William M. Johnston

Aufbauend auf seinen Standardwerken Osterreichische Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte und Der osterreichische Mensch untersucht William M. Johnston in seinem neuen Werk Denkmodelle, die die kulturelle Konkurrenz zwischen Wien und Budapest in der Spatphase der Doppelmonarchie beleuchten. Er bedient sich dazu neuer Leitbegriffe, die entweder noch weitgehend unbekannt sind oder die, wie das "Unklassifizierbare", neu konzipiert worden snd. Gemeinplatze wie "Wien 1900" oder "Budapest 1905" werden aus drei Blickwinkeln untersucht: dem osterreichischen, dem ungarischen und jenem der Doppelmonarchie. William M. Johnston bietet eine opulente Fulle neuartiger Interpretationen von zahllosen Figuren, Ideen und historischen Thesen und leistet so einen wesentlichen Beitrag zu einer vollig neuen Sicht auf die Kulturgeschichte der ausgehenden Monarchie und ihres Nachlebens.

In the twentieth century, celebrations of historical anniversaries abounded. There was the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the 150th anniversary of photography, Bach's 300th anniversary, and the 200th anniversary of the American Constitution, to name just a few. Every year hundreds of anniversaries still attract media attention and government investment in ever greater degrees. Deploying an astonishing array of insights, Celebrations explores the causes and consequences of this major phenomenon of our time. As Johnston shows, anniversaries fulfill a number of needs. They provide the kind of experience of regularity across a lifetime that the weekly cycle supplies in daily life. The use of anniversaries for political ends emerged during the French Revolution and expanded to promote nationalism during the nineteenth century, although there are differences in how they are used. Europeans tend to celebrate cultural heroes, while Americans tend to celebrate events. Entire nations exploit anniversaries of founding events in order to promote national identity. Commercially, there are whole industries built around commemoration, and they provide intellectuals an opportunity to take center stage. Using methods of cultural history, sociology, and religious studies, Johnston shows how the cult of anniversaries reflects postmodern concerns. It fills a void left by the disappearance of ideologies and avant-gardes. In an era when there is little consensus about styles or methods, anniversaries allow intellectuals, businesses, and governments to acknowledge and celebrate every nuance of opinion. By suggesting ways to use anniversaries more creatively, this book offers a broad range of insights.

Wer erinnert sich heute noch daran, dass etwa die moderne Sprachphilosophie, die Psychoanalyse, die Soziologie des Wissens, der Feuilletonismus, der Asthetizismus Hofmannsthalscher Pragung, die Reine Rechtslehre, die Zwolftonmusik von Osterreich aus ihren Weg angetreten haben? Viele der Personlichkeiten, die dieses Buch behandelt, sind weltbekannt geworden und geblieben, andere wieder sind so gut wie vergessen, aber ihr Beitrag zu einem neuen Weltbild verdient es sehr wohl, sich mit ihnen auseinander zu setzen. In derselben Stadt, in der Johann Strauss die "schone blaue Donau" glorifizierte, rang Schonberg um einen neuen musikalischen Kosmos, und in einer dem Asthetizismus uberschwanglich huldigenden Gesellschaft, die von verlogenen Tabus gezeichnet war, haben Freud und Karl Kraus das Dickicht der Zweideutigkeiten und Doppelzungigkeiten kompromisslos durchbrochen. Kontraste wie Lebenslust und Todestrieb, therapeutischer Nihilismus und Ignaz Semmelweis, Makart und Schiele, Brentano und Wittgenstein, Otto Weininger und Rosa Mayreder zeigen, wie vielfaltig traditionelle und moderne Stromungen einander befruchten. Aus der Einleitung zur 4. Auflage von William M. Johnston: "(...) Wahrend ich mir das Geistesleben des alten Osterreich ausmalte, liess ich mich von einigen seiner Protagonisten mit der notigen Kuhnheit anstecken, um ihr habsburgisches Reich als ein einziges Geistesreich zu betrachten. Wahrscheinlich hatte keiner von ihnen selbst diesen Sprung ganz gewagt - es bedurfte eines Amerikaners, um dem Bewusstsein zu gestatten, "Erfahrung zu erschaffen", wie es bei John Bayley heisst - aber gleich ihnen grundete ich meine Suche auf empirische Fakten. Das vorliegende Buch ladt den Leser ein, ausgehend von den hier prasentierten Errungenschaften den Prozess der Erfindung neuer Erfahrungsstrukturen fortzusetzen. Nicht allein die osterreichischen Dinge, sondern mehr noch die osterreichischen Ideen bieten jedermann die Chance selbst herauszufinden, worin die Bedeutung des osterreichischen Erbes besteht und innerhalb der Europaischen Union auch kunftig bestehen wird. Osterreichs grosstes Geschenk an Europa war wohl die Fahigkeit, in bis dahin ubersehenen empirischen Daten neue Ideen zu entdecken, und eben darin liegt auch das Ziel dieses Buches. Es entwirft ein Portrat von Altosterreich als einem Geistesreich, wo Ideen und Fakten fruchtbar und langfristig zusammenwirkten. Wir sind alle Erben jenes Zusammenwirkens."

