegetable components,” the best Kaffee-Ersatz. Kaffee Hag meanwhilebilled regular coffee as a “harmful stimulant” and promised athletes that its caffeine-freesubstitute would promote a healthy heart and strong nerves.82 The !rm also invited skepticsand novices to stop by its taste-testing kiosk at the Kohlmarkt to acquaint themselves withthe caffeine-free aroma.83

Finally, the advertisements from 28 May give the unmistakable impression that summer wasin the air. On this day, a new Kodak Photography branch opened on Vienna’sMariahilferstrasse. An advertisement for the event connected the new popular use of thecamera to the prospects for the coming summer holidays. “Holidays without Kodak aresquandered holidays,” the new branch advised. “This year” holidays must not be misspent:“Take a Kodak along!” (See Figure 2.) Customers unfamiliar with the new technology werereassured that its use took less than a half an hour to learn, instruction was free of charge in

77Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 24.78Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 21.79Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 13.80Wilhelm Fleischmann, et al., The Book of the Dairy: A Manual of the Science and Practice of Dairy Work (London,

1896), 321.81Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 12.82Illustriertes Österreichisches Sportblatt, 28 May 1914, 8. On the origins of caffeine-free coffee, see Mark

Pendergrast, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World (New York, NY, 1999).83Neue Freie Presse, 28 May 1914, 29.

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the shop, and even women couldlearn to operate the device. Priceswere in reach of even the poorerclasses. An entry-level “Brownie”model sold for just 8.5 Kronen.84

Elsewhere in the newspapersone feels summer in the air.P!ngsten is approaching. Thereare ads for bathing suits,reclining deck chairs, andinnumerable hotels and pensions.Arrangements were being madefor household and childcare. Areader of the Arbeiter-Zeitungposted an ad offering summerchildcare: “can take an olderchild to Styria” during theholidays; meanwhile a Neue FreiePresse reader sought temporaryemployment for a valued maid:“Seeking [position] for my maidservant: Has worked in my housefor four years. Looking for a postwith a nice family from 1 Julythrough the end of August.” Notall was rosy on the holiday front,however. For those planning atrip to the Alps, a threatenedprivatization of theGrossglockner was in the works.A Herr Willer from Bochum hadthreatened to close certain pathsand hiking trails around the

glacier during the summer season. The Neue Freie Presse, citing earlier legal precedent, tookpains to argue, “The majestic glacier region of the Grossglockner ... may never be closed offby a private owner.”85 By the time Herr Willer’s plan was to take effect—August 1—holiday-making was no longer of pressing concern to the newspaper or its readers.

Obituaries/Deaths

One striking phenomenon from the newspapers of 28 May is the eerie presence of death inmuch of the day’s reporting. A few digni!ed obituaries appear here and there, but readers

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FIGURE 2: “Austrians prepare for summer holidays.” Neue Freie Presse,28 May 1914, 23.

84Ibid., 23.85Ibid., 12. For follow-up on the glacier closing, see “Die Wegfreiheit in den Bergen,” Mitteilungen des deutschen

und österreichischen Alpenvereins 7–8 (April 1919), http://www.literature.at/ (accessed 8 August 2013).

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encountered death more typically in stories of gruesome passings: the aforementioneddrownings in Trieste, the court case of a poisoned stepdaughter, the fatal stabbing of a youngfeather decorator by her drunken lover.86 Some deaths were accidental. Thirteen-year-oldAndreas Hlusty had fallen to his death in a stairwell.87 Others were accidentally discovered.On 27 May a worker renovating Vienna’s Aspernbrücke had discovered two humanskeletons, legs entwined, buried !ve meters below the earth. There was no danger of amurderer on the loose, however; police determined that the bodies were likely victims of anearlier Danube "ood.88 Other corpses made the news this day. Under the headlines, “CorpseTrader?” and “Shipment of Body Parts,” several papers revealed that body parts had beensent from Trieste to Vienna’s General Hospital.89 Reassurance was given: The University ofVienna had “for a long time endured a shortage of corpses.” Because of the rising number ofmedical students, the so-called “poor corpses,” unclaimed bodies from city morgues, “nolonger suf!ce[d].”90 Finally, the Arbeiter-Zeitung reported unrest at the cemetery, whereSocialist-Catholic tensions in Ottakring played out graveside. The newspaper lambasted anindolent priest who failed to appear at the funeral of comrade Ernst Planner. Disgruntledcrowds mourning Planner and two other unburied corpses let out “un"attering” cries aboutthe priest, and family members contemplated burial without last rites.91

