"This set of essays by leading scholars in the field aims to provide an
overview of current work on what has sometimes been dubbed "the birth of
modernity" in fin-de-siècle Central Europe. This it succeeds admirably
in doing, and editor Steven Beller will be thanked by many teachers of
the subject of producing such a useful collection. - German History "In
the not exactly small field of works on the Vienna Fin-de-Siècle this
volume represents an important milestone. It will be indispensable, for
a long time, for the debate it pushes forward and to which it
contributes so much itself." - H-Soz-u-Kult ". . . tight and coherent .
. . not only because its eleven contributors focus on a single
metropolis, but also because they generally share a common point of
departure if not necessarily a common point of view." - German Studies
Review Fin-de-siècle Vienna remains a central event in the birth of the
century's modern culture. Our understanding of what happened in those
key decades in Central Europe at the turn of the century has been shaped
in the last years by an historiography presided over by Carl Schorske's
Fin de Siècle Vienna and the model of the relationship between politics
and culture which emerged from his work and that of his followers.
Recent scholarship, however, has begun to question the main paradigm of
this school, i.e. the "failure of liberalism." This volume reflects not
only a whole range of the critiques but also offers alternative ways of
understanding the subject, most notably though the concept of "critical
modernism" and the integration of previously neglected aspects such as
the role of marginality, of the market and the larger Central and
European context. As a result this volume offers novel ideas on a
subject that is of unending fascination and never fails to captivate the
Western imagination. Steven Beller is an Independent Scholar who lives
in Washington, D.C.
