Haunting Policework in Andreas Pittler’s Bronstein Detective Series 219 Haunting Policework in Andreas Pittler’s Bronstein Detective Series Joseph W. Moser West Chester University Abstract: Andreas Pittler depicts a haunting historical image of Vienna in his Inspektor David Bronstein detective series that reaches from the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in “Chuzpe” (2010) to the failed Nazi coup in 1934 in “Tacheles” (2008) and the Anschluss of 1938 in “Zores” (2012), as well as the end of the war and liberation by the Red Army in 1945 in “Charascho” (2014) to the time of the 1955 State Treaty in “Goodbye” (2015). All of these contextual events are narrated from the perspective of an Austrian-Jewish detective who continues to solve murders in the most difficult of times. Before the Anschluss the Jewish population accounted for about nine percent of Vienna’s population, and thus the context of a Jewish cop in Vienna before 1938 is both quite feasible and intriguing. Bronstein’s survival and return to Vienna in 1945 are a haunting reminder of the Holocaust and of the near complete destruction of Viennese Jewish culture. Keywords: Krimi, Andreas Pittler, Zores, Anschluss, Vienna 1938 Andreas Pittler is a trained historian who prior to writing fiction had made a name for himself as a writer of historical monographs. 1 The Bronstein detective series is his most successful literary oeuvre, but he continues to write other historical fiction, such as the recently published book Das Totenschiff (2016), which deals with a group of 800 Romanian Jews who tried to escape to Palestine on an overcrowded ship that was ultimately sunk with only one survivor. In his seven-part detective series featuring Oberst David Bronstein, Pittler depicts a haunting historical image of Vienna that reaches from the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in Chuzpe (2010) to the failed Nazi coup of 1934 in Tacheles (2008) and the Anschluss of 1938 in Zores (2012), as well as the end of the war and liberation by the Red Army in 1945 in Charascho (2014) to the time of the 1955 State Treaty in the final part of the series, Goodbye (2015). All of these 220 Joseph W. Moser contextualized novels are narrated from the perspective of an Austrian-Jewish detective who manages to solve murders in the most difficult of times. Pittler’s detective novels are characteristic of the early twenty-first century in the contemporary Austrian novel, since such historically accurate depictions of the cohabitation of Jews and non-Jews before and after the Holocaust would have been unthinkable in an Austrian Krimi even twenty-five years ago. Thirty years ago, the Austrian novel was still marked by Thomas Bernhard’s provocative texts, whose publication repeatedly led to public scandals, and which peaked in the 1984 confiscation of Bernhard’s novel Holzfällen . This confiscation represented a unique interference by the Austrian justice system into the freedom of speech of a writer. Even Bernhard’s roman à clef Auslöschung (1986), which examined the country’s Nazi past within the context of a single family’s history, caused a public stir that would be unimaginable today, as Austria has become more aware of its multicultural identity and more open and conscious of its past in the twentieth century ( Joseph Moser 129). The rejection of the myth of Austria as the first victim of Hitler’s aggression, whose unraveling for example in Robert Schindel’s novel Gebürtig (1992) still raised attention in the Austrian public a quarter of a century ago, is today nothing more than a nuanced and accepted historical understanding in Pittler’s detective novels Zorres and Charascho . Both works openly depict the virulent anti-Semitism in Austria before 1938 as well as the division of Austrian society at the time of the Anschluss into supporters and opponents of the Nazi regime. Bronstein’s survival and return to Vienna in 1945 are haunting reminders of the Holocaust and of the near complete destruction of Viennese Jewish culture. Vienna’s Jewish population prior to the Holocaust accounted for roughly nine percent of the population, making it the largest urban Jewish population in any German-speaking country. While two thirds managed to escape and survive, roughly a third was murdered in the Holocaust, leaving the city with only a few hundred Jews by 1943. Thus, the representation of a Jewish police detective in Vienna before 1938 is both quite feasible and intriguing. 2 Austrian Krimis have played a significant role within the genre of the Austrian novel of the last two decades. 3 The Simon Brenner hexaology by Wolf Haas represents one of the most important contemporary German-language crime fiction series with novels such as Komm süßer Tod (1998), Silentium (1999), Der Knochenmann (1997), and Das ewige Leben (2003), which were also adapted as films. Kommissar Brenner’s language as narrator, who addresses his readers with the informal German “du,” which simultaneously creates proximity and distance with his readers, underlines the social criticism and humor of an unrefined commissar and daredevil. 