Century Vienna Research Articles

An Erasmian Jewish Convert in 16th Century Vienna? Christian Concord and Jewish Sources in the Work of Paulus Weidner

This article aims to shed new light on the work of the humanist and Jewish convert Paulus Weidner (1522–1585) by focusing on his use of postbiblical Jewish sources to defend, illustrate, and spread a non-confessional Christian faith both among Jews and among the divided Christians of the Habsburg Monarchy. As such, Weidner was a major figure of the Christian via media promoted at the Habsburg court in Vienna around the mid-16th century. Yet, he retained, at the same time, a profound originality, for his contribution was largely based on the Mishnah. Indeed, Weidner not only proposed Christian interpretations of the Talmud, which he argued could lead to Christian faith but also claimed that the Pirkei Avot could serve as a source of Christian ethics and, as such, ought be added to the Biblical and classical heritage promoted and revered by scholars of his time.

Dora's mother: a housewife's psychosis.

I examine a speculative diagnosis made by Sigmund Freud regarding his patient's mother in his landmark 1905 paper describing a hysterical illness. Freud considered the impact of Dora's mother's mental state on her daughter, wondering whether the mother might suffer from a 'housewife's psychosis'. Here was an emphasis on the social structures of the times and differences between the parents in terms of sexual freedom and societal limitations placed on women. Freud's description drew attention to Dora's anxieties in relation to her parents, in particular the state of their sexual relationship and the apparently sanctioned entry of another couple, Frau and Herr K, into the parental relationship. In particular, the role of syphilis in the aetiology of sexual disturbances was considered, affecting men and their sexual partners, specifically their wives, who faced lifelong risks of morbidity, inadequate treatment and psychic disturbances at this time in 19th century Vienna.

Das Wiener Kaffeehaus als Lebenswelt und Spiegel gesellschaftlicher Veränderungen am Beispiel der Novelle Buchmendel von Stefan Zweig

In his novella Buchmendel (1929), Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) refers to the tradition of the coffee house as an explicit place of cultural and social exchange in the 20th century Vienna. The aim of this study is to show the Viennese coffee house tradition not only as a breeding ground for social developments, but also as a kind of microcosm in which the oscillations of social life are reflected. The novella Buchmendel (1929) will be used to analyse the coffee house culture of Viennese society as a seismograph of social changes. The main focus of the study is the story of the protagonist Buchmendel, whose life circumstances will be described and analysed against the backdrop of the Viennese coffee house tradition culture.

The Emergence of Habsburgs in Early Works of Joseph von Hormayr

The paper deals with the issue of emergence of the Austrian historical myth in the early 19th century. The identity crisis in Austria, Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg possessions due to the French revolution and collapse of the “Old empire” brought a discussion on loyalty towards dynasty, throne, and the state. Relations of Habsburgs with their non-Germanic realms also underwent a transformation connected with the creation of the Austrian empire in 1804. Intellectuals in the early 19th century Vienna were faced with the challenge to revisit the remains of the old model of identity and relationships between the state and the society in a new context. The new model combining romanticism and conservatism pursued to find a model of “natural” relations between the sovereign, state and society. Joseph von Hormayr was the author of concepts for Austrian history, Habsburg dynasty, and its relations with the society in the early 19th century. He justified them with legitimism, dynastic patriotism, and general historical memory. “The Austrian Plutarch” made an impact on Austrian historical memory in the 19th century. The images of early Habsburgs were supposed to demonstrate the role of monarchy in the success of the state, social stability, and European balance. The essays showed the moral right of the dynasty to leadership in Germany and Central Europe. Hormayr disseminated the concepts of “Austrian freedom” in the Empire, “putting an end to the anarchy”, consistent centralization of Southern-eastern German areas, and its support from estates. The sovereigns appeared both in the image of mobilization figures for the duchy and neighboring countries, and possessors of the personal features turning Austria into the Empire later.

Professional career and family life of Viennese Primadonnas. The case of Catarina Cavalieri and Aloysia Weber (Lange)

The aim of this article is to present the issue of female singers and their role in the society of eighteenth-century Vienna on the example of two women: Mozart’s sister-in-law Aloysia, née Weber, later Lange, and Catarina Cavalieri, the first Constance. These singers were rivals on the opera stage in late 18th century Vienna, as evidenced by the parts written for them by Mozart in his Der Schauspieldirektor. From the social point of view, the biographies of these two outstanding singers are very different.

