Barbara Beßlich’s Das Junge Wien im Alter. Spätwerke (neben) der Moderne (1905–1938) offers a timely reconsideration of the literary historiography of early Viennese modernism. Beßlich’s careful and wide-ranging study traces the later literary, cultural, and political engagements of Jung Wien’s leading figures, including Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Hermann Bahr, Felix Salten, and Peter Altenberg. Her study draws out thoughtful contrasts that challenge popular literary-historical impressions that tend to cast the careers of these authors in monolithic terms and extend the reach of the fin de siècle into the 1920s: Schnitzler remains the ironic social critic of Leutnant Gustl and Reigen, Hofmannsthal remains the elitist aesthete, and so on. Instead, Beßlich’s inquiry rejects the notion that “nach 1900 noch ein homogener Dichterkreis mit einem einheitlichen poetologischen Programm bestanden hätte,” and instead asserts that “das Spätwerk dieser Autoren zeigt, dass sich deren Lebenswege und Kunstkonzeptionen, mal gewollt mal forciert, mal gefürchtet und perhorresziert immer wieder in Wien und anderswo kreuzen” (14). Beßlich’s attention to the later works of this group of artists—framed against the backdrop of paradigm-shifting events from the early twentieth century—persuasively dismantles the mythology of an enduring Jung Wien, adding needed richness specifically to the literary-historical discourse of the Viennese interwar period.

This intervention is particularly timely in light of recent scholarship that, since Deborah Holmes and Lisa Silverman’s Interwar Vienna: Culture between Tradition and Modernity (2014), has sought to divorce the Austrian cultural narrative post-1914 from the legacy of the celebrated fin de siècle. The resurgent interest in Red Vienna has further augmented canonical understandings of literary history during this period. For her part, Beßlich underscores her acute awareness of the homogenizing tendency of literary-historical periodization as a central problem that her study sets out to overcome. On the one hand, the constellation of Jung Wien serves as a limiting definition that delineates the scope, objectives, and membership of the group of artists under examination. On the other hand, the term serves to exclude members of the group from subsequent literary-historical periodizations—for instance, Die Neue Sachlichkeit. The results of this form of literary history, Beßlich reminds us, is a group of artists caught in a state between belonging and non-belonging. In reality, however, “kaum einer verstummt, fast alle schreiben weiter” (13). This awareness of reception—both as a historical and contemporary phenomenon—helps Beßlich to frame the impact of her argument as a challenge to conventional understandings of Viennese modernism.

Beßlich’s study unfolds via a series of close readings that vary in their focus and depth. Chapters range in scope from case studies of single authors (especially Peter Altenberg) and sustained examinations of individual works (Schnitzler’s Therese or Hofmannsthal’s Timon der Redner) to comparisons that convincingly document reactions of erstwhile Jung Wiener to significant interwar discourses, including the status of religion, nationalism, and aesthetics (and especially opera). The readings are fueled by rigorous close readings and bolstered by historical primary sources, including peripheral writings (journals, diaries, letters) and periodicals. These readings are at their most effective when Beßlich demonstrates how a certain theme or event elicits distinctive reactions among the former members of Jung Wien. This is particularly apparent in the chapter “Kriegsbeginn und Habsburgs Ende.” While Bahr’s novella Heimkehr captures the ambivalence accompanying the post-imperial political landscape, Beßlich shrewdly points to Hofmannsthal’s embrace of the concept of “Europa” as a nostalgic replacement for diminished Austrian aristocracy. Such contrasts underscore the divergent later paths of the members of Jung Wien, rejecting the notion that these authors merely continued to serve as functionaries of a salient political-aesthetic movement. Beßlich’s study also succeeds in drawing a series of known yet under-studied authors more strongly into the limelight. While the post-Jung Wien works of Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Salten, and even an author like Felix Dörmann have received significant attention, the later works of authors like Hermann Bahr and Peter Altenberg have received less scholarly attention.

The breadth of Beßlich’s inquiry is one of the key strengths of the work. At the same time, the wide-ranging scope of Jung Wien im Alter also hinders the impact of the volume as a whole. While all chapters are concerned with identification, explication, and analysis of literary texts, the overarching chapter themes range from biographical, to sociopolitical, to aesthetic. Some chapters are devoted to single authors or works, others cast a broader net by engaging with multiple works from multiple authors. The result is an inquiry that at times feels disconnected, and the rationale for including individual chapters and themes is somewhat opaque. Chapter 5, devoted to shifting attitudes toward Gotthold Lessing’s writings as representatives for Enlightenment thought, is a prime example of this tendency. While Beßlich’s discussion is thorough and convincing, Lessing is perhaps not the most obvious choice as an intellectual interlocutor. The blending of chapter foci can also make the argument feel repetitive. Bahr’s Heimkehr (1924) is explored in chapter three, while the next chapter offers several pages of biographical information from Bahr’s student days in the late nineteenth century that might have been equally well-placed a chapter earlier. These moments of disjunction diminish the overall impact of the work by disrupting the coalescence of an overarching argument. This is perhaps part of the point, however; by refusing to create a coherent antipode to Jung Wien, Beßlich offers an analysis that resists the same kind of tidy literary-historical periodization that motivates her study in the first place.

Beßlich’s Das Junge Wien im Alter delivers a multifaceted exploration of the literary “afterlives” of some of Viennese modernism’s most celebrated personalities. Through careful and well-evidenced close readings, Beßlich’s study chips away at monolithic interpretations of the fin de siècle by emphasizing the complex and individual viewpoints of Jung Wien authors during and after World War I. Her volume is a useful companion to scholars of Viennese modernism, including scholars of interwar Vienna, and also persuasively engages with historical discourse via its chosen authors. Jung Wien im Alter therefore offers both a literary-historical corrective and also an affirmative contribution to the cultural history of the Viennese interwar period.