4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Political Culture, Radicalism and the Road to Philippi, February 21, 2008
Since the 1970's, it is generally accepted that fin de siècle Vienna was a birthplace of a major part of the modern culture and mentality if not of modernity itself. In the conventional picture of the origins of modernism, the Habsburg capital is the central fixture. This was primarily due to the popular success of Carl Schorske' pioneering study, Fin de Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (1980). Very briefly, Schorske explained both the origins of the ahistorical modernist mindset (as well as its discontents) in Vienna as a result of the retreat by the heirs of Austrian liberal tradition from the political realm into aesthetics and psychological in face of the rise of mass illiberal politics as exemplified by the Christian Social Party led by Karl Leuger. Later variants of this paradigm, based on unexamined assumptions about the nature of liberal influence on Austrian society have continued to structure the study of late 19th century politics and culture in Central Europe. The normalization of radical nationalism and anti-Semitism in Austrian political culture around 1900 has been depicted as marking simultaneous rejection of all things liberal and a decisive middle class retreat from politics and emblematic of an entire epoch in European history. Ultimately, this paradigm requires the self-conscious renunciation of liberalism as a necessary and sufficient condition of the birth of the modern.
By late 1980's, (due to Boyer's book and Pieter Judson's work on the liberal legacy) the assumptions underlying the Schorskean paradigm ("failure of liberalism" thesis or his claim that both modern mass politics and the rejection of the bond between art and society simultaneously has their origins in Vienna) were found to be untenable and based on uneven monographic basis.
Boyer focusing in this very detailed study on over five decades (1848-97) of Austrian politics in general and of Vienna in particular, shows that the supposed clash between 'rationalist' liberalism and 'irrationalist' anti-liberalism in Vienna was a distortion of what actually happened. Liberalism's retreat, after the enfranchisement of lower middle classes by the Taaffe regime in the 1880's was more due to their continued anti-democratic stance and continued support of restricted franchise (to those who paid at least an annual 10-florin tax or about 5% of the population) and exclusivity rather than their rationalism. Boyer re-interpretation of the rise of Christian Social party and the demise of liberal tradition centers on the unique coalition of social and occupational groups that was forged in a consecutive four stage process by Karl Leuger between 1880 and 1896, some of these groups being traditional supporters of liberals. The artisans were co-opted between 1880 and 1886, the priests and Democrats between 1886 and 1890, the teachers and civil servants between 1890 and 1894 and finally the property owners in the crucial years of 1895-96. Central to the arguments of the book in tracing the profound reconstruction of the Viennese political system by 1900 by Leuger's party is the examinations of the continuities and radical changes in the political culture of Austria.
Professor Boyer shows very clearly exactly what were the political achievements of Karl Leuger, what liberals in the Habsburg Empire aspired to and why they had to fail in the face of rise of modern mass politics. He deftly demonstrates that Leuger far from being a rightist fanatic was Vienna's first professional politician and whose espousal of anti-Semitic rhetoric was in direct imitation to the liberals' use of anti-clerical rhetoric. In this context, since Christian Socials were the first successful mass political party to programmatically use the rhetoric of anti-Semitism and to present and instill models of political behavior which in other hands and times had such calamitous consequences, the questions of Leuger's relationship to a hypothetical proto fascist tradition cannot be ignored. Careful parsing of the evidence leads Boyer to conclude that in the Viennese context, the use of anti-Semitism was an exceedingly complex defense mechanism against unwarranted social change. The political mode employed by Leuger was deeply rooted in the 19th century traditions and values and if anything, was baroque, not fascistic.
In a nutshell, Boyer's Leuger has very little to do with the merely charismatic Leuger of the "failure of liberalism" thesis and his treatment draws our attention in great detail to the underlying Viennese political tradition and social context. In other words, Boyer's research shows clearly that we cannot begin to understand the relationship of culture to politics until the question of the nature of Viennese society and its values is raised or that without the social history of Vienna, the relation between politics and culture is a purely hypothetical one.
The book is based on extensive archival research, judicious use of economic data and a formidable grasp of the social structure of 19th century Vienna. Apart from Karl Leuger, other politicians and personalities including Vogelsang, Liechtenstein, Albert Gessmann and Robert Pattai receive discerning appraisals. Considering the scope of this study, it is clear that only John Boyer's sharp sense for focusing intellectual problems has prevented the work from expanding ad infinitum.
This work not only offers the best explanation to date of the rise of the first explicitly illiberal political movement with a powerful command of bourgeois loyalties in Central Europe but also subjects crucial classificatory and explanatory categories of scholarship such as fin de siècle, liberal, mass party, anti-Semitism and proto-fascism to penetrating analysis.
Since its publication, Boyer's study however has been criticized for his passing over the underlying vitality of liberalism at the municipal and local level and preferring to base some of his conclusions on its parliamentary decline alone. As Judson's work has shown, this decline was only a small part of the larger story played out within several municipal governments and not primarily in Imperial metro pole Vienna. Outside Vienna it was often the liberals who politicized ethnic and gender differences most successfully in the 1880's and 90's. This omission leads Boyer to leave unexamined the critical connections between liberal tradition and political radicalism of the fin de siècle and the foundational role played by the liberal tradition in organizing the structures of political institutions and popular discourse. The upshot of this is that liberal ideals and culture are implicitly absolved of any responsibility for the later horrors perpetrated by the legacies of fin de siècle nationalism, racism and "irrational" mass politics.
Although this book was published more than twenty five years ago, it is still the best documented and most important book on the political culture of Vienna from 1848-1897 both for amateurs and advanced students of Central European history. It is recommended that this book be read in conjunction with Pieter Judson's, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848-1914.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
