 Thank you all for coming. This is a subject I should say that's very close to my heart. My father was born a Viennese Jew who emigrated in 39 with my mother who is from Budapest. So they are a real Austro-Hungarian couple. And one other kind of disclaimer, I was a teaching assistant for Carl Shorsky, the intellectual historian whose work on Turn of the Century Vienna really brought it into our consciousness. I mean, before his work, Fantasy Ecclavienna, Politics and Culture, appeared in 1979. People really didn't think of Vienna as really one of the key places and the beginnings of cultural modernism. But he really brought it to our attention. I remember as his teaching assistant, I had never heard of Gustav Klimt when I first started that class. And now years later in 2007, his famous painting, The Woman in Gold, whom you probably know from that film, sold at that time for more money than any painting had ever sold for before. So I think it's fair to say that this culture of Turn of the Century Vienna is now really part of our consciousness. But the question is, how Jewish was that culture? And at that point, you might scratch your head and say, well, what do you mean by that? Well, here's what I mean by it. Shorski's work was he did not ignore the Jewish element by any means. If you look at his book, one chapter is devoted entirely to the rise of anti-Semitic political movements and how Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, really responded to that with his Zionist tract, the Jewish state. So that was certainly a very major part of the work. Another was his chapter on Freud, in which he really showed how Freud's personal crisis leading to his breakthrough work, The Interpretation of Dreams, was very much connected to his Jewishness and his feelings about how that affected him in the world. So it's not that Shorski ignored the Jewish element entirely. But then 10 years later, Stephen Beller published this work called Vienna and the Jews, 1867 to 1938, A Cultural History, in which he basically challenged Shorski's thesis and said, really, that the culture of fantasy at Vienna was really defined by its Jewishness. So this is the problem we're going to be facing, how really to understand this. And now just a few facts to lay the basis for this. First of all, population. If you look at the numbers, in 1800, the Jewish population of Vienna was tiny. It was 1,000 people at the most. By 1860, it hadn't grown that much. It was still just around 6,000. But then look at the numbers. 30 years later, there were 100,000 Jews in Vienna, which is about 10% of the total population. And then 20 years after that, it had grown to 175,000. So clearly, just in terms of numbers, Jews were a very significant part of the population. But then, of course, we ask ourselves, how in the world did the population increase that much? Well, one big fact was in 1867, Franz Josef, the emperor of Austria-Hungary, well, that was the year it became Austria-Hungary, because he had, in order to appease some of the nationalist movements, he basically granted equal rights status to Hungary. And also, he basically then became king of Hungary, as well as emperor of Austria. And so the initials Ka and Ka, which means Kaiserlich and Königlich, imperial and royal, appear all over Vienna. As you may know, Robert Muzel, the great Viennese novelist of the post-World War I era, renamed this kingdom Kakanien, Ka and Ka. But I think you know what Kaka means in English. Well, it means the same thing in German. So just a little footnote about Vienna. But so anyway, getting back to 1867, this was a very challenging year. Austria had just been defeated by Prussia. And this was a huge benchmark, because for centuries, the Habsburgs in Vienna had thought of themselves as the ruling power in the German-speaking world. But then Prussia basically emerged as a ruler, and not only that, the German state, which they created just a couple of years later, did not include Austria, which was a big decision as well. So basically Franz Josef made the concession to the Hungarians by granting this equal status. And then to the sort of liberal middle class in Austria, he granted a constitution, which basically was a big, big turning point. The liberals felt this was their great day, that now middle class people could be in government. But another aspect of this constitution was that it granted equal rights to the Jews. And this was a big turning point. Then another factor here is that, as you probably know, in Eastern Europe, all over and in Russia, there was a huge rise in anti-Semitic violence, pogroms, as they were called, which led to a huge migration westward, which affected all of Europe, affected the United States as well. And so this was a huge factor. And then if you look at a map and you see where Vienna is located, it's really pretty far to the east. For instance, most of the Czech Republic is to the west of Vienna. So you think about