Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism, and Private Life
Deborah R. Coen
Abstract
This book traces the vital and varied roles of science through the story of three generations of the eminent Exner family, whose members included Nobel Prize-winning biologist Karl Frisch, the teachers of Freud and of physicist Erwin Schrödinger, artists of the Vienna Secession, and a leader of Vienna's women's movement. Training her critical eye on the Exners through the rise and fall of Austrian liberalism and into the rise of the Third Reich, the author demonstrates the interdependence of the family's scientific and domestic lives, exploring the ways in which public notions of rationality, ... More
This book traces the vital and varied roles of science through the story of three generations of the eminent Exner family, whose members included Nobel Prize-winning biologist Karl Frisch, the teachers of Freud and of physicist Erwin Schrödinger, artists of the Vienna Secession, and a leader of Vienna's women's movement. Training her critical eye on the Exners through the rise and fall of Austrian liberalism and into the rise of the Third Reich, the author demonstrates the interdependence of the family's scientific and domestic lives, exploring the ways in which public notions of rationality, objectivity, and autonomy were formed in the private sphere. The book presents the story of the Exners as a microcosm of the larger achievements and tragedies of Austrian political and scientific life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Keywords:
Exner,
Nobel Prize,
Karl Frisch,
Freud,
Erwin Schrödinger,
Vienna Secession,
women's movement,
Austrian liberalism,
Third Reich,
rationality
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2007 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226111728 |
Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: March 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226111780.001.0001 |