scholarly journals From Potemkin Village to the Estrangement of Vision: Baroque Culture and Modernity in Austria before and after 1918

2016 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 167-187
Author(s):  
Matthew Rampley

The artistic and cultural life of Austria after World War I has often been presented in a gloomy light. As one contributor to a recent multivolume history of Austrian art commented, “the era between the two world wars is for long periods a time of indecision and fragmentation, of stagnation and loss of orientation … the 20 years of the First Republic of 1918–1938 did not provide a unified or convincing image.” For many this sense of disorientation and stagnation is symbolized poignantly by the deaths in 1918 of three leading creative figures of the modern period, Otto Wagner, Gustav Klimt, and Egon Schiele, two of whom succumbed to the influenza epidemic of that year. According to this view, war not only led to the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy (and a dramatic political caesura), it also caused or, at the very least coincided with, a profound interruption to artistic life and brought Vienna's cultural preeminence in central Europe to an end. The inhabitants of the newly constituted Austrian Republic were forced to contend with significant challenges as to how they might relate to the recent past. On the one hand, some—including, most famously, Stefan Zweig—sought refuge in a twilight world of nostalgic memory; others, such as Adolf Loos, used the events of 1918 as the opportunity to advance a distinctively modernist agenda that sought to create maximum distance from the Habsburg monarchy.

Author(s):  
R. J. W. Evans

The formation of Czechoslovakia introduced a remarkable novelty into the heart of the European continent after World War I. It was an unexpected creation and a completely new state, whereas its neighbours as successors to the Habsburg Monarchy either carried historic names and connections (Austria, Hungary, Poland), or were reincarnations of existing sovereign realms (Yugoslavia), or both (Rumania). Moreover, Czechoslovakia seemed uniquely to embody the ideals of the post-war settlement, as a polity with strongly western, democratic, and participatory elements. Yet Czechoslovakia was a historical construct, deeply rooted in earlier developments. It constitutes classic terrain for a study of the ‘nationalist and fascist Europe’ which emerged after 1918. This book deals with the history of Czechoslovakia and discusses Czech nationalism, along with the Czechs' relationship with Slovaks and Germans, Britain's policy towards Czechoslovakia, and gender and citizenship in the first Czechoslovak Republic.


Author(s):  
Barbara Haider-Wilson

AbstractThe Habsburg Monarchy had a long history of relations with Palestine. In the nineteenth century, Austria participated in the “peaceful crusade” forming a special “Jerusalem milieu”. Its actors collected donations to establish several institutions. After 1918, the meaning of “Austria” was completely different from before the First World War. Yet, the (Christian Social) elites of the small Austrian First Republic and the politicians of authoritarian Austria still took an interest in matters concerning the Holy Land. In 1927, an Austrian consulate re-opened in the Holy City. The hospice in Jerusalem and the hospital of the Order of St John of God in Nazareth survived the years of turmoil. Austrian cultural diplomacy in the Mandate period continued to maintain good contacts with the local Arab population and gained new dimensions.


Author(s):  
John J. W. Rogers ◽  
M. Santosh

Alfred Wegener never set out to be a geologist. With an education in meteorology and astronomy, his career seemed clear when he was appointed Lecturer in those subjects at the University of Marburg, Germany. It wasn’t until 1912, when Wegener was 32, that he published a paper titled “Die Entstehung der Kontinente” (The origin of the continents) in a recently founded journal called Geologische Rundschau. This meteorologist had just fired the opening shot in a revolution that would change the way that geologists thought about the earth. In a series of publications and talks both before and after World War I, Wegener pressed the idea that continents moved around the earth independently of each other and that the present continents resulted from the splitting of a large landmass (we now call it a “supercontinent”) that previously contained all of the world’s continents. After splitting, they moved to their current positions, closing oceans in front of them and opening new oceans behind them. Wegener and his supporters referred to this process as “continental drift.” The proposal that continents moved around the earth led to a series of investigations and ideas that occupied much of the 20th century. They are now grouped as a set of concepts known as “plate tectonics.” We begin this chapter with an investigation of the history of this development, starting with ideas that preceded Wegener’s proposal. This is followed by a section that describes the reactions of different geologists to the idea of continental drift, including some comments that demonstrate the rancorous nature of the debate. The next section discusses developments between Wegener’s proposal and 1960, when Harry Hess suggested that the history of modern ocean basins is consistent with the concept of drifting continents. We finish the chapter with a brief description of seafloor spreading and leave a survey of plate tectonics to chapter 2. Although Wegener is credited with first proposing continental drift, some tenuous suggestions had already been made. We summarize some of this early history from LeGrand (1988).


