The enormous weight of the trunks used by some travellers not infrequently inflicts serious injury on the hotel and railway porters who have to handle them. Travellers are therefore urged to place their heavy articles in the smaller packages and thus minimize the evil as far as possible. (Baedeker, Austria-Hungary, 1911)
It was a chilly day for the season in Vienna, rather windy, and the occasional rain shower made things worse. Colonel Redl had travelled all the way from Prague and went straight to his room at Hotel Klomser, a striking building in the old town, part of a larger complex that had been known as the Palais Batthyány-Strattmann for almost two centuries. Why the hotel? Redl had his own flat in Vienna. Was its location not central enough? Did he prefer to remain less visible?
Vienna, the ancient capital of the Austrian Empire and residence of the Emperor, had become the capital of the Cisleithanian half of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. It was the seat of the government of the grand-duchy of Lower Austria, residence of a Roman Catholic prince-archbishop, and headquarters of the 2nd Corps of the Austro-Hungarian army. Vienna covered an area almost as big as London. More than 2 million people lived here before the start of the First World War, making Vienna the fourth in size among the capitals of Europe.
The mighty Danube still flows through the city today and meets the waters of the Wien. But Redl’s Vienna was a very different city then – although dominated by reactionary, conservative structures it was also an Eldorado of the arts and a capital of science, linked to names such as Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig, who wrote:
It was an ordered world with definite classes and calm transitions, a world without haste. The rhythm of the new speed had not yet carried over from the machines, the automobile, the telephone, the radio, and the aeroplane, to mankind; time and age had another measure.1
On this particular day, 24 May 1913, Alfred Redl had no eyes for Vienna’s beauty. Just a few hours later, in the early hours of 25 May, the former head of the counter-intelligence branch of the Intelligence Bureau of Austria-Hungary was found dead in his hotel room. He had shot himself through the mouth. The projectile was found stuck in his skull.
Why had this successful and highly regarded man decided to end his own life? His career had flourished. Only the year before, he had left his post in Vienna to become chief of staff of the 8th Army Corps in Prague. He had a bright future ahead of him, and was even regarded as a potential candidate for the post of war minister.
News about his suicide hit the local press the next day. The gun had slipped out of his hands; his whole face had been covered in blood (Wiener Neueste Nachrichten, 26 May 1913). They all agreed: he had been ‘mentally disturbed’. This was in fact the commonly accepted explanation for suicide, with a long tradition. In pre-modern society someone who committed suicide of free will had no right to a Christian burial.
In Redl’s case the reasons for his mental health problems seemed obvious. A man of duty who had dedicated his life to the army, he had worked much too hard which had led to what we nowadays call ‘burnout’. Wiener Neueste Nachrichten called him ‘one of our most driven and efficient officers of the General staff’ and claimed that he had recently suffered from sleepless nights.
But while most journalists tried to outdo each other with their praise for the deceased’s outstanding honesty, the first rumours started to spread. 3,000 Austrian kronen had allegedly been found in his hotel room. The Neueste Wiener Tagblatt announced that they had already started to investigate these claims. This was published on 26 May, just one day after the suicide. Nevertheless, a young journalist in Prague would later claim that it had been his article in the German-language newspaper Bohemia that had first raised doubts about this soldier’s clean slate.
Egon Erwin Kisch had been born in Prague, the ‘marketplace full of sensations’ in 1885 and later earned a reputation as the ‘raging reporter’. In his early days he had already become acquainted with ‘fanatics for liberty, anti-authoritarians, egalitarians, full of hatred against cowards and strivers and militarism … , they gave me a lot of their precious hatred for the privileged society, something I am honestly grateful for’.2
He started off as a local reporter, first for the Prager Tagblatt, then for the Bohemia. The Bohemia was a conservative paper, progovernment and anti-Czech. Kisch was only 21 years old when he got offered a job. He soon focused on the lower classes, on their everyday lives dominated by poverty, and on criminal affairs. Here, in the poorest parts of the city, in the pubs and brothels, he developed his famous style of investigative journalism. His articles got published in the paper’s Saturday supplement, and they were so successful that he later published them in his book ‘Adventures in Prague’.
