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though in a very different way from Freud, he too addressed the compul–
sive satisfactions and delusions of Eros, and demonstrated how its power
could dissolve social hierarchies. He depicted the loose morals of the
Viennese, and showed the fragile hold of morality even upon citizens who
were determined to uphold traditional values-of family, chastity, honesty,
etc. Already in 1892, the poet and playwright, Hugo von Hoffinansthal, had
written to Schnitzler that "the most secret ... inner depths stir in us and
the actually demonic, the natural in us, sounds in dark and intoxicating
sympathetic vibration." Both Schnitzler and Hoffmansthal-with the rest
of
jung
Wien-acknowledged the power of the natural, the instinctual, in
every individual as a universal given, and strove to express it in their
works-which reached a large popular audience.
Artists and architects also attempted to depict the advent of the new, of
new ways of representing the emerging age. Their concerns came together
in 1897, in the Secession-an association formed to oppose traditional
forms (i.e., the bombastic architecture of the Ringstrasse, the Burgtheater,
conventional figurative painting) and which a year later opened its own
building-an embodiment of modernism. Its architect, Josef Olbrich, set
out to erect a place of quiet elegance, a refuge from the pressures of mod–
ern life, where straight walls would be white and gleaming, holy and chaste.
Within these pristine spaces, Gustav Klimt's flat paintings, mostly of two–
dimensional women, captured attention. Freud was keenly aware of their
concerns, and of those of the many other modern artists.
But Freud's professional involvement was in medicine. Vienna had the
best hospitals, and talented physicians from around the Austrian empire,
and as far away as America, came to study with its doctors, such as Skoda,
Krafft-Ebing, and Billroth. Moreover, anyone who was so inclined could
attend lectures by the most famous professors at the university. And intel–
lectuals and scientists, the forerunners of the Vienna circle, met in the
coffeehouses and discussed world issues from the standpoint of their spe–
cific expertise-in a city where a majority of citizens were newcomers.
Many of them had arrived from the provinces and were eager to make
their way.
At the same time, anti-Semitism was rife. In the 1880s, mass parties–
Christian Socials, Pan-Germans, Socialists and Slavic nationalists-had
formed. In 1895, the anti-Semite Karl Lueger was elected Mayor of
Vienna. Although the liberal emperor Franz Josef refused to ratifY his elec–
tion, two years later he could stem the tide no longer. Franz Josef had freed
the Jews in his empire, had allowed them to reside outside ghettos, and to
join the professions. But, as Carl Schorske observes,
during the last five years of the nineteenth century Austria-Hungary
seemed to be serving . . . "as a little world in which the big one holds
