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      • Trusted Partner
        February 2009

        Daraus lassen sich ein paar Erzählungen machen

        by Taras Prochasko, Maria Weissenböck

        Ein dramatisches Zeitalter auf wenigen Seiten zu besichtigen, dazu bedarf es der minimalistischen Kunst eines großen Autors. Taras Prochasko verwandelt ein Familienepos, das Hunderte Geschichten birgt, in lauter erzählerische Extrakte, die eine versunkene Welt und ihre Bewohner heraufbeschwören und zum Gegenstand der Meditiation machen. Diese Welt heißt Stanislau und liegt im Karpatenvorland, einem Winkel des Habsburger Reichs. Nach zwei Weltkriegen ist dort nichts mehr wie zuvor. Nur der Enkel Taras wohnt noch immer im Haus seines tschechischen Großvaters an der Hauptstraße. Nicht nur ihre verworrenen Lebensläufe ruft er auf, sondern auch die vielen Dinge, die es einmal gab: »Manchmal, wenn ich nichts mache und nichts sage, scheint es mir, daß genau dies das allerrealste Ich ist. Eine Sammlung chaotischer, unnützer Dinge.«

      • Trusted Partner
        March 2007

        Berichte aus der dunklen Welt

        Prosa

        by Dževad Karahasan, Brigitte Döbert, Dževad Karahasan

        Zwanzig Minuten Fußweg sind es von der Lateinerbrücke, an der mit dem Attentat auf das Habsburger Thronfolgerpaar das »kurze 20. Jahrhundert« begann, bis zur Vrbanjabrücke, an der es 1992 mit der Ermordung zweier Studentinnen endete. Nüchtern und unspekulativ hellt Dževad Karahasan die Dunkelheit auf, die über diesem Weg und den Menschen liegt, die ihn gegangen sind. Karahasan folgt den Spuren, die das 20. Jahrhundert in seiner Heimatstadt Sarajevo und in Bosnien hinterlassen hat. Anatomie der Traurigkeit handelt von dem Sohn eines italienischen Partisanen und einer jugoslawischen Kommunistin, der im Exil sein Leben rekapituliert. In Prinzip Gabriel führen Recherchen den Erzähler nach Theresienstadt. Er entdeckt, daß dort auch Gavrilo Princip, der Attentäter von Sarajevo, inhaftiert war. Die Briefe aus dem Jahre 1993 berichten von einem Studenten, der seinen Dozenten mit den Briefen eines in Sarajevo Umgekommenen konfrontiert. Immer wieder verknüpft dieser Berichterstatter aus einer dunklen Welt scheinbar unzusammenhängende Ereignisse. In einer Prosa, die Authentisches und Fiktives geschickt ineinander verwebt, wird so die »spiralförmige Struktur der Zeit« sichtbar.

      • Trusted Partner
        August 2013

        Blumenfresser

        by László Darvasi, Heinrich Eisterer

        Zwei Menschen sind in ihrer zugenagelten Wohnung verhungert: ineinander verschlungen liegen sie in einem mit Blumen vollgestopften Zimmer. Draußen tritt die Theiß über die Ufer, reißt die Behausungen der geflohenen Juden, Armenier und Serben mit sich fort und zerstört in einer Jahrhundertflut Szeged, die Stadt im Südosten des Habsburger Reichs. Bei den Toten handelt es sich um Klara Pelsőczy, eine leidenschaftliche, ungefügige Frau, die drei Männer liebt und „mit dem Fußabdruck eines Engels auf der Hand“ zur Welt kam; und um den Naturhistoriker Imre Schön, der nach der niedergeschlagenen Revolution von 1848 sieben Jahre im Gefängnis saß: ein Vortrag über Blumenfresser wurde ihm zum Verhängnis. In apokalyptischen und phantastischen Szenarien erzählt László Darvasi von Liebe und Gewalt in Mitteleuropa. Sein von surrealen Episoden durchsetzter Roman, im Jahrhundert der Freiheitsbewegungen angesiedelt, kennt neben der menschlichen und kreatürlichen Welt eine zarte und gefahrvolle Sphäre des Traums und des hellsichtigen Irrsinns, die man nach dem Verzehr von Blumen betritt.