Unfortunately for our case, Kisch wasn’t always too particular about the truth. As Viera Glosíková from Charles University in Prague, puts it:
Kisch always knew that information alone is not enough. He realized he had to grab the readers’ attention and amuse them. He applied literary means, lyrical touches, dialogues, descriptions, and a lot of tension. He would follow a story and only disclose its essence at the very end.3
Over the years Kisch published four different versions of his Redl story, and his descriptions of the course of events was mostly accepted as definitive.
Kisch claimed in several of his books that he had been the first to argue that Redl had been entangled in the world of espionage, in bold print on top of page 1 of the Bohemia. As a matter of fact, it was page 2 of the evening edition on 27 May, and on the same day Die Zeit in Vienna also mentioned a possible connection. This was a crucial turn, as Die Zeit was a paper read in and obtaining information from officers’ circles, certainly not an anti-monarchist organ.
Rumours are circulating in Vienna that Colonel of the General staff Redl committed the suicide we reported yesterday because he was entangled in an affair of espionage. The Officers he kept company with shortly before his death confronted him with the incriminating evidence, Colonel Redl preferred to avoid further investigations through death within a given time frame.4
Nevertheless, Kisch’s approach was one of a kind and still entertains today, as he brought out the news in the form of a denial, to avoid the confiscation of the article:
There was one difficulty that seemed insurmountable. How could one intimate that an Austrian chief of staff was in the pay of a foreign nation? How could one print such news in an Austrian paper without immediate confiscation? only by a surprise play. (…) We would risk the suppression of the evening edition by bringing out the news in the form of a denial.
Thus, in bold and on the most prominent part of the first page, we wrote: ‘We have been asked by higher authority to deny the rumours that have arisen especially in military circles, that the Chief of the General staff of the Prague Army Corps, Colonel Alfred Redl, who committed suicide the day before yesterday in Vienna, had been a spy in the service of Russia and had betrayed the military secrets of his country.’ (…) Such denials are well understood by the reader. The effect is just the same as if you said, ‘No proof has been found that X is a cardsharp.’ But the confiscation of such a denial was difficult, the official censor of the State Press Bureau had to assume it had come either from the Corps Commander or from one of the Ministries in Vienna.5
So how could he have been so sure that there was any truth behind those rumours? What made him take the risk of going public with such serious allegations? According to Kisch, it had all started with a football match. In those days he was chairman of the second-rate football club Sturm, the only German group that would play against a Czech team. The Sunday game against Union Holeschowitz was an important one, as its outcome decided the club’s championship prospects. The team relied heavily on their right back, a man called Hans Wagner, a locksmith by profession. But he never turned up. Sturm lost the match, and Kisch was furious.
Wagner turned up the next day in Kisch’s office and explained his absence:
‘I was already dressed to go when a soldier came into our shop and said that someone had to go at once to the army corps headquarters to break open a lock.’
‘Don’t tell me any lies. Such a job wouldn’t take more than five minutes. And we delayed the kickoff for a full hour.’
‘It took three hours. I had to break into an apartment, then open up all the drawers and closets. There were two gentlemen from Vienna, one of them must have been a Colonel. They were looking for Russian papers and for photographs of military plans.’
‘Whose house was it?’
‘I believe it belonged to a General. It was a big apartment, on the second floor.’6
Kisch put two and two together. The apartment could only have belonged to suicide victim Alfred Redl. This was a sensation, just what a young promising journalist needed to further his career.
The real name of the locksmith who was called to Redl’s flat was Wenzel Kučirek. Kisch’s biographer Michael Horowitz reckons that even the football match was pure fiction from the start. Still, Kisch has for a long time been regarded as the discoverer of the ‘scandal of the century’. His depiction of the events that eventually led to Redl’s death, again reality blurred with fiction, was taken for granted and had a formative influence on numerous other writers and filmmakers – more about this later.
In Vienna the situation changed significantly on 28 May, the day of Alfred Redl’s funeral. The initial official statement by the Royal and Imperial Telegraphic News Bureau had proclaimed that the funeral would be attended ‘by all high ranking officers in the capital, by all troops off duty, and by the cadets of all nearby military academies’.
Funerals in Vienna played an important part in the city’s everyday life, as Otto Friedlaender ironically remembers in his autobiography Letzter Glanz der Maerchenstadt (Last Glory of the Fairy Tale City).
