I’m finally reading the copy of Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March that has been sitting on my shelf for years (I have the Joachim Neugroschel translation from Overlook Press), and so far I’m enjoying it (I’m on ch. 10, and our hero, Lieutenant Trotta, has been transferred to a battalion just a few miles from the Russian border, at the end of the Austrian railway line — my guess is Pidvolochysk, now in western Ukraine [confirmed now that I’ve gotten to ch. 21, where the battalion heads to Woloczysk, just across the river]). I’ve run across a couple of passages of clear LH interest, and I’m sharing them here, in two English versions and in the German original. First, Neugroschel’s (the first passage is from ch. 1, the second from ch. 3):
“Sit down!” said the old man. The captain unbuckled parts of his splendor. “Congratulations!” said the father, his voice normal, in the hard German of army Slavs. The consonants boomed like thunderstorms and the final syllables were loaded with small weights. Just five years ago he had still been speaking Slovenian to his son, although the boy understood only a few words and never produced a single one himself. But today it might strike the old man as an audacious intimacy to hear his mother tongue used by his son, who had been removed so far by the grace of Fate and Emperor, while the captain focused on the father’s lips in order to greet the first Slovenian sound as a familiar remoteness and lost homeyness. “Congratulations, congratulations!” the sergeant thunderously repeated. “In my day it never went this fast. In my day Radetzky gave us hell!”
[…]
There was wine; they had also managed to muster up beef and cherry dumplings. Fraulein Hirschwitz came in her gray Sunday silk and, upon seeing Carl Joseph, relinquished most of her severity without further ado. “I am utterly delighted,”’ she said, “‘and congratulate you from the bottom of my heart’”—using the German word beglückwünschen for “‘congratulate.” The district captain translated it into the Austrian word gratulieren. And they began to eat.
Here is Eva Tucker’s:
“Sit down,” said the old man.
The Captain unbuckled a portion of his glory and sat down.
“Congratulations,” said his father, using the ordinary harsh German of army Slavs. His consonants rumbled like thunderbolts, the final syllables laden with small weights. Only five years previously he had addressed his son in Slavonic dialect, although the young man had merely a smattering of it and never used a word of dialect himself. However, to address his son in his mother tongue on this day, his son who by the grace of fortune and the Emperor had been removed so far from him, would have struck the old man as an impertinence not to be risked. The Captain, in the meantime, was watching his father’s lips, ready to welcome the first sound of Slavonic like long-lost, familiar sounds of home.
“Congratulations, congratulations,” the Sergeant-major thundered again. “It wasn’t so easy to get on in my time. In my day Radetzky gave us a rough time.”
[…]
There was wine. The roast and cherry dumplings had also been provided. Fraulein Hirschwitz entered in her gray Sunday silk and, on seeing Carl Joseph, relinquished the greater part of her severity.
“I’m so glad,” she said, “and I wish you well with all my heart.”
” ‘Wish you well’ is what we should call ‘congratulate,'” remarked the District Commissioner. And they began to eat.
And here is the original:
»Setz dich !« sagte der Alte. Der Hauptmann schnallte Teile seines Glanzes ab und setzte sich. »Ich gratulier’ dir !« sagte der Vater mit gewöhnlicher Stimme, im harten Deutsch der Armee-Slawen. Er ließ die Konsonanten wie Gewitter hervorbrechen und beschwerte die Endsilben mit kleinen Gewichten. Vor fünf Jahren noch hatte er zu seinem Sohn slowenisch gesprochen, obwohl der Junge nur ein paar Worte verstand und nicht ein einziges selbst hervorbrachte. Heute aber mochte dem Alten der Gebrauch seiner Muttersprache von dem so weit durch die Gnade des Schicksals und des Kaisers entrückten Sohn als eine gewagte Zutraulichkeit erscheinen, während der Hauptmann auf die Lippen des Vaters achtete, um den ersten slowenischen Laut zu begrüßen, wie etwas vertraut Fernes und verloren Heimisches. »Gratuliere, gratuliere !« wiederholte der Wachtmeister donnernd. »Zu meiner Zeit ist es nie so schnell gegangen ! Zu meiner Zeit hat uns noch der Radetzky gezwiebelt !«
[…]
Es gab Wein, auch Rindfleisch und Kirschknödel hatte man ermöglicht. Fräulein Hirschwitz kam im sonntäglich Grauseidenen und ließ beim Anblick Carl Josephs den größten Teil ihrer Strenge ohne weiteres fallen. »Ich freue mich sehr«, sagte sie, »und beglückwünsche Sie herzlich.« Beglückwünschen heißt gratulieren«, bemerkte der Bezirkshauptmann. Und man begann zu essen.
