Socio-aesthetic Histories: Vienna 1900 and Weimar Berlin

doi:10.1017/9781108550826.018

Chapter 17 - Socio-aesthetic Histories: Vienna 1900 and Weimar Berlin

from Part III - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2019

Katharina Herold

Edited by

Jane Desmarais and

David Weir

Show author details

Jane Desmarais: Affiliation:
Goldsmiths, University of London
David Weir: Affiliation:
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

Book contents

Get access

Summary

A comparison of Vienna and Berlin, the two most significant centres of German-speaking decadence, provides insight into the relationship of social class and aesthetic experience in the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1897–1914) prior to World War I and during the tumultuous period of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933). The cultural and urban development of both cities, in their shared departure from nineteenth-century certainties, qualifies them for comparison in the context of decadence: Vienna’s imperial decline clashed with a radical re-thinking of tradition in art, and Berlin’s expressionistic distortions brought forth a brutal modernity that conservative thinkers considered to be the expression of racial degeneracy. To show how social history shaped the aesthetics of decadence at the time, the chapter focuses on the decadent art and writing of Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, and Arthur Schnitzler in Vienna, followed by Otto Dix, Alfred Döblin, and Christopher Isherwood in Berlin.

Keywords

Socio-aesthetics Vienna Berlin Herold Austro-Hungarian Empire Weimar Republic Freud Dix Isherwood decadence

Type: Chapter
Information: Decadence and Literature , pp. 283 - 299

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108550826.018 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banham, Martin (1995). The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Barzini, Luigi (1983). The Europeans, Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar

Beller, Steven (2001). Rethinking Vienna 1900, Oxford: Berghahn.Google Scholar

Benjamin, Walter (1999). Demonic Berlin. In vol. II, part 1, of Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings: 1927−1930, Jennings, Michael W., Eiland, Howard, and Smith, Gary, eds., London: Harvard University Press, pp. 322−7.Google Scholar

Döblin, Alfred (2018). Berlin Alexanderplatz, Michael Hofmann, trans., London: Penguin.Google Scholar

Freud, Sigmund (1997). Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, New York: Touchstone.Google Scholar

Furst, Lilian R. (2003). Girls for Sale: Freud’s Dora and Schnitzler’s Else. Modern Austrian Literature, 36(3/4), 19–37.Google Scholar

Gay, Peter (1968). Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider, London: Secker and Warburg.Google Scholar

Gordon, Mel (2006). Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, Venice, CA: Feral House.Google Scholar

Hensel, Georg (1975). Spielplan: Der Schauspielführer von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd ed., Frankfurt/M., Berlin, and Vienna: Propyläen.Google Scholar

Isherwood, Christopher (2012). The Berlin Stories, New York: New Directions.Google Scholar

Kaes, Anton, Jay, Martin, and Dimendberg, Edward, eds. (1994). The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Krobb, Florian (2004). ‘Die Kunst der Väter tödtet das Leben der Enkel’: Decadence and Crisis in Fin-de-Siècle German and Austrian Discourse. New Literary History, 35(4), 547−62.Google Scholar

Kupper, Herbert and Rollman-Branch, Hilda S. (1959). Freud and Schnitzler − (Doppelgänger). Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 7(1), 109–26.Google Scholar

Mahoney, Kristin Mary, (2015). Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Mann, Klaus (1942). The Turning Point, London: Fischer.Google Scholar

Marchand, Suzanne (2015). Central Europe. In Saler, Michael, ed., The Fin-de-Siècle World, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 131−49.Google Scholar

Nèret, Gilles (2000). Gustav Klimt 1862–1918, Cologne: Taschen Verlag.Google Scholar

Rasch, Wolfdietrich (1986). Die literarische Décadence um 1900, Munich: C. H. Beck.Google Scholar

Robertson, Ritchie (2018). Pared fingernails. Times Literary Supplement, 6001, 6 April, 18.Google Scholar

Schneider, Gerd K. (1995). Die Rezeption von Arthur Schnitzlers Reigen 1897–1994, Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press.Google Scholar

Schnitzler, Arthur (1995). La ronde / Hands around, New York: Dover.Google Scholar

Schnitzler, Arthur (2012). Fräulein Else, F. H. Lyon, trans., London: Pushkin Press.Google Scholar

Schorske, Carl E. (1981). Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, New York: Vintage.Google Scholar

Weir, David (2018). Decadence: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Zweig, Stefan (1943). The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography, London: Cassell and Company.Google Scholar

Book contents

Chapter 17 - Socio-aesthetic Histories: Vienna 1900 and Weimar Berlin

Summary

Keywords

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive