City of Blood

Peter Pulzer

• The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph by Robert Wistrich
  Oxford, 696 pp, £45.00, June 1989, ISBN 0 19 710070 8
• Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural History by Steven Beller
  Cambridge, 271 pp, £27.50, August 1989, ISBN 0 521 35180 4
• The German-Jewish Economic Elite 1820-1935: A Socio-Cultural Profile by W.E. Mosse
  Oxford, 369 pp, £35.00, October 1989, ISBN 0 19 822990 9
• Decadence and Innovation: Austro-Hungarian Life and Art at the Turn of the Century edited by Robert Pynsent
  Weidenfeld, 258 pp, £25.00, June 1989, ISBN 0 297 79559 7
• The Torch in My Ear by Elias Canetti, translated by Joachim Neugroschel
  Deutsch, 372 pp, £13.95, August 1989, ISBN 0 233 98434 8
• From Vienna to Managua: Journey of a Psychoanalyst by Marie Langer, translated by Margaret Hooks
  Free Association, 261 pp, £27.50, July 1989, ISBN 1 85343 057 9

Robert Wistrich’s book is about the Jews of Vienna in their golden age, Steven Beller’s about the city’s culture in its golden age. You could be forgiven for thinking that these amounted to the same thing. Not all Viennese Jews were cultural heroes, and not all Viennese cultural heroes were Jews. But the overlap is impressive and in need of explanation. W.E. Mosse’s is about the German economy in its first golden age. The overlap with creative Jews is less overwhelming here but it, too, is worthy of investigation.