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.

A Pulitzer Prize Winner and landmark book from one of the truly original scholars of our time: a magnificent revelation of turn-of-the-century Vienna where out of a crisis of political and social disintegration so much of modern art and thought was born. "Not only is it a splendid exploration of several aspects of early modernism in their political context; it is an indicator of how the discipline of intellectual history is currently practiced by its most able and ambitious craftsmen. It is also a moving vindication of historical study itself, in the face of modernism's defiant suggestion that history is obsolete." -- David A. Hollinger, History Book Club Review "Each of [the seven separate studies] can be read separately....Yet they are so artfully designed and integrated that one who reads them in order is impressed by the book's wholeness and the momentum of its argument." -- Gordon A. Craig, The New Republic "A profound work...on one of the most important chapters of modern intellectual history" -- H.R. Trevor-Roper, front page, The New York Times Book Review "Invaluable to the social and political historian...as well as to those more concerned with the arts" -- John Willett, The New York Review of Books "A work of original synthesis and scholarship. Engrossing." -- Newsweek

Vienna in 1900 was home to a thriving arts and intellectual culture that included many important thinkers and a substantial group of prominent artists, including the founder of the Secession Gustav Klimt. A common thread throughout music and the fine and decorative arts was the redefining of individual identity for the modern age, as the search for a specifically modern Viennese sense of self prompted a dialogue about ornamentation and inner truth in the arts of the age. Edited by distinguished curators Christian Witt-Dörring and Jill Lloyd, Birth of the Modern explores new attitudes—particularly those toward gender and sexuality—that surfaced in Viennese culture in the early twentieth century. The book features essays by, among others, Philipp Blom on the question of identity, Claude Cernuschi on psychological portraiture, Alessandra Comini on music in imperial Vienna, and Jean Clair on the “joyous apocalypse,” alongside images of works by fine and decorative artists, including Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, and Koloman Moser. There is an additional emphasis on fashion with illustrations of important clothing and accessories from the period. A fascinating exploration of the early days of Viennese modernism and a pivotal moment in the development of Austrian history and the arts, Birth of the Modern will be of interest to anyone curious about literature, culture, and intellectual history in turn-of-the-century Vienna.

Vienna and its Secessionist movement at the turn of the last century is the focus of this extraordinary social portrait told through an eminent Viennese family, headed by Hermine and Moriz Gallia, who were among the great patrons of early-twentieth-century Viennese culture at its peak. Good Living Street takes us from the Gallias’ middle-class prosperity in the provinces of central Europe to their arrival in Vienna, following the provision of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1848 that gave Jews freedom of movement and residence, legalized their religious services, opened public service and professions up to them, and allowed them to marry. The Gallias, like so many hundreds of thousands of others, came from across the Hapsburg Empire to Vienna, and for the next two decades the city that became theirs was Europe’s center of art, music, and ideas. The Gallias lived beyond the Ringstrasse in Vienna’s Fourth District on the Wohllebengasse (translation: Good Living Street), named after Vienna’s first nineteenth-century mayor. In this extraordinary book we see the amassing of the Gallias’ rarefied collections of art and design; their cosmopolitan society; we see their religious life and their efforts to circumvent the city’s rampant anti-Semitism by the family’s conversion to Catholicism along with other prominent intellectual Jews, among them Gustav Mahler. While conversion did not free Jews from anti-Semitism, it allowed them to secure positions otherwise barred to them. Two decades later, as Kristallnacht raged and Vienna burned, the Gallias were having movers pack up the contents of their extraordinary apartment designed by Josef Hoffmann. The family successfully fled to Australia, bringing with them the best private collection of art and design to escape Nazi Austria; included were paintings, furniture, three sets of silver cutlery, chandeliers, letters, diaries, books and bookcases, furs—chinchilla, sable, sealskin—and even two pianos, one upright and one Steinway. Not since the publication of Carl Schorske’s acclaimed portrait of Viennese modernism, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, has a book so brilliantly—and completely—given us this kind of close-up look at turn-of-the-last-century Viennese culture, art, and daily life—when the Hapsburg Empire was fading and modernism and a new order were coming to the fore. Good Living Street re-creates its world, atmosphere, people, energy, and spirit, and brings it all to vivid life.

"From the Congress of Vienna to the Austria World Summit, the city of Vienna has hosted key meetings on peace to climate action. This is a first-class book about Vienna as the crossroads of civilization and as the international capital." —Arnold Schwarzenegger A rich and illuminating history of the world capital that has transformed art, culture, and politics. Vienna is unique amongst world capitals in its consistent international importance over the centuries. From the ascent of the Habsburgs as Europe's leading dynasty to the Congress of Vienna, which reordered Europe in the wake of Napoleon's downfall, to bridge-building summits during the Cold War, Vienna has been the scene of key moments in world history. Scores of pivotal figures were influenced by their time in Vienna, including: Empress Maria Theresa, Count Metternich, Bertha von Suttner, Theodore Herzl, Gustav Mahler, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, John F. Kennedy, and many others. In a city of great composers, artists, and thinkers, it is here that both the most positive and destructive ideas of recent history have developed. From its time as the capital of an imperial superpower, through war, dissolution, dictatorship to democracy Vienna has reinvented itself and its relevance to the rest of the world.

The new presentation of the Leopold Museum's collection highlights the splendour and wealth of artistic achievements of an era shaped by the emergence of the Secessionists, the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy and the deaths of eminent artists of Viennese Modernism, including Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser and Otto Wagner. Like the exhibition, the accompanying 560-page publication also aims to convey a sense of the character of this time and of the vibrant atmosphere in the metropolis of Vienna.Twelve scientific essays by renowned experts illustrate the historical aspects and biographies of the era's eminent protagonists whose fruitful synergy provided the basis for Vienna's unique cultural life around the turn of the century. A comprehensive appendix of illustrations shows the highlights of the Leopold Collection presented in the exhibition as well as important external loans.