And now the first tremendous peal struck through the moment of midnight at the stars. Was it die Pummerin after all? The roar of the True Faith? The clarion of ancient victory? No one in the crowd had time to judge. Within seconds, a thousand other church bells across the city clanged into a chorus. The sound overwhelmed the night sky and shivered constellations.
Gradually, after five minutes, the metal tongues stopped calling. Before the last echo died into the firmament, before the kissing and whooping started on the ground, there was a moment's silence.
A new presence had descended on the roofs.
The year 1914.
When thrust into a fresh expanse of future, the viennese sought comfort in omens. They had a long-established New Year's pastime. Into an ice bucket filled with cold champagne they would throw molten bits of lead, and then, with a pair of tongs, hold up each bit for interpretation. From the shape into which the lump congealed they would extract clues to things to come. It was a game of fascinating ambiguities. Never had it been played more intensely than during the wee hours of that newest January first.
Very soon an event auspicious beyond doubt pleased the Imperial House. The young Archduke Franz Joseph became father of a healthy baby girl. She was baptized Her Imperial and Royal Highness, the most serene Adelheid Maria Josepha Sixta Antonia Roberta Ottonia Zita Charlotte Luise Immaculata Pia Theresia Beatrix Franziska Isabella Henriette Max- imiliana Genoveva Ignatia Markus d'Aviano von Habsburg. Twenty-one names garlanded a six-pound infant. Twenty-one more to strengthen dynastic continuity.
Fifty-two Viennese killed themselves that month. Most of them were poor and quite a few of them must have been prompted by the weather. On January 7, the full rigors of winter fell on the city at last. A blizzard, huge and angry, smothered the streets. A series of icy gales followed, blasting away for days.
The snow did provide jobs for shovelers. But many more were put out of work because the unrelenting, unending arctic gusts forced the closing of construction sites. Nearly every day police blotters recorded the finding of frozen bodies of indigents: in an unused bowling alley; in a crude tent by the banks of the Danube; even in an abandoned mausoleum in the Central Cemetery.
All this did not dampen toasts to the baby Archduchess in loyalist taverns all over town. Nor did it diminish the flow of congratulations from the world's ruling families to the Hofburg. Even the King of Serbia sent a telegram. Three days later, though, a statement of a rather different nature issued from Belgrade. The Serbian Crown Prince Alexander and the Serbian Prime Minister Panic would go to St. Petersburg "to discuss the international situation."
In Vienna, the Chief of Staff General Conrad deemed the visit a further hardening of the Serb-Russian coalition against Austria. In his eyes the development fit a larger pattern. Conrad's French counterpart, General Joseph Joffre, was already in St. Petersburg to expedite a loan of 550 million French francs. Why? For the explicit purpose of modernizing Russia's western railroad system, so vital in speeding troops to any war between a Russian-French-English entente and the GermanAustrian alliance.
In his memos to the Emperor, General Conrad detailed his warnings together with two requests: (1) to strengthen garrisons along Austria's border with Russia, and (2) to obtain authority for the Ministry of War to draft more conscripts for a longer period of time, in order to match the recent French law lengthening service from two to three years.
This was how the head of the war party reacted to the first stirrings of the new year. But in his audiences with the Emperor, the Crown Prince refuted Conrad's points with his own, in his own pungent style: (1) Talk of impending war between the Great Powers was criminal nonsense; it so happened that the Duke and Duchess of Portland would be Franz Ferdinand's guests at Konopiste in March; at that time Duke and Crown Prince would plan details of a visit to Austria by King George of England in September to shoot roebuck with Franz Ferdinand-after a respectful courtesy call on Franz Joseph, of course. So much for Western hostility against Austria! (2) It was precisely the swelling of Austrian garrisons at the Russian border that gave idiot hotheads in Paris and St. Petersburg a pretext to heat up the military mood in their countries. That sort of cannon-waving was not policy-it was stupidity.
Franz Joseph listened to the arguments of both men. Then he acted-like Franz Joseph. His government did introduce a bill in parliament that would extend the present conscription law; he did not increase the permanent garrisons by the Russian border.
To the Viennese such news was routine hissing and scuffling in the corridors of power. Politics were not uppermost in the town's mind during that first arctic month of 1914. The very poor kept busy fighting their way through the daily crisis of survival-to stay warm, to stay fed. Others, more fortunate, prepared for the excitement of the carnival.
Of course a number of young men did have to pay attention to military matters. Anticipating the more comprehensive conscription bill (it would harvest 32,000 more recruits annually), General Conrad tightened draft implementation. The long hand of his apparatus reached an Austrian who had already thought himself safely escaped.
Shortly after New Year's, the War Ministry's Conscription Bureau succeeded at last in tracking down the whereabouts of Adolf Hietler [sic]. On the afternoon of January 18, a German detective entered Schleissheimerstrasse 34 in Munich and found on the third floor, in a room sublet by a tailor, the man he wanted. He arrested Hitler for violating the military service regulations of an allied state. The next day the fugitive was brought to the Austrian Consulate where he was ordered to report to the Army Induction Center of his native province, Upper Austria, in Linz.
Whereupon Hitler sat down to write one of his most voluble and mendacious letters. The real reason for evading the Austrian draft had been his revulsion against serving as "a pure German" in the multiracial Habsburg forces. Yet the petition he now addressed to the Linz Magistracy, Section II, ascribes his failure to register to the monetary and spiritual straits of a loyal, impoverished, high-minded youth with lofty artistic aspirations:
the main reason making it impossible for me to honor your summons is that it has not been possible for me to muster the sum necessary for such a journey at such short notice.
In the summons my profession is specified as "artist." Although I have a right to that designa tion, it is nevertheless only conditionally appropriate. While it is true that I am earning my keep as a painter, I do so only since I am entirely without assets (my father was a government official) and therefore require an income to finance my education. I can devote only a fraction of time to financial gain since I am still completing my education as an architectural painter. Therefore my earnings are extremely modest, just sufficient for subsistence purposes. I submit as proof of the above my tax returns and request that you will be good enough to return the same to me. My income is estimated at 1200 marks at the very best, an estimate that is too high rather than too low, and does not mean that I earn 100 marks a month. Oh no. My monthly income is subject to great variation but is very poor at the moment because the art trade sort of suffers winter doldrums at this time in Munich…
Concerning my failure to register for the army in the fall of 1909, I hope you will have the kindness to realize that this was for me an immeasurably bitter time. I was an unexperienced young man without financial support, and too proud to accept subsidies or to ask for them. Without any help, dependent only on my efforts, the few kronen I earned barely sufficed for a room to sleep in. For two years I had no companion other than worry or penury, no comrade except continually gnawing hunger. I have never known the beautiful word "youth." Even today, after five years, I retain souvenirs of that time in the form of chilblain sores on my fingers, hands, and feet. And yet I cannot recall the period without a certain satisfaction, since I am now past the worst. Despite my wretchedness and despite the dubious surroundings in which I had to suffer it, I did keep my name free of stain. I have maintained a spotless record in the eye of my conscience and in the eye of the law-except for that one omitted military registration, the necessity for which I was not even aware of.