I don’t have access to the Michael Hofmann translation; if anyone does, of course I’d be curious to know how it compares.
The Internet Archive has the Hofmann translation.
Hofmann
Neugroschel’s “to hear his mother tongue used by his son” seems just plain wrong
Thanks very much, and I agree.
Does the Eva Tucker version not have the first sentence, in which the Captain unbuckled part (or parts) of his splendo(u)r? Glanz can mean shine or brilliance — perhaps a better English rendering would be ‘finery.’ ‘Splendor’ is not exactly natural English in this context.
‘Splendor’ is not exactly natural English in this context.
Nor is Der Hauptmann schnallte Teile seines Glanzes ab natural German. It’s splendiferous Joseph Roth German.
You read the sentence, chuckle and move on. If you know German. If you don’t, the sky’s the limit for speculation.
Does the Eva Tucker version not have the first sentence, in which the Captain unbuckled part (or parts) of his splendo(u)r?
Oops, my bad — I accidentally left out the first couple of sentences. Fixed now!
It’s splendiferous Joseph Roth German.
My German isn’t up to much, but even I get the feeling of k-und-k grandeur from his prose.
Aha, Tucker says he unbuckled a portion of his glory. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean…
It occured to me to wonder about the name Radetzky; the count’s full name was Johann Josef Wenzel Anton Franz Karl, Graf Radetzky von Radetz (Czech: Jan Josef Václav Antonín František Karel hrabě Radecký z Radče), so I presume there was once a village called Radetz/Radec, but I haven’t been able to find any further information.
What? Austria during WWI and you thought we can do it without Swejk?
Lukash was a typical career officer of the decaying Austrian monarchy. The cadet corps made him into an amphibian. He spoke German in society, wrote in German, but read Czech books, and when he taught at one-year school for volunteers, Czechs themselves, he told them confidentially: “Let’s be Czechs, but no one has to know about it. I’m also Czech.” [GT with my help. I don’t speak Czech or English, expect some blunders]
Lukáš byl typem aktivního důstojníka zchátralé rakouské monarchie. Kadetka vychovala z něho obojživelníka. Mluvil německy ve společnosti, psal německy, četl české knížky, a když vyučoval ve škole jednoročních dobrovolníků, samých Čechů, říkal jim důvěrně: “Buďme Češi, ale nemusí o tom nikdo vědět. Já jsem taky Čech.”
That’s all very difficult to translate! And very k. u. k. – I don’t know what all the terms mean.
Beglückwünschen very much means “congratulate”, not “wish well”; and the district governor (county executive?) explains what it means to an audience that apparently doesn’t know this word, he doesn’t say gratulieren is “what we should call” it, so Hofmann and arguably Neugroschel have it right while Tucker has it wrong. (I’m not aware of an Austria/Germany divide here, but of course such things can change over more than a century.)
I presume there was once a village called Radetz/Radec, but I haven’t been able to find any further information.
Apparently here? Much more information here, from page 91 on. The castle of Radeč was apparently already falling into ruin in 1545. Some of this information goes back to Lumír, vol. II, no. 19 (3 June 1852), p. 451 (available here), which says that in the 19th century, a dried-up pond bearing the local name Rádecký still testified to the former existence of the castle mentioned in medieval records.
Maybe this helps. I am on the road and cannot write much from my tablet.
Which of the above translations best represents hatte man ermöglicht (speaking of the meat and dumplings)? Neugroschel’s “managed to muster up”, Tucker’s “provided”, or Hofmann’s “forthcoming”?
Maybe this helps.
It certainly does! I don’t know how you do it (and on the road, no less).
I don’t read German at all, but I like all three of the translations of Fraulein Hirschwitz relinquishing her severity, as well as the captain unbuckling a portion/part(s) of his splendor/glory–perhaps not natural English, but fresh and even a bit startling. And perfectly understandable. They made me smile as I read.
The town is probably this one in West Pomerania.
Which of the above translations best represents hatte man ermöglicht (speaking of the meat and dumplings)? Neugroschel’s “managed to muster up”, Tucker’s “provided”, or Hofmann’s “forthcoming”?
