The time for autobiographies has arrived. Interest in authentic
life stories seems greater than ever, even greater than well
written works of fiction, because readers begin to recognise that
nothing is more fantastic than the complicated reality through
which we are forced to make our way. Accounts of everyday life have
long since become a source of historic insight, and even historians
are beginning to admit that concrete vignettes of an
autobiographer's life are often better able to portray what the
past was really like. All of this holds true for the memoirs of
Jakob Ludwig Heller, who lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
during the 19th and 20th centuries. The records that he left behind
reveal that nostalgic individuals were not far wrong in viewing the
Empire, and its era as the quintessence of an intact world. Of
course, things were not as peaceful and happy for everyone in the
Danube monarchy, but compared with today's world, Jakob Ludwig
Heller's milieu was a true idyll, where marriages endured, family
ties were strong, hard work was rewarded, and people rejoiced over
simple social gatherings.;Upbringing was strict, but caring, the
children were well behaved, and earning a living was fun. Long live
progress! The feeling that what he describes is lost forever is
magnified further by the fact that he grew up in a Jewish, Central
European milieu, where Jews perhaps did not live without tensions
among neighbours of other faiths, but did live without being
persecuted, robbed, and murdered. Not only Jewish readers will
regret the loss of that normal way of life. Near the end of his
memoirs, in retrospect the diarist complains about the inexplicable
intrusions of lax morals, the disappearance of fixed norms, and the
lack of the earlier, ever-present feeling of security and
continuity. What would he say today? But what makes the reading of
this simple story so rewarding, apart from the historic
information, is the intelligent, humorous, warm-hearted man who is
encountered on every page. His comments about the First World War
are especially touching. Despite his extensive life experience,
they betray his naive belief in Germany and Austria, in the
government and the army.;He is convinced that the Central Powers
fight for a just cause at a time when Karl Kraus is writing "The
Last Days of Mankind". But in those days, the great satirist was
still quite alone with his opinion. Most of the Jews, even most of
the people, probably felt as did Jakob Ludwig Heller. And the
waning of those certainties is the greatest tragedy of all, a sign
of the insurmountable distance between our world and that of the
past.
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