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Article
Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life - Book Review
Austrian History Yearbook
  • Harry Ritter, Western Washington University
Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
4-1-2009
Disciplines
Abstract

Liberal parties fared poorly in the politics of late Habsburg Austria, yet Deborah Coen argues that nineteenth-century Austro-German liberalism should be imagined in a context larger than lost elections. We must recognize liberalism’s importance in the realms of sensibility, lifestyle, science, pedagogy, and leisure. In refreshing ways, Coen’s book revises the half-truths of Carl Schorske’s picture of Austrian liberalism as a father’s credo overwhelmed after 1880 by rebellious oedipal sons, anti-Semitism, and aesthetic modernisms. Although acknowledging elitist and utopian aspects of the liberal ethos, Coen depicts liberal strategies for navigating pre-1914 change with pronounced sympathy and claims that liberalism was more supple and less hostile to modernism and generational challenge than Schorske thought. More broadly, she expands our understanding of the scientific and philosophical imaginations in Austria, the history of ethics, and relationships between the public and private spheres.

DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0067237809001052
Subjects - Topical (LCSH)
Intellectuals--Austria--Vienna--Biography
Subjects - Names (LCNAF)
Coen, Deborah R. Vienna in the age of uncertainty
Geographic Coverage
Vienna (Austria)--Biography; Vienna (Austria)--Intellectual life
Genre/Form
reviews (documents)
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Harry Ritter. "Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life - Book Review" Austrian History Yearbook Vol. 40 (2009) p. 310 - 311
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/harry_ritter/1/