The German is a bit of dry, uncommitted bureaucratese. Neugroschel’s wording is too lively; Hofmann’s too passive (as if the food had shown up on its own), so I’d say “provided” is the best of the three, although “to provide food” is a much more conventional wording in English than the German one (literally “had been made possible”). I would have used that literal translation, to stay with the general slight weirdness of Roth’s language, but in that case, the weirdness may be bigger in English than in German.
Second attempt after thinking a bit:
Roth’s wording is using dry, non-committed, somewhat bureaucratic language to imply that someone must have gone to some lengths to serve up such a feast in wartime. Neugroschel drags that implication into the open and looses the dryness. Hofmann keeps the non-commitedness and dryness of language, but drops the implication. Tucker comes nearest to the mark, but his conventional “provide” undersells the effort that probably was involved to make the feast possible.
In the years of hunger and black market after WW II, what Roth calls ermöglichen was called organisieren in German. Perhaps “had been organised” would be another possibility, although that also sounds more conventional to me than Roth’s wording.
I think the problem is that the closest pragmatic equivalent in English of German man as a marker of impersonal bureaucratese is the passive, but that can be too vague on agency. I would suggest combining the passive with a bureaucratic formula that implies special administrative effort. Say:
“There was wine, and even beef and cherry dumplings had been made available for the occasion.”
[Edit: I could probably raise the bureaucraticity by another notch with the right formula, but it eludes me now.]
In the Danish of my father’s generation, to organisere something like a meal strongly implied that the somebody else’s inventory might come up short. Bikes, building materials, and so on, though for a meal it might just mean asking friends/neighbors. Strong undertones of union members helping each other to stuff that wouldn’t really be missed, possibly going back to the war and resistance groups, but then it wouldn’t be a calque from German. I don’t know what the yoof of today calls it.
“There was wine, and even beef and cherry dumplings had been made available for the occasion.”
That’s actually quite good and comes closer to the original than the translations Hat quotes.
One notch up:
“There was wine, and even beef and cherry dumplings had been facilitated.”
“Arranged”?
I like “organized,” which has the requisite sense. OED:
Yes, but only if German ermöglichen had the same connotations.
(Norw. orge “acquire by whatever means” < organisere, an obvious calque.)
I like “organized,” which has the requisite sense.
Now I think about it, Modern Hebrew לְאַרְגֵּן le’argen ‘to organize’ (ca. 1900–. Borrowed from German?) is used with that exact secondary meaning as well.
Yes, but only if German ermöglichen had the same connotations.
I am not an expert on Austrian German of the early 20th century; I am reading the text with my personal knowledge of contemporary Germany German. But to me it looks like Roth was using a language that had a certain distancing effect, something that wouldn’t work if he used well-known circumlocutions. So a dry, somewhat bureaucratic expression that implies that getting that food on the table was not a trivial undertaking without necessarily hinting at illegal actions would be best.
Just to echo the prior deduction of Xerîb, the Czech online magazine Historická šlechta (Historical Nobility) cites the Ottův slovník naučný (Otto’s Educational Dictionary) of 1888-1909 as follows: “Původištěm jejich byla tvrz a ves Radeč u Chomutic, nyní Obora řečená.” (“Their place of origin was the fortress and village of Radeč near Chomutice, now called Obora.”)
I think it never did; it’s just Roth being creative again. (It’s immediately understandable, though; it’s not too creative.) That way it sounds much more bureaucratic, official and noble than organisieren.
That way it sounds much more bureaucratic, official and noble than organisieren.
It also sounds more military. Which is why Neugroschel‘s choice of „mustered up“ is the best of the three translations, although I might have gone with „procured“.
@Hans: But to me it looks like Roth was using a language that had a certain distancing effect, something that wouldn’t work if he used well-known circumlocutions. So a dry, somewhat bureaucratic expression that implies that getting that food on the table was not a trivial undertaking without necessarily hinting at illegal actions would be best.
@DM: it’s just Roth being creative again. (It’s immediately understandable, though; it’s not too creative.) That way it sounds much more bureaucratic, official and noble than organisieren.
@Vanya: It also sounds more military. Which is why Neugroschel‘s choice of „mustered up“ is the best of the three translations
I agree with these viewpoints, jointly and severally. I had tried in vain to remember “mustard up”. The military association is hardly there for me.
