Vienna: At the Crossroads of Central Europe
Austria
August 1 - 31, 2008

Course Information

This Program carries a total of 8 units. Enrolled students must take both courses listed. Auditing is not an option. All students will take History 198.

Course Requirements

This class focuses on European society, politics, and culture through Austrian lens. Vienna and surrounding areas will be our classroom. We examine the interplay of religion and politics in the formation of the Habsburg Empire. We study religious art of the sixteenth century and retrace seventeenth-century pilgrimages to Marian shrines and saints' relics to understand militant Protestant and Counter-reformation Catholic spirituality. We study contact and conflict between Muslims and Christians, as two empires collided in the Ottoman sieges of Vienna. We visit Baroque and Rococo palaces to see how Austrian imperial ambitions were reflected in architecture and interior design. We experience Vienna as a center of classical music and the Austrian Enlightenment through the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We analyze the Viennese institution of the Coffeehouse as a center of enlightened sociability, intellectual life, and political culture. We trace the emergence of modernism and modernity in the cosmopolitan multiethnic metropolis around 1900, in the works of Freud, Klimt, Schnitzler, Schönberg and Wittgenstein among others.

With the collapse of the Habsburg Empire after World War I and the emergence of the Austrian Republic, we turn to the rise of National Socialism, with a particular focus on Adolph Hitler's time in Vienna. We reconstruct the experience of Viennese Jews through the memoirs of Ruth Klüger, who was deported from Vienna to Auschwitz as a young girl. We visit Mauthausen, Austria's most notorious death camp, where Simon Wiesenthal was freed by American forces in 1945. Finally we explore Vienna in the post-war period as a center of international diplomacy during the Cold War and beyond, and as a new gateway to Eastern Europe with the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Our final fieldtrips will be to United Nations facilities, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). and various NGOs. The class will be taught from an interdisciplinary perspective, so that it will be of particular interest not only to history majors, but also to students in a variety of majors including German and comparative literature, art history, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, music and musicology, philosophy, psychology, religious studies, Jewish studies, film studies, political science, and international relations.

Sample Class Schedule (from summer 2007)

Wed. Aug 1    
Arrival & Check-in

Thurs. Aug 2    
Orientation
Afternoon:  city tour by bus and on foot.
For journal: what is the German word of the day? Cudos if you can make a sentence with it!

Fri. Aug. 3 
Class: The Formation of the Austrian Monarchy
Read Lehne & Johnson, pp. 3-27; Bérenger, Chaps. 10-13
Visit the Stephansdom (St. Stephens Cathedral) www.stephansdom.at/data/derdom/einfuehrung/index.php
This excursion will satisfy your macabre interests: the catacombs contain the skeletons of several thousand victims of the last Viennese plague in the eighteenth century.
Hofburg www.hofburg.wien.info/hofburg-e.html & Schatzkammer (Imperial Treasury). All the pomp and circumstance, and grandiose excess of the absolute monarchy.

Weekend assignment: Ride the Tram from our dorm to the center. Then change Trams randomly and allow them to take you to neighborhoods far from the tourist center. Get off the Tram when you see something interesting, look around; eat, drink, and shop where the locals do, then get back on and let the streetcar take you to the next mystery neighborhood.  Do this for at least two hours. Take pictures, write it up.

Mon. Aug 6 
Class: The Protestant Reformation & Catholic Counter-reformation
Film: The Hapsburgs, Part 2: Cross and Crescent (1992)
Read Lehne & Johnson, pp. 27-45; Bérenger, Chaps. 14-18.
Visit the Kunsthistorisches Museum www.khm.at/homeE/homeE.html
Find 2-3 works that exemplify Catholic sensibility, and 2-3 works that exemplify Protestant sensibility, and discuss them in detail in your journal. If possible, take photos or buy postcards.
Treasure Hunt assignment: Find where the various body parts (entrails, hearts…) of deceased Habsburgs are located.  Explain this mortuary ritual.  Examine the tombs. How do they change over time? Take photographs, buy postcards, and describe and explain what you see. In general, what was the purpose of the elaborate ritual surrounding the Habsburg monarchy?  In this context, discuss what you see in the Schatzkammer as well. Write this up in your journal. Optional treasure hunt competition: How many saints’ relics can you find in and around Vienna? The winner takes the cake (literally)!

