Peter Altenberg
Peter Altenberg was a writer and poet from Vienna, Austria. He was key to the genesis of early modernism in the city, he was born Richard Engländer on 9 March 1859 in Vienna. The nom de plume, "Altenberg", came from a small town on the Danube river, he chose the "Peter" to honor a young girl whom he remembered as an unrequited love. Although he grew up in a middle class Jewish family, Altenberg separated himself from his family of origin by dropping out of both law and medical school, embracing Bohemianism as a permanent lifestyle choice, he cultivated a feminine appearance and feminine handwriting, wore a cape, sandals and a broad-brimmed hat, despised'macho' masculinity. Discovered by Arthur Schnitzler in 1894 and appreciated by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Karl Kraus, Altenberg was one of the main proponents of Viennese Impressionism, he was a master of aphoristic stories based on close observation of everyday life events. After reading Altenberg's first published collection Wie ich es sehe Hofmannsthal wrote: "Even though unconcerned with things important, the book has such a good conscience that one can see that it cannot be a German book.
It is Viennese. It flaunts it – its origin – as it flaunts its attitude." At the fin de siècle, when Vienna was a major crucible and center for modern arts and culture, Altenberg was a influential part of a literary and artistic movement known as Jung-Wien. Altenberg was a contemporary of Karl Kraus, Gustav Mahler, Arthur Schnitzler, Gustav Klimt, Adolf Loos, with whom he had a close relationship, he was somewhat older, in his early 30s, than the others. His oeuvre consists of short, poetic prose pieces that do not fit into usual formal categories; the inspiration for his trademark short prose he drew from the concise aesthetic of Charles Baudelaire's prose poems and the spatial limitations of the'Correspondenzkarte,' the postcard, first launched and disseminated in his native Austria in 1869. He became well known throughout Vienna after the publication of a book of his fragmentary observations of women and children in everyday street activities; because most of his literary work was written while he frequented various Viennese bars and coffeehouses, Altenberg is sometimes referred to as a cabaret or coffee house poet.
His favorite coffeehouse was the Café Central, to which he had his mail delivered. Altenberg's detractors said he was a womanizer. Altenberg was rumored to have problems with alcoholism and mental illness, yet his admirers considered him to be a creative individual with a great love for the aesthetic, for nature, for young girls. He is known to have had a large collection of photographs and drawings of young girls, those who knew him well wrote of his adoration of young girls. Altenberg was never a commercially successful writer, but he did enjoy most if not all of the benefits of fame in his lifetime. Altenberg was at one point nominated for the Nobel Prize; some of the aphoristic poetry he wrote on the backs of postcards and scraps of paper were set to music by composer Alban Berg. In 1913, Berg's Five songs on picture postcard; the piece caused an uproar, the performance had to be halted: a complete performance of the work was not given until 1952. Altenberg, like many writers and artists, was short of money, but he was adept at making friends, cultivating patrons, convincing others to pay for his meals, his champagne his rent, with which he was late.
He repaid his debts with his talent, his wit, his charm. Many academics consider him to have been a "bohemian's bohemian." Most of Altenberg's work is published in the German language and, outside of anthology pieces, is difficult to find. Much of it remains in private collections. Two selections have been translated, Evocations of Love and Telegrams of the Soul: Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg. Altenberg, who never married, died on 8 January 1919, aged 59, he is buried at Central Cemetery in Austria. The Altenberg Trio is named after Peter Altenberg. Wie ich es sehe. S. Fischer, Berlin 1896. Fischer, Berlin 1897. Fünfundfünfzig neue Studien. Fischer, Berlin 1901 Prodromos. Fischer, Berlin 1906 Märchen des Lebens. Fischer, Berlin 1908. A. ebd. 1919 Die Auswahl aus meinen Büchern. Fischer, Berlin 1908 Bilderbögen des kleinen Lebens. Reiss, Berlin 1909 Neues Altes. Fischer, Berlin 1911 Semmering 1912. Fischer, Berlin 1913. A. ebd. 1919 Fechsung. Fischer, Berlin 1915 Nachfechsung. Fischer, Berlin 1916 Vita ipsa.
