Vienna's Dreams of Europe - (New Directions in German Studies) by Katherine Arens (Paperback)

About the Book

A sweeping account and re-evaluation of Austrian identity, via literature, culture and history, from the Enlightenment to the present.

Book Synopsis

Vienna's Dreams of Europe puts forward a convincing counter-narrative to the prevailing story of Austria's place in Europe since the Enlightenment. For a millennium, Austrian writers have used images of Europe and its hegemonic culture as their political and cultural reference points. Yet in discussions of Europe's nation-states, Austria appears only as an afterthought, no matter that its precursor states-the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian Empire, and Austria Hungary-represented a globalized European cultural space outside the dominant paradigm of nationalist colonialism. Austrian writers today confront reunited Europe in full acknowledgment of Austro-Hungary's multicultural heritage, which mixes various nationalities, ethnicities, and cultural forms, including ancestors from the Balkans and beyond.

Challenging standard accounts of 18th- through 20th-century European imperial identity construction, Vienna's Dreams of Europe introduces a group of Austrian public intellectuals and authors who have since the 18th century construed their own public as European. Working in different terms than today's theorist-critics of the hegemonic West, Katherine Arens posits a political identity resisting two hundred years of European nationalism.

Review Quotes

Vienna's Dreams of Europe is a critique of familiar teleological readings of modern history, an attempt to provide a more nuanced understanding of regional public institutions and public spaces in Central Europe, and an exploration of distinctively Austrian approaches to the idea of Europe. Arens brings to cultural studies-and to German studies in particular-a complex picture of European history and culture, which challenges common assumptions about modern Europe since the eighteenth century, especially "the fiction of an emerging 'German' culture-nation."
David Luft, Professor of History, Oregon State University, USA

[A] learned and thoughtful study of Austria's place in European culture and history ... Vienna's Dreams of Europe not only offers a rethinking of Austria's place in Europe; it also offers a rethinking of Austria's place within (North American) German studies. ... [It] insists on a conception of Austrian culture that is multiple and fluid. Indeed, her book is titled not "Austria's Dreams of Europe," but rather "Vienna's Dreams of Europe." Vienna here is not simply a city defined by civic boundaries, but rather a multiethnic and multilingual space defined by layers of historical ties and multiple public spaces.
Austrian Studies Newsmagazine

Through a series of expansive case studies-ranging from Sonnenfels to Stifter to Schnitzler, from Hanswurst to Hofmannsthal to Handke, and including many points along the way-Katherine Arens innovatively explores the interconnected public spaces of Austrian culture extending well beyond the borders of the nation-state. This illuminating and elegantly written book reshapes our understanding of the ongoing public project of enlightenment and provides a rewarding road map for postnational cultural studies.
Craig Decker, Professor of German and Chair, Department of German and Russian Studies, Bates College, USA

About the Author

Katherine Arens is a Professor of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. She is also a Professor in the Center for European Studies and the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of seven books, including Belle Necropolis: Ghosts of Imperial Vienna (2014), Empire in Decline (2001), and Austria and Other Margins: Reading Culture (1996). She has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Plato Award from the International Biographical Centre, Cambridge, UK.