Intro: "Countess Mizzi" | Vienna Library ON AIR

"Countess Mizzi." A Chronicle from Vienna around 1900 – 12 Moments in 12 Snapshots (Vienna Library ON AIR) On April 28, 1908, Marcell "Count" Veith and his 18-year-old daughter Marie were arrested. He was accused of pimping, she of clandestine prostitution. She drowned herself in the Danube that same day; he was brought to trial. The scandalous trial caused a sensation far beyond Vienna. This was all the more so because high-ranking police officers, the heads of the vice squad and the security bureau, were named as clients in Marie's diary and ledgers. Shortly after serving his sentence, Veith published the client list in a tabloid newspaper: 205 so-called "Cavaliere," all from the upper echelons of Viennese society. In my recently published book, "Countess Mizzi" (Wallstein Verlag), I reconstruct the harrowing case of Marie Veith from a wealth of contemporary sources and documents. "Countess Mizzi" is a laconic account that draws primarily on the materials of the thousand-page court file (held in the Vienna City and Provincial Archives) and offers a great deal of original sound. The case is recounted chronologically, meaning that the material is presented as far as possible without explicit narrative commentary, or at least without any didactic pretensions. I don't lead the readers through the text on a leash, I don't impose a perspective on them, I don't patronize them. I adopt a maxim of Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt: "No book offers more than the chance to act independently." This is meant as an invitation! The entire work is presented, as it were, in black and white. Because we are now accustomed to color in all media, black and white has an abstract quality and creates distance. On the other hand, this sparse writing leaves plenty of room. It practically challenges readers to add something, to supplement it, to color the black and white, as it were—to continue the analogy. That is what makes this starkness so appealing. Screenplay: Walter Schübler Director: Suzie Wong Reading: Walter Schübler Commentary: Walter Schübler Technical Assistance: Katrin Kühnert, Michael Burger With the kind support of the Vienna City and Provincial Archives (MA 8)