SPRING IN VIENNA
THE REBIRTH OF AUSTRIA, by Richard Hiscocks; Oxford University Press, English price 18/-. ON April 23, 1945, before the European part of World War II had ended, and even before an Austrian provisional government had been formed there was a meeting in Vienna to revive music and the theatre. There was still no street lighting, no public transport, and the "streets were strewn with rubble, dead bodies and the putrefying carcases of horses. Yet actors and musicians, old and young, who lived in and near Vienna, came together at once to start rehearsals." The Burgtheatre opened on April 30, and on May 1 the State Opera gave Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, though neither had its own building to perform in. There is something characteristically Viennese-and perhaps Austrian-about this. There were uncertain political arrangements, material destruction, near starvation and severe shortages of essential goods, but-music and the theatre were important. (I was in Vienna about a year later and went to both opera and ballet. Rusty guns and tanks were still lying derelict in the parks, but that ‘didn’t matter. Vienna seemed to be Vienna again.) This part of the post-war Austrian story will appeal to most readers, but the remainder of the book will be interesting primarily to the historian, the student of international affairs and perhaps to the economist. It is a straightforward account by a. former British Council representative of the re-emer-gence of the Austrian Republic after it had been released from the Nazis. It covers the story of quadripartite control, UNRRA and other relief, currency, prices and wages and a little politics. The story of how saved Austria from starvation and collapse was well worth telling, if only because truly international aid has receded from that high peak. If there is any criticism of the book it relates to the failure to link the story of Austria to its internal and external
political background.
W.B.
S.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 792, 24 September 1954, Page 13
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322SPRING IN VIENNA New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 792, 24 September 1954, Page 13
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