European History : Thunder at Twilight Vienna 1913 1914
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Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Release Date: 2001-04-24
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- ISBN13: 9780306810213
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 Von Berchtold's War
Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Freud, Jung--everyone knows the names, but who were these people and what did they all have in common? How did Vienna link them all?
And then there are the names that are not on the tip of one's tongue--Count Leopold von Berchtold, Gavrilo Princip, Trifko Grabez, Nedeljko Cabrinivic. Who in the world were these people and how did their actions lead the world into The Great War (which should perhaps have been more accurately known as von Berchtold's War)?
As more or less every other reviewer has mentioned, every high school graduate who labored to stay awake through the mandatory course in world history knows that the First World War was precipitated by the assassination of the Austrian archduke. Students with extraordinarily good memories may even recollect that his name was Franz Ferdinand. But how many knew that he was a political embarrassment to the Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph? That his wife was shunned from state functions? That she died with her husband from the assassin's bullets? That no one but the new crown prince, the Archduke Karl, met and accompanied the bodies from the train station to the palace chapel, where they lay in state for only a minimal amount of time? That other heads of state were discouraged from attending the funeral? That the couple was not buried in the traditional Habsburg crypts?
There was no inevitable reason that the murder of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie should have resulted in a militaristic conflagration. Had it not been for the political tension between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and for the desire of the Austrian foreign minister (von Berchtold) to subjugate Serbia militarily, the assassination would never have precipitated the war. Why did everything come to pass as it did?
That question is what Morton addresses in THUNDER AT TWILIGHT. By the end of the book, the reader understands much more clearly how the tensions, alliances, aging and increasingly ineffectual monarchs, and belligerent ministers of governments coalesced to produce the greatest war that the world had ever seen. At the same time, the reader sees the cultural and social milieu of Vienna, the seat of Austrian power, and understands how it all contributed to the ultimate horrific cataclysm. Some other reviewers have criticized Morton for painting such a complete picture of Viennese society, right down to its gardens, parks, and weather. However, to me, these vivid descriptions, whether or not they are literally accurate in every respect, contribute greatly to ones appreciation of the people and of the environment that led to the war. Not only do these descriptions help us form a complete mental image of the Viennese but they also result in a very readable and lively narrative.
Morton's vivid prose is as far removed from the dry recitation of facts and dates in my high school history textbook as it is possible to be. In his hands, history does indeed come alive and entrances the reader. I cannot recall coming across a single boring passage in the entire book. To be honest, however, there was one slightly annoying repetition: Practically every time Franz Joseph's wife Sophie is mentioned, the passage includes the adjective "morganatic." The word is completely appropriate and thoroughly accurate and even suggests the decadence of the dying Habsburg dynasty and its outmoded traditions. Yet, its continual repetition in the text may say more about the author's condemnation of the last Habsburg regime than of the royal couple. That's just a very small nit to pick with what is actually a fascinating account of the festering tensions culminating in world war.
I highly recommend the book to everyone interested in an attention-grabbing account of a brief but significant period in modern human history. You know, I find it curious that most of us easily recall the names of our American assassins--John Wilkes Booth, Charles Giteau, Leon Czolgosz, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan--none of whom generated a great war, but very few know the name Gavrilo Princip. THUNDER AT TWILIGHT should help rectify that omission.
 Gratuitous Ornamentation
Thunder at Twilight focuses on Vienna in the months and days before World War I. Historians have provided many versions of the dramatic events that brought on the war. It's an extraordinary chapter in European history and gives Frederic Morton a great deal to work with. Even though much of what he relates is already familiar, it makes for absorbing reading nonetheless. Regrettably, he embroiders the tale with all sorts of irrelevant and distracting verbal frills: what the weather was like on a particular day; what was playing at the opera, whether people were strolling in the Vienna woods, what was in bloom; who was present at various society balls and what they were wearing. He also like to name drop. He introduces characters such as Stalin, Wittgenstein, Trotsky, Kafka, and numerous others who have little or no connection to the main events. All this gratuitous ornamentation adds a distracting and irritating note to what would otherwise be a gripping and important tale.