      • Trusted Partner
        January 2005

        Habsburgs Diener in Post und Politik

        Das 'Haus' Thurn und Taxis zwischen 1745 und 1867

        by Grillmeyer, Siegfried

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2021

        Vienna’s ‘respectable’ antisemites

        by Michael Carter-Sinclair

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        May 2016

        Representations of Renaissance monarchy

        Francis I and the image-makers

        by Lisa Mansfield

        Representations of Renaissance monarchy analyses the portraits and personal imagery of Francis I, one of the most frequently portrayed rulers of sixteenth-century Europe. The distinctive likeness of the Valois king was widely disseminated and perceived by his French subjects, and Tudor and Habsburg rivals abroad. Complementing studies on the representation of Henry VIII, this book makes a dynamic contribution to scholarship on the enterprise of royal image-making in early-modern Europe. The discussion not only highlights the inventiveness of the visual arts in Renaissance France but also alludes to the enduring politics of physical appearance and seductive power of the face and body in modern visual culture. Coinciding with the five hundredth anniversary of Francis I's accession, this book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval and Renaissance art, the history of portraiture or anyone interested in images of monarchy and the history of France. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2021

        Mary and Philip

        The marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain

        by Alexander Samson

        Mary I, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, was Queen of England from 1553 until her death in 1558. For much of this time she ruled alongside her husband, King Philip II of Spain, forming a co-monarchy that put England at the heart of early modern Europe. In this book, Alexander Samson presents a bold reassessment of Mary and Philip's reign, rescuing them from the neglect they have suffered at the hands of generations of historians. The co-monarchy of Mary I and Philip II put England at the heart of early modern Europe. This positive reassessment of their joint reign counters a series of parochial, misogynist and anti-Catholic assumptions, correcting the many myths that have grown up around the marriage and explaining the reasons for its persistent marginalisation in the historiography of sixteenth-century England. Using new archival discoveries and original sources, the book argues for Mary as a great Catholic queen, while fleshing out Philip's important contributions as king of England.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2020

        Vyshyvanyi. The King of Ukraine

        by Serhiy Zhadan

        Serhiy Zhadan's new book, "Vyshyvanyi. The King of Ukraine", is a story that is always relevant, especially nowadays. It is a story of love for Ukraine. Austrian Archduke Wilhelm Franz von Habsburg-Lothringen, known as Vasyl Vyshyvanyi, played a prominent role in the Ukrainian national liberation movement. Zhadan speaks about the project: "The figure of Vyshyvany is non-trivial, interesting, and deserves all kinds of mentions and study. The coming of Vyshivany to Ukrainianness and acceptance of his identity is not a fictional story. It is interesting to learn how many people are discovering Ukraine, Ukrainian history, Ukrainian culture, and the Ukrainian language." The book has already found its supporters and even received an award in the "Best Book Design 2020" competition, held by the "Book Arsenal" International Festival in cooperation with the Goethe Institute in Ukraine. This award is fully justified: the creative tandem of Zhuk&Kelm artistic talent has created a real gem. Designer Nadiya Kelm wrote about the work: "Vyshyvany got his nickname from Ukrainian soldiers because he liked to dress up in embroidered clothes. This was the starting point for the visual concept of the book. We took a very geometric embroidery scheme, which grows with each section, revealing more and more of the portrait of the Vyshyvanyi. The perforated pages allude to the Ukrainian vytynanka (paper cut ornament)".

