PRECIOUS STONES AND DETACHED HEADS

My subject begins with the glories of ancient and medieval jewellery and strays into the fin de siècle artistic school known as the Decadents and some connected horrors. But fear not, Beauty easily outguns Ugliness!

The Empress Theodora

The Good Shepherd mosaics from Ravenna

 

Our Western horizons when we today discuss gemstones are curiously limited; we only think in terms of the more commercially valuable stones – diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, pearls -   and ignore the huge variety of other fine stones, often classified unflatteringly as “semi-precious”. The Romans perfected the ancient craft of mosaic, the creation of figures and designs using tiny coloured stones (tesserae). Classic examples of this art are to be seen at the Church of San Vitale and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, both in ravishing Ravenna, the city outpost of the Byzantine Empire in mainland Italy. Theodora, was the disreputable daughter of a charioteer, but she rose to marry mighty Emperor Justinian – admire her elaborate head-dress and the many clasps and buckles dripping exotic stones. The Good Shepherd mosaic demonstrates the precision and vibrant colours of this art-form. Islamic and Persian craftsmen kept up this tradition.

By the 8^th Century mosaics were falling out of fashion in the West but beautiful jewellery was produced, especially rings and amulets, believed to have magic powers. The artists used malleable beaten gold inlaid with precious stones, such as pearls, agate, sardonyx, carnelian, jasper, haematite, hyacinth and amethyst.

A Byzantine gold ring with stone inlays

Shoulder clasps, gold with garnet inlay, from Sutton Hoo

                                   

These early jewellery craftsmen cut their stones, much as diamond cutters do today, fully to catch reflective light; the most used cut was the cabochon, an unfaceted convex-cut. Highly prized was dark blue lapis lazuli, mined to this day in Afghanistan.

Fast forward now to the greatly arresting novel by J K Huysmans  À Rebours (translated as Against Nature, or Against the Grain) published in 1884, while Huysmans was an obscure French civil servant. It follows the inner life and exotic tastes of Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes, an immensely rich aesthete of morbid sensibility. This book, “the breviary of the Decadence”, heavily influenced Wilde among many others.

J. K, Huysmans

The Apparition, water-colour by Gustave Moreau

After lengthy consideration of interior decoration, fine colours, book bindings, ship-journeys, female flesh, dilettante scholars, theology, ancient art, rare plants, street pick-ups, classic perfumery and wine cellars, as well as an analysis of Moreau’s water-colour depicting Salome obsessed by the severed head of John the Baptist, the debauched fancy of Des Esseintes turns to precious stones. He acquires a huge tortoise at a shop in the Palais-Royal and commissions a lapidary to adorn its carapace. First he had it glazed in gold and then encrusted it with a floral pattern using startling and unusual gems:

The leaves were set with gems of a strong and definite green – asparagus-green chrysoberyls, leek-green peridots, olive-green olivines - and these sprang from twigs of almandine and uvarovite of a purplish red……For the flowers he decided on a phosphate blue: ….he chose only turquoises from the West; for the petals of the flowers he used only Ceylon cat’s-eyes, cymophanes and sapphirines. For the edging of the shell, he decided on a series of stones with contrasting colours – the mahogany-red hyacinth of Compostella followed by the sea-green aquamarine, the vinegar-pink balas ruby by the pale slate-coloured Sudermania ruby.

Des Esseintes returns from a bout of toothache to find his lavishly adorned tortoise quite dead, whether from stress or the weight of his carapace is not told. The unstable aesthete is, as usual, left frustrated and unfulfilled.

This extraordinary novel was followed by Oscar Wilde’s tragedy Salomé written in 1891, when Wilde was a famous critic and controversialist but before his triumphs as a writer of comedies. The influence of Huysmans was to be evident in the character of the protagonist and of Lord Henry Wotton in his notorious 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Wilde first wrote Salomé in French, fortunately, as the Lord Chamberlain of the day refused a licence for any play depicting a biblical event and the play had its debut in Paris. Predictably it later had a succès de scandale.

