Amazon.com description: Product Description: As the political system which maintained the Habsburg Empire began to crumble under the strain of competing nationalisms, Vienna at the turn of the century saw an unprecedented flowering of artistic and intellectual life. Bruce Thompson's account of the work of the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler presents him as an incisive chronicler and critic of the modes and mores of "fin de siecle" Viennese society. While the social groups Schnitzler treated ranged from the aristocracy to the working classes, his main preoccupation was with the bourgeoisie, and his plays and prose work expose the hypocrisy which lay behind the facade of social respectability. Dr Thompson also examines Schnitzler's treatment of women and the "Jewish question" and the influence on his work of Freud and psychoanalytical theory.