The Other Women in Gold: Vienna’s New Women

Katya Motyl, Assistant Professor at Temple University

Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Vienna underwent an extraordinary transformation into a modern metropolis. As Vienna became more modern, so, too, did its inhabitants, especially its women. Often referred to as “new women” or “neue Frauen,” these modern women challenged the strictures of conventional femininity by doing ordinary things, like walking or dressing, differently. This lecture will examine what it was like to be a modern woman in Vienna at this extraordinary time, and shed light on women’s lives outside of those aspects depicted in dazzling portraits by painters such as Gustav Klimt.

Related Reading: Embodied Histories: New Womanhood in Vienna, 1894-1934 by Katya Motyl

This talk is presented as part of the Summer 2025 Lecture Series, “Focus Vienna,” which explores themes related to the exhibition “Austrian Masterworks from the Neue Galerie.”