Dark Vienna: 1914 and the End of an Empire of 50 Million

You are outside the Capuchin Church on Neuer Markt. Beneath it lies the Imperial Crypt. If you go in, you will descend into a city of metal coffins. About a hundred and fifty Habsburgs are buried here, the family that ruled Austria for more than six centuries. Look for three tombs together. Emperor Franz Joseph. His wife Elisabeth, Sisi, assassinated in Geneva in 1898 by an anarchist. And their son Rudolf, who killed himself in 1889. Franz Joseph reigned for sixty-eight years. He lost a brother to a firing squad in Mexico, his son, his wife. And in 1914, his heir. There is a famous burial …

You are on Heldenplatz, Heroes' Square. Look at the great curved facade of the Neue Burg. It was meant to be half of a gigantic imperial forum. The other half was never built. A huge empire was governed from this palace. In 1914 it had about fifty million people. Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Romanians, Italians. Eleven main nationalities. More than a dozen languages. Coins bore the emperor's face. Banknotes had their value printed in several languages. The dynasty, the army and the bureaucracy held it together. But every people wanted mo…

You are on Ballhausplatz, facing the baroque Chancellery building. In 1914 it was the empire's Foreign Ministry. On 28 June 1914, in Sarajevo, a nineteen-year-old Bosnian student shot dead the heir Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. In this building, over the following weeks, Austrian diplomats prepared the response. They wanted to punish Serbia, which they blamed for the attack. First they consulted Germany. Berlin promised them full support. Historians call it the blank check. On 23 July they sent Serbia an ultimatum with terms designed to be rejected. They gave it forty-eight hours. …

You are in Café Central, under its vaults and columns. It opened in 1876 and was the living room of intellectual Vienna. Try an exercise. Imagine this city in January 1913. At one table in this café, an exiled Russian revolutionary is playing chess. His name is Leon Trotsky. A few blocks away, a Georgian who signs himself Stalin is spending a few weeks writing an essay on nationalities. In a hostel for poor men in the north of the city lives a failed twenty-three-year-old painter. His name is Adolf Hitler. In the suburbs, a young Croatian mechanic works in a car factory. Years later the w…

Look at the two neo-Gothic towers of the Votivkirche, like stone lace. It looks like a medieval cathedral. It was completed in 1879. It is a church of thanksgiving. In February 1853, a young Hungarian nationalist attacked Emperor Franz Joseph with a knife as he walked along the city walls. The tall, stiff collar of his uniform deflected the blade. The emperor survived with a wound. The attacker was executed. His brother Maximilian organized a collection to build this church as a sign of gratitude. Years later that same Maximilian became emperor of Mexico and died before a firing squad in 18…

You are on the Ringstrasse, facing the Palais Ephrussi, the reddish-brick building with columns on the corner, next to the university. The Ringstrasse was built from 1857 onward, after the emperor had the medieval walls torn down. In their place rose a grand boulevard of palaces, museums and public buildings. Many of those palaces were built by Jewish families of the new bourgeoisie: bankers, industrialists, merchants. This one belonged to the Ephrussi, a banking dynasty. For them, Vienna was a city of advancement. They funded the opera, music, science. Their children studied at this univer…

You are facing Parliament. Look at the Greek temple with its columns, and the statue of Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom, in front. It was completed in 1883 to house the Imperial Council, the chamber where deputies from every people of the Austrian half of the empire sat. Sessions were chaos. Each deputy could speak in his own language. There were filibusters lasting days, fistfights, flying inkwells. Mark Twain witnessed them in 1897 and could hardly believe it. In March 1914, the prime minister, Count Stürgkh, shut Parliament down. He governed by decree. So when war came, no deputy voted…

You are on Maria-Theresien-Platz, between the two twin museums. The one on the right, looking toward the Ring, is the Kunsthistorisches, the Museum of Art History. It opened in 1891 to show the collections the Habsburgs had gathered over centuries. It was the empire putting itself on display. Inside is a room devoted to Pieter Bruegel. If you go in, look for a painting from 1563: The Tower of Babel. It shows a huge spiral tower swarming with workers. It is unfinished. And it is already cracking. In the Bible, men wanted to reach heaven. God punished them by making them speak different lang…

You are on Schillerplatz, facing the Academy of Fine Arts. Look at the brick and stone facade, inscribed with the names of famous artists. In October 1907, an eighteen-year-old from Linz sat the entrance exam. He brought a portfolio of his drawings. He was rejected. The following year he tried again. He was not even allowed to sit the exam. They suggested he study architecture. He lacked the school diploma required. His name was Adolf Hitler. He stayed in Vienna five more years, ever poorer. He slept in shelters and lived in a men's hostel. He sold watercolors copied from postcards of the c…

You are at the Naschmarkt. Look at the stalls full of fruit, spices, cheese and fish. It is hard to imagine this place empty. In 1914, Vienna celebrated the war in the streets. Everyone thought it would be over by Christmas. It was not. The British blockade cut off imports. Hungary, which grew the empire's grain, kept its food. The fields were emptied of men. From 1915 there was rationing of bread, then of flour, milk, potatoes, coal. Queues outside the shops began before dawn. It was mostly women and children who stood in them. War bread was bulked out with flour from almost anything. In …

You are facing the Belvedere, the baroque palace mirrored in its pond. Today it holds Klimt's The Kiss. Before 1914, it was the residence of the heir, Franz Ferdinand. Franz Ferdinand was not popular. He was brusque, suspicious and bad-tempered. But he had a plan. He wanted to reform the empire. To give more weight to the Slavic peoples, perhaps turn the state into a federation. Serbian nationalists feared him precisely for that. He had married for love: Sophie Chotek, a Czech countess. The court never accepted her. At official functions, she was not allowed to sit beside him. In Sarajevo,…

You are facing the Museum of Military History, a brick building in the old Arsenal. If you go in, look for the Sarajevo room. In the middle stands a black open-top car. It is the car Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were riding in on 28 June 1914. Go up to the bodywork. You will see a bullet hole. Behind it, in a display case, is the archduke's pale blue uniform, the cloth stained with blood around the collar. And the chaise longue where they laid him as he died. Look at the license plate: A III 118. Much later, someone noticed it could be read as Armistice, 11 November 18, the day the war ended…

You have reached the Central Cemetery. Look at the great domed church at the end of the avenue. This cemetery is bigger than many of the city's districts. It opened in 1874, designed for an imperial capital that kept on growing. Today there are more dead here than living people in all of Vienna. The Viennese have a special relationship with death. They have an expression, a schöne Leich, a beautiful funeral, which is said as a compliment. Near the entrance are the graves of honor: Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, the Strauss family. The Vienna the world admires. Further in are whole sections o…