So a dry, somewhat bureaucratic expression that implies that getting that food on the table was not a trivial undertaking without necessarily hinting at illegal actions would be best.
Ah, so “organized” wouldn’t work.
That’s what I tried to do with the military-style concretification of “facilitate”, which I also thought would have a very similar core meaning as ermöglichen: If the original word was made up by Roth, he still transparently made it from familiar elements, and we could do the same in English, e.g. by adding an essentially meaningless prefix:
“There was wine, and even beef and cherry dumplings had been enfacilitated.”
ermöglichen was not made up by Roth. It’s a bog standard German word meaning “to make something possible”. The point people are making is that it is an odd word to use in the sense of “procuring food”, simply because it is usually used in legal or bureaucratic contexts, or journalistic jargon.
Wiktionary has a decent example of the normal environment where this word is found: “ Ein neues Gesetz soll ermöglichen, dass Betroffene finanziell entschädigt werden”.
In that case, I’m going to go with Trond’s “facilitated.”
That’s probably best.
@Vanya: Thanks. I got the meaning originally, but misunderstood the later discussion and got confused.
Another option is “enabled”.
“Enabled” would fit if it wouldn’t have those pedagogical overtones.
The Hofmann translation seems clearly the best of the three, overall. Of course it’s not perfect in every last detail; what translation can ever be that? But it’s definitely better work than the other two, which seem to me roughly on a level with each other: equally flawed, albeit in different ways.
Perhaps the most notable point of superiority in Hofmann’s text is “moved so far” – that is beautiful. The other two both lose something of the sense there.
Yes, I agree.
Hoffman’s “the stiff German spoken among army Slavs” is wrong however. “Hard” makes more sense.
Still, that made me wonder how familiar Roth actually was with the sound of Slovenian. Roth grew up among Polish and Ukrainian speakers, presumably was exposed to a lot of Russian in his childhood and Czech while living in Vienna and serving on the Eastern Front. But Slovenian sounds more like Italian than Russian. Southern Slavs would not have had the same “Army Slav” accent as the Eastern Slavs Roth served with.
But to an Austrian ear maybe any Slavic speaker would speak in a way that sounds like “the endings of words had little weights pulling them down” since Austrians tend to swallow or leave out final consonants, particularly “ch” and “t”, that a non-native speaker (or a northern German) feels duty bound to pronounce clearly.
Not only that, I assume it’s also referring to the stereotypic Slavic pronunciation of all schwas as full-vowel [ɛ].
What do you mean? The dialects do drop final /b d g x/ a lot, and turn final postvocalic /t/ into /d/, but I don’t think this is about dialects.
Most Slavic languages (apparently all except FYLOSC and Ukrainian) have final fortition, though, which Austrian German lacks (except apparently Carinthian, whose entire sound system has been reinterpreted in Slovene terms). p t k are called “hard”, so this may in fact be what “hard” refers to here.
It is also possible that the lack of free-standing [ŋ] in Slavic (other than some kinds of Polish), as opposed to [ŋg] or [ŋk], is a factor here.
Austria is a schwa-free zone; unstressed e is either [ɛ] or absent (…and ge- even comes out with [e] more often than not). However, rendering every e as [ɛ], as opposed to [eː] or syllabic consonants, is very much a component of a stereotypical generic southeastern foreign accent, likewise rendering every o as [ɔ] as opposed to [oː].
Slovene does have [eː] and [oː], though; and Russian lacks [ɔ].
@DM: I assume Roth refers to Slavs trying to speak some form of Standard Literary German, not Austrian regiolect.
Russian lacks [ɔ].
Well, Russian /o/ is frequently described as a mid vowel, but in my experience, lots of speakers have something closer to [ɔ] than to [o], and have bigger problems pronouncing the latter than the former when speaking German.
I don’t think this is about dialects.
In daily speech many Austrians preserve a lot of those phonetic features even when speaking mesolect, things like intervocalic lenition, plosive deletion before “n”, and other features that make Austrian German “softer”, or less consonant heavy, than Hochdeutsch. But you’re right that Roth was probably thinking of final fortition in particular. I am still wondering though if a speaker of a Northern German dialect (which typically have morpheme final fortition) would have perceived Army Slav German as “hard”, or whether that is a more Austrian perspective.
Stage pronunciation aside, there is no standard accent of German. And back then, people in the places this book is set in would hardly have had a chance to get any exposure to how Standard German was spoken in Berlin or Frankfurt – as opposed to Vienna.
