Viennese modernism
The Viennese Modernism refers to the cultural life in the Austrian capital at the turn of the century (from about 1890 bis 1910 ). Before the First World War and the subsequent collapse of the Habsburg monarchy , there was a significant boom in philosophy, painting, architecture, music and literature, but also in mathematics, medicine and economics and law. The term Vienna around 1900 or Vienna 1900 is also used internationally .
Viennese modernism has emerged as a countercurrent to naturalism and would like to counter the prevailing maxim of faithfully reproducing real circumstances with “art for art's sake” ( French l'art pour l'art ). The result is a style conglomerate, influenced by the diverse, sometimes contradicting currents of the fin de siècle in Europe. Important centers of modernism were Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Milan. The international discovery and research of Viennese modernism began in the 1970s.
Backgrounds and influences
The conservative Catholic monarchy Austria-Hungary has reached its high and final phase under Emperor Franz Joseph I. While industrialization is comparatively slow, a large administrative apparatus overlooks the country and the nationality conflicts in the multiethnic state are coming to a head, the centers of the empire (Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Trieste, Zagreb, etc.) achieve intellectual excellence in the development of often contradicting principles , Opinions, scientific approaches and currents. The capital Vienna, which had more than 2 million inhabitants around 1900, is the melting pot of Central European cultures, because this is where the economic and intellectual upper class gather .
Political life in Vienna is complex and full of tension. Social democracy ( Victor Adler ), Zionism ( Theodor Herzl ) and Austromarxism ( Otto Bauer ) develop. Mayor Karl Lueger uses public anti-Semitism as a political strategy in his own words . In 1914 9 percent of Vienna's citizens are Jews . They have a large share in artistic and scientific work, for example Karl Kraus , Arthur Schnitzler , Gustav Mahler , Arnold Schönberg and Alfred Polgar are of Jewish faith.
In a milieu of conservative pomp and progress, the artists turn, contrary to naturalism, to the interior and the psyche. It comes to the ego dissection. Ernst Mach describes the self as "unsaved". The connection between I and society, I and the world, is no longer justified rationally, but rather shows itself at the boundaries between dream and reality, between understanding and feeling. For contemporaries, a “mood” often expresses more than can be said in terms.
Ideas were imported through direct personal relationships between avant-garde individuals. Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner played an important role in public discourse. The literary critic and author Hermann Bahr commuted constantly between Berlin and Vienna and was thus subject to constant change due to ever newer ideas. He was first a Wagnerian and a follower of Bismarck , then a Marxist , naturalist , symbolist , finally an expressionist and finally a conservative Catholic. A decisive year for the implementation of the new ideas of Viennese modernism (contrary to historicism in architecture and literature) was in 1897 with the foundation of the Secession. The architect Adolf Loos remained impressed his life and influenced by his stay in America from 1893 to 1896, especially in Chicago and New York.
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Philosophy, psychology and social and natural sciences
Ernst Mach made a name for himself as a philosopher, physicist and scientific theorist. Ludwig Wittgenstein made significant contributions to analytical philosophy and philosophy of language . Other philosophers were Ludwig Boltzmann , Franz Brentano , Rudolf Carnap , Edmund Husserl , Alexius Meinong , Karl Popper and Moritz Schlick .
Hans Kelsen and Anton Menger are to be cited as legal scholars . Important economists were Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk , Friedrich von Hayek , Carl Menger , Ludwig von Mises and Joseph Schumpeter .
Sigmund Freud revolutionized psychology by founding psychoanalysis . In 1899 he published his famous “Interpretation of Dreams”.
Among the mathematicians are Kurt Gödel , Hans Hahn , Karl Menger and Richard von Mises .
Visual arts
The artistic work was concentrated in the associations of the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte .
The three most outstanding and internationally known painters of Viennese Modernism are Gustav Klimt (Art Nouveau), Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele (both Expressionism).
The architecture shaped Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos . Otto Wagner wrote a paper entitled Modern Architecture from 1895 , in which he declared the era and predominance of historicism (especially the buildings on Vienna's Ringstrasse in the modern Greek, neo-Roman and neo-baroque styles) to be over. He does not yet know the term “modern”, he only speaks of the necessary adaptation of the architecture to technical progress.
literature
In the literature, the grouping of Jung-Wien around Hermann Bahr , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Arthur Schnitzler and Peter Altenberg in Café Griensteidl should be mentioned. The coffee house is a cultural institution in Vienna, one speaks of coffee house literature . For many artists it will become a second home - feature pages and occasional art are created here , sometimes only in the form of fragments, Altenberg calls his works “Extracts of Life”. Other literary cafés were Café Central , Café Museum and Café Herrenhof . In addition to the aforementioned Hermann Broch , Anton Kuh , Friedrich Torberg , Alfred Polgar , Egon Friedell , Georg Trakl , Joseph Roth and Robert Musil, they met there .
music
Outstanding composers were Alban Berg , Johannes Brahms , Anton Bruckner , Gustav Mahler , Arnold Schönberg , Anton von Webern and Hugo Wolf .
literature
- Gotthart Wunberg (Ed.): The Viennese Modernism. Literature, art and music between 1890 and 1910 . Reclam, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-15-027742-6 . (Reprint 2000)
- Carl E. Schorske : Vienna. Spirit and society in the fin de siècle . 2nd Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-10-073603-6 .
- Thomas Markwart: The theatrical modern. Peter Altenberg, Karl Kraus, Franz Blei and Robert Musil in Vienna , Kovac, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-8300-1680-8 .
- Milan Dubrović : Misappropriated History. The Viennese salons and literary cafés . Zsolnay, Vienna 1985, ISBN 3-552-03705-5 .
- Jacques Le Rider , Robert Fleck (transl.): The end of the illusion. Viennese modernism and the crises of identity . Austrian Bundesverlag, Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-215-07492-3 .
- Dagmar Lorenz: Viennese Modernism . Metzler Collection, Volume 290, Realien zur Literatur. Metzler, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-476-10290-4 .
- Jacques Le Rider , Eva Werth (translator): Not a day without writing. Diary literature of Viennese modernism . Passages places of memory. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85165-496-X .
- Jacques Le Rider , Christian Winterhalter (translator): Freud - from the Acropolis to Sinai. The return to antiquity in Viennese modernism . Passages philosophy. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-85165-636-9 .
- Anna-Katharina Gisbertz: Mood - Body - Language. A configuration in Viennese modernism. Fink, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7705-4855-2 .
- Mirko Gemmel: The Critical Viennese Modernism. Ethics and aesthetics. Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein . Parerga-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-937262-20-2 .
- Helga Mitterbauer (Hrsg.), Katharina Scherke (Hrsg.): Ent-bounded spaces. Cultural transfers around 1900 and in the present . Studies on Modernism, Volume 22. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85165-640-7 .
- Barbara Tomandl: Education in the Society of Viennese Modernism. Institutions, ideas and objectives . Thesis. University of Vienna, Vienna 2008.
- Andreas Wicke: Beyond lust. On the problem of marriage in the literature of Viennese modernism . Carl Böschen Verlag , Siegen 2000, ISBN 3-932212-22-3 .
- Georg Karner: The longing for the mirror. Social reflection in and through art using the example of narcissism in Vienna around 1900 . IGEL Verlag Literatur & Wissenschaft, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-86815-738-3 .