Vienna's Dreams of Europe

<i>Vienna's Dreams of Europe</i> puts forward a convincing counter-narrative to the prevailing story of Austria's place in Europe since the Enlightenment. For a millennium Austrian writers have used images of Europe and its hegemonic culture as their political and cultural reference points. Yet in discussions of Europe's nation-states Austria appears only as an afterthought no matter that its precursor states-the Holy Roman Empire the Austrian Empire and Austria Hungary-represented a globalized European cultural space outside the dominant paradigm of nationalist colonialism. Austrian writers today confront reunited Europe in full acknowledgment of Austro-Hungary's multicultural heritage which mixes various nationalities ethnicities and cultural forms including ancestors from the Balkans and beyond.<br/><br/>Challenging standard accounts of 18th- through 20th-century European imperial identity construction <i>Vienna's Dreams of Europe</i> introduces a group of Austrian public intellectuals and authors who have since the 18th century construed their own public as European. Working in different terms than today's theorist-critics of the hegemonic West Katherine Arens posits a political identity resisting two hundred years of European nationalism.