The garden and the workshop

In comparing the two cities, Hanak notes that Vienna, famed for its spacious parks and gardens, was often characterized as a "garden" of esoteric culture. Budapest, however, was a dense city surrounded by factories, whose cultural leaders referred to the offices and cafes where they met as "workshops." These differences were reflected, he argues, in the contrast between Vienna's aesthetic and individualistic culture and Budapest's more moralistic and socially engaged approach. Like Carl Schorske's famous Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, Hanak's book paints a remarkable portrait of turn-of-the-century life in Central Europe. Its particular focus on mass culture and everyday life offers important new insights into cultural currents that shaped the course of the twentieth century.