Political Considerations of Vienna Period
I used to avoid making any sort of public appearances, although I believe I concerned myself more with politics than many others. Only in the smallest groups did I talk about what inwardly moved or attracted me. This talking at close quarters did me a great deal of good: I probably learned less about “speaking,” but I came to know people as revealed in their often infinitely primitive views and objections. In doing so, I trained myself, wasting no time or opportunity for my own further education. There was surely nowhere in Germany any such favorable opportunity as in Vienna at that time.
General political thinking in the old Danube monarchy was, judging by its extent, larger and more inclusive than in the old Germany of that period—excepting parts of Prussia, Hamburg, and the coast of the North Sea. In the present instance I mean by Austria that part of the great Hapsburg Empire which, being settled by Germans, was in every respect the cause of that state’s creation; and whose population alone had the strength to give cultural life for centuries to the nation, politically so artificial. The longer time marched on, the more the existence and future of that state depended on the preservation of this germ cell of the Empire.
If the old Patrimonial Dominions were the heart of the Empire, forever sending fresh blood into the circulation of state and cultural life, Vienna was brain and will together.
From its mere outward show alone you would have credited this city with the strength to rule as sole queen over a conglomeration of peoples, and by her own splendid beauty causing the grave signs of the whole’s senility to be forgotten.
No matter how the interior of the Empire was convulsed by the bloody turmoil of individual nationalities, the world outside, and Germany in particular, saw only the charming image of this city. The illusion was the more receptive because at this time Vienna seemed to be taking perhaps its last and greatest visible rise. Under the rule of a mayor who was a true genius the august Residence of the Kaisers of the old Empire awaked once more
77
