Design Dialogue. Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism by Elena Shapira

Abstract

Reviews 260 overwhelming — that the systematic ‘civilizing’ process conducted in BosniaHerzegovina was a ‘quasi-colonialism’ that was to be justified discursively by an ‘Othering of the Other’ (p. 230). As the Occupation exacerbated ethnic divisions, one controversial finding is that it actually prolonged the subjugation of Muslim women under Sharia Law (p. 286). (More generally, its legacy persisted in Yugoslav identity politics, with the stereotyping of Bosnian Muslims.) We are shown how the colonizer’s legitimizing discourse permeates Austrian records of the 1878 Occupation; even a rare dissident account of the ambush of troops at Maglaj is treated with scepticism here, as modulated by an inauthentic translation (p. 242). Others have noted the lack of Ottoman narratives from this era (p. 268). Aware of his own reliance on translations, Ruthner nevertheless searches for the authentic voice in his reading of the ‘first great Bosnian novel’ (p. 247), Edhem Mulabdić’s Zeleno busenje (‘Green Lawn’, 1898), of Milena Preindlsberger-Mrazović’s German-language novella collections that reveal empathy and solidarity particularly with subjugated women (Selam, 1893; Bosnisches Skizzenbuch, 1900), and — as the supreme example of ‘writing back’ (p. 293) — Na Drini ćuprija (‘The Bridge on the Drina’, 1945), Ivo Andrić’s masterly ironic re-telling of Austria’s civilizing mission in the region. Ruthner’s ‘provisional’ conclusion embraces Bernhard Waldenfels’ model of discourse in which the foreign (alien) is an independent partner and not a projection of the self (p. 311), but he ends by questioning whether Anil Bhatti’s concept of ‘likeness’ is the model that can resolve the aporias of hierarchical difference (p. 337). Gilbert Carr Trinity College Dublin Design Dialogue. Jews, Culture and Viennese Modernism. Ed. by Elena Shapira. Vienna: Böhlau, 2018. 475 pp. €35. ISBN 978–3-205–20634–7. Vienna was the intellectual and cultural capital of the European fin de siècle, the nexus of wide-ranging innovations in psychology and philosophy, literature, drama, the fine arts and music, from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis to Arnold Schönberg’s experiments in atonality. Jews eagerly grasped the egalitarian promise the Austrian Empire’s supranationalism held out to its multi-ethnic citizenry, becoming a driving force within the city’s thriving culture. In exile from National Socialism in Brazil, Stefan Zweig would later idealize in his final work, The World of Yesterday, the leading contribution of Jews to Vienna and its cosmopolitan spirit, which in his eyes had transcended even class boundaries and inevitably rendered ‘every citizen [...] supernational, cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world’ (London: Cassell, 1944, p. 22). Taking Zweig’s assertions as her starting point, and following on from her own earlier monograph Style and Seduction. Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siècle Vienna (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2016), Elena Shapira’s English–German bilingual anthology examines in broad scope Reviews 261 the role of design culture in shaping the social condition of Viennese Jews. The volume presents a series of new approaches in historical scholarship and applied fields, such as public education and architecture, to examine the complex cultural negotiations, including aspects of gender and class, that enabled Jewish designers, funders and their clients to play a pioneering role in the creation of Viennese modernism. From the emergence of fin de siècle design culture, the volume traces the repercussions of the traumatic loss of the First World War and the Empire on Austrian architecture and design in its particular Jewish codifications. Divided into five indicatively subheaded sections, the book comprises individual chapters exploring the role of Jewish designers in creating industrial and residential architecture, as well as in designing schools and religious architecture, fashion and textiles to express a distinctly Jewish self-awareness. As one chapter argues, Orientalism, unsurprisingly, played a significant role in this strategy, given the influence of Japonism on art nouveau and the common view of the Viennese secession, contrary to its universalizing tone, as a Jewish phenomenon. Further case studies include an examination of the colour decorations at Freud’s practice at Berggasse, which are read as self-conscious significations of his middle-class affiliation and professional status, and his belief in the therapeutic potential of colour. Elsewhere in the volume, Freud’s theories...