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 12-20
Author(s):  
Anisha Deswal

This paper seeks to investigate the impulses that encouraged a ‘gendering’ process and its crystallization in colonial Punjab in relation to the masculine culture propagated by the institution of a military-martial structure by the British Raj. The imperial/colonial gender perceptions led to the creation of gendered spaces in a manner conforming to the masculine ideology of the army. This is highlighted through different aspects of the lives of both men and women – their struggles, works, contributions, dreams and politics – before, during and after the First World War (1914-18). As a result, there emerged amongst the soldiers’ new high-class martial castes, middle-class patriarchal structures, and ideological pillars keen on constructing and upholding ‘ideal masculinity’ and ‘safe femininity’. The paper argues that the process of ‘gendering’ took place at two levels. On the one hand, the army structure of the colonial state paved the way for military-martial culture to exist on extreme masculine lines and, on the other hand, this ‘high’ masculine ideology percolated in the society and presented itself in contrast to the women of the region by further relegating them to the feminine spaces. Thus, the society in colonial Punjab presented a layered martial structure, which, in turn, dichotomized the gender binary. The paper attempts to reveal such ‘gender’ realities and experiences witnessed by the region of Punjab. In this context, the operation of imperial power and the resistance of the colonized to it; the space that was denied to the disadvantaged gender – women – and; the changes they imbibed along with the history of the mutual roles of women and soldiers become crucial to understand the ‘gendering’ process.


The Plunder ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Daniel Unowsky

The introduction offers an overview of the geographical and chronological scope of the violence before setting these events within existing scholarship on antisemitism, Habsburg and Polish history, and the history of violence in central Europe around 1900. Although these events have been largely overshadowed by more deadly examples of anti-Jewish violence before and after World War I, the 1898 riots constituted the most extensive anti-Jewish attacks in the Habsburg state in the post-1867 constitutional era. The 1898 Galician violence challenged the image of Austria-Hungary as a Rechtsstaat, a state governed by the rule of law. The introduction includes chapter previews.


2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Reinecke

SummaryIn the history of immigration control, the period from the 1880s to the 1920s saw an international dynamic of growing restrictions. World War I in particular has been regarded as watershed marking the end of laissez-faire migration policy. But whether 1914 can be seen as a crucial turning point depends on the country under consideration, as well as on the chosen analytical approach. Analysing Britain’s politics of immigration control before and after the war and comparing it with its Prussian equivalent, this article discusses the shifts and continuities in the concrete administration of migration. Focusing on the changing practice of expelling foreigners, it suggests a chronology of control that does not entirely correspond with the overall political changes. By 1918, the British bureaucracy possessed elaborate means to monitor aliens, and the state increasingly impacted on the migrants’ lives. In contrast, Prussia was maintaining a tightly regulated regime already, which its authorities had established well before 1914.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Kathleen Antonioli

This article argues that French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette occupies a central position in the canon of French women’s writing, and that from this position her reception was deeply influential in the development of the myth of French singularity. After World War I, a style of femininity associated with Colette (natural, instinctive, antirational) became more largely synonymous with good French women’s writing, and writers who did not correspond to the “genre Colette” were excluded from narratives of the history of French women’s writing. Characteristics associated with Colette’s writing did not shift drastically before and after the war, but, in the wake of the Great War, these characteristics were nationalized and became French.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Finkelstein ◽  
Alexandre Métraux

