Italians bringing gifts

Richard Bassett

Vienna T t is one of the great achievements of 'post-war Austria that most children of the Eighties grow up with the idea that Beethoven was an Austrian and Hitler a German. Perhaps this erroneous conclu- sion was just as prevalent before the war. As Osbert Lancaster observed, in the Thirties, one of the most widespread and dangerous illusions was that the Austrians were kindly, sensitive people, the predes- tined and unwilling dupes of the brutal and callous Prussians to whom all the more disagreeable phenomena of German his- tory were exclusively attributable.

But just as in 1848 we were reminded by Italian reports of the flogging of Venetian women by the Austrian General 'Hyena' Haynau that this was not quite on-so too the Italians reminded us that the Austrians made just as illustrious Nazis as the Ger- mans. The transfer of the Austrian former SS Sturmbannfiihrer, Walter Reder, from his picturesque fortress at Gaeta to Austria and his subsequent greeting by the Au- strian Defence Minister is one of the most extraordinary feats of diplomacy I should ever have imagined possible in these days when embassies have come more and more to resemble convalescent homes.

For however inept the Austrian Defence Minister, the youthful right-wing Liberal Party member Dr Friedhelm Frischens- chlager, was when he extended his arm to greet Reder, admirers of Italian politics must admit that the entire affair breathes the mischievous anti-Austrian spirit of Cavour. Relations between Italy and Au- stria have always been stormy, both coun- tries knowing how to employ charm and incompetence with the occasional flash of brilliance in their continuation of foreign policy by other means. So when Reder's arrival in Austria last Thursday was hailed as a sign of the excellent relations between Rome and Vienna, even the government press office was surprised.

Only last October the presence of the Austrian government at an anti-Italian demonstration by thousands of Tyrolese celebrating in Innsbruck the 175th anniversary of their rising up against Napo- leon soured relations, provoking an outcry from the Italian press and a rebuke from Italy's mild President Pertini. I imagine it was then that some bright chap in the Italian foreign office decided on a plan of Machiavellian brilliance to exact a suitably humiliating revenge on the Odiosi Au- striaci. Why not release the 'murderer of Marzabotto', an Austrian war criminal convicted of massacring hundreds of Ita- lian civilians, so that just as the Austrians were brushing under the carpet their rather

enthusiastic welcoming of the Third Reich, Reder, in person, with his impeccable c.v. of Le Paradis, Dachau and Marzabotto, could shake it all out for them?

The timing was masterly. Three months before VE day, two days before the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, one day before the World Jewish Congress held its first ever meeting at Vienna. Just as the Austrians had congratulated them- selves on the timing of their 30th anniversary of the signing of the Austrian State Treaty, which would overshadow in May any anniversary of the end of the war, the Sturmbannfiihrer flew in.

Of course there are some who , will dispute this interpretation of the events of the last week and give the entire credit for the Austrian government's embarrassing debacle to the sheer incompetence of Herr Frischenschlager. Now both Herr Fris- chenschlager and his ministry have been generously attacked in the Austrian press for manifesting distressing symptoms of belonging to the more mentally underpri- vileged members of the government. Last month, his aides even had the Times denounced for quite sanely drawing atten- tion to the lax standards of drill in the Austrian army.

But despite this overwhelming evidence of impaired judgement, I am still prepared to believe that the hapless minister stum- bled over an Italian trip-wire rather than his own two feet. According to the Au- strian foreign office, the Italians laid down a number of conditions before allowing Reder out of Italy. The first was that a representative of the Austrian government should meet Reder, who was travelling into Austria without an Austrian passport. Another was that Austria and Italy would announce the transfer simultaneously at 1915 hours last Thursday. The word reached Vienna shortly before midday when an Italian news agency, ANSA, committed what Herr Frischenschlager later called, with admirable understate- ment, 'an indiscretion'.

Perhaps the leak was an accident but the Italians would be sufficiently clued up on the Austrian government to know that if anyone was foolish enough to meet Reder, it would be Frischenschlager, who despite his youth reportedly attended in 1983 a Waffen SS veterans' reunion in Salzburg. His Liberal Party has been the rallying point for disillusioned former Nazis in Austria for years. Much of its membershiP is sympathetic towards the pan-German movement and it includes many of the scar-faced sabre-rattling students who add a note of rather sinister colour to the services at baroque churches throughout the country's university towns.

Ironically, when the Liberals finallY achieved a voice in the Austrian Govern-

ment by joining the Socialists in a coalition

government, two years ago, many enter- tained the illusion that the presence of

young chaps like Frischenschlager had finally demolished the party's reputation as a home for the geriatric loony Right.

Frischenschlager's behaviour and its sup-

port from even younger colleagues like the vigorous Jorg Haider of Carinthia, who described the Defence Minister as simPlY greeting an old Austrian soldier, have done an even better job of demolition on the new Liberal Party image. That the 'Freedom Party' as this Liberal Party is also called has finally struck its true colours, may be held in some quarters to

be rather laudable. That it should com- promise the entire Austrian government

and bring about the unwelcome exit of one of the most alarming skeletons in the Austrian cupboard is viewed with less enthusiasm. Even the Austrian arniy, hardly a left-wing organisation, added .its voice to the mounting criticism, referring to 'stains on the honour of the officer

corps'. Clearly Frischenschlager has only one honourable course left open to hun.

He has apologised but said he will not resign: he will with a sense of historY realise that the only solution is to follow

the well practised art, favoured by loyal Austrian servants over many centuries, and commit suicide.

The minister will be familiar with the story of Colonel Redl, whose melancholY

end is depicted in John Osborne's play, A Patriot for Me. Colonel Redl, it will be recalled, sold Austria's entire battle orders to the Russians almost on the eve of the first world war. For this act of incompe- tence, two officers placed a revolver on the Colonel's desk and waited outside his room until the man had done his duty.

However suitable this course of action is for Frischenschlager, there still remains the question of Reder. Those who were out- raged at his 'release' should save their indignation. For Reder, fate has provided a far less glorious end than that I advocate for the Austrian Defence Minister. The military hospital at Baden near Vienna

where the former SS officer finds himself at present is, even under the old-school reg- ime of its commandant, Brigadier August

Segnur-Cabanac, a sorry place to end LIP after 40 years of sunny skies at Gaeta with all its medieval splendours. For my part:

having seen both at this time of the year, -1 should never have consented to giving LIP five more months of pasta and- mediterra- nean light for the Biedermeier shabbiness of Baden.