In his Vienna days, Hitler lived for a time at 31 Stumpergasse (and not "29", as it's often asserted.) Hitlerites by the dozen (surely there can't be any more of them) have been taking snapshots of this other place for years and swearing that the place in the picture is where the evil maniac-to-be lived in his earlier days.

Well, it's more the myth than the reality that counts anyway. Or, rather say: close enough!

Hitler was a sort of remittance man, living on a small inheritance from his mother, who passed away at forty-seven from something that would be easily treatable today, though it doesn't sound like much fun. He came to Vienna with a letter of introduction to a famous opera designer, one Alfred Roller, whom he did not meet until he, Hitler, was somewhat more advanced in rank and more important to Rollen's career than Rollen could have ever been to his. But Hitler seemed to have shied away from the meeting, as if to ensure the harsh and unforgiving climate that would motivate him to quit painting and start making somewhat irresponsible accusations against the Jews - though slanderous sentiments of this sort were hardly rare in Europe at this time. But for a great while, Hitler - sans introduction - stuck to painting, or at least the IDEA of painting while he dressed up for the opera or read every newspaper he could get his mitts on. As his fortunes declined, he enlisted the help of Jews to see that his artwork got sold so that he, Adolph, might scrape up enough money for rent and opera tickets.

Eventually, of course, Hitler wound up, not on the streets, but in a home for the indigent, developed by far-seeing planners and funded by at least one Jew.
It was an interesting place to be, particularly for a proud young man who scorned the idea of taking a regular job because he was, after all, more educated than the average worker. It was here that he began to evolve into the lovable newsreel chap who exhorted an entire people to stay the course, as it were, and be unified as one nation under Wagner, with not a whole lot of liberty - but lots of kitschy rallies - for all. He was assisted in his development, so to say, by the example of Mayor Lueger, who didn't mind stooping to the sort of anti-Semitic attacks that must have made Jewish intellectuals both shrug their shoulders and wet their pants. It took almost thirty years from the time Hitler found himself in such dire straits till the moment the Reich chancellor strode into the Heldenplatz in triumph. It must've been worth the wait; Hitler was so happy about it he found it in his heart to welcome his adopted city - which had spurned his talent - into the National Socialist fold.

Hitler was not a particularly happy young man - which, to the psychologically-oriented, should come as no surprise. His amours were affairs of the imagination only. In his small hometown, he conceived of an epic attraction for a beautiful girl who was possibly above his station, but theoretically available. Did he tell her about it? Nein! He just sat around, moped, and watched her move about in beauty. He was dead set on marrying her, but, once again, thought and action failed to coalesce, and she, of course, took the hand of somebody else without ever knowing that he, Hitler, yearned passionately to offer his own. Yet in dreaming grandiosely of her, he set himself up for his future metier: dreaming grandiosely for millions. His dream-life was, in fact, his strongest suit, being something that was not only indelibly his, but a thing that was self-enlarging at a time when he probably felt very small indeed.

Hitler was very good at vicarious affections. I doubt whether a real person would have actually measured up to his ideals.

While he was at 31 Stumpergasse, he reveled in dreams of himself as a great artist, though he failed his exams at the art academy not once, but twice. He was told, point-blank, that his skills didn't cut the mustard and not to come back. That must've hurt. The tremendous pride and overweening pretensions of the young man were thus thwarted, not just in life, but in a sphere he thought he'd eventually conquer - and to which he felt he most indubitably belonged. Yes, a very, very bad thing to happen, this. It's one of those turning points in world history that make the study and analysis of men and events so horribly
captivating.

Hitler is said to have worked jobs now and then, but apparently this is not true. He never thought of taking a job, even as his money dwindled and, finally, ran out completely. He even took to begging - at which he was not particularly successful. Begging is something for which proud and arrogant people are not eminently qualified.

But he always managed to have well-wishing friends who saw something salvageable in him and offered to help him. Such a man stepped forward at the house in Meidling, Hitler's final tour of duty before he enlisted - ecstatically - in the Bavarian Army at the outbreak of WWI.

His name was Reinhold Hanisch and he made himself go-between for the shy, but irascible young man who couldn't bear to be contradicted, and whose thumping monologues were not merely annoying, but had a somewhat mesmerizing quality about them. If you liked to listen to a good rant, Hitler was definitely your man. But you didn't want to send him to a frame-shop with a portfolio under his arm!

Hitler's subjects were almost invariably architectural, as befits a young man who strolled in awe along the Ringstrasse, marvelling at the Royal Opera House (now the "Statsoper"), the Kuntshistorisches Museums, not to mention the majestic sweep of the great avenue itself, which began in splendor and kept right on going. He'd not seen much of that in his little old hometown and he was more than hooked: he was crazy about the place. He astonished his Nazi colleagues in later years by his accurate recall of the Ring and its various architectural properties, which he could draw from memory. One might, however, agree with his professors in condemning many of his efforts, which are awkward, but painstaking. Yet from time to time Hitler manages to nail his subject and it has a brooding majesty, a palpable presence. Hitler was a bad artist most of the time, but he had his moments. His picture of the Royal Opera House is decent enough, but he outdid himself with a painting of an old waterworks, done apparently in gouache, which run parallel across the foreground in front of a streetscape they effectively cut off from the viewer. It is a stirring piece of work and holds up very well. If I had just seen the
picture somewhere, I would asked who'd done it.

