Michael Freund, studied Psychology and Statistics at the University of Vienna, Psychology and Sociology at the University of Heidelberg, and Social Psychology at Columbia University, New York. He was consultant at the Metropolitan Training Institute at Queens College, New York from 1973-1974, and research assistant at Columbia University from 1976-1978. From 1979 until 1981 Freund directed the project "Marienthal 1930-1980" (study and video documentation). He has since worked for several media. Since 1983 he is instructor for Media Studies at Webster University, Vienna Campus.
Publications: 25 Jahre Fernsehen. Menschen vor dem Bildschirm – ein photosoziologischer Vergleich (Wien, ORF 1981); with B. Flos and J. Marton: Marienthal 1930-1980, in: Journal für Sozialforschung, 1983, Nr. 23, S. 137-149; Fensterreinigung durch Ultraschallwellen in der Alweg-Bahn nach Hütteldorf? Erinnerungen an Fortschrittsideologie und Zukunftsgläubigkeit in den fünfziger Jahren, in: Gerhard Jagschitz and Klaus-Dieter Mulley (Ed.): Die „wilden“ fünfziger Jahre (St. Pölten/Wien1985); GeistesBlitze. Bedeutende österreichische Wissenschafter im Porträt (Wien/New York, Springer Verlag 1997); classA. Austrian Product Culture Today – Österreichische Produktkultur heute (Wien, Bibliophile Edition 1999)
What do you expect a successful British author to do who experiences chronic pains? Keep a stiff upper lip, of course. That is exactly what Tim Parks had been practicing for a long time. Surrounded by friends who admired his bilingual career – the Parks’ had moved to Verona in Northern Italy many years ago – he had only let some doctors know about his condition: chronic spasms in his pelvis and the annoying need to get up frequently at night and go to the bathroom. They suggested contradictory strategies: Have surgery. Take this medication. Don’t have surgery. Try that new method.
There is a part in Tony Judt’s book Reappraisals in which he describes an exchange between British historian E. P. Thompson and the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski in the early 1970s. Thompson, according to Judt, “suggested from the safety of his leafy perch in middle England: … How dare you betray us by letting your inconvenient experiences in Communist Poland obstruct the view of our common Marxist ideal?”
We are what we eat. But what we eat is not only our personal decision. It has always been determined by a complex web of political, cultural and business dynamics. Today more than ever, nutrition is related to issues of environmental destruction, special corporate interests, illnesses and health risks. The way most food is produced depletes our energy reserves, reduces out biodiversity and is considered harmful to soil and air – and to our bodies.
Irish poet and Nobel Laureate visited the Austrian Capital to deliver the Keynote Address for the seventh biannual conference of the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies (EFACIS), held in Vienna this year for the first time. At the opening session on Sept. 3 in the Großer Festsaal of the University, Heaney spoke about “Mossbawn via Mantua: A Reading with Commentary” and discussed his poetic influences.
Can you imagine a world without the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie in Sarajevo, June 1914? A world in which nothing triggered a “Great War,” in which the Austro-Empire would continue to live in uneasy co-existence with the German Reich that would in turn still keep peace with France, a world in which they all would still be on correct terms with Czarist Russia while the British Empire would mind its own Imperialist business?
It is said that the Viennese always complain. Well, there’s one group in Vienna that doesn’t: the ex-pats living here. At least those who have a good job.
The elevation drawings show high-rise office buildings like those you can find anywhere from Dortmund to Darwin. The ads promise a fabulous new downtown center, and of course there will be a shiny big supermarket with thousands of frozen, canned, processed and preserved food items.
The day Robert Kennedy was assassinated, I graduated from high school. The war in Vietnam was escalating (and was the main topic of the valedictorian speech at school, much to the chagrin of many teachers). The Parisian May made ripples through Europe. News from faraway places like Berkeley and Columbia, and from closer places such as Berlin and Frankfurt, reverberated among Western European youth. The Prague Spring was yet to meet its fatal end. And in the middle of all this, even Vienna was changing.
We should all be so lucky: to take our address and turn it into a major exhibition. In the case of the current show at the Wien Museum, however, it was much more than luck. To begin with, its location at Karlsplatz is not just any old address. This is one of Vienna's major public spaces, arguably the dominant square of the city. So to make it the focus of a thorough historical and cultural investigation was a natural choice -- and a lot of work. But, as one can see until the end of October, it was well worth it.
Cabaret in Vienna is alive and well. The Kabarett-Theaters are often packed to capacity, and while some did have to close, other have taken their place. The most popular of the comedians have made it to feature films and to cabaret-type shows on television, transferring the format and presenting it to a nation-wide audience, albeit sometimes losing the sharpness and spontaneity of the original performances.
Jim Rogers is known in Austria for having "kissed the Vienna stock exchange awake," and internationally for being one of the savviest investors around. Born 1942 in Wetumpka, Alabama, Rogers co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in 1970. The fund gained 4,200% in the following ten years. In 1985, he wrote a very positive article about the Vienna Börse in the renowned financial periodical Barron's, triggering a bullish business for years. He toured several continents on his motorbike in search of good companies to put his money in (which also resulted in his book The Investment Biker), then went on a three-year long worldwide trip with his wife in a custom-fitted station wagon.
Why do people laugh about patients being in therapy? How come they find discussions concerning childhood problems so amusing? In short, what’s so funny about psychoanalysis?
If you ask cartoonists at The New Yorker, the answer is: everything.
Since the 1920s, innumerable cartoons have appeared in the weekly magazine about couches and their occupants, about bearded men sitting behind these couches, sometimes with funny German names, occasionally with an accent and often with an impressive diploma pinned on the wall behind them.
Freudian therapy has tickled the fancies and funny bones of the artists, and they have made public many aspects of a treatment method that values privacy.
It was an impressive gathering even by the standards of a city that is used to hosting global congresses of all sorts. The participant list of the 25 Anniversary Conference of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna included academics and politicians, lawmakers and social scientists from East and West, from the First and the Third World. Heinz Fischer spoke and Joschka Fischer discussed, veterans of the battles to tear down the Iron Curtain showed up and young researchers cross-examined them.
It was the biggest thing happening by far on the weekend of Nov. 9 through 11 in Vienna.
The Viennese Beisl is more alive and well than it has been in a long time. Several recent waves of fashionable dining may however have done some harm to these basic pubs or inns of Vienna: There was nouvelle cuisine (which translated as "eating tiny specks of stuff you don't know on a very large plate"). Then there was the post-modern dining fashion that spelled "anything goes," and in fact all sorts of crossover restaurants did go, many of them out of business. We also witnessed the attempts of convenience food chains, theme diners, fake Irish pubs and very Middle Eastern-Italian trattorie to conquer the Austrian palates.
In Austria, Gottfried Helnwein is mostly known as the 1980s “shock artist” of posters, magazine and album covers depicting scenes of pain and anxiety, often involving children and always with photorealistic perfection.
Helnwein, however, has since moved on. Born in 1948 in Vienna, his later work has included photography, extra-large canvasses and mixed media addressing a variety of themes, though the triangle of childhood–pain–sex remains central to his portfolio.
