Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2009
No one who has investigated the high culture of Vienna in the era of liberal ascendancy can fail to be impressed by the sturdy integration of its components. Not only were political, scientific, and aesthetic culture closely related to each other in principle and in practice, but the very social life and cultural forms of the elite sustained the synthesis achieved. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, this complex was breaking apart, with aesthetic culture often going its separate way from the liberal-rationalist political and academic culture with which it had been linked. The character of this union and its breakup will provide my theme.
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