Volume 37, Number 13 · August 16, 1990
Unwarlike Warriors
By R.J.W. Evans
Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848–1918
by István Deák
Oxford University Press, 302 pp., $39.95
Among the fighting forces of the great powers in old Europe, the Austrian army had two distinguishing qualities: the magnificence of its uniforms and the comprehensiveness of its defeats. Today's War Museum in Vienna is housed in the huge neo-Byzantine Arsenal building, itself a stunning piece of military ostentation. In it the visitor can admire the officers' parade dress, especially that of the cavalrymen: cuirassiers and dragoons, hussars, uhlans, and the rest. Some jackets are pure white, some have dominant reds and blues, some display intricate frogging or fur edging; most are capped by elaborate busbies or shakos. For anyone familiar with Central European culture the place is redolent with association. We are reminded of the insistent rhythms of marches by the Strauss family, or by regimental bandmasters like Ziehrer or Fucík; of military themes transformed, in their different ways, by Mahler and by Lehár (himself a bandmaster in his youth). We think of an equally colorful literary pageant of soldiers, above all in the novels of Joseph Roth, but also in Schnitzler and Musil, in Doderer, and in Hašek's stories of the Good Soldier Svejk.
Review, 4338 words
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