      • Trusted Partner
      • September 2022

        Literary Travel Guide Galicia

        On the road in Poland and Ukraine

        by Marcin Wiatr

        Galicia is an integral part of the Habsburg myth and the epitome of worldly seclusion, Eastern Jewish cultural traditions, the Kakan way of life and indescribable poverty. Even if the supranational entity called the Habsburg Monarchy, to which Galicia belonged between 1772 and 1918, no longer exists, the region lives on in literature. In addition to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Iwan Franko and Karl Emil Franzos, Joseph Roth, Bruno Schulz, Mascha Kaléko, Stanisław Vincenz, Józef Wittlin, Hnat Chotkevych, Zygmunt Haupt, Stanisław Lem, and Isaak Babel dealt with Galician themes. Today, Sophia and Juri Andrukhovych, Andrzej Stasiuk, Olga Tokarczuk, Martin Pollack, Tanya Maljartschuk, Taras and Jurko Prochasko, Ziemowit Szczerek, Natalka Sniadanko, Maxim Biller among others, do so. The book takes you to places of European history in the Southeast of Poland and in the West of Ukraine - from Krakow via Tarnow to Brody and from Lviv via Drohobych, Stanislau/Iwano-Frankiwsk and Boryslau to Zakopane. Marcin Wiatr reminds us that Galicia has historical lessons to teach us all in Europe.

      • Individual artists, art monographs
        January 2019

        The Last Days of Mankind

        A Visual Guide to Karl Kraus’ Great War Epic

        by artwork by Deborah Sengl; contributions by Marjorie Perloff, Matthias Goldmann, Anna Souchuk and Paul Reitter

        "Eye-catching": Top 10 Anticipated Art Books Publishers Weekly   Garnering critical success over the past four years, Viennese artist Deborah Sengl has exhibited taxidermied rats, drawings and paintings to restage Karl Kraus’ infamous, nearly-unperformable play The Last Days of Mankind (Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, 1915–22). Featuring Sengl’s entire installation, this edition includes essays that examine her ambitious dramaturgy, which condenses the 10-15 hour drama into an abridged reading of its themes: human barbarism, the role of journalism in war, the sway of popular opinion and the absurdities of nationalism. The Last Days of Mankind offers an agit-prop protest envisioning human folly through animal actors, who become more than human, while confronting a violence particular to humankind, laced with selfishness and greed.   The work is a hundred years old, but for me it is still current. We may not have war in the immediate vicinity, but the war within us is as strong, if not stronger, as it was then.– Deborah Sengl

      • Fiction
        July 2016

        New King Palmers

        by Peter Cowlam

        Winner of the 2018 Quagga Prize for Literary Fiction. Set in the late 1990s, in the months up to and after the death of Princess Diana, New King Palmers is narrated by its principal character Humfrey Joel, a close friend of Earl Eliot d’Oc. The earl’s ancestry is bound up with the Habsburgs and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. D’Oc is a member of the British Privy Council and a close friend of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. In the months preceding Diana’s death, he commissions a young theatre professional to develop a play. The play’s theme is constitutional issues surrounding Prince Charles, with the heir’s interests served by UK withdrawal from the EU, before it becomes a federal superstate. The commissioned play is called New King Palmers, and d’Oc maintains rigorous editorial control over it. When d’Oc’s death shortly follows Diana’s, Joel is named as d’Oc’s literary executor, with the task of bringing the play to the English stage. Supposedly written into the text is an encoded message from the British Privy Council on behalf of the House of Windsor, addressed to the stewards of the EU. When news of this leaks out no one in the British literary and theatrical worlds believes it. In fact most come to see Earl d’Oc as an invented character behind which Joel shields himself, when his own motives are themselves sinister. So sinister, an MI5 spook is put on the case.   Available at Amazon and other online retailers.

      • Biography & True Stories
        March 2021

        Mozart in Prague

        by Dr. Daniel E. Freeman

        ISBN-13: 978-1-950743-50-6   Dismissed in Vienna as a compose of excessively complicated music with little popular appeal, Mozart found complete recognition for his talents in Prague, likely as a byproduct of the exceptional musical literacy of the general population. Accounts of the affection lavished on Mozart by the people of Prague can be deeply moving for those acquainted with his bleak struggles for recognition in Vienna. Indeed, he was manhandled like a rock star at the concert in 1787 that featured the first performance of the "Prague" symphony in a way that he never experienced anywhere else. And in contrast to the tawdry ceremonies that accompanied Mozart's burial in Vienna in 1791, his funeral in Prague, attended by thousands of mourners, brought life there to a standstill. It was the residents of Prague, not Vienna, who took responsibility to provide for Mozart's widow and children. Mozart in Prague tells the story of the amazing civic revival that was responsible for Mozart's unique personal and musical relationship with this beautiful city and the colorful characters who helped shape it, including Marie Antoinette and Giacomo Casanova.

