Wien 1910 (1943)

Vienna, March 7, 1910. News spreads like wildfire through the Austro-Hungarian capital: “Lueger is dying!” The 65-year-old mayor, as popular as he is controversial, has made more than a few enemies through the decisions he has taken over the course of his political life. High-ranking officers in dress uniform have gathered at the Hofburg and make sardonic remarks as loyal subjects of the Emperor. One of them says frankly what he thinks of Karl Lueger: “The Herr Mayor who stole the love and affection of the Viennese from our Emperor.” Another says that the suspected cause of death, blood poisoning, would be “a very appropriate, very fitting way for a demagogue like Lueger to die.” But the Emperor’s loyalists are not the only ones who will shed no tears for the dying local politician. The city’s Jews, too, can scarcely hide their quiet delight at the prospect of Lueger’s imminent death. “Lueger is dying,” says one, to which another replies, “May your words reach God’s ears.” One of Karl Lueger’s fiercest political opponents is Commercial Councillor Lechner of the Liberal opposition. When he hears that Lueger is dying (“Good news”), he immediately turns to his business interests. He is determined to profit from speculation about Lueger’s impending death: “There’ll be building plots, finally a free market.” Vienna’s politicians are divided between discord and elation over the news of the mayor’s dramatic condition. Heated debates break out in the Vienna City Council over several of Lueger’s projects, intended solely for the public good and the benefit of Vienna’s citizens—projects that find little favor with opportunists and liberal profiteers from other people’s misery. Then the gravely ill Lueger enters the chamber. With great fervor, he speaks out against the hyenas of commerce and unscrupulous profiteering. Above all, his commitment to a municipal insurance company for all Viennese marks Dr. Lueger as a social reformer devoted to justice for each individual citizen. Lueger criticizes capitalism and wants Vienna’s gasworks and tramway to be municipally owned, so that every Viennese can afford these everyday necessities. The City Council erupts in enthusiastic applause, while Commercial Councillor Lechner, watching his prospects slip away, dabs the sweat from his forehead. Lueger proves himself a fighter against Social Democrats and the imperial court, against irresponsible capitalists and against Jews. Meanwhile, the irreconcilable camps of Lueger’s supporters and representatives of the Pan-German Association, mostly students on both sides, have clashed outside the university, and a huge brawl breaks out. Two Jews standing a little apart and talking together are pleased: they believe the conflict between the hostile camps can only benefit them. Having seen the apparently recovering mayor and heard his rousing speech in the council chamber, Commercial Councillor Lechner no longer wants to leave Lueger’s fate to chance. To keep his business from being ruined completely, Lechner decides what to do about Lueger: “We’ll have to give it a push”—meaning that everything must be done to hasten Lueger’s death. He seeks out Dr. Adler, a Jewish newspaper publisher and political opponent of the mayor, as an ally in his dark plans. Meanwhile, Lueger’s youthful love, the married Maria Anschütz, has arrived from Brno to say goodbye to the dying, blind mayor. A sleazy informant sees Maria leaving Lueger’s house and reports the news to journalist Adler, so that he will have enough compromising material to continue attacking Lueger in his newspaper. The mayor is glad to have seen Maria once more, but asks her to return to her husband. Maria stays in Vienna, close to him; she cannot bear to leave him alone as death approaches. When Lechner meets Adler to consider how they might hasten Lueger’s demise, Adler merely tells him to wait for the next day’s newspaper article about the mayor. That, he says, will finish off the politician they both despise. The senior officers are also deeply displeased by Lueger’s forceful appearance in the council chamber. One of them is summoned to the Emperor and says he does not know “how to break it to His Majesty gently.” Lueger is beside himself when he hears the following day about Adler’s headlines. The “public’s anger” wrecks the Jewish journalist’s newsroom. Adler stares, stunned, at the devastated office and swears revenge. Commercial Councillor Lechner floods the market with government bonds in an effort to ruin the city of Vienna and its people. “That Commercial Councillor, hand in hand with the Jews,” Lueger fumes. But he refuses to be beaten. With all his remaining strength, he pushes ahead with his final social housing project, realizing that he does not have much time left. A new piece of news hits Vienna like a bomb: Georg von Schönerer is in town! Lueger and Schönerer are both fighters for fundamental change, and they are united by their antisemitism. But even more separates them. Although both consider themselves anti-Habsburg and German nationalist, Dr. Lueger stands for the rational politics of small steps, for gradually changing conditions through compromise, while the impetuous and uncompromising Schönerer is driven to destroy the Habsburg state and unite all Germans under one government. He is a “fanatic of the future,” as one man says to another in a tavern. “He wants a Greater Germany and the Habsburgs gone.” Schönerer has come to Vienna at Lueger’s request. Shortly before his death, Lueger wants one last conversation, hoping for reconciliation, since the two men ultimately have very similar aims. Lueger and Schönerer finally meet on March 9, 1910, the day before Lueger’s death. In this very frank dispute, both realize how much divides them. Lueger sees himself as an ethnic German loyal to Austria-Hungary, while the burly Schönerer describes himself as a German nationalist, a proponent of Greater Germany. Given that two supporters from the opposing camps died in the recent clashes outside the university, Lueger appeals to his adversary: “Two Germans have bashed each other’s skulls in, while all around us our enemies are rejoicing—our common enemies, Herr von Schönerer.” Schönerer replies that Lueger had been far too considerate, too ready to compromise, and not nearly direct enough, all “for the sake of dear, lazy peace.” He says Lueger felt bound to Austria-Hungary, that “rotten structure,” as he calls it, out of misplaced sentimentality, instead of making way for a great empire of all Germans. Schönerer says, disappointed, that Lueger had once been “destined by Providence for great things” (echoing a phrase Adolf Hitler would later use frequently). To complete the parallel with Hitler’s Pan-German ideology, the film has Schönerer tell Lueger in this exchange: “One day there will be an empire of all Germans”—not a “patchwork,” as he sees it in 1910, but “a great German Reich”; anyone who tries to delay the birth of this state commits “a crime against history, which cannot be violated.” Schönerer says the two men once shared the same ideals, but that the mayor has long since betrayed them. He then leaves the room. The blind Lueger does not notice Schönerer’s departure and begins to defend the course he has taken in his reply. Dejected, Lueger attends Vienna’s grand city ball that evening. He is told that the Emperor cannot come because he is indisposed, prompting a mocking remark from Lueger. Meanwhile, Commercial Councillor Lechner takes his own life: his speculations on Lueger’s death have failed, and political decisions Lueger made just beforehand have driven him into financial ruin. During the ball, Dr. Karl Lueger suffers a fainting spell and is carried by his companions to a room. There, in the early hours of the following day, March 10, 1910, he falls asleep forever, while outside the door Maria Anschütz and the young Lueger supporter Karl Lechner wait. In the morning, crowds of Viennese gather in front of City Hall to mourn their dead mayor. Schönerer is among them; out of respect for his great opponent and fellow fighter, he doffs his hat. A black flag flies from the City Hall tower.