Tues. Aug 7     
Excursion to Melk Abbey www.stiftmelk.at/englisch/index.html
This is one of the oldest Benedictine monasteries in Europe. Here we study some medieval background, as well as religious developments during the Catholic Counter-Reformation. It has saints’ relics!

Wed. Aug 8    
Class: Ottoman Sieges; Maria Theresia
Read Lehne &Johnson, pp. 46-61; Duindam (W)
Film: The Hapsburgs, Part 3: The Jewel in the Crown
Visit Schloss Schönbrunn (Austria’s answer to Louis XIV’s Versailles) and the Baroque collection in the Belvedere. Discuss these in your journal.
Schönbrunn  www.schoenbrunn.at/en/publicdir/
Bevedere Palace  www.belvedere.at
Karlskirche http://www.karlskirche.at/
Heeresgeschichtliche Museum. Permanent Exhibition “War against the Turks”.  www.hgm.or.at/eng/  Visit the section on the Thirty-Years-War as well.

Thurs. Aug. 9     
UN main entrance (Checkpoint 1), 9:45
Review New York Times email alerts on the UN and the IAEA. By the way, what is the German word of the day?

Fri. Aug 10       
Class: Mozart & the Enlightenment
Read Peter Gay;  “The Marriage of Figaro”  libretto.
Evening: Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”
Visit the Haus der Musik  www.hdm.at
Mozarthaus http://www.mozarthausvienna.at/ (optional)

Tues. Aug 14 to Fri. Aug 17 
Read Demetz, Chaps. 3, 5, 8 & Post-script.  Kafka (optional).

Tues. Aug. 21
Class: Biedermeier
Read Lehne & Johnson, pp.    62-75
MAK (Museum für Angewandte Kunst) http://www.mak.at/e/jetzt/f_jetzt.htm
Find something Biedermeier. Photograph and describe in your journal.
BTW, what is the German word of the day?

Wed. Aug 22   
Class: Modernism & Modernity
Read Lehne & Johnson, pp. 76-103.  Schorske, Chaps. 2 & 4
Visit Belvedere Palace—Klimt collection
Take Tram 1 or 2 around the Ring Straße several times. Examine the architecture.  Listen to some Schönberg at the Haus der Musik. Do you like it or not? Why, or why not?   Locate and photograph some Jugenstil architecture.  Optional: Sigmund Freud Museum. Discuss in your journal.

Thurs. Aug 23   
Leopold Museum Guided Tour  www.museumsquartier.at/news.en.html
Evening: Film Murderers among us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story(1989)
Read Lehne & Johnson, pp. 104-135;  Jelavich (W), chaps. 3-4.

Fri Aug 24                    
Mauthausen Concentration Campwww.mauthausen-memorial.at
Read Ruth Klüger   
Visit the Jüdisches Museum (Palais Elkeles) www.jmw.at/ Before we go to Mauthuasen, see online viewing assignment:  Mauthausen Liberation (historical footage, US Department of Justice) online at www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/mauthausen/Mauthausen-00.html

Mon. Aug. 27  
Class: Hitler’s Vienna & WWII
Read Lehne & Johnson, pp. 121-135.     
In Vienna: Heeresgeschichtliches Museum; Permanent Exhibition “World War I” and “Republic and Dictatorship. Austria 1918 until 1945” (www.hgm.or.at/eng/) (optional)
Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien (www.wienmuseum.at/75.asp) (optional)

Tues. Aug. 28                                       
Class: Wrap-up
Afternoon: Third Man Tour
See the movie beforehand! Film: The Third Man (1949), www.burgkino.at/
Read Lehne & Johnson, pp. 135-170; Jalavich (W), Chaps 5-6; Brown (W)
What is the German word of the day?

Fri. Aug. 31 Check-out

Required Texts