Radio Messages for Rosa: Installment 6
Rachel Neuwalder/Karl Loewy
Vienna, 1933
It was only a few minutes into the first meeting of Professor Kris’s seminar when there was an intervention from one of the participants.
“Wouldn’t you say, Professor Kris, that the rise of the bourgeoisie in northern Italy was a factor in the development of portrait medals by artists working for the then-threatened aristocracy?”
Thick, brush-cut black hair, steel-rimmed glasses, conventionally dressed, very self-confident.
“No, Loewy, I would not, but I am sure that you would. I prefer to consider the confluence of French and Byzantine influences in the religious art of that period.”
“Surely those are simply epiphenomenal, even if they are what the people at the time, perhaps including Pisanello himself, thought to be the case. The conscious thought is not necessarily the most significant moment of understanding.”
“Can we go on, Mr. Loewy?”
Rachel Neuwalder made a note of his name.
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Rachel Neuwalder
Vienna, 1933
Few people were in the streets that evening. All down Berggasse—a? steep, short, cobbled street between two main streets, W?hringer Strasse and Porzellangasse—there were swastikas drawn with chalk on the pavement and confetti-like gilded paper swastikas and narrow strips of foil-covered paper like those English children find in what they call “crackers.”? Rachel Neulander picked up a handful of them.? One read “Hitler gives bread,” another “Hitler gives work.” People had walked over them, grinding the slogans into the pavement, perhaps not deliberately.
There were rifles stacked in neat pyramids at the street corners.
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Karl Loewy
Vienna, 1933
“Gentlemen, our topic this afternoon is the late Professor Troeltsch’s assertion that ‘Protestantism, in the first place, is simply a modification of Catholicism, in which the Catholic formulation of the problems was retained, while different answers were given to them’. In a word, he believed that early Protestantism should be understood as a continuation of the medieval period rather than the enabling condition for the development of the modern world.? This is in sharp contrast to Max Weber’s thesis that capitalism itself developed from what he called the Protestant ethic.?? Mr. Loewy, your opinion?”
“Both theses are idealist, are they not?? Marx has demonstrated that such infrastructural phenomena simply ride on the surface currents of the economic substructure of society, that, to speak directly to this case, the modern world is the creation of the exploitation of labor by capital.”
“Thank you.? That establishes the other pole of the dialectic.? Now we can explore the area between them to seek to arrive at an understanding of the history of the early modern period as in fact it was and as it was experienced by those alive at the time. I have made available to you certain collections of documents from the time of the Protestant Reformation—letters, sermons, controversial publications—as well as some interesting primary documents from the Münster Rebellion, which can be taken as an early shoot that did not flourish.”
Karl Loewy was not sure whether he should have felt flattered or simply used.? It was not an unfamiliar emotion, something he had more often experienced in contexts far different from that of a university seminar.
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Rachel Neuwalder
Vienna, 1933
After one of the notoriously unpalatable mid-day meals at the Mensa Academica, Rachel Neuwalder walked out of the university building into the rain and took a taxi to Dr. Weitznar’s office. She gave a coin to the woman sitting on the pavement holding a swaddled baby next to the entrance of the building, then went up the marble stairs to the first floor. She rang the office bell.? The maid opened the door.?
“I’m here to see Dr. Weitznar.”
“I’ll show you in.”
Dr. Weitznar was sitting at the desk, reading from his green notebook. He wrote a note, read some more, turned the page, wrote a longer note, looked in her direction:
“Good afternoon. You may sit on the couch, or lie on it, as you wish.”
“Thank you. I think I will lie down this afternoon.”
She heard him writing in his notebook.
“I don’t know what more to say, just as I can’t think of anything to write. My stomach hurts. I’ve been to the clinic.? They can’t find anything wrong.? They’ve given me some pills.”
“I see.”? He wrote in the green notebook.? “When you describe this, what other thoughts occur to you?”
“Nothing important.”
“. . .”
“It has happened before.? During examinations in secondary school, during similar occasions. It just seems to be happening more frequently now.”
“. . .”
