Who are we?
Immigration to the United States has always been marked by tension between those who are already here and those who would like to come here. Suspicion, prejudice and fear of incoming immigrants and immigration in general have been recurrent themes of American society and history almost since the inception of the country. In my novel, An American in Vienna, the subject of the status of émigrés from the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the United States in 1914 is a subtle theme and a subject of some contention between the main character, Andy Bishop, and his host, Otto zu Windischgrätz.
Many Americans do not realize that until 1921, there were no quotas or limits on the numbers of immigrants who could settle in the United States or restrictions on country of origin. After the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924, immigration to the United States was reduced to a trickle, particularly from “undesirable” countries, as determined by the elected representatives of the American people in Congress. Immigration from Asian countries and particularly Japan, China and the Philippines was essentially barred. Southern and Eastern European immigration was heavily restricted while Northern and Western Europeans were still welcomed into the United States in virtually unrestricted numbers. The racist intent of the laws is patently obvious today, but was considered very acceptable in the early 1920’s.
Prior to 1920, it is estimated that between 3.7 and 4.3 million people immigrated to the United States from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Only Germany, Ireland and Italy sent more immigrants to the United States. US immigration officials made no distinction between the various ethnic or national groups within the Empire designating them all “Austrian”, so estimates of immigration from sub-groups have had to be made retro-actively.
For the most part, immigrants to the United States from Austria-Hungary came for economic, not political reasons except for ethnic Hungarians in the period after the 1848 revolutions and civil war. Tens of thousands of Hungarians poured into the US at that time to escape feared retribution and repression by the Monarchy that had crushed the Hungarian uprising by 1849.
Hungarian immigrants, 1904
Genealogical research will often reveal to the surprise of Americans today that their ancestors were subjects of the Habsburg monarchy before coming to America. Many famous Americans were born in Austria-Hungary such as Joseph Pulitzer, born in Makó, Hungary in 1847 who served in the United States Army, Congress, became owner of the New York World newspaper and for whom the Pultizer Prize is named. Bela Lugosi, whose famous role as Dracula I reprised recently in my “Travel Austria-Hungary” series on Transylvania, took the last name of his hometown of Lugos, now Lugoj in Romania. He was born in 1882 as Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó. Harry Houdini was born as Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874 and came to the United States as a child in 1878. US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter was born in Vienna in 1882. His family immigrated to the US in 1894 when he was twelve years old.
Joseph Pulitzer
Many immigrants from Austria-Hungary came to the United States but then returned to their native land before their death. 35% of Austrian immigrants who came between 1901 and 1910 returned to Austria, and about 25% of Hungarian immigrants returned to Hungary.
Harry Houdini, the famous contortionist
In my book, An American in Vienna, the adventures of the main character, Andy Bishop, begin with genealogical research by Andy and his mother into their familial roots which lead to Austria. In turn, this leads to contact with the descendents of a common ancestor and Andy’s voyage to Austria-Hungary in 1914, only weeks before the assassination of the Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Andy’s decision to remain in the doomed Austro-Hungarian Empire when war breaks out and his irresistible attraction to a young Austrian countess changes his life and makes him an eyewitness to history.
Travel Austria-Hungary: Prague
Welcome to my continuing series featuring imaginary tourism in the now-extinct Austro-Hungarian Empire, where my novel An American in Vienna took place. Today, I would like to invite you to Prague, the capital and largest city in the present-day Czech Republic, but formerly the “third city” of the old Empire after Vienna and Budapest. In those days, Prague was situated in the heart of the kingdom of Bohemia. That Prague is today a major tourist destination in Central Europe with about 4 million visitors a year is a testimony to its brilliant charm, architecture, history and culture.
Central Prague has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site since 1992. Among the outstanding sights to see are Prague Castle, the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square (itself a major site), the Jewish Quarter including the old Synagogue and Cemetery, the Charles Bridge, the Charles University (the first in Central Europe and the oldest German university, founded in 1348) and many famous churches, bridges, squares and museums. Hidden for years behind the Iron Curtain, Prague was quickly discovered by Western European and American tourists after 1989. Its inner city has been beautifully restored, shined and polished to its original luster that made it a prized possession of the Habsburg dynasty who acquired Bohemia and the city of Prague for good in 1526.
