History

By Anne-Marie O'Connor The true story that inspired the movie Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. The Award-Winning Nazi Art Theft SagaWinner of the Marfield National Award for Arts WritingWinner of a California Book Award“Writing with a novelist’s dynamism, O’Connor resurrects fascinating individuals and tells a many-faceted, intensely affecting, and profoundly revelatory tale of the inciting power of art and the unending need for justice.”—Booklist, starred review“O’Connor skillfully filters Austria’s troubled twentieth century through the life of Klimt’s most beloved muse. . . . A nuanced view of a painting whose story transcends its own time.” —Bookforum “Ignites many a startling flashpoint in the moral history of our time—a taut, rich, tangy and instructive read.”—Frederic Morton, author of A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889 and Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914Contributor to the Washington Post Anne-Marie O’Connor brilliantly regales us with the galvanizing story of Gustav Klimt’s 1907 masterpiece—the breathtaking portrait of a Viennese Jewish socialite, Adele Bloch-Bauer. The celebrated painting, stolen by Nazis during World War II, subsequently became the subject of a decade-long dispute between her heirs and the Austrian government.When the U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the case, its decision had profound ramifications in the art world. Expertly researched, masterfully told, The Lady in Gold is at once a stunning depiction of fin-de siècle Vienna, a riveting tale of Nazi war crimes, and a fascinating glimpse into the high-stakes workings of the contemporary art world.Paperback349 pagesVintage Books, 20155.2 x 0.8 x 8 inchesISBN 9781101873120Art History, Nonfiction

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece [Paperback]

Translated by Stuart Gilbert Additional text by Ulrich Baer In 1932, Albert Einstein was invited by the League of Nations to address a letter on any subject to any individual. He chose to corresponded with Sigmund Freud on avoiding war. Einstein maintained the importance of establishing an independent judiciary body to mediate conflicts. Freud agreed with this idea but also felt that “there is no likelihood of our being able to suppress humanity’s aggressive tendencies.” To this day, the correspondence on war by two of the greatest thinkers of all time proves prescient and remains indispensable. The correspondence between Einstein and Freud was originally published by The International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations in 1933. Included in this edition is Freud’s essay “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” two pieces by Einstein on disarmament and the crisis facing affluent societies, and a biographical account of their original encounter and further exchanges. Paperback81 pagesWarbler Classics, 20235 x .203 x 8 inchesISBN 9781962572170

Why War? A Correspondence Between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud

By Linda Nochlin The fiftieth anniversary edition of the essay that is now recognized as the first major work of feminist art theory—published together with author Linda Nochlin’s reflections three decades later. Many scholars have called Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay on women artists the first real attempt at a feminist history of art. In her revolutionary essay, Nochlin refused to answer the question of why there had been no “great women artists” on its own corrupted terms, and instead, she dismantled the very concept of greatness, unraveling the basic assumptions that created the male-centric genius in art. With unparalleled insight and wit, Nochlin questioned the acceptance of a white male viewpoint in art history. And future freedom, as she saw it, requires women to leap into the unknown and risk demolishing the art world’s institutions in order to rebuild them anew. In this stand-alone anniversary edition, Nochlin’s essay is published alongside its reappraisal, “Thirty Years After.” Written in an era of thriving feminist theory, as well as queer theory, race, and postcolonial studies, “Thirty Years After” is a striking reflection on the emergence of a whole new canon. With reference to Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and many more, Nochlin diagnoses the state of women and art with unmatched precision and verve. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” has become a slogan and rallying cry that resonates across culture and society. In the 2020s, Nochlin’s message could not be more urgent: as she put it in 2015, “There is still a long way to go.” Hardcover112 pagesThames & Hudson, 2021Originally published in 19714.7 x 7 x 2 inchesISBN 9780500023846Art Criticism, Theory

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? 50th Anniversary Edition

By Carl E. Schorske “Not only is it a splendid exploration of several aspects of early modernism in their political context; it is an indicator of how the discipline of intellectual history is currently practiced by its most able and ambitious craftsmen.”—David A. Hollinger “A profound work…on one of the most important chapters of modern intellectual history”—H.R. Trevor-Roper, front page, The New York Times Book Review“Invaluable to the social and political historian…as well as to those more concerned with the arts”—John Willett, The New York Review of BooksA Pulitzer Prize Winner and landmark book from one of the truly original scholars of our time: a magnificent revelation of turn-of-the-century Vienna where out of a crisis of political and social disintegration so much of modern art and thought was born. Paperback432 pagesVintage, 19806.1 x 0.9 x 9.2 inchesISBN 9780394744780Austrian History

Fin De Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture

By Julia Dijkstra European Realities at Museum More showcases 70 interwar European works, from Otto Dix to lesser-known artists, examining the city, labor, and rising political ideologies. Following the major exhibition European Realities in Chemnitz, Museum More will present a focused selection of approximately 70 works from this international project, opening on 10 October 2025. The exhibition explores how artists across Europe responded to the turbulent interwar years through diverse Realist styles. Featuring renowned names like Otto Dix and Pablo Picasso alongside lesser-known artists from Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe, the show reflects themes such as the modern city, labor, gender roles, and rising political ideologies. European Realities at Museum More sheds new light on a lesser-known chapter of European art history and highlights the shared yet varied responses to societal change during the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated English-language catalogue, offering insights into both Dutch and broader European perspectives on Realism. This exhibition is a collaboration with Museum Gunzenhauser and Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. Paperback128 pagesText in English and DutchWaanders, 20268.66 x 0.6 x 10.63 inchesISBN 9789462626652European Art, Realism

European Realities | Schilderkunst Painting 1919-1939

By Thomas Bleitner It was a time of unimagined new freedoms. From the cafés of Paris to Hollywood's silver screen, women were exploring new modes of expression and new lifestyles. In countless aspects of life, they dared to challenge accepted notions of the "fairer sex," and opened new doors for the generations to come. What's more, they did it with joy, humor, and unapologetic charm.Exploring the lives of seventeen artists, writers, designers, dancers, adventurers, and athletes, this splendidly illustrated book brings together dozens of photographs with an engaging text. In these pages, readers will meet such iconoclastic women as the lively satirist Dorothy Parker, the avant-garde muse and artist Kiki de Montparnasse, and aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, whose stories continue to offer inspiration for our time. Women of the 1920s is a daring and stylish addition to any bookshelf of women's history. Hardcover170 pagesAbbeville Press, 20198.2 x 0.5 x 8.2 inchesISBN 9780789213471 History, Women's History

Women of the 1920s: Style, Glamour, and the Avant-Garde

Edited by Lærke Rydal Jørgensen and Kirsten Degel Foreword by Kirsten Degel and Poul Erik Tøjner Included text by Anthony Lane, Catherine Wermester, Werner Möller, Herbert Molderings, Patrick Rössler, Angela Lampe, Christopher Isherwood, Alfred Döblin, Irmgard Keun, Bertolt Brecht, Marieluise Fleisser, Vicki Baum, and Hans Fallada A sweeping journey through the roaring art and culture of the Weimar Republic. At the center of this volume are the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) artists—Otto Dix, George Grosz and Albert Renger-Patzsch—and the groundbreaking photographer August Sander, in particular his famed series People of the 20th Century, which portrayed both prominent and anonymous Germans from all parts of society in a simple and matter-of-fact pictorial style. Sander and the Neue Sachlichkeit artists both pursued an anti-Expressionist aesthetic, embracing social engagement and a rejection of romantic idealism. The Cold Gaze also looks at the extraordinary writers associated with the Weimar Republic, such as Vicki Baum, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Hans Fallada, Erich Kästner and Christopher Isherwood. Further points of focus by a range of contributing writers include Germany’s Americanization during this period; Marcel Breuer’s innovations in furniture design; the invention and ascent of the Futura font; the Weimar cult of technology; and much more.This richly illustrated catalog unfolds a period that was at once euphoric and harsh, an extraordinary moment in modernity birthed in the shadows between two world wars.Hardcover128 pages | 70 color and 77 black-and-white photosLouisiana Museum of Modern Art, 202310.25 x 8.5 inches ISBN 9788793659599 New Objectivity, German Art

