Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of History, March 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

abstract: The Neue Galerie in New York City includes some of the most impressive and culturally-specific artwork from Ronald S. Lauder's private art collection. The Neue's permanent exhibitions showcase pieces from the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) and Wiener Werkstätte (Applied Arts of Vienna) in an environment that also employs replicas and period specific motifs to evoke the interiors of the private homes in which affluent fin-de-siècle Viennese art patrons lived, displayed influential modernist work, and held culturally important salons. Gustav Klimt's celebrated Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) is arguably the museum's most prized artwork. It serves as an icon that immortalizes Ronald Lauder as private collector. The figure of Adele Bloch-Bauer has also become an important emblem, whose story epitomizes the complexities of Jewish identity and its influence upon Viennese modern art. This thesis explores how the Neue Galerie's physical layout represents a specific model of modernism. By focusing on the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, I urge a rethinking of the museum's relationship to modern art as an interpretation of the past. The themes that surround Adele Bloch-Bauer I have shaped Lauder's agenda as the leading private collector of the art of fin-de-siècle Vienna. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2012

This thesis examines the composition of affective atmospheres, emerging in court sessions of criminal matter in Vienna. The notion of atmosphere is used to explore collective affective qualities, emerging through the interplay between affective bodies and their environment. The focus provides as analytical frame for bringing forward the workings of affect in legal procedures. From a starting point in theories of affect and atmosphere, I cast light at how the affectively charged space is both monitored and beyond control. First, I trace affect through the lens of spatial arrangements of courtrooms. I show how the architectural and interior arrangements and aesthetics of courtrooms are expedient in creating resonance between the bodies and control over the situations, while being visual and material representations of law. Second, I trace affect in the relation between the bodies that produce atmosphere and regard for the bodily capacity to affect and be affected. I consider principles of criminal procedure structuring and disciplining affective bodies in courtrooms and the juridical labour entailing work on emotions. Third, I trace affect in the dynamics and changes of affective atmosphere by showing how atmospheric changes come about and are contested through intensification and ruptures in atmosphere. I discuss the compositions of affective atmosphere in relation to discipline and control converging with bodies entering the legal setting. The ethnographic material is collected through participant observation in one hundred court sessions, as well as through interviews with people involved.

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This examination explores the Viennese cultural milieu at the turn of the century in an effort to show the commonality of backgrounds and interests among those who created the culture during that period. In this the study aims at illustrating the similarities among those artists, intellectuals, and politicians in spite of the fact that their ideas helped lay the basis for the breakdown in integration of twentieth century culture which was illustrated by Carl E. Schorske in his Fin-De-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture. All this is in pursuance of the overall issue of the origin of the ideas which have dominated this century, an issue dealt with only tangentially in this study.

This thesis is a detailed study of the religious belief and survival of one of the most prominent figures of late sixteenth-century Vienna, Georg Eder (1523- 1587). Eder held a number of high positions at Vienna University and the city's Habsburg court between 1552 and 1584, but his increasingly uncompromising Catholicism placed him at odds with many influential figures around him, not least the confessionally moderate Habsburg Emperor Maximilian II. Pivoted around an incident in 1573, when Eder's ferocious polemic, Evangelische Inquisition, fell under Imperial condemnation, the thesis investigates three key aspects of Eder's life. It examines Eder's position as a Catholic in the Vienna of his day; the public expression of this Catholicism and the strong Jesuit influence on the same; and Eder's rescue and subsequent survival as a lay advocate of Catholic reform, largely through the protection of the Habsburgs' rivals, the Wittelsbach Dukes of Bavaria. Based on a wide variety of printed and manuscript material, this thesis contributes to existing historiography on two levels. On one, it is a reconstruction of the career of one of Vienna's most prominent yet under-studied figures, in a period when the city itself was one of Europe's most politically and religiously significant. In a broader sense, however, this study also adds to the wider canon of Reformation history. It re-examines the nature and extent of Catholicism at the Viermese court in the latter half of the sixteenth century. It highlights the growing role of Eder's Wittelsbach patrons as defenders of Catholicism, even beyond their own Bavarian borders. The thesis also emphasises the role, potential and realised, of influential laity such as Eder in advancing the cause of Catholic reform in the late sixteenth century. Thus it is a strong challenge to the existing, prevalent portrayal of the sixteenth-century Catholic laity as an anonymous and largely passive group who merely responded to the ministries of others.

This thesis deal with the life of Jewish Community in Vienna after Second World War to the present days. This work describes most important aspects of daily and cultural Jewish life in Vienna these days. As an introduction to the topic is described the relevant political history of Austria for example Borodajkewycz affair or Causa Waldheim. Included is also the theme of overcoming the past in Austria and the theme of anti - Semitism in this country. In the first part of this work is given a historical overview of the development of the Jewish community in Vienna after the Second World War to present days. The second part of the work deal with the main Jewish institutions, organizations and associations in present Vienna. The theme of Jewish cultural life and leisure time activities are also included. A part of this thesis is also a brief summary about the possibilities of using this theme in education at Czechs schools.

In Vienna from about 1918 until the 1930s, contemporaries perceived a high point in the music-historical significance of Mahler's works, with regard to both the history of compositional style and the social history of music. The ideas and meanings that became attached to Mahler's works in this milieu are tied inextricably to the city's political and cultural life. Although the performances of Mahler's works under the auspices of Vienna's Social Democrats are sometimes construed today as mere acts of political appropriation, David Josef Bach's writings suggest that the innovative and controversial aspects of Mahler's works held social value in line with the ideal of Arbeiterbildung. Richard Specht, Arnold Schoenberg, and Theodor Adorno embraced oft-criticized features in Mahler's music, regarding the composer as a prophetic artist whose compositional style was the epitome of faithful adherence to one's inner artistic vision, regardless of its popularity. While all three critics addressed the relationship between detail and whole in Mahler's music, Adorno construed it as an act of subversion. Mahler's popularity also affected Viennese composers during this time in obvious and subtle ways. The formal structure and thematic construction of Berg's Chamber Concerto suggest a compositional approach close to what his student Adorno described a few years later regarding Mahler's music.

During the time of Nazism, arts and music were severely curtailed by the Nazi machinery. Two of the Reich’s foremost orchestras, the Berlin and the Vienna Philharmonics, were both part of the cultural Gleichschaltung that occurred within the German Reich. Dealing differently with their new patrons, the orchestras developed a mixture of political cooperation, opportunism and opposition. While at times the orchestras attempted to bypass Nazi ideology and policies, such as in the case of the forced layoff of their Jewish members, the high party membership in Vienna in particular underlines how ambivalent reactions and attitudes towards the Hitler regime could be. While both orchestras underwent significant internal structural changes, the history of both philharmonic orchestras resembles one of privileged status and preferential treatment during the Third Reich.