He's been her obsession throughout her young life. Yet to seventeen-year-old Marie Vetsera, he i smore than that - he is her destiny. But Crown Prince Rudolf of Austro-Hungary, heir to the throne, a man of the world, much older than Marie and disease-ravaged from his indiscriminate liasons, moves in the upper circles of society to which she, of minor aristocracy, can barely aspire. Through sheer stubbornness, however and maybe a touch of the spoiled child who has always got everything she wanted, the girl succeeds in making a fateful meeting with him happen; an encounter that leads to a passionate not-so-secret affair, one marked, one marked, on her side at least, by total adoration. But all is not right in the world. There is a darker side to Rudolf's life, in which he ultimately sees only one way out.
Gabriel Allon's nightmares come back to haunt him in this tense thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva. Art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon is sent to Vienna to discover the truth behind a bombing that killed an old friend, but while there he encounters something that turns his world upside down. It is a face—a face that feels hauntingly familiar, a face that chills him to the bone. While desperately searching for answers, Allon will uncover a portrait of evil stretching across sixty years and thousands of lives—and into his own personal nightmares...
In this volume, Jane Kallir, author of numerous books on Egon Schiele, including the catalogue raisonne of his oeuvre, offers a survey of the artist's life and work featuring paintings, colored drawings, and photographs. The majority of the works presented here are from the collection of the Albertina in Vienna.
One of the most famous literary works of the 20th century, the novella “Death in Venice” embodies themes that preoccupied Thomas Mann (1875–1955) in much of his work; the duality of art and life, the presence of death and disintegration in the midst of existence, the connection between love and suffering, and the conflict between the artist and his inner self. Mann’s handling of these concerns in this story of a middle-aged German writer, torn by his passion for a Polish youth met on holiday in Venice, resulted in a work of great psychological intensity and tragic power.
“Reads like a novel. A fast-paced page-turner, it has everything: sex, wit, humor, and adventures. But it is an impressively researched and important story.” —David Fromkin, author of Europe’s Last Summer Vienna, 1814 is an evocative and brilliantly researched account of the most audacious and extravagant peace conference in modern European history. With the feared Napoleon Bonaparte presumably defeated and exiled to the small island of Elba, heads of some 216 states gathered in Vienna to begin piecing together the ruins of his toppled empire. Major questions loomed: What would be done with France? How were the newly liberated territories to be divided? What type of restitution would be offered to families of the deceased? But this unprecedented gathering of kings, dignitaries, and diplomatic leaders unfurled a seemingly endless stream of personal vendettas, long-simmering feuds, and romantic entanglements that threatened to undermine the crucial work at hand, even as their hard-fought policy decisions shaped the destiny of Europe and led to the longest sustained peace the continent would ever see. Beyond the diplomatic wrangling, however, the Congress of Vienna served as a backdrop for the most spectacular Vanity Fair of its time. Highlighted by such celebrated figures as the elegant but incredibly vain Prince Metternich of Austria, the unflappable and devious Prince Talleyrand of France, and the volatile Tsar Alexander of Russia, as well as appearances by Ludwig van Beethoven and Emilia Bigottini, the sheer star power of the Vienna congress outshone nearly everything else in the public eye. An early incarnation of the cult of celebrity, the congress devolved into a series of debauched parties that continually delayed the progress of peace, until word arrived that Napoleon had escaped, abruptly halting the revelry and shrouding the continent in panic once again. Vienna, 1814 beautifully illuminates the intricate social and political intrigue of this history-defining congress–a glorified party that seemingly valued frivolity over substance but nonetheless managed to drastically reconfigure Europe’s balance of power and usher in the modern age.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Jake Gyllenhaal. He's seen something that could get him killed. But what? Freddie Makin is a spy for hire. For a year he's been watching Jiang Cheng, an academic whose life seems suspiciously normal. To Freddie it's just a job: he never asks who's paying him and why--until the day someone is sent to kill him, and suddenly the watcher becomes the watched. On the run from whoever wants him dead, Freddie knows he must have seen something incriminating. The only trouble is, he has no idea what. Is the CIA behind all this--or does it go higher than that? Have his trackers uncovered his own murky past? As he's forced into a lethal dance across Vienna, Freddie knows one thing for sure: his only hope for survival is keeping the truth from the other side, and making sure the secrets from his past stay hidden.
