A Nervous Splendor: Vienna 1888-1889

by Frederic Morton

On January 30, 1889, during the Viennese Carnival, Emperor Franz Josef’s son and heir, Crown Prince Rudolf fired a revolver at his teenaged mistress and then at himself at Mayerling in the Vienna Woods. In this National Book Award finalist, Frederic Morton tells the story of the Prince and his city, where, in the span of ten months, “the Western dream started to go wrong.” In 1888-89 Vienna, other young men like Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodor Herzl, Gustav Klimt, and Arthur Schnitzler were as frustrated as the Crown Prince, but for other reasons. Morton interweaves their fates with that of the Prince and the entire city, until Rudolf’s body is lowered into its permanent sarcophagus and a son named Adolf is born to Frau Klara Hitler.

“Riveting” — John Leonard, The New York Times

“As lush, beguiling, and charming as an emperor’s waltz” — Publishers Weekly

“[A] spirited tale of Viennese life... by his skillful use of rich but forgotten daily details [Morton] construct[s] a fascinating account of ten months in the lives of Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms, Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo Wolff, and others.” — Kirkus Reviews

“On every page, great names and odd moments glitter... a remarkable and unusual slice of history.” — Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

“1888/1889 is my favorite year in the life of ‘the Imperial City,’ and Frederic Morton’s A Nervous Splendor is my favorite book about Vienna.” — John Irving, author of The World According to Garp

Genres: History, Nonfiction, 19th Century, European History, Politics, Travel, Music

385 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Frederic Morton (born Fritz Mandelbaum) was a Jewish Austrian writer who emigrated to the United States in 1940. Born Fritz Mandelbaum in Vienna, Morton was raised as the son of a blacksmith who had specialised in forging imperial medals. In the wake of the Anschluss of 1938 his father was arrested but later released again. In 1939 the family fled to Britain, and the following year they migrated to New York. Morton said that back in 1940 his father decided, with a heavy heart, to change their family name to Morton in order to join an anti-Semitic labor union. Frederic Morton first worked as a baker but from 1949 studied literature. In 1951 he visited Austria again for the first time after the war, and in 1962 he returned, this time to Salzburg, to marry his fiancée, Marcia, whom he had met at college. From 1959, Morton worked as a columnist for several American periodicals including The New York Times, Esquire, and Playboy . He died in Vienna ,at the age of ninety, on April 2015

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A portrait of Hapsburg Vienna about a generation before its dissolution. The monarchy is a class-driven machine producing much punctilio but apparently little in the way of strategic planning. The growth of nationalism among its polyglot population is viewed by Emperor Franz Joseph with trepidation, but ultimately the official attitude is wait and see. We as readers know these nationalist pressures will tear the Empire apart in 1914 when, in Sarajevo, Serb Gavrilo Princep blows a hole in Archduke Franz Ferdinand's neck. But in 1888 the monarchy seems either oblivious or in denial, perhaps a little of both. Only Crown Prince Rudolph and those of his immediate circle possess insight into the unsustainable imperial trajectory.

The Crown Prince is a fascinating paradox. He's well educated and liberal, a noble who's at heart a republican. His fondest wish is to see his kind expunged from state affairs. He knows the government is in desperate need of reform. Yet despite his lofty rank, his legions of admirers, he possesses no real power to effect change. The emperor employs his intelligence apparatus to spy on him. Agents follow him about and monitor his telegrams. The burden of protocol is overwhelming, but Rudolph seems to bear up well until the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. The occasion is Emperor Franz Joseph's fifty-sixth birthday. Rudolph, who prefers the company of the so-called commoners to the moribund aristocracy, despises Wilhelm for his empty pan-German rhetoric. Yet he must toast him, must follow him about like a puppy, so the Kaiser won't grandstand at this or that reception about the virtues of the Greater Reich. He's stuck in this empty diplomatic role, smiling and toasting a man he despises. He's good at it. His manners are Old World. Understandably, he grows depressed.

There can be no question of Rudolph taking a mistress from among the nobility. His marriage to a cipher was a function of politics, not love. The noble ladies set their sights on him but he is emphatically not interested. Things look bleak indeed. Then he sees Mary Vetsera at one of the few social events where commoners and nobles can intermingle. At the new Court Theater they observe each other with opera glasses. Mary is 18 and Rudolph is 30. He's heard of her, of course. Mary's mother is a skillful social climber who's handed her gifts on to her daughter. Mary's a "lady of fashion" whose every new ensemble makes the society pages. Their liaisons are complex, arranged by a Vetsera family friend. There is much scuttling about labyrinthine corridors, much zigzagging about town to shake persistent tails.

Soon they are both dead from a suicide pact. Mary's corpse is spirited away by family members and buried without ceremony. Rudolph is given a funeral the likes of which are perhaps no longer seen in our day. His death rocks the empire. Of his final messages for others, he leaves not one word, not a syllable, addressed to his father.

