I Am Through You So I Read online

  JK: During one of those raids, you almost did not make it into the shelter.

  DSR: That was at home in Vienna. Our landlord had built a private air-raid shelter in our house for his four children, and we could flee there as well. One time, we were unable to close the heavy door behind us because the air suction from falling bombs was so strong it kept pulling it back open. At that time, we had been trained to lay out our clothes in a pattern, when taking them off in the evenings, so that we would be able to find and put them on quickly even in the dark; one was not allowed to turn on the lights. A blackout was in force in Vienna. During air raids at night, we would have to dress quickly in the dark and rush to the shelter. To this day, when I take off my clothes, I arrange them in a pattern that allows me to find them in the dark. It has become a habit.

  JK: After the end of the war, the Russian occupation followed, which you have described as ambivalent in that the first wave of occupying soldiers was liberating, while the second was more oppressive. As we know today, there were systematic rapes of tens of thousands of women by occupying forces. I was very touched by the scene in which you described wanting to protect Nadja, a Ukrainian forced laborer from your neighborhood, and how a neighbor came to your aid. This neighbor paid for his moral courage with his life. Did you feel at the time that your last hour had come—or rather, that by an act of providence you had escaped with your life?

  DSR: I was in a state of complete shock. I did not even think of that aspect. But I should clarify, we were not hiding Nadja. We simply did not know where she was. She had gone. She simply fled. One could not say that I was not afraid; I was simply in shock.

  JK: Then why was your neighbor shot?

  DSR: The Russian soldiers were probably drunk. They wanted to find this girl and could not, so they threatened to shoot someone if she did not appear. They let us go because they were distracted by Mr. Springer; now he caught their attention. But he was not the only one. They rounded up some ten or twenty people, marched them to the church, and stood them up against a wall. The soldiers shot wildly in the air, but in the end, Mr. Springer was dead. They may not have intended that at all. No others were hurt. Viktor Springer lived in the house next to ours, and the Springers had a forced laborer too, an older woman from Poland, named Sophie. She saw me in uniform many times, but when the Russians asked her, “Is he not a soldier as well?” she said, “No, no, he’s just a child.” By doing that, she saved my life.

  JK: As did Viktor Springer.

  DSR: Yes. I think of him as having saved my life. When the soldiers were menacing us in the other house, he came to the garden gate and shook it. They heard the noise, let us go, ran down, and shot him.

  JK: So, to clarify the situation, the two Russian soldiers were looking for Nadja but came into your house and questioned you, if one can call it that.

  DSR: I suppose I must have been standing somewhere close by. It all happened in the street, in this broad suburban road with no traffic. Then the soldiers led me not into the house in which we lived but to the second floor of a villa on the opposite side of the street where a resistance fighter who had been an officer in the First World War lived. He was probably too old to be drafted by then. He was active in the resistance and very brave. In this moment, he kept talking to the soldiers who had put their machine guns to our heads. His wife was standing there as well. They had put a bucket over her head. He kept talking to the Russians—in German—and I suppose it is difficult to shoot at someone who keeps talking to you. Soon, Viktor Springer was rattling the gate downstairs. So, they turned, left us standing there, and we were spared.

  JK: That saved your life. In all the turmoil after the end of the war, with millions of refugees, you and your friends followed Cardinal Innitzer’s call to assist the Sudeten-German refugees.17 You write that you had no specific training and no knowledge: “Compassion and awe for the suffering of the refugees were all we brought with us.” What reaction did these actions cause in you?

  DSR: It was yet another kind of encounter with great human suffering.

  JK: Some of the Sudeten-Germans even came on foot.

  DSR: All of them came on foot. Some of them pulled little carts onto which they had packed all their possessions. That was the first time I had to give practical care to truly poor people. There was hardly anything we could do. We saw to it that they were housed in relatively humane conditions and had clean water and toilets that were at least reasonably hygienic to prevent cholera and dysentery.

  JK: What encounters can you recall from that experience?

