The Phoenix Land Page 20
The Communist government in Budapest had been making as much propaganda as possible in Vienna, and if they had succeeded in gaining power there, as they might well have at the time of the Bolshevik uprising in Bavaria, they might easily have soon held sway over the whole of Middle Europe.
As it was, the Communists had made two attempts to seize power in Austria, and could well have gained the upper hand if Schober, then head of the police and later chancellor of the republic, had not acted with speed, energy and good sense to frustrate their repeated efforts. Schober’s position with regard to the weak and vacillating Renner-Bauer administration was never easy because most of the so-called political ‘leaders’ at that time never for a moment forgot the possibility that Bolshevism might win the day, and so, to save their own skins no matter what transpired, they took care to keep good on terms with both sides. It was a form of life insurance. Perhaps they were merely obeying the adage ‘Nichts Gewisses weiss man nicht’ – ‘Nothing is certain you don’t know for sure’, as my poor grandmother used to say in intentionally bad German.
Then, in the first days of May, Schober managed to lay his hands on some documents which contained proof of Béla Kun’s subversive activities in the Austrian capital, and these he laid before the government in Vienna to show the extent to which its own power, together with their own persons, was in danger. It was from this moment that Schober was given a free hand in combating the Bolshevik propaganda with proper energy … and also treating the plight of the Hungarian refugees with more sympathy than they had hitherto received.
This welcome development came about as a result of an unpremeditated and risky enterprise.
At that time there was a whole cohort of refugee Hungarian army officers in Vienna under the leadership of Colonel Count Takács-Tholvay, who headed the military committee which had taken over after Austria had been separated from Hungary. A group of these officers somehow discovered that a Hungarian Soviet commissar called Fenyö, was coming to Vienna and bringing with him a huge sum of money – many millions, it seemed – destined to finance a Communist uprising in Vienna. They had also learned that this Fenyö was bringing with him the holy crown of Hungary which, it was rumoured, the Communists were anxious to smuggle abroad to sell. (This last rumour had even reached us in Holland, where, with the help of Elek Nagy and Thyssen-Bornemissza, we had formed a committee to buy up St Stephen’s Crown, should it turn up for sale somewhere, so as to make sure it did not fall into the wrong hands and forever become irrecoverable. Alberge, the famous Amsterdam antique dealer, had promised me to keep an eye on the world antiquarian market for us.)
The officers in exile contacted some Hungarian politicians then living in the Hotel Bristol (this was the most prestigious and adventurous group of exiles to whom I shall return later) and these enlisted the help of an English journalist who, although not only as a favour, agreed to act as if he were an English diplomat47.
On 2 May the officers broke into the Soviet Hungarian Embassy, locked up a few employees they found there and waited until midnight, when Commissar Fenyö arrived and was caught by them. He had not brought St Stephen’s Crown, but he did have the money, amounting to some 135 million in various foreign currencies and ‘blue money’48.
They then locked up the commissar and found a safe place for the money (which was later used to finance counterrevolutionary activities in Austria and Hungary). Finally they took a look at all the documents they could find; and here they were in luck. On the next day when, after a complaint from Béla Kun, the Austrians came to arrest them, they were able to furnish the chief of police with written proof of the subversive plots which had been hatched in the Soviet Hungarian Embassy. These not only included their detailed plans for overthrowing the Austrian government by force but also for robbing a bank next to the Bankgasse offices by means of an underground tunnel. A few days later the Viennese police released the Hungarian officers on bail.
It was directly after this that Schober turned his full offensive against the Communist propaganda and started treating the Hungarian exiles with benevolent neutrality.
***
At that time there were many Hungarian refugees in Vienna. As well as hundreds of army officers and a quantity of eminent politicians, there were also members of parliament, dismissed government officials and civil service employees, and many others who, although they had never been concerned with politics, were in danger of imprisonment because of their social position or wealth.
Those eminent exiled politicians who had grouped themselves under the leadership of István Bethlen were in regular touch with the ‘national’ government in Szeged49, sending officers and information there.
At the time of my arrival their headquarters in Vienna were in a narrow little office in one of the houses in Lugeck Square, next to busy Roteturmstrasse. However, it was possible to get there by way of the many small streets and passages that are to be found everywhere in Vienna, and this meant that one could arrive by at least ten different ways and leave by ten others. This office had to be manned at all hours, for, although the police closed their eyes to the activities of the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries, they did nothing to protect them. And the Reds, fully aware that serious work was being done there against them, had already tried several times to force their way in.
It was a strange time then in Vienna. While the Austrian authorities took no notice, a serious battle was being waged between the civilian Hungarian refugees and the subversive Communist agents from Budapest. Everyone carried a gun, for, although the dimly-lit streets of Vienna seemed peaceful enough, we still had to take evasive action if we sensed that we were being followed, turning to face whomever it was and waiting until he had passed by. In one or two restaurants we would find some Reds dining at another table, and so we would have to keep a wary eye on those who were watching us while seeming to sip our beer light-heartedly with some of those Hungarian ladies who had followed their husbands to Vienna.