The book is a portrait of a vanished era as much as it is a tale of star-crossed lovers. Along with Rudolph and Mary's story we're given a look at the cultural life of Vienna. The artist bios are beautifully compressed. We peek into the young lives of Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo Wolf, and Sigmund Freud--all in their twenties--as well as older established artists like Aaron Bruckner and Johannes Brahms. Vienna is a vast overwrought Baroque wedding cake. Morton brilliantly transforms the boulevard of braggadocio, the new Ringstrasse, into a fitting central metaphor for the posturing and decorum of a vast, fragmenting empire oblivious of the ticking clock. Wonderfully vivid and highly recommended.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another outstanding book by Morton, though I didn't find this one as gripping as Thunder at Twilight, in part, I think because he spent too much time trying to make Crown Prince Rudolf's suicide in 1889 resonate with sense of unease that permeated Viennese society.

Still, a very intriguing book overall. The chief players in this book, whose lives are viewed in intertwined brief episodes, are the Crown Prince, a thwarted liberal who was not permitted any real power, and ultimately sought a twisted escape from his aristocratic straight-jacket by suicide; Sigmund Freud, at that point a struggling "nerve specialist" with financial problems who nonetheless had sufficient courage to challenge the theories that were the bulwark of the medical establishment; a trio of sometimes-at-odds musical giants -- Brahams, Strauss, and Bruckner -- as well as two younger musical titans -- Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler; an artist who couldn't be bothered to cultivate favor or fortune, Gustav Klimt; and two men of letters, Arthur Schnitzler and Theodor Herzl, the latter known as the "father of Zionism."

Morton's technique here, as it was in Thunder at Twilight," is to focus on key figures that embody the zeitgeist. His prose is notably engaging and imaginative, yet also oblique and intuitive. It's no surprise, then, that Morton so obviously admires Freud, Klimt, Mahler, and others who drew from inner resources. That such men emerged from a society permeated with frivolity and ossified social forms is an irony that he doesn't even have to spell out explicitly. Always there is the tension in the book between the outward show and inner turmoil. By presenting readers with selected scenes, piquant tidbits, Morton makes distant historical figures come alive once again.

I was especially struck with his insights into the growing antisemitism of the time. It's a naive conceit that these sentiments sprang fully formed from the head of Adolf Hitler. Of course, I knew there had always been pogroms and ghettos and such, but I hadn't ever really understood how those espousing antisemitism became mainstream figures. Morton's account made it more comprehensible to me, and it's no coincidence that the book concludes with "the thin cry of baby" born to Alois and Klara Hitler: "They named their little one Adolf."

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is fairly good, though narrow and somewhat overwritten (too novelistic -- the author is, after all, a novelist, and not an historian). The truth is that I grew a bit impatient with it, as the topic continued to narrow even after the suicide of Rudolph, rather than broadening out to take on at a deeper or more serious level the implications of this 'peaking' of the Golden Age of Vienna.

At any rate, Morton's Rudolph is a fascinating and attractive figure, though Morton possibly downplays (in fact, almost buries) the role that depression over his (i.e., Rudolph's) gonorreah (then uncurable) may have played.

3 1/2 stars

[Sloweducation · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just recently moved to a new city. While I am not the "packing light" type, I had run out of all my light reading, except this little guy. Blurbed by John Irving as describing his favorite year of Viennese history (more than a little precious to have a favorite year of Viennese history, I dare say), this book is simply a pop history mess.

Morton seems to believe he is a novelist: he is constantly getting in his character's heads or describing their conduct in mundane situations. I tend to find this approach useless and misleading when done well, and Morton does it so poorly. Even if you are okay with history interspersed with fantasy, his prose is tepid (at best) and he lacks focus in every way. He skips freely among various luminaries of the era. It is not hard to follow the plot as such, but Morton writes as if he is obligated to give us a little monthly update on every character without regard to the significance of their activities. This is not so much a problem, except that it is at odds with the novelistic approach.

Morton is much more comfortable with his heroes than he is with "lesser" Viennese society. There are several embarrassing passages, clearly produced wholesale from his own imagination, about the activities of the working class, which usually show them spending profligately instead of living in poverty. Morton drips with arrogance and condescension in his treatment of the working class. The middle classes hardly fare better. Morton relies mostly on the old generalizations. He seems to have gleaned most of his information by reading contemporary newspapers, that is, what information which is not simply a condensation of modern biographies of his main characters. An utterly unserious look at Vienna.

[Dave Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frederic Morton brings to life 1888 and 1889 Vienna through artistic prose and brief, but vivid depictions of people, the places the lived, and the lifestyles they led. Morton does not convey history in a conventional academically charged sense, which is evinced in his lack of footnotes or endnotes; instead he uses an approach that mirrors a novel. The book is a great read for anybody who is interested in a casual understanding of Vienna during this period, or someone who is interested in the development of modernity from the Victorian Era. I am sure Morton took some artistic license while writing this book; however, it was used as true invention verses false invention. In other words, he used it to present a larger landscape of history rather than concoct something completely erroneous. In short, the book compliments history. It does not dictate it. It is must read for anybody about to visit Vienna.

