“Fernbild”: On Otto Friedlaender Writing Vienna 1900 in Vienna 1938–1942/45

Between 1938 and 1945 the Viennese lawyer Otto Friedlaender (1889–1963) wrote Letzter Glanz der Märchenstadt: Bilder aus dem Leben um die Jahrhundertwende 1890–1914 and Wolken drohen über Wien: Lebens- und Sittenbilder aus den Jahren vor dem ersten Weltkrieg. Written side by side, these books nostalgically, but also critically, evoke the Habsburg myth of the mutually sustaining powers of Empire and Church and thus of the empire’s spiritual unity. Writing from his position of “inner exile” and protected survival in central Vienna, Friedlaender employs a very particular, shifting lens characterized by loving humor, critical irony, and striking visuality. The term Fernbild, introduced in 1893 into optical art theory and soon adopted into cultural criticism, defines an image’s mnemonic oscillation between spatial-temporal distance and presence. This concept sheds light on Friedlaender’s dialectical work in both texts, in which he interweaves Habsburg Vienna’s anti-Semitism with foreboding and the knowledge of complete loss.