      • March 2020

        The Miracle of Survival

        by Ernst Lothar

        “The day the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell broke my heart ... something irreplaceable died.” Ernst Lothar was a child of the Habsburg Empire and remained so until his death. In the First Austrian Republic he made a name for himself as a theatre critic and until his emigration he co-directed the Theater in der Josefstadt with Max Reinhardt. In 1938 he emigrated to the USA, returning to Vienna after the end of the war as a Denazification officer; and despite hostilities later took on leading positions at the Burgtheater and the Salzburg Festival, which he co-founded. “It is difficult not to lose your heart to the ingenuity and child-like exuberance of these people,” writes Daniel Kehlmann in his epilogue to Das Wunder des Überlebens.

      • February 2019

        Ukrainian Bishop, American Church

        by Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak

        Constantine Bohachevsky was not a typical bishop. On the eve of his unexpected nomination as bishop to the Ukrainian Catholics in America, in March 1924, the Vatican secretly whisked him from Warsaw to Rome to be ordained. He arrived in America that August to a bankrupt church and a hostile clergy. He stood his ground, and chose to live а simple missionary life. He eschewed public pomp, as did his immigrant congregations. He regularly visited his scattered churches. He fought a bitter fight for the independence of the church from outside interference – a kind of struggle between the Church and the state, absent both. He refashioned a failing immigrant church in America into a self-sustaining institution that half a century after his death could help resurrect the underground Catholic Church in Ukraine, which became the largest Eastern Catholic church today. This trailblazing biography, based on recently opened sources from the Vatican, Ukraine and the United States, brings the reader from the placid life of the married Catholic Ukrainian clergy in the Habsburg Empire to industrial America.

      • Memoirs
        March 2017

        Escape Home

        Rebuilding Life After the Anschluss, A Family Memoir

        by Charles Paterson and Carrie Paterson

        The riveting family memoir of a Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice and his resourceful father begins in Nazi-occupied Europe and journeys “home” to American modernism amid the snowy mountains of Colorado. Charles Paterson (1929–2018) was nine years old when the Nazis invaded Vienna in March, 1938. Fleeing Austria for Czechoslovakia just months later, only to witness the invasion of Hitler for a second time in Prague, the author and his sister escaped to Paris to rejoin their refugee father Stefan before being adopted in Australia. Meanwhile, Stefan’s daring three-month-long escape through France by foot and bicycle, told in a detailed letter to his children from Lisbon, is a story unto itself.

      • Fiction

        Kronosova žetev/The Harvest of Chronos

        by Mojca Kumerdej

        The Harvest of Chronos looks at Central Europe, the Inner Austrian lands, modern-day Slovenian territory, an area plagued by ceaseless battles for supremacy between the Protestant political elite and the ruling Catholic Habsburg Monarchy. The battles for supremacy are fought among the rulers and between the rulers and the people. In this epic saga, history and fiction intertwine in wavelike fashion, producing a colourful portrait of the Renaissance, permeated by humanist attempts to resurrect antiquity through art, new scientific findings, and spirited philosophical and theological debates. This was a time of intrigues, accusations of heresy, political betrayal and burnings at the stake, an age that produced executioners, scapegoats brought to the sacrificial altar in the name of God, the sovereign or the common good, and extraordinary individuals who were prepared to oppose the dominant beliefs of the masses and dared to believe in a new order.In a language that is deliciously rich and slightly elevated, at times deliberately archaic but always cheerfully contemporary and imbued with humour, the novel tackles superstition, false beliefs and selective memory as well as the questions of God, of being and of nothingness.

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