Scheidungsgrund Sexualität Die Anschuldigungen der Sodomie und der ehelichen sexuellen Gewalt in frühneuzeitlichen Eheverfahren

The article examines if and with which terms sexual practices that were contemporary interpretable as "sodomite", i.e. “sex against nature”, were discussed in marriage proceedings before ecclesiastical courts. The source basis consists of 1,749 main proceedings, which were researched, transcribed and recorded in a database within the framework of two research projects, financed by the Austrian Science Fund between 2011 and 2018. After a brief overview of the legal norms, we focus on those 20 marriage proceedings in which wives and husbands spoke before the consistories about the "unnatural" sexual practices which had been demanded of them. Specifically, we analyze three marriage proceedings in which the charges went beyond the heterosexual framework and three marriage proceedings in which wives explicitly accused their husbands of forcibly carrying out "marital duties". It is noteworthy that, with one exception, the allegations were made only by wives. It is also noteworthy that, again with the exception of one married couple, all these married couples lived in 18th century Vienna and that at one fifth, nobles are overrepresented. In relation to all 444 marriage proceedings in which spouses accused each other of sexual misconduct, it becomes apparent that the allegations of sodomy and marital rape were more likely to lead to a temporary separation, however there was not one single case in which the consistorial councils decided that this accusations were sufficient to divorce the couple from bed and board. Although "sodomite" practices, especially those that transcended the heterosexual framework, were punishable by death, we found no evidence of exchange of information between the ecclesiastical courts and secular criminal justice.

Food and feed supply and waste disposal in the industrialising city of Vienna (1830-1913): a special focus on urban nitrogen flows.

Taking an urban metabolism perspective, this article investigates food and feed consumption as well as flows of nitrogen in the city of Vienna during the industrial transformation. It addresses the question of the amount of agricultural products consumed in the city and their nitrogen content, their origin and their fate after consumption. Changes in dietary nitrogen flows in nineteenth century Vienna are embedded in the context of a socio-ecological transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-metabolic regime. Similarities and differences in the size and dynamics of urban nitrogen flows in Vienna and Paris are discussed. Critical reading of historical sources and historical material flow accounting are the methodological backbone of this study. Between 1830 and 1913, inflows of dietary nitrogen into the city increased fivefold. Throughout the time period under observation, the urban waterscape was the most important sink for human and animal excreta. The amount of nitrogen disposed of in the urban waterscape via urban excreta increased sevenfold. The average daily consumption of nitrogen per capita was very similar to that in Paris, but the composition of foodstuff differed. In Vienna, the share of meat in food consumption was considerably higher. Both cities had to face the challenge of increasing output flows. However, urban authorities in Vienna and Paris came to different solutions of how to deal with this challenge. Besides institutional settings, the specific geomorphology of the cities as well as biogeographic factors such as the absorption capacity of the Danube in Vienna and the Seine in Paris mattered. Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10113-014-0653-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Scientific Reason and the Discipline of International Law

International law emerged as a professional academic specialization in a 19th century European context of wide-ranging public debates about the nature and cultural significance of science. Ever since, the status of international law as an academic discipline has been intimately connected with the capacity of international lawyers to demonstrate that our discipline is properly scientific. Yet the ideals of science upon which international lawyers have drawn in seeking to demonstrate the scientific nature of our work have not remained static. This article explores how those shifting ideals of science have shaped the concerns, questions, methods, and theories adopted by professional legal scholars in different times and places, including the 19th century Cambridge of Whewell, the 20th century Vienna of Kelsen, the post-war New Haven of McDougal and Lasswell, and the globally networked university of the 21st century. In returning to the historical debates out of which today’s highly stylized versions of positivist and policy-oriented international law emerged, the article shows that while scholars of international law have shared a commitment to scientific values of rationality, progress, and objectivity, they have understood those commitments as requiring different forms of conduct, different means of producing knowledge, and different relations to the state.

A probable case of congenital syphilis from 18th century Vienna

Archaeological excavation of a historic cemetery in Vienna, Austria, dating to the Josephinian period (CE 1765–1790) yielded a likely case of congenital syphilis. The individual displays intensive alteration of the permanent and deciduous dentition such as the mulberry molar and a tapered, fang-like canine. Traits rarely documented in paleopathological literature such as unnotched Hutchinson's incisors or pitting on the base of the cusps of deciduous second molars complement the finding. The present contribution describes this first probable case of congenital syphilis from Central Europe based on dental morphology. Beyond this documentation the specimen is compared to previous cases reported elsewhere.