Subversive Oscar Wilde

Aubrey Beardsley's Salome

The play comes to a climax as the Tetrarch Herod II, asks his step-daughter Salomé to dance for him. John the Baptist (in the play called “Jokanan”) had earlier mortally offended Salomé and her mother Herodias by doubting her legitimacy. Salomé at first refuses to dance but the enchanted Herod offers her whatever she wishes “even to half his kingdom”. Salomé dances her seductive Dance of the Seven Veils and demands the head of John – Donne-moi la tête de Jokanan, she repeatedly says. An appalled Herod first offers her instead an emerald gifted to him by Caesar. She refuses. Then he tenders his white peacocks with feet of gilded gold. Again refused. His final throw is his hoard of precious stones – pearls, black and red-wine amethysts, topazes, moonstones and onyxes. He even includes the veil to the sacred sanctuary; Donne-moi la tête de Jokanan is the only answer he gets.

 In despair he orders John’s execution and his head is presented to Salomé on a salver. Salomé kisses the lips of the decapitated prophet and complains that they taste bitter. An infuriated Herod has Salomé killed, crushed under the shields of his soldiers.

This play was what the Victorians labelled “unwholesome” and the Biblical tale is certainly a gruesome one. It has inspired many great artists and two paintings by Rubens and Caravaggio are to be seen in the National Galleries in respectively Edinburgh and London:

The Feast of Herod by Rubens

Salome with the Head of John the Baptist by Caravaggio

Two paintings from the Grand Guignol School of Art!

SMD

20.06.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

CITY SNAPSHOTS (4); PARIS 1936

The Paris we know and love, the Paris laid out by Haussmann, the Paris of uniform building heights and of the grand boulevards emanating from the Arc de Triomphe, was still more or less in place in 1936 - no Tour Montparnasse, no hideous La Defense, no aeroplane din, less chaotic traffic, only the intrusive Eiffel Tower to spoil the beautiful view. With every justification she was known as The City of Light to celebrate her intoxicating spirit.

L'Etoile

In 1936, Paris was a byword for modernity. Like Britain, France presided over a vast empire in Africa from Algeria to Madagascar and in Asia from Syria to Indo-China, but Paris set the fashions, introduced the designs, stimulated intellectual life, excited the arts of the cinema and the theatre and her popular music, sung, whistled and hummed by millions, lightened the routine burden of  workers everywhere. A typical song would be Boum! - a catchy tune from iconic Charles Trenet.

For French trades unionists and industrial workers generally 1936 was a year of excited hope. After a succession of centre-right governments and the nasty shock of the February 1934 Paris Riots, when right-wing anti-democratic groups like Action Francaise and Croix de Feu almost staged a coup, the pendulum swung and in May 1936, Leon Blum formed a Popular Front government with Socialist and Radical ministers and with the support of a significant Communist bloc.

The government rushed into action passing 133 laws in 73 days. Amid a flurry of strikes, the Matignon Accords were adopted protecting workers rights. The 40-hour working week was defined, two weeks paid annual holiday became mandatory, collective bargaining was introduced, unions and their officials could not be obstructed and retaliation against strikers was outlawed. There was a raft of other measures increasing civil service pay and ex-servicemen’s’ pensions – all an apparent triumph for the workers. But the euphoria was short-lived; while wages climbed 45%, prices cancelled that out with a 42% rise. French industry, already in deep depression, made no progress. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 polarised opinion and Blum’s espousal of cautious Non-Intervention alienated many on the Left. The Popular Front coalition began to fracture and fell apart in later 1937. The Socialist dream was over and the Popular Front failure embittered an already divided nation.

