Three-week course beginning with the story of Franz Joseph’s glittering city, Vienna; 10% Jewish, it was Janus faced, at the forefront of modernity but with a darkly sinister underbelly.
In the second session we will examine the city from humiliating defeat in WW1 to the Anschluss of 1938.
The final session turns to the Jewish tragedy. Many lost their lives but others were more fortunate and able to leave. The story of Shanghai and the Kindertransport are part of the this story too.
Karl Kraus described Vienna as: “an experimental station on the way to the end of the World”. The city of Freud, Mahler, Herzl, Shnitzler, Strauss, Reinhardt, Klimt but also of Karl Lueger and Adolf Hitler.
In the series:
Mar. 8: Vienna
Mar. 15: Defeat in WW1 to Anschluss
Mar. 22: Tragedy and escape