MUSICIANS MAKE MARKETS

ABSTRACT Arts markets are not ‘neutral’. Rather, they are inevitably coloured by socio-cultural practices and regularities, some of which are embedded in and afforded by aesthetic forms and the values and images associated with these forms. The stabilisation of distribution and consumption patterns over time may thus be linked to, and structured by, often tacitly delineated meanings, values and practices associated with artistic products (musical works and their performance, in this case). These associations afford emotional attachments and identity-stances that may become integral to artistic distribution and in ways that are socially consequential. To the extent that distribution and consumption are inflected in these ways, markets may be understood to be culturally inflected. Market processes, in other words, can be seen as structures that are both shaped by, and shape, the flow and exchange of passion, emotion and often unremarked forms of sensibility. I explore these themes through a case study of the production and distribution of Beethoven's keyboard concertos in early nineteenth century Vienna. I describe how the distribution of Beethoven's works offered gendered ‘object lessons’ about music producer/distributers (composer/performers) and music consumers. Through these lessons, the market for high culture music came to be associated with exhibitions of physical prowess, a heroic mien, and, almost exclusively, performances by men.

The fantastic organ

The Age of Insight by Eric Kandel is a brutal and beautiful book. Its pages burgeon with beautiful images and beautiful ideas. The ideas are pursued with relentless honesty and diligence for more than 600 pages. There are parts of this book that should only be read in private. I know this after a slightly fraught flight to London, trying to read the book while covering its pictures of masturbating women with my boarding card—I did not want to offend the sensibilities of an Indian gentleman, who showed a polite interest in my reading material. I am not quite sure why I did this, perhaps because I am English; or perhaps because I found the pictures curiously arousing—despite their innocent titles {e.g. ‘Seated Woman in Armchair’ by Gustav Klimt [(1862–1918): c.1913], pencil and white chalk}. Happily, the book explained why I found them so alluring. THE AGE OF INSIGHT: THE QUEST TO UNDERSTAND THE UNCONSCIOUS IN ART, MIND, AND BRAIN, FROM VIENNA 1900 TO THE PRESENT By Eric R. Kandel 2012 New York: Random House ISBN: 978-1-4000-6871-5 Price: $40.00 Kandel’s treatment is a book of two parts. The first deals with innovative thinking and insights in science and art in turn of the century Vienna. The second overviews the neurobiology of perception and emotion, bringing the reader back to deep questions about perspective taking and neuroaesthetics. The premise that underpins both parts is that the brain is an inference machine, generating hypotheses and fantasies that are tested against sensory data. Put simply, the brain is—literally—a fantastic organ (fantastic: from Greek phantastikos , able to create mental images, from phantazesthai ). For me, the story starts with Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94) and the notion of unconscious inference (Helmholtz, 1866/1962). Kandel places this story in the context of history and art, in an …

The Danube and Vienna: urban resource use, transport and land use 1800–1910

In this article, we investigate the changing role of the Danube river in relation to urban resource use, transport and land use for the case of nineteenth and early twentieth century Vienna. Vienna makes a good case study due to its geographical position as a continental city and its dynamic development of population numbers and transport infrastructure in the nineteenth century. We trace the amount of energy used in the city and identify a shift from a biomass-based energy supply to the large-scale use of coal. Along with this shift went a change in the Danube’s role as transport route: while until the 1870s, the Danube was the most important freight transport route, river transport lost importance after the great Danube regulation in 1875, and the railway took over. The river was the most important route for providing fuel wood well into the nineteenth century: Vienna drew wood from remote areas situated upstream along the Danube to the West of the city. Only after the railway connection to Northern coal deposits in the 1850s could Vienna’s energy base shift to coal. Finally, we investigate how land use in the city was affected by resource consumption and the river regulation. Wood use around the city was subject to legislative protection and was only little affected by Vienna’s resource demand. On the other hand, the Danube river regulation heavily impacted urban land use by supplying new areas suitable for settlement expansion.

Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna by Maria Rentetzi

<i>Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna</i> by Maria Rentetzi

Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna

Lititz, PA 17543, [email protected] (The opinions expressed in this section are those of the authors and do not represent the official opinion or position of the Journal, the Health Physics Society, or the authors' institutions.)

