What a fantastic essay. I've been wondering whether there is literature from another place or time that describes feelings of permanence/collapse and rootlessness/memory that I feel in the world today. I hadn't thought to look at Austria-Hungary but you have opened my mind to a new way of looking at the old empire. Thank you for that.
Thank you so much, James. Yeah, I find myself oddly interested in periods where there's this sudden break in everyday people's experiences and they have to start over. The interwar years are full of these kind of perspectives, either told through novels or autobiographies or even other mediums. So many essays about needing to begin again and commentary on the "spiritual collapse" of Europe
The writers of the former Austria-Hungary are a special case though because of their style, which is often very realist, psychological, and even existentialist. If you read Zweig's autobiography today, it's still pretty fresh and easy to place yourself in his world
So happy to see you back. As soon as I saw the title, I thought, "Oh good someone else has been thinking of Joseph Roth, too," because of course I'm often thinking of Roth's journalistic work at the end of history. Saving this for when I can really sink into it.
This mirrors post-Soviet discourse in an absolutely unfathomable way. People usually have a very one-sided view of Soviet society, but many genuinely believed in the ideals upheld by the system including the creation of an Homo Soveticus (look at how Central Asia and Azerbaijan overwhelmingly voted to stay a part of the Ussr during the 1991 referendum poll despite at first glance being from "foreign" civilizations and cultural spheres).
You are an outstanding writer. I have to admit I have a shallow understanding of the time/place of late Austro-Hungary, but this essay makes me want to learn more. The eternity, alienation, and decay seem to have many parallels to the 21st century West.
Phenomenal article. The break that WW1 represents captured my imagination like few other time periods. It’s incredible how many alternate versions of the great powers we’ve narrowly avoided or been forced past, from 1789/1848/1914/1918/1945/1989. So many epochs now! I guess we’re in the Post-unipolar post-cold war post-modern geopolitical structure now. Maybe more rootless than ever. Who knows what we’ll sleepwalk into with our digital perspective.
The links in this article are great fodder to follow. Thank you so much!! Do you recommend any of the books themselves, or are they more historically interesting than narrative wise?
Nicely said, yep. I think we have a similar perspective. And I've also been thinking about how the rootlessness caused by the internet today is similar to the rootlessness caused by mass-society urban life a century ago, especially in the way people talked about it.
If you're interested in this period, it definitely would be worthwhile to read Roth, Musil, or Zweig in their own words. I especially recommend Zweig's The World of Yesterday. The Sleepwalkers (1930-32) by Hermann Broch is also something I've been meaning to pick up as well. Additionally, one book that heavily inspired this essay is Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire by Marjorie Perloff, I really recommend it
Their world was ruined by a cataclysmic war, the bloodiest ever seen up to that time. Ours is being ruined by ephemeral algorithms and a microscopic virus. We are wimps.
The psycho-cognitive decline by algorithims is nothing to scoff at though, it's pretty fundamental to who we are and how we relate to each other hence the deep damage
This is a brilliant essay, thanks for writing and sharing! It really brings home how profoundly the carnage of the First World War, and the twentieth century more generally, uprooted the fabric of so many societies. This theme of rootlessness and a loss of certainty feels timely given the sense of disconnect so many people feel today. It takes me back to a quote from Bertrand Russell, who was discussing the vast changes he had seen in his lifetime: "The world in which I was young was a solid world, a world where all kinds of things that have now disappeared were thought to be going to last forever. It didn’t dawn on people that they might cease."
Very moving article. In what it represents, I think, we have still not reached that time period or gone past it. Austria-Hungary--before the great suicidal-fratricidal wars--was, from what I can tell, something on the order of classical Greece or renaissance Italy in historical standing, which is to say, in originality, energy, and distinctness. It is difficult for any time or place to stand out against the unending chaos of historical change, but I think there is little in history that can equal the melancholy romance of an advanced society, a thousand years in the making, as much realized in itself as anybody could ever hope to be, perched on the edge of its own annihilation. It's just so great, pitiful, magnificent, and sad. And, as you mentioned, it has significant resonances with our own time as well—with the provision that they are the vivid original, while we are the pale facsimile.
Great piece and strangely emotional. Even though this was 3 years ago, it has become far more relevant now as the world has gotten even worse. Impermanence is one of those things where you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. The inevitability of everything eventually ending is sad and tragic. At the same time, a hypothetical world of complete stagnation seems tragic as well. Perhaps there is no solution. I find myself nostalgic for the Belle Epoque period of 1870-1914. Despite not being a monarchist, I consider myself a syndicalist/socialist, it seems like that world had far more hope for everyone involved. Liberals, socialists, conservatives, and nationalists all seemed to be much more hopeful toward their visions, and their respective utopias seemed not completely naive. Now the world seems to be dying, and no one has any idea about what to do about it.