The Habsburgs acquired more territories by marriage than by war and the acquisition of the Bohemian throne provides yet another example of their success. Ferdinand I, Archduke of Austria and founder of the Austrian (as opposed to the Spanish) Habsburg line, married Anne, one of only two children of the King Vladislaus II. Anne's brother, Louis II of Bohemia and Hungary after the death of Vladislaus II, died without an heir at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. His sister thus inherited her brother's rights and the nobility of both Hungary and Bohemia elected her husband, Ferdinand, as king. The nucleus of Habsburg domination of Central Europe was born with the unification of the kingdoms of Hungary, Bohemia and the Archduchy of Austria and would last for nearly four centuries.
Ferdinand's descendents had a tumultous relationship with Prague and the kingdom of Bohemia. Rudolf II, Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, loved Prague so much that he made it his capital, in preference to Vienna. On the other hand, Prague was a major center of Protestant unrest and uprisings resulting in harsh crack-downs and suppression by the ultra-Catholic monarchy. Prague was again in full revolt in 1848 against royal absolutism but once again, the rebellion was fiercely crushed. Interestingly, German speakers then constituted a majority of the citizens of Prague, but by the 1880s after three decades of Czech migration to the city from the surrounding countryside, Germans had fallen to one in five and by 1910 to one in ten. This transformation fueled a rising Czech national identity and aspirations.
Unquestionably Habsburg architecture
The second half of the 19th century and the early 20th saw an increasingly restive Czech population agitating for equal rights with Germans and Hungarians that never came. Language issues particularly exacerbated Austro-Czech tensions in the late Habsburg period, often reducing the Austrian Parliament to deadlock and requiring the elderly Emperor Franz Josef to rule by decree. By the time of the First World War in 1914, when my novel takes place,the Czech population was so alienated that large numbers of Czech soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army defected en masse to the Russians. In 1918, as the monarchy faltered for the last time, the Czechs rose again in revolt and declared independence. In 1919, the Versailles Peace Conference recognized the new nation of Czechoslovakia, which included about 2 million Austro-Germans within its borders.
before his assassination that started the First World War and
led to Czech independence after four centuries of Habsburg rule from Vienna.
The agitation between Czechs and German-speakers now reversed with the “Sudeten” Germans demanding equal rights and privileges as the Czechs had done before the war. No amount of appeasement would ever satisfy this minority any more than it had the Czechs before the war. While Austria was never able to re-claim “German” Bohemia from the Czechs, an Austrian was: Adolf Hitler.
With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the new Czech government solved the “German” problem once and for all by forcibly expelling over a million Austro-Germans whose families had lived in Bohemia for many centuries. By 1948, a Communist coup d’etat backed by a Josef Stalin and the occupying Soviet army brought Prague behind the Iron Curtain and a grim forty years of further repression. Prague was again the scene of violent repression in 1968 when the Soviet army again crushed an attempt by the Czechs to escape totalitarian oppression. The “velvet revolution” in 1989 led by Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek led to the collapse of Communism, freedom from Soviet domination and the first democratic elections in Czechoslovakia in 1990.
If you enjoy the history and romance of Old Europe, and particularly the twilight of the Edwardian era, I hope you will consider my novel, An American in Vienna. In the novel, Andy Bishop, a young American journalist, arrives in Austria just weeks before the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand which sparks the fateful slide toward World War and chaos for family and friends. Andy Bishop's fateful decision to remain in the doomed Habsburg Empire after the war begins - and his irresistable attraction to a young Austrian countess - lead him to Budapest, Rome and finally Paris as Europe is convulsed by the greatest war since the defeat of Napoleon.
An Interview: Just Imagine It Ink!
Listen to Just Imagine It Ink's Ed Stanton interview me about my novel, An American in Vienna. Here we talk about writing, history, the places in the book and much more ... check it out!
Travel Austria-Hungary! Transylvania …
What does the word Transylvania summon to your mind?
