Week 1: Touring Vienna & Vindobona, Ancient Vienna!

The world famous Lipizzaner stallions
parade through the Spanish Riding School (Die Spanische Hofreitschule).

Welcome to "Vienna: Biography of a City"

with Jason Lahman-Goldstein 

Although no texts are required in this six week version of the course at OLLI-SFSU,  I recommend the following books. I will provide small portions of some of these texts for you as PDF downloads. However, you may wish to purchase your own copies to explore the topics in greater detail. I will email PDFs of the slideshows presented in class after the end of each session. I especially recommend the first two books as they are short, pithy general histories of Vienna, giving a good overview of each epoch from Roman settlement to the present.

·      Vienna: ALiterary and Cultural History, Nicholas Parsons

·      Vienna: ThePast in the Present, Inge Lehne, Lonnie Johnson

·      A NervousSplendour: Vienna 1888/1889, Frederic Morton

·      Thunder atTwilight: Vienna 1913/1914, Frederic Morton

·      Fin-de-SiecleVienna: Politics and Culture, Carl E. Schorske

·      Vienna andthe Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural History, Steven Beller

·      Vienna 1900:Art, Life & Culture, Christian Brandstatter

·      The Settingof the Pearl: Vienna Under Hitler, Thomas Weyr

·      GoodLiving Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900, Tim Bonyhady

In WEEK ONE we'll be exploring how Vienna became a tourist center in the late nineteenth century, discussing the idea of "the tourist gaze" and then looking at Vindobona (ancient Vienna) and its origins as an imperial Roman outpost.

***TOURISM AND VIENNA***

 Please read this essay on Vienna and 19th century tourism before coming to class.

ARTICLE: "Potemkin City: Tourist Images of Late Imperial Vienna"

File

We will also be discussing the concept of the "tourist gaze", an anthropological concept regarding modern life and how tourists "see and consume" the places that they visit. 

The articles below present some complex and interesting ideas about tourism. The authors are both building theories about tourism in the modern world. Pay attention to what they are saying about how the experience and the industry of tourism is constructed and understood by a culture.

1.) "Sightseeing and Social Structure" by Dean MacCannell (PDF document)

2.) "The Tourist Gaze" (selections) by John Urry (PDF document) Focus on pages: 1-5 (skip second part of page 5 on all the tourist numbers. Then skip to page 7 "Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Tourism" and read to page 12.

VIDEOS: 

Rambling in Vienna (short filmed tour of the city from 1936)

You may also wish to view this excellent 89 minute BBC documentary: "Vienna: City of Dreams"

***VINDOBONA: ANCIENT VIENNA AND ROME***

Above is an artist's rendering of what the ancient Roman settlement Vindobona probably looked like.

Check out the article below for more information. 

From the Roman Military Camp to the End of the First Millenary - History of Vienna

Below is a short tourist video showing the Roman ruins in Michaelerplatz!

If you're interested in the relationship of the Roman empire to the "Barbarian" peoples of Western Europe check this TV documentary highlighting the Germanic tribes.