Suggest you read: Joachim Remak, “The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 41, No 2 (Jun., 1969). Remak shows that before the war, people did not think it was doomed, but they claimed afterward that they did. It shows that what we think we know about the past is often an accepted shorthand, not what really happened. And Austria-Hungary only collapsed after brutal fighting on three fronts, and it's armies stood on enemy territory on all three. The old empire was a lot stronger than it looked, and if the war had been a little bit shorter, it would have survived.
Viel Dank (many thanks), A wonderful reminder of my two years in Wien (Vienna) 1959-61. I've read the writers mentioned here. I was one of fifteen COs (conscientious objectors) engaged in rebuilding the Lutheran Karlsschule am Karlsplatz, a 7-year project finished in 1961. What a story of a world coming apart and collapsing and then having the gift of these classic ruminating writers.
You forgot one young Austrian who drew different conclusions from this collapse: Adolf Hitler. He hated the multinational, liberal Habsburg empire, and wanted a strong state. We all know how that turned out.
If the tragedy of WWI could have been avoided, perhaps the Habsburg empire could have been a model for a European Union, where each community has its own language and culture, but inside a multinational framework. The idea of creating national states out of the collapsed empire brought disasters.
Great article. Maybe I need to reread Stefan Zweig after decades. Humans are resilient and the river of life always keeps flowing - except for the ones that have seen the end of wars.
Austria-Hungary lasted basically a piddly half a century. Ephemeral, having been created in 1867, it started falling apart during WWI and was gone forever in 1918.
The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia all lasted much longer than 51 years. In the case of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia this includes the WWII break of several years before they were mended up and re-established. USSR did not even have that break in continuity (granted a portion was occupied by the Nazis).
So Austria-Hungary is basically like the brief "United Arab Republic" of Egypt and Syria, only with a territorial connectedness those two did not have. Ah well...
What a fantastic essay. I've been wondering whether there is literature from another place or time that describes feelings of permanence/collapse and rootlessness/memory that I feel in the world today. I hadn't thought to look at Austria-Hungary but you have opened my mind to a new way of looking at the old empire. Thank you for that.
Thank you so much, James. Yeah, I find myself oddly interested in periods where there's this sudden break in everyday people's experiences and they have to start over. The interwar years are full of these kind of perspectives, either told through novels or autobiographies or even other mediums. So many essays about needing to begin again and commentary on the "spiritual collapse" of Europe
The writers of the former Austria-Hungary are a special case though because of their style, which is often very realist, psychological, and even existentialist. If you read Zweig's autobiography today, it's still pretty fresh and easy to place yourself in his world
So happy to see you back. As soon as I saw the title, I thought, "Oh good someone else has been thinking of Joseph Roth, too," because of course I'm often thinking of Roth's journalistic work at the end of history. Saving this for when I can really sink into it.
This mirrors post-Soviet discourse in an absolutely unfathomable way. People usually have a very one-sided view of Soviet society, but many genuinely believed in the ideals upheld by the system including the creation of an Homo Soveticus (look at how Central Asia and Azerbaijan overwhelmingly voted to stay a part of the Ussr during the 1991 referendum poll despite at first glance being from "foreign" civilizations and cultural spheres).
You are an outstanding writer. I have to admit I have a shallow understanding of the time/place of late Austro-Hungary, but this essay makes me want to learn more. The eternity, alienation, and decay seem to have many parallels to the 21st century West.
Phenomenal article. The break that WW1 represents captured my imagination like few other time periods. It’s incredible how many alternate versions of the great powers we’ve narrowly avoided or been forced past, from 1789/1848/1914/1918/1945/1989. So many epochs now! I guess we’re in the Post-unipolar post-cold war post-modern geopolitical structure now. Maybe more rootless than ever. Who knows what we’ll sleepwalk into with our digital perspective.
The links in this article are great fodder to follow. Thank you so much!! Do you recommend any of the books themselves, or are they more historically interesting than narrative wise?
Nicely said, yep. I think we have a similar perspective. And I've also been thinking about how the rootlessness caused by the internet today is similar to the rootlessness caused by mass-society urban life a century ago, especially in the way people talked about it.
If you're interested in this period, it definitely would be worthwhile to read Roth, Musil, or Zweig in their own words. I especially recommend Zweig's The World of Yesterday. The Sleepwalkers (1930-32) by Hermann Broch is also something I've been meaning to pick up as well. Additionally, one book that heavily inspired this essay is Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire by Marjorie Perloff, I really recommend it
Their world was ruined by a cataclysmic war, the bloodiest ever seen up to that time. Ours is being ruined by ephemeral algorithms and a microscopic virus. We are wimps.