4 There are some similarities in this respect with David Bronstein, except that Brenner is not Jewish and thus not an outsider, but Haunting Policework in Andreas Pittler’s Bronstein Detective Series 221 an insider within his own country. Of course Brenner mostly operates in Austrian cities other than Vienna, and the Brenner hexalogy is not set in a historical context. The Bronstein series appears, however, within this context of a new creative Austrian crime fiction genre along with Eva Rossmann’s Mira Valensky series, which she has been publishing annually since 1999. The Valensky series accounts for eighteen such Krimis by 2016, ranging from Wahlkampf (1999) to Gut, aber tot (2016), of which Freudsche Verbrechen (2001) is the most important when comparing Rossmann’s Valensky series to Pittler’s Bronstein series. In Freudsche Verbrechen , the investigative journalist Mira Valensky follows up on the murder of an American student in Vienna’s Freud Museum, which ultimately uncovers a case of “Arisierung” (the Nazi term for seizing property from Jews by non-Jews) of a Viennese apartment building, and thus links history with the present. 5 This topic, which was quite difficult for many Austrians, was not touched upon in Austria until the 1990s when prominent cases of so-called “Arisierungen” of real estate and works of art were finally discussed in the broad public. By creating an Austrian-Jewish detective David Bronstein, who navigates a historically accurate context and defies many of the historical myths on which post-1945 Austria had been founded, Pittler clearly takes Austrian Krimis to the next level, a level where historical fiction is intertwined with a critical examination of the country’s past. 6 In Zores , which navigates a narrow time frame from 10 to 12 March 1938, the reader is immediately aware that Bronstein will not be able to practice his profession in Vienna much beyond 12 March 1938, the day the Nazis officially took over Austria. Furthermore, in the novels leading up to 1938, one is constantly wondering how much longer Bronstein will manage to survive in his job. In Charascho , Pittler brings Bronstein back to Vienna in 1945, which is rather unusual for an Austrian-Jew and serves as a reminder of how the Holocaust obliterated Austrian-Jewish culture in Vienna, and of how the city after 1945 was primarily shaped by a population who had more or less supported the Nazi regime. The resistance fighters in Austria were few and far between except for a few Communists, and this becomes quite obvious in Charascho as well. In creating the Bronstein figure, Pittler focuses not only on a minority figure, but also on an unusual story of a Holocaust survivor whose mere existence on Vienna’s police force after 1945 serves as a reminder of how the Holocaust nearly depleted Vienna’s Jewish population that was once had a significant presence within the city. Despite the history lessons that the Bronstein series provides, it is still primarily a detective series about an investigator whose professional integrity guides his life and work. In particular, he makes no distinction in the crimes he investigates on the basis of the ethnic or political background of the vic- 222 Joseph W. Moser tims and perpetrators. Reminiscent of Inspector Foyle in the British ITV series Foyle’s War , Bronstein investigates murder in a time in which political, genocidal, and war-related murder have become commonplace and where the work of a criminal investigator seems trivial, if not obsolete, and solving crimes seems impossible given the chaos of the times. By uncovering murder in such unusual times, both detectives remind readers and viewers that it should be perfectly normal for a detective to investigate a murder case, and thus it is not their work but the historical context that has gone askew. Of course, the main difference between Bronstein and Foyle is that Bronstein not only lives in a world that is crumbling around him, but also is targeted for his ethnic background. Bronstein, unlike Foyle, does not operate within the safe and stable context of the United Kingdom, but rather in a politically and legally most unstable period in Austria’s history. This article focuses on two novels from Pittler’s seven-part series: Zores (2012) and Charascho (2014), which deal with the events of 1938 and 1945 respectively. The novels set before 1938 all have Yiddish titles: Tacheles, Ezzes, Chuzpe, Tinnef, and Zores , which are all recognizable to Viennese readers today, as these words were absorbed into Viennese German before the Holocaust and have remained a part of the vocabulary. 