Habsburg Studies Research Articles

Sexual Knowledge: Feeling, Fact, and Social Reform in Vienna, 1900–1934 by Britta McEwen (review)

Reviewed by: Sexual Knowledge: Feeling, Fact, and Social Reform in Vienna, 1900–1934 by Britta McEwen Michael Boehringer Britta McEwen, Sexual Knowledge: Feeling, Fact, and Social Reform in Vienna, 1900–1934. Austrian and Habsburg Studies 13. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. 232 pp. In this monograph, based on her 2003 dissertation, Britta McEwen has written a sensitive and thorough examination of the way in which knowledge about sex and sexuality was constructed, negotiated, and distributed in Vienna. Her timeframe is well chosen, beginning with the rapid development of the sexual sciences in the late nineteenth century and ending in February 1934 when the reform efforts in the Social Democrat–governed “Red Vienna” came to a halt in the violent conflicts with the police and the army. McEwen argues convincingly that Vienna occupied a special status during the post–World War I years, not only as the only socialist-run capital in Europe but also as a social-progressive island within a conservative nation. As such, the city-state of Vienna made for a fascinating social laboratory for the construction of sexuality and its meanings in society. While separating her study methodologically from those that link sexuality and nationalism, McEwen does frame it within supra-national discourses on sexuality, Social Darwinism and eugenics, and social pedagogy to form her central thesis, namely that sexual knowledge underwent a fundamental shift from a “form of scientific inquiry practiced largely by medical specialists to a social reform issue engaged by and intended for a wide audience” (2). In order to substantiate her claims, McEwen analyzes a myriad of mostly published yet hitherto largely unexamined texts by public servants and sex reformers close to the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria and as well as those with allegiances to the Roman Catholic Church, such as sex manuals, [End Page 125] children’s sexual education texts, or municipal reports. She uses a number of analytical tools that can broadly be subsumed under the label of poststructuralist cultural studies: Foucauldian discourse analysis, cultural history of mentalités in the manner of Lucien Febvre or Carlo Ginzburg, and William Reddy’s concept of “emotional regimes,” the cultural process by which emotions are managed and shaped. Common to all these methodologies is their emphasis on the constructedness of knowledge, which McEwen employs for a process-oriented rather than a purely descriptive approach to her topic: “I have sought to understand how people in Vienna thought about sex, what they did with the knowledge, and how that knowledge changed over time” (5). McEwen’s text is made up of six largely self-contained chapters (plus introduction and conclusion), each of which approaches her central theme from a different angle: Chapter 1 focuses on Julius Tandler’s tenure as the minister of public health after World War I and his central role in the creation of Vienna’s health and hygiene system. Tandler promoted a specifically Viennese form of eugenics called “productive population politics” (44) to bring about the repair of national health and a national regeneration through state-prescribed sexual hygiene as well as support for families, unwed mothers, and illegitimate children. In the process, McEwen argues, Tandler created an official language of sexual knowledge that would find widespread use and initiated the shift away from private doctors to public servants in the delivery of sexual health services. Chapter 2 analyzes various approaches to sexual education during the interwar period. McEwen outlines the efforts of sexual reformers to replace religious doctrine with scientifically based knowledge about the body and sexuality and the resulting counter-discourse put forward by the Catholic Church. McEwen demonstrates that the respective positions were not monolithic but allowed for considerable overlap, especially around the themes of the naturalness of (heterosexual) desire, its sublimation through self-restraint and individual responsibility, marriage, and motherhood. These last two aspects also form the central focus of the third chapter. Here McEwen argues that the heterosexual couple was the principal object of the sexual reform movement, with women having a special role in protecting their reproductive capacities (and that of their partners) through the acquisition of anatomical knowledge and the prevention of disease and unwanted pregnancy. The literary model of the...

CHARLOTTE ASHBY, TAG GRONBERG, and SIMON SHAW-MILLER, editors. The Viennese Cafe and Fin-de-siecle Culture

Charlotte Ashby, Tag Gronberg, and Simon Shaw-Miller, editors. The Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle Culture Charlotte Ashby, Tag Gronberg, and Simon Shaw-Miller, editors. The Viennese Café and Fin-de-siècle Culture. (Austrian and Habsburg Studies, number 16.) New York: Berghahn Books. 2013. Pp. xii, 244. $95.00. The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 3, June 2013, Page 981, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.3.981 Published: 24 May 2013

Hillary Hope Herzog. “Vienna is Different”: Jewish Writers in Austria from the Fin de Siècle to the Present. Austrian and Habsburg Studies 12. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011. Pp. 289.

