Berthold Viertel - A Biography of Viennese Modernism

Berthold Viertel a writer and director born in Vienna in 1885 started working on his autobiography at the age of 21 but never completed it. When he died in Vienna in 1953, he left an extensive yet fragmentary autobiographical project that had been subject to many substantial changes during his exile and remigration in 1948. During the 1990ies Viertel he was rediscovered for a very short period as an influential writer and networker by the Austrian Exile Studies. His critical perspective on an alternative Vienna around 1900 however has not been thoroughly examined in this context. This neglect is striking, considering the fact that Viertel presented an important counter-image to Stefan Zweigs idealising depiction. In order to examine Viertels complex autobiographical writing an innovative biographical approach had to be chosen, first analysing his life and autobiographical practice between 1917 and 1953. Subsequently his individual memories were interlinked with collective memory and current research in 15 biographical sites of memory (lieux de mémoire), encompassing the period between 1860 and 1917. These are mainly driven by a thematic focus, but also follow a chronological life narrative: Modernity in Vienna for Viertel, that meant the clash of two generations, fathers and sons, struggling for preservation or destruction against the backdrop of the rapidly modernizing Hapsburg monarchy, still held together by strong forces like a Monarchic Sentiment. His own Jewish, petty- bourgeois family came from Galicia and lived very differently in Jewish Vienna, influenced by Catholic Maidservants and German Culture. In Luegers Vienna as well as through Classmate Hitler children like Viertel were confronted with antisemitism and reacted first with Zionism and later with Adolescent Anarchy. Socialism also presented itself as an option for Berthold Viertel especially as he had close personal ties to the Adler Family but it was often judged as not radical enough. Viertel described his Studies as combining reactionary university education with military training and a confrontation with very different schools of thought apart from these institutions, establishing themselves in circles and coffeehouses. Sexual Emancipation was to be achieved there and Karl Kraus was a critical idol a close but ambivalent friendship connected him with Berthold Viertel. Around 1912 Viertel saw the Theatre as an instrument to take a critical stance and have impact of society, but the First World War destroyed the reformatory attempts of critical modernism and reinforced its dark, problematic side. Berthold Viertel can thus be shown as a fascinating player in the cultural scene of Vienna 1900 as well as a typical representative of a critical avant-garde, whose lines of tradition he wanted to preserve in his autobiographical writing.