A Feudal Industrial State
How would one define the Austro-Hungarian Empire in a single phrase? A feudal industrial state.
"Feudal" and "industrial state." It was a contradictory pairing, much like how North Korea's official name is the "Democratic" People's Republic of Korea. Yet, by nineteenth-century standards, it wasn't particularly strange.
In any case, all political power in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was monopolized by the imperial family and the nobility. The aristocrats still exploited commoners on their manure-scented farmlands. At the same time, the endless industrial districts of Vienna and Budapest spewed massive plumes of black smoke as they churned out an overwhelming volume of goods.
The empire was also the political and cultural heart of Europe. Renowned scholars like Sigmund Freud and Ludwig Wittgenstein resided here, alongside revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Didn't that tragic painter with the distinctive mustache also study in Austria?
The Soviet Union and the Nazis. The two most horrific entities of the twentieth century were both conceived right here in Austria.
And I had been dropped stark naked into this dreadful place without so much as a status window. I had tried denying reality, shouting "Status window!" multiple times, but it nearly got me dragged off to an asylum.
They don't perform lobotomies in this era yet, do they...?
The year was 1896, and the place was Vienna, Austria.
Just let me go home... My smartphone! My air conditioning!
[You may return only after completing your objective.]
Son of a bitch. Don't tell me I have to make a literal wish like "Please send me home" to actually get back.
My name was now Marx Stahl. I had become a thirteen-year-old Austrian boy. Even the name was far from ordinary.
"Marx" was a traditional, common name derived from Mars, the god of war. The surname "Stahl" was much the same. I heard my family had changed it from Spielberg to erase their Jewish background, which was unusual but not unheard of. Did some distant ancestor run a steel mill?
It's just that the people associated with those names are a bit...
It was like how "Adolf" used to be a perfectly ordinary German name, only to become completely unusable after a certain painter came along. Marx? Marx?! And on top of that, what? Stahl? Stahl, Stahl, Stahl... Stalin?!
Setting aside the glaringly red connotations of my name, the fact that I was a commoner without the aristocratic "von" in my surname was already a failing grade.
Of course, we weren't just any commoners. My father, Schmidt Stahl, was a Jewish publisher, and my mother, Anna Stahl, was a piano teacher. We lived as comfortably as any minor noble. Moreover, the house was far from ordinary, given the daily influx of intellectuals who gathered to debate politics.
"What is even the point of the Imperial Council? The lantern-jawed Habsburgs just run the whole show anyway!"
"Which is precisely why we must introduce universal suffrage."
"If we demonstrate the unified will of the people, even the Emperor will be forced to respect the council."
Mmhmm. It sounded a bit dangerous, but the Austro-Hungarian Empire wasn't so uptight that they would arrest people just because a few dilettantes gathered in a living room to badmouth the Emperor. Despite being a rigid class society that seemed stuck in the sixteenth century, it was surprisingly progressive when it came to freedom of expression—almost leaping ahead to the twenty-first century.
"Let us be frank. Even though we are capitalists, isn't the scientific socialism advocated by Marx the most advanced economic theory of our time?"
"Violent revolution cannot be condoned under any circumstances. However, when the day of revolution finally arrives, capitalists like us must naturally step aside for the workers."
Whoa, whoa, absolutely not!
Due to his profession as a publisher, my father stood at the absolute vanguard of intellectual thought. He was a classic Gangnam Leftist—a capitalist who, paradoxically, harbored a highly unique mindset that supported a Marxist revolution.
Actually, was he really? For all his loud advocacy of worker and female liberation, he had flown into a towering rage just last week when the maid accidentally broke a piece of Chinese porcelain.
"Oh, sir! I-I am so sorry!"
"This is why uneducated people are hopeless! Do you have any idea how much this cost?!"
"Dear, what is wrong with you? It was just an accident!"
"N-No, that's not it... I mean... She didn't just break a plate, she broke history! Do you know how old that porcelain was?!"
"Dear, the archaeology professor told us last time that it was a fake!"
Seeing how he constantly threw around the word "uneducated" despite never even graduating from a Gymnasium—the equivalent of high school—it was clear he suffered from a massive academic inferiority complex. He was undoubtedly a dilettante chasing after Marxism and republicanism simply because they sounded sophisticated.
Of course, while he was a bit petty and deeply insecure about his lack of education, he wasn't a bad man. For a capitalist, he had a rather modest, middle-class sensibility, likely because he was self-made.
This suited me just fine. My father was a firm believer in progressive parenting, at least by the standards of this era. No matter how hard I searched the memories of this body's original owner, there wasn't a single instance of corporal punishment. Considering that standard parenting in this era involved beating one's child half to death with a leather belt as if breaking a wild colt, he was incredibly enlightened.
"The Austro-Hungarian Empire has no real reason to exist. It is nothing more than an oppressive regime subjugating various nationalities."
"Precisely. Every ethnic group must break free from the Emperor's tyranny and govern their own independent nations. Hungary, Bohemia, all of them."