Leon Blum's light flickers in 1936

 

Modern France - a 1936 Bugatti

Modern France- a 1936 classic Citroen 7C




Conservative currents were strong in France. Surprisingly, Left wing students were in a minority in the Latin Quarter with the right-wing Leagues attracting greater support. Philosophically, at the Sorbonne the influence of intuitive Henri Bergson remained strong; Charles Maurras’ nationalist stance originally attracted de Gaulle; Paul Claudel in drama and poetry and Jacques Maritain in essays proclaimed the values of the Catholic Church. Another Puritan was highly influential André Gide, a pederast with acute psychological insight, who moved across the political spectrum finally denouncing the Soviet Union after a visit in 1936. The Thibaults, an epic novel by Roger Martin du Gard, was widely admired. Not all were conservative; Voyage au bout de la Nuit, a tumultuous, misanthropic novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, astounded and impressed intellectual Paris in 1932, notably Sartre, with its depiction of mass production and its satire on bourgeois values. Marxist Sartre himself produced the powerful Nausea before succumbing to the role of apologist for Leftist totalitarianism, ending his friendship with humanist Raymond Aron

Intellectual exchanges were a feature of French café life at the likes of the Dôme in Montparnasse or Les Deux Magots at St Germain des Prés. But life is not defined by politics, philosophy and economics. Just as important are fun and games which Paris provided in abundance. Maurice Chevalier, the clichéd embodiment of the romantic Frenchman, with his trademark boater, returned from heady Hollywood success to conduct an affair with ageing Mistinguett, the toast of 1920s Paris.

The end of aristocratic Europe was movingly evoked in Jean Renoir’s pacifist movie La Grande Illusion but less seriously elegant Arletty was to be seen in Fric-Frac. Years later Arletty was demonised for her notorious affair with a German officer to which her spirited retort was My heart is French, but my ass is international! In a music-hall in Pigalle, a diminutive street-singer dressed all in black made her debut – matchless Edith Piaf. Sasha Guitry trod the boards in the fancier theatres, Coco Chanel dressed the chic, and the Americans flooded in, - Hemingway, Pound, Sinclair Lewis et al happily propping up the bars with no nostalgia for Des Moines, Iowa.

The party was in full spate. Jean Sablon provided his “clip-clop” song, the jaunty Le Fiacre (The Horse-drawn Cab), the night-clubs, cabarets and music halls were rocking.

Elegant Arletty

Coco Chanel

Another Jean Sablon song was Paris, tu n’a pas changé but come 1940, Paris was to change and suffer grievously in the bitterness of Defeat, Occupation and Collaboration. It took many years for the Parisian spirit to return to 1936 levels but she now blooms again in all her glory.

SMD

15.06.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

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BREXIT FOR EVER!

With 10 days to go before Referendum Day, the great British public has had its fill of dodgy dossiers, contentious statistics and arid debate. The political temperature has gone up with allegations about the hordes of migrants waiting to sail our way and insults about the ulterior motives of Leaver politicians. My own pro-Brexit opinions are no secret, but I promise this is my final word on this vital matter until we know the result on 24 June and we adapt to a new political landscape!

I have long believed that Britain does not fit into the European Union: our institutional foundations, our global connections and our national mentality are very different from those of Continental Europe. I would put up with much of that if the EU were, as it once was, an economically dynamic entity, but it was become a sclerotic laggard. We needed a new relationship if we were to stay in and I was prepared to give Cameron a chance when he embarked on his “re-negotiation”. The EU treated Britain via Cameron with contempt. No substantive concessions were offered and what was offered had no force of law and could readily be revoked. The EU refused to make any treaty changes as that would involve obtaining the consent of a slew of national parliaments, a prospect from which undemocratic Brussels bottled out. So Cameron achieved nothing and public opinion hardened against the EU.

Besieged David Cameron

Charmless George Osborne

 

Astonishingly, Cameron set an early date for the promised Referendum and campaigned for Stay despite his obvious negotiation failure. His party was split and although half the party (especially those in office) supported him, the other half capitalised on Eurosceptic sentiment and joined the Leave camp. Cerebral Michael Gove, a close colleague of Cameron, and Boris Johnson, the vigorous ex-Mayor of London, emerged as leaders. Nigel Farage leader of UKIP was an ally but his anti-immigrant rhetoric was thought over-done. Labour, led by eccentrically confused Jeremy Corbyn, mainly backed Stay but was loth to share a platform with Cameron. The SNP, Liberal Democrats, Greens etc wanted to Remain.

