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Central Europe: Birthplace of the Modern World?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Steven Beller
Steven Beller
Affiliation:
The author is an independent scholar at 821 South Fairfax Street, Alexandria, VA 22314.
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Extract

It is not very often that the lands of Central Europe are uppermost in the historical consciousness of Western public opinion. Chamberlainesque ignorance has been the norm. In recent years, however, this situation has been at least partially remedied by two events: the dramatic series of revolutions in Eastern Europe, and—the topic of this essay—the perception of, and fascination with, Central Europe as the place from which our modern world sprang.

Type
Articles
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 23 , January 1992 , pp. 72 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1992

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References

1 I would like to thank David Sorkin, Allan Janik, and Jack Jacobs for having read the manuscript of this article and given their views on it. I benefited greatly from their advice. The views expressed in this article are, however, my responsibility alone.

2 The leading proponent of this view is Schorske, Carl E., see his fin-de-siécle Vienna: Politics and Culture (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980)Google Scholar.

3 For example, Steiner, George, “Vienna: the Crucible,” televised lecture on the “South Bank Show,” London Weekend Television, 06 16, 1985Google Scholar. Also see Stone, Norman, Europe Transformed (Glasgow: Fontana, 1983), 407–8Google Scholar.

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26 See Kieval, Hillel, The Making of Czech Jewry, 1870–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

27 Broch, Hermann, “Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit,” in Broch, , Schriften zur Literatur 1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), 167Google Scholar. This essay is now available in English, as Hugo von Hofmannsthal and His Time: The European Imagination, 1860–1920, trans, and ed. Steinberg, Michael P. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

28 See Bahr, Hermann, Selbstbildnis (Berlin, 1923), 108ffGoogle Scholar.

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34 Hašek, Jaroslav, The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974)Google Scholar.

35 Broch, Hofmannsthal, 135ff.

36 Tietze, Juden, 233.

37 For a similar argument, see Suess's, Eduard speech in the Reichstag, reported in Neue Freie Presse, morning edition, 03 29, 1895Google Scholar. On the history of Austrian anti-Semitism see Pulzer, Peter, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, rev. ed. (London: Peter Halban, 1988)Google Scholar.

38 On Tiszaeszlar see Katz, Jakob, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism, 1700–1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 275–78Google Scholar; on Hilsner, see Červinka, František, “The Hilsner Affair,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 13 (1968): 142–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Gluck, Lukács, 54ff.

40 See McGrath, William, Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis: The Politics of Hysteria (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

41 Schnitzler, Arthur, Der Weg ins Freie (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1978), 205Google Scholar. On Schnitzler's thought, and his relation to his Jewish background, see Abels, Norbert, Sicherheit ist nirgends: Judentum und Aufklärung bei Arthur Schnitzler (Königstein: Athenäum, 1982)Google Scholar.

42 Budapest before 1914 did not experience the success of anti-Semitism to the same degree as Vienna or even Prague. This may well explain why its intelligentsia were less wary of modernity than its counterparts in the other cities. See Gluck, Lukdás, 54–105. On the other hand there were plainly very large problems between the conservative Magyar gentry and the Jewish intellectual circles. Lukacs, Budapest 1900, 187ff. Also see Gluck's, interesting article on developments in modernism after 1914, “Toward a Historical Definition of Modernism: Georg Lukács and the Avant-Garde,” Journal of Modern History, 58 (1986): 845–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 See Janik, Allan, “Vienna 1900: Reflections on Problems and Methods,” in Die Wiener Moderne, ed. Brix, E. and Werkner, P. (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1990), 156–57Google Scholar.

44 On Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron see the essay by Steiner, George, “Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron,” in Encounter 24 (1965): 40–46Google Scholar. On the general argument, see Janik and Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna, 263–75.