Flow of Ambiguities

In the coffeehouse, you can find Viennese Mélange, Hungarian goulash soup, Slovenian bread, and people enjoy their Spritz just like in Central Europe: wine with soda – called “gemišt,” a German word written in Croatian. The spoken languages are Italian, occasionally Slovenian, and the older ladies and gentlemen appreciate it when someone speaks German. They may not speak much German themselves, but they feel “Austrian.” From Via San Francesco, it is not far to the water – it is not the Danube, but the Adriatic Sea. However, in Trieste, the “Danube” still flows in many hearts. Claudio Magris, a Germanist from this city, wrote the maybe most beautiful travel guide about the Danube.

Often sitting here is Marco (or as he calls himself: Markus). He explains his city in the best Viennese dialect. He, the descendant of a Venetian noble family, wants to represent the Slovenian minority, and he still refers to Vienna as “the capital.” In Trieste, there are more identity constellations and identity collisions than the city has residents: Slovenian Catholics who love Italy, Italian Communists who long for Yugoslavia, Habsburg-Nostalgics who vote for Italian nationalists in elections.

This is “Central Europe,” as the Austrian historian Moritz Csáky wrote about: a “laboratory” for mixed identities, ambiguities, contradictions, and opposites. It is the space where “either-or”-clarity does not prevail but, as Robert Musil wrote about Kakanien, there is a constant “both-and”-option (sometimes the less friendly: “neither-nor”). It is the part of Europe where the greatest Hungarian poet (Sándor Petőfi) was originally a Slovak and Serbian, where the greatest Italian Irredentist (Guglielmo Oberdan) came from a German-speaking family, where a German-speaking Jewish author called himself a “Swabian Italian” (Italo Svevo), and where a Viennese anti-Semitic, German nationalist professor (Taras Borodajkewycz) had a Polish name.

Logic need not be found here; it is no longer the realm of clear categories and unequivocal decisions. Everything is possible. Post-Habsburg Central Europe was postmodern before it was cool. Even the Danube is not a geographical category here. It does not flow where it is indicated on the map but connects people, cities, and landscapes that are not situated along the Danube. What separates them here is so common that it ultimately brings them together.