Yes, of course, but did you know that when Bram Stoker wrote his novel in 1897, the domain of Count Dracula was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Called Siebenbürgen by its Austrian overlords, the region of Transylvania had long been regarded as a unique, dark and mysterious corner of Europe with a tumultuous and often violent history. While Bram Stoker did not himself actually visit Transylvania, it is said that he immersed himself in the history and folklore of this ancient land, including the popular superstitions of the locals about the “living dead” that only came out at night.
Bram Stoker carefully researched and based his novel’s main character on the legendary, cruel Prince Vlad Dracul, known in his day as Vlad Tepes or “the Impaler” for his notorious treatment of Turkish prisoners after battle. From the novel, readers glean little tidbits of the history of Transylvania, but what is this land really like?
Today, Transylvania comprises over one-third of the nation of Romania, bounded in the south and east by the towering Carpathian Mountain chain and comprising a population of over 7 million people. The western part of Transylvania gradually becomes flatter, eventually rolling into the vast Hungarian plain and Danube basin. As with most Balkan and Eastern European areas, no single nationality makes up the people of the region.
The two predominant, but not exclusive groups are Romanians and Magyars (Hungarians), but Germans (often described as “Saxons” locally), Slovaks, Gypsies and Turks, among other minorities have lived there also. At the time of my novel, An American in Vienna, Romanians made up about 54% of the population with Hungarians making up about 33%. The socio-economic standing of the two groups, however, belied the Romanian majority. Hungarians dominated the political, social and economic scene with Romanian peasants often working on vast Magyar estates. The rise in the Magyar population in the decades before the Great War was due to “Magyarization” of the population, primarily through the educational system that was gradually turning the population into Magyar speakers; not too different from the policy of American schools toward French-speaking Cajuns in Louisiana where I now live.
Transylvania was conquered by the Hungarians in the 9th century and came firmly under the control of the Hungarian kings by the year 1000; shortly before William the Conqueror invaded Britain. There the region remained until the arrival of the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century and the struggle between the Muslim Ottomans and Catholic Habsburgs that continued well into the 18th century. With the annihilation of the Hungarians at Mohacs in 1526, Transylvania was absorbed as a vassal state into the Ottoman Empire where it remained until 1687. The Turkish defeat at the gates of Vienna led to a series of Habsburg invasions and occupation of Transylvania under the Habsburg Archduke Leopold I. In 1699 the Ottoman Empire formally ceded Transylvania to the Habsburgs.
The relative autonomy of the Transylvanian princes and governors during Ottoman rule made Transylvania a very restive and difficult principality for the Habsburgs who generally solved the problem by allowing significant autonomy to the local nobility from rule by Vienna, but this proved short lived. In 1711, local government was replaced by imperial governors appointed by the Emperor. In the revolutions of 1848, the Romanian majority, fearful of Hungarian overlordship, aligned themselves with the Habsburgs and fought with them to suppress the uprising. Unfortunately, by 1867 the tables turned when Hungary achieved virtual independence from Austria and Transylvania was firmly incorporated once more under Magyar rule.
The Carpathians and Transylvania were a major war zone in the First World War. The nearly impregnable mountains were fiercely defended by the Hungarians and Austrians against Russian invasions. In 1916, Romania declared war and briefly invaded Transylvania only to be defeated in nearly a month by Austro-German armies. The fighting on the Eastern Front is the subject of much of my novel, An American in Vienna.
When I traveled in Transylvania myself, I found it to be a remarkably beautiful country. The mountainous areas reminded me to some extent of the Adirondacks region near Glens Falls, New York where I grew up. The towns and villages, however, were nothing like New York. The images below demonstrate what a magnificent and mysterious place is the legendary region of Transylvania:
Travel Austria-Hungary! Trieste ...
The city of Trieste today
The Italian city of Trieste lies at nearly the uppermost point of the Adriatic Sea with a population of about a quarter million inhabitants. At the time of my novel, An American in Vienna, Trieste was the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its principal port. In this article, I continue with my fictional travelogue of tourism within the former Empire with a visit to this unusual and prominent seaport where so many Americans left the Old World to come to the United States.
