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 “Fascinating. . . . A mesmerizing tale of art and the Holocaust.” —The Washington Post“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.” —BookforumContributor 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]

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

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 Rudi Ekkart and Eefke Muller Looted Art & Restitution relates the history of the trade, looting and restitution of works of art from the Netherlands before, during and after World War II. Looted Art & Restitution relates the history of the trade, looting and restitution of works of art from the Netherlands before, during and after World War II. Countless artworks ended up in German hands during the occupation. The allies recovered a large number of works of art to the Netherlands after the war. It was the Dutch government’s task to return looted or forcibly sold works to their original owners. The mostly Jewish claimants, however, often encountered bureaucratic and unwilling authorities. Meanwhile, most of the artworks were distributed over museums and depots or auctioned off. It was not until the late 1990s that, in accordance with international developments, the restitution policy became much more humane and a search for the rightful owners was implemented. Hardcover216 pagesWaanders, 20246.69 x 0.9 x 9.45 inchesISBN 9789462624986History, Restitution

Looted Art & Restitution: The Exodus and Partial Return of Dutch Art Property During and After World War II

Edited with text by Nicholas Sawicki and Marie Rakušanová Preface by Zuzana Jürgens Text by Alexander Klee, Marek Nekula, and Miroslav Halak Journey through Kafka’s Prague and discover the art, architecture, media and performances that influenced the author’s oeuvre What did Franz Kafka see and do, whom did he meet and what did he read while roaming the streets of Prague? Through the Eyes of Franz Kafka brings the world of turn-of-the-century Czechoslovakia and its cultural milieu to life. The author’s home city was a heterogeneous and multilingual metropolis whose visual environment shaped his everyday experiences, from local painting and sculpture to architecture, monuments and popular visual media including advertisements, photography and cabaret. Kafka’s attention to the modern visual culture of his era was reflected in his writings and in his interest in drawing, a practice in which he received preliminary training and which he took up in his free time during his years as a university student. This illustrated publication immerses us in Kafka’s world; by following in his footsteps and looking through his eyes, we gain a new understanding of his thoughts, philosophies and inspirations. Hardcover224 pages | 231 color and 16 tri-tone IllustrationsKant, 20258.25 x 11.25 inchesISBN 9788074374265Exhibition Catalogue, Biography

Through the Eyes of Franz Kafka: Between Image and Language

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 Otto DixOtto Dix (1891–1969) is considered one of the true lions of 20th-century art, a man who established himself as an uncompromising artist that refused to temper how he rendered the realities that he witnessed. Dix’s early works often depict the true brutalities of the WWI battlefields and trenches he served in for over three years, as well as the decadent underworld of 1920s Berlin.With the publication of this first of three volumes of an extensive selection of letters, the most comprehensive collection of Otto Dix texts at last comes into print in English. Encompassing well over 1,000 letters, and ranging from friends and family to other artists, collectors, colleagues, critics & biographers, the letters offer a personal portrait of six decades of the 20th century.Dix himself was a controversial figure throughout his life, and while he claimed never to write self-testimonials, the artist had much to say about the widest range of subjects in his private correspondence. Therein, we discover much about a figure who exhibited a gruff, often abrasive persona to many, a man who depicted war with unrepentant brutality yet who could at the same time pen the most romantic, schmaltzy letters to his wife and sketch amusing caricatures to his daughter.Following his experiences throughout WWI, Dix immediately took up with the dadaists in Dresden in 1919 and became an established figure as part of the Sezession. A few years later, after his first portrait commission in Dusseldorf in 1922, Dix met his future wife, Martha, with whom he would go on to raise three children, and who is one of the principle correspondents in this volume of letters. Some of his most significant work was produced in the 1920s, including his powerful Krieg (War) portfolio, for which the Nazis branded him a “degenerate artist” and forced him to resign his professorship in 1933. Condemned to internal exile, Dix thereafter resided in Hemmenhofen, in the extreme southwest part of Germany. Twelve years later, he would suffer further indignities from the Nazis when ordered to join the Volkssturm in 1945. Dix ended up in a prisoner-of-war camp, again a survivor of a second harrowing cataclysm. After his release, from 1946 onwards, the painter lived between East and West Germany, never truly at home in either ideologically, yet he remained prolific, continuing to produce art until the end of his life, having lived through two World Wars as well as the “Cold War.”​This first volume covers the period 1904–1927 and the heart of it is a selection of Dix’s postcards from the WWI front written to his school friend in Dresden, Helene Jakob, a form of artistic reportage of uncanny power. Recipient of the Die schönsten Deutschen Bücher shortlist in 2014, Dix’s letters will prove to be of considerable interest to art historians, scholars of Expressionism, and aficionados of Dix, all of whom will encounter the artist as never before.Hardcover284 pages Contra Mundum Press, 20165.98 x 0.75 x 9.02 inchesISBN 9781940625188History, Literary Letters