Turn-of-the-century Vienna was the scene of tremendous social and artistic upheaval. Arthur Schnitzler's novel The Road to the Open brilliantly captures the complex world of Freud, Mahler, Strauss, and Klimt, dealing masterfully with the basic issues of Austian anti-Semitism, the Viennese intellectual community, post-Wagnerian music, and the psychology of Vienna's middle class.

In the twentieth century, celebrations of historical anniversaries abounded. There was the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the 150th anniversary of photography, Bach's 300th anniversary, and the 200th anniversary of the American Constitution, to name just a few. Every year hundreds of anniversaries still attract media attention and government investment in ever greater degrees. Deploying an astonishing array of insights, Celebrations explores the causes and consequences of this major phenomenon of our time. As Johnston shows, anniversaries fulfill a number of needs. They provide the kind of experience of regularity across a lifetime that the weekly cycle supplies in daily life. The use of anniversaries for political ends emerged during the French Revolution and expanded to promote nationalism during the nineteenth century, although there are differences in how they are used. Europeans tend to celebrate cultural heroes, while Americans tend to celebrate events. Entire nations exploit anniversaries of founding events in order to promote national identity. Commercially, there are whole industries built around commemoration, and they provide intellectuals an opportunity to take center stage. Using methods of cultural history, sociology, and religious studies, Johnston shows how the cult of anniversaries reflects postmodern concerns. It fills a void left by the disappearance of ideologies and avant-gardes. In an era when there is little consensus about styles or methods, anniversaries allow intellectuals, businesses, and governments to acknowledge and celebrate every nuance of opinion. By suggesting ways to use anniversaries more creatively, this book offers a broad range of insights.

Part One of this book shows how bureaucracy sustained the Habsburg Empire while inciting economists, legal theorists, and socialists to urge reform. Part Two examines how Vienna's coffeehouses, theaters, and concert halls stimulated creativity together with complacency. Part Three explores the fin-de-siecle world view known as Viennese Impressionism. Interacting with positivistic science, this reverence for the ephemeral inspired such pioneers ad Mach, Wittgenstein, Buber, and Freud. Part Four describes the vision of an ordered cosmos which flourished among Germans in Bohemia. Their philosophers cultivated a Leibnizian faith whose eventual collapse haunted Kafka and Mahler. Part Five explains how in Hungary wishful thinking reinforced a political activism rare elsewhere in Habsburg domains. Engage intellectuals like Lukacs and Mannheim systematized the sociology of knowledge, while two other Hungarians, Herzel and Nordau, initiated political Zionism. Part Six investigates certain attributes that have permeated Austrian thought, such as hostility to technology and delight in polar opposites.

Collingwood and Hegel R. G. Collingwood was a lonely thinker. Begrudgingly admired by some and bludgeoned by others, he failed to train a single disciple, just as he failed to communicate to the reading public his vision of the unity of experience. This failure stands in stark contrast to the success of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who won many disciples to a very similar point-of-view and whose influence on subsequent thought, having been rediscovered since 1920, has not yet been adequately explored. Collingwood and Hegel share three fundamental similarities: both men held overwhelming admiration of the Greeks, both possessed uniquely broad knowledge of academic controversies of their day, and both were inalterably convinced that human experience consti­ tutes a single whole. If experts find Collingwood's vision of wholeness less satisfactory than Hegel's, much of the fault lies in the atmosphere in which Col­ lingwood labored. Oxford in the 1920'S and 1930's, sceptical and specialized, was not the enthusiastic Heidelberg and Berlin of 1816 to 183I. What is important in Collingwood is not that he fell short of Hegel but that working under adverse conditions he came so elose. Indeed those unfamiliar with Hegel will find in Collingwood's early works, especially in Speculum M entis, a useful introduction to the great German.