Courses 2026

Art and Visual Culture at the Turn of the Century in Vienna

“To the Time its Art. To Art its Freedom.”

The art course of the winter school will deal with the cultural and intellectual achievements of a number of prominent representatives from the fields of fine art and applied art. It is the aim of the course to provide a multifaceted picture of what happened at the time, when art slowly embarked on the project of Modernism. The course will draw a line from Historicism, the style prevailing in the second half of the 19th century, to Art Nouveau, the style of the young, and will end with an outlook on the Austrian type of Expressionism. All these phenomena and developments will be viewed in the wider context of European art and visual culture.

The following topics will be covered in the course:

• Historicism: Hans Makart, his impact on the life style and aestetic preferences of the Viennese bourgeoisie; his history paintings, portraiture, and interior design projects.
• Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) and its stylistic features. The Vienna Secession movement; its motto, artistic program, and most important shows.
• Gustav Klimt: The scandal caused by his university paintings, his iconic images, and their reception.
• The Vienna Workshop, its ideal of craftsmanship and the concept of the total work of art.
• Female painters of the time: Broncia Koller-Pinell, Olga Wiesinger-Florian; their limited access to art education, their status in a highly patriarchic society.
• Pictorialism: The aesthetic style prevailing in photography at the turn of the century. Madame d'Ora and her photo studio.
• The Viennese salons as places of networking and cultural exchange. Famous “influencers” of the time and their promotion of aesthetic trends.
• Austrian Expressionism: Egon Schiele; his anti-aestheticism as a slap in the face of the Viennese bourgeoisie.
• Oskar Kokoschka: rebel, assailant of bourgeois values (“Murderer Hope of Women”), as well as emphatic painter of psychic realities.
• Art Nouveau revival in the 60s. Turn of the century artists as soul mates of the Hippie generation.

Requirements: Attendance and participation (20% of the grade), reading (20%), project (20%) and final exam (40%).

Recommended Reading: A. Janik and S. Toulmin: Wittgenstein´s VIENNA. New York: Touchstone (1973); E.R. Kandel: The Age of Insight. New York: Random House (2012); C.E. Schorske: Fin-de-siècle Vienna. Politics and Culture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1980); K.A. Schröder: Egon Schiele. Eros and Passion. Munich and New York: Prestel Verlag (1995).

Design, Performance, and Media in Modern Vienna

Viennese Modernism is typically identified with Art Nouveau and Modernist architecture and design, as well as Black Romanticism and Expressionist art. Famous architects such as Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos designed interiors and fashion, collaborated with leading artists, and encouraged colleagues to create ceramics and children's toys to help shape a revolutionary culture that is crucial to understanding Viennese art and design around 1900.

This course explores the relationship between design, performance, and media in early twentieth-century Vienna. It examines how prominent and lesser-known figures such as the architect Otto Wagner, the designer Koloman Moser, the journalist Berta Zuckerkandl, and the dancer Grete Wiesenthal positioned themselves and developed their professional careers in the modern city of Hoffmann and Loos. How were their social and cultural identities formed in museums, theaters, coffeehouses, and private homes, and how did photographers contribute to their media presence? Our class will closely study their networks and works.

The course will include the following topics:

• Vienna's Ringstrasse: Building the Imperial Ringstrasse - Historical Visions as part of a European cultural project.
• "Modern People" and Urban scenery: the birth of mass media; new shopping and entertainment centers in the city.
• The Wiener Secession: Otto Wagner's railway stations and modernist buildings; Joseph Maria Olbrich and the Secession building; Gesamtkunstwerk (Total-Art-Work).
• Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte: Hoffmann’s villas; Sanatorium Purkersdorf; modern design and women's fashion; illustrious female and male patrons and how they lived.
• Women in the City: photographers, artists and designers; Women’s magazines in Vienna around 1900.
• Adolf Loos and his modernist architecture: Cultural criticism and liberal newspapers; te scandal of the "Loos House"; architecture and men's fashion
• Excursion "Rebellion in the Coffee House": the role of the coffee houses in shaping the culture of the modern city.
• Design and Orientalism: Japonisme, colonialist fantasies, art, and advertising
• Avant-Garde Performances: Grete Wiesenthal and modern dance, Richard Strauss and the Opera Salomé, and Oskar Kokoschka's expressionist drama

Requirements: Attendance and participation in class discussion constitute 30%, presentations 20%, and a written final paper 50% of the grade.

Introduction to Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

The main goal of this introduction will be to make students, coming from very different cultures, familiar with the background knowledge necessary to follow the specific courses (arts, music, literature etc.). A stress will be laid on the explanation of phenomena and terms indispensable for the understanding of European and especially Austrian culture and values.

The introduction is intended to convey general historical and cultural principles that apply to all courses.

The following topics will be covered:

• Social structure
• Religions: Christianity and Judaism
• Art styles basics
• Political development of the Habsburg monarchy: economy, industrialization, foreign and domestic policy, parties, and multi-ethnic state
• Vienna around 1900: population development, minorities, anti-Semitism, and female emancipation

Requirements: The course is a prerequisite for participation in the overall program, the hours count for the contact hours and the ECTS credits. At the end of the introduction participants are required to submit a written summary of one of the topics covered.

The course will not be graded, but submission of the written summary is a requirement to attend the following courses.

