Vienna. Portrait Of A City

Vienna combines drama and elegance like no other. For centuries the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the stately city on the Danube, has been defined by vast palaces and imperial grandeur—but behind the Baroque opulence, Vienna is also a place of genteel coffee house culture, epicurean tradition, and a heritage of both delicate and daring music, art, and design, from Johann Strauss to Egon Schiele, from Gustav Mahler to Josef Hoffmann. This volume is a treasure trove of photography from the last 175 years, following the evolution of Vienna from imperial capital to modern metropolis. Like a visual walk through time and cityscape, hundreds of carefully curated pictures trace the developments in Vienna’s built environment and the cultural and historical trends they reflect, whether the urban Ringstrasse of the 19th century or the experiments of “Red Vienna” in the 1920s, when the city had a social democratic government for the first time. Through these photographs, we discover the great landmarks and lesser-known corners of Vienna, as well as its tumultuous history. We see the cultural blossoming of the fin de siècle, with innovators such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Adolf Loos, and Sigmund Freud turning Vienna into a “laboratory of modernity”; the clashes of 1934; the ascent of Nazi dictatorship; and the horrors of the Holocaust. More recent photographs explore Vienna in the postwar era, including its appearance in the film The Third Man, and today’s vibrant cultural scene. This book celebrates Vienna as a city where history and modernity coexist.