Suddenly, the conversational baton was passed to me.
"Does our little Marx have anything he would like to say about Austrian nationalism?"
"I hear you have a very bright son. He is already in his fourth year at the Gymnasium, so surely he has his own thoughts on the matter. Shall we hear them?"
It seemed my father frequently used these gatherings as teaching moments. I had to answer carefully. If I gave a foolish response, my father would be in a foul mood for the rest of the day. Honestly, I didn't care either way. Even though I had been tasked with changing history...
If I just shatter the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a hundred tiny pieces, wouldn't that count as changing history?
I felt no real emotional attachment to this place. I simply recalled some of the essays I had written in my past life and formulated an answer.
"Well... honestly, I'm not even sure if 'ethnicity' is a real thing."
"My, that is a rather unusual perspective."
"We are all the same human beings, yet we slap these labels of 'nationality' on ourselves. Why should fellow workers spill each other's blood in conflict?"
At my response, my father burst into a hearty laugh and clapped his hands in pride.
"Hahaha! Exactly! My son is already showing an interest in the most progressive ideas in the world!"
Marxism was an ideology that advocated for skewering capitalists—including my father—with bamboo spears and handing the factories over to the workers. Was it really something to be so happy about? A petty man like my father would weep tears of blood the moment he had to yield a single printing press to someone else. Regardless...
Listening to my father and his leftist companions got me thinking deeply.
Achieve a great feat to alter history? And with the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the center of it all?
The first method that came to mind was preventing World War I. The Great War began when a radical nationalist assassinated the Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassin was of Serbian descent, prompting Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. This dragged in Russia, Serbia's ally; Great Britain and France, Russia's allies; and Germany, Austria-Hungary's ally. Like a chain of Vienna sausages, a single trigger had pulled a multitude of nations into the fray.
To break that chain, I could deal with the assassin beforehand to prevent the assassination, thereby stopping World War I.
But... that probably won't work. Would merely stopping an assassin even qualify as a "great feat"?
It was an entirely subjective question. What exactly constituted a "great feat"? The bar for a great feat seemed incredibly high. Unless it was something on the scale of a ruined Germany conquering Paris in six weeks... Besides, would stopping a single assassination really prevent World War I? In the end, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would still have attacked neighboring countries that constantly stoked the flames of nationalism within its borders. At best, it would only delay the war by a few years. And with scientific progress marching on, an even greater number of people would have died when the war finally broke out. Ultimately, the world would just revert to its original course.
In that case, to prevent World War I... I would have to pacify nationalism itself.
But how? There was no way a mere thirteen-year-old kid could pull that off. Furthermore, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would shatter in 1918, the year I would turn thirty-five. And World War I would break out in 1914. I had to make a name for myself and make my move before then.
If only I had been reincarnated as some genius Archduke, I could have immediately shaken things up and rewritten history.
This was truly an unprecedented level of difficulty.
Well, whatever. Why overcomplicate things? Just leading Austria-Hungary to victory in World War I would be a monumental feat in my eyes. How on earth do you win a war with a country like this?
However, the immediate problem I faced wasn't the state of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the rise of nationalism. Having been dropped into a primitive era devoid of even penicillin, my primary concern had to be survival.
My father, Schmidt Stahl, had cast aside his work at the publishing house to tend to me, and my mother, Anna Stahl, had locked up her piano school to watch over me with worried eyes as I broke out in cold sweats. Feeling parental love after such a long time warmed my heart. I wondered if my parents in my past life had been like this. Even when I soiled the bedsheets with diarrhea, they patiently changed my clothes and sheets over and over again.
"Mother..."
"Marx? Are you feeling any better?"
This was, without a doubt, typhoid fever. Although Vienna's water and sewage systems were far superior to those of other European cities of the era, the nineteenth century was still the nineteenth century. It was probably on par with, or slightly worse than, modern Mumbai—a city notorious for its sanitation issues. Typhoid was a bacterial infection, so I needed antibiotics... Dammit.
"Please bring me some clean, boiled water... and some porridge."
"Are you in a lot of pain? The doctor prescribed some painkillers. Would you like to take some?"
"Pain...killers?"
Even with my mind clouded by high fever and dehydration, a sudden doubt arose regarding the identity of these painkillers. Generally, modern painkillers rely on acetaminophen—the active ingredient in Tylenol. If I didn't even know that, I would be an embarrassment to my past life as an organic chemistry major. But was this painkiller really Tylenol or aspirin? Truly? I began to recall the most primitive analgesics known to history. Alcohol... they wouldn't give that to a typhoid patient, so that was out.
Goddammit, that is one hundred percent opium.
To be precise, it was highly likely to be morphine, refined from opium.
"This won't do, Marx. Here is the medicine. Just swallow this."
Seeing me fall silent in thought, my panicked mother brought the medicine over. I clamped my mouth shut. If I got a taste of that relief now, I would probably end up down a ruinous path, sneaking into my mother's medicine cabinet to chug morphine whenever I felt bored.
I will make penicillin first...! No matter what!