Carl Schorske cites Karl Marx in his study of Vienna: "when men are about to make revolution, they fortify themselves in the past."1 Yet what if no past is available? The dream of rational liberalism, birthed in Austria following the 1848 revolution, could not be sustained in the cultural sphere as the century progressed for very much this reason; a reactionary New Right counterpoint to liberalism grew out of economic and ethnic dissatisfaction, dooming the movement of reason and knowledge in favor of a return to tradition. It is this volatile atmosphere that Carl Schorske's Fin-de-Siècle Vienna investigates Austrian artistic and intellectual works to gain an understanding of late-nineteenth century Vienna society.
The focus on prominent Austrian individuals allows Schorske the opportunity to analyze the varying strata each are raised in, and the nurturing conditional pressures each were subjected it. Relating each figure as fully integrated and a subjective member of society, Schorske makes clear the environmental influences of social-stratas.
Schorske demonstrates this impasse concretely with the borrowing of historical-cultural legends by architect Theophil Hansen during the building of the Reichsrat: "the statuary gracing the ramp betrayed the degree to which Austrian parliamentarian sensed its lack of anchorage in the past. Having no past, it had no political heroes of its own to memorialize."4 Greek myth was substituted for decorating a building that proclaimed "Wissen macht frei (Knowledge makes us free).5 Schorske's seven essays highlight the deep contradictions that abounded between the rational liberalism and the lack of traditional identity; this crisis which would usher in the "new key" of New Right.