Days 18-20 8/19-21.

After all of the incredible events of the last week, I decided that the rest of the week was going to be devoted to finishing up the prompts that were left for the blogs. I recruited a couple of friends to join me on the journey. Of course, we could not get all of the activities done in one day so we decided to divide it into three.
In conjunction with our discussion on modernism in Vienna, we were assigned to listen to the music of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). He was an Austrian (later American) composer who was well known for his involvement in the expressionist movement in German art and poetry. During the Nazi regime, his work was labeled as “degenerate art.” He is most well-known for the innovation of 12-tone music, which utilizes all 12 notes in the chromatic scale. The piece that I listened to was titled “Piano Concerto op. 42.” I enjoyed it on an intellectual level because it was very different from the other classical music that I have listened to. The use of all 12 notes was interesting to me because I am not trained to hear the differences between them all. This made it a fun exercise to try and hear everything that was going on during the song. By the same token, however, it was not something that I would listen to for pleasure for the exact same reason: it was confusing to listen to and much of the song was lost on me. I am sure that if I trained harder to listen I would enjoy it more, but as it stands I will say that it was interesting and leave it at that.
The topic that I enjoyed learning about the most was the Vienna Secession movement that formed in 1897. It was a movement of painters, artists, and architects who rejected the status quo of the Ringstrasse, which was an architectural mind-frame that favored a historical approach to the buildings by trying to mimic romantic, gothic, and baroque styles of ages past. The Secession, led by luminaries such as painter Gustav Klimt and Koloman Moser. They rejected the idea of historicizing the buildings and advocated finding a distinctly modern Vienna mood for the buildings. In terms of defining Viennese modernism, I prefer Jacques le Rider’s interpretation (as read in “Vienna Modernism”) of a period of uprooting and crisis of identity of women and Jews.
One of the most recognized figures of the Secession movement was Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). He was gaining popularity for his paintings and was commissioned by the University of Vienna to make paintings for the departments of Philosophy, History, and Medicine. His paintings were rejected by the professors, and Klimt joined the Secession movement. His most recognized piece is “The Kiss,” which pictures a man and a woman in a romantic embrace. I like the painting a fair amount, but I do not understand why this work has gained such international recognition. I enjoy the history behind Klimt more than his work. Anyone who comes back from being scorned to international fame deserves praise in my opinion.
In class, discussed a critical topic for Austrian history: the end of the Habsburg monarchy. After archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo Emperor Franz Joseph declared war on Serbia because they were harboring Gavrilo Princip, Ferdinand’s assailant. World War I breaks out, and the bloody affair took its toll on the monarchy. In 1916 emperor Charles I abdicated the throne, thus bringing an end to the Habsburg rule in Austrian lands. After the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed because of WWI, the new government was called the Republic of German Austria under its first chancellor Dr. Karl Renner. The treaty of St. Germaine penalizes Austria just like the Treaty of Versailles penalized Germany. This is just another example in which making policies based on visceral reactions only engenders hatred. Because Austria is a week state, separate militias form. This is going counter to the process of state-building that was taking place in the earlier days of the empire. Instead of consolidating legitimate violence in the state, there are militant splinters that form and cause havoc in the cities.
In 1933 the new chancellor Dollfuss bans militias besides his own. He propagated Austro-Fascism, which was a hyper-national sense of Austria that brought them in contention with German fascism. This contention, coupled with his oppressive policies, resulted in the outbreak of civil war in 1934. There was actually heavy fighting in Simmering. Eventually, the Nazis took the chancellor’s office and Dollfuss is killed. Hitler organized a plebiscite, or an election by the Austrians as to whether or not they wanted Nazi rule. Of course, the results were skewed and Hitler marched his troops into his home nation in 1938. On April 1st the first transport to Dachau leaves, starting the nightmare of concentration/death camps for the Austrians who did not fit into the master race. Because the Nazis drive out intellectuals and artists such as Freud and Einstein, they developed their own aesthetic in order to abandon “degenerate art” of the Jews. By the end of the ordeal, something like 65 thousand Austrian Jews died in the camps. In 1942, the Nazis declared Vienna to be “Jew-free.” It truly was a nightmare for Austria and they did not find peace until well after the end of WWII; many didn’t find peace until the end of the Cold War in 1989.
Today’s blog assignment that we decided to complete was to watch CNN in our room and compare it to American CNN. The way the station reports news in Austria is a little bit less one-sided than American CNN, in my opinion. The issue that I saw reported was the release of the Lockerbie bomber by Scotland. Although there was definitely a tone of disappointment in the reporters’ voices, they did a good job of putting on an air of objectivity. They even did a piece on how many people are boycotting Scottish liquor in an attempt to punish the country for the release. In America, there would have been a bigger focus on Libya (the country that he was released to).