The Xenophobe's Guide to the Austrians (Xenophobe's Guides) by Louis James

Author:Louis James [James, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908120069
Publisher: Oval Projects
Published: 2010-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

Another artist, Alfred Kubin, and the composers Alban Berg and Hugo Wolf all attempted suicide. Not to be outdone, the dynasty supplied the most spectacular suicide of all, when Crown Prince Rudolf shot his lover, Marie Vetsera, and then himself at Mayerling. Rudolf, who kept a skull on his desk as a memento mori, was simply one more in a long line of Austrians who opted for the short cut to the other side (although shooting his mistress at the same time was overstepping the conventions somewhat).

Jumping off bridges over the Danube was such a regular occurrence in the 19th century that Vienna is one of the few places to have a burial place dedicated largely to suicides (Friedhof der Namenlosen, The Graveyard of the Nameless) which is situated downstream near Albern, at a spot where the corpses tended to wash up.

A bonus for an Austrian of being safely dead is that his removal from the scene often brings the applause and recognition that was denied him in life. Mortality is the pre-condition for immortality, or so it is often claimed, and Mozart is paraded as the ‘awful example’. Mahler supplied a good aphorism to buttress the myth: “Muss man denn in Österreich erst tot sein damit sie einen leben lassen?” (‘Have you actually got to be dead in Austria before they’ll let you live?’)

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