Vienna Secrets

81

From the journal of Dr. Max Liebermann

I was passing through Judenplatz and stopped to consider the relief depiction of the baptism of Jesus Christ. I can remember my father pointing it out to me as a child and explaining the meaning of the Latin inscription beneath. He doesn’t read Latin, so he must have been recollecting what someone else-possibly his father-had told him. The translation he gave, as I remember it, was accurate enough. The inscription says, “By baptism in the River Jordan bodies are cleansed from disease and evil, so all secret sinfulness takes flight. Thus, the flame rising furiously through the whole city in 1421 purged the terrible crimes of the Hebrew dogs. As the world was once purged by the flood, so this time it was by fire.” My father explained the nature of the event being commemorated and gave it a name: the first Viennese geserah.

Jews were accused of desecrating churches and of ritual murder. Jewish property was appropriated by the monarchy. The old synagogue-I imagine it must have been like the Old-New Synagogue in Prague-was burned to the ground and Jews were forcibly baptized. Those who refused were put to death in a great fire on the Erdberg. My father said something like, “The city authorities have not seen fit to remove this monument.” I am not sure that then I understood what he meant. But it stayed with me because I was aware of his sadness and anger. Although it has taken six hundred years, progress has been made. Today, Jews may be insulted and abused, but they will never be consigned to the flames again. We Viennese are far too civilized.

I have arranged to see Miss Lydgate on Tuesday. We are going to a lieder concert-Mathilde Leibnitz with Kronenberg at the keyboard. Gretchen am Spinnrade is on the program. There are three women in every man’s life. Wheels turn. Time passes. And she who is unattainable remains forever young, perfected by the inaccuracies of memory and unsatisfied desire.