I know three versions of Vienna — one in person, one in history and one in song.
Most of my childhood memories of visiting the Austrian capital include Mozart, Mozart chocolates and the breathtaking St. Stephen's Cathedral, which I once mistook for Cinderella Castle. My father, a visiting professor at the University of Vienna, attempted to explain that we had set foot in one of the world's most beautiful Gothic structures. Still, I was more interested in finding Prince Charming’s room than appreciating the ornately carved pulpit or Baroque stained glass windows. In the summers of 2011–13, my family and I explored the cobbled streets and fanciful imperial gardens that characterized the city of music, and to me, Vienna remained a fairytale city. The summers I spent there were void of the darkness wrought by the infamous Disney villains I feared so deeply. Unbeknownst to five-year-old me, there were villains out there — I just didn’t know them yet.
In Hitler’s Anschluss of 1938, Germany annexed Austria and its capital, and the once vibrant city descended into an authoritarian nightmare. The Jewish people who had lived there, fortified not only by their numbers but also by their spirit and accomplishments, were largely displaced, deported and massacred, often with the enthusiastic support of the Viennese gentiles. They were first deprived of their liberties — such as their education, financial assets and property — and then of their dignity. Holy sites and synagogues were set ablaze, and Viennese Jews were forced into Putzerkolonnen, or cleaning units, and obliged to scrub the settled ashes on the streets with toothbrushes.
There is a small, almost unnoticeable, bronze statue that sits in the Albertinaplatz quarter of Vienna that commemorates the thousands of Jews who suffered in the Anschluss. It is called the “Kneeling Jew,” and it depicts just that: a kneeling Jew, barbed wire encasing his back, scrubbing at the floor with a sponge. My father told me he pointed it out one summer as we passed it on our way to the nearby butterfly museum. I’m not sure I remember seeing it, and if I did, I probably mistook it for one of Snow White’s seven dwarfs.
But between knowing Vienna in person and knowing it in history, I knew it in a song. And the Vienna I know in song is the hardest of them all to explain. Can anybody explain where a song takes them?
While it is a difficult task, I’ll try. “Vienna” (1977) by Billy Joel takes me to a particular place — with my friends and fellow seniors campers of Camp Seneca Lake in 2022. The words never pass between us, but it’s apparent: This could be our last summer together before the inexorable shove into summer internships, gainful employment and inevitably, adulthood. In just a few notes, I am immediately transported back to the fleeting moments of our final summer, indelible memories on the cusps of adulthood.
All thirty of us are packed into a ten-by-eight platform tent meant to sleep four, and my friend turns up the volume on his JBL speaker. Billy Joel plays the introductory bar to “Vienna” as if he’s playing it for us — and we sing. We sing as one. At the end of each summer, the oldest campers choose a song to be their “senior song.” The Senior Campers of 2014 chose “Rivers and Roads” (2011) by The Head And The Heart, which chronicles the heartache of maintaining long-distance friendships in four transcendent minutes. My group chose “Vienna,” or I should really say, “Vienna” chose us.
In the song, Billy Joel sings “Slow down, you crazy child / And take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while / It’s all right, you can afford to lose a day or two.” How did he know the unparalleled bliss we felt as we unplugged for two months? How did he know the joy of having friends who knew us in our natural states, untouched by hair products and social media? As Winnie the Pooh poses, “How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” Somehow, Billy Joel’s “Vienna” answers that question. “Vienna” knew that I was unfathomably lucky.
According to renowned anthropologist Clifford Geertz, “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.” If it’s not Vienna, it is your chair, your hairbrush or the smell of cut grass. They seem so simple until they are threaded in and out of your life, and 10 years later the threads are suddenly a spider web, and they are no longer simple at all. Sigmund Freud, father of psychology and a Viennese Jew, is often attributed with saying that “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” But he knew that was the exception. Things and places shapeshift, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.
That same Freud advised us that “A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.” Vienna has become a complex of mine. It is not so much a place, but an idea or an amalgam of distinct and contradictory ideas. When I listen to Billy Joel’s “Vienna” today, my mind still takes its place in that platform tent, where I once sat surrounded by my camp friends.
Therefore, I dedicate this reflection to them who, unknowingly, helped shape a beautiful association with Vienna when in its place, it could’ve been an ugly one. When I hear the song “Vienna,” or see images of the city itself, my mind first goes to the cherished memories of our last summer, eclipsing the tragedies of the Anschluss. It is my camp friends I have to thank for this, for they are the ones who helped me reconcile the past with the present, and find meaning in both.
I know three versions of Vienna—one in person, one in history and one in song. I try my best to remember the first, at times I wish I never learned about the second, and I hope I never forget the third.
