Message #92645

[Aryan Warrior]

CHAPTER II



YEARS OF STUDY AND SUFFERING IN VIENNA


When my mother died my fate had already been decided in one respect.
During the last months of her illness I went to Vienna to take the
entrance examination for the Academy of Fine Arts. Armed with a bulky
packet of sketches, I felt convinced that I should pass the examination
quite easily. At the REALSCHULE I was by far the best student in the
drawing class, and since that time I had made more than ordinary
progress in the practice of drawing. Therefore I was pleased with myself
and was proud and happy at the prospect of what I considered an assured
success.

But there was one misgiving: It seemed to me that I was better qualified
for drawing than for painting, especially in the various branches of
architectural drawing. At the same time my interest in architecture was
constantly increasing. And I advanced in this direction at a still more
rapid pace after my first visit to Vienna, which lasted two weeks. I was
not yet sixteen years old. I went to the Hof Museum to study the
paintings in the art gallery there; but the building itself captured
almost all my interest, from early morning until late at night I spent
all my time visiting the various public buildings. And it was the
buildings themselves that were always the principal attraction for me.
For hours and hours I could stand in wonderment before the Opera and the
Parliament. The whole Ring Strasse had a magic effect upon me, as if it
were a scene from the Thousand-and-one-Nights.

And now I was here for the second time in this beautiful city,
impatiently waiting to hear the result of the entrance examination but
proudly confident that I had got through. I was so convinced of my
success that when the news that I had failed to pass was brought to me
it struck me like a bolt from the skies. Yet the fact was that I had
failed. I went to see the Rector and asked him to explain the reasons
why they refused to accept me as a student in the general School of
Painting, which was part of the Academy. He said that the sketches which
I had brought with me unquestionably showed that painting was not what I
was suited for but that the same sketches gave clear indications of my
aptitude for architectural designing. Therefore the School of Painting
did not come into question for me but rather the School of Architecture,
which also formed part of the Academy. At first it was impossible to
understand how this could be so, seeing that I had never been to a
school for architecture and had never received any instruction in
architectural designing.

When I left the Hansen Palace, on the SCHILLER PLATZ, I was quite
crestfallen. I felt out of sorts with myself for the first time in my
young life. For what I had heard about my capabilities now appeared to
me as a lightning flash which clearly revealed a dualism under which I
had been suffering for a long time, but hitherto I could give no clear
account whatsoever of the why and wherefore.

Within a few days I myself also knew that I ought to become an
architect. But of course the way was very difficult. I was now forced
bitterly to rue my former conduct in neglecting and despising certain
subjects at the REALSCHULE. Before taking up the courses at the School
of Architecture in the Academy it was necessary to attend the Technical
Building School; but a necessary qualification for entrance into this
school was a Leaving Certificate from the Middle School. And this I
simply did not have. According to the human measure of things my dream
of following an artistic calling seemed beyond the limits of
possibility.

After the death of my mother I came to Vienna for the third time. This
visit was destined to last several years. Since I had been there before
I had recovered my old calm and resoluteness. The former self-assurance
had come back, and I had my eyes steadily fixed on the goal. I would be
an architect. Obstacles are placed across our path in life, not to be
boggled at but to be surmounted. And I was fully determined to surmount
these obstacles, having the picture of my father constantly before my
mind, who had raised himself by his own efforts to the position of a
civil servant though he was the poor son of a village shoemaker. I had a
better start, and the possibilities of struggling through were better.
At that time my lot in life seemed to me a harsh one; but to-day I see
in it the wise workings of Providence. The Goddess of Fate clutched me
in her hands and often threatened to smash me; but the will grew
stronger as the obstacles increased, and finally the will triumphed.

I am thankful for that period of my life, because it hardened me and
enabled me to be as tough as I now am. And I am even more thankful
because I appreciate the fact that I was thus saved from the emptiness
of a life of ease and that a mother's darling was taken from tender arms
and handed over to Adversity as to a new mother. Though I then rebelled
against it as too hard a fate, I am grateful that I was thrown into a
world of misery and poverty and thus came to know the people for whom I
was afterwards to fight.

