Intellectuals and the Future in the Habsburg Monarchy 1890–1914

204 Pages·1988·26.35 MB·English

by  László Péter, Robert B. Pynsent (eds.)

STUDIES IN RUSSIA AND EAST EUROPE
formerly Studies in Russian and East European History
Chairman of the Editorial Board: M. A. Branch, Director, School of
Slavonic and East European Studies.
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Phyllis Auty and Richard Clogg (editors)
BRITISH POLICY TOWA RDS WARTIME RESISTA N CE IN
YUGOSLA VIA AND GREECE
Elisabeth Barker
BRITISH POLICY IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE IN THE
SECOND WORLD WAR
Richard Clogg (editor)
THE MOVEMENT FOR GREEK INDEPENDENCE,
1770-1821: A COLLECTION OF DOCUMENTS
Olga Crisp
STUDIES IN THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY BEFORE 1914
John C. K. Daly
RUSSIAN SEAPOWER AND THE 'EASTERN' QUESTION,
1827-41
D. G. Kirby (editor)
FINLAND AND RUSSIA, 1808-1920: DOCUMENTS
Martin McCauley
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE SOVIET STATE,
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KHRUSHCHEV AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET
AGRICULTURE
COMMUNIST POWER IN EUROPE: 1944-1949 (editor)
MARXISM-LENINISM IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC
REPUBLlC: THE SOCIALIST UNITY PARTY (SED)
Martin McCauley
THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBUC SINCE 1945
KHRUSHCHEV AND KHRUSHCHEVISM (editor)
THE SOVIET UNION UNDER GORBACHEV (editor)
Martin McCauley and Stephen Carter (editors)
LEADERSHIP AND SUCCESSION IN THE SOVIET UNION,
EASTERN EUROPE AND CHINA
Martin McCauley and Peter Waldron
THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN RUSSIAN STATE,
1855-81
Evan Mawdsley
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE BALTIC FLEET
La.szl6 Peter and Robert B. Pynsent (editors)
INTELLECTUALS AND THE FUTURE IN THE HABSBURG
MONARCHY, 1890-1914
J. J. Tomiak (editor)
WESTERN PERSPECTIVES ON SOVIET EDUCAT ION IN
THE 1980s
Stephen White and Alex Pravda (editors)
IDEOLOGY AND SOVIET POUTICS
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ii
INTELLECTUALS AND
THE FUTURE IN THE
HABSBURG
MONARCHY
1890-1914
Edited by
Lasz16 Peter
Reader in Hungarian History
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
University of London
and
Robert B. Pynsent
Lecturer in ezech and Slovak Language and Literature
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
University of London
M
in association with the
MACMILLAN
PRESS Palgrave Macmillan
iii
© School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1988
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1988 978-0-333-44129-9
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
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No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
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civil claims for damages.
First published 1988
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2l 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Intellectuals and the future in the Habsburg
monarchy 1890-1914.-(Studies in Russia
and East Europe).
1. Austria-Intellectual life 2. Hungary
-Intellectual life
I. Peter, Laszl6 11. Pynsent, Robert B.
111. University of London. School of Slavonic
and East European Studies IV. Series
940.2'88 DB86
ISBN 978-1-349-19171-0 ISBN 978-1-349-19169-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19169-7
iv
Contents
Notes on the Contributors VII
Introduction 1
Laszl6 Peter and Robert B. Pynsent
1 Liberalism or Hedonism? Arthur Schnitzler's Diagnosis
of the Viennese Bourgeoisie 13
Martin Swales
2 Gustav Klimt: A Bridgehead to Modernism 29
Irit Rogoff
3 Sigmund Freud: Some Aspects of his Contribution 45
Brian Farrell
4 The Decadent Nation: The Politics of Arnost
Prochazka and Jift Kan'isek ze Lvovic 63
Robert B. Pynsent
5 The Meaning of Czech History: Pekaf versus Masaryk 92
Kare! BruJcik
6 National Sensualism: Czech Fin-de-Siecle Art 107
Tomas Vlcek
7 Zsigmond Justh: In Search of a New Nobility 127
Viola Finn
8 Mihaly Babits: 'All Great Poets are Decadent' 152
George Cushing
9 The Prophet of the 'Naked Soul': Stanislaw
Przybyszewski 173
Stanisfaw Eile
Index 191
V
Notes on the Contributors
Karel Brus3k teaches Czech with Slovak at Cambridge. He read
natural sciences and philosophy at Prague and Slavonic studies at
London, and has published numerous articles on European litera
ture.
George Cushing is Emeritus Professor of Hungarian at the University
of London, and was educated at Cambridge and London. He has
published translations, articles and books on Hungarian culture.
Stanisiaw Eile is Senior Lecturer in Polish at the University of
London, and was educated at Cracow. He has published books and
articles on the theory of fiction and on Polish modernism and contem
porary literature.
Brian Farrell is Professor at the University of Chicago and is Emeri
tus Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was previously
Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford until 1979. He has published
extensivelyon experimental psychology and psychoanalysis.
Viola Finn is a graduate student of jin-de-siecle Hungarian literature
at London. This is her first publication.
Laszl6 Peter is Reader in Hungarian History at the University of
London, and was educated at Budapest and Oxford. He has pub
lished extensivelyon Hungarian history , particularly constitutional
history.
Robert B. Pynsent is Lecturer in Czech and Slovak language and
literature at the University of London, and was educated at Cambridge.
He has published articles and books mainly on Czech literature.