  DSR: I can remember children, for example, who had bloody knuckles from knocking at doors begging. Seeing that, we organized little groups to go stealing cherries. There was no one who could have harvested them anyway. One evening, several children arrived pulling a handcart and said, “Mother is lying back there on the road and having a baby.” We had nothing but a bicycle, on which we went to look for her—and found her. The child had not yet come, thank God. We then led her back to the camp slowly, where she had the child.

  JK: That is truly an incredibly exciting time, to swing back and forth between life and death and experience all the emotions.

  DSR: It was certainly formative, but we only attended to what needed to be done, moment by moment. There was no time at all to think about it. This needs to be done, let’s do it. We did not think of anything more. It never entered our minds to muse on how terrible it all was.

  JK: So, you might say that it was a completely human impulse, which you were then able to see in a larger interpretive framework of faith.

  DSR: It was nice that we could do this work within the framework of the Church. As Catholic youth, we were in the heart of the places where it was happening. The only help we could always count on were the priests. They made the schools available to us as dormitories for the refugees and used the pulpit to ask for things we needed. Many priests hid and even defended women from the Russians in their churches and rectories.

  JK: Defended in what way?

  DSR: One day, we came to a village where a pastor had hidden about forty women in the parish hall. A Russian soldier broke into the building, but the pastor grabbed him and dragged him out. He tried to drown him in a small stream, at which point the soldier bit off his thumb. So, we were greeted by a pastor with only one thumb.

  JK: Did he drown him in the end?

  DSR: No, the Russian soldier ran away.

  JK: And never returned?

  DSR: As far as I know, he was never seen again.

  JK: Quite the stories…

  DSR: Of course, in the end, we did all get diarrhea; many of the refugees as well, I’m sure. Following that, I had to return to Vienna. The great gift of those weeks was that we learned compassion. For me, this was the important lesson in becoming a Christian. On special occasions, an uncle brought us sausages. We all suspected strongly that they were made of dog meat, but no one said a word; we were so happy to have meat of any kind. Once, my brother Max ate around a small piece of that sausage on his plate to save it as the final climax of his meal. When only that little morsel was left, I swooped down on it with my fork and gobbled it up. This was meant as a joke, but that sixteen-year-old-young man broke into tears. My shame also taught me compassion.

  3

  Decision

  1946–1956

  My amazement knows no bounds—the war is over and I am still alive! It dawns on me slowly at first; then, suddenly, I can see it clearly: a whole lifetime stretches before me! I am overwhelmed, overjoyed, and at the same time, frightened by this insight—frightened because I sense that this is as great a gift as it is a responsibility. What should I now make of my life? Seizing any one of the countless opportunities before me means letting go of all the others. How should I find my priorities? Looking forward, I grapple with these questions, knowing that what I do will be less important to me than that I do it with joy. And looking back at the years of war, I see that in the darkest, most unhappy moments, an inne
r joy gave me strength. It was a joy that did not depend on happiness or unhappiness. But on what did it depend? I brood over this question. And then, out of the blue, a sentence pops into my mind: “To have death before one’s eyes at all times.” Yes, really, “out of the blue”—out of the most joyous blue sky. It is a bright August day in Salzburg. I have been invited here by friends, among them an enchanting girl on whom I have a crush. The city is filled with music; everywhere, summer breezes carry tunes across streets and squares, down promenades and through open windows. It’s 1946, the first year that the Salzburg Music Festival is once again being held in a free Austria. In exchange for a packet of American cigarettes, an usher casually discovers two free orchestra seats and Elisabeth and I can hear and see Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

  The end of that opera again brings the words to my mind: “To have death before one’s eyes at all times.” This sentence keeps going around in my head. It comes from the Rule of St. Benedict, a short book, almost fifteen hundred years old. I had read it as a student because, to spite the authoritarian regime, we would read anything that displeased the government. These few words hit me more than all the rest of the book, and now it begins to dawn on me why: these past years, we young people have had death before our eyes, so close we could touch it. More of my friends were killed at the front lines than survived it. And at home, too, bombs had brought daily destruction and death. A single incautiously whispered word could mean one’s end; one of our chaplains was arrested in church and executed.1

  But despite all that, looking back, I must say that for my friends and me those terrible years of war were also years of true joy, a joy I wish never to lose. Hence the question, what gave us that joy? Suddenly, I can see the answer: We lived with such joy because we were forced to have death before our eyes constantly. Thus, we had to live in the moment—completely in the Now—and that was, in the past, the secret to our joy.