The campaign has been both unedifying and unconvincing. The Remain camp has embarked on what quite properly could be called Project Fear, fronted by George Osborne, – an avalanche of dire warnings about disasters facing Security, Defence, Industry, Sterling, Trade, the NHS, Education and yesterday even Pensions (and bus-passes!) if we voted Leave. There may be a sliver of truth in some of this, but it has essentially back-fired by its gross exaggeration. No doubt there will be many Brexit challenges but the electorate’s intelligence is insulted by the Remain approach and the unremitting gloom and doom purveyed cannot have inspired their followers but rather added to the fear that Britain is already trapped in a bureaucratic quagmire. Hardly one positive word has been said (significantly) by the Remain side about the EU, its organisation and its future prospects.

Rational Michael Gove

Charismatic Boris Johnson

The Leave side has pooh-poohed Project Fear and expatiated upon the joys of Independence. There has been much wrangling over the size of the Brexit dividend, £10bn says the Leavers, but authoritative verification is elusive. Events this year have given force to the perils of EU immigration, a subject once thought too delicate to air. The Leavers’ insistence on national Control seems very reasonable to me – but is not on offer from Brussels.  The Leavers have often struck rational chords; Michael Gove put it well: Surely it is better to be a friendly neighbour living in his own house than a discontented lodger living in a house he did not build. Boris Johnson has also performed well, curbing his love of a good joke and keeping his temper when sorely provoked.

Remain's 3 Witches

I watched Boris, politeness itself, ably supported by Gisela Stuart for Labour and Tory Andrea Leadsom debate the issues with very hostile Remainers Amber Rudd, Angela Eagle and Nicola Sturgeon. I thought Amber Rudd displayed her arrogance and her insults to Boris were surely counter-productive. Angela Eagle whined on about the wisdom of the trades unions, the most reactionary group in society, while Nicola Sturgeon demeaned her cause by her cocksure coarseness and irrelevant cracks about Scottish independence. A clear victory for the Leavers.

David Cameron has normally given a good professional account of himself but I do wonder if in his innermost being he really believes in the Remain case. His passion sometimes sounds synthetic. He miscalculated wheeling out Obama to threaten us with his “You will be at the back of the queue” jibe and I would not want to be in the same room, let alone share a platform, with sinister German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, grim oppressor of Greece and Mediterranean Europe.

Schaeuble - German Empire-builder

Juncker - Brussels blunderer

 

The Guards mounted band at our joyful Trooping the Colour last Saturday

The referendum vote will be close – I was much heartened by the poll giving the Leavers a 10% lead. I do not disparage the EU and I wish their United States of Europe project every success. I want an outward-looking Britain, valuing tolerance, trading globally and at ease with herself. I want to defend, after brushing away any cobwebs, her traditions and historic relationships. In short I want us to turn over a new and hopeful page.

My gut-instinct is that we will win on 23 June and I will be stocking up with the bubbly!

SMD

13.06,16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

CITY SNAPSHOTS (3): EDINBURGH 1999

          

     [This is one of a series describing great Cities at a moment of apogee in their histories]

We Scots are immensely proud of our great capital city, Edinburgh, with her historic Old Town, elegant Georgian and Victorian New Town, her dominating Castle, superb setting on the Firth of Forth to the North and the gentle Pentland Hills to the South.

A View of Edinburgh

The City has witnessed many a significant national moment – the erratic reign of Mary, Queen of Scots, the dogmatic ministry of John Knox, the rejection of Charles I’s prayer book at St Giles, the brutally anarchic 1736 Porteous Riots, the brief seizure of the city by Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Jacobites, the glories of the Scottish Enlightenment, the 1843 Disruption splitting the Presbyterian Church of Scotland – sometimes moments of turmoil, but a peaceful and cherished moment occurred on 12 May 1999 when the Scottish Parliament, in abeyance since 1707, was re-inaugurated by H.M. The Queen, accompanied by the new First Minister Donald Dewar.