Fischer, Berlin 1918 Mein Lebensabend. Fischer, Berlin 1919 (Digitalised at Bielefeld University Der Nachlass von Peter Altenberg, zusammensgestellt von Alfred Polgar. Fischer, Berlin 1925. Peter Altenberg. Auswahl von Karl Kraus, herausgegeben von Sigismund von Radecki. Atlantis, Zürich 1963 Das Buch der Bücher von Peter Altenberg, zusammengestellt von Karl Kraus. 3 Bände. Wallstein, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0409-3 Die Selbsterfindung eines Dichters. Briefe und Dokumente 1892–1896. Hrsg. Und mit einem Nachwort von Leo A. Lensing. Wallstein, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0552-6 Telegrams of the Soul: Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg. Trans. Peter Wortsman Ashantee.. Trans. Katharina von Hammerstein Alexander King Presents Peter Altenberg's Evocations of Love. Trans. Alexander King Simpson, Josephine Mary Nelmes. Pete
Café Central
Café Central is a traditional Viennese café located at Herrengasse 14 in the Innere Stadt first district of Vienna, Austria. The café occupies the ground floor of the former Bank and Stockmarket Building, today called the Palais Ferstel after its architect Heinrich von Ferstel; the café was opened in 1876, in the late 19th century it became a key meeting place of the Viennese intellectual scene. Key regulars included: Peter Altenberg, Theodor Herzl, Alfred Adler, Egon Friedell, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Anton Kuh, Adolf Loos, Leo Perutz, Alfred Polgar, Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky. In January 1913 alone, Josip Broz Tito, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Stalin and Trotsky were patrons of the establishment; the café was referred to as the "Chess school" because of the presence of many chess players who used the first floor for their games. Members of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists held many meetings at the café before and after World War I. A well known story is that when Victor Adler objected to Count Berchtold, foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, that war would provoke revolution in Russia if not in the Habsburg monarchy, he replied: "And who will lead this revolution?
Mr. Bronstein sitting over there at the Cafe Central?"The café closed at the end of World War II. In 1975, the Palais Ferstel was renovated and the Central was newly opened, however in a different part of the building. In 1986, it was renovated once again. Today it is both a tourist spot and a popular café marked by its place in literary history. List of restaurants in Vienna Café Central website
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Austrian Empire
The Austrian Empire was a Central European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence, it was the third most populous empire after the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom in Europe. Along with Prussia, it was one of the two major powers of the German Confederation. Geographically, it was the third largest empire in Europe after the Russian Empire and the First French Empire. Proclaimed in response to the First French Empire, it overlapped with the Holy Roman Empire until the latter's dissolution in 1806; the Kingdom of Hungary – as Regnum Independens – was administered by its own institutions separately from the rest of the empire. After Austria was defeated in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 was adopted, joining together the Kingdom of Hungary and the Empire of Austria to form Austria-Hungary; the power of nationalism to create new states was irresistible in the 19th century, the process could lead to collapse in the absence of a strong nationalism.
The Austrian Empire had the advantage of size, but multiple disadvantages. There were rivals on four sides, its finances were unstable, the population was fragmented into multiple ethnicities and languages that served as the bases for separatist nationalism, it had a large army with good forts. Its naval resources were so minimal, it typified by Metternich. They employed a grand strategy for survival that balanced out different forces, set up buffer zones, kept the Habsburg empire going despite wars with the Ottomans, Frederick the Great and Bismarck, until the final disaster of the First World War; the Empire overnight disintegrated into multiple states based on nationalism. Changes shaping the nature of the Holy Roman Empire took place during conferences in Rastatt and Regensburg. On 24 March 1803, the Imperial Recess was declared, which reduced the number of ecclesiastical states from 81 to only 3 and the free imperial cities from 51 to 6; this measure was aimed at replacing the old constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, but the actual consequence of the Imperial Recess was the end of the empire.