[Doreen Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true story that happened in such a short period of time that had major implications for world history. I really liked this one.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an example of popular history at just about its best. Morton takes just a few months in 1888 to 1889 as his subject matter and examines those months in intimate detail, using various well-known names as his focal points, and telling a story as compelling as any novel. There is also a great deal of subjectivity and "historical license" (not to say outright fiction) mixed into the narrative, to make it more readable and exciting. Nonetheless, Morton avoids distorting the facts, and he makes use of a wide range of (mostly published) primary sources, such as diaries, letters, and periodicals.

The central event of this narrative is the murder/suicide of the Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, Rudolf, and his teenaged mistress. This isn't really a spoiler (although it is the end of the book), since the book's blurb tells you that's how the story goes, as does Morton at several points in the narrative. It is seen as a kind of turning-point in Viennese history, an event, perhaps comparable to the Kennedy assassination in the 20th century, which affected everyone in the country and changed the political climate forever. Rudolf had been the progressive, the cosmopolitan, the populist, who might have led the old Empire into the new century with some hope of avoiding crisis and collapse. That, at least was the public perception. Privately, his father prevented him having any real political influence or even important duties to perform. He had to write editorials for a progressive newspaper under a false name and make elaborate arrangements for their delivery in secret.

While that is the central event, and Rudolf and the royal family (and their various concubines) are central characters, they are far from the entirety of this book. Much of it simply paints the picture of Viennese society during the period, through the eyes of notables like Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, Theodore Herzl, Anton Brueckner and Gustav Klimt, to name a few. Dozens of famous names appear in the short index, and many of them are revealed both in their public and private personas as we read.

I was given this book by a friend as I prepared to depart for graduate studies in German history, and I read most of it on the plane. I returned to it again, after I had been to Vienna once, because of the fascinating ways it came to life for me again when I was there. I recall commenting to an Austrian friend that, "for me, Vienna is still in the 19th Century." Interestingly, she said that, "this is true for many Viennese as well." Vienna is a kind of Disneyland of old Europe, and yet it is also a real city, living and thriving in the 21st century. Some of that contradiction is explored by Morton's book, perhaps only poetically, but nevertheless effectively.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first went to Vienna for a weekend in the summer of 1982, knowing only some of its cultural icons - Klimt, Breughel, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Freud - and not much at all about that monolith the Austro-Hungarian Empire, run by the Hapsburgs. The Turkish siege of the city (1529) was news to me and so was the current controversy over "guest workers" from other East European countries. I was a typical artsy naive ignorant American. The history of that very confusing melange of Eastern European countries was all mixed up in my head and has continued to be so for most of my life, probably because I've never taken the trouble to understand it but also in my defense because it's rather complex.

Frederic Morton has recreated the world of fin-de-siècle Vienna by focusing on the story of Crown Prince Rudolf - I won't recount that here except to say that he was a forerunner of liberal thinkers throughout the world who have had difficulty in making their dreams reality. Their dreams are indeed actualizable, but only if they can reach a position of power. This was denied to Rudolf by his father, Emperor Franz Joseph; that is the personal tragedy recounted here. But it was also denied by his times, when Kaiser Wilhelm II was bumptiously preparing the way to the nationalist movement which culminated in Adolf Hitler. Wilhelm got all the press (along with Brahms, ha ha) but Rudolf had captured the hearts of the Austrian people long before. How quickly our hearts do change though...

Morton interlards the story of Rudolf with the stories of Gustav Klimt, Anton Bruckner, Hugo Wolf, Johann Strauss, Theodor Herzl, Arthur Schnitzler, Gustav Mahler, and Sigmund Freud -- all great artists after their fashion who struggled and starved their way to eminence under the dead hand of aristocratic protocol maintained by spectacle and relentless gaiety. Each eventually was able to bring to fruition their genius. But not Rudolf, who was trapped by his father in the straitjacket of a Crown Prince unable to do anything with his fine mind and persistent reforming energy, blocked at every turn by protocol and censorship and ridicule.

Yes, the story ends badly. There have been films - but not very successful ones. Imho, the truth as told by Morton is better than fiction because it is presented simply with fine writing which brings the entire time to life. All of these people are REAL to me now - not just from their works, but as people living in a difficult time not unlike our own. I can see Freud taking his daily muttering angry walk around the Ringstrasse, paying no attention to anything except what his brain was discovering.

And I would even like to go back to Vienna and trace the route that Rudolf's coffin took from the Hofburg Kapelle to the Capuchin chapel, surrounded by throngs of mourning people dressed in black, completely silent, who had felt somehow that in his gilded cage, he was nevertheless at heart one of them.

Thank you, Frederic Morton.