where these Eastern European Jewish emigres were heading, Vienna was really the logical point. So many of them came there. So that kind of accounts for the population shift. But that shift, of course, had some consequences. Beller, the historian who argues for the Jewishness of the turn of the century Vienna, made the claim that the liberal bourgeoisie, the middle class in Vienna, was not only heavily Jewish, but predominantly Jewish. I'm not sure about his numbers, but certainly they represented a huge portion, especially in some of the professional fields, notably medicine, Jews were vastly represented far greater than the percentage of the population. So all this might sound like good news, but then, of course, there's always bad news. The bad news is that this great increase in the size of the Jewish population led to a growth in anti-Semitism. Another factor here is that this great liberal heyday that started in 1867 ended really six years later when there was a huge stock market crash, which really led to a lot of backlash against the liberal values, and especially against the Jews who were then regarded as the villains of the peace. Same old, same old. And you had two major political movements, basically rising up, which were both defined by anti-Semitism. One was the more radically anti-Semitic one, the so-called Pan-Germanist movement, which basically wanted to unite with the new German state. And it was also anti-Catholic who wanted to separate itself from the Vatican because they saw that as really an obstacle to merging with Germany. Needless to say, in a country that's 90% Catholic, that wasn't a very good political slogan. So they didn't really get that far politically. On the other hand, the Christian Socialist Party, led by Carl Lueger, became a huge success. Lueger himself became mayor of Vienna in 1897. And they were a little less rabidly anti-Semitic. In fact, Lueger is very famous for his one liner. He was one of his more fervently anti-Semitic apostles, saw him having lunch in a cafe with a very wealthy Jewish benefactor and was totally outraged. And when he confronted Lueger, Lueger's response in his wonderfully Viennese dialect was, oh, I get to decide who's a Jew and who isn't. So for him, anti-Semitism was a convenient kind of slogan. But nevertheless, his success was a huge blow to the Jewish population. Now, another thing, and this is worth, this applies to several of the Jewish figures, that there was a kind of backlash. And this is something we see all over Europe and we see in the US as well. Because you think of these Jews who for generations had wanted so much to assimilate, wanted to be accepted as fellow citizens. And then you have this influx of non-assimilated Austudans, as they were called, or Eastern European Jews, who spoke Yiddish, who had traditional Jewish garments, and who basically totally called into question their idea that Jews were just fellow citizens. So there was a real kind of antagonism there. And then for some Jews, this was kind of internalized to what some have called Jewish self-hatred. So things get complicated here. But then when we ask how Jewish was turned to the century Vienna, another big question to ask is, well, what do we mean by the word Jewish? And a number of the figures here, which who are sometimes basically held up as examples of Jewish achievements, many of us would question, well, are they Jews? Take Hugo von Hobson's Hofmannstahl, one of the great writers of the time. His great-grandfather was a Jewish merchant who actually was granted what's called this predicate of nobility, symbolized by their name Fohn. This was a big deal. And he got this because of his service to the Austrian emperor. But he was Jewish, and everyone knew it. However, his son then converted to Catholicism, married a Catholic woman, and then their son, who was Hofmannstahl's father, similarly married a Catholic woman. So if you define Jewishness by your matrilineal heritage, that is having a Jewish mother, then very clearly Hofmannstahl was not even close to being Jewish. But he was part of this literary circle called Jungwien, or Jungvienna, that was widely regarded as a Jewish circle. And so with this rising anti-Semitism and the knowledge that his great-grandfather had been a Jew, Hofmannstahl was kind of identified as a Jew. Another example is the philosopher Wittgenstein, who also came from very mixed family background, but who also, although he didn't identify with being Jewish, was widely regarded as Jewish. So the whole question of Jewish identity is a complicated one here. And when we start looking at some of the figures in turn of the century Viennese culture, we have several, if you could divide them into several different categories. So the first category are those who are really unmistakably Jewish, who clearly had a Jewish mother, a Jewish upbringing, and who really chose to identify with their Jewishness. Two examples are the composer