GITTA HONEGGER
495
The play's title alone (literally:
Heroes ' Square)
resounds with many
ironies. It is the name of the square where Hitler was greeted by masses of
Viennese upon his triumphant "invasion" of Vienna in March 1938.
It
is
next to the Imperial Palace - the residence of President Waldheim, which
is connected to the Burgtheater by a park, the Volksgarten, where one
of the play's scenes takes place. Part of the action, saliently set in March
1988, takes place in an apartment with a view of the Heldenplatz.
It
belongs to the family of Professor Schuster, a Viennese Jew who had
emigrated to Oxford, where he taught mathematics. He had returned to
Vienna some time after the war, only to realize twenty years later that
anti-Semitism is resurfacing more ferociously than ever. His wife is
plagued by the sound of the thundering "Sieg Heil" choruses that
greeted Hitler on the Heldenplatz. On the eve of their planned "re-emi–
gration" to Oxford, the professor jumps out the window onto the
Heldenplatz.
The play picks up on the day of his funeral, on the eve of the fam–
ily's move to their Austrian country house instead of to Oxford as origi–
nally intended. The most explosive lines are spoken by a frail, elderly
gentleman, Uncle Robert, while he tries to catch his breath after his
brother's burial, on a park bench in an alley of chestnut trees. Their
branches, bare and mysterious in the misty quiet of an early spring morn–
ing, form a ghostly archway that leads up to the Burgtheater's majestic
side wing (with the windows of the Artistic Director's office above lit
from inside). The evocative setting touches at the core of every Vien–
nese's most intimate experiences - expatriate, detractor, and loyal local,
alike. All of us (including the playwright) have surrendered at one time
or another to the exquisite melancholy that spreads over this historic part
of the city, under the comforting cover of fog that shields its beauty and
mutes its memories.
It
takes the full force of Bernhard's frustrated anger
to clear the fog and expose our own contradictions:
being a Jew in Austria today means being
sentenced to death
people can say and write what they want
the hatred ofJews is Austria's purest
guaranteed unfalsified nature
says Uncle Robert, facing the audience where, in the actual geography of
the scene, the parliament would be.
It certainly was not the first time that Bernhard's characters would
break out into long vituperations against their country, its people, and
its conditions. What was new was that they were Jewish, which added
extra fuel as well as confusion to the controversy that soon avalanched
into a ferocious battle fought out in the time-honored native tradition
