Homosexuals Crossing

Apologies for the absence..  I've been busy with work, the puppies, and a couple of trips abroad. I therefore think one of my usual ramblings is more than overdue, so here we go.

Caution: Homosexuals Crossing

Homosexuals holding hands. In public!! :o

I'm just back from Vienna, a city I visit a good 3 or 4 times a year.  Hitler had hated Vienna, because when he was there in the 1920s, it was far too Jewish, Slavic, cosmopolitan, and socialist.  By contrast, he declared "Finally, a German City!" when he moved to Munich.  The 20 July 1944 conspirators who tried to assassinate him dreamed of a free democratic European union, with its capital in Vienna, rather than Brussels.  It was the natural heart of Europe, straddling East and West, and the former capital of the great multi-ethnic Habsburg empire.

Instead, Vienna was divided in 1945, in a similar way that Berlin was.  When the Iron Curtain descended on Europe, from "Stettin in the North, to Trieste in the South" to quote Churchill, the effects on Vienna were profound.  No longer a crossroads, you effectively went to Vienna only to visit Vienna because just a few miles past the city you reached a mined, armed, dead-end.  I disliked the place intensely on my first few visits: stifling, Catholic, conservative.  A place where people in their 30s and 40s actually wore fur coats and hats without an sense of irony.  A backwater.

Then everything changed.  Since November 1989 I've watched the city slowly develop back into the type of place the Nazis loathed.  The road signs point once again to Bratislava, to Budapest and to Prague.  Unlike in the rest of Austria, the (mainly ultra orthodox) Jewish community is flourishing.  It's constantly ranked in the top three cities worldwide for quality of life.  And there's a big, visible, gay community.

Literally every time I see a Vienna tram I smile

I've been used to seeing the city trams flying rainbow flags (apparently by order of the mayor) all around the city, not just for LGBT Pride, but many of them all year round.  But this year there's something new.  It's that many of the pedestrian crossings in the centre of town have been changed to same-sex couples... with love hearts.  They are a mixture of male/male and female/female - as well as male/female couples (nice inclusive measure to bisexuals and straights!)

Here is a female couple dutifully showing you to wait for the green light at the entrance to the main shopping street, Kärtnerstrasse, close to the Vienna State Opera House:

Lesbians say DON'T WALK

Symbolism

A needless, silly bit of symbolism?  The Far Right Freedom Party certainly thinks so, and is sufficiently wound up they've threatened court action over the lights.  But here I am, a 44 year old, out, self-confident gay man, who had heard about the pedestrian lights and who felt a genuine pique of excitement and happiness to see that they actually existed.

When I was a kid growing up in Germany I loved Playmobil.  In about 1980 they suddenly started randomly including Turkish figures (that is brown faced, ordinary people, rather than historic characters dressed in a fez).  They've moved on to a whole range of ethnicities now, such as the black family below.

Playmobil rocks

I guess that unless you belong to a group that isn't in the majority, it isn't very easy to put yourself in the shoes of another group and realise what public invisibility feels like.  Same-sex couples aren't by any means invisible in tv programmes, movies etc in the way they were in say the 1980 or even 1990s, but this little thing (and the rainbow flags on the trams, which I adore) costs very little, will be ignored by many people, but will really matter to some.  

It's so easy to dismiss, but then you think of the unsure gay teenager who sees that someone very senior in the city administration has made this gesture of inclusiveness.  Or you smile at the thought of little child asking their parent why these street signs are different to the ones they normally see, and hope it's a lead in to a "different couples and families" exist type conversation. 

The Times They Are A Changin'

And if you have any sense of history you start reflecting on the place this is happening.   Yes, Vienna was traditionally a "red" city, but it's also the place where tens of thousands of cheering citizens poured out onto the Heldenplatz on 15 March 1938 to cheer Hitler's triumphant arrival in the city.  The sporadic outbursts of violence against the city's Jews in the 2. district led an embarrassed Berlin to radio through orders to tone down the aggression (there were lots of international journalists in town).  Nazism grew in extremely fertile ground in Catholic, right wing Austria, even in its capital.

