Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World

Psychoanalysis, neoliberal economics, atomic physics, atonal music, sexology, art therapy and much more all originated in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire—as did Nazism and organised antisemitism. Equally, between them the Viennese diaspora who fled Nazism invented the shopping mall, helped to create Hollywood, devised management theory, pioneered modern espionage, conjured up the sexual revolution and produced Reaganism and Thatcherism. How, and why, did just two generations of Viennese come to be so innovative, and across such a bewildering range of disciplines and professions, essentially creating the modern world? Dr. Richard Cockett explains all in his fascinating talk.