Hillary Hope Herzog. “Vienna is Different”: Jewish Writers in Austria from the Fin de Siècle to the Present. Austrian and Habsburg Studies 12. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011. Pp. 289. - Volume 44

Gary B. Cohen and Franz A. J. Szabo, eds. Embodiments of Power: Building Baroque Cities in Europe. Austrian and Habsburg Studies 10. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008. xiv + 283 pp. index. illus. bibl. $90. ISBN: 978–1–84545–433–3.

Gary B. Cohen and Franz A. J. Szabo, eds. Embodiments of Power: Building Baroque Cities in Europe. Austrian and Habsburg Studies 10. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008. xiv + 283 pp. index. illus. bibl. $90. ISBN: 978–1–84545–433–3.

LAURENCE COLE, DANIEL L. UNOWSKY, editors. . (Austrian and Habsburg Studies, number 9.) The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy New York: Berghahn Books. 2007. Pp. viii, 246. $90.00

Laurence Cole, Daniel L. Unowsky, editors. . (Austrian and Habsburg Studies, number 9.)The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy New York: Berghahn Books. 2007. Pp. viii, 246. $90.00 Get access Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky, editors. The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy. (Austrian and Habsburg Studies, number 9.)New York: Berghahn Books. 2007. Pp. viii, 246. $90.00. The American Historical Review, Volume 113, Issue 2, April 2008, Page 624, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.113.2.624-c Published: 01 April 2008

Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky, editors.The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy.:The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy. (Austrian and Habsburg Studies, number 9.)

Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky, editors.<i>The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy</i>.:<i>The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy</i>. (Austrian and Habsburg Studies, number 9.)

The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habshurg Monarchy. Ed. Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky. Austrian and Habsburg Studies, vol. 9. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007. ix, 246 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Tables. Map. $90.00, hard bound.

The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habshurg Monarchy. Ed. Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky. Austrian and Habsburg Studies, vol. 9. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007. ix, 246 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. Tables. Map. $90.00, hard bound. - Volume 67 Issue 4

The Great Tradition and Its Legacy. The Evolution of Dramatic and Musical Theater in Austria and Central Europe. (Austrian and Habsburg Studies 4) by Michael Cherlin, Halina Filipowicz, Richard L. Rudolph

28 Reviews (including clerical) interests,were indeed immensely complex. This realization leads to a number of criticisms. This book is so packed with information and analysis that it has the makings of a standard work that one would want to consult again and again. To achieve that, however, more consideration for the user would have been required: a good index, for example, maybe even a listing, with dates and other pertinent information, of themany scholars, associations and organizations, and periodicals mentioned; better proof-reading (to remove embarrassing mistakes, such as the three different spellings of the name of the author of Imperial Leather. Race, Gender, and Sexuality in theColonial Conquest [ 1994], Anne McClintock) ;and meaningful footnotes on the actual page rather than being referred to one of themore than a thousand endnotes where one then finds a name and date to be checked in the bibliography ? an exhausting wild-goose chase. In parts, especially in thewide-ranging introductory chapter, the author has the tendency to subsume virtually all 'anthropological' thought since the Renaissance (literally from Copernicus to Freud) under one sinister hierarchical (i.e. paternalist and racist) and universalist super-narrative, thus implicitly creating her own post-colonial and feminist counter-narrative. This approach brings with it the distinct danger of practising what it pretends to criticize. But even with these minor objections, overall this book marks an impressive and important achievement. National University of Ireland, Maynooth Florian Krobb The Great Tradition and Its Legacy. The Evolution of Dramatic andMusical Theater in AustHa and Central Europe. Ed. byMichael Cherlin, Halina Filipowicz and Richard L. Rudolph. (Austrian and Habsburg Studies 4). New York and Oxford: Berghahn. 2003. xiii + 274 pp. $75.00; ?55.00 (hardback). isbn 1-57181-173-7. $25.00; ?18.50 (paperback; 2004). isbn 1-57181 4?3-5 The trouble with grandiose titles is that the reader usually expects rather more than can be given within the compass of a relatively slim volume. This title certainly promises much, and what we have are fifteen essays on aspects of drama and musical theatre, ranging over two centuries. The book is divided into two sections: 'dramatic theater' (introduced by Halina Filipowicz) and 'musical theater' (introduced byMichael Cherlin). These introductions repay careful reading (even ifwe may not agree with Filipowicz's suggestion of the sexual excitement created by theatrical performances, p. 6) and provide some coherence to a wide-ranging collection of articles. The theatre section is divided into two parts, of which the first, 'The Enlightenment and the "New Beginning'", contains essays on 'Moral optimism and the fine arts in late-eighteenth-century Austria' (by the historian Ernst Wangermann), on the uses towhich nineteenth-century Polish dramatists put the 'national hero' Tadeusz Kosciuszko (Halina Filipowicz; but we note that none of the four plays mentioned was staged inVienna), on Nestroy, linking him to several 'followers' in the twentieth century (CarlWeber), on pantomime, AUSTRIAN STUDIES, I3, 2OO5 281 dance and physical culture in German and Austrian modernism (Harold B. Segal), and on Max Reinhardts Viennese productions of the 1920s (Michael Patterson). The second part, 4Post-Holocaust and Postmodern Theater', has essays on Jelinek's Nora play (Christina Kiebuzinska) and on George Tabori (Hans-Peter Bayerd?rfer), as well as two on Thomas Bernhard ? on Heldenplatz (Alfred Pfabigan) and Vor demRuhestand (Jeanette R. Malkin). The main focus ison Austrian drama, and readers, depending on their knowledge of the subject matter, will find something of interest inmost of the papers. This reviewer particularly enjoyed four, those by Segal, Kiebuzinscka, Bayerdorfer and Malkin. 'Pantomime, Dance, Sprachskepsis, and Physical Culture inGerman and Austrian Modernism' covers in itsnine pages a broad base and will, hopefully, encourage readers to look out works they haven't yet read and to relate drama to a wider field. Kiebuzinska's 'Elfriede Jelinek's Nora Project; or what happens when Nora meets the capitalists' provides a thorough, ifstraightforward, analysis ofJelinek's satirical 'Nora' play written in 1979, deconstructing Ibsen's A DolVs House and The Pillars of theCommunity.Hans-Peter Bayerd?rfer's 'George Tabori's Return to theDanube, 1987-1999' looks at another of the 'anti-Austrian' dramatists of the late twentieth century, putting Tabori's efforts into the...