Gathering storm
I can think of few other books, save Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station and Andrei Biely's St. Petersburg, that so brilliantly captured the spirit of a time, bringing key figures to life and recreating a vibrant sense of being there. In this case the scene is Vienna, on the eve of the Great War. I was captivated.
And what a cast of characters! Russian revolutionaries (Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky), aristocrats and courtiers of the Habsburg dynasty (foremost among them the Emperor Franz Joseph and the Crown Prince, Franz Ferdinand); future catalyst of WWII, Adolf Hitler; and a host of intellectual and artistic giants such as Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Oskar Kokoschka, and Arnold Schönberg. Impressively, the main narrative thread isn't lost in this colorful swirl of personages; in fact, for a reader with even a modest grounding in European history and culture, these numerous fleeting appearances only add to the vibrancy of the tale.
I was swept up immediately by Morton's heady prose -- at times, I confess, I found it to dip rather heavily into the symbolic or engage in the overly rhetorical flourish -- but still his writing has undeniable evocative power. Here, for instance, is a passage describing the eccentric habit of a struggling artist living in poverty in a Viennese "men's home":
"....Now the brush would drop from his hand. He would push the palette aside. He would rise to his feet.
"He began to speak, to shout, to orate. With hissing consonants and hall-filling vowels, he launched into a harangue on morality, racial purity, the German mission and Slav treachery, on Jews, Jesuits, and Freemasons. His forelock would toss, his color-stained hands shred the air, his voice rise to an operatic pitch. Then, just as suddenly as he had started, he would stop. He would gather his things together with an imperious clatter, stalk off to his cubicle.
"And the others would just stare after him."
That, of course, was a sketch of Adolf Hitler.
But what most struck me after reading A Distant Thunder is how well Morton had made clear the causes of World War I. Of course, every school boy knows that the trigger was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Like me, however, many have undoubtedly wondered just who was this Franz Ferdinand to have set off such a sequence of cataclysmic events. Morton makes the ill-fated Crown Prince the central character of his book, and in doing so infuses it with heavy irony, for Franz Ferdinand was, despite all his bluster, a constant advocate of peace, not war. That the Great War was begun ostensibly on his account was the supreme irony.
Morton adroitly renders a sympathetic but unsentimental portrait of Franz Ferdinand, highlighting his problematic relationship with his uncle, the Emperor, and his devotion to his wife Sophie, whom he had married contrary to Habsburg wishes. If there is a tragedy here beyond the insane march to war, it is this story of a prince and the sacrifices he made for his beloved wife, who was continually slighted by a court intent on keeping her down among the "non-royals" in its merciless pecking order.
Finally, as an occasional visitor to Vienna, a city I've long admired, I'm greatly looking forward to reading Morton's other Vienna-inspired history, A Nervous Splendor, which deals with the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889.
Very Interesting
I'm doing research on the hope of writing a romance novel based on a story my ex-husband told me about how his grandfather came to America. I found this book fascinating. It gave me a real feel for the time and the place. And unlike many history books, it wasn't boring.
The Beginning of the End
Fred Morton certainly lived up to his reputation in this novel about the waning days of the "Imperial City of Vienna" and all the different personages inhabiting the Empire [Stalin, Hitler, Trotsky] during these turbulent pre WWI years. Excellent for history buffs such as myself or anyone else for that matter who enjoys a good read about the declining days of Empire and the effect of the Great War on European Aristocracy. Also interesting to note that Franz Ferdinand's three surviving children [daughter and two sons] were taken in by a friend after their parents murder by a Serbian Terrorist [not family as they were morgantic children due to their mother's status] and all eventually found themselves sent to a concentration camp [Therienstadt] when Austria was gobbled up by Germany during the Nazi's rise to power..as they did not possess "Imperial Status" Dont hear too much about this in any books. Eventually they were liberated by the Allies and their property restored to them. Sophie outlived both her younger brothers living to the ripe old age of 91. Her desendents live today in Konopiste; the Palace of Arch Duke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Chotek.
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