Vienna Meets Berlin. Cultural Interaction 1918–1933. (British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature 41) by John Warren, Ulrike Zitzlsperger

Abstract

192 Reviews Vienna Meets Berlin. Cultural Interaction 1918-1933. Ed. by John Warren and Ulrike Zitzlsperger. (British and Irish Studies inGerman Language and Literature 41). Oxford: Lang. 2005. 298 pp. ?33.00. isbn 978-3-03910 548-5? As John Warren notes in his introduction to this volume of essays, the cultural 'interaction and even interdependence' between Vienna and Berlin in the early twentieth century was a topic for journalistic reflection as early as 1918 (p. 17). Since the 1990s, ithas been the subject of several collections of scholarly essays. Combining detailed case-studies of individual figures and works with broader considerations, most notably of images of the two cities, the current volume draws together seventeen papers (ten in German and seven in English) that were originally given inDecember 2001, at a symposium held at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies inLondon. Unsurprisingly, theatre and performance are strongly represented, in two informative ifoverlapping surveys (byJohn Warren and Alexander Weigel) of interactions between the theatre scenes inVienna and Berlin, while Christian Glanz offers a comparable overview ofmusical life.All three contributors stress that the cultural conservatism of Vienna between the wars was at once cause and effect of a northward migration of avant-garde figures. This tendency is exemplified not only by the (intermittent) voluntary exile ofArnold Sch?nberg but also by?d?n von Horv?th, towhom Alan Bance offers a thought-provoking 'Centenary Tribute', and by the fortunes of Karl Kraus's Die Un?berwindlichen (1929), first staged inBerlin by Berthold Viertel. At the time of the symposium, Edward Timms's account of this production provided a tantalizing glimpse of what was to come in the second volume of Karl Kraus. Apocalyptic Satirist (2005). The journalistic feuilleton constitutes a further focus of attention. Helen Chambers compares the court reporting of Gabriele Tergit and Joseph Roth, highlighting its value as a vehicle for social commentary and criticism; Christian J?ger analyses the stereotypical images of Berlin and Vienna that journalists in both cities conjured with as they attempted to dissect and resolve the contradictions of modernity; Bernhard Fetz explores similar issues with reference toDas Tage-Buch, the influential Berlin journal founded in 1920 by Viennese exile Stefan Grossmann; and Ulrike Zitzlsperger identifies in Kurt Tucholsky 's references to Vienna an indirect means to criticize Berlin and therefore the inverse of a technique favoured by Kraus. The greatest strength of this volume lies in themutually illuminating nature ofmany of the contributions. For example, some of the stereotypical images of Berlin as modern, 'masculine' and dynamic and Vienna as backward-looking, 'feminine' and lacking in vigour reappear in Andrew Barker's discussion of Roth's Zipper und sein Vater (1928). While for Roth what is distasteful about Berlin is epitomized by itsburgeoning film industry,Thomas Elsaesser presents Wienfilm director Walter Reisch as 'the mythographer of Viennese schmaltz' (p. 219), offering a fascinating reading of Das Lied istaus (1930). A broader, more theoretical view of citymythologies is taken by David Midgley, in an article that draws both on such familiar material as D?blin's Berlin Alexanderplatz and AUSTRIAN STUDIES I5, 2OO7 !93 on the less-known Berlin (1920) by Paul Gurk. This group of essays is usefully read alongside Frank Trommler's piece, a welcome reminder that, even if many bourgeois writers, journalists and filmmakers continued to trade inHabsburg nostalgia, the achievements of the Socialist municipality between the wars, and above all its housing policy, formed the starting-point for an alternative mythology, making 'Red Vienna' the envy of progressives across Europe and not least inBerlin. Almost inevitably in a collection of this kind, some contributions, while not without interest, have only limited relation to its narrative of interaction. Hans Hahn investigates the respective attitudes to war of Freud and Einstein; and Matthias Uecker compares two classic sociological studies of the inter-war period ? Kracauer's Die Angestellten (1930) and Jahoda's and Lazarsfeld's Die Arbeitslosen von Manenthal (1933) ? underlining the influence on both of journalistic techniques. The two final contributions, in which Hanns Eisler features prominently (Friedbert Aspetsberger on the avant-garde as radical youth movement and Gert Mattenklott on Eisler's Faustus project), explore interactions between the two...