Book launch and lecture with Dr Lorenzo Bellettini

Arthur Schnitzler (1862 – 1931) lived in an epoch of profound changes, from the birth of psychoanalysis and modernism in the arts, to the rise of anti-Semitism, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the holocaust. His life was linked to that of famous and influential figures in Vienna who belonged to his close circle of friends: Sigmund Freud, Theodor Herzl, Stefan Zweig, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Felix Salten, but also Thomas Mann, Henrik Ibsen, and Gustav Mahler, to name just a few.

Making use of original photographs, film excerpts and sound recordings, this lecture retraces the adventurous rescue of Schnitzler’s manuscripts and describes the atmosphere in Vienna, one of the most extraordinary cities in Europe at the peak of its cultural influence. It tells the story of the difficult relationship between talented, ambitious and influential men, who debated on, and passionately wrote about, psychoanalysis, Zionism, the meaning of art and, above all, the construction of a fragile identity in a period of great changes leading to modernity.