What I don’t know is what Prague German was like.
Before syllabic nasals? Yes.
Yeah, the German of Germany is irrelevant to Roth — it’s all k.u.k.
I dunno. Here is Emperor Franz-Joseph speaking – that sounds like very much like German speakers that try to approximate a school standard, and not very Austrian. It has all the schwas, and while you could debate whether his -en is [ən] or a syllabic “n”, you can also debate that for Germany German, and the point for “Slavic” accents would be that they have neither, but [ɛn].
If that is typical for the German that k.u.k. functionaries spoke on official occasions, I would also assume that this is what Roth’s officers would strive to achieve, without fully managing to do so.
Oh, fascinating.
What strikes me is its inconsistency. My impression is he wasn’t sure what kind of register to aim at – like he wasn’t trained in public speaking, or like he wasn’t sure how strongly he needed to overenunciate for the phonograph.
Sometimes I hear exaggerated spelling-pronunciations, with -en as [ɛn]; sometimes I hear syllabic consonants; and there are one or two where he switched from one to the other while the word was already underway and ended up with [ən].
The same happens with rhoticity. Somewhere around the middle there’s Arbeit with a [r], an exaggerated spelling-pronunciation; near the beginning, anderem comes out as [and̥ɐm] just like in Viennese mesolect today – the second e is dropped, placing the r right in front of a consonant, so it disappears, too. …Though, actually, it’s entirely possible that the text he was reading didn’t use the modern standard form anderem* and actually said anderm. Compare the German federal ministry of the interior: Bundesministerium des Innern** – modern standard would be Inneren. Standard German, and I mean the written form, has changed more since then than Standard English, let alone Standard French, and it was also considerably less standardized than today.
Other than that, it’s largely unremarkable Standard German as spoken in Vienna. It actually reminds me a lot of Anton Zeilinger.
A generic/stereotypical Slavic accent would differ from this in:
– voiced [b d g] (“softer”), except final fortition (“harder”)
– lack of final lenition of t (“harder”)
– syllable- or mora-timing (“clearer”, so perhaps “harder”)
– neither [eː] nor syllabic consonants, only [ɛ] (“harsher”, so probably “harder”)
– likewise no [oː], only [ɔ] (“harsher”, so probably “harder”)
– unrounding of all front vowels (Bavarian dialects have rounded front vowels, just in different places than the standard)
– lack of free-standing [ŋ] (“exaggerated”, so probably “harder”)
* [and̥ɐʀɛm] for me
** Not anymore… it’s now Bundesministerium des Innern, für Bau und Heimat. No idea why it isn’t für Inneres, Bau und Heimat or für innere Angelegenheiten, Bau und Heimat – apparently, the nonstandard form is regarded as a proper name now and can be extended but not modified.
Oh, fascinating.
Seconded — thanks for finding that!
– laminal instead of apical [r]. Not very easy to hear (it’s part of the difference between rr and -r- in Spanish), but another feature on the “harder” side.
Thank you from me too, Hans!
This interview with Max Brod might give you an idea. Not that much different from the 1960s standard German spoken by the interviewer.
That recording of Franz-Joseph was indeed very interesting. And my strongest impression was that same as David Marjanović’s—that there was quite a bit of inconsistency in his pronunciation (especially early on, I thought).
„Prague German“ was reportedly considered „the best“ German in the German speaking world in the pre-1914 era, which I suppose means closest to literary standard.
A generic/stereotypical Slavic accent
This is my issue. What generic accent? Slovenes or Croatians don’t sound like Czechs, Poles or Ukrainians when they speak German. I just don’t think Roth actually had a lot of exposure to South Slavs in his life. Based on no real evidence, I always got the sense the Trottas act like Moravians but Roth decided to call them „Slovenian“. Possibly to make Trotta‘s death as geographically remote from his ancestral land as possible inside the Monarchy.
A generic/stereotypical Slavic accent
I agree with Vanya’s point re the actual differences between Slavic accents. Adding to that, I normally can distinguish between a Russian and a Polish accent in German, while the stereotype takes them to be the same. Stereotypes are known for not corresponding to the facts (or at least grossly oversimplified them.)
Other than that, it’s largely unremarkable Standard German as spoken in Vienna.