Hitler addresses Vienna from the Hofburg Palace

Now that same square, just one year ago, was the place for another gathering of a different type.  It was at the far end of the picture and involved some 10,000 cheering Viennese.  This time they were there to greet home triumphantly a different one of their own: a certain bearded drag queen called Conchita.  Look behind the crowd with the rainbow flags to the pale grey building in the distance.  That is the Hofburg, and a keen eye will spot the exact balcony that Hitler had stood on, well within living memory.  And OMG I just noticed that there's one of those hat-wearing Austrians in the front row.  He must be lost.  The woman to his right doesn't look too happy either.  Oh well :P

WE LOVE YOU CONCHITA!

But seriously, do you get what a massive change this is?  At the incredibly serious, and wonderful, Haus der Musik, which is devoted to the Great Composers, the Theory of Sound etc. there is a Conchita exhibit right there as the first thing you see.  Vienna has gone through 180 degrees, and it's not just since 1938.  It's more like since 1989.

Conchita's Dress and Portrait, Haus der Musik. 26" waist. Amazing!

Just like Ireland, which recently gave a massive two fingers to a long history of the Church's attempts to control, manipulate, oppress and repress people's private lives and morality, this is about so much more than just LGBT rights.  The popular referendum in the Republic of Ireland was about accepting that all sorts of people don't "fit the mould" (whatever illusory thing that mould was).  It was about sending a huge signal of acceptance.  It was about saying that we want a modern society, where people are more than tolerated: they are welcomed.  In both Ireland and Vienna's cases that is probably as much a domestic message as one intended for an international audience.  It's about how people outside view those places today.  And it's a message that genuinely fills me with happiness and hope.

An outstanding, inspiring result in the Irish SSM referendum

Now, most importantly... the next blog will contain puppy updates, I promise!

Austria and the Past

Austria's one of the countries I've visited most in my life, around half a dozen times each year, and one I still find a bit of a puzzle.  It's the land of beautiful mountains, the Sound of Music [click on the link for everything you need to know about that], and Vienna.  Yet there's something I don't quite "get" about the place.   A lot of that, I think, is to do with the way Austrians relate to their past, which is what this blog post is about.

The Monument actually takes up a whole square

Last week I was in Vienna and I took the above photograph of the National Memorial to the Victims of War and Fascism.  It was inaugurated in 1988 on the 50th anniversary of the Anschluss of the country by Nazi Germany.   It's a big, prominent feature, right in the very centre of the city, behind the Opera House, at the entrance to the main shopping street.  You'd assume they chose the words quite carefully.  The plaque simply says:

"On this sport stood the Philipphof, which was destroyed during a bombing raid on 12 March 1945.  Hundreds of people who had sought refuge in the cellars of the building died as a result.

This monument is dedicated to all victims of war and fascism."

That's it.  Where to start.  Well, let's go back to some basics on Austrian history before we reach the reason why this is so jaw-droppingly unacceptable in my view.  You may have wondered why Austria, which speaks German, and is made up overwhelmingly of ethnic Germans, and shares very close cultural links to Germany, is not part of the country.  I shall endeavour to explain!

Ostarrîchi and all that jazz

The country traces its modern roots to about 996 when its name, which means "Eastern March" (a fortified area bordering the Slavic domains) was first mentioned.  It was populated by German speakers and became an independent duchy in 1156.  For over 600 years of this time it was ruled over by the Habsburg family, who were actually originally immigrants from neighbouring Switzerland.  See: this is what happens unless you have strong borders: first they come to do the underpaid jobs you don't want on hotel receptions; and next they're ruling the place, strutting around calling themselves Holy Roman Emperors and building magnificent palaces like Schönbrunn.  Vote UKIP and all that.

Austria was pretty shit at wars, losing a remarkably high percentage that it ever got involved in.  For this reason there's a HUGE monument at the Praterstern in Vienna to an utterly insignificant naval victory they won in 1866 against the Italians, in which two(!) Italians ships were sunk.  When you're rubbish at battles, you've really got to sex up the ones you won, I guess.  So, instead of fighting, Austria married off its royal children strategically and built up a great empire.  The Habsburg motto became: Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube (let others wage war; you, fortunate Austria, marry).