7 Zores means troubles. Charascho —the title of the novel set in 1945—is Russian for “ OK , good.” The title reminds one of the fact that the Red Army was the liberator of Vienna, who brought an end to Nazism. The final novel in the series is called Goodbye (2015), in which Bronstein deals with the Allied occupation of Vienna as well as the withdrawal of the troops in 1955 following the state treaty, hence the English title. The period the Nazis named “Anschluss” (March 1938—April 1945) is characterized not only by a significant regime change and the obliteration of Austrian democratic institutions, but also the beginning of the end for all Austrian Jews as well as for people whom the Nazis deemed to be Jewish within their construct of legalized racial policies. Likewise, the liberation of Vienna by the Red Army is less of a “downfall” but rather an opportunity for a new beginning for the very few Austrian Holocaust survivors who were able and willing to return to their home country. This is an important distinction to make, as many Austrians still see the period from the end of the war to the State Treaty, i. e., 1945 to 1955, as the Besatzungszeit (the period of occupation) instead as a period of liberation from Fascism. 8 In Zores , it is abundantly clear to Bronstein that he is involved in a race against time in solving crimes as his investigations start on Thursday, 10 March 1938, one day before the evening during which Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg surrendered Austria to the Nazis. Bronstein investigates the murder of a major Nazi supporter by the name of Suchy—a fictional character—who has two major Austrian Nazis as rivals: Arthur Seyß-Inquart and Glaise Horstenau, who might Haunting Policework in Andreas Pittler’s Bronstein Detective Series 223 have had a motive to kill him. Other potential motives relate to Suchy’s devotion to his young male followers, whom he may have provided with ideological instruction, which leads to speculations about his sexual orientation. Finally, Suchy owned a cattle-trading business that involves the large-scale import of Hungarian cattle to the Viennese slaughter houses in St. Marx, thus undermining the local competition. Despite the unfolding political events, Bronstein continues to investigate Suchy’s murder, questioning many witnesses and people who may have had diverse motives or connections to Suchy. In fact, he continues his work as if the possible Nazi takeover of Austria would not affect him at all, but pursuing his work up until the last minute is the only way for him to maintain a certain level of normalcy in a time of chaos and uncertainty. One of the witnesses he interviews in his investigation tells him: “Ach, sehen Sie sich doch um, Herr Oberst. Hier geht doch alles den sprichwörtlichen Bach hinunter. Alles versinkt im Chaos. Die Regierung hat doch überhaupt nichts mehr unter Kontrolle. Das halbe Kabinett hört nur noch auf die Anweisungen aus Berlin, und die Beamtenschaft unternimmt alles in ihrer Macht Stehende, um sich auf die Seite der zu erwartenden Sieger zu schlagen. Für Österreich sind doch nur noch die Juden, ein paar unverbesserliche Monarchisten und vielleicht das Häuflein Kommunisten, das es in diesem Lande gibt” (67). Pittler’s novel makes clear that the majority of Austrians were not attached to Schuschnigg’s corporate state, as Bronstein meets characters who are joyfully anticipating the change in power. The historical irony that the Jews supported Schuschnigg’s corporate state out of fear of the Nazis and despite the corporate state’s own anti-Semitism does not go unnoticed in the novel. Schuschnigg’s Ständestaat —an authoritarian state modeled on Mussolini’s Italy—was not very popular because it failed to address current problems while denying people the freedom of democracy and crushing the Social Democrats, a potentially important ally against the Nazis. To many non-Jewish Austrians, the difference between Hitler’s and Schuschnigg’s fascism was not significant while the “Anschluss” to a Greater Germany seemed appealing to many. For Austrian Jews, however, the support of the corporate state was a matter of life and death, as there was no legalized anti-Semitism in Austria prior to the “Anschluss” to Nazi Germany. In depicting Bronstein’s investigation, Pittler uses Viennese dialect to both authenticate the situation and to show social class differences. The novel has a nine-page glossary at the end of the book to translate local terminology into High German. On 11 March 1938, the day of the evening when Schuschnigg resigned, Bronstein’s investigation takes him into Arthur Seyß-Inquart’s office— the man who would replace Schuschnigg as Chancellor briefly under the Nazis until Austria was incorporated into Germany, and who would later become a leading figure in Nazi Germany, ultimately tried and hanged in Nuremberg after 224 Joseph W. Moser the war. Seyß-Inquart’s assistant announces Bronstein: “A Itzig, Herr Doktor. Der traut si da her! ” (“Itzig” was a Nazi slur for Jew). The assistant tries to kick Bronstein out, but the latter counters: “Einen Augenblick, ja! So geht das nicht! […] das ist eine Mordermittlung, und da habe ich das Recht …,” to which the assistant replies: “A Jud hot ka Recht” (144). Beaten up and thrown out of the office Bronstein makes the following realization: “In Bronstein stieg erneut Panik auf. Es ging um seine Existenz, nicht nur um die Österreichs. Mit dem Fall Schuschniggs würde er auch fallen. Er wäre vogelfrei. Jeder könnte ihn niederschlagen, nicht nur ein verrotzter Nazi-Rohling” (147). Nevertheless, he continues his investigations and discovers that Schönberger another (fictional) Nazi killed Suchy