Thank you for confirming that. And even the points you mention where his pronunciation is non-standard show features that are frequent in Germany German accents as well, like the syncope of second schwas around liquids or vocalisation of /r/. So this looks like a register that is close in pronunciation to what a German would use.
https://deutsch.radio.cz/ueber-stacheldraht-karpatendeutsche-und-kafka-der-autor-constantin-goettfert-im-8217702#player=on
I was going to post this earlier, but did not think it added anything. But maybe others would like the contrast between Czech interviewer and Austrian interviewee (also perhaps the topic)
Yes, but I mean what it was like phonetically. The written standard is written; it does not come with a pronunciation.
||:Oh, fascinating.:|| I watched the whole thing.
Brod has:
– Final fortition of plosives, though not in gewidmet; and the first /t/ in Weltliteratur is probably deleted entirely.
– Otherwise strikingly reliably voiced /b d g/.
– g never turns into /x/.
– Intervocalic /b/ often turns into a Spanish-style approximant (not into /v/ as e.g. in Austrian dialects) – even in Oskar Baum.
– [z] consistently in all the expected places, plus -ismus and etwas nicht; final fortition is not universal. There’s even das Ganze with fully voiced [zg], Kafkas Bild with [zb] (but it ends in [t]), and Aufrichtigkeit with [v]!
– Non-final /k/ is almost always [g̊]; I find it difficult to hear the pure voice contrast in gar keine or gekannt.
– I can’t tell if his [r] is apical or laminal.
– Non-rhoticity, except for a few [ar], Sorge and sorgenvoll, and at least one wirklich; I strongly suspect all of these are deliberate overenunciation.
– -ion as two syllables.
– No long consonants, except [sː] in Szenen.
– No trouble with rounded front vowels.
– Unstressed e is either [ɛ] or absent, creating syllabic consonants; no schwa.
– Intervocalic and sometimes final [ŋ], but often final [ŋg̊] or [ŋk].
– [h] in annähernd and seherische.
– I can’t geographically place his vowels.
In short, not Austrian, not simply a Czech accent, and not a combination of both either, though there’s clear influence at least from the latter and probably some from the former. Some features, e.g. the use of [z], must have come from north of Bohemia; there is no [z] even in Carinthian.
The interviewer is also interesting. At first I thought he was Saxon: /p t k/ and /b d g/ largely merged as [p t k] finally and before /r l/ (no examples with /n/ available), [b̥ d̥ g̊] otherwise (a few [d] and [k], in particular, do occur), and the somewhat fronted-and-unrounded u fits – but he uses [z] quite sparingly, unlike the few Saxons I’ve heard. It’s also striking that he turns Seher into sehr.
(The vocabulary and grammar of both are nothing short of literary, as expected from an interview with a writer; there are no clues to whether they’d speak differently in daily life in these respects. …The one exception is Brod’s im Tag; I’m pretty sure I’ve only ever encountered am Tag in standard and dialects alike.)
Makes sense.
Vocalisation of /r/ is standard except in Switzerland and stage pronunciation, and after short vowels in the *handwave* Rhineland. It’s consistently applied by newsreaders from ORF to NDR.
The announcer, in the first half-minute, has a weak Czech accent. The interviewer sounds like a native speaker from at least as far north as Berlin, including numerous nonstandard features like gesagt coming out as [gəzɑχt]. The interviewee only sporadically pokes his nose out of Viennese mesolect (into more standard or more northern features); Viennese mesolect was originally intended as a colloquial register for Standard German, and that’s how he uses it here.
Here‘s another example from the last generation of Prager Deutsch speakers: https://youtu.be/DZaFsITh1BA?si=CAJB7H-9TXIGxqE-
That might be what you get when you start with Brod’s accent and then live in Vienna for sixty years. (Plus, likely, some overenunciation for the camera.)
The /ʃ/ sounds precisely like the Czech one, but that’s gone native in Vienna and is found in at least some subdialects there.
@DM
Does Viennese mesolect go as far as where the interviewee came from, or does he employ it in interviews instead of what he grew up speaking? Thanks for listening, I also thought the interviewer had a native German accent but found it unusual that a German would be working for Radio Prag, I suppose this is him and he does interviews for them out of interest or for personal reasons or because SWR has a deal with them.
https://www.zu.de/unileben/pioneer-of-the-month/kuemmerer-frieder.php
The interviewee definitely went to school in Vienna and would speak mesolect in most situations.