The small community that grew up around a textile mill that became known as Marienthal is best known as the site of Jahoda, Lazarfeld, and Zeisel's landmark study of mass unemployment in the early 1930s, Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal. Ein soziographischer Versuch über die Wirkungen langandauernder Arbeitslosigkeit (Leipzig, 1933). This text explored the effects of virtually full unemployment using pioneering methods of social research that, while they might make the hair of a contemporary university board of ethics stand on end, resulted in an impressively detailed study of the lives of former mill workers and their families. Mythos Marienthal attempts both to commemorate local visual history in the midst of a long-term revitalization project in the region and to act as a “supplementary source for the study of Marienthal” (14).

Reinhard Müller provides a brief overview of the community and book that emphasizes the deep roots of the Marienthal that sprang up around the textile mill in the nineteenth century. However, the vast majority of the book is dedicated to a collection of historic photographs assembled by Walter and Sonja Dienstl. As a piece of local history, the work is a well-produced visual record of a peculiar community that never formally existed as an administrative unit. As a companion to the landmark 1933 study, it hints at some of the opportunities for a deeper understanding of the region and its culture but does not present the material for a more thorough understanding of the community.

Mythos Marienthal succeeds best in conveying the centrality of the textile mill itself, demonstrating its physical dominance of the settlement and role in the growth of the community and its own sense-of-self. The transformation of May Day celebrations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in particular provides fascinating visual images, evolving from a semi-rural holiday into a well-organized demonstration of an increasingly self-confident working class. Beyond the magnificent beards and moustaches displayed by the white-collar workers, images of workers in the 1920s who were increasingly coming to look like a prosperous middle class are a poignant counterpoint to the community described by Jahoda, Lazarfeld, and Zeisel. Müller's chapter on living space in the community is also especially interesting in the context of the 1933 study, as it provides a strong sense of the physical space inhabited by the study's subjects. The cramped conditions of the courtyards, the role of the central water wells, and the surprisingly small area occupied by the factory residences in Marienthal are at once representative of working-class life in Central Europe in general and peculiar as an example of a relatively small factory settlement in the rural outskirts of a metropolis.

Unfortunately, much of this is undermined by organizational questions within individual chapters and a good deal of attention to details of ownership. The chapter of photos of Hausgemeinschaften in particular is difficult to interpret without a clear map that shows the importance of proximity to the mill emphasized in the text. Similarly, with the collection of postcards in Chapter Four, it is unclear if these represent the best of the lot, all that survives, or if they demonstrate the development of the growing sophistication and community pride that they seem to indicate. It is likewise unfortunate that more direct attention was not paid to the development of either the Austrian Social Democratic Party or the Union of Austrian Textile Workers in Marienthal, as both are critical to understanding the development of local culture. More emphasis on the National Socialist period would also have been useful. Although Müller and the Dienstls have provided some photographs of this period, an opportunity to present some of the ways that the same physical spaces like the Herrengarten Park, local pubs, and Heinrich Treer's general store were used after many of the old political and associational structures were destroyed seems to have been missed.

Perhaps this asks too much. In light of the fact that Marienthal itself was always more of a neighborhood than a city with the kinds of archives and other infrastructure that would have preserved local history systematically, the existence of the photos assembled by the Dienstls is itself welcome. In sum, this volume offers the unique opportunity for those familiar with the 1933 study to appreciate some of the visual atmosphere of the community but contains less material for more general students or scholars.