The Cold Gaze: Germany in the 1920s

By Rainer Metzger It was the decade of daring Expressionist canvases, of brilliant book design, of the Bauhaus total work of art, of pioneering psychology, of drag balls, cabaret, Metropolis, and Marlene Dietrich’s rising star in theater and silent film. Between the paroxysms of two world wars, Berlin in the 1920s was a carpe diem cultural heyday, replete with groundbreaking art, invention, and thought.This book immerses readers in the freewheeling spirit of Berlin’s Weimar age. Through exemplary works in painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic design, photography, and film, we uncover the innovations, ideas, and precious dreams that characterized this unique cultural window. We take in the jazz bars and dance halls; the crowded Kinos and flapper fashion; the advances in technology and transport; the radio towers and rumbling trams and trains; the soaring buildings; the cinematic masterworks; and the newly independent women who smoked cigarettes, wore their hair short, and earned their own money.Featured works in this vivid cultural portrait include Hannah Höch’s Journalists; Lotte Jacobi’s Hands on the Typewriter; Otto Dix’s Portrait of Sylvia von Harden; Peter Behrens’s Project Alexanderplatz; and Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, starring Dietrich as cabaret performer Lola Lola. Along the way, we explore both the utopian yearnings and the more ominous economic and political realities which fueled the era’s escapist, idealistic, or reactionary masterworks. Behind the bright lights and glitter dresses, we see the inflation, factory labor, and fragile political consensus that lurked beneath this golden era and would eventually spell its savage end with the rise of National Socialism.Hardcover96 pagesTaschen, 20178.4 x 0.5 x 10.3 inchesISBN 9783836550505Art History, German History

Berlin in the 1920s

By Rainer Metzger Poets and intellectuals brushed shoulders in bustling coffeehouses, young avant-gardists heralded a new era in social and sexual liberalism, waltzes resounded through the Ringstraße, the Vienna Secession preached “to every age its art, to every art its freedom,” and tremors warned of looming political disintegration when the Austrian capital passed into a new century.Across economics, science, art, and music, Vienna blossomed into a “laboratory of modernity,” one which nurtured some of the greatest artistic innovators―from Egon Schiele’s unflinching nude portraits to Gustav Klimt’s decadent Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, from the ornamental seams and glass floors of Otto Wagner to Ditha Moser’s calendars adorned in golden deities.Discover the Zeitgeist, the scandals, and the extraordinary protagonists in this introduction to a transformative epoch. Across painting, sculpture, architecture, and design, we explore all the movers and shakers through insightful profiles and crisp double-page reproductions. Marking the centenary of the deaths of some of its brightest talents, this collection joins Vienna in its 2018 celebration of Modernism.“In most cities, the streets are paved in asphalt―in Vienna, they’re made of culture.”—Karl Kraus Hardcover96 pagesTaschen, 20188.5 x 0.5 x 10.3 inchesISBN 9783836567053Austrian History, Art History

Vienna Around 1900

By Peter Vergo "Handsomely reproduces some of the work that so shocked the conservative Viennese public." —Observer"The continuing value of this seminal title is demonstrated by its publication as a fourth edition." —Library Journal"The go-to volume for the artists of the Vienna Secession." —St. Louis Post-DispatchThe artistic stagnation of Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century was rudely shaken by the artists of the Secession. Their works at first shocked a conservative public; but their successive exhibitions, their magazine "Ver Sacrum", and their application to the applied arts and architecture soon brought them an enthusiastic following and wealthy patronage. This book traces the course of this development, of the Wiener Werkstätte that followed, and the individual works of the artists concerned. Peter Vergo quotes extensively from the writings of contemporary reviewers, critics and the artists themselves. He has eyewitness accounts of the exhibitions, the opening of the Secession building, the work in progress on the Palais Stoclet and Kabarett Fledermaus. The result is a documentary study of the successes and failures, hopes and fears of the members of an artistic movement which is still admired today.Hardcover285 pages | 150 color images, 75 black-and-white imagesPhaidon Press, 201510.2 x 1.1 x 11.8 inchesISBN 9780714868783Austrian History, Art History, Viennese Secession, Wiener Werkstätte

Art in Vienna 1898-1918

By Eric D. Weitz Thoroughly up-to-date, skillfully written, and strikingly illustrated, Weimar Germany brings to life an era of unmatched creativity in the twentieth century—one whose influence and inspiration still resonate today. Eric Weitz has written the authoritative history that this fascinating and complex period deserves, and he illuminates the uniquely progressive achievements and even greater promise of the Weimar Republic. Weitz reveals how Germans rose from the turbulence and defeat of World War I and revolution to forge democratic institutions and make Berlin a world capital of avant-garde art. He explores the period’s groundbreaking cultural creativity, from architecture and theater, to the new field of "sexology"—and presents richly detailed portraits of some of the Weimar’s greatest figures. Weimar Germany also shows that beneath this glossy veneer lay political turmoil that ultimately led to the demise of the republic and the rise of the radical Right. Yet for decades after, the Weimar period continued to powerfully influence contemporary art, urban design, and intellectual life—from Tokyo to Ankara, and Brasilia to New York. Featuring a new preface, this comprehensive and compelling book demonstrates why Weimar is an example of all that is liberating and all that can go wrong in a democracy. Paperback512 pagesPrinceton University Press, 20186.1 x 9.25 inchesISBN 9780691183053German History, Non-Fiction

Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, Weimar Centennial Edition

Edited by Anton Kæs, Martin Jay, Edward Dimendberg "The Weimar Republic Sourcebook is an invaluable resource for understanding one of the most important and resonant eras of the twentieth century. Since the Weimar debate has continued to repeat itself, albeit with less intellectual brilliance, this book is as much about the present as about the past. Here is the Weimar era in all its many-voiced and eloquent complexity: most of these texts, even those by the most famous names of the period, appear for the first time in English. This is an indispensable, enthralling, properly ambitious book."—Susan Sontag"This is an essential book for anyone teaching a course on the Weimar Republic, and advanced students should be advised to purchase it."—German History"The Weimar Republic Sourcebook will almost certainly transform the way the intellectual legacy of the Weimar Republic is thought about and taught in the English-speaking world."—Modernism/modernity A laboratory for competing visions of modernity, the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) continues to haunt the imagination of the twentieth century. Its political and cultural lessons retain uncanny relevance for all who seek to understand the tensions and possibilities of our age. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook represents the most comprehensive documentation of Weimar culture, history, and politics assembled in any language. It invites a wide community of readers to discover the richness and complexity of the turbulent years in Germany before Hitler's rise to power.Drawing from such primary sources as magazines, newspapers, manifestoes, and official documents (many unknown even to specialists and most never before available in English), this book challenges the traditional boundaries between politics, culture, and social life. Its thirty chapters explore Germany's complex relationship to democracy, ideologies of "reactionary modernism," the rise of the "New Woman," Bauhaus architecture, the impact of mass media, the literary life, the tradition of cabaret and urban entertainment, and the situation of Jews, intellectuals, and workers before and during the emergence of fascism.While devoting much attention to the Republic's varied artistic and intellectual achievements (the Frankfurt School, political theater, twelve-tone music, cultural criticism, photomontage, and urban planning), the book is unique for its inclusion of many lesser-known materials on popular culture, consumerism, body culture, drugs, criminality, and sexuality; it also contains a timetable of major political events, an extensive bibliography, and capsule biographies. This will be a major resource and reference work for students and scholars in history; art; architecture; literature; social and political thought; and cultural, film, German, and women's studies.Paperback806 pagesUniversity of California Press, 19956.5 x 1.8 x 9.8 inchesISBN 9780520067752German History, Philosophy, Culture Studies

The Weimar Republic Sourcebook

By Lynn H. NicholasWinner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardWinner of the 1999 Legion of HonorWinnter of the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award“Nicholas knows the art world as well as any military historian knows his battlefield . . . Her work deserves the widest reading.”—New York Times Book Review“At once fascinating and horrifying [with] a strong element of spine-chilling suspense.”—Los Angeles Times“Intriguing..suspenseful . . . a sensational story of moral courage and greatness of character in the face of pure evil.”—Houston ChronicleThe cast of characters includes Hitler and Goering, Gertrude Stein and Marc Chagall—not to mention works by artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso. And the story told in this superbly researched and suspenseful book is that of the Third Reich's war on European culture and the Allies' desperate effort to preserve it.From the Nazi purges of "Degenerate Art" and Goering's shopping sprees in occupied Paris to the perilous journey of the Mona Lisa from Paris and the painstaking reclamation of the priceless treasures of liberated Italy, The Rape of Europa is a sweeping narrative of greed, philistinism, and heroism that combines superlative scholarship with a compelling drama.Paperback512 pagesVintage Books, 19955.2 x 1 x 8 inchesISBN 9780679756866Award-Winning, Art History

