This combination of bourgeois complacency with increasing political instability was the setting for an extraordinary artistic, scientific and philosophical flowering, a ‘golden age’ in which, according to Stefan Zweig’s memoirs, ‘the desire for culture was more passionate than in other European cities’. Its chief characteristic (perhaps in reaction to the increasing tensions in the body politic) was a tendency to look inward rather than outward, most notably illustrated by the pioneering exploration of the subconscious undertaken by Josef Breuer (1842-1925) and, preeminently, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), in whose home the Mittwochsgesellschaft (‘Wednesday Society’), the precursor of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, held its weekly meetings from 1901.

Vienna had long been a centre, also, of musical excellence. As the old century was drawing to a close, the waltzes of Johann Strauss II (1825-99), with their hint of sweet melancholy, captured the city’s hedonistic self-image and its fondness for sentimentality; the operetta was the great popular form, with Franz Lehár’s (1870-1948) masterpiece The Merry Widow premiered at the Theater an der Wien in 1905; while the more challenging symphonies of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and the early, difficult, music of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) tested the limits of popular taste.

Meanwhile, the conservatism evident in the visual arts was challenged by the Secession, a society founded in 1897 by nineteen young artists and architects in reaction to (or secession from) the prevailing Academic tradition, which favoured historical subjects and styles. Its first president was Gustav Klimt (1862-1914); other key members were the architects and designers Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), Otto Wagner (1841-1918) and Josef Maria Olbrich (1867-1908). The movement embraced the Jugendstil, a distinctive variant of the Art Nouveau style current in Paris. In 1903 Klimt and a number of others broke off from the Secession and set up the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), with the aim of reforming product design: among its leading figures was the painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918). One of the most significant architects of the period, Adolf Loos (1870-1933), whose provocative manifesto was entitled Ornament and Crime, belonged to neither group.

By the standards of Britain, France and Russia, nineteenth-century Austrian literature was relatively undistinguished. In 1890, however, a group of young writers – including Schnitzler, Peter Altenberg (1859-1919) and Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) – formed Jung-Wien (Young Vienna), a progressive literary society which met in the famous Café Griensteidl. The group later included the young Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) and, until he turned against it, Karl Kraus (1874-1936), the influential editor and financier of the provocative satirical magazine Die Fackel (The Torch).