Syllabus
Information regarding the 2021 summer semester:
Courses will take place in the online MsTeams environment due to the covid-19 pandemic.The link to join the MsTeams team for this subject will be distributed to all registered participants.
THE HABSBURG NOSTALGIA BETWEEN MYTH AND KITSCH
SYLLABUS
WEEK ONE: INTRODUCTION
WEEK TWO: AUSTRIA-HUNGARY in WESTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY
Hans Kohn: Was the Collapse Inevitable?
Joachim Remak: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?
Robert Kann: The Defeat of Austria-Hungary in 1918 and the European Balance of Power
WEEK THREE: AUSTRIA-HUNGARY in HISTORIOGRAPHY of the SUCCESSOR STATES
Werner Suppanz: Supranationality and National Overlaps: the Habsburg Monarchy in Austrian Historiography after 1918
Tibor Frank: Conflicting Sovereignties: The Habsburg Monarchy in Hungarian Historiography
WEEK FOUR: HABSBURG ORPHANS
Stefan Zweig: The World of Yesterday, chapter 1
Franz Werfel: An Essay Upon the Meaning of Imperial Austria
WEEK FIVE: REQUIEM for the MONARCHY 1
Austeria by Jerzy Kawalerowicz
WEEK SIX: REQUIEM for the MONARCHY 2
Joseph Roth: The Radetzkymarch
WEEK SEVEN: The EMPIRE of SUBCONSCIOUSNESS
William Johnston: The Austrian Mind, chapters 15 and 16
Sara Grainham: The Habsburg Twilight, chapter 3
WEEK EIGHT: The LABORATORY of MODERNITY
Hermann Broch: Hugo von Hofmannstahl and His Time , part I, chapters 4 – 6.
Ernest Gellner: Wittgenstein, Malinowski, and the Habsburg Dilemma , part I, chapters 2 - 8
WEEK NINE: The LABORATORY of MODERNITY 2
Robert Musil: <span lang="en-U
Annotation
The Habsburg Nostalgia between Myth and Kitsch
The dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918 caused almost no protests, to say nothing of resistance. And yet, democracy and the national self-determination, which were supposed to replace it, did not work particularly well in
Central Europe after 1918, nor did the economy. The inter-war realities proved harsh enough for many Central-
Europeans to look back at the time before 1914 with a rising sentimentality. There was a number of highly talented authors – such as Robert Musil, Joseph Roth, or Franz Werfel – who inspired this trend with their writings.
Historians and essayists, and particularly those who fled the region because of Nazism and Communism – also had their doubts whether the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy was beneficial for the region; however, the monarchy also had its passionate critics. After World War II the Habsburg nostalgia entered popular culture, dominated the tourist industry, and seriously influenced historical studies on the region. During this course, students will be faced with various aspects of the Habsburg’s image in historical narratives, essays, literary fiction, iconography, and films. One of the goals of this course is to provide its participants with an opportunity to analyze various genres as historical evidence.