GER40230 Vienna 1900

Academic Year 2019/2020

In Vienna around 1900, a range of modern styles and avantgarde ideas competed with aristocratic odds and ends of the Habsburg Empire in its final years. For so long the centre of a German monarchy that stretched into central and Eastern Europe, through its alliance with Hungary dominating the region, Vienna, if a city can be a seismograph, did not sense that change was coming. But with its Kaffeehäuser and palaces, its baroque and modern architecture, Vienna was a vital location for intellectual and artistic life. Its influence on modern art, philosophy, science and European culture in general was most significant. Many of its leading artists and writers were Jewish, such as Sigmund Freud and Arthur Schnitzler, a little later, Joseph Roth. This module will examine some of the artistic and intellectual undercurrents of the time. Artists to be discussed include Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, writers will include Robert Musil, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Joseph Roth and we will also examine the influence of philosophers such as Mach and Brentano. No study of Vienna around 1900 would be complete without reference to some of the writings of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.