Taking this significant change into consideration, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II created the title Emperor of Austria, for himself and his successors. In 1804, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, ruler of the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy, founded the Empire of Austria, in which all his lands were included. In doing so he created a formal overarching structure for the Habsburg Monarchy, which had functioned as a composite monarchy for about three hundred years, he did so because he foresaw either the end of the Holy Roman Empire, or the eventual accession as Holy Roman Emperor of Napoleon, who had earlier that year adopted the title of an Emperor of the French. To safeguard his dynasty's imperial status he adopted the additional hereditary title of Emperor of Austria. Apart from now being included in a new "Kaiserthum", the workings of the overarching structure and the status of its component lands at first stayed much the same as they had been under the composite monarchy that existed before 1804.
This was demonstrated by the status of the Kingdom of Hungary, a country that had never been a part of the Holy Roman Empire and which had always been considered a separate realm—a status, affirmed by Article X, added to Hungary's constitution in 1790 during the phase of the composite monarchy and described the state as a Regnum Independens. Hungary's affairs remained administered by its own institutions, thus no Imperial institutions were involved in its government. The fall and dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire was accelerated by French intervention in the Empire in September 1805. On 20 October 1805, an Austrian army led by General Karl Mack von Leiberich was defeated by French armies near the town of Ulm; the French victory resulted in the capture of many cannons. Napoleon's army won another victory at Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. Francis was forced into negotiations with the French from 4 to 6 December 1805, which concluded with an armistice on 6 December 1805; the French victories encouraged rulers of certain imperial territories to ally themselves with the French and assert their formal independence from the Empire.
On 10 December 1805, Maximilian IV Joseph, the prince-elector and Duke of Bavaria, proclaimed himself King, followed by the Duke of Württemberg Frederick III on 11 December. Charles Frederick, Margrave of Baden, was given the title of Grand Duke on 12 December; each of these new states became French allies. The Treaty of Pressburg between France and Austria, signed in Pressburg on 26 December, enlarged the territory of Napoleon's German allies at the expense of defeated Austria. Francis II agreed to the humiliating Treaty of Pressburg, which in practice meant the dissolution of the long-lived Holy Roman Empire and a reorganization under a Napoleonic imprint of the German territories lost in the process into a precursor state of what became modern Germany, those possessions nominally having been part of the Holy Roman Empire within the present boundaries of Germany, as well as other measures weakening Austria and the Habsburgs in other ways. Certain Austrian holdings in
Danube
The Danube is Europe's second longest river, after the Volga. It is located in Eastern Europe; the Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for 2,850 km, passing through or bordering Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine before draining into the Black Sea, its drainage basin extends into nine more countries. The Danube river basin is home to fish species such as pike, huchen, Wels catfish and tench, it is home to a large diversity of carp and sturgeon, as well as salmon and trout. A few species of euryhaline fish, such as European seabass and eel, inhabit the Danube Delta and the lower portion of the river. Since ancient times, the Danube has become a traditional trade route in Europe, nowadays 2,415 km of its total length being navigable; the river is an important source of energy and drinking water. Danube is an Old European river name derived from a Proto-Indo-European *dānu.
Other river names from the same root include the Dunaj, Dzvina/Daugava, Donets, Dniestr, Dysna and Tuoni. In Rigvedic Sanskrit, dānu means "fluid, drop", in Avestan, the same word means "river". In the Rigveda, Dānu once appears as the mother of Vrtra, "a dragon blocking the course of the rivers"; the Finnish word for Danube is Tonava, most derived from the word for the river in Swedish and German, Donau. Its Sámi name Deatnu means "Great River", it is possible that dānu in Scythian as in Avestan was a generic word for "river": Dnieper and Dniestr, from Danapris and Danastius, are presumed to continue Scythian *dānu apara "far river" and *dānu nazdya- "near river", respectively. The river was known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning "strong, swift", from a root also encountered in the ancient name of the Dniester and akin to Iranic turos “swift” and Sanskrit iṣiras "swift", from the PIE *isro-, *sreu “to flow”. In the Middle Ages, the Greek Tiras was borrowed into Italian as Tyrlo and into Turkic languages as Tyrla, the latter further borrowed into Romanian as a regionalism.
The Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, "the bringer of luck". In Latin, the Danube was variously known as Ister; the Latin name is masculine, except Slovenian. The German Donau is feminine, as it has been re-interpreted as containing the suffix -ouwe "wetland". Romanian differs from other surrounding languages in designating the river with a feminine term, Dunărea; this form was not inherited from Latin. To explain the loss of the Latin name, scholars who suppose that Romanian developed near the large river propose that the Romanian name descends from a hypotetical Thracian *Donaris that shares the same PIE root with the Iranic don-/dan-, with the suffix -aris encountered in the ancient name of the Ialomița River, in the unidentified Miliare river mentioned by Jordanes in his Getica. Gábor Vékony says that this hypothesis is not plausible, because the Greeks borrowed the Istros form from the native Thracians, he proposes. The modern languages spoken in the Danube basin all use names related to Dānuvius: German: Donau.
Dunav. Dunai. Classified as an international waterway, it originates in the town of Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest of Germany, at the confluence of the rivers Brigach and Breg; the Danube flows southeast for about 2,730 km, passing through four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and Ukraine. Once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, the river passes through or touches the borders of 10 countries: Romania, Serbia, Germany, Slovakia, Croatia and Moldova, its drainage basin extends into nine more. In addition to the bordering countries, the drainage basin includes parts of nine more countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Italy, North Macedonia and Albania, its total drainage basin is 801,463 km2. The highest point of the drainage basin is the summit of Piz Bernina at the Italy–Switzerland border, at 4,049 metres; the land drained by the Danube extends into many other countries. Many Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges and other shallow-draught boats.
From its source to its outlet into the Black Sea, its main tribu
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was an Austro-Bohemian late-Romantic composer, one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners. In 2016, a BBC Music Magazine survey of 151 conductors ranked three of his symphonies in the top ten symphonies of all time. Born in Bohemia as a German-speaking Jew of humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera.
During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. His innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Tchaikovsky. Late in his life he was director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. Mahler's œuvre is limited. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists; these works were controversial when first performed, several were slow to receive critical and popular approval. Some of Mahler's immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein and Peter Maxwell Davies are among 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler.
The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composer's life and work. The Mahler family were of humble circumstances. Bohemia was part of the Austrian Empire. From this background the future composer developed early on a permanent sense of exile, "always an intruder, never welcomed."Bernhard Mahler, the pedlar's son and the composer's father, elevated himself to the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie by becoming a coachman and an innkeeper. He bought a modest house in the village of Kalischt, halfway between Prague in Bohemia and Brno in Moravia, in the geographic center of today's Czech Republic. Bernhard's wife, gave birth to the first of the couple's 14 children, a son Isidor, who died in infancy. Two years on 7 July 1860, their second son, was born. In October 1860, Bernhard Mahler moved with his wife and infant son, Gustav, to the town of Iglau, 25 km to the south-east, where he built up a distillery and tavern business; the family grew but of the 12 children born to the family in Iglau only six survived infancy.
Iglau was a thriving commercial town of 20,000 people where Gustav was introduced to music through street songs, dance tunes, folk melodies, the trumpet calls and marches of the local military band. All of these elements would contribute to his mature musical vocabulary; when he was four years old, Gustav took to it immediately. He developed his performing skills sufficiently to be considered a local Wunderkind and gave his first public performance at the town theatre when he was ten years old. Although Gustav loved making music, his school reports from the Iglau Gymnasium portrayed him as absent-minded and unreliable in academic work. In 1871, in the hope of improving the boy's results, his father sent him to the New Town Gymnasium in Prague, but Gustav was unhappy there and soon returned to Iglau. On 13 April 1875 he suffered a bitter personal loss when his younger brother Ernst died after a long illness. Mahler sought to express his feelings in music: with the help of a friend, Josef Steiner, he began work on an opera, Herzog Ernst von Schwaben as a memorial to his lost brother.
Neither the music nor the libretto of this work has survived. Bernhard Mahler supported his son's ambitions for a music career, agreed that the boy should try for a place at the Vienna Conservatory; the young Mahler was auditioned by the renowned pianist Julius Epstein, accepted for 1875–76. He made good progress in his piano studies with Epstein and won prizes at the end of each of his first two years. For his final year, 1877–78, he concentrated on composition and harmony under Robert Fuchs and Franz Krenn. Few of Mahler's student compositions have survived, he destroyed a symphonic movement prepared for an end-of-term competition, after its scornful rejection
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