- the turn of a century
At that time Vienna was an epicenter for science and culture, where many new ideas emerged and stood out against each other. Much of what we now consider almost synonymous with modernity appeared here, approximately during the period from 1890 until the outbreak of World War I. People like Arnold Schönberg, Gustav Mahler, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Kraus, Robert Musil, Hermann Broch, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Sigmund Freud could be seen here. The Viennese waltz mixed with twelve-tone music. Within fine art, expressionism and mysticism blended in architecture and design this manifested itself in the oriental meanders of the Jugendstil (Art Nouveau). Language philosophy also gained a dash of this mysticism in Wittgenstein, but a new kind of factualism in Fritz Mauthner. Sexual life was apprehended in a new way by thinkers such as Otto Weininger and Sigmund Freud. Unfortunately, much more sinister ideas also thrived. Hitler studied art in Vienna, but he hated the city so much, that allegedly he had said in his bunker in 1945 that he regretted not having destroyed it altogether.
Almost ten years ago, I had the idea of producing a CD-ROM about Vienna at the turn of the century. I believed this medium would fit perfectly for this kind of thematic material. My intent was not just to offer a few samples, but rather entire literary works, complete symphonies etc. Yes, I know. One CD-ROM would not have sufficed. But the idea was what mattered, to use this relatively new multi-sensory medium for such a project. I had realized by then that in a chaos of source information like that, every kind of order is local and temporary, and this is something one can take advantage of. One can display interesting relations between text, sound and images with hyperlinks, and using menues and search engines one can structure the same material in many different ways. This was supposed to be a work of reference for those with a general interest as well as for those with a need for more profound knowledge - it was not intended to be just a multimedia presentation of that common kind, which is scarcely more than a clickable TV program.
Rather soon I gave up the idea. At an early stage I realized that I would have to negotiate with several hundred copyright owners, which hardly was an undertaking for a one-man firm. So, hereby I gladly forward this idea to anyone with the money and the staff for it. On the other hand, today I believe a combination of WWW and CD-ROM would be a better alternative for such a project. The idea to do what I now have done was thus not a very far-fetched one, although this Vienna issue is, of course, very far indeed from the original idea developed in full scope.
But is this really something new? Yes and no. Not really in its current form but probably in its future implications. There are, as we all know, lots of Web sites like "The One-stop Shop for Javascript Links" or "Overview of Web Cameras". Yet, the Vienna 1900 kind of cross-section through time and space is not so frequently found on the Web. And it is rather unusual that e-magazines consist of links to other people's content only. This alone could be controversial today, since there are lawyers trying to convince us all that simple linking constitutes copyright infringement, unless the linker has permission from the linkee. Even second-hand linking is sometimes regarded as a risky undertaking, a sort of implicit justification of dubious content if you, for instance, set up a link to the quite decent site A, which in turn, however, has a link to the porn site B.
All that is nonsense. If you enter the Web scene, you have to accept its features, especially those which make up the whole point of it. Objecting against hyperlinking on the Web is like grumbling about that you will be seen if you appear on TV.
But is it really OK to do what I have done here link to the chapter of Hitler's "Mein Kampf", where he writes about the period he lived in Vienna? The government of Bavaria owns the copyright to Hitler's book, and for years they have tried to suppress publication of it. Storing a copyright protected text without a permit on a server is, of course, unlawful. But what about a link to such a file would this constitute some sort of (procurement of) illegal handling of stolen goods?
A collection of links, like the one I present here, is unfortunately perishable. In only a few weeks a large part of the links will probably not work any more, because the files they point at have changed place. The day we invent absolute and document specific methods for referencing on the Web, this docuverse to use the visionary Ted Nelson's term will become ever so much more powerful.
In a couple of years each one of us will easily be able to put together link lists of this kind, nobody has to do it manually. Using more refined metainformation about documents and better search engines, capable of, for instance, retrieving only documents of a certain degree of difficulty or only documents of a certain reliability (through authority indexing), we will be able to compile a customized link list, regarding any subject or any combination of subjects.
In the future, texts on the Net will furthermore be processed and manipulated as a kind of raw material. I have, as a slight foretaste of this, linked to some pages, not directly but by way of the translation service of Alta Vista/Systran. With only one more mouseclick you may have, for instance, a German text translated into English, or vice versa. Machine translation is still in its infancy (see my earlier article "The Debabelizing of the Internet"), and the translations in these cases come out very differently. Some turn out pretty good, while others get to be virtually unintelligible. Arnold Schönberg is for instance renamed as Arnold Beautiful mountain. And the essay "Die Sprache" (Language), by Karl Kraus, comes to illustrate istelf in an eerie way, when rendered into "English".
