Cafes are frequented for breakfast between 8 and 10 a.m., but chiefly in the afternoon and evening, when numerous Austrian, German, and other newspapers are provided. Small cups of black coffee, ‘Nussschwarzer’; with milk, ‘Capuziner’; larger cup or glass of coffee with cream, ‘Melange’; cream, ‘Obers Grosser Kaffee’ means coffee and milk served separately.
(Baedeker, Austria-Hungary, 1911)
When Urbański entered the Colonel’s flat in Prague it struck him as ‘opulent’ and ‘feminine’, nothing like a typical soldier’s domicile. It was hard enough on him and Corps Commander Arthur Giesl von Gieslingen having to gather evidence against a trusted colleague and friend who was now believed to be a spy. They were still in a state of shock. But it would get worse. When Urbański opened the drawers to Redl’s desk, he found several unfinished letters to a lieutenant based in Stockerau.
It slowly dawned on him that these were love letters. He also found perfumes and cosmetics, and a pile of ‘disgusting’ photographs that left no doubt about Redl’s homosexual inclination. When he showed them to Hoetzendorf back in Vienna the Chief of the General Staff almost felt sick. The ‘filthy’ pictures showed Redl and a number of other men, amongst them the much younger lieutenant, completely naked. According to some papers they also posed in women’s lingerie.
The young lieutenant in question was Stefan Horinka. He got arrested on the Wednesday, two days after letters and photographs had been discovered. To start with only his surname and initial had been published, which led the papers to accuse the wrong man. Then they asked the legitimate question why it had taken so long to arrest him. As this man had quite obviously been close to the master spy there was a good chance that he had known a secret or two, or even possessed incriminating evidence. And what exactly had been the nature of their relationship? The Fremdenblatt called it ‘peculiar’.1 The army still desperately tried to defuse and cover up as much as possible.
In the course of the scandal many claimed that everybody had known what had been going on. Others insisted that ordinary people who knew nothing of such aberrations had therefore been unable to spot them. Redl had on occasion been seen with women in public. This had led to wild rumours about countless affairs, with prostitutes, cabaret singers and aristocrats alike. The most popular version combined these stories with Russian femme fatale types who had dragged the poor helpless officer to his doom. Given that the man himself was a specialist in the field of hidden persuasion, the very thought of him losing his senses over the looks of a woman is rather absurd.
One of the accused turned out to be Marianna (May) Török de Szendrö, also known as Djavidan Hanum, a Hungarian noble born in the US, writer, painter and pianist, who had married the last Khedive of Egypt (he was also the last ruler of Egypt to have a harem). She’d later write a critical book on the subject, based on her own experience. When Redl met her in Vienna she and the Khedive had just separated. Neighbours heard ‘knocking sounds’ in her flat and found the regular visits by a Colonel of the General Staff suspicious. Worst of all, she suddenly left the city on 23 May. The knocking sounds later turned out to have been Djavidan hitting the keys of her piano.
Funnily enough a few years later she became associated with the Polish spy Jerzy Sosnowski who plyed his trade in Germany. Marianna/Djadidan is a fascinating character and her richly faceted life still holds many mysteries. The authors feel that Redl might have been one of them. That she wasn’t particularly precious about her methods is shown by a later incident, when, in Paris and desperate for money, she staged a hunger strike and feigned a ‘collapse of malnutrition’ in front of the flashing cameras. When the desired effects failed to emerge, she started picketing the British Embassy, to get her hands on a visa enabling her to travel to London to take a screen test for the film Queen for a Day produced by Alfred Golding 2.
It is of course possible that Redl was bisexual. Newspapers wrote about orgies and naked dancers he and his young lieutenant enjoyed watching. But it is more likely that he used women to entertain his male lovers and to cover up his own true inclinations. In the end, as far as we know, no evidence was found that suggested any kind of sexual or deeper emotional relationship to a woman.
His real love and passion belonged to men, especially to one of them: Stefan Horinka. According to the explicit testimony the latter gave at the Garrison Court after having been arrested for ‘fornication against nature’, Redl had approached him in 1908.3 Under the pretext of wanting to check his health, the superior asked Horinka to open up his trousers, took out his penis and examined it for much longer than necessary. Similar occurrences happened, and over time Redl would also take photographs of the naked young man and of his penis in different stages of erection.
These photographs weren’t the only ones the commission from Vienna discovered in his flat. There were pictures of the naked Colonel, and amongst the other playmates two of his former servants showed up: Andreas Nebel and Josef Schuler-Strasser. Nebel had worked for Redl for five years, between 1896 and 1901. But even after he had found himself a new job – with a little help from his former employer – at the Austrian-Hungarian Bank, he continued to live with Redl until 1904 when he got married.
