Austria: Recommended Reading and Viewing
To get a feel for Austria past and present, consider these books and films:
Books: Non-Fiction
For an overview of Austrian history, try The Austrians: A Thousand-Year Odyssey (Brook-Shepherd), though most of its focus is on the 19th and 20th centuries. Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Schorske) is a dense but comprehensive analysis of the birth of modernism through Klimt, Freud, and other Viennese luminaries. The Spell of the Vienna Woods: Inspiration and Influence from Beethoven to Kafka (Hofmann) blends personal anecdotes, history, tourist information, and stories about artists who found inspiration in the 540-square-mile area that serves as Vienna's playground. Beethoven: The Music and the Life (Lockwood) includes details about the musician's life in Vienna and his contributions to its culture.
Memoirs: The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, written by Maria von Trapp, tells the true story behind the musical phenomenon. Stefan Zweig's World of Yesterday looks at how he became a successful writer in the "lost world" of pre-war Vienna.
Books: Fiction
Much fiction set in Vienna concerns the imagined lives of famous artists. The Painted Kiss (Hickey) reflects the lush elegance of fin-de-siecle Vienna and the relationship between painter Gustav Klimt and his pupil Emilie Flöge, who posed for Klimt's masterpiece The Kiss. Márai Sándor's reflective Embers paints a rich picture of cobblestoned, gas-lit Vienna just before the empire's glory began to fade. In The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Meyer), Sherlock Holmes travels to Vienna to meet with Sigmund Freud and gets involved in a case. Henry James' Midnight Song (Hill) is another literary mystery with a cast of famous historical characters. Mystery fans could also consider Airs Above the Ground (Stewart), with Lipizzaner stallions and the Austrian Alps as a backdrop, as well as A Death in Vienna (Tallis), which involves a cover-up by the Catholic Church.
Austrian feminist Elfriede Jelinek, known for exploring dark themes, won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her most famous novel, Die Klavierspielerin (The Piano Player, made into a movie) is about a troubled piano teacher who messes up the lives of her students. Viennese writer Joseph Roth's classic novel Radetzky March follows four generations of a family during the decline and fall of the Habsburgs.
Films
The Great Waltz (1938) portrays the life of composer Johann Strauss. Orson Welles infuses The Third Man (1949, actually shot in a bombed-out and Soviet-occupied Vienna) with noir foreboding. In Miracle of the White Stallions (1963) the Lipizzaner stallions are the stars in this true story of how the horses were liberated by General Patton after World War II. The beloved musical The Sound of Music (1965), also partially set in World War II, helped turn Julie Andrews into a star. Mayerling (1968) is about the suicide of Habsburg heir Archduke Rudolf (played by Omar Sharif), which played a pivotal role in Austrian history.
Mahler (1974) describes the man behind the music, and Amadeus (1984) made Mozart into a flesh-and-blood man (who giggles), as did Immortal Beloved (1994) for Beethoven.
In Before Sunrise (1995), Ethan Hawke sightsees, talks, romances, and talks some more with Julie Delpy in Vienna. The Illusionist (2006) set in circa-1900 Vienna, is about a magician who uses his abilities to gain the love of a woman engaged to the crown prince.
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