Murders and accidents aside, the most frequent death stories by far in the Viennesenewspapers were suicides. Suicide reporting transcended Lager orientation altogether. Wehave mentioned already the life and death coincidence on the Selbstmörderbankerl and thedemise by his own hand of the young pilot Stampach. Although one ought to heed historianWilliam Bowman’s caution not to “reinforce the cliché of the Habsburg capital as themorbid center of Central Europe,” one could indeed be excused from reaching just such aconclusion from the day’s reading.92 Not all suicide coverage was sensationalistic. In theof!cial Wiener Zeitung, suicides were reported in bookkeeping fashion alongside all of theother things to be counted—cases of rabies, tuberculosis, herpes. Its unadorned reportingcontained features of suicide coverage replicated in other papers: “The day before yesterday64-year old writer Moritz T. shot himself in the head with a Browning pistol. He committedthe deed on account of suffering (wegen eines Leidens). This morning locksmith apprenticeAdolf W. shot himself in the left temple with a cane gun. He suffered a severe concussionseveral years ago and has since repeatedly voiced suicidal intentions.”93 The pattern is: name,profession, weapon or method, and “cause.”94 In other papers we read: Tuesday evening aman shot himself in the head with a revolver at the Stadtpark. He was twenty-!ve-year-oldmusician Franz N. His motive: “weary of life” (Lebensmüde).95 Yesterday, an elegantlydressed man shot himself with a revolver in the town of Mariazell. He was Herr Mandl, head

86Neues Wiener Journal, 28 May 1914, 10; Wiener Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 7; Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 6.87Neue Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 5.88Neue Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 3; and Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 6.89Reichspost, 28 May 1914, 9.90Neue Freie Presse, 28 May 1914, 13.91Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 6.92William Bowman, “Despair Unto Death? Attempted Suicide in Early 1930s Vienna,” Austrian History Yearbook

39 (2008): 138–56, at 141.93Wiener Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 7.94For explanations of suicide in popular discourse of the time, see Susanne Hoffmann, “Suizidalität im

Alltagsdiskurs: Populare Deutungen des ‘Selbstmords’ im 20. Jahrhundert,” Historical Social Research 34, no. 4(December 2009): 188–203.

95Arbeiter-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 7.

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of a large !oral business in Vienna. His motive: "nancial distress. Suicide was a commonplacestory for the Viennese reader, especially at this time of year—spring was typically the peakseason for Austrian suicide.96

What many of the suicide reports on 28 May share is the weapon: a gun. It is surprising forthe American reader to imagine Vienna as a “gun society.” And yet, it clearly was. The gun wasthe chosen weapon of many suicides. It is hard to estimate howmany guns were in circulation inprewar Vienna. What guns there were in private hands the government was eager to round uponce war was imminent. The Imperial Decree 160 of 25 July 1914 ordered the requisition ofprivate "rearms.97 Although statistics on private gun ownership are hard to "nd, theadvertisements for guns are not. The Carinthian weapons factory “Melichor” advertisedhunting ri!es with the newest gadgetry and “unparalleled shooting performance.”98 Theautomatic pocket pistol “Steyr” was advertised in an army newspaper as “Absolutelydependable! Available at all gunsmiths and arms dealers.”99 On 28 May, it was reported thata shoot-out had occurred on the Rotenturmstrasse: “As is known, a half-crazy man wasshooting with a revolver from the roof of a passing omnibus.” Rather than attempting todisarm the shooter, male passersby had apparently !ed. The newspaper reporting this scene,Danzer’s Armee-Zeitung, commented with disdain on the use of handguns in public and thelack of masculine honor on display in the hedonistic city controlled by “paci"sts, monists,Socialists, esperantists, and the like.”100

