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In 1900 Vienna was
the capital of a Habsburg empire that had become a
political dinosaur in the world of industrial
modernism. Its emperor, Franz Joseph, had come to
power over fifty years earlier, following the
revolutions of 1848, and he would rule for another
sixteen years. In the two hundred years between
1700 and 1910, the population of Vienna grew by a
factor of twenty, from a mere 123,000 to well over
2 million. Vienna was a vastly heterogeneous,
multi-ethnic metropolis, made up of ethnic Germans,
Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Poles,
Russians, Romanians, Italians, to name just the
principal groups. It was a city wrought by
political tensions. From 1897 to 1910 the city was
governed by the highly popular (and populist)
German nationalist, anti-Semitic mayor Karl
Lueger. |
