GERMANY: By Proxy

I'm the toast of Vienna, And most of Vienna Can boast It's been host To the toast of Vienna.

This little ditty, sung in At Home Abroad by Beatrice Lillie in 1935, might well have been sung in earnest by Countess Vera Fugger von Babenhausen any time before the Nazification of Austria. Besides having Kurt von Schuschnigg as fiance, she had as fancy a pair of slanting eyes and as sensitive a pair of musical ears as any blonde in the city. She was 33, a moderately gay divorcee, an intelligent...