The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War

By Amos Elon “Brilliant, far-reaching, passionate. . . sweeping and marvelously detailed. . . finely, intimately, movingly drawn. . . a book for the ages.” —The New York Times“[Elon] is a master of the telling anecdote. . . One should be grateful for what Elon has done.” —Los Angeles Times“A work packed with beautifully sketched portraits, and constructed with a practiced eye for memorable, well-executed anecdotes.” —The New York Times Book ReviewIn this important work of historical restoration, Amos Elon shows how a persecuted clan of cattle dealers and wandering peddlers was transformed into a stunningly successful community of writers, philosophers, scientists, tycoons, and activists. In engaging, brilliantly etched portraits of Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and many others, Elon traces how a small minority came to be perceived as a deadly threat to German national integrity. Paperback464 pagesPicador, 20035.6 x 0.9 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9780312422813Art History, Biographical, German History

The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933

By Robert Beachy Winner of the 2015 Randy Shilts Award“Excellent and richly documented. . .Beachy’s work must [be] considered in the larger context of a shift in cultural studies. . .Fascinating.” —V.R. Berghahn, The New York Times Book Review“Beachy enlarges our understanding of how the international gay-rights movement eventually prospered, despite the setbacks that it experienced not only in Nazi Germany but also in mid-century America.” —The New Yorker “A superb work of historical reclamation–by far the best account we have of the formative years of homosexual identity and emancipation, it is brilliantly researched and beautifully written.” —Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, CUNY In the half century before the Nazis rose to power, Berlin became the undisputed gay capital of the world. Activists and medical professionals made it a city of firsts—the first gay journal, the first homosexual rights organization, the first Institute for Sexual Science, the first sex reassignment surgeries—exploring and educating themselves and the rest of the world about new ways of understanding the human condition. In this fascinating examination of how the uninhibited urban culture of Berlin helped create our categories of sexual orientation and gender identity, Robert Beachy guides readers through the past events and developments that continue to shape and influence our thinking about sex and gender to this day. Paperback352 pagesVintage, 20155.2 x 0.8 x 8 inchesISBN 9780307473134German History, Cultural Studies

Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity

Edited by Mirjam Zadoff and Karolina KühnA volume examining queer lives caught between empowerment and stigmatization in early twentieth-century Germany.The contributions in this volume present the story of queer lives in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century—from the first emancipation movements around the turn of the century via attempts at self-empowerment in the Weimar Republic to the destruction of queer subcultures under the National Socialist regime and the continued discrimination against LGBTIQ+ persons in the postwar period. Since the late nineteenth century, increasing numbers of people have self-assuredly championed the recognition of queer lifestyles. These pioneers formed collectives, made their voices heard, and questioned dominant gender categories politically, scientifically, and artistically. Through essays, interviews, and artworks, the authors and artists illustrate this struggle for recognition which was forcefully prevented and destroyed following the seizure of power by the National Socialists and almost forgotten after 1945.Paperback252 pagesHirmer, 20236.75 x 9.5 inchesISBN 9783777439921History, LGBTQ+, Gender and Sexuality

To Be Seen. Queer Lives 1900-1950

By Padraig Rooney "At last a biography in English of one of the most interesting women of the twentieth century! Schwarzenbach was so far ahead of her time that we are only now beginning to catch up to her. Little happened in the early decades of the twentieth century to which she didn't have a connection. What a life! And what a great way Padraig Rooney has told it." —Carlos Dews, editor of The Collected Works of Carson McCullers “An empathetic portrait of an audacious woman.” —Kirkus Reviews Annemarie Schwarzenbach was one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable women, possibly the greatest sexual and political radical of the 1930s. But until now she’s been largely ignored. Born to a wealthy family in Switzerland, as a teenager she rebelled against her domineering pro-Nazi mother. She immersed herself in the antifascist, queer and artistic circles of the German diaspora of the 1930s. Her edgy glamour and androgynous beauty turned heads in the lesbian nightclubs of Weimar Berlin, on the ski slopes of St. Moritz, and in New York's luxury hotels and jazz bars. Constantly on the move, Annemarie chronicled the low and dishonest decade leading to war through her unique journalism, writing and photography. Her work was as adventurous and uncompromising as her personal life, and reveals a deep courage, intelligence, and ambition tragically curtailed by her untimely death. Hardcover332 pagesPolity, 20256.3 x 1.4 x 9.1 inchesISBN 9781509566297Biography

Rebel Angel: The Life and Times of Annemarie Schwarzenbach

By Peter Gay “Absorbing . . . [Peter Gay] has recaptured the spirit of this exciting decade and he provides a reliable guide to it.”—Walter Laqueur, New York Times Book Review“A virtuoso performance, not the least because it has captured, with the greatest possible economy, a culture whose origin and essence were closely intertwined with its politics.”—Peter Jacobsohn, The New Republic A seminal work as melodious and haunting as the era it chronicles.First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake of Hitler's rise to power. Despite the ephemeral nature of the Weimar democracy, the influence of its culture was profound and far-reaching, ushering in a modern sensibility in the arts that dominated Western culture for most of the twentieth century. Vivid and eminently readable, Weimar Culture is the finest introduction for the casual reader and historian alike.Paperback224 pagesW.W. Norton & Co., 20015.5 x 0.6 x 8.2 inchesISBN 9780393322392German History, Culture Studies, Non-Fiction

Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider

By Joseph RothTranslated by Michael Hoffmann "Nonstop brilliance, irresistible charm and continuing relevance."—Jeffrey Eugenides, New York Times Book Review "A singular achievement of both journalism and literature, a travel guide composed by a...poet who captured a city at its most cosmopolitan—and on the brink of collapse."—Thane Rosenbaum, Washington Post Book World "There is a poem on every page of Joseph Roth."—Joseph Brodsky What I Saw, like no other existing work, records the violent social and political paroxysms that compromised and ultimately destroyed the precarious democracy that was the Weimar Republic. As if anticipating Christopher Isherwood, the book re-creates the tragicomic world of 1920s Berlin as seen by its greatest journalistic eyewitness. Against the traditional portrayal of Berlin as an entrepôt of fun and transport, of government, nightlife, and literary glamour, Joseph Roth’s gritty depiction chronicles the lives of the city’s forgotten inhabitants: the war cripples, the Jewish immigrants from the Pale, the criminals, the bathhouse denizens, and the nameless dead who filled the morgues. Paperback240 pagesW.W. Norton & Co., 2004Originally Published in 19845.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9780393325829History, German History

What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933

By Joseph RothTranslated by Michael HoffmannWith a Comment by Elie Wiesel "[A] book of impassioned reportage and polemic...it is impossible not to feel a sympathetic wonder."—Michael Andre Bernstein, The New Republic "In these disturbing yet strikingly illuminating pages, the truth of Jewish destiny from long ago vibrates and sings..."—Elie Wiesel "[C]aptures and encapsulates Europe in those uncertain hours before the upheaval of a continent and the annihilation of a civilization."—Cynthia Ozick, author of Quarrel and Quandary One of the foremost novelists of the twentieth century, Joseph Roth (1894-1939) wrote these evocative dispatches between the two World Wars. In them he warned of the false comforts of Jewish assimilation, laid bare the schism between Eastern and Western Jews, reflected on the concept of Jewish identity, and looked with foreboding at Germany’s future. The combined exigency and restrained contemplation of Roth’s writing have earned him comparisons to his more celebrated contemporaries Thomas Mann and Isaac Babel. Now brilliantly rendered by the award-wining translator Michael Hofmann, The Wandering Jews offers a unique view of the European Jewish experience at a critical juncture of world history. Paperback168 pagesW.W. Norton & Co., 2001Originally Published in 19275 x 0.5 x 7.5 inchesISBN 9780393322705History

The Wandering Jews: The Classic Portrait of A Vanished People

By Joseph RothTranslated by Michael Hofmann At one time an underground hero in the world of journalism, with prose on a par with Tolstoy and Kafka, Joseph Roth now looms large in the pantheon of European literature. Indeed, the last five years have seen a major Roth revival culminating in Report from a Parisian Paradise, a haunting epitaph by the greatest foreign correspondent of his age. An exile in Paris, Roth captured the essence of France in the 1920s and 1930s. From the port town of Marseille to the erotic hill country around Avignon. Report from a Parisian Paradise―superbly translated by Michael Hofmann―paints the sepia-tinted landscapes, enchanting people, and ruthless desperation of a country hurtling toward dissolution. Roth's book is not only a paean to a European order that could no longer hold but also a miraculous and revelatory work of transcendent philosophical clarity. Paperback303 pagesW.W. Norton and Company, 20055.5 x 0.8 x 8.2 inchesISBN 9780393327168Journalism, History