Later on Redl kindly provided the couple with a useful present: their own house. Their benefactor became a regular visitor, and one of Nebel’s own sons was named after him. In August 1912 he was put under police surveillance, when it became too obvious to his neighbourhood that he and his wife lived beyond their means. Both the police as well as the military investigations came to nothing but we think we should leave a big question mark beside this character.
Coincidentally, one of Nebel’s bank colleagues was no other than Stefan Horinka’s father, who asked him to request his big friend’s intercession to get his son into the Infantry Cadet School. Josef Schuler-Strasser had been Nebel’s successor, and again they seemed to enjoy more than just the ordinary master-servant relationship. Schuler-Strasser, who accompanied his employer on his final trip to Vienna, could be seen in public enjoying meals with his employer, dressed in fine clothes.
Both of them were lucky. The incriminating photographs turned out to be old enough to be statute-barred, and the court believed that they had been seduced to commit immoral acts against their will. Horinka also claimed in court, just like Nebel and Schuler-Strasser, that all the fondling had happened against his will, and explained the recent disagreement that had come to light through a series of letters with his refusal to have sexual intercourse. Luckily for him, one letter seemed to prove his statement and he too got off rather lightly, with three months in prison, although he also lost his military rank.
The letter dated 27 April 1913 does indeed leave us with an impression of Horinka having been put under pressure: ‘You threaten to ruin me if I don’t let you have your way. Fair enough, I’ll rather perish than live the life of a strumpet who is forever worried that she might get thrown out.’ As he couldn’t see an end to it he announced his plan to leave the military, he was ‘not prepared to be pressured’.4
This all sounds pretty innocent, but let’s not forget that when these lines were put on paper, the two men had already known each other for almost ten years. Redl had made it possible for Horinka to start and to further his career, and the protégé had profited immensely from financial assistance over time. After Horinka had finished cadet school, his benefactor supported him first with 50 kronen (this rose to 100 and ended with 600 kronen) per month. In addition, he paid his rent, 1,000 kronen, not to mention the extra 12,000 kronen he spent on furnishing his flat.
They enjoyed holidays together, and expensive presents were a common occurrence, best of all: two horses and an automobile. Thanks to Redl he quickly climbed up the career ladder, from infantry to cavalry and on to the prestigious 7th (Franz Ferdinand) Uhlans. Horinka took full advantage of the fact that the older man was besotted with him. Even the most well-intentioned observer had to admit that this level of investment over such a long time was unlikely to be explainable by a couple of photographs and the occasional exposure of genitals.
Dark clouds appeared in the sky when Stefan Horinka fell in love with a young woman, Marie Dobias, his ‘Mitzerl’ (diminutive of Maria/Marie). She made the most of her lover’s close relationship with his ‘uncle’. Redl ended up paying for everything, rent, clothes, new teeth – and even abortions. Redl approved of the latter as he worried that the greedy girlfriend would try to force Stefan to marry her if she was expecting a child.
As we can see, no agents from foreign powers were needed to blackmail Redl. He had his hands full trying to keep his lovers submissive by financing their luxurious lifestyles. However, it is possible that some of these men threatened to give away his secret if their demands weren’t met.
Gay male culture became visible in the Vienna of the fin-de-siècle. During the Industrial Revolution, large numbers of people moved into the city, many of them young single men. By the turn of the century, a number of guest houses, cafes and bars catered to a gay clientele, and baths and parks served as cruising venues for men to meet each other and have anonymous sex, a practice that seems to have gained popularity among gay men at this time.5 Rent boys offered their services to ‘elegant men of all ages’ and often took advantage of their fear of being discovered.
And they had good reasons to keep a low profile. Homosexuality was illegal, and it remained so until 1971. In the eighteenth century, sodomy had been a criminal offence punishable by death. In 1768 Empress Maria Theresa had reformed the imperial law. Sodomites were to be beheaded; the body and the head were to be burned. Under Napoleon sodomy was decriminalized in many European countries. In Austria, Emperor Francis II lessened the punishment from death to a prison term ranging from six months to a year – a considerable improvement. In 1852 punishment was again increased to a maximum of five years in prison. The term ‘homosexuality’ was introduced in the late nineteenth century by Karoly Maria Benkert, a German psychologist. At that point it was no longer a specific act that a person decided to commit, as in the medieval view. Sexuality was now usually seen as biologically driven; it appeared as an ‘unchosen’ characteristic of the individual. But when homosexuality is not chosen, it makes no sense to criminalise it. Instead, it was believed that people could be cured. Doctors and psychiatrists like Sigmund Freud, Richard von Krafft-Ebing or Magnus Hirschfeld campaigned for the repeal or reduction of criminal penalties. Public opinion was hugely influenced by the tragic end of Oscar Wilde after his imprisonment for gross indecency, and the suicide of Alfred Krupp.
