Austrian-German telegram (catastrophic but not serious)
anecdote · WWI/historical apocrypha ·
retold in 3 talks
During WWI, Berlin telegraphed Vienna that the situation was 'serious but not catastrophic'; Vienna replied it was 'catastrophic but not serious', Žižek uses this as a formula for modern ideological denial of ecological and other crises.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“with us the situation is serious but not catastrophic... with us it's catastrophic but not serious”
“Germans to Austrians: 'Here the situation is serious but not catastrophic.' Austrians to Germans: 'With us the situation is catastrophic but not serious.'”
“here on our part of the front, the situation is serious but not catastrophic... here with us, the situation is catastrophic but not serious.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
François Guizot1Trofim Lysenko1Luiz Henrique da Costa (Newton da Costa)1Utsa Patnaik1Jung Chang and Jon Halliday1Yang Jisheng1Saba Mahmood1Talal Asad1
alongside works
You Can't Take It With You, Frank Capra1The Three Negations (Badiou, Cardozo Law Review)1There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson1Mubei (Tombstone), Yang Jisheng1Mao: The Unknown Story, Chang and Halliday1Is Critique Secular? (Brown, Butler, Asad, Mahmood)1Day for Night (La Nuit américaine), Truffaut1Chevengur, Andrei Platonov1
Every retelling 3
During WWI, Berlin telegraphed Vienna that the situation was 'serious but not catastrophic'; Vienna replied it was 'catastrophic but not serious', Žižek uses this as a formula for modern ideological denial of ecological and other crises., illustrating fetishist split,symbolic efficiency,ecological ideology
In WWI, Germans telegraphed Austrians: 'situation serious but not catastrophic'; Austrians replied: 'with us, catastrophic but not serious.' Žižek uses this to capture our ideological predicament, we know things are catastrophic but cannot take it seriously., illustrating ideology,material force of ideology,the situation is catastrophic but not serious
In WWI, German HQ telegraphs Vienna: 'Serious but not catastrophic.' Austria replies: 'Catastrophic but not serious.' This perfectly renders the fetishist split: knowing the catastrophe but not taking it seriously., illustrating fetishist split,ecology and ideological disavowal