Report from a Parisian Paradise

By E. Amy BullerForeword by Professor Kurt Barling A lesson from history that is needed today more than ever. Darkness over Germany delivers a stark warning from history of how a man with little political experience rose up as a voice of a disenfranchised people. In this powerful book, a pioneering young woman, Amy Buller, recounts the hopes and fears of Germans engulfed in the rise of fascism during the 1930s. During the years leading up to the outbreak of war, Buller defied her critics and social norms by leading delegations of British intelligentsia to Germany to learn about and confront the appeal of the Nazis. The book tells the stories of the Germans whom Buller met, including their positivity about the forces uniting the country, and their terror that Hitler was the man at the helm. Darkness over Germany is Amy Buller's recollection of these unlikely encounters and her analysis of how National Socialism took hold. It tells a remarkable and largely forgotten story of British-German relations in the 1930s. The book speaks resonantly of the need to stay vigilant and maintain dialogue in times of change and discord. Paperback254 pagesInterlink Publishing, 201813.2 x 1.8 x 21.6 cmISBN 9781623719968German History, Non-Fiction

Darkness Over Germany: A Warning from History

By Ehrhard Bahr “Each chapter in Bahr's book is capable of standing alone, but the author also invokes ideas, incidents and personalities in each chapter that strike sparks off the material in other chapters. . . . Weimar on the Pacific is a brilliant tour de force of intellectual history and cultural criticism, both audacious and accomplished.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review“This is a wonderful book. . . . The writing is distinguished by a profound knowledge of its many subjects, an infectious interest, and a sharp eye for telling details, all of which bring the material alive.”—Modern Language Review“This important book--of meticulous and impressive research, refined analysis, and lucid organization and writing--is demanding, a challenge to the author’s peers and yet rewarding also for the generally educated reader.”—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society In the 1930s and 40s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals—including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg—who had fled Nazi Germany. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works to address the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism. Weimar Germany and its culture, with its meld of eighteenth-century German classicism and twentieth-century modernism, served as a touchstone for this group of diverse talents and opinions.Weimar on the Pacific is the first book to examine these artists and intellectuals as a group. Ehrhard Bahr studies selected works of Adorno, Horkheimer, Brecht, Lang, Neutra, Schindler, Döblin, Mann, and Schoenberg, weighing Los Angeles’s influence on them and their impact on German modernism. Touching on such examples as film noir and Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, Bahr shows how this community of exiles reconstituted modernism in the face of the traumatic political and historical changes they were living through. Paperback382 pagesUniversity of California Press, 20085.9 x 1 x 8.9 inchesISBN 9780520257955German History, Literature

Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism

By Janet Ward "This outstanding book has retrieved all the luminous qualities of its subject matter to produce an astonishing revelation of gleaming appearances on splendid display. It is unrivaled by any previous study."—Marcus Bullock, coeditor of Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings 1913-26"Weimar Surfaces creates provocative new connections between the historical constellations that found a privileged expression in Weimar Berlin and the more contemporary debates on the legacies of modernism and modernity. A compelling study."—Sabine Hake, author of The Cinema's Third Machine"Janet Ward's study of Weimar architecture and design is the most comprehensive and integrated study of the surface of Weimar experience yet written. . . . A first-rate and stimulating book."—Sander L. Gilman, coauthor of Hysteria Beyond Freud Germany of the 1920s offers a stunning moment in modernity, a time when surface values first became determinants of taste, activity, and occupation: modernity was still modern, spectacle was still spectacular. Janet Ward's luminous study revisits Weimar Germany via the lens of metropolitan visual culture, analyzing the power that 1920s Germany holds for today's visual codes of consumerism.Paperback358 pagesUniversity of California Press, 2001 6.1 x 0.9 x 8.9 inchesISBN 9780520222991German History, Urban Studies,

Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany

By Volker WeidermannTranslated from German by Carol Brown Janeway “Intimate . . . Weidermann gives us a glimpse of what was, to many of these writers, a brief but rare home.”—Claire Hazelton, The Guardian“Potent and melancholy . . . Weidermann has combed letters, books, diaries, and reminiscences and used them to tell his sad tale as if it were a novel."—Michael Prodger, The Times, London“Dazzling. . . Graceful. For such a slim book to convey with such poignancy the extinction of a generation of ‘Great Europeans’ is a triumph.”—The Sunday Telegraph“Beautifully translated by Carol Brown Janeway . . . a short but vital calm-before-the-storm history, one that shines a valuable light on two of the 20th century’s finest writers . . . rich in insight and empathy. This is a sparkling gem.”—Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star-Tribune It’s the summer of 1936, and the writer Stefan Zweig is in crisis. His German publisher no longer wants him, his marriage is collapsing, and his house in Austria—searched by the police two years earlier—no longer feels like home. He’s been dreaming of Ostend, the Belgian beach town that is a paradise of promenades, parasols, and old friends. So he journeys there with his lover, Lotte Altmann, and reunites with fellow writer and semi-estranged close friend Joseph Roth, who is himself about to fall in love. For a moment, they create a fragile haven. But as Europe begins to crumble around them, the writers find themselves trapped on vacation, in exile, watching the world burn. In Ostend, Volker Weidermann lyrically recounts “the summer before the dark,” when a coterie of artists, intellectuals, drunks, revolutionaries, and madmen found themselves in limbo while Europe teetered on the edge of fascism and total war.Ostend is the true story of two of the twentieth century’s great writers, written with a novelist’s eye for pacing, chronology, and language—a dazzling work of historical nonfiction. Hardcover164 pagesPantheon, 2016 5.4 x 0.8 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781101870266Literature, Biography, European History

Ostend: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark

By Stefan Zweig Translated by Anthea Bell Cover illustration by Edward Steichen Written as both a recollection of the past and a warning for future generations, The World of Yesterday recalls the golden age of literary Vienna—its seeming permanence, its promise, and its devastating fall. Surrounded by the leading literary lights of the epoch, Stefan Zweig draws a vivid and intimate account of his life and travels through Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and London, touching on the very heart of European culture. His passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the edge of extinction. This new translation by award-winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig’s writing in arguably his most revealing work. Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was born in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig traveled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoyed literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide. Also available in German here. Paperback472 pagesNebraska University Press, 2013Originally published in 19415.5 x 1 x 8.5 inchesISBN 9780803226616Biography, History, Travel

The World of Yesterday

By Katharina Rich Perlow At various times throughout her adult life in the United States, Katharina Rich Perlow was asked how her family survived World War II in Vienna, Austria. She was reluctant to conjure up the harrowing events of her childhood—until now. As the number of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust diminishes rapidly, and for the sake of her children and grandchildren, Katharina felt compelled to tell her story. Her memoir is the story of six-year-old Katharina, her two older siblings, her Catholic mother and her Jewish father, forcibly moved from a quiet, small-town life into a tiny apartment in the heart of wartime, working-class Vienna. It is the story of her soon-to-be widowed mother trying desperately to conceal from neighbors the secret that meant the difference between life and death. Despite being deprived of all the normal hallmarks of childhood, including school, social life, and even food, Katharina tells her story from the point of view of the energetic, curious, and insightful girl that she was, and the woman she was to become. From learning to dance the waltz in her tiny kitchen, to hiding in the catacombs during the Allied bombing, this is a story of bravery, family sacrifice, and survival under the most horrific of circumstances—and ultimately, of hope and resilience. Paperback202 pagesWalter Press, 20146 x 0.5 x 9 inchesISBN 9780615926292Memoir, Biography, Austrian History

Obstructed View: A Memoir of a Young Girl Growing Up in Wartime Vienna

By Marjorie Perloff "One of our finest critics and a tireless advocate for the avant-garde….To have this memoir now is a boon."—Andrew DuBois, Harvard ReviewA fascinating memoir of refugee flight and survival, intellectual yet highly personal, by one America's eminent literary critics.The Vienna Paradox is Marjorie Perloff's memoir of growing up in pre-World War II Vienna, her escape to America in 1938 with her upper-middle-class, highly cultured, and largely assimilated Jewish family, and her self-transformation from the German-speaking Gabriele Mintz to the English-speaking Marjorie—who also happened to be the granddaughter of Richard Schüller, the Austrian foreign minister under Chancellor Dollfuss and a special delegate to the League of Nations. Compelling as the story is, this is hardly a conventional memoir. Rather, it interweaves biographical anecdote and family history with speculations on the historical development of early 20th-century Vienna as it was experienced by her parents' generation, and how the loss of their "high" culture affected the lives of these cultivated refugees in a democratic United States that was, and remains, deeply suspicious of perceived "elitism." This is, in other words, an intellectual memoir, both elegant and heartfelt, by one of America's leading critics, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal. Paperback224 pagesNew Directions, 20045.2 x 0.8 x 8 inchesISBN 9780811215718Memoir, Biography, Austrian History

