Heldenplatz

Recording from the Burgtheater, 1989

Vienna, March 1988. A few days ago—on the 50th anniversary of Hitler’s march into Vienna—Professor Josef Schuster, an émigré who had returned to Vienna from England, threw himself from the window of his apartment onto Heldenplatz. The housekeeper, Mrs. Zittel, speculates on the reasons behind this act of despair, caused by the anti-Semitic hostility Professor Schuster had faced since his return from exile. The suicide seems all the more incomprehensible given that the professor was determined to emigrate permanently to Oxford to resume his former professorship. He had also hoped that England would bring an improvement in his wife’s mental state; in their apartment on Heldenplatz, she was still haunted by the “Sieg Heil” chants of the jubilant crowd from 1938. After the funeral, Anna and Olga, the deceased’s daughters, and Robert Schuster—whose brother was also a scientist—discuss the changes and decisions that have now become necessary while walking in the Volksgarten. But these practical considerations soon give way to a ruthless assessment of the state of affairs in Austria. Robert Schuster launches into a desperate yet incisive tirade, which he continues in Scene 3—where the widow and her closest family and friends have gathered in the apartment on Heldenplatz after the funeral: An assessment that spares neither Austria’s politicians nor the clergy, nor even the general population, while the professor’s widow is still haunted by the ghosts of the past.