The vast, multinational empire was all fine and dandy until the political changes occasioned by the rise and defeat of Napoleon, and the rise of nationalism in the 19th century.  Austria occupied an odd position in German affairs.  The Habsburgs tended to be elected to the position of Holy Roman Emperor (ie. German Emperor) and so had a reasonably dominant influence in the territory we now call Germany.  At the same time they had a vast non-German empire, whose people would come to identify more and more with their national grouping as time went on.  Matters came to a head when the North Germans took on Austria in war, and of course won so rapidly the poor Austrians didn't even have time to get their Apfelstrudels out for breakfast.  If you've been paying attention, you'll remember: Austrians = "shit at war".

The once multinational, multilingual Austrian Parliament

Austria was pushed out of German affairs, the King of Prussia became Kaiser of a unified Germany (excluding some 8 million ethnically German Austrians), and Austria-Hungary, as it was now known, tried to hold together its dysfunctional empire of around 10 different nationalities.  On one level it was doomed to failure; on another view it was an economically booming multinational entity of 50 million people.  Its economy grew 75% from 1870 to 1913, for example, almost double the rate of Britain's, and faster even than Germany's.  Representatives from around the Empire addressed the Parliament in Vienna (above) in their own language, schools taught in their the local language, and State officials could use their own language at work.  Some would say it was heading very much in the right direction, and was a prototype for a central European Union.

Anschluss and Austrian War Criminals

World War One is of course the hot historical topic of 1914.  It all of course began when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich because he was hungry.  If you're a Blackadder fan, you'll know the poor Ostrich died for nothing too :(  Germany had given Austria-Hungary a blank cheque offer of military support, which given just how shit Austria was at fighting wars was possibly rather silly.  

The plaque commemorating Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Imperial Burial Vault in Vienna is dedicated to "the first victim of WW1".  How interesting a spin that is, from the country that actually chose to declare war and invade Serbia a month after his assassination in Sarejevo.   I also read a fascinating little Q&A in a Vienna tabloid last week on WW1.  The first thing it said was "It's clear that Emperor Franz Josef was not solely to blame for the war."  This narrative of "it wasn't us" will return... 

When Austria pulled out of the war in October 1918, with its empire collapsing round its ears, followed by the collapse of Germany shortly afterwards, the question was, what next.  Now that they were free of their foreign empire, plenty of Austrians favoured union with Germany. However, the Allies were having none of it.  A referendum in Salzburg province indicated a genuine 99.8% support for becoming part of neighbouring Bavaria.  The victorious Allies would only apply the principle of self-determination when it suited them and strengthening Germany was not on the cards in 1919.  So, Austria became a "rump republic" just 1/8th the size it had been, once again outside and independent of Germany. 

Terrified Austrians look away in horror at the Anschluss. Oh.

In March 1938 the Germans invaded.  Well... that's how many Austrians tend to characterise it.  Given crowds lined the route of the panzers towards Vienna and the only thing that was thrown at them were flowers by the ecstatic onlookers, it's hard to see it as a military invasion in the usual sense.  I'm told that during the filming of the Sound of Music, the city of Salzburg's objection to decking the streets with Nazi flags were swiftly withdrawn when they were told actual archive footage would be used instead (thanks @chrisdaleoxford!).  Just 25 years later there would have been some very prominent, identifiable, red faces to be noted in the crowd.

Let's not sugar-coat Austrian involvement in the Third Reich.  They were in it up to their ears.  From the Führer Hitler, downwards to Adolf Eichmann (the major organiser of the holocaust who attended the same school in Linz that Hitler did, 17 years later), to Franz Stangl (commandant of Treblinka), to Amon Goeth (of Schindler's List fame), and to members of the Austrian ski regiments that the Third Reich newspapers proudly proclaimed had taken part in the invasion of Norway, the Austrians were hugely enthusiastic participants in the Reich.  The uncontrolled viciousness of anti-Semitic attacks in Vienna during 1938/9 actually caused the Nazis in Berlin embarrassment: the Jews needed to be robbed and encouraged to emigrate in an orderly fashion, not be beaten up so obviously under the nose of the world media.  One shocking statistic I heard is that the Austrians made up just 7% of the Third's Reich population, yet contributed 25% of the membership of the SS, and 40% of the management at the death camps.  