The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir

By Edmund de Waal A New York Times BestsellerAn Economist Book of the YearCosta Book Award Winner for BiographyGalaxy National Book Award Winner (New Writer of the Year Award)“A family memoir written with a grace and modesty that almost belie the sweep of its contents: Proust, Rilke, Japanese art, the rue de Monceau, Vienna during the Second World War. The most enchanting history lesson imaginable.” —The New Yorker“A self-questioning, witty, sharply perceptive book . . . The Hare with Amber Eyes is rich in epiphanic moments . . . By writing objects into his family story [de Waal] has achieved something remarkable.” —Tanya Harrod, The Times Literary Supplement“Part family memoir, part Proustian confession, subtle, spare and elegant.” —Hilary Spurling, The Independent Edmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots—which are then sold, collected, and handed on—he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive. And so begins this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire. Paperback354 pagesPicador, 20115.5 x 1 x 8.3 inchesISBN 9781250811271Austrian History, Design

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

By Frederic Morton “A remarkable and unusual slice of history.”—Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times“As lush, beguiling, and charming as an emperor’s waltz”—Publisher’s Weekly On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed height of the Viennese Carnival, the handsome and charming Crown Prince Rudolf fired a revolver at his teenaged mistress and then himself. The two shots that rang out at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods echo still. Frederic Morton, author of the bestselling Rothschilds, deftly tells the haunting story of the Prince and his city, where, in the span of only ten months, "the Western dream started to go wrong." In Rudolf's Vienna moved other young men with striking intellectual and artistic talents—and all as frustrated as the Prince. Among them were: young Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodor Herzl, Gustav Klimt, and the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, whose La Ronde was the great erotic drama of the fin de siecle. Morton studies these and other gifted young men, interweaving their fates with that of the doomed Prince and the entire city through to the eve of Easter, just after Rudolf's body is lowered into its permanent sarcophagus and a son named Adolf Hitler is born to Frau Klara Hitler. Paperback352 pagesPenguin Books, 19805 x 0.6 x 7.1 inchesISBN 9780140056679Austrian History

A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889

By Frederic Morton “The detail surrounding the many people involved in the slice of history building up to World War I is amazing…This book, with its accounts of the activities of many countries' politicians and the culture of Vienna at the time, explains what was going on so well that you almost feel as though you are there.”—Costa Mesa Daily Pilot “A book about war and madness…A fascinating and well-written account of the social origins and context of [World War I].”—Huffington Post "While we're still marching through the centennial of the First World War, this is the perfect time to delve into the history, not just of the war itself but of the world that produced it. Frederic Morton's vivid portrait of antebellum Vienna begins with the intrigues and tensions roiling the Hapsburg capital in 1913 and ends with the breakdown of diplomacy among the Great Powers and the outbreak of war in the fall of 1914. Along the way, he introduces the reader to major historical figures of the twentieth century."—The Federalist, "Notable Books of 2016" Thunder at Twilight is a landmark of historical vision, drawing on hitherto untapped sources to illuminate two crucial years in the life of extraordinary city of Vienna—and in the life of twentieth century. It was during the carnival of 1913 that a young Stalin arrived in Vienna on a mission that would launch him into the upper echelon of Russian revolutionaries, and it was here that he first collided with Trotsky. It was in Vienna that the failed artist Adolf Hitler kept daubing watercolors and spouting tirades at fellow drifters in a flophouse. Here Archduke Franz Ferdinand had a troubled audience with Emperor Franz Joseph—and soon the bullet that killed the Archduke would set off the Great War that would kill ten million more. Paperback400 pagesDa Capo Press, 20148.9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches ISBN 9780306823268Austrian History, Non-Fiction

Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914

By Richard Cockett“A rich and fascinating book. Pre-war Vienna was a cauldron of ideas—ideas that were mostly extinguished in Austria, but exported to the Anglo-American world. Richard Cockett makes a compelling case for how they continue to shape our lives.”—David Edmonds, author of The Murder of Professor SchlickHow can one European capital be responsible for most of the West’s intellectual and cultural achievements in the twentieth century?Viennese ideas saturate the modern world. From California architecture to Hollywood Westerns, modern advertising to shopping malls, orgasms to gender confirmation surgery, nuclear fission to fitted kitchens—every aspect of our history, science, and culture is in some way shaped by Vienna.The city of Freud, Wittgenstein, Mahler, and Klimt was the melting pot at the heart of a vast metropolitan empire. But with the Second World War and the rise of fascism, the dazzling coteries of thinkers who squabbled, debated, and called Vienna home dispersed across the world, where their ideas continued to have profound impact.Richard Cockett gives us the entirety of this extraordinary story. Tracing Vienna’s rich intellectual history from psychoanalysis to Reaganomics, Cockett encompasses everything from the communist rebels of Red Vienna to the neoliberal economists of the Austrian School. This is the panoramic account of how one city made the modern world—and how we all remain inescapably Viennese.Paperback464 pages | 25 black-and-white illustrationsYale University Press, 20245.11 x 1.17 x 7.75 inchesISBN 9780300279368Viennese History, Austria

Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World [Paperback]

By Angus Robertson "From the 13th century till the end of World War I, a Habsburg ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Vienna as its capital city. No other royal dynasty has a record that can match that of the Habsburgs. Mr. Robertson holds that the key to the Habsburgs’ greatness was sheer continuity and the stability that comes with it; he even ascribes to them a sense of mission. There is something valid in Mr. Robertson’s endorsement of the city as a civilizational crossroads.”—The Wall Street Journal "[Angus Robertson's] love for the city is apparent in this panoramic account of Vienna as a cultural, intellectual, and political capital of Europe."—The New CriterionVienna is unique amongst world capitals in its consistent international importance over the centuries. From the ascent of the Habsburgs as Europe's leading dynasty to the Congress of Vienna, which reordered Europe in the wake of Napoleon's downfall, to bridge-building summits during the Cold War, Vienna has been the scene of key moments in world history.Scores of pivotal figures were influenced by their time in Vienna, including: Empress Maria Theresa, Count Metternich, Bertha von Suttner, Theodore Herzl, Gustav Mahler, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, John F. Kennedy, and many others. In a city of great composers, artists, and thinkers, it is here that both the most positive and destructive ideas of recent history have developed.From its time as the capital of an imperial superpower, through war, dissolution, dictatorship to democracy Vienna has reinvented itself and its relevance to the rest of the world.Hardcover464 pagesPegasus Books, 20226 x 1.6 x 9 inchesISBN 9781639361953Austrian History

The Crossroads of Civilization: A History of Vienna

By Pieter M. Judson “Pieter M. Judson’s book informs and stimulates. If his account of Habsburg achievements, especially in the 18th century, is rather starry-eyed, it is a welcome corrective to the black legend usually presented. Lucid, elegant, full of surprising and illuminating details, it can be warmly recommended to anyone with an interest in modern European history.”—Tim Blanning, The Wall Street Journal“Crisply written and nuanced… With invigorating precision, [Judson] analyses how the state was built up by various forces working simultaneously from above and below. His view is not blurred by the unhelpful nostalgia with which so many accounts are suffused.”—Adam Zamoyski, Literary Review“Strongly revisionist and effortlessly wide-ranging, Judson’s book offers a strikingly original interpretation of Austria-Hungary as an empire rather than a collection of hostile national groups. This powerful insight should change how we think about European history.”—Robert Nemes, author of Another Hungary: The Nineteenth-Century Provinces in Eight Lives In a panoramic and pioneering reappraisal, Pieter Judson shows why the Habsburg Empire mattered so much, for so long, to millions of Central Europeans. Across divides of language, religion, region, and history, ordinary women and men felt a common attachment to “their empire,” while bureaucrats, soldiers, politicians, and academics devised inventive solutions to the challenges of governing Europe’s second largest state. In the decades before and after its dissolution, some observers belittled the Habsburg Empire as a dysfunctional patchwork of hostile ethnic groups and an anachronistic imperial relic. Judson examines their motives and explains just how wrong these rearguard critics were. Rejecting fragmented histories of nations in the making, this bold revision surveys the shared institutions that bridged difference and distance to bring stability and meaning to the far-flung empire. By supporting new schools, law courts, and railroads, along with scientific and artistic advances, the Habsburg monarchs sought to anchor their authority in the cultures and economies of Central Europe. A rising standard of living throughout the empire deepened the legitimacy of Habsburg rule, as citizens learned to use the empire’s administrative machinery to their local advantage. Nationalists developed distinctive ideas about cultural difference in the context of imperial institutions, yet all of them claimed the Habsburg state as their empire. The empire’s creative solutions to governing its many lands and peoples—as well as the intractable problems it could not solve—left an enduring imprint on its successor states in Central Europe. Its lessons remain no less important today. Paperback 592 pages Harvard University Press, 20186.2 x 1.5 x 9.5 inches ISBN 9780674986763Austrian History

