Maureen Healy traces the fall of the Habsburg Empire during World War I from the perspective of everyday life in the capital city. She argues that the home front in Europe's first "total war" was marked by civilian conflict in streets, shops, schools, entertainment venues and apartment buildings. While Habsburg armies waged military campaigns on distant fronts, women, children, and "left at home" men waged a protracted, socially devastating war against one another. The book will appeal to those interested in modern Europe and the history of the Great War.
Contents
List of plates; List of maps, figures and tables; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Politics and Representation: 1. Food and the politics of sacrifice; 2. Entertainment, propaganda and the Vienna War Exhibition of 1916–17; 3. Censorship, rumours and denunciation: the crisis of truth on the home front; Part II. State and Family: 4. Sisterhood and citizenship: 'Austria's women' in wartime Vienna; 5. Mobilizing Austria's children for total war; 6. The 'fatherless society': home-front men and imperial paternalism; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
Reviews
"a tour de force. It is one of the best recent studies of the destruction of the Habsburg Monarchy, as well as an innovative cultural-social history of the Great War.... Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire will, of course, be of interest to historians of the Habsburg Monarchy, modern Europe, and First World War, as well as to cultural, family, gender, and urban historians, more generally. With its innovative approach to total war and the downfall of the Monarchy, this eminently readable volume should find an audience far beyond academia.With its innovative approach to total war and the downfall of the Monarchy, this eminently readable volume should find an audience far beyond academia." Nancy M. Wingfield, Northern Illinois University, HABSBURG (H-Net)
"Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire counts among the best books published on Australian history in recent years."
Jeremy King, Mount Holyoke College, Central European History
"...ambitious ...an excellent narrative of what total war meant on the home front."
German Studies Review
"This is an impressive study of the collapse of authority on the home front during the Habsburg monarchy's last war. It is a major contribution to the historiography."
Mark Cornwall, University of Southampton, Australian History Yearbook
"...Maureen Healy offers a welcome examination of the politics of teh mundane through an analysis of police and newspaper reports, state papers, autobiographical materials, and letters of petiition and denunciation...the text constitutes a thought-provoking contribution to studies of the home front in the First World War, in particular through the ways in which Healy seeks to ascertain how citizenship, war service and community were imagined and experienced." The International History Review C.M. Peniston-Bird, Lancaster University
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