Dewar is sworn in as First Minister

Dewar and H M The Queen

Few Scots could fail to be moved by the formal words intoned by SNP’s Winnie Ewing, the most senior member: The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25^th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.

It must have been a particularly proud moment for Donald Dewar whom I knew slightly. A lanky, rather shambolic figure, who learned his razor-sharp debating skills at Glasgow University, he was witty – not suffering fools gladly – but rational, fair-minded and politically cautious. Living alone, his wife had left him for Labour Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine, he immersed himself in Scottish history and had piloted the Scotland Act, defining devolved powers through Westminster In 1998. The temporary first home of the new Scottish Parliament was the Kirk Assembly Hall on the Mound, where his hero Thomas Chalmers, leader of the Free Church Disruption, had taught theology.

Kirk Assembly Hall and temporary site of the Scottish parliament (1999-2004)

Edinburgh in 1999 was going through a fruitful period. Although Labour won back power in 1997 after 18 years of Tory government, it still pursued basically Thatcherite policies. Government interventions in business were infrequent. Over the years Edinburgh had built itself up as a financial centre, with ambitious local banks, well-regarded investment managers and solidly-established insurance companies like Scottish Widows and Standard Life. Royal Bank of Scotland was expanding quickly and a year later was to acquire the much larger NatWest Bank, a tasty feast for driven Fred Goodwin, rising star of the Bank. The other major local bank, Bank of Scotland, was to merge in 2001 with the Halifax Bank and embark on a headlong expansion.

RBS St Andrew Square

Bank of Scotland Head Office

Edinburgh was much more than a financial centre. Her professionals, notably Scots lawyers and doctors were of a very high quality, four universities graced the city led by the venerable Edinburgh University, famed for its medical faculty and later its School of Informatics, studying engineered computational systems with a speciality in artificial intelligence. This had encouraged a lively IT industry. Secondary education was rated highly with 20% of Edinburgh pupils attending private schools, like my own Alma Mater Merchiston Castle but including Loretto and Edinburgh Academy.

The city’s atmosphere was mainly comfortably bourgeois but there was a druggy and violent underside as depicted with some brio in Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting starring Ewan McGregor, from Irvine Welsh’s novel. With a population of 495,000, Edinburgh’s largest employer was the local authority – food manufacturing, brewing and hospitality provided more jobs for working people. Scottish culture is now largely subsumed by that of Britain but the Edinburgh Festival, created in 1947, now the largest in the world, brings music, theatre, cinema and art of the highest standards to the occasionally stolid burghers of the wind-swept city.

In 1999 Labour controlled the new Edinburgh Parliament. It was well-represented in Westminster where incisive John Smith from Glasgow, and a close friend of Donald Dewar, had been Labour leader 1992-4 until his premature death aged 55. Labour’s new Prime Minister, persuasive Tony Blair, was English but had been educated at Edinburgh’s Fettes College. His principal lieutenant, powerful Gordon Brown, was at the Exchequer, while gnomic but brilliant Robin Cook was Foreign Secretary. Alistair Darling, a safe pair of hands, jumped from portfolio to portfolio – all 3 Edinburgh men.

Gordon Brown

Robin Cook

Alistair Darling

But Fortune is a fickle goddess and her wheel turned against Scotland. Donald Dewar had a fatal heart attack in 2000 on the steps of Robert Adam’s elegant Bute House in Charlotte Square. The construction of the new Parliament building at Holyrood was mismanaged; the original estimate of £109m ballooned to £414m: similarly the later Edinburgh Tramway system, managed by the council, cost £776m against an estimate of £545m and was years late. All this damaged Labour whose support was being eroded rapidly by the nationalist SNP. The 2007 economic crisis undermined Edinburgh’s financial sector; Bank of Scotland had lent very unwisely and HBOS had to be rescued by Lloyds Bank: RBS was worse, overreaching itself with fanciful global acquisitions. Too big to fail, the UK government stepped in and even now still owns 73% of RBS’s equity.