The Habsburg Empire: A New History

By A. Wess Mitchell "A compelling and long-overdue analysis."—Richard Bassett, author of For God and Kaiser: The Imperial Austrian Army, 1619–1918 "This graceful account of Habsburg diplomacy . . . explains how the empire survived so long."—Andrew Moravcsik, Foreign Affairs The Empire of Habsburg Austria faced more enemies than any other European great power. Flanked on four sides by rivals, it possessed few of the advantages that explain successful empires. Yet somehow Austria endured, outlasting Ottoman sieges, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. A. Wess Mitchell tells the story of how this cash-strapped, polyglot empire survived for centuries in Europe’s most dangerous neighborhood without succumbing to the pressures of multisided warfare. He shows how the Habsburgs played the long game in geopolitics, corralling friend and foe alike into voluntarily managing the empire’s lengthy frontiers and extending a benign hegemony across the turbulent lands of middle Europe. The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire offers lessons on how to navigate a messy geopolitical map, stand firm without the advantage of military predominance, and prevail against multiple rivals. Paperback416 pages | 16 black-and-white illustrationsPrinceton University Press, 20196.1 x 1.1 x 9.1 inchesISBN 9780691196442Austrian History

The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire

by Iryna Vushko “Iryna Vushko gives us a beautifully crafted analysis that explains—through carefully drawn biographical studies—the very diverse and often constructive ways in which the legacies of the Habsburg empire shaped the subsequent development of not only different national ideologies and cultures in Central Europe, but also the way in which Europe is thought and dreamt.”—Harold James, author of Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization “With gentle prose and deep research, Iryna Vushko gives us the inheritance of the Habsburg monarchy. In this study of political Europeans formed by it, she deepens our understanding of the nation-state and European integration. Few monographs work so profoundly to reshape the history of the twentieth century.”—Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century This book is a collective portrait of twenty-one key statesmen who came of age during the Habsburg Empire. They include the cofounder of Austro-Marxism and the Austrian republic’s first foreign minister, the cofounder of the European Union after the Second World War, the founder of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and Mussolini’s ambassador to Vienna. Some survived the First World War and the resulting geographical divisions in their homelands, and some went on to serve in politics and governments throughout Europe. Taken together, the stories of these men offer readers a window on broad issues of European history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—chiefly, how an imperial heritage, a shared vision of statehood and nationalism, and a commitment to peaceful conflict resolution helped establish enduring loyalty and unity despite the geographical fault lines resulting from the war. As Iryna Vushko explains, their stories also offer an increasingly nuanced understanding of the achievements and failures of the Habsburg Empire. Hardcover352 pages | 18 black-and-white illustrations Yale University Press, 20246.2 x 9.3 inchesISBN 9780300267556History

Lost Fatherland: Europeans between Empire and Nation-States, 1867-1939

By Larry Wolff "[A] masterful intellectual history of the province."—Timothy Snyder, New York Review of Books "Wolff's way of telling the story of how the idea of Galicia evolved throughout the nineteenth century is a dense narrative in which a variety of sources are related or juxtaposed to create multiple contexts—historical, political, social, intellectual, cultural. . . The scope and quality of Larry Wolff's scholarship makes The Idea of Galicia an impressive achievement. Not only has the author made a major contribution to the history of Galicia and to historiography, but he has also set a high standard for historical writing."—Jolanta Pekacz, Canadian Journal of History Galicia was created at the first partition of Poland in 1772 and disappeared in 1918. Yet, in slightly over a century, the idea of Galicia came to have meaning for both the peoples who lived there and the Habsburg government that ruled it. Indeed, its memory continues to exercise a powerful fascination for those who live in its former territories and for the descendants of those who emigrated out of Galicia. The idea of Galicia was largely produced by the cultures of two cities, Lviv and Cracow. Making use of travelers' accounts, newspaper reports, and literary works, Wolff engages such figures as Emperor Joseph II, Metternich, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Ivan Franko, Stanisław Wyspiański, Tadeusz "Boy" Żeleński, Isaac Babel, Martin Buber, and Bruno Schulz. He shows the exceptional importance of provincial space as a site for the evolution of cultural meanings and identities, and analyzes the province as the framework for non-national and multi-national understandings of empire in European history. Paperback 504 pagesStanford University Press; 1st edition, 20126 x 1.25 x 9 inchesISBN 9780804783125European History

The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture

By David Edmonds and John EidinowOn October 25, 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, England, the great twentieth-century philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The meeting—which lasted ten minutes—did not go well. Their loud and aggressive confrontation became the stuff of instant legend, but precisely what happened during that brief confrontation remained for decades the subject of intense disagreement.An engaging mix of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection, Wittgenstein's Poker explores, through the Popper/Wittgenstein confrontation, the history of philosophy in the twentieth century. It evokes the tumult of fin-de-siécle Vienna, Wittgentein's and Popper's birthplace; the tragedy of the Nazi takeover of Austria; and postwar Cambridge University, with its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell. At the center of the story stand the two giants of philosophy themselves—proud, irascible, larger than life—and spoiling for a fight. Paperack352 pagesHarper Collins Publishers, 20025.4 x 7.2 inchesISBN 9780060936648

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers

By Elana Shapria "[Shapira] maps the possibility of thinking about Jewish agency in the arts while avoiding the temptation to essentialise Jewish identity, to homogenise Jewish attitudes, or to represent "the Jew" as a total personality whose positions are governed entirely by the fact of their Jewishness. Instead, she demonstrates how patrons were thinking through their Jewishness at the same time as they were positioning themselves in terms of class, gender and sexual identity, and were doing so at a time when all of these were topics of substantial dispute."—The Art Newspaper"Authoritative. . . . Shapira's documentation in primary and secondary sources is exhaustive. . . . Recommended."—Choice"Compelling and important. . . .Working from a truly astounding range of primary and archival sources, she brings to life the protagonists of her story with intimacy and richness of detail. Rarely has the active role of Jewish patronage been explored in such depth."—Ars Judaica A recent surge of interest in Jewish patronage during the golden years of Vienna has led to the question, Would modernism in Vienna have developed in the same fashion had Jewish patrons not been involved? In this provocative reexamination of the roots of Viennese modernism, Elana Shapira analyzes the central role of Jewish businessmen, professionals, and writers in the evolution of the city's architecture and design from the 1860s to the 1910s. According to Shapira, these patrons negotiated their relationship with their non-Jewish surrounding and clarified their position within Viennese society by inscribing Jewish elements into the buildings, interiors, furniture, and design objects that they financed, produced, and co-designed. This book uniquely treats Jewish identification within Viennese modernism as a matter of Jews' active fashioning of a new language to convey their aims for emancipation, along with their claims of cultural authority. Paperback336 pagesBrandeis University Press, 20166 x 1 x 9 inchesISBN 9781611689211Austrian History, Modernism, Design

Style and Seduction: Jewish Patrons, Architecture, and Design in Fin de Siècle Vienna

By Katya Moytl “In her superb new study of Viennese women, Motyl explores the real-life practices of a range of ‘new women’ during and after the First World War. Moving beyond approaches that treat the ‘new woman’ as a discursive or political phenomenon, she instead explores women’s everyday life practices. By tracing her subjects’ bodily routines, Motyl’s remarkably original work gives radical new meanings to the concept of a ‘new woman.’” ―Pieter M. Judson, author of The Habsburg Empire: A New History Explores the emergence of a new womanhood in turn-of-the-century Vienna. In Embodied Histories, historian Katya Motyl explores the everyday acts of defiance that formed the basis for new, unconventional forms of womanhood in early twentieth-century Vienna. The figures Motyl brings back to life defied gender conformity, dressed in new ways, behaved brashly, and expressed themselves freely, overturning assumptions about what it meant to exist as a woman. Motyl delves into how these women inhabited and reshaped the urban landscape of Vienna, an increasingly modern, cosmopolitan city. Specifically, she focuses on the ways that easily overlooked quotidian practices such as loitering outside cafés and wandering through city streets helped create novel conceptions of gender. Exploring the emergence of a new womanhood, Embodied Histories presents a new account of how gender, the body, and the city merge with and transform each other, showing how our modes of being are radically intertwined with the spaces we inhabit. Paperback304 pages | 50 halftonesUniversity of Chicago Press, 20246 x 0.73 x 9 inchesISBN 9780226832166 Women's History, Vienna

