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Like her letters, Helene’s stories often take us on a roundabout yet satisfying journey. The story posted today begins by referring to a newspaper article about the opening of Vienna’s rebuilt opera house in 1955. She then muses on the Vienna of her memory, and regrets that her daughter Eva’s experience of that Vienna ended up being far less magical than her mother’s, especially after March 13, 1938. She tells us a bit about her impressions of living in San Francisco. After explaining the ins and outs of Vienna’s coffeehouse culture, Helene recalls a happy time from Eva’s childhood, which brings us to the title of the story – a song that was popular at the time [Per Wikipedia (using Google translate): “Oh Katharina! is the title of a one-step hit that Richard Fall composed in E flat major in 1924. The text for this was composed by the librettist Fritz Löhner under his stage name Beda. The song was published with the subtitle "Grüss dich Gott" by the Viennese Bohème-Verlag Berlin-Vienna.”].
Newspaper clipping saved by Helene
Translation: Left side - State Opera House 1945: A fiery ruin in a burning, starving, trembling city; Right side - State Opera House 1955: A shining palace of fine arts, jewel of the new Vienna
Excerpt of the first half of a story written by Helene in the late 1950s:
First page of story
O, Katherina, O, Katherina
That Vienna which had reopened its new Opera building in November 1955 is as strange to me as is the North or South Pole.
I made Austria’s capital my elective home 55 years ago with an abundance of sentiment and the consuming flame of immeasurable vehemence of feelings which only a girl at the tender age of sixteen can produce who had not yet sought or found another outlet for her emotions.
As a high school girl stuffed with Greek mythology, I had the idea of Vienna as the Muse of songs and tunes, disguised as a big city. Such a metamorphosis seemed to me just as imaginable as Jupiter’s matricides.
… I have to begin with: “Once upon a time,” since I told that story to my daughter when she was just three years old.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful habitation situated on the banks of the Danube, surrounded by an enchanting landscape, near the spurs of the Alps. The Romans on their conquests stopped and settled at that place and called it Vindobona – good wind – and later it became Vienna, a beautiful city inhabited by people who really were brought there by a good wind….
Many good fairies stood godmother, endowed it with beauty, hilarity and music. Music was in the air, in the trees, in the woods, in the flowers, and in geniuses such as Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms, who knew to listen and only had to write it down. The swallows when they left that place to visit the pyramids in Egypt told them how wonderful that place was where they came from and that they wanted to return as quickly as possible.
That and other fairy tales I told my daughter when she was somewhat older than she was as the heroine of my following tale. I guess she will never forgive me for that false notion that I gave her of her birthplace, a description existing only in my flourishing imagination, from that Vienna I loved so much and still love.
She was almost 18 years old when Hitler on the 13 March 38 conquered Vienna and was hailed as savior by well-instructed legions of imported Viennese from the Reich (Germany) and Graz, the provincial capital of Styria, that town which got for that Judas kiss the title of Die Stadt der Volkserhebung – Town of the Revolution. On that day had my daughter drunk Lethean water. All the nice recollections which she must have had sank into the trap-door of her theater. Forgotten were the evenings I spent with her at the opera, at the concerts, museums, our Sunday walks in the Vienna woods, trips to the Wachau and even the immortal works of the German poets were overturned by the creations of the united native Austrian and the Horst Wessel Lied or imported mob: Huetet euch ihr Mazzoth-Fresser, bald kommt die Nacht der langen Messer.” Watch out you matzo eater, near is the night where our long knives will be in action. …
It is not my intention to spoil my own delight and happiness at being so lucky to bask as a resident and citizen of California in the beautiful sunshine the Lord who had created radiant days with such perfection; the Lord who besides making weather had the ability to plunge all the world into an inferno.
May 5, 1924 was the third birthday of my little girl. I decided to celebrate that grand day by taking my child to the Rudolfshof which was very easy to approach or to leave if the weather should have the caprice to change.
The vast garden provided a big playground for children, with clean sand and buckets so that the kids could carry as much water as they needed from the nearby faucet. The place was at a higher level than the coffee house garden, and the parents were sitting under blooming chestnut trees on that beautiful spring day. All mothers had one thing in common: the wish to relax. They managed it in a variety of ways: by reading, embroidering, or like me, doing nothing. I took a chair to put my feet on, leaned my head on the back of a wicker chair, and closed my eyes.
Before I give a description of that glorious day, I have to convey how an old time Viennese ordered a cup of coffee, an unpretentious cup of coffee, in one of the circa 2,000 coffeehouses of the city of Vienna.