There are plenty of ‘funeral amateurs’ amongst the population of Vienna who never miss a beautiful funeral. They are busy people as there are so many beautiful funerals every day. Poor people save up all their lives for a splendid funeral with a magnificent lying in state and a gala hearse.7
The actual scenario at Vienna Central Cemetery was rather different. Once again Die Zeit knew all the details and reported how the crowd reacted with great anger when at 12.50 two men appeared carrying the coffin, one of them casually dressed. Only a handful of family members were present, including Redl’s two brothers. The coffin was lifted onto a plain hearse drawn by two horses. Not a single military official turned up, no funeral march, no drum-roll or volleys over the grave escorted the Colonel to his final resting place.
But much to the annoyance of the military leadership, two of the wreaths that were laid originated from their own ranks. One is thought to have been offered by the regiment Redl’s brother belonged to, the second one carried a ribbon with the inscription ‘The Friend to the Friend’, and displayed the name Major Friedrich Novak. An order was given to remove both wreaths, and the cemetery management obliged.
By now, the press had tasted blood and became unstoppable in their thirst for more. On the day of the funeral the Prager Tagblatt quoted Die Zeit (so did other papers) and had intended to write in more detail about the Colonel’s alleged espionage activities – but it got seized.
The next day the Socialists’ Arbeiterzeitung (Workers’ Newspaper) came up with the headline: ‘The Colonel of the General Staff – a Spy?’ It refers to the article published by Die Zeit and continues: ‘If you know about the custom to “kindly invite” officers who have committed serious infamy to shoot themselves in order to avoid a court case and conviction, you will conclude from this description that it must have been the same in Redl’s case.’
And it went on: if he really was a spy, he clearly must have worked for the Russians. And without doubt he would have been ‘the most dangerous spy’ of all. The journalist gives a long description of Redl’s expert appearances at court.
The way he talked about all things military showed that he had absolute trust in his own knowledge. You got the impression he really knew what he was talking about. The second expert looked like an utter fool compared to Redl. If they really had managed to buy such a gifted Officer of the general staff, who was highly experienced in both theory and practice of espionage and had the best career prospects, this was surely one of the biggest oddities that had ever emerged from militarism.
And he finishes: ‘the mighty military officials will surely realise that it is now too late to try to cover things up or deny the truth’.8
The ‘mighty officials’ had already got the message. Also on 29 May they issued an official communiqué. Redl had ‘committed suicide after proven acts of grave misconduct: 1. Homosexual intercourse that led to financial problems. 2. Sale of secret official documents to agents of foreign powers.’
The one-horse cabs (Einspaenner or Comfortables) have 1–3 seats; those with a pair of horses (Fiaker) have either two seats only (known as Zweisitzer) or four seats (known as Viersitzer). There are also Taximeter Cabs and Taximeter Motor Cabs. The ‘fiakers’ have rubber tyres and drive at a good pace. (Baedeker, Austria-Hungary, 1911)
On 30 May the Prager Tagblatt joked: the mobilisation plans of the 8th Army Corps had disappeared. Redl had been so upset about this that he committed suicide . . .
Of course, the crucial questions behind these lines are: which secrets had he betrayed to the enemy? And why on earth had the commission allowed the accused to take the truth to his grave? There was perfectly good reason to assume that the main reason behind the ‘generous permission’ that had been granted to the Colonel was the attempt to cover up the scandal the army officials knew would hit them like a storm. ‘So let’s play the comedy about the knightly atonement! Then nobody will ever know anything about the embarrassing story, and the rabble of civilians won’t get disrupted in their belief in all things military.’ And: ‘Don’t even think about approaching the army with frankness. If you want to talk about the army you have to do so bright-eyed and with passion … appearance everywhere and at all times is all that counts in Austria.’9
In Redl’s case, the officials had acted like amateurs and foolishly harmed their own cause. They had allowed the man who’d had the most intimate knowledge of the Empire to escape. Not only did they not know what he had told the enemy, or even who the enemy was. Unfortunately, they had also failed to find out who his collaborators were. The latter were left undisturbed in their midst. And of course, there was a good chance that the clever spy had also sold military secrets of the German Reich – not exactly a trivial matter.
