Notes on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or dessert in a cupboard

scrambled thoughts on dessert in a cupboard

Johann Straus number 2 was the most famous musician of his time; he was, in a sense, the Michael Jackson of his era, no, thats not right, he wasnt black, fucking whacked out, a pedophile, melanin confused, the definition of batshit crazy, no , ok, Strauss numero deuce was like, well, he was like noone today, celebrity was different then.Examples are aplenty if ye need them.The cult of celebrity that we are all members of, to some extent, didnt exist then.... in a time of European intellectuals and artists delving into their pauper, peasant roots, Strauss was no different, taking the folk songs of the Austrian and Hungarian peasants and re-tooling them into classical music; though,his music proved to be immensely popular . Very popular. His waltzes and marches had the world humming. The music of a dying epoch, a diseased empire. Vienna at this time was abuzz, indeed all of Austria-Hungary swooned and reeled with artistic eruption. But, at the edges of empire, disparate groups sought independence and/or a new society.
Serbian nationalists, Croat patriots, Magyar neo-Huns, communists,socialists,anarchists,pan -Teutons, jihadists, Czech nationalists,Italian supremacists,Pan -Slavists, Zionists,etc,et al.....out of this ethnic and political goulash came great ideas(Jung,Freud,...) foul aberrations(Hitler,Anton Pavic, the Ustasha, the Hungarian Iron Guard) music(Strauss' all, Brahms, )writers galore---Felix Salten(he, of Bambi and soft porn fame, Joseph Roth, Musil, Karl Kraus, Geza Csath, Jan Neruda, Strindberg, Krleza, and art: Klimt, Kokoshka, and others, Egon Schiele, Adler, Martin Buber, Schnitzler, Ferdinand Porsche, PEZ(Haule , I think he was who invented PEZ), KAFKA!!!, Max Brod, Hrabal, Herzl, the list is exhaustive...coffee, the best absinthe, dances, pomp and more pomp and circumstances beyond ones wildest imaginations---well, perhaps not Freuds or Jungs.
And, before the attentat by Gavrilo Princip on the fateful day in Sarajevo was a decision by the deranged archduke(no capitals,please)to commit suicide by disregarding the advice of his closest aides and military advisers. Instead of hundreds of bodyguards in a place where most of the citizens wanted you dead,for one reason or another, the good archduke brought under a dozen men and his wife.. To a region newly captured,that had just thrown off the Ottoman Empire after 500 years,a region teeming with revolutionary groups, with nationalistic groups, with every kind of violent person swarming with other violent persons the gaudy archduke paraded in an open motorcade before pissed off Muslims, wrathful Serbs,mad anarchists, zealous communists, Slovene patriots under the influence of one too many cappucinos; nine assasins lost their nerve when the first assassin, regaining it , attacked...firing five shots, hitting Franz Ferdinand in the jugular and Duchess Sophie in the tum-tum.The surprise is that everyone was surprised.I think, more than anything, Europe was saddened that its best dressed, youngest, most melodic Empire was now dead. Kaput. The song was over. The end . The ornate, gilded dancehall was silent as a tomb.As Eddie Izzard says, it all ended with the flair of a sunken flan in a cupboard. Only this flan, turned into World War 1. The brocaded, mustached Empire of Austria- Hungary had disintegrated and it took Europe down with it.