Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WWI & the First Republic
Fin-de-Siècle Austria
Austria in the late 19th century followed a similar pattern of industrialisation and growth
of political parties based around workers' movements that occurred in other continental
European countries. The country's oldest political party, the Sozialdemokratische Partei
Österreichs (SPÖ; Social Democratic Party of Austria), was founded as the Social Demo-
cratic Workers' Party in 1889, based on German models. By the turn of the 20th century,
Austria - and Vienna in particular - was experiencing one of its most culturally exciting
periods. The capital's population had almost doubled between 1860 and 1890, growing to
more than two million inhabitants.
This was the political and cultural hub of an empire that spanned Austria and Hungary,
but also included 15 other countries, proving a magnet for artists, architects, the perse-
cuted and plain hangers-on who wanted to try their luck in the capital of an empire. In this
empire, however, Austrians and Hungarians enjoyed a higher status than Slavs, leading to
exploitation and often tensions in the capital.
Architecturally, Austria's capital was transformed by a spate of building and infrastruc-
ture projects that, among other large projects, saw it receive a metro system. The Seces-
sion movement, the Austrian equivalent of art nouveau, sprang up and rejected histor-
icism. Villas sprouted out of the ground in Vienna and across the country, and the coffee
houses, especially in the capital, became the centre of literary activity and music. In 1913
Arnold Schöneberg began developing his 'atonal' style of musical composition when he
conducted his famous Watschenkonzert (so-called 'clip-over-the-ear concert') in Vienna's
Musikverein. For a public used to the primrose tones of Romanticism, it must have felt
like an unmitigated aural assault.
Meanwhile, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had set up his practice in Vienna's Bergstrasse
and was challenging the sexual and psycho-social mores of the previous century. He used
the term 'psychoanalysis' and explained the role of sexuality in our lives. This was, in
fact, a highly sexualised period, with writers such as Arthur Schnitzler and Expressionist
artists like Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka taking sexuality as a major
theme in their works. WWI brought all this to an end.
