A Stranger In The House : the website of Alan Hubbard : A University Education
Postcards In Vienna Before The War
No Man Is Wholly Evil. We All Cry And Laugh In The Same Way
A History Essay
He spins round and round, merging with the strange intangible colours that fly towards him. He becomes a whirlpool of madness spinning on and on. He hears the sound of marching boots. Masses shouting “Heil”. He senses being a great leader, having unlimited control, glory.
BANG. Dying alone. Deep underground. He spins again, he is flowing backwards towards pain. Again he hears adoring masses. Ordering death. Feeling death. Anger. Confusion. The madness keeps on. Flowing further backwards. Starting revolutions. Finding appreciation. Further back. Trenches and explosions. The Iron Cross fastened to his chest. War and purpose. Injury and Pride. Then spinning back. Stopping. He is cold. He is alone. He is on the street, sitting in a gutter, rags against his skin. In the distance he can vaguely make out the faint sound of opera. He tries to make out which one but his hearing fails him. He looks across at his postcards, littering the street. He waits for somebody, anybody, to come and buy one of his works of art. He feels angry. Why will they not come? Why will they not listen? He remembers the past, segments of his life flash before him. He has little else but his memories but he would willingly destroy them all, if he could. “The indignity. My life has been a series of indignities hoisted upon me by those who do not deserve to know me. It has all been sad misfortune, dealt cards which in no way compliment my greatness. One day I will reduce all who have caused this indignity to ruin. One day I will be know as a great man. “Adolf Hitler” they will say: “He was a great man. A true artist and philosopher.” They will shout my name to the stars and then they will be sorry. My first indignity was to be born to a family far beneath my station. Oh, my father thought he was somebody, a great civil servant, a true Austrian. My father was nothing. He could not see that we were part of Germany. He could not see the potential of his own son. Blinded by his small-minded alcohol-ridden ideas and delusions. He was an illegitimate, a bastard, an old shrivelled, diseased bastard who plucked my poor mother and made her his third wife. Defiling her with his touch. He believed he could command me and child that I was I suffered his harsh indignities. He would blow his whistle and I would run to him and do what he said. He would fall from his bar-stool and I would carry him home. I did not love the man. But I was afraid of him. I remember when I was nine years old. He came back from the tavern, reeking of evil intoxicants. He grabbed my hair and told me that I would grow up to be like him, a fine civil servant. I cried and told him I wanted to be an artist. I remember how his face suddenly reddened and became like a Jew’s. I remember how his fists burnt my cheek, how his belt cut my stomach. How he snapped, his limbs becoming a blurr of pain. How my mother cried as she stood powerless to defend me. My mother’s tears.... When he had finished I lay there. Unable to move, unable to cry. But he was crying. Screaming out that he had killed me. Asking God for forgiveness. I knew then that there was no God. Only man. That we must create our own Gods. I cried when I saw him layed out in front of me. Dead and stinking of beer. His poisoned lungs finally poisoning him. But inside I was laughing. Laughing at the irony of it all. Laughing at his indignity. Knowing that finally I could be who I am.... My mother’s tears. I sometimes think that mother never stopped crying. All her children dying. Her husband. Watching her beloved son suffer indignity after indignity... I remember returning home. Finding that the woman who had nursed me in my sickness now needed me to nurse her. The only man left in my fickle family. They had all deserted her. Some by choice and some by death. They all deserve to burn. I wasn’t there when she needed me... But it was not my fault. I had to take that exam. Even if Vienna will not recognise my talents I had to give them the opportunity.... Her breast. From which I had suckled, withering, poisoning her body. That fragile body. That fragile woman. Who had brought me warm milk everyday when I had fallen ill poisoned by my own father. Yes, poisoned by my own father. He had passed his lung sickness on to me. Giving me indignities from beyond the grave... Everyday watching her slip away. Applying idoform to her cancer. Washing her. Wiping her mouth. Making myself into a woman, cleaning and cooking. Hoping that she would not go. The smell of idoform getting into the walls, into my clothes. I sometimes thought that it had become part of my skin... Remembering how little Edmund had died. Measles taking away his six year old soul. My little brother, who could not defeat death.... When she died she was also buried in the cemetery that I could see from my bedroom window... She died quietly, death should not be quiet. Death should be loud and glorious. Why did such a great woman have to die quietly, beneath our Christmas tree. What humiliation.... Settling the medical bill on Christmas eve. Dr Bloch trying to be kind. I didn’t want kindness, I wanted an end to the humiliation and indignity that was being wrought on our great family... So I left, hoping I would find dignity here. But the world seems wrong and dignity is never given to those who deserve it. One day I will gain my dignity and make them sorry. I am grateful, in some ways, to my youth. It taught me how to brave this world. I was able to realise who I was and what I wanted. I was given nothing in school. My father sent me to technical school, not the classical school I deserved. But this meant that I had to find my own ideas. I read voraciously. I discovered the great German traditions of art and literature. I was a young visionary. I was popular. Always the leader. We would make war on each other and I would be the general. I never tired of those games. I would find new playmates, when my armies tired,to continue the battle. I loved to fight as cowboys. We would kill the Indians (I always won.) I would tolerate nothing less...Then Edmund died... Why could he not be a victor like me. Why could he not fight against death. We are greater than death. The Germans are greater than death. We must fight like Cowboys, fight like we did in the Boer war. Defeat our enemies. We must stop suffering these indignities... But he did die the coward. No. He was not a coward he was my brother. He would have been great like me. He... I would shoot rats with my gun. They were glorious days