Between Shtetl and Salon: Jewish Women in Vienna 1900
Alison Rose. Jewish Women in Fin de Siècle Vienna. Jewish History, Life, and Culture Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. xi + 314 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-292-71861-6.
Reviewed by Megan Brandow-Faller (Georgetown University)
Published on HABSBURG (November, 2009)
Commissioned by Jonathan Kwan
Between Shtetl and Salon: Jewish Women in Vienna 1900
Alison Rose’s pioneering monograph Jewish Women in Fin de Siècle Vienna charts new territory on the familiar waters of Vienna 1900. Since the publication of Carl Schorske’s compelling series of cultural historical essays (Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture [1980]), a model that attributed an efflorescence of modern art, literature, and science in the Austrian capital circa 1890-1914 to the disillusioned sons of liberalism, historians have revised and expanded aspects of the Schorskean “failure of liberalism” paradigm. A number of recent works have corrected Schorske’s neglect of the distinctly Jewish character of Viennese modernism, highlighting the prevalence of Jewish patronage of modern art, contributions to literature, philosophy, and psychology, and even proposing that notions of Jewish enlightenment, or Haskalah, stamped the general character of the Viennese fin de siècle.[1] Yet, aside from a few general works, Rose’s groundbreaking publication represents the first full-length study dedicated to a gendered analysis of Viennese Jewry circa 1900.[2] Basing her work on collections of personal papers, memoirs, pamphlets, and oral histories housed in American, Austrian, and Israeli repositories, Rose seeks to “reintegrate Jewish women into the history of turn of the century Vienna in order to demonstrate their importance as cultural creators” (p. 2). With distinguished track records as salonières and business associates, Jewish women harnessed the flexibility in Talmudic law and traditional and reform Judaism to pursue a variety of religious, cultural, and intellectual pursuits propelling
Reviewed by Megan Brandow-Faller (Georgetown University)
Published on HABSBURG (November, 2009)
Commissioned by Jonathan Kwan
Between Shtetl and Salon: Jewish Women in Vienna 1900
Alison Rose’s pioneering monograph Jewish Women in Fin de Siècle Vienna charts new territory on the familiar waters of Vienna 1900. Since the publication of Carl Schorske’s compelling series of cultural historical essays (Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture [1980]), a model that attributed an efflorescence of modern art, literature, and science in the Austrian capital circa 1890-1914 to the disillusioned sons of liberalism, historians have revised and expanded aspects of the Schorskean “failure of liberalism” paradigm. A number of recent works have corrected Schorske’s neglect of the distinctly Jewish character of Viennese modernism, highlighting the prevalence of Jewish patronage of modern art, contributions to literature, philosophy, and psychology, and even proposing that notions of Jewish enlightenment, or Haskalah, stamped the general character of the Viennese fin de siècle.[1] Yet, aside from a few general works, Rose’s groundbreaking publication represents the first full-length study dedicated to a gendered analysis of Viennese Jewry circa 1900.[2] Basing her work on collections of personal papers, memoirs, pamphlets, and oral histories housed in American, Austrian, and Israeli repositories, Rose seeks to “reintegrate Jewish women into the history of turn of the century Vienna in order to demonstrate their importance as cultural creators” (p. 2). With distinguished track records as salonières and business associates, Jewish women harnessed the flexibility in Talmudic law and traditional and reform Judaism to pursue a variety of religious, cultural, and intellectual pursuits propelling