Embodied Histories: New Womanhood in Vienna, 1894-1934

By Mel Gordon When Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin first appeared in the fall of 2000, it inspired wide acclaim and multiple printings.This sourcebook of hundreds of rare visual delights from the pre-Nazi, Cabaret-period “Babylon on the Spree” has the distinction of being praised both by scholars and avatars of contemporary culture, inspiring performers, filmmakers, historians straight and gay, designers, and musicians like the Dresden Dolls and Marilyn Manson. It is the visual scrapbook and inspired design source of hit television series, Babylon Berlin.Voluptuous Panic’s expanded edition includes the new illustrated chapter “Sex Magic and the Occult,” documenting German pagan cults and their bizarre erotic rituals, including instructions for entering into the “Sexual Fourth Dimension.” This edition also includes sensational accounts of hypno-erotic cabaret acts, Berlin fetish prostitution (“The Boot Girl Visit”), gay life (“A Wild-Boy Initiation!”), descriptions and illustrations of Aleister Crowley’s Berlin OTO secret society, and sex crime (“The Curious Career and Untimely Death of Fritz Ulbrich”). Paperback300 pagesFeral House, 20088 x 0.8 x 11 inchesISBN 9780922915965German History

Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin

By Maria TatarIn a book that confronts our society’s obsession with sexual violence, Maria Tatar seeks the meaning behind one of the most disturbing images of twentieth-century Western culture: the violated female corpse. This image is so prevalent in painting, literature, film, and, most recently, in mass media, that we rarely question what is at stake in its representation. Tatar, however, challenges us to consider what is taking place — both artistically and socially — in the construction and circulation of scenes depicting sexual murder. In examining images of sexual murder (Lustmord), she produces a riveting study of how art and murder have intersected in the sexual politics of culture from Weimar Germany to the present.Tatar focuses attention on the politically turbulent Weimar Republic, often viewed as the birthplace of a transgressive avant-garde modernism, where representations of female sexual mutilation abound. Here a revealing episode in the gender politics of cultural production unfolds as male artists and writers, working in a society consumed by fear of outside threats, envision women as enemies that can be contained and mastered through transcendent artistic expression. Not only does Tatar show that male artists openly identified with real-life sexual murderers — George Grosz posed as Jack the Ripper in a photograph where his model and future wife was the target of his knife — but she also reveals the ways in which victims were disavowed and erased.Tatar first analyzes actual cases of sexual murder that aroused wide public interest in Weimar Germany. She then considers how the representation of murdered women in visual and literary works functions as a strategy for managing social and sexual anxieties, and shows how violence against women can be linked to the war trauma, to urban pathologies, and to the politics of cultural production and biological reproduction.In exploring the complex relationship between victim and agent in cases of sexual murder, Tatar explains how the roles came to be destabilized and reversed, turning the perpetrator of criminal deeds into a defenseless victim of seductive evil. Throughout the West today, the creation of similar ideological constructions still occurs in societies that have only recently begun to validate the voices of its victims. Maria Tatar’s book opens up an important discussion for readers seeking to understand the forces behind sexual violence and its portrayal in the cultural media throughout this century.Paperback213 pagesPrinceton University Press, 19977.75 x 10 inchesISBN 9780691015903Weimar Era, German History

Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany

Original Price: $39.95 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Barbara Stollberg-RilingerMaria Theresa (1717–1780) was once the most powerful woman in Europe. At the age of twenty-three, she ascended to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, a far-flung realm composed of diverse ethnicities and languages, beset on all sides by enemies and rivals. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger provides the definitive biography of Maria Theresa, situating this exceptional empress within her time while dispelling the myths surrounding her.Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Stollberg-Rilinger examines all facets of eighteenth-century society, from piety and patronage to sexuality and childcare, ceremonial life at court, diplomacy, and the everyday indignities of warfare. She challenges the idealized image of Maria Theresa as an enlightened reformer and mother of her lands who embodied both feminine beauty and virile bellicosity, showing how she despised the ideas of the Enlightenment, treated her children with relentless austerity, and mercilessly persecuted Protestants and Jews. Work, consistent physical and mental discipline, and fear of God were the principles Maria Theresa lived by, and she demanded the same from her family, her court, and her subjects.A panoramic work of scholarship that brings Europe’s age of empire spectacularly to life, Maria Theresa paints an unforgettable portrait of the uncompromising yet singularly charismatic woman who left her enduring mark on the era in which she lived and reigned.Hardcover1104 pagesPrinceton University Press, 20226.5 x 2.5 x 9.5 inchesISBN 9780691179063 History, Habsburg Empire

Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time

By Nancy Goldstone The vibrant, sprawling saga of Empress Maria Theresa—one of the most renowned women rulers in history—and three of her extraordinary daughters, including Marie Antoinette, the doomed queen of France.Out of the thrilling and tempestuous eighteenth century comes the sweeping family saga of beautiful Maria Theresa, a sovereign of uncommon strength and vision, the only woman ever to inherit and rule the vast Habsburg Empire in her own name, and three of her remarkable daughters: lovely, talented Maria Christina, governor-general of the Austrian Netherlands; spirited Maria Carolina, the resolute queen of Naples; and the youngest, Marie Antoinette, the glamorous, tragic queen of France, and perhaps the most famous princess in history. Unfolding against an irresistible backdrop of brilliant courts from Vienna to Versailles, embracing the exotic lure of Naples and Sicily, this epic history of Maria Theresa and her daughters is a tour de force of desire, adventure, ambition, treachery, sorrow, and glory. Each of these women’s lives was packed with passion and heart-stopping suspense. Maria Theresa inherited her father’s thrones at the age of twenty-three and was immediately attacked on all sides by foreign powers confident that a woman would to be too weak to defend herself. Maria Christina, a gifted artist who alone among her sisters succeeded in marrying for love, would face the same dangers that destroyed the monarchy in France. Resourceful Maria Carolina would usher in the golden age of Naples only to face the deadly whirlwind of Napoleon. And, finally, Marie Antoinette, the doomed queen whose stylish excesses and captivating notoriety have masked the truth about her husband and herself for two hundred and fifty years. Vividly written and deeply researched, In the Shadow of the Empress is the riveting story of four exceptional women who changed the course of history.Paperback640 pagesBack Bay Books5.65 x 8.25 InchesISBN 9780316449304History, Biography

In the Shadow of the Empress: The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette, and Her Daughters

By Larry Wolff "In Larry Wolff's brilliant telling, an opera's fairy-tale empress and a real-life Habsburg empress come to embody the phantom political culture of an empire that to this day maintains a powerful hold over Central and Eastern European institutions and imagination."—Pieter M. Judson, author of The Habsburg Empire: A New History "This alluring and original work of history explores the parallel lives of a twentieth century opera, the twilight of the Habsburg Empire, and its last emperor and empress. Politics is woven into the opera's creation and its later life. In this brilliant book, art imitates life, and life art, through mirror images, shadows and the unexpected destinies of historic personages."—Leon Botstein, Bard College "The Shadow of the Empress has many virtues: great erudition, lively writing, and undeniable energy."—Celia Applegate, Austrian History Yearbook A beguiling exploration of the last Habsburg monarchs' grip on Europe's historical and cultural imagination. In 1919 the last Habsburg rulers, Emperor Karl and Empress Zita, left Austria, going into exile. That same year, the fairy-tale opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow), featuring a mythological emperor and empress, premiered at the Vienna Opera. Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and German composer Richard Strauss created Die Frau ohne Schatten through the bitter years of World War I, imagining it would triumphantly appear after the victory of the German and Habsburg empires. Instead, the premiere came in the aftermath of catastrophic defeat. The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy explores how the changing circumstances of politics and society transformed their opera and its cultural meanings before, during, and after the First World War. Strauss and Hofmannsthal turned emperors and empresses into fantastic fairy-tale characters; meanwhile, following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy after the war, their real-life counterparts, removed from political life in Europe, began to be regarded as anachronistic, semi-mythological figures. Reflecting on the seismic cultural shifts that rocked post-imperial Europe, Larry Wolff follows the story of Karl and Zita after the loss of their thrones. Karl died in 1922, but Zita lived through the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the Cold War. By her death in 1989, she had herself become a fairy-tale figure, a totem of imperial nostalgia. Wolff weaves together the story of the opera's composition and performance; the end of the Habsburg monarchy; and his own family's life in and exile from Central Europe, providing a rich new understanding of Europe's cataclysmic twentieth century, and our contemporary relationship to it. Paperback452 pagesStanford Press, 20236 x 9 inchesISBN 9781503635647European History, Performing Arts History