Trafficking materials and gendered experimental practices: radium research in early 20th century Vienna - by Maria Rentetzi

Trafficking materials and gendered experimental practices: radium research in early 20th century Vienna - by Maria Rentetzi

Maria Rentetzi. Trafficking Materials and Gendered Research Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna

Maria Rentetzi. Trafficking Materials and Gendered Research Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna

Grain Prices and Mortality in Vienna, 1648-1754

Class specific mortality in 17th and 18th Century Vienna shows a cyclical pattern which is related to grain price cycles in the 5-10 years range. This relationship is not stable over time. Applying spectral analysis based on time-varying VARs, it can be shown that at the beginning of the observation period, comovement of grain prices and mortality is considerably high in areas populated by lower classes of society. This comovement cannot be found in richer areas of the city and vanishes over time for the entire population of the city.

Trafficking materials and gendered experimental practices: radium research in early 20th century Vienna

Maria Rentetzi surveys the experimental practices of radioactivity research in early-twentieth-century Vienna, focusing on radioactive materials, instruments, women's work in physics, and gendered skills. She shows how experimental cultures in radioactivity-scientific practices employed by gendered subjects who shared a certain material and epistemic style of research--were constructed and reshaped by socialist politics in Vienna at that time. She also explores the different ways experimental practices affected men and women in laboratory sciences. Rentetzi expands the notion of material culture to include not only instruments and objects but also materials that operated as both commodities and objects of scientific inquiry. She tells a multifaceted story of how purified radium ended up on laboratory benches and who extracted and isolated it from tons of residues; the individuals who designed experiments and instruments for probing radium's properties; and those who carried radium outside of the physics laboratory and into the clinic and medical amphitheatres. Rentetzi examines how the architecture of the laboratory affected men's and women's scientific work and the way in which its urban setting reflected assumptions about scientific cross-disciplinary collaborations. Following the circulation of radium and the pursuit of power through strategies of partnership and collaboration, Rentetzi redraws paths of scientific exchange and transfers the reader from scientific laboratories to hospitals and from academic to industrial sites.

Franz Joseph and the Creation of the Ringstrasse

INTHE NINETEENTH CENTURY Vienna was known as a city of pleasure. A Frenchman, Victor Tissot, writing in 1881, found it characterised by (a fever of work and pleasure, above all pleasure. Doctors there have never thought to cure it. It is the sickness which keeps them alive.'l He quoted approvingly a diplomatic messenger who stated that leaving Berlin for Vienna was like leaving a stable to enter a drawing room.2 Stefan Zweig later recalled: (It was wonderful to live here ... it was a simple matter to enjoy life. Vienna was, we know, an epicurean city ... Making music, dancing, the theatre, conversation, proper and urbane deportment, these were cultivated here as particular arts.'3 Even during the Metternich period, visitors and inhabitants believed the same. Goethe's friend, Varnhagen von Ense, wrote in the early 1830'S: (The whole aspect of the city and its surroundings has something, rich, pleasurable and gay of heart about it. People here seem healthier and happier than elsewhere; the dark spirits which dog mankind, which harass us unremittingly, find it hard to breathe in this air, and seldom have tried to lodge here. Such an appearance has something uncommonly agreeable; it exerts a power for peace on every temperament, every humour, and promotes the feeling that thus it should be for every man among us; for everybody such an atmosphere is the right and natural one. And even if it is only an appearance, the appearance is not in vain.'4 His views were endorsed by Mrs Trollope, who, writing in 1836 of the Viennese, declared: (I certainly never saw the elements of what in most other cities would have constituted a mob, so decently clothed, so generally clean and well-to-do in appearance, and, in the midst of great gaiety and good-humour, so perfectly quiet and orderly.'5 Indeed, that most astute of all observers from England, Peter Turnbull, called them (a most happy and enjoying people',6 while Lady Londonderry agreed that (with all their apathy and slowness ... [the Austrians constitute] (a very gay, junketing nation.'7 Almost everyone agreed then that nineteenth Vienna was a happy, easygoing and gemutlich place, although it was usually remarked that the strengths of

The doctors' plague: germs, childbed fever, and the strange story of Ignac Semmelweis

Ignac Semmelweis is remebered for the now commonplace notion that must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-19th century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. This is the revealing narrative of one of the key turning points in medical history.