[Jess Garlasco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the narrative of this book and the way that the author chose to write about a specific piece of Viennese history when the lives of many important people and the beginning of many history defining movements were undertaken. The pacing up until Rudolf’s *death* at Mayerling was incredibly gripping, but I felt the ending dragged a bit after that. I enjoyed reading about the big players in Vienna at this time, particularly the artists and composers and I appreciate that this book keeps us updated on the number of times that Dr. Schnitzler and his “Sweet Girl Jeanette” get it on - by the end it is 474 times if his personal diary is to be trusted (why was this so important to reference maybe a dozen times in the book??).
I don’t necessarily think this book is a 5 star book but I was so engaged by it that I couldn’t give it anything less.

[Alexander Veee · Rating 5 out of 5]

"But the happiest event in musical Vienna occurred one April evening at the Rothen Igel restaurant. At 7 P.M Professor Bruckner appeared with two friends. The waiters were astonished. Usually the peasant maestro ate elsewhere, at the restaurant Zur Kugel on Am Hof Square. And the wonders of the night had only begun. A few minutes later Johannes Brahms marched in, complete with white beard, nimbus, and a retinue of three. After a stiff greeting he took a seat at the opposite end of a long table. Even though this was his regular restaurant, whose dishes he knew by heart, Brahms demanded the menu, quick!! Bruckner tried to match the other man's fierceness by yelling for the same thing in his Upper Austrian dialect.

For long minutes the two masters frowned up and down the list of dishes. Mutual acquaintances had arranged this "conciliation dinner." Obviously they had engineered a debacle. And then, at the very same second, both geniuses shouted the same phrase at the waiter. "Roast pork and sauerkraut!"

The table dissolved into laughter. The impossible ensued: an amiability between opposites, feeding on small talk about pilsner beer and Viennese cuisine. It did not survive long beyond the evening. But for the duration of one dinner the muse knew peace."

[Ghost of the Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

***minor editing done, review still a work in progress***

The Austrian - Hungarian empire in the years before the world lost its innocence has long been an interest of mine, partly because of Empress Elizabeth (Sissi).
I've read multiple sources on politics, economy,cultural life, private life of Vienna and the Viennese, and yet somehow always managed to bypass this one.
If you have been looking for a book that does indeed open a window into that city and its people, that lets you walk the palaces and the streets to feel the pulse of Vienna then go no further and read this one.
A rather clever mix of facts and artistic license, it conveys the mood of Vienna impeccably well during a particularly dark chapter of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire - the death of Crown Prince Rudolph. The author was very successful in not only showing the before but also the after, and the implications that his death would have in the start of WWI. Should you decide to go ahead and read this one, you will meet not only the rich and famous but also the poor and the forgotten....for Vienna wasn't just glitter and gold, but also disease, corruption and despair.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is amazing how well Frederic Morton's wonderful 'A Nervous Splendour' has weathered the years, possibly because he is a novelist, rather than a historian, and someone whose family whose lived and prospered in that complex Mittel Europa that was Austria-Hungary. But this is no nostalgia tinged journey into the sepia tinged twilight of the dying empire. Morton's account is clear-eyed and unsentimental and because of that it is all the more memorable.

I cannot think of a better book for anyone embarking on a journey into the wonderful, flawed, but extraordinary world that was Austria-Hungary.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one reminded me of Solomon Volkov's cultural history of St. Petersburg: that isn't a compliment.

I think two stars in closer to an estimation. As the narrative shed its filler in the second half, fewer peeks into the diaries of Freud and Mahler, their was a whsiper of verve. The figure of Crown Prince Rudolf is a curious one, but one they maintains the enigma.

[Laurie Neighbors · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never has an in-depth account of a history-changing suicide pact been so much darn fun. Morton's prose is amazing -- he is compassionate, passionate, and snide, sometimes all in the same paragraph. I did, in fact, laugh out loud. My eyes welled with tears. And now I have a heady crush on a dysthymic, dead, frustrated prince. Good times.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat impressionistic portrait of Belle Epoque Vienna, centring on the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf at Mayerling. On the one hand, this book was a vivid portrait, especially of the noble and bourgeois classes, followed through the course of a hectic year, with plenty of everyday detail. On the other hand, the book definitely had a curiously eccentric character to it. It's lyrically written, delving into the psychology of (some of) its (primarily male) (yes I'm a little salty about this for reasons mentioned below) subjects (not only Rudolf but Strauss, Brahms, Mahler, Bruckner, Klimt, Freud, Herzl, Schnitzler, et al) with such confidence, and such paucity of footnotes, that I found myself wondering how much of the story was really based in fact and how much was the author's vivid imagination. Somewhere in this book are some unifying theses - that the bourgeois of Vienna never achieved the same social standing as the middle classes of other European nations, for instance, or that the Vienna of this period was characterised by an anxious striving after elusive grandeur - that enlightened me very little because the author said everything he had to say in such imprecise and lyrical language.

