utumn in Vienna offers students the opportunity to study Central European civilization in one of its chief capitals, a city of great beauty and cultural richness. A series of excursions in and around Vienna supplement the lectures and readings of the "Vienna in Western Civilization" sequence, connecting them with the architecture, historical sites, and artistic treasures that comprise the physical legacy of the Habsburg Empire. Chief among these outings is an extended trip to Budapest, the co-capital of Austria-Hungary, or to Prague.

History Comes Alive

ienna is one of the oldest and most prestigious European cities. This former imperial capital is one of the newest sites for an intensive course in the history of European civilization.

Once the center of a huge, multinational empire, it continues to be a stimulating, cosmopolitan city with extraordinary music and theater, superb museums, and a literate, coffee-house culture of sociability that remains unique in the world.

The lectures and primary source readings in this course examine major problems in the history of European civilizations, beginning with the ancient Roman world and medieval European society, through the political and religious upheavals of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the formation of the Habsburg Empire as a major intellectual as well as political power and its legacy in contemporary Austria.

Students and faculty encounter the ghosts of Vienna's medieval and imperial past each day, just as they also learn about the consequences of that past for the twentieth century.

In the study of nineteenth and twentieth century European culture and politics, this course places special emphasis on Austria within the broader context of the rise of the modern European nation-state, while also studying its recent and contemporary politics, and its influence on the emerging world of post-Cold War Central Europe.