That's right. If you can find Austrians, Hungarians, Slovenians, Croatians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Catholic Ukrainians (Ruthenes), Bosnians, Jews or Romanians in your family ancestry, it is entirely possible that your family passed through Trieste on their way to this country. They would have been among the 4,315,000 peope who left Austria-Hungary between 1820-1920, making the old Austro-Hungarian Empire the fourth largest source of immigrants to the United States after Germany, Italy and Ireland. Just under 9% of all immigrants to the United States came from Austria-Hungary and would have seen many of the splendid sights I will display below.
A little history, as always, about this underrated destination. Trieste fell under Austrian Habsburg dominion during the Middle Ages in 1382 when the Republic of Venice ceded this province to the Habsburg Archduke Leopold III after a war. The city continued to be a source of contention between Venice and the Habsburgs who occasionally lost it to Venice or other invaders until 1509 when the Habsburg dynasty recovered it again after another war and kept it for good. Thereafter, it became their window on the world, steadily gaining in population and wealth. The prominence of the city skyrocketed in the early 18th century when the Habsburg Emperor Charles VI made it a "free port" under its own autonomous rule. Quite a bit of construction and public works was undertaken during the reign of the Empress Maria Theresa and by the early 19th century, the city's geographic location, wealth and power made it an object of intense interest during the Napoleonic Wars. The city was occupied three times by the French and temporarily annexted to the French puppet republic of Illyria, but under the terms of the Congress of Vienna was once again restored to Austrian rule in 1815.
The Austrian Lloyd shipping line was founded in 1836 due to ever-rising commercial expansion and by 1913, the line had over 60 ships in commerce. The Austrian Navy and commercial interests were responsible for Trieste becoming a major ship-building city in the 19th and 20th centuries. The city's unique location as early as Roman times made it a real crossroad when it came to its settlement and population. At the time of my novel, Slovenes and Italians were the predominant, but not the only ethnic groups that made up the city and its surrounding suburbs and villages on the Istrian peninsula. Italians made up over half the population of the inner city while Slovenes predominated in the suburbs and surrounding areas. German speakers amounted to about 5% of the population, mainly in the inner city, followed by Croations, Czechs, Serbs and Greeks. Due to the large Italian population in Trieste, the Istrian peninsula and the city became the objects of desire by the new Kingdom of Italy. By the terms of the secret Treaty of Rome in 1915, Italy was promised the city and surrounding peninsula in return for her entry into World War I against Austria-Hungary.
Trieste is the scene of the beginning of one of the chapters of my novel when one of the major characters, Johann von Caboga, watches from the rail of an Austrian battleship the arrival from Sarajevo of the remains of the slain Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife and their departure from Trieste to their funeral in Vienna. Trieste is again the scene of another moment in the novel when the main character, the American Andy Bishop, and his friends leave Austria for Italy on the eve of war between the two countries. The ensuing war between Austria and Italy is a major historical backdrop to An American in Vienna including an entire chapter on one of the famous Battles of the Isonzo at the outset of the war.
As is always the case in this travelogue of the now-extinct Austro-Hungarian Empire, this imperial city continues to show bits and pieces of its past as the greatest port of one of the greatest empires in Europe that expired in 1918. Here are a few of them.
With that, I bid the city farewell, as my ancestors did in the 18th century when they set forth from Austria for New York where they settled and remain to this day, until my next post in the series Travel Austria-Hungary!
Travel Austria-Hungary!
My book, An American in Vienna, takes place in 1914 in a country that no longer exists. Nonetheless, I thought it would be fun and interesting in a series of articles to point out the attractions of the cities and places that were once found within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and which, even today, are major sites to see in Central Europe. Today, I would like to concentrate on what was the second “capital” of the old Empire: Budapest. This is a city I have visited and found entrancing. A major part of An American in Vienna takes place here as well, and for good reason.