Then there was the book's treatment of its only prominent female character, Baroness Mary Vetsera, the teenaged fashion icon whom Rudolf dragged with him to the grave. Surely it is far more understandable why a deeply frustrated and disillusioned 30-year-old man would commit suicide and even beg his various liaisons to accompany him, than it is why a 17-year-old coquette eyeing a career as a royal mistress should. It's hard to believe that Mary was in the grip of romantic idealism, and the significant gap in age and power should surely raise all sorts of questions, and yet for all the psychological interrogation of Rudolf's motives, Morton leaves Mary's wholly unexamined. At least he does give us the nauseating, maddening details: that Rudolf shot Mary two hours before himself, most likely as a way to screw his own defective courage to the sticking-point; that her corpse was removed from the scene of the crime in secret with a broomstick down the back of the dress so that she would appear to be sitting upright and alive in the carriage that took her away; that her name and memory was swiftly expunged from the newspapers; that she was buried in secrecy by officials who celebrated the intrigue and excitement of these events with drunken carousing.

As I said, a helpful book, with a wealth of vivid details, but somewhat lacking when it comes to the commentary.

[Susan Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like to try to read about places before I visit, so I’m now reading about Vienna. The suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf is difficult to understand, and this looks at other famous Viennese in 1888-1889. But not an easy text to stay with at times.

[Giovanna Eichner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can only describe this as how marvel fans must feel when watching an avengers movie. Freud, Brahms, Strauss, Mahler, Schniztler hanging in Vienna… plus great social commentary.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Wozu hast du gelebt? Wozu hast du gelitten?"

This book was a gift from my dear friend Daniela. She gave the book to me because we both love the musical Rudolf by Frank Wildhorn, and he based that off this book. She said that this made for a really good read. So I was curious: what did this book have to say, that made for such a historically incorrect (although in my opinion, still enjoyable) musical?

This book paints a mostly historically correct view of Vienna, in 1888-1889. So far, so good. It was also nice to read that Morton included many other interesting figures from Vienna from that time, including someone I have lately been getting rather interested in, Sigmund Freud. It captured the essence of Vienna as it was at the time in its pages. That includes the formalities and the depression. And many many suicides.

As it was, the book made for a very interesting but heavy read. It is a good book to read about Rudolf, although you don't really get to know the guy, nor Mary Vetsera either. If you are interested in Mayerling specifically, I wouldn't recommend this book. The information about Mayerling wasn't new or ground-breaking, and is discussed in many other books as well. The part where it gets really interesting is when Morton speaks about the effect of Rudolf on Vienna, and discusses what might have happened, had he lived. And at the same time he includes many interesting little details about Vienna-life in general.

Morton seems to have a really good overview of the European history, because he discusses political movements and Rudolf's views as well. I find it interesting that he doesn't seem to think that had Rudolf lived and become Emperor, everything would've changed for the better. Many people seem to think this, but then again, nothing but good about the dead.

I thought Morton made for a clever, occasionally witty, but always sharp writer. Despite taking creative license here and there - as I'm sure he must have done, the book was overfull with details - it always felt right. The biggest mystery at the end of the day is how Wildhorn managed to write the musical he wrote. The musical lacks the historical accuracy and depth of the book, and didn't even manage to portray the main characters right. That is actually quite an achievement.

"In der heutigen westlichen Gesellschaft scheint die Jugend oft eine ganze Generation von Rudolfs zu sein: theoretisch frei und von Glanz umgeben, tatsächlich aber von frustrierender Machtlosigkeit; voll unverholener Skepsis und doch nicht imstande, selbst etwas zu errichten, an dem alle Skepsis verstummt, frei, sich selbst als uneingeschränkte Individuen zu sehen, ohne jedoch je zu wahrer Individualität und Ich-Verwirklichung zu gelangen; frei, der Lust bis zum Überdruss zu huldigen; frei, für ihre Sinne und Ideale absolute Forderungen zu stellen, um letztlich von beiden immer wieder im Stich gelassen zu werden, gleichzeitig verwöhnt und unglücklich; frei, die Tiefen intellektueller Frustration bis zur Neige auszukosten."

Mayerling happened in 1889, but history repeats itself, and that's why the tragedy is never fully over. This book makes for a very good read. If you're interested in the subject, you really want to read this.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This account of life in Vienna in 1888 and 1889 is held together by the remarkable and tragic story of the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf, but takes in a broad sweep of life in the Austrian capital, from coach drivers and factory workers to the composers Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Johann Strauss and Hugo Wolf, a young Sigmund Freud, the artist Gustav Klimt, the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, the 'father of Zionism' Theodor Herzl, the antisemitic politician Karl Lueger, and the Emperor Franz Josef himself.

In elegant and occasionally fruity prose, Frederic Morton reconstructs the "nervous splendour" of late nineteenth century Vienna in fine detail. He plays with the idea of what might have been - whether the more forward-thinking Rudolf could have led Austria or indeed the Empire to a more peaceful future, had he been allowed to play a more strategic role, or whether the rot had set in irretrievably beneath Vienna's ornate facade.