The SNP tide proved to be strong. Under epicene Alex Salmond it formed a minority Scottish administration in 2006 and a majority one in 2011. A reasonable competence was established. The Westminster government permitted a referendum on independence in 2014 and the 55-45% vote in favour of the union was a relief, but too close for comfort. More recently the collapse in the global price of oil has ruined the economics of the North Sea Oil industry, a lynch-pin in the SNP’s budgetary case. In 2015’s general election Labour’s vote collapsed and the SNP won another 50 seats to add to its existing 6. The SNP was led by Nicola Sturgeon, a feisty Glaswegian, but narrow and coarse-grained to my taste. There were signs of a Conservative revival in the Scottish elections of 2016 under the vigorous leadership of Edinburgh’s Ruth Davidson, but she is a kick-boxing Lesbian – not at all the tweedy, land-owning Unionist with which I am more familiar!

Edinburgh changes constantly like any city. Her beauty thankfully does not much change and I echo contemporary writer Alexander McCall Smith’s words;

This is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again.

For those who have never been, come and visit. For those who know her well, refresh your spirit by savouring again the city’s conviviality, fascinating history and friendly atmosphere.

Convivial Edinburgh

Historic Edinburgh

                                                                 

SMD

10.06.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

CITY SNAPSHOTS (2): VIENNA 1913-14

[This is one of a series on Cities at a moment of apogee in their histories]

The image of Belle Époque Vienna is usually a positive one, the Imperial pomp, the impressive buildings, the vibrant intellectual life, the fashionable bourgeoisie, the lively dancing and the pervading music. Vienna in the immediate pre-Great War years had all of this but there was a flip side of poverty and discontent in a city of 2m souls which a surprising number of distinguished inhabitants professed not to like. The city was an uneasy compound of anachronism and modernity and was to be the tinder-box to the greatest cataclysm ever to strike Europe.

Mayor Lueger presides over a ball at the Rathaus (City hall) in 1904

On the surface all was well. The revered Emperor Franz Joseph, now a rather sclerotic 83, presided over the vast Habsburg domain comprising Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Poles, Croats and the much less favoured Romanians, Slovaks, Slovenes, Ruthenes and Bosnians. All came to admire Vienna, much improved after 1850, the magnificent tree-lined horseshoe-shaped Ringstrasse enclosing the old city with Court Theatre, Opera House, Belvedere Palace and Rathaus.

The Burgtheater (Court Theatre) on the Ringstrasse, Vienna

The Viennese took their recreations happily. They whooped about at the Prater pleasure gardens, ate delicious cakes at Demels and at the Sacher Hotel and patronised the boulevard cafés. The cafés were meeting places – Griensteidl became the rendezvous for Young Vienna, the intellectual group including dramatist Arthur Schnitzler, novelist Stefan Schweig and architect Adolf Loos, protagonist of Art Nouveau. The Café Central was patronised by austere Sigmund Freud but a real regular was a certain Mr Lev Bronstein, who edited an obscure Russian newspaper called Pravda. A senior Austrian politician, on being told of the danger of Russian revolution, joked dismissively “We had better keep an eye on our Mr Bronstein!”, better known to history as arch-agitator Leon Trotsky.

The music of 3 generations of Strausses still captivated popular taste but by 1914 the atonal and dodecaphonic technique of Arnold Schonberg led the avant-garde with his followers Anton Webern and Alben Berg. The people sang:

Wien, Wien, nur Sie allein

Sollst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein!

(Vienna, Vienna, you will always be the city of my dreams!)

The Vienna Secessionists, led by Gustav Klimt, was the dominant painting school, while a whole class of rich connoisseurs attended exhibitions, collected art and porcelain and appreciated the short literary essays (“feuilletons”), favoured medium of the intelligentsia. At his famous consulting rooms at Berggasse 19 Wien IX, Sigmund Freud was inventing the new science of psychoanalysis, selecting his patients among a rum group of neurotic Jewish ladies and writing about the libido, the interpretation of dreams and the concept of the unconscious. He formed a group of disciples, including Carl Jung and Alfred Adler with American members too, but Jung and Adler split off on their own quite quickly. The final intellectual strength came from philosophy where Ludwig Wittgenstein was the acknowledged genius, studied under Bertrand Russell in Cambridge in 1912, inherited a fortune in 1913, becoming the second richest man in Vienna, much of which he soon gave away. His later Tractatus astonished colleagues and defined the entire subject.