Letters, Vol. 1 (Otto Dix)

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 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 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 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

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 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 Carl E. Schorske “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 Books“A work of original synthesis and scholarship. Engrossing.”—Newsweek A 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Stefan ZweigTranslated by Eden and Cedar Paul "Certainly no one can arise unmoved from the reading of this powerful work."—The New Republic"Stefan Zweig’s remarkable study of Marie Antoinette; A full-bodied biography which bids fair to be the definitive life of that tragic queen."—The New York Times"The most influential biography of Marie Antoinette."—The Guardian Stefan Zweig based his biography of Marie Antoinette, who became the Queen of France at the age of fifteen, on the correspondence between her and her mother, and her great love the Count Axel von Fersen. Zweig analyzes the chemistry of a woman's soul from her intimate pleasures to her public suffering as a Queen under the weight of misfortune and history. Zweig describes Marie Antoinette in the King's bedroom, in the enchanted and extravagant world of the Trianon, and with her children. And in his account of 'The Revolution', he describes her resolve during the failed escape to Varennes, her imprisonment in the Conciergerie and her final tragic destiny under the guillotine. Zweig's account has been the definitive biography of Marie Antoinette since its publication, inspiring Antonia Fraser and the recent film adaptation. Paperback592 pagesPushkin Press, 2017Originally published in 19325.1 x 1.5 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9781906548308Literature, Biography, History

Marie Antoinette

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 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 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, 20146 x 1 x 9 inchesISBN 9780306823268Austrian History, Non-Fiction

Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914

By Tilar J. Mazzeo"Set against the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of World War II, The Hôtel on Place Vendôme is the captivating history of Paris’s world-famous Hôtel Ritz—a breathtaking tale of glamour, opulence, and celebrity; dangerous liaisons, espionage, and resistance." —from Tilar J. Manzeo, the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot and The Secret of Chanel No. 5“Mazzeo pulls back the heavy curtains of the Ritz in Paris to reveal a steamy world of sex, drugs, partying and political intrigue.” ―Alan Riding, author of And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris“Mazzeo enthrallingly depicts a hotbed of both the magnificent and the mundane . . . Readers will enjoy Mazzeo’s fascinating collection of secretive, scheming historical characters, all under one elegant roof.” ―Publishers WeeklyWhen France fell to the Germans in June 1940, the legendary Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme—an icon of Paris frequented by film stars and celebrity writers, American heiresses and risqué flappers, playboys, and princes—was the only luxury hotel of its kind allowed in the occupied city by order of Adolf Hitler.Tilar J. Mazzeo traces the history of this cultural landmark from its opening in fin de siècle Paris. At its center, The Hotel on Place Vendôme is an extraordinary chronicle of life at the Ritz during wartime, when the Hôtel was simultaneously headquarters to the highest-ranking German officers, such as Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring, and home to exclusive patrons, including Coco Chanel. Mazzeo takes us into the grand palace’s suites, bars, dining rooms, and wine cellars, revealing a hotbed of illicit affairs and deadly intrigue, as well as stunning acts of defiance and treachery.Rich in detail, illustrated with black-and-white photos, The Hotel on Place Vendôme is a remarkable look at this extraordinary crucible where the future of post-war France—and all of post-war Europe—was transformed. Paperback 320 pagesHarper Perennial, 2015 reprint5 x 8 inches ISBN 9780061791048History

