New essays providing a wide-ranging cultural, social, and political picture of volatile between-the-wars Vienna. Although beset by social, political, and economic instabilities, interwar Vienna was an exhilarating place, with pioneering developments in the arts and innovations in the social sphere. Research on the period long saw the city asa mere shadow of its former imperial self; more recently it has concentrated on high-profile individual figures or party politics. This volume of new essays widens the view, stretching disciplinary boundaries to consider the cultural and social movements that shaped the city. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resulted not in an abandonment of the arts, but rather led to new forms of expression that were nevertheless conditioned by the legacies of earlier periods. The city's culture was caught between extremes, from neopositivism to cultural pessimism, Catholic mysticism to Austro-Marxism, late Enlightenment liberalism to rabid antisemitism. Concentrating on the paradoxesand often productive tensions that these created, the volume's twelve essays explore achievements and anxieties in fields ranging from modern dance, theater, music, film, and literature to economic, cultural, and racial policy. The volume will appeal to social, cultural, and political historians as well as to specialists in modern European literary and visual culture. Contributors: Andrea Amort, Andrew Barker, Alys X. George, Deborah Holmes, Jon Hughes, Birgit Lang, Wolfgang Maderthaner, Therese Muxeneder, Birgit Peter, Lisa Silverman, Edward Timms, Robert Vilain, John Warren, Paul Weindling. Deborah Holmes is Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna. Lisa Silverman is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

About the Author
Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust Research professor in the History of Medicine, Department of History, Oxford Brookes University. ROBERT VILAIN is Senior Tutor and a Fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford, UK, and Lecturer in German at Christ Church.

Reviews
An excellent collection. explores a pleasingly wide range of cultural activities.. Warmly recommended. * JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES *
The intellectual level of the essays is consistently high. The primary and secondary literature in English and German - from Stefan Zweig to Gregor von Rezzori and Carl E. Schorske - is handled competently. * LITERATURKRITIK.DE *
Contributors show how . . . interwar Vienna was an exhilarating place that hosted pioneering developments in the arts. * BOOKNEWS *
[T]his collection should stimulate a general rethinking of interwar Austria, a significant site of cultural production overshadowed by German and European politics in the scholarly mind. . . . [I]t opens up new scholarly terrains that need future consideration. * MONATSHEFTE *



Book Information
ISBN 9781571134202
Author Deborah Holmes
Format Hardback
Page Count 310
Imprint Camden House Inc
Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Weight(grams) 1g