Vienna Secrets

Acknowledgment And Sources

I would like to thank: Hannah Black, Clare Alexander, and Steve Matthews for their valuable comments on the first and subsequent drafts of Vienna Secrets, Nick Austin for a thorough copyedit; Rebecca Shapiro, Jennifer Rodriguez, and Bara MacNeill for their assistance in preparing the U.S. edition; Simon Dalgleish for identifying German errors in the text; Luitgard Hammerer for conducting research on my behalf and providing a very good taxi service to Stift Klosterneuburg and the delightful Heurigen of Bisamberg; Penny Faith for casting a Jewish eye over the text; Dr. Julie Fox for describing the clinical signs associated with terminal syphilis; Dr. Yves Steppler, consultant pathologist, for lengthy and detailed discussions on the topics of decapitation and other aspects of pathology of interest to a crime writer; Her Excellency Dr. Gabriele Matzner-Holzer for assistance with establishing some helpful contacts in Vienna; Professor Karl Vocelka (University of Vienna) for providing me with a comprehensive list of the plague columns; and Nicola Fox-for comments, criticism, early proofreading, preliminary editing, and the odd plot contribution.

Das Vaterland was a real Catholic periodical, although I believe it might have been discontinued by 1903. Liebermann’s explanation (to his father) of how dreams work can be found in Lecture 14 (Wish Fulfilment) of Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. The idea of a collective unconscious was current many years before Jung made the idea popular. Freud, and many others, considered the possibility of its existence throughout the nineteenth century (see The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry by Henri F. Ellenberger). Lurian cosmology is paraphrased and quoted from two scholarly works on Jewish mysticism: Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction by Joseph Dan and On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism by Gershom Scholem. The subjects of demonology and animation are also considered in these works. The rite for keeping Lilith away from the marriage bed is quoted by Scholem in the chapter titled “Tradition and New Creation in the Ritual of the Kabbalists.” More specific information about Isaac Luria, his ministry, and the practice of metoposcopy can be found in Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos by Lawrence Fine. Information about B’nai B’rith was based on passages in Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement by Professor Dennis Klein. The golem legend and its variants are described in The Prague Golem: Jewish Stories of the Ghetto (a miscellany including the writings of Chajim Bloch) and The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague by Yudl Rosenberg. The idea that Freud was a closet kabbalist (or at least a secret enthusiast) is explored in Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition by David Bakan. The 1965 edition contains a revised introduction by the author that suggests that Freud owned a collection of Judaica including kabbalistic writings (absent from the official Freud Library catalogue). There were two waves of pogroms in Russia. The first was between 1881 and 1884. The second started in 1903 (the year in which Vienna Secrets is set) and went on until 1906. All the atrocities described by Professor Priel are based on authentic accounts. Moreover, all the references to anti-Semitism are historically accurate (see Karl Lueger: Mayor of Fin de Siecle Vienna by Richard Geehr). The wall inscription celebrating the Holocaust of 1421 can be found at Judenplatz 2. Anna Katzer and Olga Mandl’s description of their women’s refuge is based on Bertha Pappenheim’s lecture “Welfare for Female Youth at Risk,” an excerpt of which can be found in The Enigma of Anna O: A Biography of Bertha Pappenheim by Melinda Given Guttmann. Other facts relating to prostitution and the white slave trade are also drawn from the same source. Miss Lyd — gate’s account of the building of Santa Maria del Fiore and “On the Tranquility of the Soul” borrows substantially from Brunelleschi’s Dome by Ross King. Song translations (including the poem “Silent Grief” by Ernst Koch) were taken from Richard Stokes’s The Book of Lieder. Freud’s speech on thumb-sucking is an almost exact transcription of a passage in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Freud’s views on Mozart’s Magic Flute can be found in the celebrated Ernest Jones biography. Ivo Poppmeier’s condition has been documented by physicians for centuries but is known today as couvade syndrome, a term first coined by Tylor (1865) in an anthropological context. The article that Schmidt reads in the Wiener Tagblatt-concerning Arthur Schnitzler-is an almost verbatim transcription from a real article published on January 14, 1903. Schnitzler’s anecdote about Director Lautenburg is taken-with slight changes-from his memoir My Youth in Vienna.