Arnold Schoenberg. We'll talk about him a little more later. And then another writer, Richard Behrhoffmann. And then there are others who identified as Jews culturally, though not really religiously. Siegmund Freud would be one example, who, as you probably know, was not a great fan of religion of any kind. But he still was a member of Bnei Brith. He joined in a very crucial time in his career, and he remained a member. So he did identify as a Jew. Another example is Theodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement, who also was really not very religious at all, but clearly embraced his Jewish identity at a time in his career. So this is one group. But then another would be people like the writer, Arthur Schnitzler, who were definitely Jewish by descent, but who did not deny their Jewish identity, but really did not embrace it in any way. And Schnitzler is an interesting example. I'll talk a little more about him in a while. But then there are others who were raised Jewish, who were actually Jewish by descent, but then who chose to convert. And yet, even after conversion, they felt they really never could escape their Jewish identity. And a prime example of that is the composer Gustav Mahler. And then the other extreme are those who some have labeled self-hating Jews. Otto Weininger is the most pathological example. He wrote of his work at a very young age called Geschlecht und Charakter, so gender or sex and character, which was extremely misogynist. I mean, basically wailed about the feminization of culture. But then, towards the end, has a whole chapter about the Jews who are basically regarded as quintessentially feminine. And he just totally demonizes the Jews. Now Weininger committed suicide shortly after this appeared. Curiously enough, he chose to go to the house where Beethoven died, which is where he killed himself. But his work, believe it or not, was widely read, even among some Jewish circles. So he had a huge impact, though hardly anyone would deny that he was a self-hating Jew. Karl Krause is a more controversial figure. And we'll talk more about him in a bit. He was a very influential writer and journalist from really the turn of the century until his death in the 1930s. He was Jewish, although he converted to Catholicism for a while, then sort of divorced himself from the Catholic Church. But he became the huge critic of much of the Jewish culture of his time. And so some of you may know the book by Sandra Gillman called Jewish Self-Hatred, which is the sort of defining text he devoted a whole chapter to Karl Krause. But others, including Jewish scholars, question that. So his status is a little ambiguous in that way. So now let's actually talk about some of these Jewish figures. And I'm dividing it up into different fields of culture. So we'll start with literature. And one major figure here is Artur Schnitzler. Now, some of you may know his name. Others who may not know the name may have been acquainted with some of his works. His play Rheigen, which is very controversial, those of you who know it know, that it starts with a sailor and a prostitute in one scene having a little liaison. And then in the next scene, the sailor has it with another woman. Then in the next scene is that woman with someone else. So it's a circle, basically, which kind of combines all the different social classes in Vienna. And you'll see in the middle of every scene, you'll see a dash, dash, dash, dash, dash. And you can imagine what that signifies. So when you see that in any other work, you'll start thinking of that. So this became the basis for two very celebrated films, one French film, and from 1950, La Ronde with Simon Signoré, famous actress. Another, in 1964, by Roger Vadim called Circle of Love, featuring Jane Fonda. And another work by Schnitzler that has made its way into American larger culture is the film from 1999, Eyes Wide Shut, which starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. So Schnitzler's work is certainly still very much present with us. He had no interest in religious observance, and he had rejected Zionism. But he still never denied his Jewish background. And in two of his major works, he really dealt with the rise of anti-Semitism, the novel The Road into the Open and the play Professor Bernhardy. His works stirred up a great deal of controversy, some of them because of their racy content, as in the case of Reagan or Circle of Love, and others because his work, Lieutenant Gustl, was a really path-breaking work. If you know, Stream of Consciousness, you've probably all heard that term, it really became one of the significant revolutionary breakthrough modes in 20th century writing. This is one of the very first examples of it. But the narrator is a military officer, and shall we say, it does not paint a very flattering portrait of the military officer. So Schnitzer got a lot of flak for showing disrespect to the military. But of course, all of this