These last were mostly young and pretty, for it was only the young who were prepared to risk this often-perilous exile. There was an amusing tale about how one of them got to Vienna, a tale that shows how enterprising a clever woman can be.
Together with her husband, she had been in hiding in a country house near Györ. They decided they would try to escape across the border to Austria, and so her husband, who was wise in the ways of the world, at once started to investigate all possible means of escape. He pored over innumerable train timetables, taking many notes, and, after much thought, decided that it would be best if they took separate trains to Bruck and met there at the bridge which formed the frontier. He declared that all would go well provided she learned his lessons well. This she did, to the point of getting bored with her husband’s endless repetition of his instructions. On the following day he left to take the train from Györ, while the wife took another to Ovár. She arrived at Bruck according to plan, but her husband did not, despite the fact that it had been he who for several days had been telling her what to do. It had been he who had gone on repeating ‘Now don’t miss the train! What on earth will I do if you don’t turn up? I’ll die of worry. For Heaven’s sake, use your head for once!’ and many other remarks even less flattering. And then it was he who failed to turn up. The clever intelligent man had boarded the wrong train and was taken to Sopron instead.
In the meantime the wife had to wait. She was dressed as a peasant woman, and very pretty she looked with a kerchief on her head and ample skirts. On her back was a bundle, and hidden inside her clothing were her jewels. She had no documents of any kind on her since, although her husband had spent a large sum of money in obtaining false identity papers, he had not given them – or any money – to her because everyone knew you should never entrust anything important to a woman as it was sure to be mislaid as soon as it was most needed!
What was she to do? Her husband had ordered her not to leave the station. ‘Don’t go straying off somewhere!’ he had said; and so she just had to sta
y … and wait.
She waited all day.
Then, seeing that her husband still had not turned up, she went over to talk with the frontier guards on the bridge. She sat down on a bench with them and started to chat and joke with them. Then she began to tell them of her awful predicament: her aunt had gone back into the town and didn’t seem to be coming back, but she couldn’t get across the frontier without her. What was she to do? She had to return to Austria where she had work, and her employer would be sure to beat her if she was late and didn’t show up on time. And so she prattled on with her tale of woe while, I am sure, smiling sweetly at those indomitable military men until they melted and not only let her cross the border but went so far as to escort her as far as the Austrian guard post so as to ensure she came to no harm!
A week passed before the husband managed to reach Vienna; and I am sure he was not allowed to forget his tardiness for many a day, and no doubt found himself well and truly punished in more ways than one!
***
With the money they had ‘acquired’ in the Bankgasse raid, the refugees were able to put in hand some of the plans they had been making. One of these was to recruit bands of patriotic troops to go to the Vas and Zala districts next to the Austrian province of Styria and take control of these normally quiet border counties50.
At this time there were plenty of available officers among the exiles, but very few ordinary soldiers. It was therefore decided to recruit men from those elements of the unemployed Viennese who were honest, determined and well meaning. Small advertisements were put in a number of daily papers offering good pay to strong and courageous young men. Those interested were requested to report to certain ‘X, Y and Z’ offices between specified hours in the morning and late afternoon. I only know the story of one of these recruiting posts because I had it direct from a friend who was the treasurer there. However, I believe it was much the same in the others.
This particular post was opened at a restaurant in Landstrasse called the Rother Hahn – the Red Rooster. The recruiting committee consisted of five officers. On arrival there in the morning they were surprised to see many eager young men waiting for them on the pavement outside; and, as the day went by, their numbers continually increased. Inside the recruiting went slowly because each candidate had to be carefully checked to be sure of his nationality, his political views and his personal history. Also it had to be just as carefully explained to him what he was being hired to do. The restaurant’s main room was full to overflowing, while outside many hundreds were waiting to be let in, so much so that traffic in Landstrasse was brought to a standstill. Of course this was not really surprising since there were then so many unemployed in Vienna.
The policeman posted in Landstrasse was astonished by the crowd gathering there and at once assumed that if young working-class men were being recruited there it could only be the work of Bolshevik agents and so telephoned the police station for orders. He was at once told that everyone there, recruiters and recruited alike, should be arrested without delay.
Towards noon a band of policemen, led by a detective, entered the Rother Hahn.
‘Hände hoch!’ – ‘Hands Up!’ cried the detective, gun in hand.
The result was panic. Those recruits who had already been signed up disappeared in seconds, while two of the five recruiting officers escaped in the general confusion. Only my friend and two others stood their ground. The detective asked them for their identity papers. He was already somewhat taken aback to discover that of the first two he spoke to one was a major of hussars and the other a captain, but when he heard who my friend was – he bore a noble name well known in Vienna – his astonishment was such that he was only convinced of the truth of it on examining all the papers.
‘Jésu Maria!’ he cried in his Viennese dialect. ‘San’s denn a Verwandter vom lieben Grafen Anton? Und von der Gráfin Sarolta? Und wie san’s denn a Bolschewik worden? – ‘Are you a relation of dear Count Anton? And of the Countess Sarolta? How did you become a Bolshevik then?’