  Since I do not ever want to lose this spark of joyous aliveness, in the future, too, I will need to “hold death before my eyes at all times.” I had found this guiding thought in the Rule of St. Benedict. Did that mean that I would need to become a Benedictine monk? At the time, this thought made me queasy, and so I preferred to go dancing. No one dances the polka with as much fire as my Elisabeth. The two of us lived on a hill overlooking St. Peter’s Archabbey, and each morning, I walked down to celebrate Mass with the Benedictine monks. In my Schott Missal, I followed along with the Latin Mass texts for the day in German. Every day, it seemed that the reading, yet again, concerned decisions. I am captivated by the topic of decision-making, even if only half consciously. Hesitantly, I consider whether that all-important joy might even be worth becoming a monk for. I am divided against myself but shrink back from making a decision. The next morning, the first reading at Mass speaks of the famous judgment of Solomon in 1 Kings 3: two women bring one child before the king, and each claims the child is hers. Solomon calls for a sword and says, “Divide the living boy in two; then give half to the one, and half to the other. One of the women cries out, “Please, my lord, give her the living boy; certainly do not kill him!” (vv. 25, 26) thus proving herself to be the true mother.2

  In that moment, something in me cries out as well, and I’ve made my decision. Of course, it’s perfectly illogical, but I now know that becoming a monk will be my path, however far the detours may lead me.

  I will run away from the consequences of this decision for the next seven years, finding one alibi after the next: studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, a diploma as an art restorer, cofounding a successful children’s magazine,3 working as a restorer, journeying to the United States, studying anthropology, travels as prefect of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, a year in Florida, a doctorate in psychology at the University of Vienna.…

  In truth, I had been unknowingly prepared for the experience of my “calling.” After the war, my brothers and I renewed contact with our father. He was now living in East Tirol and got me a job as a farmhand over the summer holidays. Hard work and hearty farmers’ meals sound seductive—but on the second day, I am sent straight up to a mountain pasture, known as the Alm. Here, food is less plentiful, but the solitude and silence, surrounded by the peaks of the Dolomite Mountains, become an experience of deep contemplation and inner joy.

  The only other people up on the Kerschbaumer Alm are “Uncle” and “Aunt”—distant relatives of the farmer for whom I am working—who have lost their homes in the war. We live primarily off Sterz:4 Aunt cooks, Uncle and I sit across from one another, and Aunt puts the pan between us. On the first evening, we both start at our edge and work our way toward the center of the pan, but Uncle is quicker and works his way past the middle into my territory. From then on, I start our meals by making a line down the middle of the pan and eating from the center toward me. That way, we get along. I learn to milk and otherwise handle sheep and young cattle. I can walk across the Alm for hours, listening to the silence and reading my pocket Bible—particularly the psalms, which I read over and over. But I also read the Song of Songs, the other Wisdom Writings, and the stories about King David, who also began his life as a shepherd.

  I remember a moment from the first year after the war that casts light on the circuitous path from my beatific experience on the Alm to my similar later experience as a novice: A few friends and I are standing in a crowded tramcar. We are talking about our plans; the others seem to have clear-cut career paths in mind. Something in me resists such clarity. “I’d like to encounter many different things before I make my decision,” I hear myself saying, and listen, astonished, as I spontaneously use a metaphor to express my idea: “The broader the base, the higher the pyramid.”