In closing, we have seen that on this average Thursday before the Great War, Vienna was acity of parades and shoot-outs, beauty creams and corpses, soccer matches and suicides. We willavoid trying to foretell whether readers “knew”—or could have known—that in a month’s timethe rhythm of everyday life would begin to change radically. Speculating so would draw us intothe realm of fortune-telling and the occult. By chance, this, too, was on offer on 28 May.A mysterious “Professor Roxroy” offered his services in a prominent quarter-page ad in theInteressante Blatt. He offered customers the chance to learn their fortunes. “Let this manpredict your life’s destiny!” his ad trumpeted.101 Fortune-telling was also depicted in thepress as the sinister business of gypsies (see Figure 3). With a full-page illustration of exoticgypsy women seducing gullible souls in Berlin with their card reading and magic potions,the Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt warned its readers that even “big city people” could be ensnared inthe gypsies’ false promises of knowing the future.102

Alongside “Roxroy” and other fortune-tellers, the Vienna stage offered a third venue fortelling of things to come. In late May 1914, Johann Nestroy’s comedy Lumpazivagabundus

96Norbert Ortmayr, “Selbstmord in Österreich, 1819–1988,” Zeitgeschichte 17, no. 5 (1990): 209–25, at 216. 1907–1913 were peak years for suicide in Austria. The suicide rate fell in 1914 and continued to fall every year during thewar. Ortmayr, 222. One anomaly on 28 May was that, with the exception of aviation enthusiast Stampach, all suicidesappear to have been civilians. In fact, suicides were more frequent among members of the military than amongcivilians.

97RGBl. 160, 25 Juli 1914, “Verordnung des Gesamtministeriums vom 25. Juli 1914 über den Besitz von Waffen,Munitionsgegenständen und Sprengstoffe und den Verkehr mit denselben.”

98Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, 28 May 1914, 30.99Danzer’s Armee-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 11. This newspaper appeared every Thursday, and thus on 28 May 1914. It

was edited by Carl Danzer “unter Mitwirkung eines Kreises höhere Of"ziere.”100Danzer’s Armee-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 2.101Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 17. “Roxroy” would have been a popular manifestation of the wider

“contemporary craze for spiritualism and psychical research” that existed in philosophical and scholarly Viennesecircles. See Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, “The Modern Occult Revival in Vienna, 1880–1910,” Durham UniversityJournal 80 (1980): 63–68, at 63.

102Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, 28 May 1914, 25.

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(1833) had been magni!centlystaged at the Volksprater in ashow dubbed “a sensation,” arollicking performance in a cityaccustomed to good theater.103 Inthe play, a cobbler is one of threevagabonds being tested by theking of the good fairies and thepatron saint of the vagabonds.104

He is also an amateur astrologerand predicts that a comet willsoon come and destroy the earth.His Kometenlied foretells of thedownfall of man and thedestruction of the world; itsrefrain, ominous in May 1914,echoes: “The world surely won’tbe here much longer.” (Die Weltsteht auf kein’ Fall mehr lang.)

“The world,” or morespeci!cally Europe, had alreadygone to hell in the minds of someconservatives. The comet hadalready struck. Danzer’s Armee-Zeitung for 28 May surveyedEuropean politics and statecraftand denounced bitterly its

“hypocrisy, pretenses, shamelessness, lies, and fraudulence.” Wearily watching the eventsunfold in the Balkans, its editor yawned, “It’s fortunate that the dog days of summer arecoming soon. Then at least one doesn’t have to read the newspaper.”105

MAUREEN HEALY is an associate professor of history at Lewis and Clark College. She received the 2005Herbert Baxter Adams Prize and the 2005 Barbara Jelavich Book Prize for her book, Vienna and theFall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, 2004).

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FIGURE 3: “Fortune-telling on the eve of World War I.” Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt, 28 May 1914, 25.

103Interessante Blatt, 28 May 1914, 11.104Johann Nestroy, Three Comedies, trans. Max Knight and Joseph Fabry (New York, 1967), 23.105Danzer’s Armee-Zeitung, 28 May 1914, 1.

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773

774

775

776

777

778

779

780

781

782

783

784