“The political situation seems to be making it worse. It is as if those public matters, which I was unaware of when I was a child, now act as an accelerant, as it were, for my stomach problems.”
“Do you remember emotions like those you are describing occurring when you were a child?”
“My father was quite severe, very formal.? A man of few words.? I always felt that I could never do enough to please him.? It was as if there was always some test taking place, a test that I was sure to fail.”
“. . .”
“One day the teachers gave us letters for our parents, describing our progress in school.? They were sealed.? I took mine home and hid it in my cupboard.? I was afraid that it would say that my work was unsatisfactory. That evening my father said he had been told to expect a letter from the school.? I had to give it to him.? As I handed it to him he said nothing, just looked at me.? Then, as I stood there, he opened the letter, read it, and put in his pocket, not saying anything, just giving me that same look. You look at me the same way.”
“. . .”
“Am I talking about the right kind of things?? Should I say something more about my father?”
“If something occurs to you.”
“Sometimes we would go to the Prater.? He would take my hand—I had to reach up above my head to hold his hand—we would walk along one of the paths for a very long time.? I would get tired, but I would never complain: I was so happy to be with him, to hold his hand as we walked along the path through the woods.”
“Was your mother with you?”
“I don’t remember.? I don’t think so.? She must have been.”
“But you don’t remember.”
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Rachel Neuwalder
Vienna, 1933
The Czech maid opened the door.?
“Dr. Weitznar is ready for you.”
Dr. Weitznar was sitting at the desk, the green notebook open in front of him. He looked up as she came into the room.
“Good afternoon. You may sit on the couch, or lie on it, as you wish.”
“Thank you. I think I will lay down this afternoon.”
He looked down at the notebook. “Last time we were talking about your mother.”
“I think I said something stupid like I didn’t remember her.”
“Why do you say that was stupid?”
“Of course I remember my mother.? I loved my mother. She was very beautiful.”
“There is a saying of Karl Kraus: ‘Some women are not beautiful, they just look as though they are’.”
“That’s amusing, but I’m not sure what it means.”
“It may not refer to physical beauty.”
“Oh, in that case, yes.? My feelings about my mother were not beautiful. Our family revolved around my father.? Everything was arranged to please him: meals at these times, including these foods; waiting for him to come home or to emerge from his study; answering his questions when he asked them; admiring and repeating his remarks about current events.”
“You are talking about your father.”
“That’s true.? I’m sorry.? Mother took care of father, ensured that nothing interfered with his work or upset him.? That meant she was a of sergeant major for the children and servants.”
Paging back through the notebook:? “Didn’t you say she had her own work?”
“Oh yes.? But no one talked about that.”
“No young child accepts that her mother is anyone, anything, other than his mother.”
“Mother was just part of the house, actually.? We didn’t think about her except as someone who made sure everything happened the way it should.? I suppose we were dependent on her for that.”
“How did you feel about being dependent on her?”
“I didn’t feel anything about that. Should I have?? It was just how things were.”
“Everybody both loves and hates the people they most depend on.”
“I don’t think I either loved or hated her.? Of course I loved her, how could one not love one’s mother?? We weren’t demonstrative.”
“Did you tell her you loved her?”
“I don’t think so.? That would have been very odd in our family.”
“Did you tell her you hated her?”
“No, of course not.? Maybe when I was upset.? She knew I didn’t mean it.”
“How did she know that? It is perfectly normal for a girl to feel that she hates her mother. A child is dependent on her mother, but she comes to hate being dependent, so she hates her mother. What she really hates is the part of herself that is dependent. And she protects that part of herself by attacking its object: she hates her need for her mother. Some people are always, all their lives, enraged that they are not self-sufficient, that they aren’t omniscient, omnipotent gods.”
“Do you think I’m like that?”
“Do you?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Would you like to be self-sufficient, omniscient, omnipotent?”
“I suppose.? If I were I would be able to change the world, I would be able to reduce the amount of suffering in the world.”
“Do you want to do that?”
“Of course.”
Michael Holzman?
#historicalfiction #spies #1930s #Vienna #psychoanalysis