God Is on Our Side

At the Military Museum

Just as the sturdy churches in England sometimes remind me of military fortresses, with prominent tombs and memorial tablets for fallen soldiers, so did the Austrian Military Museum have several features that reminded me of a church. Located on a rise just above downtown, the museum sits in the center of several army barracks built after the popular uprising of 1848, positioned so as to give the military proximity to the inner city and easy access to bashing demonstrators. The Military Museum in German is called simply and melodically Der Heeresgeschichtliches Museum. Inside, room by room, the history of Austria from the 15th century to the present opens like blossoms in the springtime.

Before we had even fairly started our march through the exhibits, we saw on a set of glass doors "Panzergarten Geschlossen." The "Tank Garden" was closed to visitors. As happened when the dentist said "Enjoy the cleaning," I was uncertain whether "tank garden" was a translation issue or a frightening cultural difference. Beyond the glass doors in the wind and frost, in a grass cloister, there were dozens of World War II era tanks and other armored vehicles, all of which lacked color, delicacy, and pleasing fragrance. The gardeners who parked them took advantage of every square inch of a large courtyard: the vehicles were crammed together in disorderly lines--like cars at an intersection in Rome--poised to invade but waiting decades for the light to turn green. A sign on the glass doors indicated that the garden will reopen in April, and I am certain that it will be much lovelier when the turrets are in bloom. My thoughts drifted to Mel Brooks' "Springtime for Hitler and Germany" and the lead tenor stormtrooper belting out "We're marching to a faster pace / Look out here comes the master race!"

Although several of the exhibits were engrossing, Linda and I found two rooms of particular interest, the one depicting events leading up to World War I, and the other devoted to World War II.

Prominently displayed is the car in which Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, the event that ignited World War I. A bullet hole is visible in one of the rear doors; adjacent to the car, a glass-enclosed pall displays the prince's uniform, complete with blood stains and a small sign with an arrow helpfully noting the hole in his collar where a bullet entered his neck. Nearby was the sofa on which he expired. Seeing the blood-spattered garments of Franz Ferdinand, I have to say, was awesome, more affecting even than the often grisly relics in the churches of Rome. His death, and World War I, took on a depth of reality that I could never gain access to merely by reading about those events. Definitely worth the pilgrimage.

Mines, bunkers, and guns of every type, and helmets, uniforms, and pistols taken from American and Russian soldiers...some displays from the past hundred years reminded me of the Maltese crosses designating fallen military from the 1940s in the Grinzing cemetery--the feeling of historically experiencing war from the other side. A poster announces the city's food ration: 1 kilo of turnips and 3 kilos of potatoes per person per week. Other posters call for donations for troops. The exhibits own the past--the suffering and deprivation, and Hitler's rule--with simplicity but also with what feels like colossal understatement. Vienna has no plaques to designate where Hitler lived, where he studied art, or where he made speeches or held rallies. The military museum, at least, displays a few posters with his visage, as well as swastikas and a yellow star of cloth with "Jude" on it. Perhaps the room has as much balance as is possible. To wholly repress a figure such as Hitler, a form of "dehumanizing," carries its own risk of creating mystery and interest and possibly even attraction. To be wholly open about him, on the other hand, might create a risk of revival and draw pilgrims to his vision of a religion of the state.

Since my time in Rome 10 years ago, my thoughts have often run to the similarities in secular and religious saints, and the propensity to idealize and conflate in creating such figures. In Rome, statuary and pictorial presentations of the Virgin are nearly always with the baby Jesus: the qualities of fertility and maternal nurturing celebrated in the Virgin are, in the view of some, conflated with the qualities of the Egyptian deity Isis--goddess of motherhood and fertility, who also had powers to resurrect. Isis's temples were numerous throughout the Mediterranean region long before the appearance of Christianity. In the churches of Rome, representations of Mary and Jesus frequently resemble poses of Jupiter and other Roman gods--for example, the hand holding a globe or scroll, or even, as in the equestrian statue of Marcus Aureleas on the Capitoline Hill, the extended hand with the "clemencia" gesture. With religious figures, many pilgrims welcome the chance to visit not just their bones but their clothing, whether it be the coarse robe of St Francis or the Shroud of Turin. How good of the local authorities here to display the vestments of Franz Ferdinand. Der Heeresgeschichtliches Museum is a holy place, taking account of good values and evil ones, and thus promoting its theme posted throughout: "War belongs in museums." Much better than "God is on our side."

A Mighty Fortress. The religious and the military sometimes blend in curious ways. A cannonball is lodged in the stone of the south wall of St Stephen's, with the year 1683 inscribed just below it. It is an artifact of the Turkish siege of Vienna in that year. The church was struck by hundreds of cannonballs, and damage to the walls and Gothic decoration is still evident. On the side of the church is a statue of San Juan Capistrano, who stands atop a conquered Turk who is snarling at onlookers. Both, I think, are waiting for the swallows to return in the springtime, perhaps to nest in the Tank Garden.

Filler

-- For New Year's Eve dinner I chose a typical Austrian dish: Tafelspitz (boiled beef). It was served with three kinds of potatoes: cold boiled, hot boiled, and fried.

-- The week after Christmas, stands abounded around the city selling goodluck charms for the new year--mostly in the form of little pigs, clovers, and ladybugs...none in the shape of potatoes.

-- A teenage girl with a little boy, about 4, sitting opposite me on the tram. She took off her mittens and his, and, as both smiled, she helped him practice counting and addition on his fingers. As they arrived at their stop, she bundled him up again; they got off and, holding hands, ran together laughing up the sidewalk.

-- On a daytrip to Neusiedlersee, a shallow lake on the Austrian-Hungarian border, through frozen slitted eyelids we watched the wind sweep skaters and ice sailboats, and loft and bounce two huge, colorful kites, one shaped like a fish and one an octopus. The horizon was not a line but a blur of white-gray ice and white-gray sky. In a small cove, skating school was underway: parents strapped little skates on children, some of whom had probably learned to walk only months before.