The Hotel on Place Vendome: Life, Death, and Betrayal at the Hotel Ritz in Paris

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 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 Michael White "With Generation Dada, White has presented readers with a powerful new portrait of an avant-garde that flourished in one of the most fraught cities of the early twentieth century." —Catherine Craft, Burlington Magazine“In a well researched, detailed examination of the Berlin avant-garde in the context of WWI, White . . . offers a fresh analysis of the key events and personal relationships that helped form the artistic practices of some of the central figures of the German Dada movement. In an informative but refreshingly accessible style, the author manages to pay close attention to the intricacies of cultural and historical context as well as the formal elements of the works themselves . . . demonstrating a keen eye for the relationship between content and form.” —ChoiceFor the Berlin Dadaists, their identity as a collective—Club Dada, to members—was an integral part of their artistic practice. But the circumstances that brought together the likes of George Grosz, John Heartfield, Raoul Hausmann, and Johannes Baader—renamed Propaganda Marshall, Monteurdada, Dadasoph, and Oberdada within the organization—have remained largely unexamined until now. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book documents the group'ss beginnings in wartime Berlin and reveals how these relationships influenced its provocative acts, which were inextricably tied to the era's chaos and brutality. Studying how the Dadaists saw themselves as a new generation—in contrast to their pacifist forebears, the Expressionists—the book sheds light on key developments and events, such as the First International Dada Fair, held in Berlin in 1920. It also offers the first serious consideration of the group's role in constructing its own legacy, even as the works were deliberately rooted in the ephemeral.Michael White is reader in the history of art at the University of York and is best known internationally for his research on the early-20th-century De Stijl group in the Netherlands. Hardcover382 pages | 20 color and 130 black-and-white illustrationsYale University Press, 20137.8 x 1.2 x 10 inchesISBN 9780300169034Art History, Dada, German History

Generation Dada: The Berlin Avant-Garde and the First World War

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 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 Robert Musil & Klaus AmannTranslated by Genese Grill Literature and Politics presents Robert Musil's writings on the relationship between literature and politics from World War I through World War II and elucidates his personal struggle to bear witness during the Age of Totalitarianism. In essays, addresses, aphorisms, and unpublished notes on contemporary events, Musil charts the increasing dangers to artists and ethical thinkers of extreme ideological conscription, the subtle and not so subtle changes in public and political discourse, the epoch-making events and dire existential threats of his times. Musil acts as a cultural seismographer, interrogating causes and symptoms in himself and his world, as he moves between Nazi Germany and pre- and post-Anschluß Austria, ultimately escaping to Switzerland where he and his Jewish wife, Martha, lived in exile until his death in 1942. The writings question concepts of race, identity, and nation, and untangle the complex relationship between nation and artist and between the individual and the collective, celebrating the rich and irreducible nature of individual creative work as the bulwark of a free, ethical, and pluralistic society.Klaus Amann provides an invaluable introduction to Musil's political thought and his struggle, during the war years, to come to terms, to survive, and to find some way to bear witness. Amann recounts Musil's political trajectory, from fairly indifferent aesthete to socially-engaged supporter of the Weimar Republic and its liberal reforms, to critic of Nazi and Communist Totalitarianisms, and as prescient sceptic about the "cultural optimism" of the Soviet experiment. Musil's ultimate stance—as a thinker who radically resists taking final stances - is that politics endangers culture and humanity by dictating to artists how they should write, think, paint, compose, and by instrumentalizing art in the interest of ideology. Paperback562 pagesContra Mundum Press, 20235 x 1.25 x 8 inchesISBN 9781940625546Literature, History

Literature & Politics

By Megan Brandow-Faller“Impeccably researched, The Female Secession is an invaluable contribution to scholarship on early twentieth-century Austrian art and to feminist art history. Brandow-Faller persuasively argues that the self-consciously feminine art produced by Women’s Academy artists should be understood as part of a feminist lineage that leads through the artwork of 1970s feminist artists such as Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro and on to that of craftivists of the twenty-first century.”—Bibiana Obler, author of Intimate Collaborations: Kandinsky and Münter, Arp and Taeuber“This beautifully illustrated study brings new attention to the overlooked achievements of women artists in Vienna in the early twentieth century. It is a much-needed contribution to design history that illuminates the role of gender in Central European art education and professional practice.”—Rebecca Houze, author of Textiles, Fashion, and Design Reform in Austria-Hungary Before the First World War: Principles of DressDecorative handcrafts are commonly associated with traditional femininity and unthreatening docility. However, the artists connected with interwar Vienna’s “female Secession” created craft-based artworks that may be understood as sites of feminist resistance. In this book, historian Megan Brandow-Faller tells the story of how these artists disrupted long-established boundaries by working to dislodge fixed oppositions between “art” and “craft,” “decorative” and “profound,” and “masculine” and “feminine” in art.Tracing the history of the women’s art movement in Secessionist Vienna—from its origins in 1897, at the Women’s Academy, to the Association of Austrian Women Artists and its radical offshoot, the Wiener Frauenkunst—Brandow-Faller tells the compelling story of a movement that reclaimed the stereotypes attached to the idea of Frauenkunst, or women’s art. She shows how generational struggles and diverging artistic philosophies of art, craft, and design drove the conservative and radical wings of Austria’s women’s art movement apart and explores the ways female artists and craftswomen reinterpreted and extended the Klimt Group’s ideas in the interwar years. Brandow-Faller draws a direct connection to the themes that impelled the better-known explosion of feminist art in 1970s America. In this provocative story of a Viennese modernism that never disavowed its ornamental, decorative roots, she gives careful attention to key primary sources, including photographs and reviews of early twentieth-century exhibitions and archival records of school curricula and personnel.Engagingly written and featuring more than eighty representative illustrations, The Female Secession recaptures the radical potential of what Fanny Harlfinger-Zakucka referred to as “works from women’s hands.” It will appeal to art historians working in the decorative arts and modernism as well as historians of Secession-era Vienna and gender history.Hardcover304 pages | 27 color, 60 black-and-white illustrations Penn State University Press, 20208 x 10 x 1 inchesISBN 9780271085043Art History, Women Studies, Vienna

