33.3 Europe: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 9/27)

Franz-Joseph had picked poor prime ministers after Schwarzenberg. There was no Bismarck, no Disraeli, no Gladstone nor Clemenceau. The one who came nearest to his liking and trust was Count Edward Taaf e, who lasted 14 years in the job and kept some peace by diplomacy only between the Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, Slovenes and the Austrians. But by 1886 there was great political strife between German and Bohemian subjects and Franz-Joseph did not well understand their feelings, but felt the only solution was continual adherence of both to Vienna. Georg von Schoenerer was an early leader of the Pan-Germanic movement, which was also anti-semitic. A program of state ownership of railroads, graduated income tax and the separation of church and school were proposals offered by Linz. Another "radical" was Viktor Adler, who founded the Social Democratic Party and organized demonstrations.

Austria's contributions to world knowledge and culture during this century were fantastic. In medicine alone the accomplishments were legion. Carl Rokitansky was the founder of pathological anatomy; Hermann Nothnagle first evaluated blood pressure in diagnosis; and Ernest Bruecke pioneered in physiology. There were multiple world famous psychiatrists - Freud, Krafft-Ebing, Joseph Brewer and others. Among the orthopedic surgeons were Adolf Lorenz and Lorenz Boehler, Jr. Bela Schick devised the diphtheria skin test, while Johannes Mueller is credited with establishing medicine as a true science. Von Helmholtz developed the ophthalmoscope; Koch worked out the bacteriology of tuberculosis and cholera; and Semmelweiss found the cause of puerperal fever, making one of the great advances in obstetrical care. Probably the greatest surgeon of the late century was Albert Theodor Billroth, born and educated in Germany, but working later in Zurich and especially Vienna, where he was the first to perform extensive operations on the pharynx, larynx and stomach. His students subsequently filled most of the prestigious surgical appointments in Europe. Incidentally, Billroth was also a musician and a great friend of Brahms.

Technological advances in Austria may be listed as follows:

• 1815 - Founding of Vienna Polytechnic
• 1829 - First trial of screw driven vessel, in Trieste Harbor
• 1839 - Invention of the sewing machine by Madersperger of Vienna, and also the time of Austria's first railway
• 1864 - First internal combustion engine invented by Siegried Marcus
• 1866 - Typewriter invented by Mitterhofer of the Tyrol

The great musicians of Austria included Johann Strauss, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Brahms (originally from Hamburg, but settled in Vienna), Richard Wagner (from Bavaria) and Franz Schubert. In 1873 building was started on Vienna University, but in that same year a cholera epidemic broke out and a "Black Friday" occurred on the stock exchange, with a resulting financial crisis, which spread across Europe and even to the United States. By 1890 Vienna had 1,300,000 people.

The Empress Elizabeth was killed by an assassin in Geneva in 1898 and the heir to the throne, her son Rudolph, had committed suicide some 9 years previously. At the end of the century there were mass meetings of the Social Democrats in Vienna and the cry was "Young Czechs" against Germans. (Ref. 177 , 184 , 128 , 125 ) Braudel (Ref. 292 ) quotes the historian of rural Austrian society, Otto Bruenner, as saying that the peasantry of Austria was the real foundation stone of European society and that regardless of changes in government, it had remained essentially -unchanged in structure from Neolithic times right down to the l9th century.