The Vienna I Knew: Memories of a European Childhood

by Joseph Wechsberg

Wechsberg’s memoir of pre-World War II mittel-Europa recounts with charm and irony life in the dying Habsburg Empire, family stories of wealth gained and lost, the subtleties of coffeehouse culture and the dynamics of Viennese society where one “is at the same time an actor, his own audience, and his own critic.”“[His] early childhood reads like an idyll […] so that while other writers may recall the last years of this ancien régime as constricting, Wechsberg remembers them as kindly and easygoing if sometimes philistine and stuffy. However, his father was killed in action on the Russian front very soon after the start of the First World War, and his mother, having invested her inheritance in government bonds, was impoverished when the government lost the war and was dissolved. Yet this is in no way a mournful young Wechsberg found the pre-war years entertaining, and his inquiring, wry mind makes the post-war years equally so. His account of a visit in the twenties to rich relatives in Vienna, describing his provincial bewilderment at their cosmopolitan luxury, is very funny; it is also excellent social history, and everybody in the story — for example, the chauffeur, whom Wechsberg found the most comprehensible member of the ménage — comes alive for us. Though Wechsberg can remember himself as a country cousin, his memoirs are urbanity itself.” — The New Yorker (July 30, 1979)

Genres: History, Nonfiction

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[lisa_emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book on my search for all things Vienna. I had never heard of this author. Wechsberg was born in 1907 in Ostrava which was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire when Wechsberg was a child, and then it was part of the Czech Republic after WWI. The Vienna Wechsberg recalls is the glamorous city of his mother's memories. The book is built up of recollections of Wechsberg's childhood in the industrial outpost of Vienna. Vignettes of relationships between the Germans, Jews, and Czechs are interwoven with the backdrop of economic struggles and growing nationalism and Anti-semitism that led up to the German takeover of the Czech Republic. It is an emotional but not sentimental picture of that pivotal point of the Austro-Hungarian collapse. In particular, I found his explanation of the economic situation informative. Wechsberg's father's family were bankers, (although the father died fighting in WWI) and his family became broke after sketchy investments and the meltdown of the family bank. Also he gives a wonderful description of the cafe culture of that time, illustrating the various kinds of cafes and the shifting cafe denizens. Wechsberg, who was Jewish, escaped the Holocaust in time by going to America. He eventually wrote for the New Yorker in additional to living a colorful life. This memoir, although not strictly a Vienna memoir, still illuminates an historical time that fascinates me and it is an enjoyable read as well.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Wechsberg's beautifully detailed, lovingly shared memoir of his childhood, adolescence and young adulthood in the pre-WWII culture of Central Europe. The Vienna I Knew begins in Mahrisch-Ostrau, a provincial outpost of the Austro-Hungarian empire, now Ostrava in the Czech Republic with Wechsberg recounting his happy childhood with genuinely loving parents prior to his father's death early in WWI. Wechsberg marks this loss by telling his readers that his father lies in an unmarked mass grave in a Polish forrest. He learns the truth of what happened to his brave and ethical father from the local peasants. Bracketing this loss is the foreknowledge that his mother is unable to escape the holocaust. Between these two tragedies Joseph attends Jewish school gaining wisdom at an early age from a prophetic Talmudist; becomes a local Chanchar, visits wealthy Viennese relatives all the while providing rich period details the social history of the times. One very engaging chapter is spent recounting coffee house life in Ostrau; an entire culture in microcosm. Wes Anderson, director of the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, admits that he stole the concept for his film from Stefan Zweig. I also suspect he stole a bit from The Vienna I Knew: Memories of a European Childhood.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phenomenal and beautiful writing.