  So, to expand the “base of the pyramid,” I study at the Academy of Fine Arts, where I passed the entrance exam during the war. And since I am interested in primitivism and children’s art, I also study ethnology and developmental psychology at the university. Bombs have destroyed the university buildings, so the first thing we students must do is help with the reconstruction. We do so with the joy of new beginnings and rebuilding. After we have completed the mandated hours of shoveling rubble—marked in our student passes—we are permitted to enroll in a course of study.

  In the summer of 1947, I visit the United States for the first time. Even the crossing on the SS Marine Falcon, a small troop transport ship, is an adventure. I have been invited to a convention of Young Christian Students in Chicago. I still remember how, one evening, our Austrian delegation was supposed to sing Austrian folk songs, but how all of us began to cry so much from homesickness that we could not keep singing. From Chicago, American students give my French friend, Isabel, and me a ride to California. From there, we return to New York by bus, which takes an entire week. Then we board a ship of the Holland American Line back to Europe. (At the time, flying across the Atlantic was financially out of the reach of mere mortals.)

  My second journey to the States is initially planned as a visit to my grandmother and to my two brothers studying in New York—but a surprise extends the trip. While I am in New York, I receive a telegram from the Vienna Boys’ Choir stating that one of the prefects has been denied an entry visa at the last minute. Could I accompany the Choir on their North American tour in his stead? The invitation came because I had worked as prefect of the Choir during my summer vacation, and their rector, Monsignor Joseph Schnitt, had come to know me. And so, for over three months, I get to ride on the Choir bus across the United States, including brief visits to Mexico and Canada. We give two concerts every three days and cover more than two hundred miles a day. This is very taxing for the children. I have nothing to do with their musical education, but must instead ensure their physical and mental well-being. One of the boys, Werner Scholz, will remain my lifelong friend.

  One minor event on this tour with the Vienna Choir Boys was to gain major importance for me: an American choir, the Apollo Boys’ Choir, invited the Viennese boys for a little party while we were in Palm Beach, Florida. On that
occasion, their founder and director, Coleman Cooper, suggested to me that I might want to work as a prefect in his choir after the Vienna Boys’ Choir return to Austria. The prospect of living in Florida and in Palm Beach at that, was tempting enough, but I would be living in a most beautiful palazzo, imaginatively decorated in the style of the Italian renaissance. In the early 1920s, Philadelphia art patron Joseph E. Widener had commissioned architect Maurice Fatio to create Il Palmetto. The elegantly landscaped grounds of this estate extended across the entire strip of land between Lake Worth and the Atlantic Ocean. Recently, this paradise had become the home of the Apollo Boys’ Choir. Throughout my life, I have often had the privilege of calling exceptionally beautiful places home. None of them was more enchanting than Il Palmetto, where “Mama Cooper,” as the boys called her, cared for them and me as a mother would. It was an additional piece of good fortune that I was allowed access to the choir’s recording equipment, as I was working on my dissertation about vocal expressiveness at the time. In those days, recording devices were extremely expensive, and their operation was nowhere near as simple as it is today. The magnetic tape kept jumping off the reels, or it would tear and have to be spliced; sometimes I was entangled in tape from head to toe, like Laocoön in the serpents. When I had finally collected the necessary material, I returned to Vienna, wrote my dissertation, and attained my doctorate in psychology in November 1952 under Professor Hubert Rohrbacher. Fortunately, I was able to return to New York City that same year, in time to celebrate Christmas with my family. That winter journey across the storm-tossed Atlantic would be my last crossing on a steamship. Only many years later would I return to Europe—that time by airplane.

  This, my third stay in the United States—not the sort of place one seeks out to become a monk—was soon to become a time of crisis for me. After all, this time I had not merely come for a visit, but to immigrate. True, I was happy to be with my family, but city life in Manhattan was not for me. The only place I truly felt at home was the silent reading room of the Public Library on 42nd Street. I spent countless joyful hours in the library’s huge, dimly lit, high-vaulted halls, and to this day, I am grateful for the gift this was to me.