The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women’s Academy

By Elias Canetti “Perhaps the most revealing essay on Kafka ever published. At last Kafka is matched in thought and prose.”—The Times Literary Supplement Felice Bauer was Kafka’s first great love and the inspiration for his first great fiction. Six weeks after they met, he wrote "The Judgement" for her in one night of feverish activity. Kafka always inferred to the traumatic, public breaking-off of their engagement as his “tribunal,” and indeed he began work on The Trial within a month of that event.Kafka’s letters to Felice offer rare insights into the writer’s life and art. Elias Canetti’s brilliant and sensitive examination of this moving correspondence shows the origins of Kafka’s voice as a writer and his torment as a man. Paperback188 pagesSchocken, 1988Originally published in 19695.2 x 0.4 x 7.8 inchesISBN 9780805207057Literature, Biography, Non-Fiction

Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice

Original Price: $55.00 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS Edited by Museum der Moderne Salzburg and Sabine Breitwieser History is constructed through the continual reinterpretation of artifacts that preserve historical events. But can these artifacts be taken as objective facts? For centuries, artists have offered through their work contrary meanings for both historical and contemporary events. In times or places of crisis, the power of art to depict harsh realities and new ways of understanding history have been particularly pronounced.Art/Histories looks at history through the lens of artworks from the sixteenth century to the present, including works from Otto Dix, Anselm Kiefer, Käthe Kollwitz, Alice Creischer, Jörg Immendorff, Felix Droese, and many others. Drawing on the world-class collections of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Sabine Breitwieser examines the stories these works tell about the events depicted, as well as the artists’ involvement with them. With nearly three hundred full-color illustrations, the book challenges many of the tools currently used to examine and evaluate history. Paperback204 pagesText in German and English Hirmer Publishers, 20149.5 x 0.8 x 11 inchesISBN 9783777422794History, Art History

Kunst/Geschichten Art/Histories

by James J. Sheehan "Sheehan covers a wide swath of aesthetic, architectural, and social history in his discussion of the growth, the purpose, and the reception of museums by the public in nineteenth-century Germany...[T]he author deftly presents the role of German art museums in all their complexity, yet succinctly summarizes their importance both for nineteenth-century Germans and their legacy today."—The Historian"James Sheehan is indeed a master of the historical craft. Clear organization, lucid prose, and the ability to balance a broadly sweeping narrative with close readings of specific subjects....This book is especially timely considering the revamping of Berlin museums. Relates such an important and intriguing history that one wishes the story were continued in detail up through the third Reich and into the postwar period."—Central European History"A fine survey...bringing together and properly ordering a wide range of material concerning the intellectual and institutional premises of the changing role of museums in the German art world."—The New Criterion Combining the history of ideas, institutions, and architecture, this study shows how the museum both reflected and shaped the place of art in German culture from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. On a broader level, it illuminates the origin and character of the museum's central role in modern culture.James Sheehan begins by describing the establishment of the first public galleries during the last decades of Germany's old regime. He then examines the revolutionary upheaval that swept Germany between 1789 and 1815, arguing that the first great German museums reflected the nation's revolutionary aspirations. By the mid-nineteenth century, the climate had changed; museums constructed in this period affirmed historical continuities and celebrated political accomplishments. During the next several years, however, Germans became disillusioned with conventional definitions of art and lost interest in monumental museums. By the turn of the century, the museum had become a site for the political and cultural controversies caused by the rise of artistic modernism. In this context, Sheehan argues, we can see the first signs of what would become the modern style of museum architecture and modes of display.The first study of its kind, this highly accessible book will appeal to historians, museum professionals, and anyone interested in the relationship between art, politics, and culture. Hardcover272 pages | 34 halftonesOxford University Press9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inchesISBN 9780195135725German History, Museum Studies

