Vienna: Myth and Reality
Hans Keller, 5 June 1980
The well-nigh drug-like fascination which Vienna has exerted upon the Western world at all emotional and intellectual levels – Johann Strauss’s as well as Arnold Schoenberg’s, the Schnitzel’s as well as Arthur Schnitzler’s and Sigmund Freud’s – was bound to result in an attempt to explain it all, or most of it, or that part of it that has a hypnotic effect on the investigator himself. The question then naturally arises how far he has fallen victim to the myth whose reality he is trying to uncover – to the belief that what comes from Vienna is Viennese, has to be, couldn’t come from anywhere else. It is a question that will be answered in about 2,500 words’ time; hard fact will intervene.