Rethinking Vienna 1900

Fin-de-siecle Vienna remains a central event in the birth of the century''s modern culture. Our understanding of what happened in those key decades in Central Europe at the turn of the century has been shaped in the last years by an historiography presided over by Carl Schorske''s Fin de Siecle Vienna and the model of the relationship between politics and culture which emerged from his work and that of his followers. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to question the main paradigm of this school, i.e. the "failure of liberalism."

This volume reflects not only a whole range of the critiques but also offers alternative ways of understanding the subject, most notably though the concept of "critical modernism" and the integration of previously neglected aspects such as the role of marginality, of the market and the larger Central and European context. As a result this volume offers novel ideas on a subject that is of unending fascination and never fails to captivate the Western imagination.

Fin-de-siècle Vienna remains a central event in the birth of the century's modern culture. Our understanding of what happened in those key decades in Central Europe at the turn of the century has been shaped in the last years by an historiography presided over by Carl Schorske's Fin de Siècle Vienna and the model of the relationship between politics and culture which emerged from his work and that of his followers. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to question the main paradigm of this school, i.e. the "failure of liberalism."

This volume reflects not only a whole range of the critiques but also offers alternative ways of understanding the subject, most notably though the concept of "critical modernism" and the integration of previously neglected aspects such as the role of marginality, of the market and the larger Central and European context. As a result this volume offers novel ideas on a subject that is of unending fascination and never fails to captivate the Western imagination.

List of Illustrations
Preface
Notes on Contributors

Introduction
Steven Beller

Chapter 1. Vienna 1900 Revisited: Paradigms and Problems
Allan Janik

Chapter 2. Rethinking the Liberal Legacy
Pieter M. Judson

Chapter 3. Fin de Siècle or Jahrhundertwende: The Question of an Austrian Sonderweg
James Shedel

Chapter 4. Theodor Herzl and Richard von Schaukal: Self-Styled Nobility and the Sources of Bourgeois Belligerence in Prewar Vienna
Michael Burri

Chapter 5. Marginalizations: Politics and Culture beyond Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Scott Spector

Chapter 6. Freud’s “Vienna Middle”
Alfred Pfabigan

Chapter 7. Popper’s Cosmopolitanism: Culture Clash and Jewish Identity
Malachi Haim Hacohen

Chapter 8. A Matter of Professionalism: Marketing Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
Robert Jensen

Chapter 9. The Image of Women in Painting: Clichés and Reality in Austria-Hungary, 1895–1905
Ilona Sármány-Parsons

Chapter 10. Afterthoughts about Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: The Problem of Aesthetic Culture in Central Europe
Mary Gluck

Select Bibliography
Index