Museums in the German Art World: From the End of the Old Regime to the Rise of Modernism

Edited by Anton Kæs, Martin Jay, Edward Dimendberg "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 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"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

Editied by Phillip Prodger Between 1925 and 1938, photographer E.O. Hoppé traveled the length and breadth of Germany, recording people and places at one of the most tumultuous times in the country’s history. He photographed movie stars and captains of industry, workers and peasants, and captured the birth of the Autobahn and UFA film studios in its heyday. He saw the rise of fascism, the creation of vast new suburbs, and the displacement of people from their traditional ways of life. With unprecedented access to the country’s world-famous factories and industrial installations, he witnessed Germany as few others could—barreling headlong into the unknown. Moving, insightful, and deeply revealing, the full significance of Hoppé’s German work has been unknown until now. This volume combines photographs published in Hoppé’s legendary book of 1930, Deutsche Arbeit, with many new pictures never previously seen. From factory floor to the commuters of Berlin and Munich, Hoppé’s photographs reveal the profound social and economic tensions that preceded the Second World War. This publication uncovers Hoppé as a pivotal figure in the history of twentieth-century photography, who introduced for the first time elements of typology, seriality and sequence, which have become key elements of contemporary photographic practice. Hoppé used his experience in Germany to develop a modern new style of photography—showing not just how things looked, but how it felt to be there. Hardcover240 pagesSteidl, 201511 x 1.2 x 12 inchesISBN 9783869309378Photography, German History, Documentary

The German Work

By Elyse Graham RELATED EVENT Join author Elyse Graham for a lecture at Neue Galerie New York on March 19, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. Her talk, "Book and Dagger: How Academics Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II," will present the story of a small group of academics-turned-OSS spies who invented modern spycraft and helped turn the tide of the war. Register Here “A fascinating new study. . .Book and Dagger tells the story of four such recruits—and surveys many others—with an almost breathless sense of wartime romance and drama. It makes for entertaining, atmospheric reading.” —Wall Street Journal The untold story of the academics who became OSS spies, invented modern spycraft, and helped turn the tide of the war At the start of WWII, the U.S. found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today’s CIA, was quickly formed—and, in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians, and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work—and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and our cultural institutions with their efforts. In Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham draws on personal histories, letters, and declassified OSS files to tell the story of a small but connected group of humanities scholars turned spies. Among them are Joseph Curtiss, a literature professor who hunted down German spies and turned them into double agents; Sherman Kent, a smart-mouthed history professor who rose to become the head of analysis for all of Europe and Africa; and Adele Kibre, an archivist who was sent to Stockholm to secretly acquire documents for the OSS. These unforgettable characters would ultimately help lay the foundations of modern intelligence and transform American higher education when they returned after the war. Thrillingly paced and rigorously researched, Book and Dagger is an inspiring and gripping true story about a group of academics who helped beat the Nazis—a tale that reveals the indelible power of the humanities to change the world. Hardcover400 pagesEcco, 20246 x 1.15 x 9 inchesISBN 9780063280847History, World War II

Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II

By Benjamin Carter Hett “[World War II's] proximate origins are the subject of Benjamin Carter Hett’s fast-moving, absorbing and aptly titled The Nazi Menace…Thanks to the author’s knack for the capsule biography, we gain fascinating insights into less obvious figures, among them Hugh Dowding, an eccentric and canny architect of Britain’s air defense network; Ernst von Weizsäcker, a senior German diplomat torn between his opposition to a general war and his support for German expansion; and Dorothy Thompson, the ferociously anti-Nazi American columnist and radio broadcaster.” ­­―The New York Times Book Review A panoramic narrative of the years leading up to the Second World War―a tale of democratic crisis, racial conflict, and a belated recognition of evil, with profound resonance for our own time. Berlin, November 1937. Adolf Hitler meets with his military commanders to impress upon them the urgent necessity for a war of aggression in eastern Europe. Some generals are unnerved by the Führer’s grandiose plan, but these dissenters are silenced one by one, setting in motion events that will culminate in the most calamitous war in history. Benjamin Carter Hett takes us behind the scenes in Berlin, London, Moscow, and Washington, revealing the unsettled politics within each country in the wake of the German dictator’s growing provocations. He reveals the fitful path by which anti-Nazi forces inside and outside Germany came to understand Hitler’s true menace to European civilization and learned to oppose him, painting a sweeping portrait of governments under siege, as larger-than-life figures struggled to turn events to their advantage. Paperback416 pagesSt. Martin’s Griffin, 20215.99 x 0.96 x 8.99 inchesISBN 9781250798763German History, World War II