An American who had the desire for a cup of coffee would have gone to a cafeteria, would have sat down at a counter or a booth if there had been one, would have accepted without turning a hair a cup with its dark contents and without much ado. Cream, sugar, ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, tabasco and toothpicks were always on any table or counter and he could put in his cup whatever and however much as he wanted. The waitress wouldn’t give him a look or a thought, would write the bill and put it upside down before the guest. He would drink, pay and the whole affair would have been over in a few minutes. What an easy job to work in an American coffee shop. For an American, a cup of coffee is a cup of coffee, nothing else except that in the ten years since I lived in one of the most beautiful cities in the United States, in San Francisco the price for a cup of coffee jumped from a nickel (5 cents) to a dime (10 cents).
A traveler who had not enjoyed the Vienna I have known would have to learn by heart some rules or expressions before he had the right to say he knew the famous Viennese coffee houses.
There were from the standpoint of the vessels as well as from the curtains so many variations:
· One tasse equals about a cup
· One glass contains the same amount, but some people prefer to drink their coffee out of a stem-glass.
· One schale is a cup of medium size
· One Nuss had a double meaning. As measurement it meant a small cup like a nutshell, as stimulant it meant a dollhouse sized cup of coffee with enough milk to turn the beverage the color of a nutshell. (The American meaning “nuts” would have been more adequate.)
· One Turkish (my favorite) was a concoction of powdered, finest coffee, boiled in a special way with sugar in a conic-shaped vessel with a long stem of copper or brass, served in the little pot in which it was boiled, put on a tray with a glass of ice water and an empty dollhouse-sized cup.
To order the coffee the way you wanted it was a little bit more difficult. The Viennese didn’t just order the empty container:
· Tasse mit Schlag was a big eggshell-china cup with whipped cream
· Tasse mit Doppelschlag was the same with a double amount of whipped cream.
· Tasse: more brown meant the same container, but not too much milk, without Schlag (whipped cream)
· Schale “more brown” was a medium-sized cup. (I suppose that after World War II no Viennese had the desire of “more brown.” [Helene drew a swastika]
The price for all mentioned kinds was the same.
· A Kapuziner was always understood to be a small cup of coffee with milk in the color of the garb of a Capuchin monk (not lighter, not darker).
· A Mocca was a small dollhouse-sized cup of always ready black coffee, contrary to the always freshly prepared Turkish.
Now, with the apprentice David in “Meistersinger” who introduced the knight Walther von Stolzing into the mysteries of a mastersong, I would say: These are only the names, now learn to order your cup of coffee. The memory of a Viennese waiter was amazing. When he approached a table of a dozen people who ordered at least half a dozen, he only seldom made a mistake and if he did, he would have apologized. With an air worthy of a more important affair, he wrote down the orders, repeated them by throwing a glance at each guest, and when everybody nodded appreciatively, the waiter went to the counter where the orders were effectuated, and with the greatest calmness he asked for: six with and six without. With an inimitable nonchalance, he distributed the cups in the opposite order that had been made. No German guest would have accepted something he had not ordered. But the Viennese tourist who got a table in such an establishment considered himself lucky to be asked by a waiter for his wishes at all and he by no means complained. He was so happy, tired and glad to have an opportunity to relax that he willingly accepted that 2+2=5 and consumed what the waiter had put before him. If one of the guests made a fuss, the coffee was taken from him, given to somebody at the next table who couldn’t wonder enough about the attention the waiter paid to him, but the complaining guest could wait until doomsday for another cup and would have accepted with pleasure that cup he had refused before, but he had lost his chance.
Maybe in the resurrected Vienna, the coffee house habits have not changed totally, since not all Viennese are gone. Therefore, European travelers who pass Vienna, I freely give you the first lesson in coffeeology which you must learn by heart if you don’t want to be recognized as a greenhorn. (That is a terrible thing. Believe me, I speak with some authority about that subject).
Photo of Helene with young Eva
That tedious lesson was necessary to understand the trouble of a mother of a three-year-old, taking her out for a trip.
I told my girl: “Eva, it is your birthday and I will take you out without your little brother.”
-“That is fine.”
-“Will you not take along your new doll?”
-“I don’t want to carry it along all day.”
-“No maternal instinct at all,” I thought.
-“Where shall we go, Eva? Prater or Rudolfshof?”
-“Rudolshof, and I want to have an ice-bombe.” (different flavors of ice cream in various colors, imbedded in two shells of meringue, big enough to serve four people)
-“All right,” I said and thought she will not be always three years old. Today I will let her have her will and I will say to the waitress to fill it with only half the amount.
We took the streetcar #38 and my daughter behaved herself and accepted the seat I had chosen, unlike her general habit. She looked very pretty in her new dress of white muslin with blue dots.
At the Waisenhausgasse Orphanage stop, two capuchin monks entered the car and seated themselves opposite of us.
-“Mutti, why have the two men no hats and go on the street in their housecoats?
