Bourgeois Innocence Lost: Uncanny Children in Turn-of-the-Century Vienna

In Vienna around 1900, representations of uncanny children abound: Sigmund Freud’s case studies; Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s, Leopold von Andrian’s, and Arthur Schnitzler’s narratives; and Gustav Klimt’s, Egon Schiele’s, and Oskar Kokoschka’s paintings confront the reader and onlooker with unsettling images of children who seem anything but innocent. This essay posits that shifts in the bourgeoisie’s self-perception—from liberal underdog to that of a privileged class, financially empowered and politically wedged between the lower classes and the destabilizing nobility—prompted a re-evaluation of bourgeois history. In this process, images of children began to serve as a multifaceted index of a past in which innocence is both present and always already lost; and in which the seeds of the future are as promising as they are foreboding. Representations of uncanny children in Vienna 1900 serve as a mirror of the liberal bourgeoisie’s understanding of its past and future, and they bespeak the profound unease and deep-seated anxiety that mark what the bourgeoisie—and in particular the German-speaking bourgeoisie—perceives to be its precarious position within a multi-national, multi-ethnic empire whose identity is shifting and whose integrity is fraying.