A quick bit of history about the city … In 1361, King Bela IV made Buda the capital of the Magyar kingdom of Hungary, placing his castle at the top of the hills of Buda and surrounding the city with stone walls to protect against invaders. A center of learning and culture during the Renaissance, the city was besieged and fell to the Ottoman Turkish Empire in 1541 and was held by the Turks for 140 years.
The Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand was elected King of Hungary by a despairing Magyar nobility in 1526 after the Battle of Mohacs and the death of Louis II the last Magyar king. Between 1686-1699, the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (pictured below) engaged in a series of wars with the Ottomans culminating in their defeat and the conquest of Hungary for the Habsburg dynasty. From that time forward, the Habsburg dynasty ruled Hungary as kings until 1919 and the defeat of Hungary in World War I. In 1848-49 Budapest was at the center of an uprising against absolutist Habsburg rule which was eventually crushed, but by 1867, Hungary achieved independence from Austrian rule from Vienna while retaining the Habsburg dynasty.
Between 1867-1914, Budapest grew rapidly and regained its standing as a city of the first rank in Europe. In 1873, Buda, Pest and Ancient Buda were officially merged into a single metropolitan city straddling the mighty Danube River. An enormous population boom, massive public works and unprecedented prosperity vaulted the city to unquestioned prominence as the second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Confirmation of its new status in the late 19th century was the fact that Budapest attracted immigrants from all over Europe, but particularly Jews from the East. By 1880, nearly a quarter of the city’s residents were Jewish and this city became known as the “Jewish Mecca”.
The late Habsburg period might be considered one of the happiest eras of a city that had seen much violence and repression over the centuries. The defeat of Hungary in World War I brought this glorious era to an end. While an initial excitement arose over complete independence from the old Empire in 1918, the harsh Treaty of Trianon was imposed upon Hungary by the victorious allied powers. A Communist Revolution led by Bela Kun followed defeat with a brief Soviet republic that collapsed thereafter in much bloodshed and fighting. A conservative, authoritarian regime led by Admiral Horthy remained in power until defeat in World War II, followed by Soviet occupation with subservient Communist puppet governments until the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1989.
Travel to Budapest will reveal a magnificently beautiful city that has reclaimed its national character once again and provide the visitor with a never ending series of historic buildings, sites, panoramas and vistas amidst a culturally vibrant ambience. In our mythical travel adventure, let me point out some of the delights of Budapest, some of which figure in my book …
Austria and Hungary; Accomplices to World War II?
Adolf Hitler with Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart in Vienna
The Germany of Adolf Hitler would find very willing accomplices in the remains of the core of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had suffered complete disintegration with the collapse of its German ally in 1918. Many Austro-Germans and Magyars considered the Czechs, Slovaks and Romanians who now ruled over millions of their countrymen to be inferior in every way and were aghast at the trick of fate that had given these predatory neighbors dominance over them and their countrymen. Both Austria and Hungary’s discontent spawned revolutionary chaos and disorder that, in turn, led to authoritarian, if not fascist governments that viewed German resentments at the result of the First World War with sympathy.
While Austria-Hungary had not enjoyed quite the lofty perch that Germany had held in pre-World War I Europe, her fall had been even more precipitous and ironic. While Germany had remained intact as a country, Austria-Hungary had split apart at the seams, forming three new countries (Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) and ceding the remains of its territory to Poland, Italy, Romania and the new Yugoslavia.
Further, while Germany was being pressed hard on the Western Front in 1918, Austria-Hungary had essentially beaten and even occupied every one of its antagonists: Romania, Serbia, Russia and Italy. The remarkable resilience and stamina of the old Empire during four years of war had astounded friend and foe alike. No foreign troops stood on or even near the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s soil in 1918 and were unlikely to do so for quite some time. Indeed, peace treaties had already been signed with Romania and Russia.
It was cold, hunger and impoverishment that combined with the collapse of Germany, that triggered collapse from within. Austria-Hungary could not have fought on alone. Its other key ally in the Balkans, Bulgaria, had already sued for peace and revolutions were breaking out in Budapest, Prague and Vienna. The young Habsburg Kaiser, Charles I, lacked the ruthlessness and the loyalty of an exhausted army that would have been needed to put down these nationalist uprisings. Nonetheless, or perhaps because of it, many Austrians and Hungarians found it particularly hard, after all that, to accept a shattering, ignominious defeat and insignificant status in the aftermath of the Great War.
To many Austrians, the siren-call of being part of a new and powerful German Empire had great appeal. Once before, in 1848, the possibility of Austria and the German nation uniting had been seriously debated. The pan-Germans, located particularly in the Sudetenland areas of the new Czechoslovakia had long dreamed of uniting with Germany. In the aftermath of defeat in 1918, serious negotiations had been underway between the new Austrian and German republics to create a new all-German nation in the heart of Europe that would, in a way, have consoled the populations of both countries from the loss of territory and prestige that had to be accepted in the wake of defeat. These discussions and that dream were rudely shattered by the terms of the Treaties of Versailles and St. Germain that absolutely forbate any union between these two countries.
Adolf Hitler, himself an avid sympathizer with the pre-war Pan-German movement in his former (Austrian) homeland, was profoundly interested in political union with Austria. To two million Austrians who found themselves under Czech rule by 1919, it had real appeal. While the majority of Austrians undoubtedly preferred independence in 1938, enough of them had gone over to the Nazi cause to make a bloodless coup d’état possible and annexation by Germany a reality in March of that year. The Von Trapp family notwithstanding, there was little resistance within Austria toward German occupation or rule during the Nazi period until things began to go badly in the war.
The disintegration of the Former Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1919
The Hungarians (Magyars) had also been humiliated by the post-war Treaty of Trianon that had stripped them of territory and sentanced millions of their countrymen to live outside the borders that remained to them, prdominantly in Slovakia and Romania. When Hitler invited Hungary to participate in the liquidation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, the Hungarian government was more than willing to join and re-annex territory lost in 1919. Their compatriots in Slovakia were rejoined with the homeland. Hitler was also shrewd enough to force the Romanians to give Transylvania back to Hungary returning millions of Magyars to bolster the population of an ally who would gladly fight alongside Austria and Germany, just as she had done in the First World War, until the Red Army arrived in 1944 and laid waste to Budapest and much of the Hungarian countryside.
The resentments, not so much of military defeat in World War I, but to the loss of prestige and national pride at the humiliating terms of the peace treaties that followed, sowed the seeds of national discontent that were reaped by Adolf Hitler and Germany within fifteen years of defeat. The leaders of the victorious powers in Paris would have done well to have studied the history of the Congress of Vienna and emulated it rather than attempting to impose an idealistic new world order, as the Americans under Woodrow Wilson attempted, or further advancing selfish imperialist ambitions as France, Italy and Britain did.
The victors peace in the Treaties of Versailles (Germany), St. Germain (Austria) and Trianon (Hungary), imposed by the sword, lasted only as long as the sword could keep it intact. By September 3, 1939, neither Britain nor France could restrain Germany from not only recovering the territories she lost in the First World War, but in defeating and occupying Poland, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Belgium and even France herself . Britain would ultimately defeat Germany in World War II with the help of the United States and Russia, but the cost would be so exorbitant as to virtually bankrupt and cause the disintegration of the British Empire. The Americans wandered off from the Paris Peace Conference into isolationism. The United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles nor joined the League of Nations that followed, nor was the United States of any support to the people of Europe in the 1930s when the Germany and her allies set about to obliterate these treaties altogether and establish a "New Order" in Europe.
Second Verse, Same as the First?
