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AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
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spite of his great age brought about a transformation, and the architect Otto Wagner (1841-1918), who, though his roots were set in the age of Francis Joseph, became the leader of the moderns in Vienna.

Side by side with these artists, who, in spite of their inter- national features, devoted their talents to Austria, were others who split away from their native land and became completely identified with foreign art, for example : Alphons Mucha (b. 1860), who became a French decorative artist; the painters Charles Schuch (1876-1903) and Emil Orlik (b. 1870); the sculptors Hugo Lederer (b. 1871) and Hans Metzner (1870-1919); and the architect Josef Olbrich (1867-1908), who have all more importance in the development of German art in general than of Austrian art.

Meanwhile there arose various national schools, which developed with energy their racial peculiarities. The young Poles, united in the society called the Sztuka, endeavoured to depict Slav gaiety in a riot of gaudy colour (Chelmonski, Mehoffer, etc.); in like manner the Slovak Joza Uprka (b. 1862) exploited his native land, his materials being peasant customs and types and the peasant's love of colour. Frantisek Bilek (b. 1872) mirrored in mighty contours the ardent faith of the Slav peoples, while Jan Stursa, endowed with equal power, re- fined it into an art of truly European quality. In contrast with these two Czech sculptors may be placed the highly gifted Southern Slav Mestrovic, who expressed in his art the refractory energy and wild fanaticism of his race. Among German-Austrian artists the originality of the Tirolese Albin Egger-Lienz (b. 1868) deserves special mention, for in it the Tirolese element plays an important part.

In Vienna the leading personality of his generation was Gustav Klimt (1862-1918); his very delicate decorative art, his subtle taste in colour, his inclination towards industrial art, make his painting so Viennese that it would hardly be com- prehensible in other surroundings. A pendant to him is the architect Josef Hoffmann (b. 1869), who originated in the school of Otto Wagner, whose stiff principles he softened, however, by his richer-taste (e.g. the Stoelet House in Brussels); the tendency towards decorative and industrial art which Klimt had revived in Vienna was turned into a systematic school by Hoffmann. In theatrical decoration, in domestic architecture, in all branches of the handicrafts, Vienna became a leading centre of the moderns, the " Viennese Workshops " (Wiener Werkslatle) and the " Austrian Craft Guild " (Qsterreichische Werkbund) being the centre of their activity. A leading figure among the younger generation of artists, after the war, was Oskar Kokoschka (b. 1888). (H. TK.)

Literature and Drama. Between 1910 and 1920 new tendencies and personalities came into the literary foreground in Austria, and moreover death made many gaps in the ranks of the leading representatives of the older traditions. In 1916 died Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (see 8.843*). Born in the same year as Francis Joseph (1830), she had continued her literary activity to the very end of her life. In 1915 she published the sketches entitled Stille Welt, and from her literary remains appeared in 1916 Erinnerungen an Grillparzer and Blatter aus einem zeitlosen Tagebuch: prose poems, satirical attacks on Ibsen, Hauptmann and the modern school, for whom she had no sympathy. Her enthusiasm for Tolstoy was correspondingly great, and among her successors she marked out for special praise Enrica Handel Mazzetti, with whom she carried on a correspondence which was published under the title of Der Dichlcrinnen stiller Garten. In 1918 died the Styrian dialect poet Peter Rosegger (see 23.734). He too delighted in creation till the end of his life, and was oc- cupied in revising his collected works for an edition in 40 volumes. Riickblicke auf den Schauplalz des Lebens : Abendddmmerung appeared posthumously in 1919; it deals with questions of time and eternity, religious, social and political problems, and the characters of eminent people, e.g. Schiller and Francis Joseph. His greatest successor as a dialect poet he held to be the Tirolese dramatist Karl Schonherr. During the decade several other notable writers died. Count Albrecht Wickenburg (1838-1912),