kind of criticism of his work had anti-Semitic undertones, or not even undertones. Sometimes they were quite blatantly anti-Semitic. So his Jewishness was certainly a very big factor there. And there are just a couple of interesting aspects of his work. He, as I told you, was definitely not interested in Zionism. He once made a comment that, well, I once visited the town in Hungary that my ancestors came from, and people thought that I would have to have some real sort of connection with it. He said, I felt nothing. And he said, but then there are some people out there who think that I'm supposed to have a connection with this country in the Middle East that my relatives haven't been, my ancestors haven't been for 2,000 years. So it was clearly a swipe at Zionism. But interestingly enough, the character in his novel, The Road Into the Open, that everyone assumes is basically a self-portrait of Schnitzer, makes an almost exactly the same comment. But then in this very same chapter where he's sort of basically going on about Zionism saying, I am, this is my land. This is my Heimat. He uses this German word Heimat. But then there's a little paragraph when he says he sees this sort of Austrian guy waving at him. And he talks about how he doesn't trust any of these people. There are none of them. He just feels totally, totally kind of alienated from them. So it's interesting that even within his narrative, Schnitzer kind of undercuts his own argument and basically calls into question whether Zionism is really such a stupid idea. Another interesting little anecdote from that novel, there's this wealthy Jewish financial, industrialist whose wife and daughter want to be very, push away their Jewishness and have a salon where they invite all these artists and aristocrats and intellectuals. And so Salomon, the father patriarch who is very Jewish, has this conversation with this writer. He says, well, I think you're Jewish, aren't you? And he says, well, I don't choose to regard myself as Jewish. And then Salomon in his crusty way says, well, trust me, if you're walking along the Ringstrasse of the Great Boulevard and someone knocks your hat off because, sorry to tell you this, you've got kind of a Jewish nose, trust me, you'll feel struck as a Jew. I really always remember that passage because it really brings to light the question of, do we get to decide our own identity? Is that something we can define for ourselves or is it something that other people assign to us? And I think that's certainly a very interesting question. So just a little snapshot of Schnitzler's work. On the one hand, someone who certainly had no interest in Jewish religion and rejected Zionism, but on the other hand, someone who was very aware of his Jewishness and how that was perceived by others. Now, let's talk about a couple of other writers. Richard Berhofmann is not that well known outside of the German speaking world, but he was part of this same group of young Vienna. And he wrote dramas based on the Old Testament and then his famous poem, one famous poem of his called The Lullapy for Miriam, both the name Miriam and this part of this last stance of the poem, I think signal his sense of Jewish ancestry. Basically, deep within us runs our forefathers blood, on to the future it rolls like a flood. All are within us. So it is a kind of affirmation of his connection to his Jewish descent. Then basically after 1938, when Hitler annexed Austria, he left, he became a US citizen in 1944, but he died the following year. And this one will surprise you, Felix Salton, who is not that celebrated as a literary figure, but he is the author of Bambi. And so, those of you who are old enough probably remember that film. And then, now Hugo von Hofmann, Sal, a writer who's very close to my heart that I've written quite a bit about. He is, although not that well known these days in the English speaking world, he was, among others, T.S. Eliot praised him as one of the leading writers of the time. His poems that he published, he wrote mainly in the 1890s, are still some of the most anthologized poems in German. Certainly, he's one of the great poets of that modern age. Although, he had an interesting career, the letter of Lord Chandos, which is a kind of fictional letter written by this Elizabethan lord, to Francis Bacon, his patron, the scientist, talks about how he's had this crisis of cognition and language and he can no longer speak. Which is interesting because the letter is written in very eloquent prose. But this work is widely considered one of the key documents of a crisis of language, which is really one of the defining aspects of literary modernism. Another thing that Hofmann Sal's famous for is his collaboration with Richard Strauss. For the opera fans out there, certainly the name der Rosenkawalier and some of the others like Elektra, Die Frau in den Schatten, these are some of the great German language operas. And this was kind of