Vienna was famously cosmopolitan and many of the leaders of the arts and professions were of Jewish origin.

Sigmund Freud

                 

Ludwig Wittgenstein

                                                                           

The Jews were envied for their success and riches, though there were plenty poverty-stricken refugee Jews from Galicia. The Rothschilds and the Ephrussis maintained palatial establishments in central Vienna and lavish houses in the country. The Empire and its bureaucracy was generally supportive and Franz Joseph tried to block the appointment of Carl Lueger as Mayor of Vienna. Lueger did good work beautifying the city and modernising the water supply and drainage but he was a virulent anti-Semite, dying in 1910. His oratory inflamed the Viennese working class and one of those most impressed was Adolf Hitler, a native of Linz, who lived in the city, latterly in a doss-house, from 1905 to 1913. He then sought his fortune in Germany, bringing his poisonous Viennese opinions with him.

The insurrectionary underbelly of Vienna was not confined to Trotsky and Hitler: Stalin (under the pseudonym Koba) visited an unimpressed Trotsky from Cracow in 1913 while another brief resident until conscripted in 1914 was Josip Broz (otherwise Tito) later dictator of Yugoslavia.

Despite all these tensions and difficulties, there were few clouds in the sky in summer 1914. The Emperor departed for a holiday in lovely Bad Ischl in the Salzkammergut. His nephew and heir Franz Ferdinand was due to visit Bosnia, annexed in 1908. Relations between the two were uneasy. Both were arch-conservative, but FF planned to streamline the Empire by clipping the wings of the erratic Magyars and advocated peaceful diplomacy in the Balkans. The Emperor had disapproved of FF’s marriage to the aristocratic Sophie, who was not of royal blood as custom required. The marriage was a morganatic one (any children could not succeed to royal positions) – FF felt insulted.

As the world came to know, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated on 28 June in Sarajevo by a terrorist called Gavrilo Princip, working for the Serb gang The Black Hand
.

Emperor Franz Joseph

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Princess Sophie assassinated

The appalling news shocked Vienna. The Emperor had delegated the handling of the crisis to his government, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and Foreign Minister Count Leopold Berchtold. The involvement of Serbia was soon established; a harsh ultimatum was despatched to Belgrade: the Serbs were conciliatory. But Vienna had miscalculated. Russia mobilised to help the Serbs prompting Germany to mobilise to support Austria-Hungary. The French, allied to the Russians, mobilised too and Germany marched against France through Belgium. Britain declared war on Germany as she had guaranteed the integrity of Belgium. By early August 1914, all Europe was aflame.

The ruinous War lasted over 4 years. By November 1918, the Habsburg Empire was no more and soon Vienna was the over-sized capital of a relatively small European state. Her days of joy and glory were gone for ever.

SMD       06/06/16              Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

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CITY SNAPSHOTS(1): SALONICA 1908

[This is one of a series describing great cities at a moment of apogee in their histories]

Salonica 1908.

Salonica was always an unusual place and Ottoman Salonica came to embody the easy-going tolerance of life under the latter-day Porte. To the ever-increasing numbers of Western visitors she epitomised the intriguing mysteries of the Levant overlaid on a famed classical past overlooked by nearby Mount Olympus. There was no dominant group. The Ottoman Sunni Muslims (about 25%) monopolised the civil service and the army and were the titular leaders of the city. The Christians, mainly Greek Orthodox but also feuding Bulgarians, (another 25%), once mere landless peasants, were commercially acute, enterprising and some were getting very rich. The largest minority was the Sephardic Jews (35%) descended from the large community which fled persecution in 15^th century Iberia and found a tolerant Ottoman haven. The Jews provided the dock workers and porters, the artisan classes and some very rich families. A unique Salonican group were the Ma’min, (about 5%) originally followers of the mystical Jewish pseudo-Messiah, Shabbatai Zevi, who converted to Islam in 1666. They were more influential than their numbers. Albanians, Serbs, Arabs, Dervishes and Armenians made up the balance.