It finally dawned on them that they had messed things up badly. They had to come up with a new story to save their necks. And so they did, through the Fremdenblatt, their unofficial voice. They produced the story that, part authentic, part fabricated, became legendary and got replicated in a range of variations throughout the twentieth century in film and literature.10
In this new version, poor old Redl appeared as the victim of ‘moral misconduct’. All this unspeakable behaviour had of course happened a long time ago, when he was a young man. There were people who knew of the poor young chap’s sins, and started to blackmail him. Even one of his own servants was said to have been one of them. He was only a Captain when his debts started to get out of hand, and Redl was worried that this would cost him his career. When he was almost completely crushed a helping hand appeared – an agent from a foreign power.
Redl couldn’t resist. He became one of their most valuable spies ever. They also threatened to tell his secret, should he not satisfy their demands. Needless to say, his superiors had harboured serious suspicions. Certain military measures that had only been at planning stage started to get implemented by neighbouring powers. And not only did Redl suddenly appear debt-free, he started to lead a rather luxurious life, binge drinking champagne, pocketing 100,000 Austrian kronen in the last winter alone and driving two expensive automobiles. If anybody asked he replied that he had inherited the money.
Our clever superiors decided it was now time for a trap. They sent a false invitation that invited him to Vienna, to meet an agent they assumed was one of his contacts. Redl acted immediately, travelled to the capital in his own automobile, accompanied by a servant, and checked into a first-class hotel.
So far so good; now he left his own car at the hotel to meet the agent. The authorities checked the car and conveniently found: a Browning pistol, a case for a pocket knife and scraps of paper. Redl had already been slightly worried when the agent had not turned up at the agreed place. It got much worse when he returned to his hotel. Although he was in civilian clothes, a stranger awaited him with the case for his knife and the words: ‘Colonel Redl, you left this in your car.’ He immediately assumed that this stranger was a police agent and that the car had been searched.
He found four officers waiting outside his room. They confronted him with the accusations and the unpleasant news that enough proof had already been discovered in Redl’s Prague domicile. The officers then left him to it, and Redl left the hotel, though only for a short while and, of course, under close surveillance. Two officers stayed in the hotel. When Redl returned between 8pm and 9pm, he found on his table a Browning (not his own) and an instruction booklet for the same, just in case the Colonel had forgotten how to handle firearms.
Whoever had placed it there had kindly left it open on the page that describes how to pull the trigger. Dutifully, he instantly decided to commit suicide. He wrote several farewell letters, each annotated with the hour it had been composed. At 4am the servant was asked to check on his master. He found him lying in a pool of blood. He had killed himself at about 2am in front of the mirror. Nobody had heard the shot, not even the couple and their daughter next door, who only woke up when they heard the servant screaming for help. He constantly questioned how his master had acquired the Browning as it wasn’t his own. The officers and police agents left the hotel when news reached them. Soon afterwards a military commission arrived and seized everything they found in the room.
This material was perfect for a writer like Kisch. He combined the stories, changed the course of action here and there and embellished it with dramatic details. The following excerpts have been taken from his fourth and last adaption, published in his books Prager Pitaval and Marktplatz der Sensationen (Sensation Fair):
Early in the year 1913 two letters reached the general delivery department of Vienna’s main Post Office. Both letters carried the identifying cypher ‘Opera Ball 13’, typed out on a machine. They had been posted at Eydtkuhnen, a town on the German-Russian border. These letters aroused a certain suspicion, all the more so when they were opened and found to contain Austrian banknotes – six thousand Kronen in one, eight thousand in the other (…).
Two Secret Service men, Ebinger and Steidl, were dispatched to the Post Office, to keep a constant watch. They had a room connected electrically with the general delivery wicket, so if anyone called for the letters they could be immediately notified by the employee in charge of that window, who had simply to ring a bell. (…)
On the evening of May 24, 1913, a Saturday, five minutes before the official closing hour, the bell began to ring in the room of the Secret Service men, stirring them out of their accustomed calm. Before they could reach the general delivery window, where the employee had taken as long as he could without arousing undue suspicion on the part of the receiver, the latter had already taken his ‘Opera Ball’ letters and left.
They hurried after the man and were able to catch a glimpse of a portly gentleman slamming shut the door of a taxicab just as it rolled away from the curb where it had been parked. … But now, for both of them and for the Austrian army as well, there began a whole series of incredible coincidences, sheer blind luck.