There are moving human details. Rudolf, whose relationship with his father the Emperor is entirely correct but devoid of affection, leaves suicide notes to several members of his family but not a word to Franz Josef. When the Emperor finds out, this very formal man - the living symbol of the Empire - breaks down in tears. Franz Josef also reveals his human side in his relationship with the actress Katharina Schratt - one that was emotionally if not physically intimate.

Meanwhile, Bruckner's rivalry with Brahms, Freud's career setbacks, Hugo Wolf's depression and Arthur Schnitzler's very active sex life are all woven into Morton's narrative. But his main character is Vienna herself: glittering and gay, full of elegance and charm; but also fearful, insecure, unable to reconcile its internal contradictions or escape from its own myth. It is a fascinating place and time, in which Morton sees parallels with the late twentieth century and even (in his 2005 Preface) the twenty-first.

[Tocotin · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a hysterical (not funny hysterical, but unhinged hysterical) book. Exclamations, declamations, ejaculations, oh my! Sometimes the writing catches itself by the tail, like here: “The Vienna-loving Viennese could tolerate their city again.” Lolwut?

Well… I wanted to like this more than I did. I have a drop of Austrian blood, my grand-grand-grandfather sat in the Vienna City Council or some such body, I don’t remember… Anyway, Vienna is a fascinating city, Old Prohazka (aka Franz Joseph) and his era pretty entertaining to read about, and I appreciated some interesting detail about the slow pace of life and the formality and quaintness. The classified columns in the newspapers are hilarious:

“The gentleman who stumbled by mistake into the funeral feast at the Hannes Saal yesterday and who read such wonderful forgiveness in the eyes of the lovely lady in the feathered black hat with the veil on the side… said gentleman would be plunged into mourning as well, if the lady would not grant him the chance to make restitution for his blunder at a meeting he prays might be arranged through Box 871, this newspaper.”

Try to match this tone, historical novelists!…

But the fixation on the Crown Prince Rudolf was grating on my nerves. As much as I despise Tolstoy, I think he was spot on about the general insignificance of historical personages, especially those mechanically created, like rulers and hereditary aristocracy. Rudolf’s death was a shock for sure, but these people did have their own lives, even if the author prefers to mock and caricature them (those odious descriptions of Öttakring!).

And then there is the casual insertion of this:

“Nearly every morning dawned over a new mutilated whore’s corpse in Whitechapel […]”

Really, author? See this little bird fly away? That was my respect for you.

[James Henderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In the first July week of 1888 Mahler sat down in his childhood room at his father's house in Iglau and worked out great sound-metaphors of perdition, the first movement of his Second Symphony. He would call it Totenfeier or Death Celebration. And to [his] friend he would confess: 'It is the hero of my First Symphony I carry to the grave here. Immediately arise the great questions: Why hast thou lived? . . . Why hast thou suffered? . . . Is it all nothing but a huge, terrible joke?'"

This is a cultural history of a moment in time, less than two years, when the Hapsburg Empire was about to expire. The story of Crown Prince Rudolph and his world during the years of 1888 and 1889 touched upon the lives of many of the most famous people in nineteenth century history; people who would change both our parents' lives and our own in the twentieth century. Young men are part of this story and they include Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Theodore Herzl, Hugo Wolf, and Arthur Schnitzler whose La Ronde was the great erotic drama of the fin de siecle. Their cultural elders were present also and Frederic Morton, whose own grandfather lived on the periphery of the story, narrates many cultural events including the feud between Bruckner (obsessed with Wagner) and Brahms (one of whose followers was a young Arnold Schoenberg). The history reads like a novel that is both exciting and pathetic, for an era and a century and a world were coming to an end--the great war that would destroy much of what little culture survived into the new century was lurking in the relative near-mist of future history.

[Lil · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable read, Morton has an astounding ability to weave events together and give me a clearer picture of all the incredible intersections of this time. I can't comment as to the accuracy of his research - and there were times when I had to wonder how he could possibly know certain things - but even with a liberal dose of fictional prerogative this is an impressive work.

Actually, I think what kept me so engrossed was Morton's ideal mix of celebrity gossip and class analysis. The latter was never overbearing or dogmatic, just present as a background explanation of why seemingly absurd things could unfold as they did. The attention to the "stars" of Viennese society - Brahms, Freud, Bruckner, Mahler, Klimt, the Wittgensteins - felt a bit more tedious at times, but helped with the overall impression of the tenor of the times. What I liked more were the insights into Viennese society - of the balls and the fashions and the Gschnas that dominated Vienna - that contributed to making Rudolf's position so oppressive and his angst so palpable. It's been a long, long time since a history book has made me feel so comprehensively informed (admittedly on a superficial level, but still) about the context of a time that I knew next to nothing about.

I also appreciated his writing style - eminently readable, with the most astounding command of language, and a flow that kept me turning pages late into the night. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a starting point and overall flavour of this period.