The city (population 150,000) was remarkably polyglot. The Muslims spoke Turkish and Arabic, the Christians Greek or Slavonic dialects, while the Jews conversed in Judeo-Spanish, mainly derived from Catalan and inaccurately known as Ladino, which strictly was its religious version. They used a Hebrew script. Polite society often spoke French.

Into this rich stew Western influences intruded. Steamships plied their trade with the accessible port and in 1888 the railway at last connected Salonica with Paris. The region’s roads were deplorable, but tobacco factories and textile mills prospered. Western ideas were admired and a revolutionary fervour gripped the Ottoman politicians and army officers. In July 1908, the suspended liberal constitution of 1875 was re-instated and the absolutist powers of the Sultan curtailed.

Sultan Abdul Hamid goes to prayers in the Salonica Mosque in 1908, a finale to his pomp

This constitutional revolution was the work of the Young Turks, many based in the city, including its leader, civil servant Enver Pasha. In the background, a more junior army officer gave his support – Mustapha Kemal, born in Salonica and later founder of modern Turkey.

Imagine the scene in July 1908. The new Constitution was proclaimed and symbolically the Greek Archbishop, the Bulgarian leader and the Mufti embraced on a balcony and called on the populace to do the same in the name of Fraternity. There was in the words of a French officer “indescribable delirium” as the streets filled with flag-waving crowds. A few days later Enver Pasha himself orated on the virtues of cross-confessional Ottoman unity: Citizens! Today the arbitrary ruler is gone, bad government no longer exists. We are all brothers. There are no longer Bulgarians, Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, Jews, Muslims – under the same blue sky we are all equal, we are all proud to be Ottomans! A new dawn was apparently breaking.

But the dream was short-lived. The bubbling forces of nationalism could not be contained and the military weakness of the Ottomans attracted the cupidity of the new Balkan states. In 1912 Greece seized Epirus, Crete, the Aegean Islands and most remarkably Salonica itself, without a fight. The Bulgarian army arrived 24 hours later, but earned no great spoils, having to be content with Thrace. The Salonicans, apart from the Greek Orthodox, were not enthusiastic. The Jewish community was much larger and jealous of its privileges, the Bulgarians were discontented and the Muslims feared Christian discrimination. Disastrously in 1914 the Young Turks entered WW1 on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The Ottomans descended into genocide, on the pretext of border security. In 1915-16 some 1.5m Armenians were foully murdered en masse. The Turks fell upon the Pontic and Anatolian Greeks resulting in 1.2m deaths by 1922 and a massive exchange of population between Greece and Turkey under the aegis of the League of Nations. Thousands of Greek refugees moved to Salonica and the demographics finally moved towards the creation of a Greek city. The Muslims were forced to sail to Kemal’s truncated new Turkey, the Ottoman Arab lands lost forever after 1918.

Salonica’s famous Jewish population did not fare well. In 1917 an enormous conflagration destroyed three-quarters of the city, after a French soldier’s camp-fire was upset. The old Jewish quarter was razed, and although eventually rebuilt, many Sephardim saw their future in Paris, New York and a few settled in Palestine. There were still almost 50,000 Jews in Salonica in 1942 – to be rounded up by the Nazi Germans and Austrians and tragically gassed at Auschwitz in 1943; only 1,000 survived, an unspeakable crime.

We are well aware of the difficulty of holding together cities or states of complex ethnicity. Salonica (known as Thessaloniki) with a population of 954,000, is now a handsome city of wide boulevards and sea-side promenades, with important Byzantine remains. Yet she has lost her heady, idealistic flavour of 1908. Greece has won a fine second city but Europe has lost a uniquely balanced civilisation.

SMD

02.06.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016