Social Issues and Their Repression

Mark Twain wrote that the Austrian government "encourages them [the people] to amuse themselves with things less inflammatory than politics." For most Viennese, these distractions included theater, art, music, and architecture. Vienna was at the turn of the century one of the most beautiful cities in the world; the four kilometers of the Ringstrasse contain some of the most beautiful, grand, ornate, and most of all imperial buildings in the world. But even the Ringstrasse was a form of cover up for Austria’s problems. Franz Joseph built the Ringstrasse to take the place of the Vienna city walls, which finally came down in 1858, almost embarrassingly after they had become obsolete. The construction of the Ringstrasse is symbolic of more serious problems in the Empire. Franz Joseph chose to cover up the serious problem of an inefficient and out-of-date military/industrial system by creating beauty.

Fin-de-Ciecle Vienna’s culture reflected the internal inconsistencies and problems of the nation as a whole, yet seemed to wholly ignore those problems. Many have observed that the Austrians seemed to be living in a dream world, covering up the problems of their age with elaborate balls, with grand architecture and art, with waltzes. Even the most famous of Austrian waltzes, The Blue Danube, had an opiate effect. It was written only a few weeks after Bismarck defeated the Austrian military at Sadowa, which marked the end of Austria’s claim to supremacy in the German speaking world, yet it is often remembered as the ultimate example of Austrian culture and Viennese elegance. Die Fledermaus, the most famous of Strauss’s operas, took Viennese minds off of the awful stock market crash of 1873, which the Austrians referred to as their own Black Monday.

Even the waltzes themselves seemed to be a release from the pressures and the repression of Viennese life. Though waltzes seem staid to a modern audience, a German visitor, quoted by Janik and Toulmin, described them as being almost demonic. "African and hot-blooded, crazy with life…restless, unbeautiful, passionate…Bacchantically the couples waltz…lust lets loose. No God inhibits them," he said.

In the end, the city of Vienna itself is a contradiction. It was built to be the most grand and beautiful city in the world, but only after its nation had surrendered whatever dominance it ever had over even its own territory. Though its citizens considered themselves to be the most modern and cosmopolitan people on earth, they were at the center of a decadent and dying empire. Like Romans believing that the increasingly bloody spectacles in the Coliseum were proof of its vibrancy, Austrians were content in believing that the beauty of their surroundings proved the power of their empire.