[Sherwood Smith]

This intense, nervy historical look at the city of Vienna during the time the crown prince contemplated (and then carried out) his murder suicide, is vivid and so effective that the novelist John Irving wrote a novel around it, called Hotel New Hampshire, quoting some of the punctuating observations, like a famed musician recording in his diary every time he did the mattress Olympics with his mistress.

This was the first history I read in which I could see how very close fiction and history really are--I was so used to the dry, scholarly texts of earlier years, and the new quantifiers of facts like Braudel and Aries of those seventies (whose work gave rise to some truly great cultural studies).

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chronicling the months leading up to and just after Crown Prince Rudolph Habsburg's suicide with a young lover in Mayerling, just outside Vienna. Morton paints a portrait of the city and the imperial sham that the Austro-Hungarian Empire had become, centered on this frustrated young man who was sharp, educated, sensitive, and utterly impotent to do anything constructive under the show-piece reign of his father, who seemed to believe that as long as the forms of empire were managed properly, the actual substance would take care of itself.

Reading several books about the period 1880 to 1914 seems essential to get a true grasp of the rot at the center of Old Europe that ultimately collapsed into the chaos of WWI. This would be a good one to add to any such reading list.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this and appreciated the way Morton reveals the nervousness under the "splendor" I felt it was stronger than 1913 (similarly focused on a short period of time) because Morton chooses to let us experience the year through the eyes of actual people.

We see Freud struggling with rejection by his professional peers and worried aboout money. We see the competitiveness between now-famous musicians. We learn of the Crown Prince's struggle with his uncomfortable powerlessness and feel the effect of his suicide on the society.

An amazing and interesting time and place.

[Elliott · Rating 2 out of 5]

The switching between characters was atrocious (in the unsmooth sense), and his style of relating so much at the end to Hitler & the concept of anti-semitism is so far stretched it's incredulous.

[Daniel Polansky]

Vienna descends into modernity in Morton's exquisitely detailed, compellingly readable cultural history of a dying dual monarchy. An old favorite of mine, worth the re-read.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I've completed post-election, and it seems appropriate. Much like America at the tail-end of 2024, Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1888-1889 was on the precipice of a defining event in its history and didn't realize it until it was too late.

"A Nervous Splendor," by Frédéric Morton, looks at the events in the capital city of Austria-Hungary as they unfolded from July 1888 to April 1889. Using a wide lens focused on several prominent individuals, he weaves together a story that is all too relevant to our own times, of a power structure upset by a traumatic event and unaware of the forces set in motion that will lead to its ultimate destruction.

At center stage is Rudolf, the Crown Prince and heir to Franz Joseph, the Emperor. Rudolf differs from his father in temperament, being more liberal than the old man, and is stuck waiting in the wings perpetually as he is given only ceremonial powers and positions within the Empire. Gradually he becomes convinced that self-harm will be his only escape from this purgatory, and his death at the end of January 1889 (alongside his teenage mistress, whose corpse is taken from the site of their deaths in a fashion comically macabre) signals the end of any hope that Austria-Hungary will veer away from its close relationship with Imperial Germany, under the leadership of freshly crowned and already belligerent Wilhelm II.

But Rudolf is not the only personage we meet: we see artists and thinkers in chrysalis (Freud, Klimt, Theodor Herzl) and gray eminence (Brahms, Bruckner, and so on). We see Arthur Schnitzler, whose work influenced Stanley Kubrick's final film, at the birth of his own, controversial career. We see Gustav Mahler travel to Budapest and take over the orchestra there to bring out Hungarian voices in music. And we see the common, lesser-known names of society at that time, noble people at the time lost to history and those whose titles did not live long after their own deaths. The epic of self-harm that haunts Vienna at this time causes a stir, especially when it claims its most prominent victim in Rudolf. And it ends with the birth of a child, not far from Vienna but far enough to grow up feeling the distance from his dreams, who will grow up to be history's greatest monster.

"A Nervous Splendor" is a wonderful book full of deep insight and revealing moments in the life of a city and an empire on the brink of ruin. And Austria-Hungary, while granted with at least almost thirty more years after the events of this book, was in decline once Rudolf's body was laid into the ground. The dreams he had for his reign died with him, and were replaced by the fears of an older generation and the automaton-like dedication to duty above all else that crystallized in his father Franz Joseph. And while few realized it at the time, history was about to come for the gilded society of Vienna under Habsburg rule. And what would come after would shake the foundations of the world well into the present day.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first read this when I was in grad school (so long ago that I wasn't even writing reviews on Goodreads yet) but had forgotten how ponderous and odd the pacing is. I guess that's why I gave it three stars the first time around.

The second read was befuddling. So much potential. So very much. Perhaps too much. Morton is looking at a microcosm, from historical standards, just one year in one place. But even one year in one place is too much and Morton makes the mistake of waffling between doing a survey and doing a narrow-focus seminar, a schizophrenia affects the readability of the book. Too many characters, too many strings, too many stories, too many side quests. It is in need of a judicious editor to pare it down. Or, perhaps, divide it into two books. Or three.

