Book Discussions of Maria Todorova's The Lost World of Socialists at Europe's Margins and Georg B. Michels' The Habsburg Empire under Siege: Ottoman Expansion and Hungarian Revolt in the Age of Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü

A year-end thank you from the Center for Austrian Studies

Professor Helfferich's talk surveyed some of the disruptions and devastations caused by the Thirty Years War but focused on people’s survival tactics, which included everything from fighting back, to negotiating to trickery echoing that was used by Odysseus himself in his daring escape from Polyphemus. The full talk is now on our YouTube channel.

Landry shows how Europeans moved mountains and earth to transform the Alps into a natural battery in order to make fickle water behave more like the dominant energy source of the time: coal. A history of the Alpine energy landscape reveals how central these “peripheral” mountains were to the drama of the early twentieth century and suggests certain lessons as the world contemplates a “green” energy future.

Marchand's talk told the tale of two porcelain manufactories, the Imperial Viennese Manufactory (WPM) and the privately owned Thuringian firm, Wallendorf, from which sprang several 19th-century market leaders (C. M. and Lorenz Hutschenreuther). While their founding dates are separated by nearly a half-century (WPM, 1718; Wallendorf, 1764), both of these manufactories passed through a crucial period in the 1780s in which enlightened absolutist economic policies began to move away from mercantilism towards a freer, more competitive, market for luxury goods. By juxtaposing the fate of these firms between 1770 and 1840, the talk described the collapsing of older forms of princely financing and artisanal production in the face of expanding competition and innovations in chemistry and labor-saving devices.

The latest issue includes an interview with Tara Zahra (who delivered our 2020 Kann Memorial Lecture), an update from the Panel for In Rem Restitution, Bertram M. Gordon on Robert Kann, book reviews, updates from the North American Centers, and more!

How to measure goals and outcomes when interrupted by a pandemic: A long to-do-list remains after Covid-19 forces a sudden departure from Minneapolis.

While demonstrating the ways in which Jewish history was inextricably linked with the history of Europe as a whole, Hacohen’s narrative also underscores the enduring significance of rabbinic culture and Jewish religious traditions. In so doing, he deftly charts a middle path between cosmopolitan and nationalist narratives of Jewish European history.

This talk examined the relationship between imperial collapse and anti-globalism in interwar Austria, focusing on popular movements that arose on the right and left to achieve greater individual and national self-sufficiency, as well as new forms of internationalism that aimed to re-imagine and revive transnational relationships.