The two police agents stood on the Kolowat Ring and debated with themselves. Should they chase up the driver at once and invent some fairy tale about a hot chase in which the quarry had nevertheless made a getaway? (…) While they were still trying to make up their minds, they blinked; for there, suddenly, was the taxi which twenty minutes before had carried off their prize. The very same number; they signalled, they whistled, they screamed, they gave chase. The taxi stopped. It was empty.
The detectives decide to board the vehicle and follow the unknown individual through Vienna. In the interior of the cab they find: ‘a case or sheath for a pocketknife, made of light grey cloth. (…)’. Their chase ends at the hotel Klomser where Steidl instructs the porter to find out which of the guests the case belongs to. Down the stairs comes Redl, ‘… in uniform, buttoning his gloves’. He stops at the desk and lays down the key to room Number One. In the telephone booth meanwhile Detective Ebinger is reporting that by coincidence Colonel Redl is also stopping at the Klomser. Should they report to the Colonel? ‘Is it possible that the spy may have purposely taken the room here in order to get close to the Colonel?’
‘Did you happen to lose the case to your knife?’ the porter asks Colonel Redl, while in the booth opposite, Ebinger is telling his chief what they found in the taxi. ‘Yes,’ says Colonel Redl, and taking his knife out of his pocket he slips it into the light grey case, ‘I’ve been missing it for the last fifteen minutes. Where did you find – ‘
In the midst of his question he stops, for he knows the answer. (…) With a sudden jerk he turns around and notices a man who seems to be making a great show of being deeply interested in turning over the pages of the register. Colonel Redl knows the man. That was when Colonel Redl turned pale as death, for he knew at once that he was a dead man.
He stepped out into the street, walked away rapidly. (…) Meanwhile the two Secret Service men are still on Redl’s tail. They catch sight of him in a passageway. And he too catches sight of them. He tears up papers and throws the bits on the floor. He thinks that one of the detectives will stop to gather up the shreds, and it will be easier then to slip away from the other. (…)
These scraps of paper were conveyed at once to the Board of Investigation where they were put together. They turned out to be postal receipts for money orders sent to a lieutenant in the Uhlans (lancers) at Stockerau, and for registered letters sent to Brussels, Warsaw and Lausanne. (…)
In the Klomser Hotel, just a few hours before, Colonel Redl had received a visit from Lieutenant Stefan Hromadka, an officer in the Uhlans at Stockerau, and as pretty as a picture. They had had a long discussion over their friendship, which the dear boy wished to break up in order to marry. At half-past five Lieutenant Hromadka had left, and ten minutes later Colonel Redl stepped out in order to go to the Post Office to claim his money. He had been putting the matter off for weeks because there was a certain amount of risk involved. But now he had no choice. He had promised Stefan an auto. He thought that if the two of them were to take a long cross-country trip together, the separation of Stefan from his fiancée might make him forget his intention to marry.
In the meantime, Colonel Urbanski von Ostrymiecz, who led the Board of Investigation, reported to the Head of the General Staff, General Conrad von Hoetzendorf.
‘Spit it out, August! I’m prepared for the worst.’
‘Your Excellency, the man is Colonel Redl.’
‘Who, are you mad?’ Hoetzendorf exclaimed. ‘Are you trying to make a fool of me?’ (…) General Conrad von Hoetzendorf had sunk into his chair and was holding both hands against his heart. (…)
‘That wretch must die at once!’
(…)
At midnight four high ranking officers appear at the Hotel Klomser. They knock at the door of room Number One. A hoarse ‘Come in’ is heard and the quartet step inside. Colonel Redl is seated at his table and twice makes an effort to rise but each time falls back in his chair. Finally he stands, swaying. ‘I know why you gentlemen have come,’ he manages to say. (…)
The commission asks Redl about his accomplices.
‘I have none,’ he replies.
‘Who induced you to become a spy?’
‘The Russian military attaché in Vienna, he forced me – because he found out – that – that I am – a homosexual.’
The four officers shiver with disgust; (…)
The General: ‘You may request a weapon, Herr Redl.’
Redl: ’I – humbly – request a – revolver.’
(…)
The detective who was called up at five o’clock in the morning was Ebinger. He was ordered to go up to Colonel Redl’s room. (…) A few minutes later Ebinger reported to the commission, ‘The room was not locked. I opened the door. Colonel Redl was lying dead near the sofa.’
