HIST 333

Spring 2007

Wednesday 1:10-4:00pm

Acland Seminar Room

Professor Eliza Ablovatski

Email:

Office: Seitz House 5

Office hours: MW 4-5pm, F 2-5pm

Freud’s Vienna:

Culture, Politics and Art in the Fin-de-Siècle Habsburg Monarchy

Course Description:This upper-level seminar will examine the explosion of creativity and radicalism in late Hapsburg society, focusing on the capital city Vienna. In the years before and after 1900, the city was vibrant with many of the most important creators of early twentieth-century modern culture; among them not only Freud but also his contemporaries: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner, Karl Kraus, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, Theodore Herzl, Otto Bauer, Karl Lueger, Gustav Maher, and Arnold Schoenberg, to name only a few. Taking the multi-lingual/religious/ethnic Habsburg Monarchy as our base, we will follow developments in the fields of psychology, medicine, literature, architecture, art, and music, putting them into the context of important political and social movements like socialism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and liberalism. This seminar is designed for junior and senior history majors with a background in European history. However, non-majors with knowledge of or interest in music, art history, or German literature are strongly encouraged to join.

Course texts available for purchase:

  • Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader [Peter Gay, ed.]
  • Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna
  • Joseph Roth, The Emperor’s Tomb
  • Barbara Jelavich, Modern Austria: Empire and Republic, 1815-1986
  • Veza Canetti, Yellow Street [arriving late – purchase later!]
  • Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered [arriving late]

Other books on reserve (additional readings on Eres or available electronically):

  • Brigitte Hamann, Hitler’s Vienna
  • Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Monarchy
  • Peter Hanák, The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Budapest and Vienna
  • Sander Gilman, Difference and Pathology and The Jew’s Body
  • István Deák, Beyond Nationalism

Requirements:

Class Participation/Attendance: are mandatory. The seminar meets only once a week – missing any of these few classes is unacceptable. Please contact me in advance if you will miss a class – you will need to write a paper on the readings for that week. Missing more than 2 classes for any reason will seriously affect your grade and your ability to pass the class.

Professionalism: This is a seminar, based in large part on discussion of shared readings and films. The class will therefore depend on the strength of your participation. All students are expected to attend class, attend all outside film screenings, and be active participants in discussions. Students are expected to learn and follow the norms of historical scholarship, as well as the Kenyon Honor Code. They should show respect to classmates and the professor, turn in all work on time, address problems as they arise, locate the readings ahead of class or alert the library staff or professor if they have trouble finding them. Students should bring all assigned readings (print out a copy of online sources) with them to class to aid in discussion.All graded work must be handed in hard copy to me. No emailed attachments will be graded.

Course Requirements: In addition to the professionalism described above, students will complete the following written assignments: a dream report, a Portfolio Project (described below), a Chain Bibliography (described below), and a final research paper due during exams. After the bibliography is due, students will present their research area to the class orally, with a handout for the group.

Posting to Moodle: This class is a pilot for the course-software Moodle. Our syllabus (with hyperlinks) and assignments are posted on the course website at moodle.kenyon.edu. Each week students will post questions and responses raised by the assigned readings– these should be provocative for discussion, make comparisons across assignments, as well as a place to clear up uncertainties. These are due by noon on the day of the seminar.

Grading: Professionalism (all semester)15%

Posting to Moodle (weekly)10%

Dream Report(Feb. 7) 5%

Portfolio Paper (Mar. 1) 15%

Chain Bibliography (April 4)20%

Presentation (by group)10%

Final Research Paper (May 9)25%

Portfolio Project: each student will select a theme or issue raised by the readings and then using the library’s resources, will find at least 3 scholarly articles about that theme. Using these new articles as well as the original assignments from class, the student will write a paper (6 pages) on the topic they chose. The entire “portfolio” will be handed in: a description of the theme with the assignments it was drawn from, copies of all of the scholarly articles, as well as the student’s own paper.

Chain Bibliography: in preparation for the final research paper, and building on the Portfolio, students will prepare a bibliography relating to their chosen research topic. The “chain” is built by pursuing sources from the footnotes as you read and research. Each entry comes from reading a previous entry, rather than from a new (or the same) database search. The “chain” starts with our class readings and becomes more specific. A list of required elements (number and types of sources) will be handed out with the assignment. The associational chain of the entries in the bibliography must be diagramed or explained in prose.