Machine translation on a global network basis is, however, the beginning of a tremendously important development, where the reader (frequently in collaboration with other readers and writers) will be able to use lots of different tools for modifying texts or to extract hidden facts and relations from documents. I have elsewhere tried to visualize what such a personal text mining tool might look like.
In the future, these texts about Vienna could be expanded with add-ons from other texts on the Web. You might click on something mentioned only in passing in a text, and the reading tool will immediately retrieve facts about the subject in question, and display them in footnote form or weave them into the original text, with the help of some kind of linguistic parser (a tool for grammatic/semantic analysis). Even sound and image files could probably also be integrated in this scheme. Just as well as this reading tool will be able to create abstracts, it will also be able to expand texts - and other kinds of collections of facts - in this way, beginning for instance with just a skeleton outline.
We will certainly have to wait a few years until this becomes possible. Presently, I can only wish the Art Bin readers a pleasant journey through time to Central Europe of a hundred years ago. Karl-Erik Tallmo
Street maps of Vienna
A simple overview, one more detailed and zoomable, and a dynamic map where one can choose scale and enter street addresses.
Vienna LiveCam
Here you may control several cameras in real time and take a closer look at people and cars in the streets. A bit jumpy but it works. Today's weather and other info is available at Excite.
The Legendary Hotel Sacher
One site in English with a little history and how to order the famous Sacher-Torte. Another site in both German and English, newer, a little more systematized, and with a list of VIP guests through the decades.
A historical survey of public toilets
"Wenn es sein muß", a historical survey of public toilets in Vienna: The oldest, the classic, and the exotic ....
Direct link | Filter link (into English) through Alta Vista translation
Not Vienna Only
If you want to dive into Austrian culture more in general, check out the Austria Culture Net (in English) and the AEIOU Project a huge resource, both in German and English. Read for instance the articles about "Rethinking Austria" and the coffee houses, real and virtual.
Fashion
Fashion and moral in Vienna around 1900
"Mode und Moral in Wien um 1900" - here you can read, for instance, writer Stefan Zweig's (1881-1942) view of fashion:
Direct link | Filter link (into English) through Alta Vista translation
Architecture
Art Nouveau/Jugendstil in Austria
An introduction (in English or German) to the Art Nouveau movement in Austria, which lasted from about 1890 to 1914.
Adolf Loos
About the Austro-Czech architect and critic Adolf Loos (1870-1933), famous for as diverse projects as the Tristan Tzara house in Paris and the Chicago Tribune Tower. The interface of this site is hard to handle but there are interesting facts here, to be read in either English or German. There is also a portrait of Loos made by artist Oskar Kokoschka (see also below).
Otto Wagner
Otto Wagner (1841-1918) was an architect, city-planner and furniture designer. He taught at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts during the years 1894-1912. Great Buildings Online have more about Wagner, and you can also take the The Otto Wagner Ride (or Die Otto Wagner Tour) around Vienna. The Post Office Savings Bank, which he designed, has also a special online tour through the building:
Direct link | Filter link (into English) through Alta Vista translation
Camillo Sitte
Camillo Sitte (1843-1903) was another great Austrian architect and city-planner, who wrote one of the classics in this field, "Der Städtebau nach seinen künstlerischen Grundsätzen" ("Urban planning according to artistic principles"). A short bio is available at AEIOU, and the Camillo-Sitte-Lehranstalt has some info about their patron:
Direct link | Filter link (into English) through Alta Vista translation
Art
Gustav Klimt
Klimt (1862-1918) is maybe the foremost of all of the Art Nouveau painters, decadent, Byzantine, using textile patterns and gold paint. In 1897 he founded the Secession of independent artists, defying the established academies and galleries. There are lots of Klimt sites on the web: Gustav Klimt Museum, Gustav Klimt Art Gallery, the Small Gallery of Gustav Klimt, Gustav Klimt - A Fin du Siecle artist. There is also the WebMuseum with some text in English:
Direct link | Filter link (into German) through Alta Vista translation
Oskar Kokoschka
Expressionist Kokoschka (1886-1980) studied with Klimt in Vienna and showed his art there for the first time in 1909. Austria Tourism has information about Kokoschka at their Jugend pages, but their server is frequently difficult to reach. There are also the Oskar Kokoschka Homepages and Mark Harden's Artchive. A page with some text (In English) about Kokoschka is at the Ishbel McWhirter site:
Direct link | Filter link (into German) through Alta Vista translation
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele (1890-1918), draughtsman and painter, famous for his expressive nudes, often sinewy bodies in strange poses. As a 19 year old he quit the Academy of Fine Arts, since he found the education there too old-fashioned and rigid. The Leopold Collection of Vienna is shown at the Neue Galierie Graz pages in both German and English. Museum of Modern Art in New York also displayed works from the Leopold Collection in 97/98, and the accompanying web pages are still up:
Direct link | Filter link (into German) through Alta Vista translation
Music
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II (1825-99), the waltz king, son of the older Strauss who wrote the Radetzky march. The National Library in Vienna has some pictures of Strauss, and Geocities special Vienna Community has info about the centenary.