In other occupied European countries, there was a mixture of collaboration and resistance.  In Austria there wasn't collaboration: there was full on leadership and participation.  Austria was an integral part of the Nazi Third Reich.  There was absolutely no armed resistance: as the historian Guy Walters put it to me recently, the museum of Austrian Resistance in Vienna is the smallest one he has ever visited.

The Real Life Amon Goeth, from Vienna, as played by Fiennes

From 1943, only when it became clear that Germany was losing the war, and food and other shortages hit hard, did the love affair at being part of the Greater German Reich began rapidly to wane in Austria.  Local party officials reported regular occurrences of dissent and anti-Piefke comments.  Piefke is a derogatory term for Germans still used by some Austrians: it's a bit stronger than the US term for northerners, "Yankee".  Let's go with "Fukcing Yankee", or similar.  Then, late in the war, came the Allied bomb raids: the centre of Salzburg was obliterated and around 30% of Vienna was destroyed.  In the end, Austria was on the losing side of yet another war (this time, fortunately, and of course!).  Finally the country was divided, like Germany into four zones of occupation.  This lasted ten years until the US, Soviet Union, Britain and France withdrew in 1955.  Austria was forever to remain a neutral country, and would never seek reunification with Germany, as part of the new Austrian State Treaty. 

So there's your long-winded answer.  Why isn't Austria part of Germany today, whilst say neighbouring Bavaria is? - a series of historical accidents.  It did not stop them, sadly, from participating fully in the worst chapter of German history imaginable.

The Myth of the First Victim

With newly re-established Austria finding its feet in 1955, many people turned firmly to the future and did not want to discuss the past.  To be fair, collective amnesia was a phase that many in Germany went through too.  The difference was that the Austrians had what they took to be official sanction for it in the words of the 1943 Allied "Moscow Declaration".  It had described Austria as "the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression".  This was a blatant untruth, and was intended to encourage resistance in the country.  It followed directly with a warning that if Austria did not do so it would pay for it when victory came.  As we know, that resistance never happened.  Right up to May 1945 young Austrian men were dying fiercely defending the Third Reich.

In West Germany, by contrast, an intensive programme of civilian de-nazification had been carried out by the Allies, which just did not occur here.  It suited many Austrians, laden with personal or family guilt, and latent resentment for the terrible fate that had befallen the country from 1938-45, to buy into this myth of the first victim.  The Sound of Music is the perfect example of the sugar-coating/ total white-washing of the period of history.  You watch it and think "oh those poor little Austrians!" forgetting entirely about the sing-song Viennese accents ordering people off trains and into gas chambers.  Worse, the movie isn't even Austrian - it's a product of Hollywood.

Oh Julie: what were you part of?

In 1991, a majority of Austrians said it was time to "put the holocaust behind them".  Just consider for a moment how many holocaust and other war victims were still alive and suffering at that point.  A poll in March 2013 that was widely reported abroad showed three of five Austrians want a "strong man" and lead the country, and 42% think things were not all bad under Hitler.  46% (in 2013!) still thought of Austria as a victim.  

I suppose it's something, though, that 54% rejects the myth.  Given these figures it would be silly, and wrong, to say "all Austrians deny the past".  They clearly do not.  As time has gone on, there has (slowly) been a more honest and critical reappraisal of the situation.  Attitudes also vary according to which part of the country you visit.  Vienna has long been traditionally more social-democrat and, I think, open to own up to the country's history.  Even in sleepy, conservative Salzburg I met a woman who was spitting mad about companies celebrating their 60th anniversaries in 2008/9, when she said it was blatantly obvious they had been "aryanised" (i.e. stolen from their former Jewish owners).  The picture is nuanced, but it's fair to say that in general Germany has been admirably open at least since the late 1960s to talking about its past, whereas Austria has been remarkably reticent on the whole.