-“They don’t wear housecoats” I whispered, “and don’t talk so loud.”
-“Why?”
-“It is not customary. Imagine if everybody would talk as loud as you do at the same time, what a noise there would be in the streetcar.”
-“But nobody besides me talks.”
-“Because all people here in the tram have better manners,” I lisped into her ear. “Nobody is interested in your conversation. Therefore, if you have to tell me something or want to ask me a question, do it in a way that not all the people have to listen to it.”
-“The two men wear clotheslines instead of belts. Why are they dressed so funny?”
-“They are monks and the garb they wear is required by the order they belong to,” I whispered and repeated: “Please lower your voice.”
I tried to divert her attention to something on the street but my daughter didn’t care about what was going on outside.
-“What are monks?”
-“Priests. And now be silent for a little while, please. Take into consideration that not all people like to have their thoughts disturbed.”
-“What kind of priests?”
-“Kapuziner (Capuchins).”
Immediately my daughter started to sing a hit, just in vogue at that time: “O, Katherina, o, Katherina schenk mir ein ‘nen Kapuziner.” (O, Catherine, o, Catherine, Serve me a little cup of dark, brown coffee), but the way my child pronounced it when she picked up that song on the street ran: “O, Catherine, o, Catherine, present me with a little monk.”
I dropped my handbag, lost my color and my wits, and my only wish was to leave the car.
-“Come along Eva, we have to get out.”
-“No, it is not yet the terminal and Rudolfshof is the next to last station.”
-“You are right, but I remembered that I have an errand here in the neighborhood and then we will take the next car.”
-“Today is my birthday and I want you not to run errands.”
Disregarding her objection, I pulled the cord and approached the exit, but my daughter showed not the slightest inclination to leave the tram. The car stopped at the next corner but my child didn’t want to leave the car and I had to postpone my “errand.” Eva ran back to where the monks were sitting, placing her little person before them. The older one was a very stout man; the younger one was tall and slim. I was afraid that my daughter would make some remarks to continue the conversation. I took her hand and wanted to tie her to a bench in the most remote corner, but Eva grasped with her other little paw the garment of one of the monks, without finding it worthwhile to contradict my: “Come and sit down, please.”
-“What is your name, please?” she asked the older priest, bending her head a little to one side and casting him a coquettish glance, which had she been fifteen years older would have been called “irresistible.”
-The friendly priest said, smiling: “Father Anselmo.”
-“And yours?” she asked with a similar look to the younger priest.
-“Frater Clemens.”
-“My name is Eva Maria Nehoc and my mother’s name is Helene and my father’s is Vitali.”
All passengers, except me, seemed very amused and I thought: “five minutes more and all the people in the car would be informed in which income tax bracket we belong.”
-“Why did my mutti tell me your names were Kapuziner?”
-“That is the name of our brotherhood.”
-“The name of our brotherhood is Harry.”
-“I think you love your brother very much,” said the young priest.
-“Not too much. He is screaming a lot and so loud.”
-“How old is he?”
-“Three months.”
-“You did the same when you were a baby, only you can’t remember.”
-“Maybe, but I had no brother nor sister who would be annoyed by my hollering.”
-“But you have parents, who perhaps didn’t like it either.”
-“Oh, they didn’t mind,” she said deprecatingly.
For a few minutes I didn’t listen to what my daughter told them, but it must have been something very funny because all our fellow-passengers roared with laughter. Even the two monks were smiling.
My daughter still stood before them supporting herself on their knees as the car took a sharp curve. I rose from my seat and asked my little girl to be good and sit down.
-“Mutti, you have to give Father Anselmo and Frater Clemens some money to buy themselves socks, they don’t have any.”
-I tore her away vigorously and said: “I will, but not on the streetcar.”
-“Why?”
-“In churches are boxes to put money in.”
-“But you never go to churches. Will you go to their homes?”
-“I will go to a church today and you can accompany me.”
-“Poor men. They have to wash their feet very often, don’t they?”
-I bent to her ear and whispered: “They do, but please be quiet, really my head aches from your talking continually.”
-“If you have a headache, I am sure you will not go to church today. Shall I ask for their address so you can pay them a visit to their home?”
I was at the end of my wits and did not answer her anymore, but Heaven heard my prayer. The two monks had to leave at the next stop. An elderly lady saw that the two priests had risen to leave the car, stood up too to kiss their hands. My daughter watched it, ran to the exit and called: “Father Anselmo, Frater Clemens, please wait a moment, my mutti wants to kiss your hands too.”
That time they didn’t pay attention to the wish of my daughter.
The car moved in the same direction the two Kapuziner monks walked, and when we passed them Eva waved with her little hand and they answered her salutation with a smile.