Irit Rogoff, art historian and critic, formerly lecturer at the Courtauld
Institute and Warwick University, was educated at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and the Courtauld. She has published cata
logues and articles mainly on German and central European art.
vii
Vlll Notes on the Contributors
Martin Swales is Professor of German at University College, Lon
don, and was educated at Cambridge and Birmingham. He has
published a large number of books, with and without his wife, on
German and Austrian German literature.
Tomas Vlcek is Research Assistant at the Institute of Art Theory and
History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and was educated
at Prague. He has written and edited numerous books and articles on
Czech art and literature.
Introduction
LAsZL6 PETER AND ROBERT B. PYNSENT
Culture in the Habsburg Monarchy was always fragmented. Even
at the higher social level the elite in the Monarchy consisted of cul
turally diverse groups. Diversity at the top reflected a society which
lacked cultural homogeneity. Ever since the Austrian, Bohemian and
Hungarian Lands had been permanently united in the sixteenth
century - and even more after parts of the Low Countries and of Italy
and Poland were added - the diversity of religion, language and
custom had been more pronounced than elsewhere in Europe.
This volume concerns the cultural elements that linked the Monar
chy's social groups to each other rather than separating them. Social
developments in the nineteenth century produced culturally contra
dictory results. In so me respects society became more integrated and
the Lands moved closer to each other. In other respects new rifts
developed. This was as true of intellectual as of other aspects of social
life. The unifying process was undoubtedly helped by the loss of the
Low Countries, later of Italy, and the creation of the German
Empire, which weakened Austria's ties with the rest of Germany.
But the real force of social and cultural convergence inside the
Monarchy lay in internal economic and social change. Paradoxically,
the 1848-9 revolutions, instead of disrupting the Monarchy, in their
consequences helped its integration. In 1850 the internal tariffs which
had earlier separated the Lands were finally removed. The rapid
growth of towns and industrialisation, a common currency, credit and
transport system, particularly railways, through which entrepreneurs,
engineers, and even the labour force were easily shifted from one
Land to another, created urban centres all over the Monarchy with a
similar outlook. These economic changes were matched by compar
able changes in social institutions. The Austrian Civil Code of 1804
was introduced into the Hungarian Crown Lands in 1852 together
with the judicial system. Bureaucrats were transferred in large num
bers from western to eastern parts. The Lands of the Monarchy, if
only for a short period, acquired the same centralised bureaucratic
institutions after the collapse of the 1848-9 revolutions.
1
2 Introduction
In the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, German became
established as the language of high culture in the Monarchy. After
1848 through the growth of capitalism and of administrative central
isation, German urban culture permeated the new urban centres. As
Pest, Prague, Zagreb rapidly expanded, so did German culture. Civil
servants, railway officials, industrialists and, in some Lands, even
workers on the shop floor were becoming German in culture.
German culture could not, however, become general. The social
group which transmitted the new urban culture was not sufficiently
strong for that, and it was itself not quite homogeneous. The new
middle classes grew partly out of indigenous German burghers and
partly out of the Germanized educated classes, in which the Jews,
who were gradually emancipated, were prominent. In fact the Jews
provided the backbone of the German urban middle-class culture in
Vienna and Pest. The Jewish middle classes did not achieve social
integration in the new expanding urban centres. Pest grew from
100,000 in the 1840s to a million by 1918. Natural growth was hardly a
factor in this expansion. The incessant flow of people from the
villages explains this growth. The newcomers brought with them a
culture different from that of the germanised Jewish middle classes.
The two sets of newcomers rubbed shoulders without sharing the
same culture.
A rift had developed between the culture of the towns and that of
the countryside. Furthermore, the cultural gulf between Vienna and
the Lands was also growing. Cultural change engendered by the
growth of urban capitalism moved in the opposite direction to politi
cal change in the Monarchy. The new culture did not engulf the
Lands where society remained predominantly agrarian.
The emancipation of the pe asants , the introduction of equality
before the law and of modern private-property relations, and the
change to a market economy gradually transformed the countryside
in the nineteenth century. Social transformation in the countryside
largely followed the politics of the landlords who, in most areas
where they were not German-speaking, led anti-German nationalist
movements. The rise of nationalism held back and, later, isolated
germanised Jewish urban culture.
The politically most successful nationalist movement was led by the
Hungarian gentry who, through the Settlement or Ausgleich of 1867,
acquired Horne Rule for the eastern half of the Monarchy. The Croat
gentry in the south and the Polish gentry in Galicia acquired auton
omy. The attempt in Bohemia to attain a position comparable to that