Does the Past Matter?

Well yes, I think it does.  An honest appraisal of the past is, for me, a key component in achieving a healthy, tolerant society.   The Jewish community of Germany is absolutely flourishing once more and is the fastest growing in the world.  At 120,000 it is the 3rd largest in the EU.  Munich's Jews are back up to pre-1933 numbers.   It's nothing short of a miracle that Jews feel safe and want to bring up their children up right across the country.  I absolutely believe this in part down to the way the country has dealt so thoroughly with the history of the Nazi period.  In Austria there is a quite different feeling.  The small Jewish community is centred in one district of the capital, it is predominantly Ultra-Orthodox and was for many years completely stagnant in size.  Repeated recent stories sadly point to Viennese Jews being wary of anti-Semitic attacks. 

The far-right Freedom Party of Austria regularly polls 20-25%; in 1999 when it entered national government as part of a coalition, it attracted diplomatic sanctions from the EU.  Germany (just like Britain) isn't a bed of roses when it comes to xenophobic tendencies, but in Austria these people have been polling big numbers for decades and actually taking part in local and national government.  Its leader was recently embroiled in a scandal over an overtly anti-Semitic cartoon that he published.

Open-minded, liberal friends of mine in Vienna acted angrily to the reporting of the March 2013 poll abroad.  They said Austria was being picked on and it really was time to move on - their kids were sick of hearing all this when they had nothing to do with it.  I'd have a lot more sympathy with this if the country had actually been through the process Germany has.  You are much more inclined to forgive when something has been honestly owned up to, rather than dealt with it in a half-hearted and sometimes completely dishonest way.  This is even more the case where almost half the population still today thinks of their country as a victim rather than a perpetrator nation.  Of course my friends' kids were nothing to do with the actual crimes: but they are part of the society in 2013 that answers these polls the way it does, and that votes the Freedom Party in.

Mauthausen in Austria: the cruelest of all camps?

I remember my first visit to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp near Linz.  It is widely known as the most gratuitously cruel of all the camps across German-controlled Europe.  The SS took pleasure in devising over 60 ways of killing prisoners, from forcing them to climb down a quarry wall whilst taking pot-shots at their hands (the "Parachute Jump") to the "domino effect" of prisoners carrying heavy stones up 180 uneven steps falling back onto the people below them.  There was a special exhibition on entitled "Austrians in Mauthausen".  This presumably was set up by whatever professional historians run the exhibits here.  I was excited to see this acknowledgement of the role of Austrian SS management and guards in this Austrian camp.  But no, it was an exhibit about political opponents and the handful of priests who had ended up there.  The last section was a huge celebration of the liberation of Austria in May 1945.  Wow.  Just wow.  Austrian kids will come here to be educated on the holocaust and they will leave with the impression the Germans came in, did it all, and left.  It's actually shameful.

"That" Monument

So we return to the monument in the centre of Vienna.  In a way it draws together all the strands of this post perfectly.  It purports to commemorate all victims of war and fascism, yet it makes no reference to the Jews, to the Gypsies, to the socialists, to the communists, to the priests, or to the gays.  Of the 40 million victims of the Second World War, it in fact only mentions one group expressly: the 300 or so rich Austrian inhabitants of the luxury Philipphof apartment complex who were killed in a US air-raid.

I feel quite strongly about the wrongs of the Allied carpet bombing of German and Austrian civilian targets (please read this post if you haven't already) but this "War and Fascism" monument.. it actually makes me vaguely stabby.  I believe it is right and just to acknowledge civilian victims, even in a perpetrator nation, and even if they were members of or supporters of the Nazi party.  They did not deserve to be summarily burnt or crushed to death in a cellar in this way.  But before that HAS to come acknowledgement of the other victims, and indeed this country's role in carrying out crimes against them.  That is entirely, 100%, lacking here.  Austria really can do better than this.