Urbański von Ostrymiecz went to Prague and reported to Baron Giesl, the Commanding Officer of the Army Corps. After lunch they went to Redl’s apartment. It was locked and no one had a duplicate key. And while the commission is standing in front of this locked door, I am standing on the football field of Holleschowitz. Our match is scheduled to begin, but our ending, Wagner, has not arrived.11
This last sentence alone exemplifies nicely how the journalist Kisch likes to give way to the fiction writer. The locksmith on duty was in fact called Wenzel Kučirek, and he had not been called to deal with the front door, as Giesl did produce a second key. Instead, he had been called to open a number of cases endowed with ‘English’ (Chubb) locks. The large numbers of discrepancies led Kisch’s biographer Michael Horowitz to believe that the whole football match was pure invention.
While Kisch developed his own popularity – he was soon celebrated internationally as a ‘young wonder journalist’ who managed to solve one mystery after another – his colleagues kept spinning new theories, more or less independently from official directions, that turned up one day and were forgotten the next. One stronger strand was a new idea on how to shift the blame: surely, a woman had her finger in the pie? The same papers that had just declared Redl’s homosexuality jumped on the same bandwagon and published detailed articles. Redl was said to have had affairs with glamorous ladies, and especially one long-lasting relationship with a ‘certain very elegant’ one, who was of course in fact a spy and sent him to his doom. Even the Fremdenblatt took the same line. The woman was Russian, incredibly beautiful and sent to Vienna with the one and only mission to lure him into her trap.
Reasonable journalists kept criticising and questioning the fairy tales and urged their readers not to lose sight of the real issues, mainly the failure of those responsible in the army. The Arbeiterzeitung wrote, ‘the whole world is asking, are they blind or did they simply choose not to care?’ The Russians knew that Redl was deep in debt, his own colleagues didn’t? They blindly believed in his simple explanation that he had inherited some money.
Quite a bit of money – in 1906 he owned four horses and kept them in his own stables. It seemed that he had started trading them, as new horses kept arriving, allegedly from Galicia and Russia, while others disappeared. Redl led a life of luxury, he ended up with four servants and a chauffeur (all of whom enjoyed a pleasant lifestyle themselves), two expensive cars, a high-quality furnished flat, and spent his spare time binge-drinking champagne.
The conclusion was: ‘There was only one clever guy in the General Staff, unfortunately he happened to be a spy. Judas sacrificed one person, (…) Redl was prepared to trap hundreds of thousands of Austrian and German soldiers. A paid gangster almost became Europe’s fate.’12 In the meantime his collaborators and blackmailers remained free to roam. Not a single arrest had been made and what about those mysterious women, or his male sexual partners?
The officials had to show results. So they did. They questioned a sophisticated woman, a foreigner, once married to an Austrian but now divorced, she was said to have had an affair with Redl for eight years. Still, no one saw a reason to keep her in custody. Instead, all eyes moved what was believed to be the bigger catch: the Lieutenant Stephan Horinka from the 7th Galician Uhlan Regiment was arrested, in his (female) lover’s flat (paid for by Russia).
He had been seen in Redl’s company for several years, so frequently that he was believed to be his son, although Redl used to introduce him as his nephew. Needless to say that he was neither. Together they enjoyed la dolce vita to the full. In the days before his arrest Horinka had appeared restless to his neighbours. Now that he was confined no one knew what the charges actually were – did they concern his homosexuality, or was he also accused of being a spy?
The only official statement, published in the Militaerische Rundschau on 1 June concerned the ‘outrageous’ rumours that Redl had passed on mobilisation and deployment plans to the enemy. ‘As anyone who is sufficiently knowledgeable about military organisations knows – no officer is in the position to pass on military secrets to foreign powers.’ But surely Redl wasn’t your ordinary officer?
The official denial was believed to be mainly directed towards Germany, and Berlin sent the conciliatory reply that no harm had been done: although the relations with their neighbour were excellent, this kind of material would never be brought to the attention of any foreign power.
But a semi-official article unearthed another attempt to relieve the army officials from being accused of failure: they now claimed that Redl had made a full confession before he died. He had provided detailed information about when he had started, who he had worked for and what he had sold them. And he gave the names of other officers involved, strange though that, with the exception of Horinka, no arrests were heard of. One journalist joked: ‘Good for them that it’s now in the papers, it will remind them that it’s time to flee.’
