THE transforum BOOK REVIEW
From Vienna to Chicago: Liberal Traditions on Both Sides of the Pond
By Henry Gonzalez Grimm
The birth of modern Central Europe took place in the death throes of one the world's last, truly multinational empires, the Habsburg Monarchy. Fervent nationalism was on the rise in Austria-Hungary throughout the 19th century, and it was one of the critical factors that directly led to many of the horrific wars a century later. But how did the Habsburg government react to the avalanche of political demands put forward by its ethnic groups? In the late 19th century, in an effort to accommodate the growing nationalistic tide, the Monarchy created new bureaucratic institutions along ethnic lines. However, ethnic institutionalization led to ethnic attribution and, in turn, the individual was absorbed by his or her ethnic community. Ironically, this well-intentioned policy only reinforced the exaggerated nationalist demands the government was hoping to avoid. So the Habsburg lands had moved from the liberating values of liberalism with the help of the Monarchy's institutions to an era of narrow-minded ultra-nationalistic ideologies.
This is one of many insightful arguments found in Gerald Stourzh's From Vienna to Chicago and Back, a collection of delightful, and unique, intellectual, political, and historical essays. The author is equally at ease within the political and cultural worlds of Austria and the United States. Far from dry and droll, his essays manage to engage the reader in a dialogue, so while reading diverse and seemingly complex topics such as changing meanings of the terminology of constitution in the late 17th and 18th centuries, readers might feel as if they are in the middle of an intensely personal, albeit intellectual, conversation with Mr. Stourzh. The driving force behind his stunningly extensive and varied collection of essays include his conviction that the origins of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights lay in the seeds of the American and French Revolutions.
An acknowledged master of Central European History, Gerald Stourzh studied at the University of Chicago with renowned scholars of political history and thought such as Hans J. Morgenthau and Leo Strauss. Gerald Stourzh is now a professor emeritus at the University of Vienna. From Vienna to Chicago and Back is the summation of an intellectual journey, over the course of a half century, by this outstanding man.
From Vienna to Chicago and Back:
Essays on Intellectual History and Political Thought in Europe and America.
By Gerald Stourzh
384 pp, $45
The University of Chicago Press, 2007
The Clearing
By Peter Steiner
Translated by Todd C. Hanlin
176 pages, $18.00
Ariadne Press, Riverside, CA, 2007
The Clearing is at once a point of departure and a point of return. The narrator grew up in rural Austria with his grandparents and experienced the hardships of war and the eventual dissolution of his family during peacetime. He returns from his worldly travels as a mature man who now, in a single day, reconstructs his youth in the presence of the deserted inn where he first encountered the world.
Peter Steiner was born in Baden near Vienna in 1937. He began his first attempts at fiction in the 1980s, has written a dozen prose pieces since, and today lives as a freelance writer outside Vienna and in New York City. The Clearing was first published in 1995. The translator, Todd C. Hanlin, is Professor of German at the University of Arkansas.
Numbers at Work: A Cultural Perspective
By Rudolf Taschner
Translated by Otmar Binder and David Sinclair-Jones
200 pages, $39.00
A K Peters, Ltd., Wellesley, MA, 2007
Drawing primarily from historical examples, this book explains the tremendous role that numbers and, in particular, mathematics play in all aspects of our civilization and culture. The lively style and illustrative examples will engage the reader who wants to understand the many ways in which mathematics enables science, technology, art, music, politics, and rational foundations of human thought. Each chapter focuses on the influence of mathematics in a specific field and on a specific historical figure, such as Pythagoras: Numbers and Symbol; Bach: Numbers and Music; Descartes: Numbers and Space.
A highly respected applied mathematician, Rudolf Taschner was Austria's Scientist of the Year 2004. He is also the creator of math.space, a one-of-a-kind project located in the Viennese MuseumsQuartier, one of the world's ten biggest museum complexes. It opened in January 2003 with the goal of showing that mathematics is one of the highest cultural achievements of our society.