The Disintegration of the Austrian Empire

Half a century after the overthrow of one of Europe's oldest dynasties, the historic role and the achievements of its multinational empire are once again debated by historians everywhere. It is as if the experience of the second world war and our inability to conclude it with a more satisfactory settlement than the previous one were making us reconsider and question the assumptions and policies of the peacemakers of 1919. This renewed interest can be seen in the West, as for example in the United States, where the renascence of 'Habsburg Studies' leads to rather favourable reappraisals, while British historians still incline to the traditional anti-Austrian line. But more significantly still, the same process of historic revision is at work in the succession states, where it is becoming increasingly common to conduct rational debates free of cliches and emotive language. The explanation for this phenomenon is not merely the nostalgia felt by immigrants from Central Europe and their descendants, nor is it the relief felt by intellectuals cautiously moving out of the Stalinist strait-jacket. It is more likely perplexity at the nature of a region which since the end of the Austro-Hungarian regime has defied all efforts to renew its former pattern and has refused to be federated or absorbed whether in a western framework of treaties and alliances as after I918, under German leadership as in the thirties, or by Nazi or Soviet force as in the forties and fifties; and it does not appear that communism has provided a unifying drive in our time. Central Europe is simply not ready for unity. Like the pre-war Little and Balkan Ententes, which were purely diplomatic constructions and never engaged popular sympathy, so the war-time plans for federating parts or even the whole of the region, which were the work of exiled Czech, Polish, and Balkan leaders, remained academic exercises which their peoples were un-

The Status of Habsburg Studies in the United States

The status of Habsburg studies in the United States could easily be described in one word: “flourishing.” Evidence for this assertion can be found in any issue of the Austrian HistoryNews Letteror its successor, theAustrian History Yearbook, or in the very fact that this conference is being held. Readily available are long lists of books and articles published by Americans on the history of the Habsburg monarchy, of dissertations completed and in progress, and of research projects contemplated and under way—all good signs of much scholarly activity.

Metternich: A Reappraisal of His Impact on International Relations

Previous articleNext article No AccessMetternich: A Reappraisal of His Impact on International RelationsRobert A. KannRobert A. Kann Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 32, Number 4Dec., 1960 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/238614 Views: 9Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1960 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:JENNIFER MITZEN Reading Habermas in Anarchy: Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Public Spheres, American Political Science Review 99, no.33 (Sep 2005): 401–417.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055405051749James R. Sofka Metternich's Theory of European Order: A Political Agenda for “Perpetual Peace”, The Review of Politics 60, no.11 (Aug 2009): 115–150.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500043953Paul W. Schroeder The Status of Habsburg Studies in the United States, Austrian History Yearbook 3, no.33 (Feb 2009): 267–295.https://doi.org/10.1017/S006723780000775X

Has the Past a Place in History?

Previous articleNext article No AccessHas the Past a Place in History?Charles E. NowellCharles E. Nowell Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 24, Number 4Dec., 1952 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/237539 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 2Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1952 The University of Chicago PressPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:John Cule The Amateur Medical Historian, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 87, no.1010 (Aug 2022): 599–603.https://doi.org/10.1177/014107689408701011Paul W. Schroeder The Status of Habsburg Studies in the United States, Austrian History Yearbook 3, no.33 (Feb 2009): 267–295.https://doi.org/10.1017/S006723780000775X