The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy

At once an invaluable photographic record of life in Weimar Berlin and a timeless demonstration of the cinema's ability to enthrall on a purely visceral level, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City offers a kaleidoscopic view of a single day in the life of a bustling metropolis.Carl Mayer (The Last Laugh), influenced by the naturalistic Kammerspiel movement, envisioned "a melody of pictures" sprung from daily reality instead of the stylized artificiality of the studio-bound expressionist film. Following Mayer's rough outline, photographer Karl Freund deployed a team of cameramen to explore the avenues, alleyways and factories of Berlin and secure hidden-camera glimpses of the people and machinery that provide the city with its constant motion. The many hours of footage were then edited into a series of five acts, like movements of a symphony, by Walther Ruttmann as a continuation of his experiments with abstract motion.Berlin defined the formula of the "city symphony" film and according to John Grierson- the filmmaker/critic who coined the term "documentary" - "No film has been more influential, more imitated."Opus IA rare example of the German avant-garde cinema known as absoluter Film, Walther Ruttmann's hand-colored Opus I is an exploration of the geometry of movement within the frame and the sensory effect these abstract shapes evoke as they swell, streak and swim across the screen. Viewed alongside Berlin, Opus I seems a thumbnail sketch for the sweeping slice-of-life documentary, revealing the degree to which Ruttmann's 1923 film was more a spectacle of raw motion than a documentary portrait of Berlin's daily routines. Opus I is accompanied by Max Butting's 1922 score, adapted and conducted by Timothy Brock.Berlin, Symphony of a Great CityDirected by Walther RuttmanGermany 192762 MinutesBlack and WhiteSilentOpus IDirected by Walther RuttmannGermany 192210 MinutesColorSilent Flicker AlleyNTSC FormatISBN 889290092014Documentary, DVD

Berlin, Symphony of a Great City [DVD]

By Meriel Schindler An extraordinary memoir of a Jewish family spanning two world wars and its flight from Nazi-occupied Austria. Meriel Schindler spent her adult life trying to keep her father, Kurt, at bay. But when he died in 2017, he left behind piles of Nazi-era documents related to her family’s fate in Innsbruck, Austria, and a treasure trove of family albums reaching back to before World War I. Meriel was forced to confront not only their fractured relationship, but also the truth behind their family history. The Lost Café Schindler re-creates the journey of an extraordinary family, whose relatives included the Jewish doctor who treated Hitler’s mother when she was dying of breast cancer; the Kafka family; and Alma Schindler, the wife of Gustav Mahler. The narrative centers around the Café Schindler, the social hub of Innsbruck. Famous for its pastries, home-distilled liquors, live entertainment, and hospitality, the restaurant attracted Austrians from all walks of life. But as conditions became untenable for Jews in Austria during the Nazi era, the Schindlers were forced to leave, and their café was expropriated. Meriel reconstructs the color and vibrancy of life in prewar Innsbruck against the majestic backdrop of the Austrian Alps, as well as the creeping menace and, finally, terror of the Nazi occupation. Ultimately, The Lost Café Schindler is a story of tragic loss—several relatives disappeared in Terezín and Auschwitz—but also one of reclamation and reconciliation. Beautifully written, it is an unforgettable portrait of an era and a testament to the pull of family history on future generations.Hardcover432 pagesW.W. Norton, 20215.04 x 1.18 x 7.72 inchesISBN 9780393881622Austrian History, Memoir

The Lost Café Schindler: One Family, Two Wars, and the Search for Truth

By Philippe Sands“Gripping . . . fascinating and important, told in vivid detail . . . fiercely inquiring . . . suspenseful . . . extraordinary.”—The New York Times Book Review“Hypnotic, shocking, and unputdownable.” —John le Carré, internationally renowned bestselling author“A burningly necessary book. Sands makes a gently unsparing dissection of deception, love, delusion, and ineradicable evil. Elegant, painstaking, passionate, and quietly enraging.”—A.L. KennedyBaron Otto von Wächter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor of Galicia during the war, creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the British, by Simon Wiesenthal, on the run for three years, from 1945 to 1948. Philippe Sands pieces together, in riveting detail, Wächter’s extraordinary, shocking story. Given full access to the Wächter family archives–journals, diaries, tapes, and more–and with the assistance of the Wächters’ son Horst, who believes his father to have been a “good man,” Sands writes of Wächter’s rise through the Nazi high command, his “blissful” marriage and family life as their world was brought to ruin, and his four-year flight to escape justice–to the Tirol, to Rome, and the Vatican; given a new identity, on his way to a new life via “the Ratline” to Perón’s Argentina, the escape route taken by Eichmann, Mengele, and thousands of other Nazis. Wächter’s escape was cut short by his mysterious, shocking death in Rome, in the midst of the burgeoning Cold War (was he being recruited in postwar Italy by the Americans and the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps or by the Soviet NKVD or by both; or was he poisoned by one side or the other, as his son believes–or by both?). An extraordinary discovery, told up-close through access to a trove of family correspondence between Wächter and his wife–part historical detective story, part love story, part family memoir, part Cold War espionage thriller.Paperback448 pages | 83 illustrations and 4 mapsAlfred A. Knopf Publishers, 20216.5 x 9.5 inchesISBN 9780525562535History, Biography, Politics

The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive [Paperback]

By Joachim C. FestTranslated by Martin Chalmers “Quietly compelling, elegantly expressed...Not I shrinks the Wagnerian scale of German history in the 1930s and 1940s to chamber music dimensions. It is intensely personal, cleareyed and absolutely riveting.”—New York Times “A stunning portrait of a strenuously anti-Nazi family in Berlin who managed to hang on to their moral convictions during the brutalizing Hitler years...A beautifully written and translated work that creates rare, subtle portraits of Germans.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year, a portrait of an intellectually rigorous German household opposed to the Nazis and how its members suffered for their political stance. Few writers have deepened our understanding of the Third Reich as much as German historian, biographer, journalist, and critic Joachim Fest. His biography of Adolf Hitler has reached millions of readers around the world. Born in 1926, Fest experienced firsthand the rise of the Nazis, the Second World War, and a catastrophically defeated Germany, thus becoming a vital witness to these difficult years. In this memoir of his childhood and youth, Fest offers a far-reaching view of how he experienced the war and National Socialism. True to the German Bildung tradition, Fest grows up immersed in the works of Goethe, Schiller, Mörike, Rilke, Kleist, Mozart, and Beethoven. His father, a conservative Catholic teacher, opposes the Nazi regime and as a result loses his job and status. Fest is forced to move to a boarding school in the countryside that he despises, and in his effort to come to terms with his father’s strong political convictions, he embarks on a tireless quest for knowledge and moral integrity that will shape the rest of his life and writing career. Paperback464 pagesOther Press, 2025 5.5 x 8.25 inchesISBN 9781635425123History, Memoir

Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood

By Anne Nelson One of the untold stories of the Holocaust—the nail-biting drama of Suzanne Spaak, who risked and gave her life to save hundreds of Jewish children from deportation from Nazi Paris to Auschwitz “vividly dramatizes the stakes of acting morally in a time of brutality.” —The Wall Street Journal Suzanne Spaak was born into the Belgian Catholic elite and married into the country’s leading political family. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Renée Magritte. In Paris in the late 1930s her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life’s purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups. Then, under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups “kidnapped” hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers. Suzanne’s Children is the “dogged…page-turning account” (Kirkus Reviews) of this incredible story of courage in the face of evil. “Anne Nelson is superb at showing the upheavals in Europe since WWI through vivid, illuminating details…and she also masterfully describes the incremental changes in the Jews’ plight under the Occupation” (Booklist). It was during the final year of the Occupation when Suzanne was caught in the Gestapo dragnet that was pursuing a Soviet agent she had aided. She was executed shortly before the liberation of Paris. Paperback336 pagesSimon & Schuster, 20185.5 x 1 x 8.38 inchesISBN 9781501105333History, World War II

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