Pursuing Enlightenment in Vienna, 1781-1790 Heather Morrison Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2005 Pursuing enlightenment in Vienna, 1781-1790 Heather Morrison Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Morrison, Heather, "Pursuing enlightenment in Vienna, 1781-1790" (2005). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1624. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1624 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. PURSUING ENLIGHTENMENT IN VIENNA, 1781-1790 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In The Department of History by Heather Morrison B.A. Indiana University, 1996 M.A. University of Toronto, 1997 August, 2005 ACKNOWLDGEMENTS This dissertation could not have been completed without the advice, support and help of friends, family, and advisors. My parents supported me above and beyond anything I could have expected or imagined during my long tenure at Louisiana, I want to thank them and my entire family for being there when needed. After thirty years, my cousin Sofia’s friendship and support helped immensely, especially while my brother kept me accountable by continuously asking me if I was done with that book yet. Friends in Baton Rouge and Vienna made my graduate experiences fly by and offered support and advice when I needed it. Annie helped with the essentials: providing food, wine, and either adventure or a hammock. Rand and Tamara kept me entertained and were always there for griping sessions or to celebrate achievements. My advisor, Suzanne Marchand, has been a true mentor; I cannot thank her enough for her support, her advice, and so much of her time. I also thank Christine Kooi, David Lindenfeld, Meredith Veldman and Karl Roider in the History Department and Mary Sirridge in the Philosophy Department for reading and commenting on my dissertation. The History Department, the Graduate School and the Fulbright program in Austria offered much-appreciated financial support while I was researching and writing this manuscript. I would like to dedicate this to my grandmother, Kay Downs, who died returning home from visiting me in Vienna while I was researching this dissertation. She never ceased telling me how proud she was that I was getting a graduate degree when she had never had the chance to go to college. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………ii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: ENLIGHTENMENT IN VIENNA?……………………..1 2. THE BROSCHÜRENFLUT AND VIENNA’S RUSH TOWARDS ENLIGHTENMENT…………………………………………………………48 3. VIENNESE LOCALISM, GERMAN NATIONALISM, ENLIGHTENMENT COSMOPOLITANISM:CONFLICTING IDENTITIES AND FEARS OF INFERIORITY IN THE PRESS……………………………………………112 4. ARBEIT AND ÜBUNG IN ZUR WAHREN EINTRACHT, 1782-1786…….178 5. LETHARGY AND LYRIC: THE RETIREMENT OF ENLIGHTENMENT ACTIVISM…………………………………………………………………243 6. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………….308 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………316 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………332 iii ABSTRACT Radical transformations came about in Vienna during the 1780s, as intellectuals in the city embraced the Enlightenment and explored ways in which the movement could be spread. In 1781, Joseph II and his state reformed censorship. In an instant, the Viennese had access to the great scholarly works of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. In an instant, Vienna spawned a multitude of writers, publishing houses, reading rooms and all the accoutrements of a culture of print. The newly generated intellectual culture produced an amazing amount of pamphlets, an era termed the Broschürenflut in Austrian history. Public debate on the state, religion, and society accompanied the flood of short tracts, bringing together a group of intellectuals in support of Enlightenment. These men of letters quickly consolidated their energies to bring rational reform to the people of the Habsburg state through the methods of print and association. Their first project was a weekly literary review focusing exclusively on the domestic press called the Realzeitung. The editors worked in association to promote the development of a more profound, internationally acclaimed publishing center in Vienna and to seek to overcome the years of intellectual isolation and Catholic repression. The Viennese also adopted freemasonry in their attempt to become a center of Enlightened progress; scholars, poets, reformers, and musicians joined together in a lodge modeled on Western Academies. Zur Wahren Eintracht pushed members to produce academic works, music or poetry for special, semi- public lodge meetings whose purpose was to spread specialized knowledge and foster iv debate. The lodge did not stop at producing lectures; it also issued several successful periodical publications. Vienna thus quickly became a center of the Republic of Letters generating a remarkable amount of Enlightenment activity in a few short years. The ideas and methods of the Viennese Enlightenment were a product of and a response to the reforms of Joseph II. It would also be the king’s wariness and lack of support that would cause the Enlightenment movement to recede; by the end of the decade freemasonry came under state regulation, secret police dampened public debate, and the press became less free. v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: ENLIGHTENMENT IN VIENNA? Vienna in the 1780s experienced a briefly flourishing Enlightenment. Taking advantage of enlightened absolutist monarch Joseph II’s reform of censorship, a group of writers, scientists and bureaucrats attempted a transformation of the city’s regressive intellectual scene into one that produced works rivaling those of the French, Protestant Germans and the British. Insecure, not profound, and stunted by a subsequent conservative reaction, this city’s Enlightenment movement is nonetheless significant in showing the dedication of intellectuals to reform through publication and association. Historians have neglected these ten years of intense intellectual exchange, yet central, controversial aspects of the Enlightenment are well represented here: the role of localism versus cosmopolitanism, publicity versus secrecy, Enlightenment from above or popular Enlightenment, freemasonry, secret societies, and journalism. The intellectuals of Vienna formed a group who publicly promoted the project of Enlightenment, first through publication and then by adopting successive social means of spreading reform. Associating was meant to further the effectiveness of the individual in achieving change by uniting each specialized scholar with complementary minds and talents. The new group shared the common goal of reforming all of society and the state under which they lived. With open access to Enlightenment texts and the opportunity to publish their own critical works first granted by Joseph II in 1781, the intellectuals of 1 Vienna instituted a reform movement seeking to fulfill the possibilities allowed by the political decision to grant press freedoms. The first phase of enlightened reform took the form of a pamphlet debate on the methods the self-proclaimed Viennese Aufklärers should adopt in spreading enlightenment and furthering the intellectual life in Vienna. After two years of this public discussion, the initial organized method adopted was an improving journal edited socially by a group of learned men. The journal promoted the Viennese Enlightenment by trying to place the local publications on par with those of the rest of Europe. This, however, limited the social basis of reform to a small elite group of writers who could reform only insofar as they could reach a reading public with their journal. Next, a group of intellectuals opted to expand their efficacy by taking over a pre-existing freemason lodge—thus using an institution already focused on social means to improve morals and gain knowledge—to attempt to create an Academy of Arts and Sciences despite the state’s notably absent support. Through their lectures and various publications, this ‘secret’ society became the major source of enlightenment production in Vienna from 1782 to 1785. After that time, as the regime began expressing distrust of freemasonry and public criticism in general, the Aufklärers in Vienna turned to more private forms of association and satirical works of literature that allowed for subtle criticism with the goal of promoting Enlightenment ideals. The Viennese Enlightenment movement is characterized first and foremost by its extreme rapidity. The definitive work on the Austrian literature of this era argues that authors believed this “thaw” in literature would be fleeting.1 The speed with which writers and intellectuals adopted language, ideas and activity in the name of 1 Lesli Bodi, Tauwetter in Wien: Zur Prosa der Österreichischen Aufklärung (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1977). 2 Enlightenment influenced every aspect of the movement. A desire for rapid publicity and achievements further molded the types of writings published, the associational activity, and the perceptions and realities of the city’s