'Der ungeheure begriff asien': China and Japan in Viennese fin-de-siecle literature, art, and culture (Gustav Klimt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Peter Altenberg)

This work examines the fascination with East Asia, particularly with China and Japan, in the artistic and cultural productions of Viennese modernism. Although I introduce this project as a case study about fin-de-siecle Vienna, it really contains four case studies, operating together to explore one problem, the importation of East Asian cultural and artistic elements into Viennese modernism.; The first chapter outlines the fascination with East Asia within Viennese popular culture, based on a close look at newspapers, magazines, and journals. In the following chapters, I analyze the work of three prominent modernists: the artist Gustav Klimt, and the authors Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Peter Altenberg. Each case study marks a different image of Asia and therefore a different type of Orientalism.; For the artists, the underlying effort was to define their own identities, styles, and engagements as modernists, and adding a multicultural aspect to their work was one way to accomplish that. By turning to such foreign elements, the artists comment on Vienna in general and their lives in Vienna specifically. All of the artists must harmonize striving to be modern with nostalgia for the traditions of past generations. By reaching outside of Europe for artistic and personal inspiration, the artists displaced the process of identity creation into a less familiar space.