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Interwar Vienna was considered a bastion of radical socialist thought, and its reputation as \"Red Vienna\" has loomed large in both the popular imagination and the historiography of Central Europe. However, as Janek Wasserman shows in this book, a \"Black Vienna\" existed as well; its members voiced critiques of the postwar democratic order, Jewish inclusion, and Enlightenment values, providing a theoretical foundation for Austrian and Central European fascist movements. Looking at the complex interplay between intellectuals, the public, and the state, he argues that seemingly apolitical Viennese intellectuals, especially conservative ones, dramatically affected the course of Austrian history. While Red Viennese intellectuals mounted an impressive challenge in cultural and intellectual forums throughout the city, radical conservatism carried the day. Black Viennese intellectuals hastened the destruction of the First Republic, facilitating the establishment of the Austrofascist state and paving the way forAnschlusswith Nazi Germany. Closely observing the works and actions of Viennese reformers, journalists, philosophers, and scientists, Wasserman traces intellectual, social, and political developments in the Austrian First Republic while highlighting intellectuals' participation in the growing worldwide conflict between socialism, conservatism, and fascism. Vienna was a microcosm of larger developments in Europe-the rise of the radical right and the struggle between competing ideological visions. By focusing on the evolution of Austrian conservatism, Wasserman complicates post-World War II narratives about Austrian anti-fascism and Austrian victimhood.

Although beset by social, political, and economic instabilities, interwar Vienna was an exhilarating place, with pioneering developments in the arts and innovations in the social sphere. Research on the period long saw the city as a mere shadow of its former imperial self; more recently it has concentrated on high-profile individual figures or party politics. This volume of new essays widens the view, stretching disciplinary boundaries to consider the cultural and social movements that shaped the city. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resulted not in an abandonment of the arts, but rather led to new forms of expression that were nevertheless conditioned by the legacies of earlier periods. The city's culture was caught between extremes, from neopositivism to cultural pessimism, Catholic mysticism to Austro-Marxism, late Enlightenment liberalism to rabid antisemitism. Concentrating on the paradoxes and often productive tensions that these created, the volume's twelve essays explore achievements and anxieties in fields ranging from modern dance, theater, music, film, and literature to economic, cultural, and racial policy. The volume will appeal to social, cultural, and political historians as well as to specialists in modern European literary and visual culture. Contributors: Andrea Amort, Andrew Barker, Alys X. George, Deborah Holmes, Jon Hughes, Birgit Lang, Wolfgang Maderthaner, Therese Muxeneder, Birgit Peter, Lisa Silverman, Edward Timms, Robert Vilain, John Warren, Paul Weindling. Deborah Holmes is Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna. Lisa Silverman is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

One of the great strengths of [Andrew Barker]'s work is that he focuses on works that have received less critical attention, such as Andreas Latzko's war reflections in Menschen im Krieg (1917). He does well to contextualize these lesser-known works with con- temporary, more canonical texts, such as Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch (1932), which is often mentioned as a work of comparison. Moreover, Barker's study reveals the intricate web of literary allusions employed by writers at this time, such as Soma Morgenstern's near quotations from Kafka's short story \"Ein Landarzt\" (1917) in Der Sohn des verlorenen Sohns (1935) and Doderer's reference to [Franz Werfel]'s character Klara Wewereka in Die Wasserfälle von Slunj (1963). Also noteworthy is Barker's choice in his chapter on the events of 1934 to include the works of two German writers, Anna Seghers and Friedrich Wolf. Acknowledging that there was very little response by Austrian writers to the civil war in its immediate aftermath-he writes that the events went \"virtually unrecorded in Austrian literature\" [121])-Barker uses Seghers's Der Weg durch den Februar (1935) and Wolf's Floridsdorf (1936) to emphasize the importance of the February revolt for leftist politics throughout Europe as \"the first Socialist uprising against a Fascist dictatorship\" (122). The international impact of the civil war deserves recognition, but as neither Seghers nor Wolf spent significant time in Austria, these works seem slightly out of place in the larger strand of Barker's narrative, which otherwise focuses on authors who at one time or another identified as \"Austrian,\" and whose works are based on first-hand impressions of the political, social and economic struggles facing their fledgling country in the interwar period.