It turned out that in his youth the detective had been a forest guard on their estate and knew and loved the whole family who had always been so kind to him that he remembered them with great devotion.
After that it was not difficult to convince him that men were being recruited to fight the Communists, not to aid them. The detective would then have been happy to let everybody go free but had been ordered to round up all those involved and escort them to the local police station. He was very loath to do this. It was unthinkable that such important, nobly born gentlemen should be marched through the streets in broad daylight with a police escort! He hit upon a neat solution. It was simply that the ‘prisoners’ should walk ahead, just as if they had been taking a stroll, while the police, carrying their piles of confiscated documents, should follow ten paces behind. The detective himself would be on the sidewalk, from time to time waving a hand to indicate when they had to turn left or right until they all arrived at the police station.
The police commissioner was a neat little official smelling of ink. With scrupulous courtesy he carried out his duties to the letter of the law. He retained only the papers relating to the case while my friend’s personal belongings, including his chequebook, were at once returned to him. ‘I will telephone immediately to headquarters for further instructions,’ the commissioner said. ‘In the meantime, gentlemen, please make yourselves at home!’
By then it was already midday and, as the reply did not come at once, the policemen sent round to the nearest good restaurant for some lunch for the detainees, while the detective did his best to entertain them. A few hours went by like this until finally the order came for them to be set free. Towards evening those members of the recruiting committee who had not tried to evade arrest were allowed to depart in peace.
Not so those who fled. With the usual Hungarian conspirator’s disdain for taking precautions, the other two went out for a pleasant stroll that same afternoon. As they walked down Kärtnerstrasse they were recognized by one of the would-be recruits. This goody-goody busybody rushed off to tell a policeman, who blew his whistle for help, and soon the two officers were arrested and sent under guard to the chief of police’s offices on the Ring. There they were to left to pine in solitary confinement for several days. At length the Refugee Committee learned what had happened to them and applied officially for their release, which, at long last, was granted.
As I only returned to Vienna at the end of July, my personal knowledge of events dates from then. Otherwise, I have to depend on what I was told by friends who had been living there. So I have decided only to recount here what has not been published elsewhere but which seems to me to characterize the atmosphere we lived in those days.
In the Vienna of those days I knew only of two bright oases where the gaiety of the old imperial city was kept alive.
One was the Zichy villa in Hietzing, where many of the refugee ladies would meet in the afternoons to play bridge for some imaginary currency since no one had any real money. There was plenty of light-hearted flirting and, as there were plenty of men and very few women, the so-called weaker sex had a very good time.
Many months later, back in Budapest, I met one of these beauties again.
‘We haven’t seen each other since the days of the Bolshevik threat,’ I said.
‘Oh! Whatever became of that dear old Bolshevism?’ she replied, smiling.
***
The other oasis was Frau Sacher’s shop. Old Frau Sacher, who owned the famous hotel that bore her name, was the last truly activist believer in Legitimacy in Austria. She even managed to resist the determined and persistent pressure of the Renner-Bauer government.
This government tried its best to break her. They had her electricity cut off, they withdrew her license to sell alcoholic drinks, and they even provoked her staff to strike. They fined her and did many other things to bring her to heel, but she never yielded. She closed her restaurant, keeping only the shop open, and there she sa
t, enthroned on an armchair placed near the cash register, for all the world as if she were an empress herself. Here she would receive all her old loyal customers, who would drop in from time to time, ostensibly only to buy a tin of sardines or a small jar of ‘Mixed Pickles’51 but really just to kiss her hand and gossip about those wonderful days of old now only a memory. She was indeed the last ruler of the old Kaiserstadt – the imperial city.
***
I saw only two of those left-wing actors in the tragicomedy of Budapest52. These were Baron Lajos Hatvany and Vilmos Böhm.
Here in Vienna Hatvany was just the same sort of ‘kibitz’ to the refugee committee as he had been to the revolutionary ‘statesmen’ back in Budapest.
The nature of the kibitz is that he always attaches himself to the winning side. If a player holds a ‘full house, aces high’ a kibitz would behave as if he had personally arranged it, and if the lucky player fails to double, the kibitz would then shake his head vehemently to show that that is not what he would have done if it had been his hand in another game. A kibitz would make out that, of course, ‘X’ should not have played trumps but something quite different, as he had suggested, but then no one listened to him, oh no, not to him!
At one time he had basked in the reflected glory of Ady. Ady, who resented Hatvany’s bragging about his share in the poet’s glory, took his revenge in some of his poems. Károlyi did it differently.
Hatvany’s book The Story of a Month was his way of ‘kibitzing’ the October Revolution. In this work he attributed any success to his influence; he had advised this, he had pointed out that; and it had only been his foresight that had prevented any number of possible mistakes.
In reality he never had any influence even though he had usually been on the spot. It is true he was at the Astoria and also in Belgrade, but in his book, which was written that same December to blow his own trumpet as soon as the revolution had apparently achieved its aims, Hatvany took all the credit to himself, so much so that anyone who read it was apt to believe everything he wrote, and this was the basis for much of the hatred he was to inspire later, poor man, when all he had done was to stand behind the real leaders with his fingers crossed!