The final trial of Oscar Wilde had left the public appalled and outraged at the ‘crimes’ that such a prominent man was able to commit. When the verdict was announced in the courtroom cries of joy and celebratory dancing commenced by the public in attendance.6 The judge called the crime as so horrible that he had to restrain himself when he was forced to talk about it. He had presided over murder cases, but he felt that this one had been by far the most atrocious. He also echoed the public’s fears that Wilde had corrupted younger men.
Wilde’s health deteriorated in prison, where he had been condemned to hard labour. After his release he lived a meandering life, poor, ill and an alcoholic, until he died in Paris in 1900. On his sickbed he had proclaimed, ‘I will never outlive this century, the English people would not stand for it.’ He was wrong: almost overnight, a legend was born: Wilde the homosexual martyr and moral rebel. A young gay-rights movement embraced him as a hero of defiance.
Around the same time, German tycoon Friedrich Alfred Krupp enjoyed himself on the island of Capri, allegedly in the company of young men. Italy had legalised homosexuality in 1889 and had become an oasis for rich gay men from all over Europe. But Krupp wasn’t just anybody – his family, arms and steel magnates, was (and still is) one of the most powerful in the country. He was active in politics and a close friend of the Kaiser. This made him a popular press target, and in 1902 the Social Democrats’ newspaper Vorwaerts picked up the gossip and published it. He died soon after. It was assumed that he had committed suicide, convinced that he was doomed to a fate like Oscar Wilde’s.
Unlike Wilde at the time of his death, Krupp had been popular with the people, and Kaiser Wilhelm himself went on a crusade against the Social Democrats. In a speech to Krupp’s employees he praised his integrity and promised to ‘hold the Kaiser’s shield over the house and the memory of the deceased’.7 This scandal was big news, not just in Germany but also in Austria and the rest of Europe.
Even more attention was given to another affair that concerned a close confident of the Kaiser – some say he was even more than that. This case became the biggest scandal around homosexuality in the German monarchy: the Harden-Eulenburg affair. Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg, was born into a noble Prussian family. In 1886 a school friend invited Eulenburg to his estate where he was introduced to the Crown Prince.
Wilhelm, twelve years younger than the 29-year-old Eulenburg, immediately fell under the spell of the charming, entertaining and cultured older man. When Wilhelm became Kaiser in 1888, Philipp, a member of the ‘Liebenburg Circle’ of aristocrats, the inner elite, became his closest adviser. He steadily encouraged Wilhelm to assume ‘personal rule’ (which he later regretted). Wilhelm’s decision to sack Bismarck had been supported by Eulenburg.
In 1892, he was appointed ambassador to Austria-Hungary. Now and for the first time he was himself badly affected by the ‘culture of intrigue’ that dominated Prussia. He had fallen out with his former friend and ally Holstein, who contacted journalist Maximilian Harden to inform him that Eulenburg was a homosexual. He supposedly had relationships with the President of the Berlin City Police, Baron von Richthofen, and Kuno von Moltke, head of the Berlin Military Garrison.
Harden’s paper Die Zukunft had taken up the struggle against the Liebenberg Circle, which Harden regarded as the decisive obstacle to an extension of the spheres of influence of the German Empire. He forced Eulenburg to retire from his ambassadorship in Vienna. But when he continued to exert influence on political developments, Harden outed him. What followed was a series of courts-martial, five civil trials and accompanying libel trials. Ultimately, Eulenburg escaped further persecution because of his poor health.
Wilhelm II had been kept in the dark, but when he finally found out what was going on it didn’t take him long to grasp that his own position was in danger. There had always been rumours about the homoerotic nature of his friendship with Eulenburg.8 Now, his inner circle fell apart, homosexuals were named, and it would only be a matter of time until compromising details regarding the entertainment they had enjoyed together at Liebenburg Castle leaked to the public. The Kaiser withdrew from their friendship, Eulenburg was deeply hurt. He lived in retirement without further contact with German government or the Kaiser until his death in 1921.
It has often been said that the loss of Eulenburg’s consensusoriented influence on Wilhelm opened the way to the disaster that was soon to follow. High-profile cases like those of Krupp and Eulenburg furthered the rise of conspiracy theories and slowed down the progress public opinion had made towards homosexuality. Fears were stirred up. Gay circles were said to be conspiring everywhere, against the government, against the people, the ‘homosexual intrigues’ were a danger to the very foundations of empires.
These were the circumstances Alfred Redl had to deal with. Had he been a working-class man perhaps no one would have minded, but a high-ranking military official? No way! The Danzer Armeezeitung (Danzer Army Newspaper) wrote:
… his love life was degenerated one speculated, one knew it. And this ill man was promoted to manage a Corps as Chief of staff. A ‘humane psychiatry’ that accepts the inescapability of their sex life leaves the Urninge (homosexuals) to themselves in the darkness of their gatherings as long as they don’t pose a danger to the public. But it is not a custom to appoint an Unmann (literally ‘un-man’) to a high military position, in the brightest light.9