Vienna

Book excerpt: From border garrison of the Roman Empire to magnificent Baroque seat of the Habsburgs, Vienna's fortunes swung between survival and expansion. By the late nineteenth century it had become the western capital of the sprawling Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but the twentieth century saw it degraded to a hydrocephalus cut off from its former economic hinterland. After the inglorious Nazi interlude, Vienna escaped from four-power-occupation in 1955 and began the long climb back to the prosperous and cultivated city of 1.7 million inhabitants that it is today. Even as a metropolis, Vienna always retained a sense of intimacy, and sometimes of intellectual and spiritual claustrophobia. This village has been a crucible of creativity from the glittering arts and music of Habsburg and noble patronage to the libidinous hothouse of Freud's fin-de-siecle society, with all its brilliance and ambivalence. Subjected to constant infusions of new blood from the Empire, and now from the former imperial territories and beyond, Vienna has both assimilated and resisted cultural influences from outside, creating its own sui generis culture."