in many ways. We would roam the streets. Little warriors preparing for future glories which awaited us. I was a fantastic shot. I could shoot bottles off the cemetery wall... The cemetery where my brother and my mother were buried...I realised we must build our glory from the death our country has suffered. We must rebuild this place, destroy the influences of the Slavs, destroy the influences of the Jews. We must make our new history. Make our own version of the great Operas of Wagner. We must sing in the streets and burn away all humiliation. I tried to make my school friends understand. They sometimes avoided me when my temper was hot but I think they understood what I was saying. We were German nationalists to a man. Awaiting the time to overthrow the Hapsburg Monarchy. We were Germans. Austria was German. I would not tolerate any disobedience. Why do people seek to contradict me. I am visionary. I know what these people do not and I must be allowed to tell them. I will not suffer any contradiction. I will not. The teachers were forever contradicting. They belonged to a different order. Loyal to Hapsburg to a man. Even Dr Potch, who taught me of the glories of Germany. Even this Historic master. Even he was on my father’s side. Against the Kaiser. Against making Austria great; rejoining Germany. The fools. But in the midst of this my artistic soul flourished. I taught myself the truths of life. Taught myself how to paint. How to appreciate Opera. How to sing. Nourished by my mother’s love. Despite my father never buying me any books I struggled for the great German language, culture and thought. I fought against my father and the teachers for this great country. Alone but unafraid. I learnt about the dangers of the Slavs and other races. I remember dividing my class into Aryan and Non-aryans. Allowing only the true Germans to sit on my side. All the others had to sit away from us... And now I am far away from my school. More in time than in distance. Glorious Vienna. With its beautiful architecture, its Opera House. But I am forced to sell postcards to tourists in the streets. Me. Adolf Hitler. This place is the worst of indignities. I left my home to live here. I wasn’t there when my mother became ill, I was here taking an art exam. I should have been admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts but like all great artists I am not recognised. My greatness is not recognised. How quickly a friendly city can become unfriendly when it will not accept you as a part of it. When you remain stranded on the outside. Watching the artists stroll about you. But I did not give up. When my mother was dead and I had nothing else to hold me down I came here again. Took the exam again. And was again refused. I spent months as a part of this great city’s elite. Spending my money on culture. I redefined my ideas on life and realised that social reform must be forced upon these short-sighted people who do not even notice my potential. This is a sick society. It is truly sick. I rejected the idea that I should get a job. That is beneath me. I am an artist and a philosopher. I will one day show these people the way, I will not work for them, they will work for me. Suddenly I am reminded of Stefanie. That beautiful blonde girl I loved in my youth. How she could have been my wife. How we could have lived in splendour in the fantastic house I would have built for her. How we would have been happy...She could not see. Like all the others she could not see. Her admirers, if they could be called admirers, they could not see. Those airheads. They are not worth the ground my feet walk upon. One day they will all see. Here in Vienna, before my funds offered me this new humiliation, I could have bedded a few young ladies. But I am strong and I resisted, respecting the act of marriage like all these idol headed people around me. Then I became like I am now. Penniless. I no longer have to refuse people my bed. I no longer have a bed and no longer dress finely. Having to struggle to survive everyday has made me realise that life is survival. You can have no time for pity. There is only the struggle. One day I will defeat this struggle. I will show these short-sighted people the way. And here on the streets of this ungrateful city I finally realised the main cause of all my indignities. The evil behind my humiliation. The reason that my vision has been kept from my people. I will one day write my revolution in a book for my people to read so they too can understand what cancer destroys this country: ‘ Once, as I was strolling through the inner city, I suddenly encountered an apparition in a black caftan and black hair locks. Is this a jew? was my first thought’ ‘For, to be sure, they had not looked like this in Linz. I observed the man furtively and cautiously, but the longer I stared at this foreign face, scrutinising feature for feature, the more my first question assumed a new form: Is this a German?’ ‘...the more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity...’ ‘For me this was a time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through. I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-semite.’ 1 I will write this in a great book. And all will see the indignity that the Jews have caused both me and my country. This keeps me sane amongst the dirt and stench of the street. It keeps me from screaming. One day I will not be one poor man alone, but a great man, a leader. A God....” He awakens from his revelry and scrutinises the streets once more waiting for the slight human contact that selling one of his postcards will give to him. He looks up towards the sky. The sky spins and the colours from the buildings and the streets are mixed into it. He feels his skin being pulled off and mixing. He is again a spinning blurr of colour and sound. People are marching. Jews are screaming. He hears music by Wagner and Beethoven. He hears generals calling him Fuhrer. He is a great man. He continues to spin down the years. Getting closer and closer to an end. He is alone again. More alone as a leader than he was on the streets. They have all left him. His empire has fallen. He takes up a gun. The colours spin and spin and then spin into blackness. Blackness spins around and around and then stops. BANG. Nothing is left. A Voice: “Condemned and doomed to die, we are all shut in the prison of this world. In this prison no one escapes death. The surface of this prison is divided into many parts, and some build here, others there. They fight about the prison just as they fight about a kingdom”You can e-mail David here
Site Homepage | AUE homepage & contents | Previous page | Next page | Return to Top