The Vienna Paradox: From the ‘Woman in Gold’ to the Edge of Irony

On
Tuesday, February 16 at 7 p.m. in the Fish Interfaith Center
, the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education continues its year-long series with a lecture by Dr. Marjorie Perloff. The author of a dozen books, including works on poets W.B. Yeats and Frank O’Hara and on post-modern literature and art, Dr. Perloff is professor of English emerita at Stanford University and the Florence R. Scott Professor of English Emerita at the University of Southern California.  In May, the University of Chicago Press will publish Dr. Perloff’s newest book,
Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Hapsburg Empire.


As many of you will recall, we opened our fall series with the screening of
Woman in Gold
. The film recounted the courageous effort of Maria Altmann and her dedicated attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg, to reclaim the famous portrait of Maria’s aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, painted by Gustav Klimt and stolen by the Nazis. Through the eyes of the young Maria, we encounter a Vienna of brilliant culture and creativity, as well as one filled with the warmth and love of family. The Nazi
Anschluss
of March 1938 brought that extraordinary time in Vienna’s history to an end.

Next Tuesday, in her lecture
The Vienna Paradox: Jewish Identity and Austrian High Culture Between the World Wars
, Dr. Perloff takes us back in time to the vibrant Vienna of the interwar years. It is also the Vienna of Dr. Perloff’s early childhood — a world which, as she describes in her memoir
The Vienna Paradox
, celebrated “art for life’s sake.” Born Gabriele Mintz, Dr. Perloff was named for Gabriele von Bűlow, the daughter of Prussian philosopher and humanist Wilhelm von Humboldt. Her parents, Maximilian and Ilse Mintz, were highly cultured and assimilated Jews; indeed, her maternal grandfather, Richard Schűller, served as the Austrian delegate to the League of Nations after World War I. A few months after the
Anschluss,
then in his 70s, Richard Schűller was forced to flee his beloved Vienna by hiking over the mountains into Italy.

In what promises to be a fascinating presentation, Dr. Perloff will interweave material from her new book on “Austro-Modernism” with her memoir of self-transformation from the German-speaking Gabriele to the English-speaking Marjorie.   I hope you will join us for this very special event in our year-long series on the theme
Memory, Meaning, and Justice.

Admission is free. No tickets/reservations required.
Reserved seating is available for groups of 10 or more.
Contact Ashley Bloomfield at (714) 532-7760 or ambloom@chapman.edu to make group reservations