Vienna
An outpouring of jaunty black comedy
Whether reportage or dashed down diary entries, Xandra Bingley’s vivid stories seem to catch life on the wing as it flashes past at terrifying speed
The joy of composers’ graves
I called on Hugo Wolf the other week, and he didn’t look too great. He wouldn’t, of course; he died…
Alice in Nightmareland: The Matchbox Girl, by Alice Jolly, reviewed
A mute 12-year-old girl is invited to Dr Asperger’s clinic in 1930s Vienna – but how will ‘idiot’ children fare once the Nazis come to power?
Hope springs eternal: The Café with No Name, by Robert Seethaler, reviewed
It’s Vienna, 1966, and a young labourer casts a speculative eye on a ramshackle café in the corner of the Karmelitermarkt, daring to restore it and improve his lot
In search of kindred spirits: An Absence of Cousins, by Lore Segal, reviewed
When Ilka Weisz, a young refugee from Vienna, accepts a teaching post in smalltown Connecticut, she struggles to make friends in the close-knit academic community
Hero and villain: The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, by Sam Taylor, reviewed
A Jewish teenager is the victim of a Nazi arson attack in 1933. Alternative scenarios see him joining the French Resistance, and being recruited by the SS
In defence of the EU
Eastern Europe is the graveyard of empires. Rome failed on the Danube, Napoleon on the Dnieper. The epic struggle between…
‘Will you do a book for me?’
Born in a poor quarter of Vienna, the refugee took London by storm, married four times, survived financial ruin and died eulogised the world over
Last chance saloon
Florian Illies describes the charged atmosphere of Europe in the early 1930s, as people grew increasingly desperate to celebrate their last chance of freedom
Was it murder?
In a beautifully told novel, O’Callaghan focuses on the mysterious death of the footballer Matthias Sindelar in 1939 – possibly as a result of defying Hitler
The trouble with Austria’s vaccine passport plan
Are vaccine passports being used in other countries in an attempt to cut Covid infections – or to try and…
Otherworldly genius
The 20th-century Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel did his level best to live in the world as his philosophical hero Gottfried…
A pan-European cheese dream
The best moment in the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day Concert comes after the end of the advertised programme.…
Paradis regained
Selina Mills on Maria Theresia von Paradis, the gifted but forgotten 18th-century composer, whose story will finally be told in a new chamber opera
High life
Vienna Somebody once described Vienna as a top opera performed by understudies. The remark was unquestionably witty, but utterly false…
Family matters
History will record Leopoldstadt as Tom Stoppard’s Schindler’s List. His brilliant tragic-comic play opens in the Jewish quarter of Vienna…
Wonderful, overwhelming, once-in-a-lifetime display of Bruegels – get on a plane now
‘About suffering’, W.H. Auden memorably argued in his poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, the old masters ‘were never wrong’. Great…
Carry on Don
One of these days I will probably see a production of Don Giovanni set in a research station in the…
Hero or collaborator?
Simon Baron-Cohen wonders whether the humane Hans Asperger may finally have betrayed the vulnerable children in his care in Nazi-occupied Vienna
A deal for the good of the world, but in Vienna rather than Brussels
As an occasional lecturer on the abstruse topic of the efficacy of sanctions in conflict resolution, I find myself much…
Pliny the Younger on Fifa
In any huge enterprise (like Fifa), where does the rot begin? Pliny the Younger mused on this question in a…
Letters
Bees vs Belgians Sir: To answer Rory Sutherland and Glen Weyl’s question: yes, everyone should vote and no, just because…
High life
A recent column in the FT made me mad as hell. The writer, Simon Kuper, calls Vienna a backwater, which…
Vienna
People get the wrong idea about Vienna and I blame Johann Strauss. His plinky-plonky waltzes have become the soundtrack to…
Dirty dancing
Vienna’s New Year’s Day concert is still tarnished by its Nazi origins, says Norman Lebrecht