a unique partnership. Usually, you assume that the librettist is just a sort of minor servant in the creation of an opera, but this was a true collaboration where the two of them worked together and was really significant in that way. Now, Hofmann's style, as I mentioned before, was, you know, by any normal definition, certainly not Jewish. His, both his grandfather and his father were, and well, both his grandfather had converted and his father was the son of a non-Jewish mother. So in that respect, he was clearly not Jewish, but again, because of his association with this literary circle, he was widely regarded as Jewish. And this is just one passage from one of his poems that is often cited as evidence for his connection to his Jewish ancestry. Then that in lives a century old I share and Kinsman laid in coffins long ago are yet as close to me as my own hair. And, you know, so these are very haunting words that really suggest, and I'm not saying that's the only way to read them, but I think it is very productive to think about them as a statement about his Jewish identity. So the field of literature clearly was heavily, I won't say dominated, but certainly was, there was a hugely disproportionate representation of Jews in that circle. Journalism, Moritz Benedict, who was born a Jew in Poland, came to Vienna as a child, and he became the editor of the leading newspaper in Vienna, which was really one of the leading newspapers in Europe as a whole. The Neue Freie Presse, which it's sort of descended today as simply Die Presse, the major Austrian newspaper. He was a very prominent journalist, but he was of course also the target of many anti-Semitic attacks. And one thing that was significant for Karl Kraus, who we'll talk about next, was his fervent support for the Austrian cause in World War I. And, you know, in retrospect, those who were big fans of the war, you know, don't have that positive image. Now, we turn to Karl Kraus, who's one of the most controversial figures of the time. He was called an anti-journalist by some because of his frequent attacks on the press, especially Moritz Benedict, but he was best known for his own journal called Die Fakl, or The Torch, which he started in 1899 and became a huge hit in the Viennese circles. In 1911, after the first 10 or 12 years, he actually took submissions from other writers, but starting in 1911, it was basically a one-man show where he published poems, essays of various kinds, all kinds of genres. And he was a huge hit. I mean, he had a huge circle of admirers in Vienna. He was Jewish by birth and descent, and everyone knew that, but he formally left the Jewish community in 1899, and then 12 years later, he converted to Catholicism. But then he hated the Salzburg Festival, which is still one of the grand European arts festivals of the summer, which was founded by Hofmannstahl, by the way, and one or two others, but he despised it and he left the Catholic Church because of its association with that festival. He was, in many respects, a pioneer. He really, his critique of language was really, really path breaking and just pointing out how corrupting language is both a symptom of and a cause of the horrors in the political world, World War I being the most obvious example. Some of you may know George Orwell's essay, Politics and the English Language, which came many years later, really making similar arguments to what Krauss had argued. But he is widely regarded by many as a self-hating Jew, although there are many also who contest that claim, but like it or not, he was still widely regarded as a Jew in the culture of the time, and he knew that. Okay, now, of course, one of the major figures of this time is Zygmunt Freud. He was born also in a small town in Moravia, moved to Vienna as a young boy. He had a traditional Jewish upbringing, but he rejected that, but he still embraced his Jewish identity. He joined Nebryth right around the time of his huge sort of crisis that led to his breakthrough work, The Interpretation of Dreams. His early followers in the years after its publication were all Jews. And, well, psychoanalysis was often called dieudische Wissenschaft, the Jewish scientist, the science because of this. But then Carl Jung arrived, and then, of course, it became a little less Jewish, but it was still identified that way. And as I mentioned before, Shorsky does really highlight his Jewishness. And he dealt with his Jewish legacy for a long time. His final work, Moses and Monotheism, which really put forward a theory which was very upsetting and challenging to the Jewish population at the time of Hitler and his arrival, basically still shows his preoccupation with Jewish themes. And, okay, just wanted to show that. Now we enter the world of music. Now, yes, there were some major composers around who had at least spent most of some of their careers in Vienna, Anton Brookner, and who both have come to mind, but two of the major really