The Austrian Dimension in German Intellectual History: From the Enlightenment to Anschluss by David S. Luft

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Austrian Dimension in German Intellectual History: From the Enlightenment to Anschluss by David S. Luft Katherine Arens David S. Luft, The Austrian Dimension in German Intellectual History: From the Enlightenment to Anschluss. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. X + 234 pp. David Luft, Horning Endowed Chair in the Humanities (Emeritus) at Oregon State University, has again proven himself one of the premier contemporary interpreters of Austrian intellectual history. The Austrian Dimension in German Intellectual History is an altogether magisterial presentation of a new, expansive approach to the great final chapter of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's intellectual life. [End Page 82] Luft begins by noting that the histories of Europe's nation-states simply do not accommodate a multilingual and multicultural region like Habsburg Central Europe. "National intellectuals," for example, are rarely seen as (at least) bilingual and bicultural—the precise status of many eminent names in a Habsburg monarchy never even seeking a single ethnic-national identity. Instead of contrasting "Austrians" and "Germans," Luft takes a broader view of Central Europe's German-language intellectual sphere. He begins with the late eighteenth century (before Prussia had claimed sovereignty over a united "German Reich") and situates an emerging Germanophone intellectual life in Cisleithania, the lands to the west of the Leitha River that became the Habsburg empire's heart after 1740: Bohemia and Austria (including Moravia). Luft rejects the idea of a single "Austrian" intellectual history for this region, set over and against "German" or European thought. He does, however, find a culture of "creativity and imagination" culminating in the 1905 generation: "The unifying themes of this tradition are a positive attitude toward the Enlightenment and modern science, combined with a resistance to reductionism and ideological polarization, the emphasis on ethics and inner experience, and respect for unconscious energies and what we cannot control" (139). Thus, Luft finds in Cisleithania a mainline of intellectual interests sustained in the two Habsburg capitals: Prague (until 1618) and then Vienna (for the final three hundred years of Habsburg rule). The book's first sections explain this map and how Austria and Bohemia became historically entangled, starting with the Holy Roman Empire. The Protestant Reformation brought the German language to the region. Bohemian resistance to the Habsburg Counter-Reformation led to the famous Defenestration at Prague (1618); the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 saw the defeat of the Czech-Bohemian armies (Hussite Protestants) by Catholic-Imperial forces. This forced Bohemia under Habsburg rule. After mapping the region's geography, Luft provides a timeline for Cisleithania's development, dividing it into four "modern" eras. The first was known as "Josephinism" (after Joseph II, son of Maria Theresa and the Holy Roman Emperor between 1765 and 1790, with his brother Leopold reigning for two years after that). A small group of state bureaucrats who were also intellectuals initiated a modern state. These ncluded Joseph von Sonnenfels (innovator in law and theater censorship), Joseph Dobrovský (contributor to establishing modern Czech and an advocate defining Bohemia as a joint [End Page 83] German-Czech cultural space), and the van Swietens (two educational reformers). Europe's disruptions—associated with the French Revolution, Napoleon, and their aftermaths—define the second era, between 1792 and 1866, marked by the conservatism of Metternich and the Congress of Vienna. This era's most significant Austrian figures are Stifter, Bolzano, and Grillparzer in letters, as well as historiographer František Palacký (part of the Czech revival) and Count Thun (of the University Reforms). The more familiar liberal era ran from 1867 to 1900, after the Austrian Empire became the dual monarchy in the Hungarian Ausgleich. The 1873 Börsenkrach braked its progress, feeding directly into growing antisemitism and nationalism among the Empire's ethnic-national populations. That liberal period nonetheless prepared the way for the final "Austrian" era beyond the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire proper: the era of modern intellectual life from 1900–1938/39, which was not an era of decline, as is sometimes thought, but rather one whose history has not been sufficiently appreciated. In the next three chapters, Luft tracks three major streams of intellectual life running throughout Cisleithania's existence. Chapter Three introduces philosophy and...