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) moved to Vienna from Northern Germany at the age of 30, and then lived there most of his life. He liked Vienna, since it had good cafés and it was a city where you could easily stay unmarried. Austria Tourism has information about him.
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner (1824-1896), like Beethoven, wrote nine symphonies. He was the sworn enemy of Eduard Hanslick (see below). A basic repertoire list is available at Classical Net. In the article "Bruckner's Move to Vienna" you can read about his struggle to compose the ninth symphony before he died:
There is also a biographical article in German, written in 1996 in memory of his death:
Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904), critic and musicologist, wrote "Vom Musikalisch-Schönen" ("About the Musically Beautiful"), where he defined music as sounding moving forms without any real signifying content. For this he was attacked by Wagner and Bruckner among others. Robert W. Hall tries to give these ideas some vindication in his article "Hanslick With Feeling":
Austria Tourism has some biographical data about Hanslick:
Arnold Schönberg
Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), founder of the second Viennese school and dodecaphony. Austria tourism has a few links in general about the second Viennese school. Knowledge web puts Schönberg graphically into context, while Grove has a biographical survery in English. Other material i English is available at Legacy of Arnold Schönberg, while Arnold Schönberg Center has biographical and other facts in German. The Classical Music Pages have a small gallery with pictures. Egotrip Magazin has an article in German about his unfinished opera "Moses und Aron":
Alban Berg
Alban Berg (1885-1935), the other great name of the second Viennese school. He started his studies with Schönberg in 1904. A short biography is available at The Contemporary Classical Music Archive, and a few other facts and links can be found at Emory University. The Classical Music Pages have a few pictures on display.
Anton Webern
Anton Webern (1883-1945) was the third great name of the second Viennes school. His name was originally von Webern. A short biography is available at The Contemporary Classical Music Archive. As we know, on the Net any rumour might spread around - were Webern and his colleagues actually Nazi Spies using the twelve-tone concept for encoding messages ?
Conductor and composer Pierre Boulez presents a more serious article in French, "Trouver un langage" ("Finding a Language"):
Franz Lehár
The hungarian Franz Lehár (1870-1948) composed operettas and comic operas, such as "Die lustige Witwe" ("The Merry Widow", 1905). Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv has a short bio and a RealAudio sample:
Karol Szymanowski
Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) known for a sort of lyric mysticism, lived in Vienna 1910-14. Neue Musikzeitung has a short biographical article in German:
Maria Ivogün
Opera singer Maria Ivogün (1891-?) whose last name is derived from her mother's name, Ida von Günther, made her debut as Mimi in La Bohème thanks to Bruno Walter. A short article is available in English:
Literature
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was strongly influenced by e.g. d'Annunzio and Maeterlinck. His "Der Tor und der Tod" from 1893 is available online.
Robert Musil
Robert Musil (1880-1942), famous for his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften ("The Man without Qualities"). One site has information in both English and Dutch, while Frédéric Mars's pages are in French only. Tomas Steinhardt has written a paper about "Der Einfluß Friedrich Nietzsches auf Robert Musils 'Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften'" and Dutch author Cees Nooteboom has an article in German about Kakanien, which was Musil's nickname for Austria:
Hermann Broch
Not much is available on the Web about the remarkable author Hermann Broch (1886-1951), known for among other works "Der Tod des Vergil" ("Death of Virgil", 1945) and "Der Schlafwandler Trilogie" ("The Sleepwalkers trilogy", 1931/32). HTL Rankweil has a few brief facts:
Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus (1874-1936), author, satirist, and editor of the magazine Die Fackel during the years 1899-1936. A gluttonous aphorism (too much for machine translation) by Kraus is available on the Web in German. "Hypocrisy or Merely Condradiction?" is a brief look at the life and work of Karl Kraus by Jessica Van Campen:
Franz Deubzer writes in German about "The language criticism of Karl Kraus" ("Die Sprachkritik von Karl Kraus"):
And a text by Kraus himself, "Die Sprache", is available in German:
Philosophy, Language etc.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Austro-British philosopher Wittgenstein (1889 -1951) has inspired quite a few web pages. His most famous work is "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", cryptic, intriguing, inspiring, even spiritual in its succession of assumptions, beginning with "The world is all that is the case" and concluding with "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Available on the web in German as well as in English, and also in a bi-lingual hypertext version. Fragments from "Philosophical Investigations" are available at the Wittgeinstein Think Page. Good general information about the philosopher is available at Brian W. Carver's page and the Wittgenstein Archives in Norway. A highly recommendable book (in print) is Allan Janik's and Stephen Toulmin'sWittgenstein's Vienna, which deals with most of the intellectuals found in this link list. This short biography on the Web is in English:
Direct link | Filter link (into German) through Alta Vista translation
Franz Brentano