kind of defining figures in the music scene were Gustav Mahler, first of all. He was born in what was then Bohemia now in the Czech Republic, which was, of course, part of the Habsburg Empire at the time. He was raised Jewish, but in 1897, in order to receive the post of director of the Vienna Hof Opera, or as it was then called the Vienna Court Opera, which is now the Vienna State Opera, one of the great opera houses in Europe, in order to receive that post, he had to be baptized as a Catholic. Now, was he ever a believing Christian? Not really. One of his colleagues said, he was asked once, well, why haven't you never written a mass? And he said, well, it's because I could never bring myself to write a credo. Credo is the part of the mass that really sets forward one's creed, one's beliefs. He couldn't do that. So, there was clearly reason to doubt his necessarily of his faith. And some of his works had Christian themes, notably the Second Symphony, the Resurrection Symphony. He still really never embraced this Christian identity. And he is famous for his statement, I am three times a foreigner, as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew in the whole world. So, he never really felt that he could ever shed his Jewishness. And then, some would point to passages in his music and most notably, something, a passage from the slow movement of the First Symphony, which sounds very Jewish. It has a very folk-Jewish feel to it, kind of like klezmer music. So, clearly, he is someone whose Jewish identity never really left him. Now, Arnold Schoenberg, as you may know, not one of the most beloved composers of the 20th century. I can tell you a few stories about how people just really freak out at his music sometimes, but he was still a huge figure in 20th century music. He was born and raised in the second district of Vienna, which was known as the Matzo Island. Guess why? Because it had a very heavily Jewish population. And so, he had a very traditional Jewish upbringing, but then he kind of felt a little alienated from it and he wanted a more spiritual kind of connection. And in 1897, he actually chose to be baptized as a Lutheran. Now, say what you will about it, but in a country that's 90% Catholic, that's clearly not a pragmatic choice. And then, he was really made two of the most revolutionary innovations in 20th century composition. In 1910, he took the move towards atonality. Now, what does that mean? It means, you know, traditional music has a set key where, you know, basically, yes, the music will stray away from that key, but we'll always return to the key and your ears will tell you, okay, I know where we are now. Atonality takes away that. And so, where dissonance in the past had been sort of contained within a tonal dimension, he had, by his own definition, achieved the emancipation of dissonance. The other breakthrough was 12 years later when he invented the system of 12 tone composition. And I'm not gonna take the time to really sort of elaborate on what that means, but it was a huge, huge step and really was one of the major theories of composition in the 20th century. Interestingly enough, his two most significant disciples, Weber and Alban Berg, were not Jewish, but they were very close to him in every way. Although he had chosen to kind of leave Judaism behind, he had several encounters with antisemitism in the 1920s, which finally led him to re-embrace his Jewish identity. He began composing a lot of works in Jewish themes like the opera, Moses and Aaron. He moved to Berlin in 1925, but he became the target of a lot of antisemitic attacks. And then when Hitler came to power, he emigrated to the U.S. On his way, he stopped in Paris where he chose to have a formal ceremony to mark his return to Judaism. In the U.S., he taught briefly at a music conservatory in Boston. Then he taught briefly at USC, but then he became part of the faculty at UCLA. And if any of you have been to the UCLA campus and visited the music building there, guess what the name is? It is the Schoenberg Hall. So he still has his mark on that. So he's clearly an example of someone who, apart from his divergence for a few years, clearly embraced his Jewish identity. Now, another major factor here is Zionism. Teodor Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement. What is interesting here is that Teodor Herzl was regarded by all of his contemporaries as the epitome of the assimilated Jew. He was known for his very dapper kind of style, his clothing, his hairstyle and all of that. And he was actually an advocate for assimilation. When he, you know, basically as a journalist, he was sent to Paris in the 1890s where he was present during the Dreyfus Affair, you know, this huge outbreak of anti-Semitism in France, which was very traumatic for Jews all over Europe because France, everyone had thought, was the epitome of a progressive state that would allow Jews their citizenship. So when this kind