Vienna's Literature around 1900 and its Cinematic Reception

Around 1900 the literary scene in Vienna was highly complex. An especially interesting group of writers was the “Young Vienna”-school, who embraced modern developments like psychoanalysis and dealt with formerly taboo topics like human sexuality. The course will concentrate on these authors.

We will chiefly deal with Arthur Schnitzler, who wrote theater plays and stories. But we will also spend time talking about other writers like Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Karl Kraus – and maybe also about Prague writers like Franz Kafka, if the wish arises. Besides, we will talk about the issues discussed in Vienna around 1900: the ideas of Sigmund Freud, questions of national and sexual identity, antisemitism, the social situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before and after the First World War.

Participants will have to read and discuss a few literary texts (which will be provided to the participants in an English translation):

• Arthur Schnitzler: Der Reigen (La Ronde)
• Arthur Schnitzler: Lieutenant Gustl
  
• Arthur Schnitzler: Traumnovelle (Dream Story, which was the literary model for an America film, Stanley Kubrick‘s Eyes Wide Shut, in 1999)

Besides, we will watch and discuss Eyes Wide Shut and compare it to Schnitzler’s story.

Requirements: Attendance and participation in class discussion constitute 30%, reading the required literary texts 30% and a written final (essay-type) 40% of the grade.

Music and Musical Culture in Vienna around 1900

The musical culture in Vienna around 1900 is widely renowned for its exceptional creativity and innovative capacity. The protagonists and the achievements commonly associated with this vital period in music history – e.g. Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg and his „Second Viennese School“ – for a long time also stood at the center of musicological research on 20th century music. In recent years, however, the perspective has been broadened substantially, mainly due to the impact of the intensified work on Viennese modernism in other humanities and in cultural studies. As a consequence, the musical culture in fin-de-siècle Vienna became visible as a complex phenomenon characterized by radical shifts as well as continuities with the past and even by contradictory tendencies.

The course will try to address the topic from several vantage points:

• The institutions, organizations and spaces of musical life, in relation to the diverse strata of the musical public and to the pertinent political and social conditions.
• The wide array of musical styles and repertoires present at that time, resulting not only from the contemporary compositional activities (which were multi-layered in itself, ranging from “radical modernism” to popular music), but also from the ongoing relevance of earlier music.
• The diverse aesthetical positions and general views on music, comprising newly developed scientific approaches as well as metaphysical idealizations and even ideologically conditioned functionalizations.
• The interrelations between the developments in music and in other intellectual and artistic fields, leading to the question, how music can or has to be integrated into a comprehensive concept of “Viennese Modernism” around 1900.

Requirements: Regular Attendance and active participation in class discussions (20 %), preparation and presentation of a definition of two keywords (own research, handout) relevant for the units (30 %), a final essay with a minimum of 7,000 characters on a topic of the student's choice (in consultation with the lecturer; 50 %).

Society and Psychoanalysis - Multiple Perspectives on Freud and his Era

A lecture series with Mitchell Ash, Daniela Finzi, Richard Lein, Johann Lughofer, Elana Shapira, Klaus Taschwer, and Sabine Schlüter.

Around 1900, economic and social changes fostered deepening political and cultural conflicts. Emancipatory movements and mass phenomena demanded new approaches. Vienna was culturally highly complex and politically and socially divided. Religion and social conventions ceased to provide sufficient orientation. Mass movements and political demagogues characterized the public space.

Psychoanalysis offered new ways of dealing with actual problems and found its way not only into psychiatry, into art, literature, and music but also into the emerging social sciences and political analysis. This was a radical reaction against traditional views of the world.

Psychoanalysis would combine and elaborate developments that had been around since the 18th century. The scientific exploration of intimate emotions and of areas that were once taboo – like infantile sexuality or the profane foundation of religion and the functioning of propaganda – was considered scandalous but nevertheless gained a wide notoriety and eventually revealed dimensions of human behavior and cultural life commonly denied or concealed.

In this course we want to combine a look at the history of human sciences with an exploration of developments in the fields of society, politics and culture.

This lecture series will be held by Richard Lein, who also serves as course coordinator, Johann Georg Lughofer, and Elana Shapira. Additional guest lectures will be given by Mitchell Ash, Daniela Finzi, Sabine Schlüter and Klaus Taschwer.

Requirements: Attendance and participation in class discussion constitute 30%, a short paper 30% and a written final exam 40% of the grade.

Society, Politics, and Daily Life in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

The course examines Vienna's transformation into the cultural and scientific center of Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. It analyzes the political, social, and cultural conditions that led to Vienna's development into a metropolis, as well as the outstanding achievements in science and culture that made Vienna famous far beyond the borders of the Habsburg Monarchy. However, the dark sides of these developments are also addressed: severe social problems, anti-Semitism, and conflicts between the nationalities living within the boundaries of the city. The course aims at looking behind the common image of fin-de-siècle Vienna and paints a picture of an up-and-coming metropolis with all its bright and dark sides.

The following topics will be covered in the course:

• Political and territorial structure of the Habsburg Monarchy
• Development of territory, demography and population in Vienna 1870-1918
• Administration and political parties in fin-de-siècle Vienna
• The social structure of Vienna and its impact on (everyday) culture
• Czechs, Jews, and other nationalities in Vienna between integration and discrimination
• Education and educational institutions in Vienna 1870-1918
• Food and (mal)nutrition in fin-de-siècle Vienna
• Housing as a social phenomenon

Requirements: The grading is based on participation during class (20 %), a short paper (40 %) and the written final exam (essay type) (40 %).