Yet his erratic production in art would, of course, haunt him later in life, when he made the disastrous military decisions that would eventually cost him and his Thousand Year Reich the war. A damned good thing for us, of course. Unfortunately, Hitler had his good days too.

It would, obviously, have been better for almost everybody had Hitler the artist kept at it. Apart from its obvious effect on world affairs, it might have also given us a Vienna we have never seen: one in which the visual potency of a great imperial city might have been at glorious odds with a deeply manic-depressive, not to say hysterical, personality.
Shiele was active at the time, as was Klimt. They were obviously innocent of the young Hitler living in his doss-house over in Meidling, and had they seen his worst stuff - and of this there is no dearth - they wouldn't have been impressed. Hitler was, in fact, lucky to have Hanisch looking out for him because a lot of the crap he did was hardly even worthy of the venues chosen for it. Yet, given time, Hitler might have actually turned into a creditable, if uneven, talent whom the academy might have ultimately embraced.

Of course, if you look at most of the stuff he was doing, you'd have to share the verdict of the old professors who gave him the boot and started him off in his other, more infamous direction. I'm sure the moral of this story has been discussed at tremendous length among Hitler Studies' enthusiasts, but it seems that whenever an artist is lost to the world, he or she does something a helluva lot worse - as if to be an artist scorned is one of the most wicked human scourges imaginable. Could be. I can't stand having my pictures misunderstood, disliked, or (needless to
say) rejected. I always understand the context within which these things happen. I know that this person simply can't "relate" to the work at hand. This other person might be highly emotional and can't help but reacting, not only to my work, but to everything in this way. And this juror. . .well, this juror is so completely captivated, not to say smothered, by his or her prejudices that it is simply impossible for him or her to step out and away from them. If I'm a victim of these prejudices, I should simply acknowledge that they can do harm now and then and try to find a more receptive audience. And I do. I do every single one of these things.

And yet I still want to kill the juror.

Max Steiner. Billy Wilder. Gustav Mahler. What do these people have in common besides being still reasonably well-known? I wouldn't have known myself before I went to Vienna, but there I learned, while just walking around, not only about these overachievers' early whereabouts, but that their whereabouts were here in Vienna.

I will give the city high marks for courage, in that Vienna actually chased a few of these people, by both act and inference, out. If I'm not mistaken, Steiner was a Jew. Vienna was a rather warm place for a Jew after Hitler's Anchluss, whose implacable anti-Semitism would deport, and eventually kill off, sixty thousand of them. A drop in the bucket, considering the astronomical death-toll of the war itself. But those sixty thousand lost were enough to significantly drain the city of its intellectual autonomy. It was Jews like Freud around whom the intellectual life of the city revolved, and which raised its international reputation during the pre-WWII area to heights it will likely never achieve again.

At any rate, a city that could do such a thing to its intelligentsia has cohones for acknowledging its not-so-very-favorite sons. I came across Steiner's name in the Prater, while in the company of my dear friend Linda Tabor, a Richmond expatriate who is fond of saying that it took her forty years to come back to Vienna. What she says also happens to be true; she'd been married here in the Sixties and had fallen in love with the place - which is not a hard thing to do.

Steiner had apparently come of age in the neighborhood
- a fact the city fathers wished to acknowledge some years ago in the form of a handsome little gewgaw with his name and some significant career milestones on it.
He became a very successful Hollywood composer, working on such films as Gone With the Wind, accentuating its majestic sweep with a score that might be seen today as somewhat over the top. But who hasn't been stirred by its great melodic heart, culminating in everybody's favorite moment in the film, when The Great Kiss happens?

Steiner was a somewhat traditional composer and kept whatever avant-garde tendencies he may have had to himself. Like most refugees from Europe, he settled into the American zeitgeist without any apparent adjustment woes. As did Billy Wilder, whose "funny"
accent gives one pause because his films are so quintessentially American. He said to Jack Lemmon that they couldn't go wrong if they could make films about the rich screwing.

Perhaps the old, and war-extinguished, Viennese irreverance was resurrected by him via American movies. It is a pleasant thought.

Vienna is a city of plaques and reverences to a often glorious, but also creepily blood-stained, past. I think that's why much of its art and literature is seen as so mordibly self-flagellating. Something called "Actionism" flourished here back in the Eighties, I think - and has obvious scions, if art galleries are any indication of the city's darker creative impulses. Actionism was an attempt to reduce
art to a gross and earthy - not to mention degrading
- substance: shit, for one. In the States, such playacting might be regarded as infantile (which
doesn't mean it can't be successful. Remember "Piss
Christ"?) In Vienna, the precis of Actionism might be seen as an spasm of revulsion against its past, a rejection of all order and standards, a grim salute to the chaos and cruelty that underlies all human interaction on this earth.