Honor Code and Lateness Policy: Please read the Kenyon College policy “Academic Honesty and Questions of Plagiarism” in the Course of Studycarefully. It is expected that all work that you turn in for this course is your own and that you will follow the general guidelines of academic honesty, as well as the norms of the historical profession for citation, when writing for this class. Any questionable work or cases of possible infractions of the Honor Code will be turned over to the Academic Infractions Board. You will receive a “zero” for any plagiarized work. In order to be fair to all students, late work will be marked down for each day that it is late and will not be accepted after one week. Missing a scheduled presentation will mean a grade of zero.

Library: We will meet with Liz Uzelac, the history department liaison in the library. You should also feel free to contact her about your research questions for the portfolio, bibliography, and final paper. Liz’s hours at the reference desk are: Tuesday from 2-4pm and Friday from 2-4pm. You may also email her at any time for help with history resources and ask any other librarians to help you. Liz’s email is:

Note: If you have a disability and therefore may need some sort of accommodation(s) in order to fully participate in this class, please let me know. In addition, you will need to contact Erin Salva, Coordinator of Disability Services (x5145). Ms. Salva has the authority and expertise to decide what accommodations are appropriate and necessary for you.

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Class Schedule:

Please see Moodle for hyperlinks and updated assignments!

January 17: Introduction to Vienna and Freud

  • View: Slides of City and Ring
  • Assignment: begin recording dreams

January 24:Arrival on the Ringstrasse

  • Freud’s Education and Migration to Vienna
  • Vienna under Franz Joseph I: Architecture and Politics in the Dual Monarchy
  • Read:
  • Schorske: “Ringstrasse,” (24-115)
  • Jelavich: “The Austrian Empire” (29-71); first half of “The Dual Monarchy” (72-98)
  • Stefan Zweig,"The World of Security," in The World of Yesterday, 1-27 [Eres -- password for course = wien)

January 31:Anti-Semitism and Politics

  • Freud’s career at the University
  • Jewish Assimilation in Vienna
  • Rise of Anti-Semitic political parties
  • Read:
  • Schorske, “Politics in a New Key,” (116-180)
  • William J.McGrath, “Student Radicalism in Vienna.” Journal of Contemporary History, 2/3 (1967),183-201 (on JSTOR:
  • Sander Gilman, “The Jewish Nose: Are Jews White? or the history of the Nose Job,” in The Jew’s Body [reserve]
  • Brigitte Hamann: “Jews in Vienna” in Hitler’s Vienna: A Dictator’s Apprenticeship (325-359)

February 7:Dreaming Vienna – Dream Report Due

  • Freud’s early psycholanalytic theories
  • Viennese Intellectual Life anno 1900
  • Read:
  • Jelavich: “Vienna as a Cultural Center” (99-129)
  • Schorske: “Politics and Patricide in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams” (181-207)
  • Freud Reader: “The Interpretation of Dreams” (129-142); “On Dreams” (142-172)

February 14:Freud and Dora

  • Freud’s Hysteria studies
  • Generations of Jewish life in Vienna
  • Gender, Race, and Class
  • Read:
  • Freud Reader: “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” or “Dora” (172-238)
  • Sander Gilman, “Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Joke,” in Difference and Pathology [reserve]
  • Sander Gilman, “The Jewish Psyche : Freud, Dora, and the Idea of the Hysteric,” in The Jew’s Body [reserve]

February 21:Dora’s World: Women in Vienna

  • Assignment: bring research topics to class
  • Library presentation with Liz Uzelac (2:30-4pm)
  • Ida Bauer and her family
  • Women and Sexuality
  • Read:
  • Sander Gilman, “Male Stereotypes of Female Sexuality in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna,” in Difference and Pathology [reserve]
  • Susan Zimmermann, “Making a Living from Disgrace: the Politics of Prostitution, Female Poverty and Urban Gender Codes in Budapest and Vienna, 1860-1920,” in Gee, et.al, The City in Central Europe: Culture and Society from 1800 to the Present [Eres]
  • Ilona Sármány-Parsons, “The Image of Women in Painting: Clichés and Reality in Austria-Hungary, 1895-1905,” in Beller, Rethinking Vienna 1900 [on reserve]