The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War

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 Alessandra Comini ''This erudite, mostly engaging self-portrait charts the making of an art historian and professional 'seer,' whose passion and wit enabled her to become a noted teacher and scholar at Southern Methodist University. Comini helped unearth centuries of overlooked women in art and wrote landmark studies of the Austrian painter Egon Schiele and of musical iconography. For someone engaged in a life of the mind, she has lived much of it in motion, and the art of travel and close consideration of cultural context have been her keys to learning and teaching. She is at her riveting best when she reveals her discoveries about Schiele in his Vienna prison cell, Winckelmann in Rome and Trieste, the composer Edvard Grieg in Norway, and the painter Akseli Gallen-Kalella in Finland. Her short essays dazzle the most when they reveal her keen eye, such as when she discerns how the German artist Kathe Kollwitz, in a bust of herself, 'used the resolute features of her own aging face as a spiritual topography for courage and resignation.''' --Booklist Overflowing with passion for her work as a scholar and teacher, Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, Alessandra Comini reminisces through six decades as an unconventional art historian in this illustrated memoir. The author of award-winning books on Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Ludwig van Beethoven, Comini draws on her sixty years of daily journals, sharing research-related anecdotes as she reflects on the formation and flowering of her distinguished career. Beginning with her colorful background as a refugee from Franco's Spain, then Mussolini's Italy, she describes her music-loving family's sometimes humorous, sometimes painful adjustment to a World War II Texas. A series of fortuitous experiences at Interlochen's National Music Camp, Barnard College, the University of California at Berkeley, and Columbia University later leads to what would ultimately be a turning point in her life as well as in Schiele scholarship. She discovered the actual cell in which Schiele had been imprisoned in a provincial Austrian jail half a century earlier. Comini invites readers to join her in the same zestful and persistent pursuit of cultural history that has repeatedly earned her the honor of being voted "outstanding" professor, by her students at Columbia University and later at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Her research and quests take the reader around the world and back. From the islands of Corfu, Madeira, R gen, and Tahiti to the cities of Lisbon, Rome, Oslo, and St. Petersburg, Comini pursues such diverse and distinctive personalities as Rosa Bonheur, Gustav and Alma Mahler, Pablo Picasso, Eleonora Duse, Edvard Munch, K the Kollwitz, Vaslav Nijinski, and Egon Schiele. Alessandra Comini's memoir will inspire readers with its sincere and compelling account of an extraordinary life and career still passionately in progress. Retirement for her has meant discovering a joyful new profession: writing art history murder mystery novels that take her eighty-year-old pseudonymous heroine Megan Crespi from the top of Europe down to Antarctica in pursuit of murderous purloiners of artworks by Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Munch, and Kollwitz. Paperback242 pagesSunstone Press, 20166 x 0.55 x 9 inchesISBN 9781632931405History

In Passionate Pursuit

By Christophe Koné“Uncanny Creatures contributes a new and novel theory of dolls and their relationship to the concept of the uncanny. It also contributes to the ongoing/emerging scholarship on gender and queer studies to the fields of German studies and art history.” —Nathan Timpano, University of Miami Germany held a monopoly on the manufacture and export of bisque toy dolls in Europe before WWI. Yet, dolls’ omnipresence in the material, visual, and literary culture of the modern German-speaking world has so far not been properly addressed. In demonstrating this cultural affinity for dolls, Christophe Koné draws upon a range of stories and seminal essays on dolls, as well as toys, sculptures, paintings, and photographs. He examines how E.T.A. Hoffmann’s romantic tale The Sandman (1815) has been a major source of inspiration for German-speaking doll makers because of how it centers imagination and inventiveness. Using Hoffmann’s tale as an early example of an amalgam between doll thinking and making in German culture, Koné shows how it initiated a genealogy of doll thinkers (Freud & Jentsch), writers (Rilke), painters (Kokoschka), photographers (Bellmer), and makers (Pritzel). Uncanny Creatures then explores how this unusual interest in human-like figures continues a long tradition of thought devoted to conceptualizing “things,” from Immanuel Kant’s theory of the thing-in-itself to Martin Heidegger’s lecture on the thing, and Eduard Mörike or Rainer Maria Rilke’s thing-poems. Because dolls occupy a liminal space—not quite things and more than mere objects—they appear as uncanny creatures which have held a fascination for writers, thinkers, and artists alike. Uncanny Creatures moves past the Freudian discourse of fetishism to propose a new reading of doll artifacts in German culture centered on their ability to evoke a feeling of uncertainty and unsettlement in the viewer. Paperback184 pagesUniversity of Michigan Press, 20246 x 0.6 x 9 inchesISBN 9780472039739 German History & Theory

