A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889A National Book Award Finalist A "riveting" (New York Times) look at one year of Viennese life during the twilight of an empire On January 30, 1889, at the champagne-splashed hight of the Viennese Carnival, the handsome and charming Crown Prince Rudolf fired a revolver at his teenaged mistress and then himself. The two shots that rang out at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods echo still. Frederic Morton, author of the bestselling Rothschilds, deftly tells the haunting story of the Prince and his city, where, in the span of only ten months, "the Western dream started to go wrong." In Rudolf's Vienna moved other young men with striking intellectual and artistic talents—and all as frustrated as the Prince. Among them were: young Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodor Herzl, Gustav Klimt, and the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, whose La Ronde was the great erotic drama of the fin de siecle. Morton studies these and other gifted young men, interweaving their fates with that of the doomed Prince and the entire city through to the eve of Easter, just after Rudolf's body is lowered into its permanent sarcophagus and a son named Adolf Hitler is born to Frau Klara Hitler. |
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already anti-Semitic Anton Bruckner Archduke arrived Arthur Schnitzler AUSTRIAN NATIONAL LIBRARY ball Baltazzi Baron Baroness began Bernhardt bowed Brahms Bratfisch Budapest carnival Count Court Opera Court Theater Crown Prince Danube death dress Elisabeth Emperor Empire Empress Fasching fashion father fiacre Franz Joseph Frau Schratt Freud German girl Gustav Gustav Klimt Gustav Mahler Habsburg Hanslick Herr Herzl horses Hoyos Hugo Wolf Hungarian hunting Imperial and Royal Imperial Highness January Jewish Johann Strauss Johannes Brahms Kaiser Katharina Schratt King Klimt knew Köchert lady letter liberal Lord Chamberlain Loschek Love Poachers Mahler Majesty Mary Vetsera Mayerling Meynert Mitzi Caspar Moritz Szeps Nehammer Neue Freie Presse never night official PICTURE ARCHIVES play Prater Prince's Princess Professor Ringstrasse Rudolf Schönerer season Stephanie stood summer sweet Theodor Herzl took turned Vienna Woods Viennese waiting waltz week Wiener Tagblatt Wilhelm Wittmann wrote young