Could be. I don't, however, think anybody could argue with the need for atonement. Nor should one demur at its many possible manifestations, from plaque-posting to art forms in which feces and not, say, cadmium yellow, provide the material strength.

There are other plaques around the city as well: these state in no uncertain terms the toll taken by Allied bombings. Most occurred later in the war, but the plaques lump them all into the 1939-1945 years - the entire extent of WWII. I like that as well. It seems to acknowledge that Vienna was in the thick of things (which it was) from the git-go, when Hitler rallied two hundred thousand strong and got a very, very clear signal. Of course, Vienna was Hitler's adopted city and who in his right mind wouldn't want to welcome a conquering hero who might someday deport him if he didn't?

One place that isn't so well marked, but carefully acknowledged, is the - by Vienna standards - vast unused expanse of still-undeveloped real estate in Southeast Vienna, bordered by Aspangasse, in the Renwegg District. I walked there a number of times looking for some obvious and perhaps heart-wrenching sign that so many human lives were essentially lost there. But the railroad tracks were gone, and only a few functional-looking buildings were there to suggest that the area had had any purpose at all. Along Aspangasse were a number of picturesque buildings I, an architecture enthusaist, couldn't quite orient to the place itself. They had a sort of neutral charm, suggesting not horrific loss but historic continuity.
In such places people carried on their lives as their fellow citizens were being shunted off into cattle cars and taken away. I had a vision of a nice old lady sweeping the sidewalk, as many nice old ladies do here. Vienna must be one of the cleanest large cities on earth.

Much of Vienna appears to have been shelled and rebuilt. But this street had at least its share of the very old things for which people come to Vienna.
They were the kinds of very old things that had attracted Hitler, a very spotty painter of the conventionally picturesque, during his 8-year sojourn to the city. It is perhaps a cliche to notice the mundane, life-goes-on quality that surrounds hallowed sites, particular if these hallowed sites have not yet been officially hallowed. But there was nothing else around except a U-Bahn stop. Kids had sprayed a little graffiti there, but for the most part the place was eerily and resoundingly empty. I saw a provisional mockup for an one-site monument to the place somewhere. It's minimal, in the tradition of the Vietnam Memorial here in DC, but it seems less eloquent of unspeakable tragedy than the place itself.
Perhaps that's why nothing has been done with it. It just sits here, year after year, so that people might, each in their turn, reflect on it or forget about it completely.

The war museum isn't far away. I didn't make time to see it. Perhaps next visit.

People bitterly complain at how Mozart - who has his share of plaques and monuments - was treated here.
Actually, he was more his own worse enemy and simply overspent his money. His income was excellent. He just enjoyed giving a lot of it away. Not so Beethoven, who's probably responsible for more plaques and mini-shrines than any other notable person in all of Vienna. Seems he moved around a lot. Had to.
Debt collectors have good legs.

I think Mahler was one of the few people who actually left because he wanted to. Apparently he got sick of the political infighting and petty bickering of his colleagues at the Opera and moved to the States, where was received kindly and treated well. He died, a free man, at fifty.

What does all this mean?

It seems that anyplace that has a past can either acknowledge it gracefully or hide strategically from it. Richmond, Virginia, where I lived for some years, struggles not very manfully with its past because it hasn't entirely acknowledged it. There are plaques, but they mostly celebrate old victories and/or romantic exploits. The slave trade has its tour and its most wretched citizens, both past and present, have been given lip service. There is even a sort of backlash among black people that is as openly racist (against whites) as white racism ever was. But Richmond can't deal with that either because there are just things people don't talk about.

So Vienna's open and even self-hating acknowledgement of its own past is, by comparison, not a bad thing.
It will always have its indigenous charm. It will also be a magnet for tourists. And it will always have its secret, erotically complicated inner life.
But it has at least tried to come to terms for the sins of its fathers and I think that's a very good thing. I don't care much for Actionism and feel its practitioners have, as it were, thrown the baby out with the bathwater in identifying realism, for example, with the Nazis. Academic realism was indeed a propoganda tool, but the artists who celebrated Aryan trimphalism were docile creatures who merely wanted to work. The avant-garde, or "degenerate"
artists caught a great deal of flak for it and had no life to speak of once they decided to go with the "the other side." Most people anywhere don't have a great deal of courage. Even the most talented among us can bet on the wrong horse and follow it much, much too far. One of those artists was the idealistic and infinitely talented Carl Moll, who saw the error of his ways to the extent that he could no longer live with them and committed suicide. He'd, however, been one of those artists who'd been interested in equality and experimentation and departed from the academy.
Then he made a very bad mistake and backed Hitler. I did not find any plaques celebrating his existence.

Well, we always pay for our loyalties in one way or another and Vienna reminds us of that very thing implicitly, fiercely, resoundingly. Even if it didn't have the sort of imperial-era charm it most indubitably does, that would justify its existence for that reason alone.

Long live you, Wien!