The Burning of the World: A Memoir of 1914 (21 page)

1
.   An ancient Croatian hill town a few kilometers inland from Novi.

2
.   Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia at midday on Tuesday, July 28, 1914. Public news of this probably reached Novi on July 29, with notices calling up reservists as part of mobilization against Serbia posted the same day. BZM had six days to report for duty in Veszprém, in western Hungary, with a recently formed infantry regiment of the Royal Hungarian Army (
Magyar Királyi Honvédség
, literally “Hungarian Royal Homeland Defense Force”—abbreviated to
Honvéd
).

3
.   Hungary had risen in revolt against Austrian rule in 1848—“the year of revolutions.” Although the rebellion was crushed, it signaled the revival of Hungarian nationhood.

4
.   Zsigmond Sebők (1861–1916), Hungarian journalist and writer of children’s literature. He edited the children’s magazine called
Jó Pajtás
(Good Pal), produced by the Franklin publishing house, for which BZM drew illustrations.

5
.   1882–1932; Hungarian painter and graphic artist and friend and colleague of BZM at the Budapest School of Applied Arts, where he taught costume design.

6
.   Novi Vinodolski is one of several picturesque towns on the section of northern Adriatic coastline belonging to pre-1919 Croatia. With the connection of Fiume (Rijeka) to the railway network in 1873, this area attracted genteel summer visitors from all over Austria-Hungary. Croatia-Slavonia, though part of the Kingdom of Hungary, enjoyed a degree of self-government. Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia were provinces of Austria.

7
.   The sailors are, presumably, Croats, on their way to Austria-Hungary’s naval base at Pola. Their song satirizes the Hungarians.

8
.   1859–1929; Hungarian journalist and writer. He co-edited
Jó Pajtás
with Zsigmond Sebők.

9
.   Cherso (Cres), Veglia (Krk), Arbe (Rab), and Lussino (Lošinj) are islands off the Istrian coast, famous as beauty spots. It is presumably one of these that Gustav Aschenbach, at the beginning of Thomas Mann’s
Death in Venice
, finds uncongenial and abandons for Venice.

10
. The Eight (
A Nyolcak
) was a group of avant-garde Hungarian painters, formed in 1909 and influenced by fauvism, cubism, and expressionism. Its members were Róbert Berény (1887–1953), Dezső Czigány (1883–1937), Béla Czóbel (1883–1976), Károly Kernstok (1873–1940), Ödön Márffy (1878–1959), Dezső (Desiderius) Orbán (1884–1986), Bertalan Pór (1880–1964), and Lajos Tihanyi (1885–1938). The group’s 1911 exhibition in Budapest created a sensation and sharply divided critical opinion.

11
. Kraljevica, Croatia.

12
. Now the Croatian city of Rijeka, Fiume was Hungary’s seaport until 1918 and the maritime outlet for the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

13
. A strong winter wind in the eastern Adriatic.

BUDAPEST AT WAR

1
.   The express service covered the 502 kilometers between the two cities in under twelve hours.

2
.   BZM had served as a “one-year volunteer” in 1909 (instead of doing the normal two or—in the common army—three years of compulsory military service) after completion of his studies at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. One-year volunteers had to meet an educational requirement and pay for their own clothing, food, and equipment. At the end of their year, they passed into the reserve. Those like BZM who subsequently passed a qualifying examination received an officer’s commission with the rank of ensign in the reserve.

3
.   The chorus of a jingoistic song of this title (“Megállj, megállj, kutya Szerbia!”), which enjoyed great popularity in the first weeks of the war.

4
.   “Toreador, love awaits you!” From the “Toreador’s Song” in Bizet’s
Carmen
.

5
.   In fact, his stepmother. BZM’s mother died in 1895.

6
.   From a ribald folk song.

7
.   1885–1954; Hungarian painter and graphic artist.

8
.   1872–?; Hungarian painter.

9
.   1885–1924; Hungarian painter.

10
. 1870–1911; Hungarian painter.

11
. The Nagykörút (Great Ring Road), built in 1896, is a grand semicircular boulevard around the center of Pest, modelled on the famous Ringstrasse in Vienna.