Frank Tallis, acclaimed author of the Edgar Award–nominated Vienna Secrets, returns with a new and masterfully woven tale full of deceit, love, and rich mystery. Set in fin de siècle Vienna, it’s perfect for fans of Boris Akunin, Alan Furst, and David Liss. Ida Rosenkranz is top diva at the Vienna Opera, but she’s gone silent for good after an apparent laudanum overdose. Learning of her professional rivalries and her scandalous affairs with older men, Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt and Dr. Max Liebermann suspect foul play instead. Their investigation leads them into dark and dangerous conflicts with Gustav Mahler, the opera’s imperious director, who is himself the target of a poison pen campaign, and Karl Lueger, Vienna’s powerful and anti-Semitic mayor. As the peril escalates, Rheinhardt grows further into his role as family man, while Liebermann finds himself at odds with his inamorata, Amelia, who’s loosening both her corset and her tongue in the new feminist movement. PRAISE FOR FRANK TALLIS’S VIENNA THRILLERS “[A] captivating historical series.”—The New York Times Book Review “[A] riveting read . . . with well researched and wonderfully imagined period detail.”—The Guardian (U.K.), on Vienna Twilight “Chock-full of tantalizing elements.”—The Austin Chronicle, on Vienna Secrets “Engrossing . . . immensely satisfying.”—The Boston Globe, on Fatal Lies
One woman’s journey to find the lost love her grandfather left behind when he fled pre-World War II Europe, and an exploration into family identity, myth, and memory. Years after her grandfather’s death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled “Correspondence: Patients A–G.” What she found inside weren’t dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family’s prewar Vienna. One woman’s letters stood out: those from Valy—Valerie Scheftel. Her grandfather’s lover who had remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria. Valy’s name wasn’t unknown to her—Wildman had once asked her grandmother about a dark-haired young woman whose images she found in an old photo album. “She was your grandfather’s true love,” her grandmother said at the time, and refused any other questions. But now, with the help of the letters, Wildman started to piece together Valy’s story. They revealed a woman desperate to escape and clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom. Obsessed with Valy’s story, Wildman began a quest that lasted years and spanned continents. She discovered, to her shock, an entire world of other people searching for the same woman. On in the course of discovering Valy’s ultimate fate, she was forced to reexamine the story of her grandfather’s triumphant escape and how this history fit within her own life and in the process, she rescues a life seemingly lost to history.
Vienna and its Secessionist movement at the turn of the last century is the focus of this extraordinary social portrait told through an eminent Viennese family, headed by Hermine and Moriz Gallia, who were among the great patrons of early-twentieth-century Viennese culture at its peak. Good Living Street takes us from the Gallias’ middle-class prosperity in the provinces of central Europe to their arrival in Vienna, following the provision of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1848 that gave Jews freedom of movement and residence, legalized their religious services, opened public service and professions up to them, and allowed them to marry. The Gallias, like so many hundreds of thousands of others, came from across the Hapsburg Empire to Vienna, and for the next two decades the city that became theirs was Europe’s center of art, music, and ideas. The Gallias lived beyond the Ringstrasse in Vienna’s Fourth District on the Wohllebengasse (translation: Good Living Street), named after Vienna’s first nineteenth-century mayor. In this extraordinary book we see the amassing of the Gallias’ rarefied collections of art and design; their cosmopolitan society; we see their religious life and their efforts to circumvent the city’s rampant anti-Semitism by the family’s conversion to Catholicism along with other prominent intellectual Jews, among them Gustav Mahler. While conversion did not free Jews from anti-Semitism, it allowed them to secure positions otherwise barred to them. Two decades later, as Kristallnacht raged and Vienna burned, the Gallias were having movers pack up the contents of their extraordinary apartment designed by Josef Hoffmann. The family successfully fled to Australia, bringing with them the best private collection of art and design to escape Nazi Austria; included were paintings, furniture, three sets of silver cutlery, chandeliers, letters, diaries, books and bookcases, furs—chinchilla, sable, sealskin—and even two pianos, one upright and one Steinway. Not since the publication of Carl Schorske’s acclaimed portrait of Viennese modernism, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, has a book so brilliantly—and completely—given us this kind of close-up look at turn-of-the-last-century Viennese culture, art, and daily life—when the Hapsburg Empire was fading and modernism and a new order were coming to the fore. Good Living Street re-creates its world, atmosphere, people, energy, and spirit, and brings it all to vivid life.
The hit novels behind the major new TV series Vienna Blood ___________________________ Vienna, 1902. Vienna is in the grip of the worst winter for years. Amid the snow and ice, a killer embarks upon a bizarre campaign of murder. Vicious mutilation, a penchant for arcane symbols, and a seemingly random choice of victim are his most distinctive peculiarities. Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt summons a young disciple of Freud - his friend Dr. Max Liebermann - to assist him with the case. The investigation draws them into the sphere of Vienna's secret societies - a murky underworld of German literary scholars, race theorists, and scientists inspired by the new English evolutionary theories. At first, the killer's mind seems impenetrable - his behaviour and cryptic clues impervious to psychoanalytic interpretation; however, gradually, it becomes apparent that an extraordinary and shocking rationale underlies his actions ... Against this backdrop of mystery and terror, Liebermann struggles with his own demons. The treatment of a patient suffering from paranoia erotica and his own fascination with the enigmatic Englishwoman Amelia Lydgate raise doubts concerning the propriety of his imminent marriage. To resolve the dilemma, he must entertain the unthinkable - risking disgrace and accusations of cowardice.
