The German Genius

Concorde, for example) were given in terms of a “Mach number.” 26
    After these achievements, however, Mach became more and more interested in the philosophy and history of science. Implacably opposed to metaphysics of any kind, he dismissed as worthless concepts such as God, nature, soul, and “ego.” All knowledge, Mach insisted, could be reduced to sensation, and the task of science was to describe sense data in the simplest and most neutral manner. This meant that for him the primary sciences were physics, “which provide the raw material for sensations,” and psychology, by means of which we are aware of our sensations. For Mach, philosophy had no existence apart from science. An examination of the history of scientific ideas showed, he argued, how these ideas evolved. He firmly believed that there is evolution in ideas, with the survival of the fittest, and that we develop ideas in order to survive. For Mach, therefore, it made less sense to talk about the truth or falsity of theories than to talk of their usefulness. Truth, as an eternal, unchanging thing that just is , for him made no sense. The Vienna Circle was founded in response as much to his ideas as to Wittgenstein’s.
    T HE “A RYAN D EFICIT” IN C ULTURE
     
    All this was the Vienna that the young Adolf Hitler arrived in from Linz, where he had grown up, in 1907. It was bewildering. Brigitte Hamann tells us that in 1907 Vienna had 1,458 automobiles, which caused 350 accidents a year (overshadowed by the 980 accidents caused by horse-drawn carriages). 27 The Westbahnhof, the station where Hitler arrived, was lit by electric light, as were the city’s ten inner districts. There were great battles in the newspapers of the time about the merits of modernism. For the opponents of modernism, the term “degenerate” ( entartet ) was a favorite form of abuse. Modernism in Vienna, at the time Hitler was there, was often referred to as “Jewish modernism,” though this was clearly not true—Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Alban Berg, Otto Wagner, and Adolf Loos were not Jewish but the label suited the opponents of innovation. According to August Kubizek, it was in Vienna that Hitler began to reflect on how the “Aryans’” obvious educational deficit and lack of interest in culture could be reduced.” 28
    The two best-known anti-Semites in Vienna (though there was no shortage) were George Schönerer, the leader of the Pan-Germans (see Chapter 22), who lost his seat in the Austrian Parliament the year Hitler arrived, and Karl Lueger. The Pan-Germans pledged allegiance to their “Führer,” sang “Schönerer songs,” and wrote poetry in his praise. Full-page advertisements were taken out in the newspapers, with “H EIL TO THE FüHRER ” in the headlines. 29 Schönerer’s early fight was against Russian Jews, fleeing the pogroms of the tsars, and he made a point of appropriating Wagner to the anti-Semitic cause.
    Dr. Karl Lueger was Schönerer’s archenemy, and their followers often feuded. Hitler, however, was impressed by Lueger even while he was a follower of Schönerer. 30 Lueger had been mayor of Vienna for ten years by the time Hitler arrived there. A handsome man, fond of the mayoral chain, he had, to his credit, masterminded the modernization of his city with efficiency and charisma, often attacking the local merchants for profiteering from their customers. “He knew how to turn disputes over such personal matters as milk prices and refuse disposal to his advantage.” 31 And he raised anti-Semitism to an art form, becoming a superb, demagogic mass orator: the Jews, he insisted time and again, were to blame for most of the misfortunes of the Viennese (the Jewish population of the city had risen from 2,000 in 1860 to 175,300 in 1910). 32
    We must be careful, however, not to ascribe all of Hitler’s characteristics to his time in Vienna. The Austrian capital was a sophisticated, cosmopolitan, multifaceted city which could be—and was—enjoyed in many different ways. The tumult of war and the divided and divisive landscape of the Weimar Republic still lay ahead. Still, there is no escaping the fact that Vienna in the first decade of the twentieth century provided the young Hitler with a whole raft of experiences that, almost certainly, he would never have had elsewhere.

Munich/Schwabing: Germany’s “Montmartre”
     
    M unich was radiant…Young artists with little round hats on their heads…carefree bachelors who paid for their