It was during this period that my eyes were opened to two perils, the
names of which I scarcely knew hitherto and had no notion whatsoever of
their terrible significance for the existence of the German people.
These two perils were Marxism and Judaism.

For many people the name of Vienna signifies innocent jollity, a festive
place for happy mortals. For me, alas, it is a living memory of the
saddest period in my life. Even to-day the mention of that city arouses
only gloomy thoughts in my mind. Five years of poverty in that Phaecian
(Note 5) town. Five years in which, first as a casual labourer and then as
a painter of little trifles, I had to earn my daily bread. And a meagre
morsel indeed it was, not even sufficient to still the hunger which I
constantly felt. That hunger was the faithful guardian which never left
me but took part in everything I did. Every book that I bought meant
renewed hunger, and every visit I paid to the opera meant the intrusion
of that inalienabl companion during the following days. I was always
struggling with my unsympathic friend. And yet during that time I
learned more than I had ever learned before. Outside my architectural
studies and rare visits to the opera, for which I had to deny myself
food, I had no other pleasure in life except my books.

[Note 5. The Phaecians were a legendary people, mentioned in Homer's
Odyssey. They were supposed to live on some unknown island in the Eastern
Mediterranean, sometimes suggested to be Corcyra, the modern Corfu. They
loved good living more than work, and so the name Phaecian has come to be
a synonym for parasite.]

I read a great deal then, and I pondered deeply over what I read. All
the free time after work was devoted exclusively to study. Thus within a
few years I was able to acquire a stock of knowledge which I find useful
even to-day.

But more than that. During those years a view of life and a definite
outlook on the world took shape in my mind. These became the granite
basis of my conduct at that time. Since then I have extended that
foundation only very little, and I have changed nothing in it.

On the contrary: I am firmly convinced to-day that, generally speaking,
it is in youth that men lay the essential groundwork of their creative
thought, wherever that creative thought exists. I make a distinction
between the wisdom of age--which can only arise from the greater
profundity and foresight that are based on the experiences of a long
life--and the creative genius of youth, which blossoms out in thought
and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, without being able to put these
into practice immediately, because of their very superabundance. These
furnish the building materials and plans for the future; and it is from
them that age takes the stones and builds the edifice, unless the
so-called wisdom of the years may have smothered the creative genius of
youth.

The life which I had hitherto led at home with my parents differed in
little or nothing from that of all the others. I looked forward without
apprehension to the morrow, and there was no such thing as a social
problem to be faced. Those among whom I passed my young days belonged to
the small bourgeois class. Therefore it was a world that had very little
contact with the world of genuine manual labourers. For, though at first
this may appear astonishing, the ditch which separates that class, which
is by no means economically well-off; from the manual labouring class is
often deeper than people think. The reason for this division, which we
may almost call enmity, lies in the fear that dominates a social group
which has only just risen above the level of the manual labourer--a fear
lest it may fall back into its old condition or at least be classed with
the labourers. Moreover, there is something repulsive in remembering the
cultural indigence of that lower class and their rough manners with one
another; so that people who are only on the first rung of the social
ladder find it unbearable to be forced to have any contact with the
cultural level and standard of living out of which they have passed.

And so it happens that very often those who belong to what can really be
called the upper classes find it much easier than do the upstarts to
descend to and intermingle with their fellow beings on the lowest social
level. For by the word upstart I mean everyone who has raised himself
through his own efforts to a social level higher than that to which he
formerly belonged. In the case of such a person the hard struggle
through which he passes often destroys his normal human sympathy. His
own fight for existence kills his sensibility for the misery of those
who have been left behind.

From this point of view fate had been kind to me. Circumstances forced
me to return to that world of poverty and economic insecurity above
which my father had raised himself in his early days; and thus the
blinkers of a narrow PETIT BOURGEOIS education were torn from my eyes.
Now for the first time I learned to know men and I learned to
distinguish between empty appearances or brutal manners and the real
inner nature of the people who outwardly appeared thus.