Many people have heard the idea that the Second World War was simply a continuation of the First after a twenty year intermission. Is this true? The answer, in my opinion, is no. The First World War was the single greatest cause of World War II and without which the Second World War would not have happened, but it was not a continuation of the First World War. Rather, it finally settled a number of major issues caused by the sudden end of the First World War on November 11, 1918 and the Peace Conference that followed. In particular, the Peace Conference that followed the Armistice that ended hostilities in Europe not only failed to inaugurate at least a century of peace, as the Congress of Vienna had done at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, it actually created conditions that led to a second general, continental European war in 1939. The comparison between the Congress of Vienna and the Peace Conference of Versailles is an invidious but useful one for the purpose of highlighting the errors made at Versailles and the deadly consequences that flowed from them. After a rapidly-spreading series of strikes and uprisings in 1918 and a steady stream of military defeats in France, the German Parliament (Reichstag) declared an end to the monarchy, established a Republic and requested an armistice from the approaching Anglo-French-American armies. This was somewhat analogous to the French Senate deposing Naploeon in 1814 and requesting an armistice with the invading great powers of Austria, Prussia and Russia. Even though the Sixth Coalition armies occupied Paris for a time, the French were invited to Vienna to participate in the peace conference there and they did. While France was required to renounce Napoleonic conquests, France was treated with the respect of a great power and included in the post-war Concert of Europe that began in 1815. By contrast, the new German government was required to agree to withdraw and demobilize its armies and to turn its fleet over to Britain. Once this was done, Germany was, in effect, at the mercy of the allies. France, Italy and Britain exploited this fully at the Peace Conference in Paris, to which Germany was not even invited, except to sign the treaty without negotiation. The terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty were imposed upon a Germany that, if she had rejected them, would have been invaded and occupied by the Allied powers. So Germany signed. History shows what a vengeful, “victor’s peace” begets; namely, a mass movement like the Nazi party and a leader like Adolf Hitler. Without a vengeful peace in 1919, Adolf Hitler might well have ended his life in poverty, painting little postcards of Munich for tourists. Instead, he will forever remain in the company of Genghis Khan, Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin, among the darkest and most sinister figures in history. Without a victor's peace at Versailles, a popular ideological political party would not have had the fertile soil in which to root until the point in 1932, a mere thirteen years after Versailles, the Nazi party became the largest (although not the majority) political party in Germany. What was it about the Versailles Treaty that led Germany to recklessly gamble its entire national existence on another World War? It wasn’t the loss of Germany’s overseas colonies to Britain and France. It wasn’t ceding Alsace and Lorraine back to France. Even the loss of some of her eastern territory to Poland would probably not have been enough to arouse Germans to war again. Rather, it was her reduction in status to that of a pariah nation and a third-class military power on top of these other humiliations that eventually hardened enough hearts and softened enough heads in Germany to make another war a possible solution, especially to an impoverished Austrian corporal who had nothing to lose. The reparations forced upon Germany by the victorious powers, exacted year in and year out, reminded the Germans over and over again of their national debasement and continuing punishment. The reduction in her once-proud army and navy to a mere 100,000 men gave her a military status akin to Belgium or Portugal. Indeed, when Germany was unable to make full reparation payments in the early 1920s, the French army occupied much of the Rhineland and stayed there for years until the payments were made up. In the annuls of the great powers of European history, it was difficult to find a parallel to Germany’s fall from the pinnacle of military, economic and diplomatic status in 1914 to the depths of 1919 and she was not alone. Austria was born in bewilderment as a small, independent country with millions of its citizens living outside its borders in northern Italy and in the new republic of Czechoslovakia. Hungary was also born into resentment at its loss of territory, landlocked status and millions of its citizens living in Romania, no longer the dominant power of the lower Danube it had been. I will discuss the post-war situation in the remains of Austria-Hungary, the other major European power defeated in World War I, in my next blog.
History and Alzheimer's Disease
Memory impairment, problems with language, decision-making ability, judgment and personality are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s Disease. People often ask me as an author of historical fiction what is so important about knowing history. My answer is to compare people who know little or no history to Alzheimer’s Disease patients who have little or no knowledge of their past. With little knowledge of history, important events occurring in the present cannot be judged or evaluated in context. Nor can predictions be made reliably about future consequences of today’s actions without some knowledge of what has happened in the past under similar circumstances.
The Great Recession of 2008 is not the first financial/economic meltdown experienced by the United States. The Great Depression that began in 1929 is only the most well known historical precedent. Policymakers in government today have studied long and hard the actions and reactions of the decisions of policymakers in the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations. They would be fools if they hadn’t. Present day decisions can avoid the mistakes of the past that exacerbated or prolonged the Great Depression and spare us the age old curse of those who don’t know history; that they repeat it. Economic history is but one example.