12
. This is probably Friday, July 31, 1914, when both Russia and Austria-Hungary declared general mobilization; a state of readiness for imminent war (
Kriegsgefahrzustand
) was proclaimed in Germany; and a German ultimatum was sent to Russia. The risk that Austria-Hungary’s war on Serbia might trigger a continental war thus became a virtual certainty. The newspaper in front of whose offices—next door to the famous New York Café—the scene takes place was probably
Az Est
(Evening).

13
. 1882–?; Hungarian painter.

14
. 1884–1949; Hungarian painter.

15
. The Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, where BZM studied from 1903 to 1908. He refers to it by a student nickname of the day,
a Tökéria
(the Perfectery)—a play on the institution’s founding mission “to contribute to the perfecting of every branch of the nation’s fine arts.”

16
.
Fészek
means “nest.” This was one of the coffeehouses frequented by artists and critics; from about 1916, it became a haunt of radicals and the literary avant-garde. Not to be confused with the artists’ club of the same name, of which BZM was a leading member.

17
. Probably the Hungarian painter Sándor Teplánszky (1886–1944).

18
. 1860–1931; Hungarian painter.

VESZPRÉM

1
.  A historic city in western Hungary, close to the eastern end of Lake Balaton.

2
.   The
Ausgleich
(Compromise) of 1867 established the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary as a union between the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary under a head of state who was both emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. Accordingly, at a ceremony in St. Matthias Church, Budapest, on June 8, 1867, Emperor Franz Joseph I was crowned king of Hungary by the Hungarian prime minister, Count Andrássy, and Archbishop Simor of Esztergom. Franz Joseph’s consort, the Empress Elisabeth of Bohemia, was crowned queen by Bishop Ranolder.

3
.   An early indication, perhaps, of the resort to the printing presses to meet the enormous costs of the war. The amount of paper money in circulation doubled between July 1914 and December 1915, fueling inflation.

4
.   Istvan Medgyaszay (1877–1959) was a Hungarian architect, noted for his use of motifs from Hungarian folk art on buildings in the idiom of the Vienna
Sezession
.

5
.   1845–1914. A leading and prolific exponent of the
Sezession
style of architecture in Hungary. Many of his designs incorporate brightly colored tiling inspired by folk art.

6
.   A traditional Hungarian spirit, typically distilled from apricot, plum, or pear. Its alcohol content can be up to seventy-five percent by volume.

7
.   A high-security prison in an old fortress in northern Slovakia, notorious for the harshness of its regime.

8
.   Hungarian was the language of command in the Royal Hungarian Army. The other junior officers, including BZM, had presumably done their military service in the “common” army of the monarchy—the
kaiserliches und königliches
(“
k.u.k.
”)
Heer
, or Imperial and Royal Army—in which the language of command was German.

9
.   An order of chivalry founded during the First Crusade.

10
. “It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.” The Latin proverb’s probable origin in the
History of the Peloponnesian War
of Thucydides (book VII, chapter 75) makes it seem particularly apt.

11
. Ferenc Pogány (1888–1946); member of the Royal Hungarian opera company 1912–1926. He was taken prisoner by the Russians and held in captivity until 1920. He was, in fact, a baritone.

12
. József (Joseph) Diskay (1889–1960); member of the Royal Hungarian opera company. He emigrated to the USA in 1919 and pursued a career in Hollywood.

13
. A town at the western end of Lake Balaton.

THE MARCH

1
.   The first verse of a traditional Hungarian folk song.

DEPLOYMENT

1
.   1848, i.e., the Hungarian revolt against Austrian rule.

2
.   An Austrian possession from 1772, Galicia extended north and east from the Carpathian Mountains to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s long border with Russia. This strategically important territory, with Lemberg (L’viv) as provincial capital and a major military stronghold at Przemysl, saw a succession of titanic clashes between four Austro-Hungarian and five Russian armies from the opening days of the war until 1916. After a tentative initial advance into Russian territory, Austro-Hungarian troops fell back but won the Battle of Zamosc-Komarów (August 26 to September 2, 1914). However, the decisive engagement of this first phase of the Galician campaign was the Battle of Rava Ruska, which began on September 6, 1914. BZM’s regiment, the Veszprém 31st Honvéd Infantry (of the 41st Honvéd Infantry Division of the Third Army), was in the thick of the battle; having already suffered heavy losses, it now needed urgent replenishment.