The psycho-cognitive decline by algorithims is nothing to scoff at though, it's pretty fundamental to who we are and how we relate to each other hence the deep damage
This is a brilliant essay, thanks for writing and sharing! It really brings home how profoundly the carnage of the First World War, and the twentieth century more generally, uprooted the fabric of so many societies. This theme of rootlessness and a loss of certainty feels timely given the sense of disconnect so many people feel today. It takes me back to a quote from Bertrand Russell, who was discussing the vast changes he had seen in his lifetime: "The world in which I was young was a solid world, a world where all kinds of things that have now disappeared were thought to be going to last forever. It didn’t dawn on people that they might cease."
Wow, that Russell quote reads just like something Zweig would write.
Very moving article. In what it represents, I think, we have still not reached that time period or gone past it. Austria-Hungary--before the great suicidal-fratricidal wars--was, from what I can tell, something on the order of classical Greece or renaissance Italy in historical standing, which is to say, in originality, energy, and distinctness. It is difficult for any time or place to stand out against the unending chaos of historical change, but I think there is little in history that can equal the melancholy romance of an advanced society, a thousand years in the making, as much realized in itself as anybody could ever hope to be, perched on the edge of its own annihilation. It's just so great, pitiful, magnificent, and sad. And, as you mentioned, it has significant resonances with our own time as well—with the provision that they are the vivid original, while we are the pale facsimile.
Great piece and strangely emotional. Even though this was 3 years ago, it has become far more relevant now as the world has gotten even worse. Impermanence is one of those things where you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. The inevitability of everything eventually ending is sad and tragic. At the same time, a hypothetical world of complete stagnation seems tragic as well. Perhaps there is no solution. I find myself nostalgic for the Belle Epoque period of 1870-1914. Despite not being a monarchist, I consider myself a syndicalist/socialist, it seems like that world had far more hope for everyone involved. Liberals, socialists, conservatives, and nationalists all seemed to be much more hopeful toward their visions, and their respective utopias seemed not completely naive. Now the world seems to be dying, and no one has any idea about what to do about it.
Excellent post. I love all of these writers.
Suggest you read: Joachim Remak, “The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 41, No 2 (Jun., 1969). Remak shows that before the war, people did not think it was doomed, but they claimed afterward that they did. It shows that what we think we know about the past is often an accepted shorthand, not what really happened. And Austria-Hungary only collapsed after brutal fighting on three fronts, and it's armies stood on enemy territory on all three. The old empire was a lot stronger than it looked, and if the war had been a little bit shorter, it would have survived.
Fascinating, this is exactly the kind of thing I'd love to read. Thanks for the suggestion!
Viel Dank (many thanks), A wonderful reminder of my two years in Wien (Vienna) 1959-61. I've read the writers mentioned here. I was one of fifteen COs (conscientious objectors) engaged in rebuilding the Lutheran Karlsschule am Karlsplatz, a 7-year project finished in 1961. What a story of a world coming apart and collapsing and then having the gift of these classic ruminating writers.
Wayne Yoder
Very nice. Much nicer than the failing American Empire that controls present Europe.
But I am rather surprised that the works of Lajos Zilahy were not mentioned - "Century in Scarlet", "The Dukays" ...
You forgot one young Austrian who drew different conclusions from this collapse: Adolf Hitler. He hated the multinational, liberal Habsburg empire, and wanted a strong state. We all know how that turned out.
If the tragedy of WWI could have been avoided, perhaps the Habsburg empire could have been a model for a European Union, where each community has its own language and culture, but inside a multinational framework. The idea of creating national states out of the collapsed empire brought disasters.
Fascinating and prescient essay, thank you
One of the best posts I’ve ever read on Substack, and I’m a stack addict lol.
Me before reading this: America is Rome reborn!
Me after reading this: America is… Austria-Hungary? 🤔
Great article. Maybe I need to reread Stefan Zweig after decades. Humans are resilient and the river of life always keeps flowing - except for the ones that have seen the end of wars.
Austria-Hungary lasted basically a piddly half a century. Ephemeral, having been created in 1867, it started falling apart during WWI and was gone forever in 1918.
The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia all lasted much longer than 51 years. In the case of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia this includes the WWII break of several years before they were mended up and re-established. USSR did not even have that break in continuity (granted a portion was occupied by the Nazis).
So Austria-Hungary is basically like the brief "United Arab Republic" of Egypt and Syria, only with a territorial connectedness those two did not have. Ah well...