The Arc of History Lecture Series: Austria 1900–2020
We are excited to continue our series of lectures launched in 2024, reflecting on Austrian history, identity and creativity over a turbulent 120 year span.
The lectures will be of particular interest to those who have recently acquired Austrian citizenship, or are considering applying.
For new Austrian citizens: In case the event is sold out, please write an email to office@acflondon.org to join the waiting list.
Lecture 9: Viennese Modernism in British Exile: Austrian Émigré Designers and Artists in Britain, 1930–1950
By Elana Shapira
After being forced to flee Austria for Britain, the Viennese modernists—designers and artists—were invited to help shape a cultural agenda that combined Austrian and British influences. Those involved included the architects Ernst Freud and Ella Briggs, the designer couples Jacques and Jacqueline Groag and Josef Berger and Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag, and the artists Oskar Kokoschka and Marie-Louise von Motesiczky. Shapira's talk opens with a passage from The Story of Furniture (1947), written and illustrated by British designer Gordon Russell and Austrian architect Jacques Groag. ‘We have discovered that people are more important than things.’ This shared ethical approach re-evaluated the relationship between identity and material possessions by placing the emphasis on people and their needs. It was an essential aspect of Viennese modernism that became more pertinent after its protagonists were forced to emigrate. Shared by Austrian émigrés and their close British colleagues, this approach, together with the influence of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories and Otto Neurath’s sociological insights, contributed to a cultural transformation within British society. Austrian designers and artists applied their knowledge of Viennese modernism to their creative work as they adapted to their new lives in Britain. Through their publications and works, they challenged nationalistic, ethnic and class divisions, supporting a humanistic European perspective in Britain. This lecture will reconsider their cultural networks and works in Britain.
Elana Shapira is a cultural and design historian and specialist in the study of Viennese modernism. She lectures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her research interests include Central European cultural networks, design and media in the 20th century, women’s art and design and diaspora aesthetics. She has recently edited the volumes Austrian Identity and Modernity: Culture and Politics in the 20th Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2025), Eine Wiener Schule in Berlin 1900-1933 (Berlin: De Gruyter), coedited It Hurts! Violence against Women in Art and Psychoanalysis (Berlin. De Gruyter, 2025) and coedited and coauthored Finding Ella Briggs: An Unconventional Architect (Princeton University press, 2025). Her forthcoming coedited book, Crossing Borders: Central European Women in the Arts will be published by De Gruyter in November 2026. Shapira has organized major international symposia and workshops on such diverse topics as nationalism and modernism, psychoanalysis and art, émigré design cultures, Jews and cultural identity in Central European modernism, and women designers and artists in Vienna and Central Europe. The forthcoming interdisciplinary international symposia are “Dance – Art – Design” at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, September 17-18, 2026 (programme available at https://www.dieangewandte.at/en/news/detail?artikel_id=1782096137522) and “Trauma and Dialogue” at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna on October 9, 2026 (programme available at https://www.freud-museum.at/en/detail/trauma-und-dialog).
Katherine Klinger is the initiator of the lecture series The Arc of History. Previously, she was director of Second Generation Trust, a UK-based charity specialising in post-Holocaust generational consequences. She organised a number of ground-breaking conferences in London, Berlin and Vienna in the nineties, aimed at bringing together descendants of both victims and perpetrators. Katherine ran the Education Department of the Wiener Holocaust Library for a decade. She has recently acquired Austrian citizenship.
About the Arc of History Lecture Series:
The series commences with the last decades and the onset of Modernity from 1900. This was a profoundly significant period both artistically and intellectually, with far-reaching influence and importance, both nationally and internationally. Against this backdrop, the lectures consider significant Jewish contributions to the period, alongside the darker forces gathering momentum, culminating in the tragic fate of Austrian Jewry and other victims.
Austrian complicity, together with a postwar victim narrative, led many to shun a country that formally had nurtured some of the greatest achievements and minds of the early 20th century. With a growing recognition of the need to reassess its history, Austria finally commenced, in the mid-nineties, its own unique process to repair some of the mid-century rupture. The announcement in 2020, enshrined in law, that all Austrian descendants of NS persecution have the right of citizenship, is an important and significant contribution to this process. To date, over 35,000 people from across the world have acquired Austrian citizenship and it is estimated that the numbers will rise considerably in the next decade.
The final lecture in the series will reflect on the implications and meaning of citizenship in a country where connection has often been associated with tragedy and ambivalence, and many have rarely, if ever, even visited. As a new chapter opens, perhaps a new sense of purpose, opportunity and responsibility emerges.
