A Head for Eisenstadt · Vienna Files

This radio drama uses AI-generated writing, voices, music, sound effects and artwork. All spoken performances in this edition use ElevenLabs V4.

A sexton in Eisenstadt says she laid the head of the composer Matthias Altmann in his tomb yesterday, after nearly a century and a half in Vienna. Half of Austria wept. Now she stands at a Vienna detective's door with a parcel in an altar cloth. Why was a stranger's funeral card hidden inside his sealed casket?

🎧 Full episode · full-cast radio drama, 27 min. Vienna Files: a post-war detective audio drama set in occupied Vienna, performed by a full cast.
Hörspiel · audiokniha · rozhlasová hra (English audio, English captions)

Listen as a podcast, with full transcripts: https://mono-noir.transistor.fm/

Stories, transcripts and the schedule: https://matezz.com

🎭 Directed Edition — every role cast for this story and every line performed with full voice direction.

Vienna, August 1952. The bell rings at the mezzanine off the Herrengasse before the coffee has boiled, and the narrator, Dr. Fuchs, follows the detective August Brenner down the passage to answer it. At the door is Frau Nemeth, sexton of a church in Eisenstadt, who has come a long road through the Russian zone. The narrator warns her to mind the zither a client left behind and never came back for, and asks her to sit; she will stand, because if she sits she will not get up again. She came on her nephew's milk lorry, not the bus, with a parcel in an altar cloth. Yesterday, she tells Brenner, she laid the head of the composer Matthias Altmann in his tomb with her own two hands; the bells were on the wireless and half of Austria wept. When the mourners had gone and she tidied the casket, she found something that does not belong there, and she will not unwrap it here: she has come sixty kilometres to fetch the detective. Inspector Lang of the Vienna police drives them out himself in a grey police Volkswagen until a striped barrier and a sentry stop the car. The sentry reads Lang's pass, printed in four languages, twice; Lang has come in his own coat, without his driver, on his free day. In Eisenstadt a sacristy smells of snuffed candles, an empty casket stands open on trestles, and the sexton shows Brenner where she found it. Back in Vienna, where Lang wants the casket's road walked end to end, the questions lead to Pokorny, a hearse driver for the city undertakers; to Frau Haselbach, a cemetery gardener; and to Frau Michaud, an archivist among her shelves. What was a stranger's funeral card doing inside a dead composer's casket?

From the series Vienna Files: a real Austrian crime reimagined as a post-war noir radio mystery, performed by a full multi-voice AI cast with an original score and sound design.

Loosely inspired by a real Austrian case of the 1950s. All names, characters, dialogue and events are fictional; the words, actions, motives and private lives of every character — including a celebrated composer, the clergy and staff of a church, archivists, undertakers and cemetery gardeners, the officers and soldiers of the occupying powers, the investigators and the police, and anyone suspected or accused of the crime — are invented for drama, and so is the solution of the mystery. Where a real city, church, cemetery or public body is mentioned, its part in this story is invented; the archive, the undertakers' yard and the offices named in it are invented too. This is a work of fiction, not a factual account of any real person or institution. No real person is portrayed, and no real individual, company or organisation is accused of any act shown here.

Setting: Vienna — August 1952.

Writer v2.7 — the studio's newest writing process: the plot is planned and checked by an AI story editor, then each act is drafted with the whole story in view and edited before a word is voiced — and then cast and performed with our new casting and voice direction.

Chapters:
0:00 The Bell Rings Before the Coffee Has Boiled
1:43 A Grey Police Volkswagen and a Striped Barrier
3:04 Snuffed Candles in the Sacristy
4:56 Cold as a Wine Cellar, Before the White Marble
6:15 A Folded Handkerchief on a Stone Bench
7:43 A Stair as Steep as a Ladder Before Dawn
9:18 Back in Vienna by Noon, a Hose and a Rake
10:58 Night Falls Beside the Orphaned Zither
12:13 Received Among the Shelves of an Archive
14:20 Next Morning, a Bare Room and a Tin Mug
15:53 That Afternoon at a Flower Bed by the Gate
17:21 Up the Back Stair Once More
19:17 Behind the Chapel, a Tarred Hut and a Whetstone
21:07 Dusk Among the Rows, Walking Back
22:24 After Dark Under One Bare Bulb
24:10 Vienna, Close on Midnight

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