Uncanny Creatures: Doll Thinking in Modern German Culture

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

Original Price: $51 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS Ecrit par Armelle WeirichCélèbre en Autriche pour son salon au sein duquel elle accueillait les plus grands artistes et intellectuels de son temps – Gustav Klimt, Gustav Mahler, Stefan Zweig – Berta Zuckerkandl fut elle-même une critique d’art majeure qui a impulsé et soutenu le développement de l’art moderne au tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles.Paperback294 pagesText in FrenchPu Rennes, 20236.69 x .59 x 9.65ISBN 9782753592391Viennese Salons, Austrian Writer

Berta Zuckerkandl: De Klimt à Rodin, une salonnière et critique d'art entre Vienne et Paris

Original Price: $42.00 UP TO 20% ADDITIONAL SAVINGS FOR MEMBERS By Rainer J. Hanshe"With its ingenious orchestration of the archive and its sensitivity to both the depths and inadvertencies of the creative process, Closing Melodies maps the twin stories of the last days of Friedrich Nietzsche and Vincent van Gogh within a phantasmagoria of space, time, and vision. Rainer J. Hanshe has an unparalleled grasp of what might be called the analytics of genius." —Nicholas Birns, New York UniversityAs the 19th century comes to a close, Friedrich Nietzsche and Vincent van Gogh unknowingly traverse proximate geographical terrain, nearly circling one another like close but distant stars as the philosopher wanders between Nizza, Sils Maria, and Torino, and the painter wanders between Paris, Arles, and Saint-Rémy. In the midst of their philosophical and artistic pursuits, simultaneously, the Eiffel Tower, symbol of artistic progress and industrialization, begins to rise in Paris amidst clamors of protest and praise.Through intertwining letters written to (& sometimes by) friends, family, and others, the philosopher and painter are brought into ever-greater proximity as we witness their daily personal and artistic struggles. Woven between and interrupting this panoply of voices are a series of intervals, short illuminating blasts, like a camera’s exploding flash powder, of artistic, scientific, political, and other events spanning 1888 to 1890, drawing Nietzsche and Van Gogh in and out of the wider expanses of history.As construction of the Eiffel Tower comes to completion in Paris and Elisabeth Förster, the sister of the philosopher of the will to power, tries to found a utopic race colony in South America, the lives of Nietzsche and Van Gogh come to their terrible denouements. Her brother now a full-fledged zombie, the former queen of Nueva Germania seizes the reins of his living corpse and rides him into the future.With no deus ex machina in sight, and none possible, WWI and the terrors and the beauties of the 20th century crack the horizon.Paperback836 pagesContra Mundum Press, 20236 x 1.85 x 9 inchesISBN 9781940625522History, Biography

Closing Melodies

Edited by Elizabeth Otto and Patrick Rössler “Bauhaus Bodies addresses gender issues more broadly, with fourteen essays by established and newer scholars on body culture, spirituality, dance, androgyny, clothing, experimental photography, and the unsung contributions of Bauhaus wives and female wall painters.” ―Woman's Art Journal“Dispensing with the usual focus on a monolithic school and its leaders, this collection will prove an indispensable resource for investigating the Bauhaus' immediate social impact, historical context, and far-reaching historical implications.” ―CHOICEA century after the Bauhaus's founding in 1919, this book reassesses it as more than a highly influential art, architecture, and design school. In myriad ways, emerging ideas about the body in relation to health, movement, gender, and sexuality were at the heart of art and life at the school. Bauhaus Bodies reassesses the work of both well-known Bauhaus members and those who have unjustifiably escaped scholarly scrutiny, its women in particular.In fourteen original, cutting-edge essays by established experts and emerging scholars, this book reveals how Bauhaus artists challenged traditional ideas about bodies and gender. Written to appeal to students, scholars, and the broad public, Bauhaus Bodies will be essential reading for anyone interested in modern art, architecture, design history, and gender studies; it will define conversations and debates during the 2019 centenary of the Bauhaus's founding and beyond.Paperback392 pages | 12 color and 110 black-and-white illustrationsBloomsbury Publishing, 20199 x 6 inchesISBN 9781501344787Bauhaus History, Gender Studies, Essays