husband of the poetess Almasy-Wickenburg, was a fine lyrical poet who made a masterly translation of Shelley's Prometheus. Freiherr Alfred von Benger (1853-1912), important as an essay- ist and playwright, founded the Deutsches Schauspielhaus at Hamburg, and ultimately became director of the Burgtheater. Max Burckhard (1857-1912), a distinguished jurist, who was director of the Burgtheater for eight years, was a champion of Ibsen, Hauptmann, Schnitzler and Anzengruber, and patron of the greatest actors of the rising generation Hedwig Bleibtreu, Lotte Medelsky, Mitterwurzer and Kainz; he was active as a critic, dramatist and story-teller, but the artistic merit of his work was unequal. In 1917 died Bertha von Suttner, authoress of the novel Die Waffen nieder!, well known as a protagonist of the League of Peace, and winner of the Nobel prize. The Zionist Hugo Zuckermann (1881-1917), whose song, Driiben am Wiesenrand silzen zwei Dohlen, was much sung at the beginning of the World War, fell in battle. Peter Altenberg (1859-1919) died at the age of 60; he was equally original in his life and his art, and his books, Wie ich es sehe, Was der Tag bringl, Semmer- ing, etc., have a highly personal touch.

In spite of these losses there was no lack of talent in Austrian literature, for many followed in the footsteps of their predecessors but most of them sought and found ways of their own. The creations of Ibsen, Zola, Maeterlinck, Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, Shaw and Strindberg had their influence on the younger genera- tion. Modern and ultra-modern tendencies, the new romanticism, symbolism, occultism, expressionism, took the place of realism, naturalism and impressionism. The partisans of Stirner and Nietzsche, the Sturm und Drang school, lost all sense of reason and moderation. Far removed from these wandering fires, and yet receptive to the subtle innovations of Ibsen and Hauptmann, there developed the most powerful of contemporary German- Austrian writers, Karl Schonherr. Born in 1830 at Axams near Innsbruck, the son of a schoolmaster, he spent his life in Tirol, going to the university of Vienna, where he qualified as a doctor. In 1895 he first appealed to the public in his dialect poems, Innthaler Schnalzer, and his sketches Allerhand Kreuzkdpf. His drama, Judas von Tirol, was an unsuccessful attempt to represent the betrayer of Andreas Hofer on the stage. Die Bildschnitzer and Sonnwendtag met with success both at the Volkstheater and the Burgtheater. In 1907 followed the tragi- comedy Erde, in which the principal role, that of the old peasant Grutz, was splendidly played by Josef Kainz, and is a finely conceived type. The character was so convincing that the original of old Grutz was looked for in every walk of life and mis- takenly supposed to be Francis Joseph, since he kept the im- patient heir, Francis Ferdinand, waiting in vain for the throne. After a fairy play, Das Konigreich, Schonherr composed his tragedy, Glaube und Heimat, a national-historical drama which gave a vivid picture of the Reformation and Counter-Reforma- tion and the proscription of Protestants in the Alpine regions, and in spite of ultramontane agitation was played hundreds of times with the greatest success. In 1915 Schonherr completed his technically unique drama for three characters only, Der Weibsteufel; it was violently attacked by ecclesiastical fanatics, and its morality was defended by the poet in an indignant answer to the bishop of Munich. In the middle of the war Schonherr published the drama on the subject of Hofer which he had begun in 1909, Volk in Not, a German heroic poem, which represented so impartially the light and dark sides of the Tirol's struggle for freedom that the military censorship of Berlin and Vienna, on trifling pretexts, for years prevented this masterpiece from being produced. Schonherr's remaining plays are: Fruchtbarkeit, the tragedy of a childless peasant woman; the Kindertragodie, again for three characters only; and two pessimistic pictures of aca- demic life, Narrenspieldes Lebens (1918) and Der Kampf; ein Drama geistiger Arbeiter (1920). Schonherr's stories, Caritas (1907) and Aus meinem Merkbuch (1911), are worthy to rank with his plays, and in their sober form, grim humour and tragic reticence bear the true impress of the Tirolese race.

Fundamentally different in method and art is the most notable Austrian dramatist next to Schonherr, Arthur Schnitzler.

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