Skreeeeem! The Sound Of Music

I feel a bit dirty for having actually used some law in my last blog.  That isn't what I went to university for years for, followed by that training contract thing and my post-qualification experience.  Back to the fluff you're accustomed to instead!

So, I travel to Salzburg a fair bit with my groups of lovely Americans. I delight in telling both showing them the locations used for the Sound of Music and telling them all the things wrong with the movie.  So here goes for some of the things you might not know and almost certainly don't need to know.

Stunning Salzburg: the Do-Re-Mi fountain/ Castle

Background to the Movie

It's based on a true story.  Maria Trapp (the "von" is illegal in Austria and has been since the end of WW1) wrote her memoirs in a book called the The Story of the Trapp Family Singers in 1949.  She negotiated a very bad deal and essentially signed away the royalties.  The book was made into German language films, followed by a musical, and finally the movie we all know backwards and watch every Christmas or Easter entirely drunk.  The movie has been watched by an estimated 1 billion people: the Trapp children received precisely directly $0 as a result.  Great business woman!

There are lots of factual inaccuracies in the movie.  Maria came to the family as a tutor for one of the kids, not as a governess to all.  This took place in 1926, so she had been with them for 12 years (and married to Captain von Trapp for 11 years) when the Anschluss - the setting for the movie - takes place.  The eldest child was a son, not a daughter; they had 10 children not 7.  The family was actually quite impoverished, having lost their money with the collapse of a private Austrian bank in the 30s.  The money came in large part from the Captain's first wife, Agathe Whitehead, the granddaughter of the inventor of the torpedo.  The Captain was a Ritter (Baronet, or Sir), not a Baron - having been rewarded for successfully sinking several British ships during World War One.  He was actually an Italian citizen (he was born in present day Croatia, but owned a property that was transferred from Austria-Hungary to Italy with the Treaty of Versailles).  After 1918 he was a plain old "Herr" - it remains a criminal offence to use noble titles in the Republic of Austria.

It's often said that when Rodgers and Hammerstein got hold of the rights to the movie, America was crying out for a saccharine coated story to cheer them up from the gloom and to distract them from the problems of a war in Vietnam (they had almost 200,000 troops there by the end of 1965), the shock at the death of President Kennedy, and on-going civil rights battles dividing the country.  The Sound of Music, with its sweet, cheery, innocent "loveliness" was an instant and massive hit.  It has remained one throughout the Anglo-Saxon world ever since.

Some Interesting Things About the Movie

Point number one is that virtually no-one knows the Sound Of Music in Austria, nor in Germany.  It is an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.  Salzburg is the city of music, yes - but the music of Mozart.  (To be fair, he hated the place: there is a wonderful new modern art monument to him near the Salzach River.  It is a tall chair with a hole in it.  When I asked a city guide why, she quoted a letter from the 22 year old composer: "I hope it's not necessary to tell you that I care little about Salzburg and nothing at all about the archbishop, and that I shit on both of them.")

The only people who know the movie are those involved in the tourist industry.  Those Austrians who have watched it consider it unbelievably kitsch and faintly ridiculous.  References to "Schnitzel with Noodles" are found very amusing - no Austrian would ever combine the two.

The next thing is that if you know Salzburg, you know the sequences just don't work.  The kids come out of one place and then are to be seen 25 minutes' walk away on the other side of town after turning a corner.  The wedding church is in Mondsee, not at the Abbey, 27km outside Salzburg.  The graveyard scene looks vaguely like St Peter's cemetery - but actually it isn't half as beautiful if you've been.  In fact it was a set in a studio which had more space.  Also the monks would not allow the cemetery to be filmed in.

Leopoldskron: the lake/ gardens (but not house) from SoM

The "Von Trapp" villa is actually three different locations.  The gardens with the beautiful lake are at Leopoldskron.  The house exterior (it is nowhere near a lake) is at Frohnburg, a couple of kilometres away on the road to Hellbrunn Palace.  The gazebo was in yet another place, but has been moved to Hellbrunn.  Sadly, when I visited a week ago, there wasn't a trace to be seen of Rolf's fabulously and improbably tight trousers.  Oh - and if Liesl was 16 going on 17 at the time of the movie, I'm the Pope. Try closer to 26 going on 27....