Bauhaus Bodies: Gender, Sexuality, and Body Culture in Modernism’s Legendary Art School

By Thea von Harbou This city of the future encompasses two worlds: that of the hedonistic ruling class and that of a segregated subculture, toilers in a mechanized underworld who labor to provide the rich with their pleasures. When a charismatic leader arises, she seeks a savior to unite the disparate social orders. "Between the brain that plans and the hands that build," she declares, "there must be a mediator―the heart."Thea von Harbou, creator of the screenplay for Fritz Lang's iconic 1927 film, wrote this novel to expand upon the movie's ideas and concepts. Vivid in description, rich in characterization and symbolism, the story draws upon ancient myths to form a compelling vision of the future. Noted science-fiction authority Forrest J. Ackerman hailed the book as "a work of genius," and a century after its initial publication Metropolis continues to captivate readers.Paperback224 pages Dover Publications, Reprint edition, 2015 5.12 x 0.39 x 7.87 inchesISBN 9780486795676Literature, Film, History

Metropolis

Edited by Alana Shapira and Anne-Katrin Rossberg Gestalterinnen played a decisive role in the development of modernism in Vienna. This publication presents new research on women designers, ceramicists, fashion designers, graphic artists, garden architects, photographers, art historians and patrons. The contributions illuminate the eminent importance of these women for Viennese modernism and show how traditional role models were challenged during the interwar period. The Gestalterinnen confronted existing prejudices and created new visual languages in order to forge successful careers. At the same time, they contributed to critical discourse on the emancipation of women.Paperback272 pages De Gruyter, 2023 6.6 x 0.7 x 9.4 inchesISBN 9783110771886Women Artists, Design

Gestalterinnen: Frauen, Design und Gesellschaft im Wien der Zwischenkriegszeit

By Jennifer HiggieA dazzlingly original and ambitious book on the history of female self-portraiture by one of today's most well-respected art critics.Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have - and, of course, continue to do so - often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to the pressures of family and public disapproval.In The Mirror and the Palette, Jennifer Higgie introduces us to a cross-section of women artists who embody the fact that there is more than one way to understand our planet, more than one way to live in it and more than one way to make art about it. Spanning 500 years, biography and cultural history intertwine in a narrative packed with tales of rebellion, adventure, revolution, travel and tragedy enacted by women who turned their back on convention and lived lives of great resilience, creativity and bravery.Paperback336 pagesPegasus Books, 20226 x 1.5 x 9 inchesISBN 9781639362936Art History, Biography & Autobiography

The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience: Five Hundred Years of Women's Self Portraits

By James Reginato“A brisk and sympathetic chronicle of the man [J. Paul Getty] and his many descendants. Add this to Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe’s Vanderbilt and Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers, and we may have a new pandemic escape genre on our hands: the scionography. —New York Times Book ReviewOil magnate J. Paul Getty, once the richest man in the world, is the patriarch of an extraordinary cast of sons, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. While some have been brought low by mental illness, drug addiction, and one of the most sensational kidnapping cases of the 20th century, many of Getty’s heirs have achieved great success. In addition to Mark Getty, a cofounder of Getty Images, and Anne G. Earhart, an award-winning environmentalist, others have made significant marks in a variety of fields, from music and viniculture to politics and LGBTQ rights.Now, across four continents, a new generation of lively, unique, and even outrageous Gettys are emerging, and not coasting on the dynasty’s still-immense wealth. August Getty designs extravagant gowns worn by Katy Perry, Cher, and other stars; his sibling, Nats—a fellow LGBTQ rights activist who announced his gender transition following his wedding to transgender icon Gigi Gorgeous—produces a line of exclusive streetwear. Their fascinating cousins include Balthazar, a multi-hyphenate actor-director-DJ-designer, and Isabel, a singer-songwriter-MBA candidate. A far-flung yet surprisingly close-knit group, the ascendant Gettys are bringing this iconic family onto the global stage in the 21st century.Through extensive research, including access to J. Paul Getty’s diaries and love letters, and fresh interviews with family members and friends, Growing Up Getty offers an inside look into the benefits and burdens of being part of today’s world of the ultra-wealthy.Hardcover336 pagesGallery Books, 2022‎6 x 1.2 x 9 inchesISBN 9781982120986History

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