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Belle Necropolis: Ghosts of Imperial Vienna

By (author) Katherine Arens

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Price: R 2 587.95

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Since coming to public notice through major museum catalogues and the work of Carl Schorske around 1980, fin de siÃ¨cle Vienna has been cast as the final bloom of a dying culture. Yet this assessment is itself a historical construct, deriving from the politics of the twentieth century. This volume argues that Â«Habsburg nostalgiaÂ» is anything but backward looking: instead, images from this glittering Habsburg past become evidence of a cultureâ€™s sophisticated sense of how and why history is made, in both official and popular spheres. Including the first translation of an original account of Crown Prince Rudolfâ€™s suicide at Mayerling in 1889, Belle Necropolis argues for Austriaâ€™s continued reuse of its own history to point the way toward the future rather than simply memorializing a past that only exists as living memories of shared stories, not as a truth in itself. Case studies included here range from imperial stereotypes before 1900 through their adaptations in the film 1. April 2000 and todayâ€™s musicals, and from the politics of representing Austria since Rebecca West up through Schorskeâ€™s master narrative of the Ringstrasse. Through these studies, Habsburg culture emerges as a culture of commemoration that uses its own past to overcome the limits of a small country seeking a role on the contemporary world stage.