Redl’s case also made it into Parliament. Several questions and interpellations concerned mainly two areas: why was he allowed or even forced to commit suicide? And how come Generaladvokat (assistant to the general procurator) Pollak, a judicial official, had been part of the commission that had allowed the accused to skip legal proceedings? The Defence Minister promised to come up with answers within a week’s time.
In the meantime, in these early days of June 1913, countless different stories about Redl’s life and career circulated in the papers, amongst them a considerable amount of what would have been slander, had he been alive. It was said that he had accused his own brother, also an officer, of being a spy. To disable Austrian espionage in Russia, he had declared Austrian spies to Russian spies. Civilian clothes were found beside Redl’s dead body – proof that he had planned an escape. All that was missing from the big picture was clarity.
And clarity was certainly not achieved by the statement that was finally given by the Defence Minister Freiherr von Georgi on 5 June, based on information provided by the ministers of war and of justice, ‘the most embarrassing moment of his long career’.
According to Georgi, there had been indications of espionage for quite a while, and Redl had been under surveillance. On 24 May they finally had proof. On the very same day Redl arrived in Vienna and went for dinner with Generaladvokat Pollak. He told his old friend that he had committed a crime against morality and professional honour, but did not give any details. He knew he was under surveillance and asked Pollak to lend him a revolver.
Pollak refused. Redl changed course and requested his help to gain permission to return to Prague. This Pollak promised to arrange, and went to make a phone call to the Head of Police Edmund von Gayer. Instead of acting on Redl’s request, he asked for advice on how to deal with the officer who seemed confused and made no sense to him. Maybe he could be admitted to a psychiatric hospital? Gayer thought the best thing to do would be to try and calm the man down, and ask him to return to his hotel. This plan succeeded.
The Minister emphasised repeatedly that Pollak was not part of the commission that came to visit Redl at the hotel, nor had he been involved in any decision-making. At 10pm the Chief of the General Staff had officially established Redl’s guilt and went on to form a commission. This took until midnight, when they set off to Redl’s hotel where they arrived at 12.30. They had also been informed by the police about Pollak’s phone call and Redl’s announcement that he wanted to shoot himself.
They found the accused in his room with a cord lying on his bed and a dagger on his desk. He welcomed them with the words: ‘I know why the gentlemen are here. I feel guilty.’ During the interrogation Redl admitted to espionage but insisted that he had no accomplices, that no one knew his real identity and that he had only been involved in espionage for a short time. Satisfied with his answers, the commission left him to it. The hotel remained under surveillance to prevent his escape. The next day he was found dead in his room.
Delegate Leuthner: ‘So where did he get the revolver from, or can you shoot yourself with a cord?’
Minister: ‘The commission did not order the Colonel’s suicide, which he had evidently already planned, nor did it force him to commit it.’
Delegate Hillebrand: ‘They should have prevented it!’
Minister: ‘On 25 May we searched Colonel Redl’s flat and his office in Prague. His paperwork showed that he had indeed been a spy, but also that he had homosexual relations, in particular and for some time to one Lieutenant, the so-called nephew, and that this confusion had without doubt led to high levels of spending. The detailed notes they had found in Prague provided proof that his confession in Vienna was true and complete.’
Leuthner: ‘But you did not arrest him!’
Minister: ‘All available data indicates that he began spying in March 1912. We have to state with deep regret that Redl has indeed passed on general instructions related to the mobilisation of the armed forces to foreign powers.’
Delegate Nemec: ’Powers! That’s important!’
Minister: ‘Despite the gravity of this fact it has to be noted that specific recent measures (deployment plans) could not have been given away as they could not have been accessed by Redl.
With regards to Redl’s obvious high spending I have to say: the big expenditure is without doubt a result of him satisfying his unnatural passions; obviously the way this money was spent remained hidden from the public and could not attract attention. Redl explained the efforts that resulted from the acquisition of expensive horses, the keeping of expensive cars etc. with an inheritance of which he ostentatiously told people around him. There was indeed a certificate of inheritance amongst the paperwork, but only a small amount of this inheritance that was shared out between many heirs was allocated to Redl.
There are actually a number of indicators that point towards serious debt, this is currently being investigated, and it seems like this debt increased daily, despite him having led a more modest life in the recent more critical days compared to his past.
As seen above, it has so far been established that Redl’s espionage goes back to March 1912. It can therefore be assumed impossible that he started many years ago.