Franz Brentano (1838-1917), the German philosopher who founded act psychology. In 1874 he wrote "Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint":
And Dieter Münch has written about Brentano and catholicism:
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), founder of phenomenology and a student of Franz Brentano's. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a bio in English, and the library at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau has a short one in German. Husserl's inaugural lecture at Freiburg im Breisgau, "Pure Phenomenology, Its Method and Its Field of Investigation" (1917) is available in English:
Fritz Mauthner
Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923), philosopher, writer, and critic, claimed that language cannot supply true knowledge about reality; it has merely a social function. Mauthner Gesellschaft has a lot of other writers' texts about him. An overview of e-texts by Mauthner is available here; among them is "Ein Abend im Irrenhause" (at Project Gutenberg):
Another text is his parody "Das Geheimnis der ledernen Hose":
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who founded anthroposophy, studied mathematics and philosophy in Vienna. The Rudolf Steiner College in California has some biographical data in English:
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), Austro-British economist and political philosopher who has influenced the modern liberal movement a lot. Friedrich Hayek Scholars' Page contains an overview of material about Hayek. At least two introductory essays about Hayek are available online, both in English. The first one is written by Peter J. Boettke, professor of economics at New York University:
The next article is "Up From Serfdom" by professor Richard Ebeling:
Psychology
Otto Weininger
Otto Weininger (1880-1903) is most famous for his philosophy of sexuality, which had a deep impact on Freud. Among his works are "Geschlecht und Charakter" (1903) and "Über die letzten Dinge", published posthumously in 1904, after Weininger's suicide, which took place in the same house where Beethoven died. A site called "The Thinking Man's Minefield" has facts and links concerning Weininger. And a sample in English from "Sex and Character":
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), father of penis envy and psychoanalysis. A collection of links to Internet resources on Freud and his works is available at Sigmund Freud and the Freud Archives. "A Science Odyssey" has a biography in English. You may also check out the Museum at Berggasse 19 or try "That's My Theory", a sort of quiz game, where you are supposed to single out Freud from two anonymous thinkers. One of Freud's major works, "The Interpretation of Dreams", is available in English in its 3rd edition:
Freud on psychoanalysis and Vienna:
A more general depiction of the Viennese breeding-ground for this new theory of the soul is made in "Mekka des Geistes und der Neurosen":
Otto Rank
Otto Rank (1884-1939), psychoanalyst who worked with Freud in Vienna already in 1906. He wrote, for instance, "Art and Artist". Dr. C. George Boeree has written about Rank and his work:
Science
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach (1838-1916), physicist and philosopher with an exceptionally wide-spread influence. He inspired Einstein, and Hofmannstal and Broch attended his lectures at the University of Vienna. In 1909 Lenin wrote the book "Materialism and empiriocriticism", which was aimed against Mach's ideas. One of the physical phenomena he discovered, the band effect is described at the Department of Psychology of the University in Toronto.
Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin (who wrote the book about Wittgenstein's Vienna) has a text on Mach, "Ernst Mach und die metaphysische Spekulation":
"Die ökonomische Natur der physikalischen Forschung" (The Economic Nature of Physics Research") is a lecture held by Mach at the Imperial Scientific Academy of Vienna in 1882:
"Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhältnis des Physischen zum Psychischen" ("The Analysis of Sensations and the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical"), written by Mach in 1886 and available here in English:
Hitler and Nazism
If you wish to read a more regular issue of The Art Bin, all of the old ones are available here!
Ludwig Boltzmann
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906), physicist and mathematician. He developed a kinetic theory of gases, and is known also for his relation, his distribution, and his factor. A more general biographical article is available in English:
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) studied painting in Vienna (here is one of his water-colors) before he moved to Munich in 1912. In chapter 2 of "Mein Kampf" Hitler writes about his years in Vienna. This chapter is available here in German and in English. Please note that these links lead to neo-Nazi sites, and the linking is in no respect to be considered as a plea or apology for Nazism or racism. The Art Bin editor believes, however, that Hitler's text is a very important source, which should be available for anyone who wants to study 20th century history. It is a disgrace that the ministry of finance in Bavaria tries to use the alleged confiscation of Hitler's copyright as a means to withdraw this material from the public, both in print and on the Web. It is a disgrace that the Web community thus has to turn to the advocates of the Nazi ideology to be able to study its origins. (A Swedish publisher opposed the Bavarian ministry in court, and their copyright claims were completely rejected in the Supreme court. About the English print edition, see The New York Times Book Review June 1998).
Here is a chapter from "The Roots of Holocaust" by William H. DuBay titled "Hitler in Vienna":
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