Normally I would have raced though this book, but am reading small chunks at a time. Depressingly the theme of antisemitism grows and grows, dominated for me by what will happen when Hitler comes to power in Germany. I find it incredible that despite the Emperor's enfranchisement of the Jews still there are open calls in the Reichstrat for Schusgeld - a bounty for shooting Jews. As the author says, after his Paris researches,
"It looks as if I am going to spend another winter reading about antisemitism"
And how true that is, despite the riches, the successes of the Ephrussi family and others like them, they are still outsiders to a rabid section of Europe.
Then there is assertion in the book that suicide was a common among these rich nobility - and a list follows - three of Wittgenstein brothers, Mahler's brother - but I think this might be the literary equivalent of "Britons dead in balloon crash". Add in the suicide of the Crown Prince after he had shot his mistress and you have every ingredient for a massive press ghoul fest. Just because they are the relatives of the famous the suicides stick out, but we know that suicide is one of the most common causes of death in young men even to this day. I want to see the figures!
There is in fact an entire book on Suicide in fin-de-siecle Vienna, by John David Deak, but I can't get any more information. But there is this amazing passage from a book on Budapest, that speaks for itself!
The final chapter of this section, “Rites of Becoming Visible and Invisible,” is a magnificent exposition on metropolitan suicide and suicide attempts. Sadly, Budapest had the highest proportion of suicides of any European city, with figures for the period from unification until World War II averaging between 5.3 and 5.7 per thousand. In 1883, the Public Health Commission speculated that the city’s high rate of suicide was due to mental illness and imitative behavior, and encouraged journalists to exercise restraint in reporting suicides. Gyáni notes that while the commission may have been mistaken about the issue of mental health as a principal reason, their observation about imitation actually had some clout in reference to suicide attempts. Thanks to his close attention to visuality throughout the text, Gyáni’s subtle observation that many attempted suicides were efforts at becoming visiblein the crowd of metropolitan strangers is even more effective. Distressed people atop elevated sites, such as bridges or one of the city’s very few tall office buildings, thus made their “entourage” or fellow alienated people aware that their personal problems had become untenable. “Such gestures are, logically, more effective if they are spectacular,” he adds (p. 131). A fire chief’s report from 1927 indicated that such dramatic attempts had become almost routine, yet actual suicides got far less coverage in the press than the “unsuccessful” attempts atop a bridge. (Firemen even got a bonus for rescuing people atop the bridge.) Gyáni undertakes a social analysis of suicide statistics, concluding that those most likely to commit suicide were those who had least control over their destiny: domestic servants among women and industrial apprentices or officials among men. Those who were least socialized in making decisions for themselves, Gyáni speculates, were thus most likely to seek the ultimate extrication from their lot. (My bold italics)
Metropolitan Identities in Fin-de-Siècle Budapest, from a review of Gabor Gyani. Identity and the Urban Experience: Fin-de-Siecle Budapest. Translated by Thomas J. DeKornfeld. Wayne: Center for Hungarian Studies and Publications,
Google, Google what did we know before Google? Right now, using these figures, which may or may not be accurate, there are 5.3 to 5.7 suicides per thousand of population Budapest, late 19thh to early 20th century, and this is more than Vienna. The suicide rate in Great Britain in 2011 was 11.8 per hundred thousand. So the Budpest figure is incredibly high - equivalent to approx fifty per hundred thousand - or five times the rate in modern day Britain. I take it all back - suicide was certainly much more common, although my italics in the quotation above assert that it was manly amongts servants, apprentices and officials, rather than the rich and famous.
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