Especially during the many years he was employed by the Evidenzbureau, where he frequently acted as an expert on espionage, his position speaks against the possibility of having played an active part as an agent for a foreign power, as Redl had always shown a rigid approach in cases of espionage …’
Delegate Habermann: ‘The goat as the gardener!’
Minister: ‘… and would have risked betrayal by these agents.
No accomplices were found. I have to add it would have made little sense for someone so accomplished with the techniques of espionage to burden himself with accomplices that could have turned into a danger for him at any given time.
The Lieutenant we mentioned earlier got arrested, but he is so far not suspected of espionage. Rumours that higher ranking officers as well as a lady had been compromised were proven wrong. A connection between Redl and the Russian Consul in Prague could not be established. There is no connection to the Jandrić or other recent cases of espionage. All rumours of Redl having sold secrets about the German army are wrong; the same applies to assertions made by the press that Colonel Redl had been sent to meetings with the German General Staff.
Our magnificent and glorious army got hit hard when an unworthy desecrated its honour. But one person’s disgrace cannot affect a whole community and its countless examples of boundless self-sacrifice, the highest sense of duty and heroism. I’m therefore not worried that just because of this one mishap our army could lose people’s trust, which means a lot to us, or that it could lose the respect of foreign armies, the former we will always justify and try to earn, the latter, if necessary, enforce.‘
The minister’s speech earned no applause at all. Delegate Nemec proposed a debate, but this was rejected by the governing parties. Later on that day, during a budget debate, Social Democrat Seitz took his chance to criticise the minister for a speech full of bad stylistic blunders, but short of facts. It was still a mystery who had ordered Redl to come to Vienna. Why was he allowed to roam the city when it was clear that he was a spy?
What if he used that time to warn his accomplices? What if Pollak himself was one of them? The commission listens to his confession but still doesn’t arrest him. Instead the culprit is left by himself in his room with cord and dagger. Hours later they return and find him dead. Who gave him the Browning? If it hadn’t been the commission, why wasn’t the police looking into this? How could they possibly take the confession of this highly agitated man seriously? Why did they not initiate criminal proceedings?
Instead, leaving the cord behind reminds one of the most primitive days of justice, the ‘silk thread of the Turkish sultans’. [Turkish sultans sent a silk thread to high-ranking personalities who were sentenced to death. The condemned was then usually strangled by a servant or soldier. Through this method the sultans could get rid of relatives to secure their rule, without shedding their royal blood; occasionally, the convicted ‘were allowed’ to escape the strangling by suicide.] According to the minister there were no accomplices?
Who transferred the money, who received his telegrams? What about the mysterious ladies? And the foreign powers, they paid millions without even knowing the guy? The only country that could possibly be that naïve would be Austria itself! If the minister accepts the claim that Redl had not engaged in espionage before March 1912, it only proves that there was never a proper interrogation, nor a serious investigation, or that he covers up the real facts. And what happened to the tax man? Any ordinary man gets harassed if he kicks over the traces, surely Redl’s permanent excesses would have led to some questioning? But why ask if all you want to do is hide the truth?
The minister desperately seeks our trust – but it is not just the Social Democrats – whoever is capable of reasonable thought amongst the middle classes will tell him that his elaborations have ruined the trust in the army leadership as well as in the government. The main virtues commonly praised in soldiers were missing completely: bravery and truthfulness.13
The Defence Minister’s official statement, disappointing as it was, also formed a turning point in public reporting. Newspaper articles became shorter and rarer. The press focused on more pressing issues. Less than a month after the Treaty of London is signed at an international conference of Europe’s ambassadors, to settle the First Balkan War, the second one erupts when Bulgaria, disgruntled about the outcome of the previous conflict, attacks its former allies Serbia and Greece.
At the same time a young disillusioned artist called Adolf Hitler leaves Vienna, where he had several times failed to gain admission to the Academy of Fine Arts, to settle down in the German Fatherland, but is tracked down by the Austrian authorities and faces with the possibility of prison for avoiding military service.
And the Archduke Franz Ferdinand declares plans to inspect Habsburg troops in Bosnia in 1914.
Alfred Redl’s real story remained a mystery. In some ways it still remains so today. But let us turn the clock back to the year 1864, when the family of a railway clerk in Lemberg, Galicia, was about to expand …