because of internal power struggles within the party. Bronstein gets Schönberger to confess and wants to arrest him, but Schönberger tells him that Seyß-Inquart would be Chancellor by next week and that Bronstein would be incarcerated in the prison at Stein, while he would remain free. Nonetheless, Schönberger, who is actually somewhat unsure as to who is currently in power in Vienna on that day, takes flight from Bronstein who pursues him, until Schönberger is struck and run over by a streetcar. In a sense, justice is served, though the problems are just starting to mount for Bronstein, as it is evening now and Schuschnigg has surrendered Austria to Nazi Germany on the radio. It is too late for Bronstein to leave, so he goes home to wait for the morning train to Czechoslovakia. Zores concludes on Saturday, 12 March, only two days after Bronstein opened his investigation. On the radio, he hears the names of: “Hugo Jary, Anton Reinthaller, Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Gegen all diese Leute hatte die Polizei noch bis vor wenigen Tagen ermittelt. Nun waren sie Minister” (222). Nazi criminals have become the leaders of a new Austria within Nazi Germany, and the honest cop Bronstein is on a train to Czechoslovakia. The novel ends with the line “Jsem obcan Ceskoslovenské republicky” (I am a citizen of the Czechoslovak Republic), which Bronstein memorized to escape to Czechoslovakia on a forged Czech passport, which his longtime friend and colleague Cerny, who is known to readers from previous novels, had provided him. This final scene seems like the obvious end of the Bronstein series with no indication of what might happen to Bronstein, but the series continues in the spring of 1945 with Charascho when Bronstein returns from exile in France to solve a murder that occurred in the final days of the war in Vienna when the city was already under attack from the advancing Red Army. Charascho is structured quite differently from Zores. While the latter unfolds quickly within a matter of two days in March 1938 with an obvious caesura caused by the Nazi takeover of Austria, Charascho presents two parallel narratives—that of the murderer, which starts during the battle for Vienna, and that of Haunting Policework in Andreas Pittler’s Bronstein Detective Series 225 Bronstein returning to Vienna two months later in May 1945. The reader knows from the onset who committed the crimes and where the murderer is hiding, and it is therefore Bronstein’s surprising return to and investigation in this wartorn city that is most fascinating, a city which is both home to him and alien after seven years of forced exile. Unlike in Zores there is no hurry to complete the investigation, in fact it seems that as the reconstruction of the city begins and the infrastructure starts to recover in rudimentary ways (resources for the police force such as basic transportation become available) that his work actually becomes more viable. What is similar to Zores for the reader is that Pittler describes a city in both novels which neither the author nor most of his readers experienced. His historically accurate depictions are largely possible because the years 1938 to 1945 are only barely Zeitgeschichte anymore. Today it is hard to imagine everyday life in Vienna in those days, since most readers only know the contemporary peaceful and prosperous city. As mentioned earlier, only three decades ago such a precise and realistic literary representation of 1938 and 1945 that shows Vienna from a very gloomy side, uncovering a haunting past, would have been taboo in Austrian literature. The temporal distance to this dark past, however, makes it possible for readers in Austria to appreciate Pittler’s descriptions of the past that do not adhere to any revisionist historical myths. Charascho delivers an interesting depiction of the long since outdated concept of the Stunde Null (zero hour). The novel starts out with a prologue set in Vienna on Thursday, 12 April 1945, in which Max Burger, a Nazi criminal and former Auschwitz guard who is making his way through and ultimately out of Vienna, is covering his traces and murdering potential witnesses. At the same time in Besançon, France, Bronstein decides to follow a group of Czech resistance fighters who want to return to Czechoslovakia. The continuities represented in the fact that Burger’s crimes were committed in the final days of Nazi rule and uncovered in the newly reconstituted Austria underscore how the concept of Stunde Null does not work historically. There was no easy way for Austrian Jews to return to Vienna in 1945, but through his connections to the Czech resistance, Bronstein can make his way back. Bronstein climbs over rubble to reach his apartment in Vienna’s Walfischgasse and adapts to life in a city to which he has become somewhat estranged. The city’s destruction and the food rationing concern him less than the closure of all Kaffeehäuser —an indication that a lack of coffee in Vienna is the real sign of the apocalypse. He returns to work as a detective for the Viennese police, now under the direction of the Communist Heinrich Dürmeyer. Burger