All of that said, there are some insightful moments, like this one that is basically the nutshell around which Morton's history is built; why is Vienna so different than other European cities?

"Geography is destiny. Henceforward Vienna had to be both throne room and fortress. There was a good reason why the Imperial Palace was called the Hofburg, 'Court Fortress.' More than once the battering ram of the Turk drove at Vienna's ramparts. Through a long historic stretch the town was, simultaneously, traumatized by war and exalted by intimacy with the crown. As a result it never went through normal urban development by way of a gradual unfettering of the middle class. The sword of the knight and the flourish of the courtier marked its streets, not the common sense of the tradesmen. There was very little physical or psychological room inside these ramparts for bourgeois growth. Sometimes the guilds managed to assert civic independence, but in the end the Imperial overseers always carried the day. In other, comparable Western capitals burgherdom thrived along with practicality, efficiency and industry. Not in Vienna."

Or this one
"... in Vienna the accomplishment of actual success did not count for as much as the accomplished gesture. A physician, for instance, was expected to make housecalls in a two-horse fiacre. Freud could not afford a fiacre ... one hour a week he lectured at the University to a scant audience of eight or nine (sometimes eked out by friends for the looks of the thing). The honorarium was a few pennies above nil. Yet the gesture let Freud call himself Universitatsdozent on his shingle."

And we think current society is too "performative." We didn't invent the concept at all. We supersized it with social media, yes. But it was always there. And it was there, in spades, in late 19th century Vienna, where Freud --and Bruckner and Klimt and Mahler -- all strive for the recognized relevancy that history would eventually give them but which seemed out of reach to them as they went about their day-to-day lives.

The larger theme of the book is the foiled liberalism of this era; in Germany Crown Prince Friedrich died paving the way for Kaiser Wilhelm's nationalistic conservatism. And, in the Hapsburg empire, the liberalism of Crown Prince Rudolf died when he did, leaving Franz Joseph without a direct heir.

It's a leap to assume that had Rudolf not died by suicide World War I would have looked different; one of the main reasons Rudolf ended his life was his frustration with his political impotency and Franz Joseph lived until 1916, when WWI was well underway. Had Rudolf been alive, would he have been able to talk Franz Joseph out of declaring war on Serbia, setting off the dominoes?

Not likely, based on this telling. Franz Joseph was not particularly fond of his son's politics and worked to marginalize him. And this marginalization, both by the crown and by the people, drove Rudolf to his death.

"...Rudolf had to playact his way through the usual ceremonial chores . . . mostly he concealed himself and his resentment beneath his official graciousness ... but he had to keep smiling. He had to smile while sitting for a portrait commissioned by the City Council. One hundred and sixty copies of it would go as Christmas gifts to one hundred and sixty schools throughout the municipality. He was wonderfully popular. But most Viennese did not recognize him as a modern leader who wanted to raise the proletarian to bourgeois; who wanted to encourage the middle class so that its fruits -- science, efficiency, progress -- might cure the Empire's languid rot. Too many Austrians saw him with an entirely unenlightened adulation as a high gallant, the hero of a living fairytale."

And this is indeed the crux of the book. If only Morton hadn't let himself get so entangled with side quests.

"By such a paradox Vienna attained greatness after all. It bred the geniuses who foretold the modern wound. And Rudolf, too, became in time a sad but significant precursor. He was the herald of an alienation common to the youth of our day. Over him loomed Franz Joseph, a storybook incarnation of The Establishment. Today The Emperor has been computerized into a system willing to grant its children lordly perquisites and sexual license while remaining resistant to all essential reform. Under today's system the young often appear to be a generation of Rudolfs: free and glamorous in theory, crushingly impotent in action; freely skeptical yet unable to establish one skeptic-proof premise; free to see themselves as unbounded individuals without ever arriving at successful individuality; free to press pleasure to numb excess; free to demand the absolute of their senses and their ideals only to be failed by both, overprivileged and hapless at once; free to sound the depths of sophisticated frustration. The shots in the Vienna Woods were fired in 1889. Today and every day hundreds of other unnerved fingers are already crooked into hundreds of other triggers. Each time we hear of another strange young death in a "good" house we hear of another Mayerling."

Morton wrote this in 1979. It is just as true today, in 2023.

History doesn't really repeat itself as much as cycle through the same existential themes. Over and over and over again.

[Laura R. Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vienna, Austria is my favorite city. Oh, how I wish I had read this book before I traveled there! I had no idea that so many notable and historic figures, including Freud, composers Mahler, Brahms and Buckner, and artist Gustav Joint, to name just a few, all were living in Vienna in the late 1800s, including the 11 month period in 1888-1889 that is the focus of this book. The author did a splendid job building the momentum and anticipation leading up to the main event of the book, the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf (not a spoiler because it's a known historical event), giving you the "feel" of Vienna at the time through the lives of the secondary historical figures, including those named previously. All in all, a great read.