vineyard drinkers sang a song written just a few months earlier. It came from the pen of a municipal bureaucrat yet it had grown to be the rage all over Europe; it had even spread to England and America. The whole world was hymning something fragile and sweet:
Actually 'Wien, Wien' was just the latest and by far the most famous example of the genre Wiener Lieder. Over a hundred WienerLieder had been composed in the last eighty years. All were songs of lyric wistfulness. They sighed of a love not for a woman or a man but for Vienna; for that rainbow of a town fraying away exquisitely between vineyard and Danube; for streets in which the girls were beautiful because the houses were old; for a world whose doom was its enchantment.
In April 1914 the people on the wooden benches sang 'Wien, Wien,' to serenade their sick, dear Emperor. Actually he had become dear only after he had become ancient. But he had been ancient for so long, he seemed to have been dear forever. For generations those silver sideburns had generated fond stories, wonderful rumors, reverent speculations. Austrian patriotism centered on this ikon of infinite anecdotes and wrinkles. Still, the day must come when six horses draped in black would bear him away; when the most unsentimental of Archdukes would roar up in his motorcar to take possession of the Imperial Palace. What then?
Neither the firmament's glimmer above nor the reflections in the Danube below answered the question brooding over the vineyard hills. And so the people in the leafy inns resorted to their only ready remedy: to drink; to gossip antique Habsburg gossip again; and, again and again, to sing 'Wien, Wien…'
Another tune attained enormous popularity in Vienna's springtime of 1914-the first international hit of a young American composer, Irving Berlin. It was frequently featured by modish restaurant orchestras like the one in the Ring- strasse's Grand Hotel. But during late April and early May the music there played to an unusual number of empty tables. Franz Joseph's pneumonia was taking its toll in these plush precincts, too. The succession, with its perils and uncertainties, loomed ahead. A sudden decline had shaken the stock market. Many of the more loose- pursed tycoons were retrenching and that included patrons of the Grand Hotel restaurant. Nevertheless, some habitues kept coming to enjoy Stuffed Whitefish a la Radziwill (a renowned virtuosity of the chef's) and to keep au courant with Mister Irving Berlin. Among prominent diners figured Hermann von Reininghaus, the young brewery grand seigneur, and his dusky wife Gina as well as the third element of the triangle, General Conrad, the Chief of Staff.
The presence of the beloved-even when encumbered by her husband-always cheered the General. What's more, the good weather promised him, a passionate mountaineer, some fine Alpine tours. But as Gina noted in her memoirs, his smile looked rigid in those days. With reason. The General shared all of Vienna's fear for the old Emperor. In addition, he must face the probability that the new monarch would dismiss him in disgrace, would send him packing summarily, together with the Hungarian Prime Minister Tisza even as the coffin of Franz Joseph was carried into the crypt of the Capuchin Church.
Of course an exit in May would only accelerate somewhat the General's timetable. In the spring of 1914 he had resolved to wait for the Sarajevo maneuvers at the end of June, and then to resign. It was enough. He had been harassed too often by Franz Ferdinand, rebuffed too often each time he requested the punishment of Serbia- which was fomenting a rebellion in Albania right now. Too often had he been frustrated for the sake of 'this foul peace which drags on and on,' as he had put it in one of his secret letters to Gina von Reininghaus. The same letter vibrated with impatience for a 'war from which I could return crowned with success that would allow me to break through all the barriers between us, Gina, and claim you as my own dearest wife. [a war that] would bring the satisfactions in my career and private life which fate has so far denied me.'
He would be denied them forever when Franz Ferdinand mounted the throne. Still, at the Grand Hotel restaurant he could bear with fate a little better because here it was cushioned with Gina's closeness. When the orchestra struck up that rousing new air from America, the General rose to his feet, bowed, requested Herr von Reininghaus's permission to ask Frau von Reininghaus for the honor of this dance.
It was granted. General and lady walked to the parquet floor. They began to sway in each others arms. The vocalist sang, in Viennese English, the song most popular throughout the Western world that spring of 1914:
Repercussions of Franz Joseph's pneumonia spread southward to the Serbian capital. Before the news reached him there, Gavrilo Princip had been focusing steadily, unblinking, on a climax that drew nearer each day: the June war games of the Austrian Army near Sarajevo, captained by the man who must be killed, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
To help him in the deed, Princip had recruited Nedeljko Cabrinovic in Belgrade. In Sarajevo itself Princip's old confederate Danilo Ilia was waiting. But by April Princip decided that the assassination of the Habsburg Crown Prince was an enterprise requiring yet another partner. He picked Trifko Graben, a fellow lodger in his rooming house at 23 Carigradska Street in Belgrade.
Graben, too, had been a former high school student in Austrian Bosnia who had crossed the border into Serbia and now lounged about Belgrade coffeehouses between odd jobs. But Grabez's exile differed from Princip's. It lacked politics. In a dispute over grades, Graben had punched his teacher in the nose before running away. Vagabonding, adventuring, womanizing, appealed to Graben much more than ideology. Yet Princip liked the lad's pluck and brawn. And so thin little Princip began to talk to Graben, whose muscular frame towered over him. He kept talking softly, steadily, in the seclusion of his room. Unblinking, he talked with a voice barely audible yet of an overwhelming intensity. When he finished, the big fellow had become the little one's obedient disciple. In two days, juvenile delinquent had changed to zealot. Grabei was ready to do anything at his leader's command.
Princip had now collected the manpower for his kill. He still needed arms and the training to use them. The Young Bosnia organization, whose members met on coffeehouse terraces, would be of limited use. Young Bosnia's program included action to flesh out its anti-Habsburg slogans. But too much of its energy went into the production