on the other hand finds it increasingly difficult to hide in a country where nobody wants to be officially associated with the crimes committed by the Nazis, and he finds refuge in Fischamend, a town just a few kilometers outside of Vienna. Bronstein and his colleagues manage to apprehend 226 Joseph W. Moser Burger by December 1945, but Burger is not tried in Austria, because too many people in high places fear that their paths may have crossed Burger’s during the Nazi period. Since Burger is also wanted in Poland, he is extradited to bring him to justice without disrupting the new careers of former minor Nazis in Vienna. Again this novel demonstrates how there was no Stunde Null , but rather a transition, in which many so-called minor supporters of the previous regime adapted to the new circumstances. Charascho closes with Bronstein spending Christmas with his friends in Czechoslovakia. His temporary departure from Vienna in December 1945 is very different from the one in March 1938, because he knows that he will be back this time, but Vienna no longer feels like home. Charascho reminds the readers that the few Austrian Jews who survived the Holocaust were not invited back, and that the new leaders of the country had no interest in discussing the Holocaust nor did they want to atone for it. While Bronstein ekes out a living for himself in postwar Vienna, he is now even lonelier than before, as the city’s Jewish population was obliterated while the perpetrators of the genocide were not brought to justice. The Bronstein series does not end in 1945 even though its protagonist retires from his job, but continues on to 1955, which was another milestone in Austrian history when the State Treaty was signed and Austria became a neutral country modeled on Switzerland. The four Allied occupation forces withdrew in 1955, which has been mythologized in Austrian history and is also one of the major differences between postwar West Germany and Austria. Aptly entitled Goodbye: Inspektor Bronsteins Abschied (2015), this last novel in the Bronstein series deals with the final months of the Allied occupation of Austria, a historically unique situation during the Cold War in the mid-1950s because Americans and Soviets were still collaborating in Vienna’s First District, a district jointly administered by the four Allied powers. Yet this required collaboration between two rival armed forces creates the political context for a murder that Bronstein solves in this last novel. Former police chief Vinzenz Seiser, who had been a member of the KPÖ (Communist Party of Austria) and close to the Soviets in his home district of Favoriten (Soviet zone at the time), is found dead. Because his body is found in an unlikely location in the American zone the police decide not to formally pursue the matter, but Inspektor Zedlnitzky who may not officially investigate the case asks Bronstein to investigate on his own, which leads to him solving the case and confronting the murderer, who is the local chief of the American CIA � Just as the foreign ministers of the four Allied countries arrive to sign the State Treaty at the Belvedere Palace, Bronstein has a chance to take decisive action by dropping a flower pot on the perpetrator, who is not killed but injured. Much as with the perpetrator in Zores who is run over by a trolley , justice is served on a person who would not have been tried by the authorities in charge at the time. Haunting Policework in Andreas Pittler’s Bronstein Detective Series 227 Pittler’s novels are a refreshing change in historical fiction from Austria, as his books do not shy away from challenging his readers to confront the darker days of Vienna’s (and Austria’s) past. The fact that his books have been selling well in the Austrian market indicates that Austrian readers are ready to confront their history more openly, and that contemporary readers appreciate detailed historical narratives, even within a fictional framework, about what remains the most difficult part of Austria’s history. Notes 1 See Bruno Kreisky and Zwischen Feder und Fahne: Schriftsteller und Nationalismus as examples of his early non-fiction writing. 2 According to Jonny Moser there were 167,249 Jews in Vienna on 13 March 1938, two days after the Anschluss ( Jonny Moser 16). 3 See McChesney for a detailed discussion of Austrian Krimis. 4 See Nindl 13 for a detailed discussion of Wolf Haas’s use of language. 5 See O’Brien for a detailed analysis of Freudsche Verbrechen � 6 In their critical stance vis-a-vis Austria’s past Andreas Pittler’s Krimis can be compared to those by Wolf Haas and Eva Rossman ( Joseph Moser 138—39). “Tacheles reden” means to speak frankly about an issue; “Ezzes” means “good advice”; “Chuzpe” is “audacity”; and “Tinnef” is “trash.” The concept of “downfall” was recently reintroduced into German-language culture via Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film Der Untergang (2004), which chronicled the final hours in Hitler’s bunker and thereby perpetuated the notion of 1945 as the year of Germany’s “downfall.” Works Cited Foyle’s War . 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