The Arc of History Lecture Series: Austria 1900 - 2020
We are excited to continue our series of lectures launched in 2024, reflecting on Austrian history, identity and creativity over a turbulent 120 year span.
The lectures will be of particular interest to those who have recently acquired Austrian citizenship, or are considering applying.
For new Austrian citizens: In case the event is sold out, please write an email to office@acflondon.org to join the waiting list.
Lecture 4: The Transformation of Images of Vienna from 1945 to the Waldheim Affair in 1986
By Dr. Monika Sommer
The lecture will explore evolving images of the city of Vienna. It will shed light on how Vienna's identity has been shaped and reshaped over decades, through an examination of illustrated books from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as exhibitions from the 1980s.
The lecture will demonstrate the city's journey from post-war recovery to the controversial Waldheim era, highlighting significant cultural and historical shifts.
Dr. Monika Sommer is the founding director of the House of Austrian History (Haus der Geschichte Österreich) since February 2017.
She studied history at the universities of Graz and Vienna. She completed a training course for curators in museums and exhibitions at the Institute of Culture Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Dieter Bogner, Renate Goebl). From 1999 to 2003 she was a research assistant at the Commission for Cultural Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She worked as a curator at the Wien Museum from 2009 to 2013. In 2009, she co-led the project “Insitu. Contemporary history finds the city” with Heidemarie Uhl and Dagmar Höss as part of the European Capital of Culture Linz. At the same time, she worked as a curator and consultant for several Austrian museums. Since 2006 she has also been co-director of the /ecm programme for exhibition theory and practice at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.
Katherine Klinger is the initiator of the lecture series The Arc of History. Previously, she was director of Second Generation Trust, a UK-based charity specialising in post-Holocaust generational consequences. She organised a number of ground-breaking conferences in London, Berlin and Vienna in the nineties, aimed at bringing together descendants of both victims and perpetrators. Katherine ran the Education Department of the Wiener Holocaust Library for a decade. She has recently acquired Austrian citizenship.
About the Arc of History Lecture Series:
The series commences with the last decades and the onset of Modernity from 1900. This was a profoundly significant period both artistically and intellectually, with far-reaching influence and importance, both nationally and internationally. Against this backdrop, the lectures consider significant Jewish contributions to the period, alongside the darker forces gathering momentum, culminating in the tragic fate of Austrian Jewry and other victims.
Austrian complicity, together with a postwar victim narrative, led many to shun a country that formally had nurtured some of the greatest achievements and minds of the early 20th century. With a growing recognition of the need to reassess its history, Austria finally commenced, in the mid-nineties, its own unique process to repair some of the mid-century rupture. The announcement in 2020, enshrined in law, that all Austrian descendants of NS persecution have the right of citizenship, is an important and significant contribution to this process. To date, over 35,000 people from across the world have acquired Austrian citizenship and it is estimated that the numbers will rise considerably in the next decade.
The final lecture in the series will reflect on the implications and meaning of citizenship in a country where connection has often been associated with tragedy and ambivalence, and many have rarely, if ever, even visited. As a new chapter opens, perhaps a new sense of purpose, opportunity and responsibility emerges.
Further lectures in the series (TBC):
- Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky
