Browse Exhibits (7 total)

This exhibit explores the stylistic, cultural, and historical forces that shaped architecture and urban planning in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century.  This project centers on the significant buildings, urban sites, infrastructure development, key architects, the planning of the Ringstrasse, as well as the creation of the Prater park, examining the multiple layers of the city, the built landscape and urban life past, and our present experiences of the city through image, video, sound, and narrative.   

This exhibit was created during the Spring 2011 course, "Vienna 1900 and the End of an Empire", an interdisciplinary course in the 360 Degree program, taught by History of Art Professor Christiane Hertel and Professor of German, Imke Meyer of Bryn Mawr College.

We must thank Professors Imke Meyer and Christiane Hertel, Digital Collections Specialist Cheryl Klimaszewski, digital technology assistant Jennifer Lopatin, and our fellow classmates for all of your enthusiasm and guidance through this project, and finally, Bryn Mawr College, for supporting our research both local and abroad.

This exhibit will explore Sigmund Freud’s theories and the contemporary influences on his formulation of the idea of psychoanalysis, through the topographical model of the city of Vienna: the Outer Circle, the Ringstrasse, and the Inner Circle. The first section, the Outer Circle, will focus on contemporary thinkers from the fields of biophysics, neurology, psychiatry and medicine that came from outside of Vienna and their influence on Freud; the Inner Circle will attempt to show the cultural particularities of fin-de-siècle Vienna that had influenced Freud’s theories; the Ringstrasse section, alike the real Ringstrasse that connects the Outer Circle with the Inner Circle of Vienna, will explore Freud’s ideas and works as a reflection of/connection between theoretical and practical influences of contemporary psychiatry and psychoanalysis and the cultural influences of Vienna 1900.

"The stage represents the most powerful and direct form of art"
-Max Reinhardt

"..The history of European theatre may have been carried out as a history of identity [...] The fundamental theatrical situtation, therefore, always symbolizes the conditio humana, regardless of its different culturally-historically determined forms."
-Erika Fischer-Lichte

What does the term 'theater' mean? Does it encompass only those productions that go up onto the stage, with actors and characters with a grand tradition behind them? Or does it also include those avant-garde off-stage burlesques and variety shows?

'Theater' in Vienna at the turn of the century meant all these things. The stage in 1900 could serve as a study of contrasts, encompassing everything from cabarets to the Austrian dramatic canon.

There is no better way to see this than by looking at the period's playwrights and their works. From Hugo von Hofmannsthal, bred in the bourgeois tradition, to Arthur Schnitzler, who criticized that very tradition while being part of it, to Oskar Kokoschka, who sailed straight off into symbolism and abstraction, theater took on many forms. The playwright's works differ so dramatically from one another, yet still discuss similar themes and concepts - indicative of the issues that dominated Vienna's intellectual climate at this critical time period.

For many years Vienna 1900 has been a topic of much interest with considerable thought dedicated to the architectural, artistic, and intellectual production of the time. This exhibit hopes to explore women's fashion around this period, a topic often mentioned, but not given the same consideration as other research areas. In fin-de-siecle Vienna a movement of reform dress was growing supported by such figures as Emilie FlÖge, Gustav Klimt, and members of the Wiener Werkstätte. The corset was eliminated and loose, free-flowing forms took their place. However, despite such interest and intiative by these notable persons of the time, many women continued to live out their lives in corsets, seeing reform dress as a disturbing trend and misguided folly. And so began years of struggle between the two as the "Reformkleid" or reform dress, as it was called, came to symbolize women's liberation and emerging feminism.