INTO THE FIRE

1
.   The German and Polish spelling is Rawa Ruska (sometimes Rawa-Russka); now Rava-Rus’ka, Ukraine, close to the border with Poland. In 1914 the town was twenty-four kilometers from the Russian border. BZM’s unit probably arrived there on September 7, 1914, the second day of the battle, in which some 300,000 troops were engaged along a ten-kilometer sector of the front.

2
.   Dabrovka (Dubrivka) is about five kilometers south of Rava Ruska.

3
.   Once it had acquired range, a battery of field artillery would lay down concentrated fire to “sweep” a given target area. The other side’s reserve troops would be held what was considered a safe distance outside that area until required in the front line, but remained vulnerable to “nuisance fire.”

4
.   Austro-Hungarian military doctrine required infantry to advance line abreast in “firing lines” (
Schwarmlinien
).

5
.   The Steyr-Mannlicher M1895 rifle was the standard infantry weapon of the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I.

6
.   The distinctive standard knapsack (
Tornister
) issued to Austro-Hungarian troops had a pony-skin or cowhide front flap.

7
.   Legislation to increase military expenditure and enlarge and re-equip the army introduced in the Hungarian parliament in 1910 was held up for two years by the nationalist opposition, who demanded the introduction of Magyar as the language of command in Hungarian units of the common army and equality of Hungarian with Austrian flags and insignia.

8
.   From the aria “E lucevan le stelle” in Puccini’s
Tosca
, sung by Cavaradossi as he awaits execution.

9
.   Kassa (Košice), the second largest city in Slovakia. The lower ranks of the 34th “common army” infantry regiment, which was based there, were preponderantly Slovaks.

10
. Artillery shells packed with steel or lead balls, which are projected forward when a small charge at the base of the shell explodes near the end of the shell’s trajectory.

11
. A type of artillery shell first used in World War I. Unlike a shrapnel shell, it contains a powerful explosive, bursting the entire shell into fragments propelled in all directions with great force.

12
. The villages of Magierov (Maheriv) and Dobrosin (Dobrosyn) are about ten kilometers apart and roughly fifteen kilometers to the south and southeast, respectively, of Rava Ruska. The main front during the battle had run roughly north-south through this area.

13
. A general retreat of the Austro-Hungarian First, Second, Third, and Fourth Armies from Galicia to the Carpathian Mountains—a distance of over a hundred kilometers—was ordered late on September 11, 1914, when the Russians threatened to encircle the Second, Third, and Fourth Armies from the north and the Germans declined to come to their aid.

14
. This was putting it mildly. Austro-Hungarian casualties in the war’s disastrous first two weeks totalled 400,000 men, including 100,000 taken prisoner by the Russians. The regular officer class was virtually wiped out. Russia lost 250,000 men, of whom 40,000 were taken prisoner.

15
. The “castle” is probably the Poniński palace in Horyniec (now Horyniec-Zdrój, Poland), some eighteen kilometers southwest of Rava Ruska. The building survives as a sanatorium.

BACK TO LIFE

1
.   Lubaczow lies some seventeen kilometers west of Horyniec.

2
.   Ruthene (Rusyn) would be intelligible to a speaker of Slovak.

3
.   This Jewish shtetl cannot be identified with certainty, but might be the village of Wulka (Wólka) Horyniecka. Its entire population would be among the approximately 434,500 Jews murdered between March and December 1942 at the Nazi extermination camp at Belzec, about twenty-five kilometers to the north.

4
.   BZM writes that the name was “something that sounded like ‘Rammia,’” but it can confidently be identified as Basznia (Basznia Dolna), which lies approximately midway between Horyniec and Lubaczow and is the only stop on the railway line between those two places. The unmetalled direct track from Horyniec joins the road at this point.

5
.   Consciously or otherwise, BZM seems to be paraphrasing (or parodying) Théodore Géricault’s celebrated painting
The Raft of the Medusa.

6
.   A rusty-purplish artist’s pigment.

7
.   Now Nowy Sącz,, in southern Poland.

8
.   “Hail, Caesar; those about to die salute you.” Quoted by Suetonius in
The Lives of the Caesars
and attributed to prisoners condemned to die in mock battle before the Roman emperor Claudius. BZM may also have in mind a painting of the subject by Jean-Léon Gérôme.