When Emanuel Ringelblum was born on November 21, 1900, in Buczacz, the small, multilingual and multi-ethnic Galician town was to be found on the far northeastern part of the Austrian Empire. As a mail stamp on a Correspondenz-Karte or Karta korrespondencyja of 1890 shows, the place was officially spelled in accordance with its Polish orthography. However, it was called Butschtasch in German, Bichuch in Yiddish, and still differently in Ukranian. After World War I, it was for a short while part of Ukrania, and subsequently became Polish, then Soviet, and Ukranian again in the aftermath of the end of the Soviet Union. Ringelblum's cousin, Shmuel Josef Agnon (1888–1970), was also born in Buczacz. But their lives were to diverge in most respects. Agnon is remembered as one of the leading authors of modern Hebrew belles-lettres who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966. And one remembers Ringelblum as the one who, with utmost and relentless courage, organized the underground archive Oyneg Shabes in the Warsaw ghetto. Samuel D. Kassow, the expert on the history of Oyneg Shabes and the author of a brilliant monograph on this subject, asserts that “more than anyone else it was Emanuel Ringelblum who encouraged individuals to write, who organized and conceptualized the archive, and who transformed it into a powerful center of civil resistance” (Kassow [2007] 2009, 7).


Author(s):  
Bojan Djordjevic

The fundamental issue in the first years after the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was related to the future organization of Dubrovnik Archive, considering that the invaluable materials still lay in the Rector?s Palace, which assumed a completely new role and a special place in the newly formed Kingdom. Namely, following the end of World War I and the foundation of the new state, the Rector?s Palace in Dubrovnik, as a cultural property of national significance, was proclaimed a cultural-historical monument, on the one hand, and also a residence of the king, on the other. Therefore, it came under the jurisdiction of the Court of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later the Court of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), i.e. of the Royal Office. The jurisdiction over the Archive itself, specifically over the materials kept in it, was in the hands of the Ministry of Education. In 1921, Antonije Vucetic was named the first administrator of Dubrovnik Archive. Vucetic immediately and unequivocally advanced the thesis that Dubrovnik Archive, despite not being of the rank of the Archives in Zagreb and Belgrade, still is ?the most celebrated in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes?. Above all else, he emphasized the historical significance of this Archive, containing materials important for the history of the Republic of Dubrovnik, but also for the Serbian and Croatian histories from the 11th to the 19th centuries. In the year 1930, a new administrator was appointed to Dubrovnik Archive. It was Branimir Truhelka. He realized that in the case of the most important matters related to the Archive, in the case of all the Archive?s needs, they should turn, if possible, directly to the Court of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, i.e. to the Minister of the Court. The year 1931 marks the beginning of Truhelka?s systematic efforts to obtain the most that could be obtained for Dubrovnik Archive, to explain its significance to the authorities on the Court, and - without insisting on moving the Archive from the Rector?s Palace, being aware of the lack of support for this - to do everything to provide the safe keeping of valuable materials and to secure research in the Archive. Until the beginning of World War II and the occupation of Yugoslavia, Dubrovnik Archive prospered and an increasing number of researchers came to work in it. Thus, Dubrovnik Archive proved itself to be an unavoidable source for studying the past of both the Republic of Dubrovnik and the Serbian people.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-63
Author(s):  
Eduart Begolli

Abstract The paper reflects political, economic, social activities and aspects of Korça during the period of the study.This period is special and important in the history of the Korça region and the Albanian state. During this period were launched the institutions of public life, founded in the form of governance, which included a series of economic activities for Korça based on creating new contemporary legislation increasing the institutions’ role in relation to the previous tradition; building up a modern national educational institution in order to change the mentality of the people, basically oriented to the western countries’ policy. There are described the key moments of political, economic, social and cultural life of the Prefecture’ people of Korça.The main aim and objective of the study has to familiarize the reader with the Korça region people role in the political, social, economic, during 1912-1920 ‘s, and the efforts of this population for freedom and independence and national unity.The most outstanding personalities in the different fields of the life in Korça region in local and national level are recorded, showing their role in certain moments of these developments.The important place has taken the attempts of Greeks for annexation of Korça region using the different political, diplomatic and military means, but there were also the wishes of the population of Korça to be part of Albania. The ability of Korça citizens for selfgovernance is clearly expressed during WWI when the “Autonomous Republic of Korça” government was founded.


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