Film: Strauss’s “Elektra” – screening TBA

February 28:Artists in the Garden

  • Guest: Music History Professor Reginald Sanders
  • Klimt and his society portraits
  • Secession and other artistic circles
  • Architecture - Wagner and Students
  • Music – Mahler, Strauss, Schoenberg
  • Read:
  • Schorske, “Gustav Klimt: Painting and the Crisis of the Liberal Ego” (208-278) and “Explosion in the Garden: Kokoschka and Schoenberg” (322-366)
  • Janik and Toulmin, “Culture and Critique: Social Criticism and the Limits of Artistic Expression,” (92- 119) in Wittgenstein’s Vienna [reserve]

March 1 (Thursday): Portfolio Projects due by 4pm

March 7 and 14: NO CLASS – Spring Break

March 21:Socialism in the family

  • Otto Bauer and Victor Adler
  • Austro-Socialism
  • Socialist Party Organization
  • Read:
  • Excerpts of Bauer and readings on Austro-Socialism
  • Michael John, “We Do Not Even Possess Our Selves: On Identity and Ethnicity in Austria, 1880-1937,”Austrian History Yearbook 30 (1999), 17-64
  • Begin: Veza Canetti, Viennese Short Stories

March 28:Working Class Vienna

  • Geography of Class
  • Servant life
  • Factory work
  • Read:
  • Adelheid Popp autobiography in Kelly, The German Worker
  • Veza Canetti, Viennese Short Stories(finish)

Film: “Colonel Redl” (István Szabó, 1985) – screening TBA

April 4:Empire on the Eve of War – Chain Bibliography due

  • Presentations (group I)
  • Decadence?
  • Nationalism: Young Czechs
  • Monarchy of Bureaucracy and Army
  • Read:
  • Pieter Judson, “Rethinking the Liberal Legacy,” in Rethinking Vienna 1900 [reserve]
  • T. Mills Kelly, “Taking it to the Streets: Czech National Socialists in 1908,” Austrian History Yearbook 29 (1998), 93-112.
  • István Deák, Beyond Nationalism, chapters 9 and 10: “Nobles and Near-Nobles in the Officer Corps” and “Religion, Nationality, Advanced Training and Career” (156-189) [reserve]
  • Joseph Roth, Emperor’s Tomb (first half)

April 11:“Wien im Krieg”: Wartime Vienna

  • Presentations (group II)
  • Patriotism, militarism, bureaucracy, and food
  • History of WWI
  • Read:
  • Jelavich: “War and Dissolution and Conclusion” (end of chapter 2: 130-150)
  • Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Monarchy, chapters 1, 3 and 6: “Food and the Politics of Sacrifice,” “Censorship, Rumors and Denunciation: the Crisis of Truth on the Home Front,” and “The ‘Fatherless Society’: Home-Front Men and Imperial Paternalism” [reserve]
  • Péter Hanák, “Vox Populi: Intercepted Letters in the First World War,” in The Garden and The Workshop [reserve]
  • Joseph Roth, Emperor’s Tomb (second half)
  • Freud Reader: “Mourning and Melancholia” (584-589) and beginning of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (594-610)

Film: “Stadt Ohne Juden” (Hans Breslauer, 1924) – screening TBA

April 18: Refugees and “Rest-Austria”

  • Presentations (group III)
  • Jewish refugees in Vienna
  • Paris Peace Treaties
  • What is Austria?
  • Read:
  • Jelavich: “The First Republic, 1918-1932” (151-191)
  • Freud Reader: “The Future of an Illusion”
  • Franz Theodor Csokor, “3 November 1918” [reserve]
  • Hugo Bettauer, City Without Jews [reserve]

April 25: Red Vienna and Interwar Politics

  • Presentations (group IV)
  • Red Vienna
  • Apartments for the workers
  • Militarization of politics
  • Civil War 1934
  • “Austro-Fascism”
  • Read:
  • Jelavich: “Austrofascism, Anschluss and War, 1932-1945” (192-244)
  • Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (begin)

May 2: Last Class: Anschluss and Exile

  • Austria joins the Nazi “Reich”
  • Popular support for Hitler
  • Violence against Jews, Arrests
  • “Aryanization” of Jewish property (topic: Bloch-Bauer Klimt paintings)
  • Exile (return to Freud)
  • Read: Ruth Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (finish)

May 9 (Wednesday): Final Research Papers due by 4pm