No Rolf, No Tight Trousers *sad face*

All *interior* scenes were filmed back in Hollywood.  Therefore when you see Maria talking to the Captain in the garden, watch carefully.  The scenes were filmed as monologues in 2 different locations - you never see both the lake and the house together.  Maria is filmed with the lake behind her; the Captain is filmed with the house behind him, and they simply cut and pasted the sequences together.  Clever for the early 60s.  When anyone enters the house, the scene is in fact back in California, not in Austria.

The real Trapp house is in yet *another* location and does not feature in the movie at all.  It is now a hotel.  It gets great reviews.

Whilst the movie was filmed, all of the child actors, their mothers, Maria and the rest of the cast stayed in the beautiful 5-star Hotel Sacher by the river.  It was at this time known as the Österreichischer Hof.  Legend has it the name was changed as wealthy Americans staying there could not pronounce the name to taxi drivers.  Christopher Plummer alone stayed in the Hotel Bristol across the square.  He apparently didn't mind the noise of the children, but did mind their mothers.

Some Clangers

The movie is *full* of mistakes - part of which makes it so much fun to watch.  I seem to spot something new each time.  The very first scene announces we are in "Salzburg, Austria in the last Golden Days of the 30s" - watch out for the modern 15-storey concrete tower block on the far left close to the railway station.  The area was bombed to shit by the USAF during WW2 and the building in question is the Hotel Europa, fondly known as the "Cigarette Packet" locally and of 1957 vintage.

The opening sequence looks like it is a paid-for advert by the Austrian Tourist Board.  It takes about 10 minutes before the camera swoops in on Julie spinning round on the hillside.  Moments later she is rushing back on foot to the Nonnberg abbey - about 15 km away.

Maria famously rips down the curtains to make play-clothes for the children.  They dance around in them during Do-Re-Mi - but watch mid song as they change into a whole SET of other multi-coloured clothes - before changing back into the original curtain clothes.  Has a single window in Salzburg been safe from Maria's kleptomaniac activities during these weeks?

How many windows were harmed in filming this scene?

The Captain drives a lovely Mercedes-Benz cabriolet.  Its steering wheel is on the wrong side.  Austria drives on the right (and has done since 1918), yet the car is a right drive model.  It also has 4 seats.  This does not stop the family (7 kids plus 2 adults AND the ever so slightly sinister Uncle Max of the splendid "Gloomy Pussies" line) at various points from piling in.  Ten people in a four seater car is quite some going.  Bagsy not sitting on Uncle Max's lap :o


The movie has wonderful summer sunshine.  The birds are singing, the trees are in full leaf.  The kids are wearing adorable little curtainy Lederhosen: they even go for a dip in the lake!  Now consider the timing.  All this happens directly before the couple get it together (that scene where they do actually makes me feel suicidal) and then disappear off on honeymoon.  They come back to find Austria has been annexed by Germany.  The actual date of the Anschluss? 12 March 1938.  January and February aren't that warm in the mountains, kiddos!

The Real Life Maria

The real life Maria Trapp was by many accounts an utter battle-axe.  By contrast her husband was universally considered a lovely, sweet man.  He died in 1947 in the US.  Maria was extremely controlling with regards to her step-children and children and forced them to sing like puppets.  They sang beautifully on stage, which they had to do to earn money when they arrived in New York, but American audiences did not like them.  During one performance a fly flew into Maria's mouth and she nearly choked.  The children burst out laughing, as did the audience, and from that moment she realised that an American audience required entertainment, not just perfect harmonies.

There are various stories of Maria's daughters having nervous breakdowns and being found wandering in fields, having climbed out of the window of the ski lodge she eventually bought in Stowe, Vermont.  She certainly seems to have been a very difficult and not entirely stable individual.  She would attend performances of the movie and apparently lose herself and walk down the aisle of the cinema during the wedding scene, for example.  She actually married the Captain in the Nonnberg Abbey, not the church at Mondsee as in the movie.  The nuns refused to allow the camera crew to film inside and were incidentally horrified to see actresses having cigarette breaks outside the abbey (they could not stop the filming of the outside).