One can argue about the correct lessons to be learned from history, but you can’t argue about history itself. If you don’t know history, you can’t derive any lessons from it at all. The greatest catastrophe to befall modern civilization in the 20th century was unquestionably the Second World War. Estimates of the number of dead vary but are currently thought to be as high as 72 million dead. Russia, Ukraine and the countries making up the former Soviet Union lost about 26.6 million people dead in a four year war. Poland lost one-third of its population. The continent of Europe, China, and Japan were all economically and physically annihilated by this war. Humanity requires an answer to the question of how this disaster happened so that it can be prevented from ever happening again.
Historians are vital to human civilization because they discover and record the truth of what happened to humanity in times past. There are some experiences that humanity should avoid repeating but cannot if we have collective memory loss similar to Alzheimer’s Disease. In a democracy, it is not only important that decision makers know history but, because ordinary people elect the decision makers, it is crucial that they know the truth about the past as well.
Historical fiction plays a significant role in filling this need by drawing readers into an intriguing story that takes place in another time that impacts the characters in the story. The author of historical fiction may also teach the reader about interesting and important events that happened in the past that may inspire the reader to learn more about them and the history of the times.
In my novel, I explored the causes and origins of the First World War. This war was also a calamity but perhaps even more importantly, it was without question the most important root cause of the Second World War that followed twenty years later. I will discuss this more in my next post.
Writing for Pleasure
One of the things I am often asked by people who know me is how I managed to write a 420 page novel while at the same time practicing law in my career as a trial lawyer? The answer can be simple or complicated.
The simple answer is because I wrote for the pleasure of writing, not as a profession. I already have a profession. If you enjoy writing, then you do it as a leisure activity when you’re not working or doing other things you have to do. Writing is fun for me, not work. Thus, it becomes a matter of finding the time to do it. We all have time; it’s a matter of priorities what you do with yours.
On a deeper level, I think that many of us have stories to tell. They may be real or they may be fiction, but for me, it’s more a matter of letting a story come out than making it up. The urge to tell a story begs for release. When you find time to sit down and write, then, it can be a very soothing therapy to “get it out”. When it amuses, entertains or enlightens other people who appreciate it, the delight is complete.
Writing a novel is the easy part. Getting it published and promoting it is real work. Most authors, from what I can tell, are completely clueless about how to go about getting their work published, and why shouldn’t they be? Their personalities are bound up in the creative process, not the commercial. Even those who have figured out the landscape can quickly be humbled by the immense disparity in resources and bargaining power between them and the publishers. Since hundreds of thousands of books are written every year, getting the attention of a literary agent or a major publisher is virtually impossible, especially for a first-time, unknown author. I am convinced that there are innumerable Pulitzer-prize quality novels and books out there that are simply unknown.
Advice is abundant on the internet. So abundant that any meaningful, cogent advice gets completely lost in the clutter. Hundreds and even thousands of people, entities and websites claim to have the answer to getting your book published and, just as important, purchased. Many, if not most, only grasp or share a piece of the publishing world with you either out of commercial guile or because they really don’t know as much as they pretend. In truth, if you are serious about getting your book published and read, you have to learn about this world yourself. That takes time. This is the real pick and shovel work of being an author.
So when people say how did you manage to write a novel, it’s an easy answer. If they asked how did you manage to get it published, that’s another story. In the end, you have to love what you’re doing to write a book because otherwise you will give up at many critical points along the way. Whether your book is a best seller or a niche piece won’t matter if you enjoy writing and have the curiousity and stamina to journey into another world … the world of publishing and promotion.
About Me
Chip WagarChip Wagar has a degree from the George Washington University in International Affairs. He studied central European history and politics at the Austro-American Institute in Vienna and has traveled extensively in central Europe and the Balkans. For the past thirty years he has been a practicing attorney in New Orleans, where he lives with his two children. He is the author of the novel An American in Vienna, published in 2011.