of anti-Semitism bubbled up in Paris, that was really a huge event for everyone. And that experience, plus the election of Carl Lueger as mayor of Vienna, finally tipped the scales for the Forer Herzl. He had, a few years earlier, actually advocated, this will sound crazy, a mass conversion of the Jews and sending them to Rome where the Pope would greet them with a blessing. So that was his first idea. Another idea was having a major Jew challenge when the anti-Semites do a duel and defeat him and thus, you know, rescue the honor of the Jews. So clearly Herzl was not what you would expect from the founder of Zionism. And also what's interesting is that, you know, Shorsky argues that Zionism, as he envisioned it, was really the kind of fulfillment of the liberal, European liberal ideals in terms of a more sort of humane work week and things like that. Also, what did he think would be the language of this Jewish state, English. And also, by the way, in his founding work, the Jewish state, he sort of examines various possibilities in addition to Palestine. He said Argentina was one, another one was Uganda. So he was not exactly what you would expect now, looking back on that time. But clearly, he was one of the major figures of the time. Okay, now the visual arts, if there's one field in Viennese culture of the turn of the century where Jews were clearly not dominant, this is the field. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oscar Kokoschka, the major figures, none of them were Jewish. Now, the only thing that has to be said here is that Schoenberg, in addition to his compositions, also was a painter. And some of his paintings are quite haunting. This one is Der Rote Blick or The Red Glance. And now a painting that many of you have seen. This is by Gustav Klimt, who was definitely not Jewish. But the patrons of the arts in Vienna were still heavily Jewish. And also the subjects of many of the paintings. And this one, which is, of course, the basis for this film from 2015, The Woman in Gold, was a prime example. This, by the way, did I already mention, sold for more money than any other painting had at the time than 2007. Okay, so now in conclusion, so the two different points of view here. One is Karl Shorsky, who basically really looks at Viennese culture of this time as a kind of result of the crisis of liberalism due to the stock market crash and all the kind of political upheavals. Basically his notion was this liberal middle class kind of retreated into an artistic realm or in Schnitzer's case into some more sexualized realm. But that that's really what formed the culture. And he didn't ignore the Jewish element, but he really saw them as part of this larger middle class phenomenon. Stephen Beller, on the other hand, takes a very different point of view. And I'll just read from the conclusion to his book. The Jewishness of the cultural elite in Vienna gave the capital of the Habsburg monarchy a cultural and intellectual importance for that time, which it had never known before and certainly no longer possesses. The awkward but inescapable conclusion seems to be that it was indeed its Jews which made Vienna what it was in the realm of modern culture. Other historians, notably Robert Wistrich and Marsha Rosenblit, have focused on the Jewish cultural figures in Vienna, though they didn't really take this very kind of extreme position that Beller does. So where does this leave us? There's no question that in most of these cultural areas Jews were represented far beyond their proportion of the population. You know, the question is, is this culture fundamentally Jewish and what do we mean by this term Jewish? If we regard it as a religious term and many people would insist on that, then only a small number of the figures in Vienna would qualify. If we defined it ethnically or culturally, then their prominence and in some cases dominance is undeniable, but does their Jewishness shape that culture? And this is a question. And in response to this, I might want to quote Freud. He gave a speech thanking the Nebryth for their support. This is later in his career where he talked about his, due to his Jewish upbringing, he was never sort of constrained to a sort of typical conformity. And basically his Jewishness as he saw it allowed him to think outside the box. And seen from this point of view, we might regard the Jewish experience of exile and persecution as one that made Jews the pioneers of modernity, not only in Vienna but elsewhere as well. But does this mean that this modernity is essentially Jewish or simply that Jews played a major role in this creation, both in Vienna and elsewhere? And that's where I would conclude that, you know, I think we can certainly go say without question that Jews played a huge role in the society, one far beyond their percentage of the population. And this is something that I think is a source of pride. So let me end there and see if you have any questions.