Its Enduring Legacy

All of this is of course utterly unimportant: the movie is utterly fabulous: good kitsch shite, and I love it.  You can probably tell from how much I know about it that I *might* have watched it more than once.  Ahem.  It has enduring appeal: thousands of people still go along to Singalong Versions that are held regularly.  Some idiots even get dressed up and take yodelling goats under their arms with them.  Ahem again.

WHO would humiliate themselves like this?!

Most recently the show has made it to Salzburg - with lyrics in German - in the form of a puppet show.  The puppets actually control puppets in the Lonely Goatherd song, which must be amazing to watch.  The Sound of Music brings millions in tourism each year to Salzburg.  Almost 50 years later it is still going *very* strong.  It is good clean fun, and we love it.

A More Serious Problem

The PROBLEM though is the utter whitewash of Austrian history.  The movie portrays Austria as the innocent victim, the object of Germany's aggression.  This is so far from the truth it is offensive.  I have heard the statistic that Austrians made up 7% of the population of the Reich, 25% of the membership of the SS, and some 40% of the management of the death camps.  Hitler was Austrian, as were Eichmann (chief implementer of the Final Solution), Stangl (commandant of Treblinka), Arthur Seys-Inquart (Reich Protector of the Netherlands), Odio Globocnik (lead administrator of the Death Camps), Amon Göth (of Schindler's List fame) etc etc .  This country was up to their eyebrows in the whole murderous chapter.

After the Anschluss a referendum was held: admittedly there was intimidation etc, but nonetheless 99.7% of Austrians voted in favour.  Hitler's reception in Vienna was rapturous.  Austrians threw flowers at the German tanks, rather than shooting at them.  Remember the Singing Contest scene in the Sound Of Music where everyone in the audience gasps and shakes their head when the Captain announces he will have to go off to Bremerhaven to join the Navy of the Third Reich?  (actually he did consider doing this in real life).  The 0.03% of Austrians who voted against annexation with Hitler's Germany could actually probably have fitted in the Salzburg festival hall.  The Nazis in Berlin were actually shocked at the utterly vicious spontaneous attacks on Vienna's Jews by their Austrian compatriots and tried to rein them in as they gave such bad publicity.

Orgasming Austrians in Vienna crowd to meet their Führer

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre continues to criticise Austria strongly for its unwillingness to put Nazi criminals on trial (the last was in the 1970s) and compares it highly unfavourably with Germany in this regard.  The "victim theory" is highly damaging to Austria's present and future.  Only recently I was in Auschwitz and visited the Austrian exhibit.  There was a massive disclaimer at the start from the Austrian government that said they realised how one-sided and historically inaccurate the exhibit is.  Things are changing, but only slowly.  The Sound of Music has widely perpetuated the "innocent little Austrian" myth abroad and this is actually very, very bad.

If you want to read some more serious thoughts on how dealing with history affects a country's present and future, have a gander of this by me, written during the Queen's visit to Ireland.

The Final Scene

The movie closes wonderfully with the family singing "Climb Every Mountain" all the way to Switzerland.  Had Mother Superior been wheeled out to sing this by the Austrians, incidentally, the Anschluss could no doubt have been prevented single-handedly.  The notes she hits would have stopped Panzers in their tracks and shattered glass in Munich, 2 hours away.

In any case: Switzerland!  Yes, it's around 350km from Salzburg.  That's quite a long way on foot, singing the whole way.  Actually the family in real life took a train to Italy, then a boat via Southampton to New York.  Oh and they weren't *exactly* upping and escaping from the Nazis either.  They came back to the Third Reich, entirely voluntarily, in the summer of 1939 and didn't leave again until well after World War 2 had broken out.

Last but not least, do you recognise the mountain in the movie?  I do.  It's the Untersberg.  Unmistakable.  It leads straight to Germany.  Not just to Germany, but to Hitler's Eagle Nest mountain hideout.  Yes, just the place to escape from the Nazis......