The most recommended books about Austria

Much has been written about the Holocaust but enough can never be said. Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937 to a non-observant Jewish family forced to flee the Nazi terror. 

In his play Leopoldstadt Stoppard follows the history of a family living in that Jewish suburb of Vienna, from the turn of the 20th century to today. The story of the prejudice and restrictions they experienced, as well as the hopes they had of transcending them through business success and assimilation, are heartbreaking. A friend of mine came from such a family and from his recollections I know that Stoppard has described the situation accurately.

This play (as the family) is full of characters you care about deeply, and knowing about the coming Holocaust, we want to cry out a warning to them.  We can’t. But this is a warning about the future.

This is a heavier read taking us through a group history of the Austrian School of Economics from the coffee houses of Imperial Vienna to the modern-day Libertarians. Economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Joseph Schumpeter originated ideas that have had a big impact on economics and politics, and have been much debated ever since.

I read this book as part of the research I did for my WIP, a WW2 novel. Hitler does not play a significant role in my novel, but it is impossible to study the modern history of Europe without wondering what turned a talented young Austrian artist into  the most hated man of the 20th Century.

The Secret Journals of Adolf Hitler, Volume 1: The Anointed is Part One of a two-part biography. Presented as a personal journal, this  well researched expertly written revelation  follows the formative years of Hitler’s life. This exploration seeks to help the reader  understand the desperate journey that turned an ordinary child into a charismatic madman, who after more than seven decades, still remains one of the greatest enigmas of all time.

An insightful must- read for any 20th Century History Junkie.

This is a story about the best-selling Viennese cookbook that was stolen by the Nazis and republished under someone else’s name during the War. The text and color photographs are identical, but the names of the authors are different. The original author, Alice Urbach, who was Jewish, had her book “Aryanized” for over 80 years, even though her hands are still featured in the illustrations. It shows how respectable businesses and individuals can continue to profit from the persecution of Jews long after the Holocaust ended. 

I found this a quite remarkable story that has only recently been published in English. It demonstrates the extremes to which the Nazis went to stamp out anything that was Jewish. Only in 2021 were the rights returned to the original author posthumously.

I absolutely love twisted scenarios, and Maria Haushofer’s book presents us with a simple yet terrifying premise: What if you were trapped, alone, for the rest of your natural life?

While staying at her family’s countryside lodge, the protagonist wakes up to find an invisible barrier separating her small patch of land from the rest of the world. Thanks to some exploration and a pair of binoculars, she can see that everyone beyond the wall is dead, apparently turned to stone.

The entire story follows the sole character’s isolation and struggle to survive. Well, I should say sole human character because Haushofer does an incredible job of bringing her non-human personas to life via a dog, cow, bull, several cats, and even an albino crow.

This is a strange and fascinating novel, and I promise you’ll never read another like it.

Recalling Ibbotson’s personal experience of leaving Austria for England before Hitler’s Anschluss, The Morning Gift is a witty and warm marriage of convenience story between a witty and intrepid archaeologist, Quinton Somerville, and a brilliant professor’s daughter Ruth Berger. When Ruth is accidentally left behind in Vienna after her family has emigrated to England, Quin marries Jewish Ruth and protects her from oncoming Nazi occupation: under the condition that they will part ways when both are safely back in London. But Quin and Ruth continue to run into each other again and again and again. A deliciously Austrian-flavoured book. Ibbotson’s Viennese set-sequences and memories are a love letter to her city.

After 1918, many German and Austrian Habsburg officers blamed their defeat on being ‘stabbed in the back’ by civilian ‘shirkers’, leftists, and (in the Habsburg case) fractious nationalists.

Both states indeed failed to manage their home fronts but, as Alexander Watson shows in his compelling account of this titanic conflict, there were far more complex reasons for the war’s outcome, not least the willingness of the high command in both states to embark on a conflict they had no realistic chance of winning.

Fleeing the Nazi Anschluss, Austrian quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger (famous for the wave equation and his eponymous cat) took refuge at Trinity College in Dublin. To thank his hosts, Schrödinger delivered a series of ground-breaking lectures in 1943, later published as What is Life? Schrödinger’s thought-provoking queries, originating from quantum mechanics, paved the way for the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. After the war, in subsequent lectures published as Mind and Matter, Schrödinger tackled a deeper subject: the nature of consciousness.

Together, these classics are unparalleled in what they imply about life and its most remarkable attribute: sentience.

Troubling aspects of Schrödinger’s personal life make it tempting to exclude this work. Ultimately, it's crucial to separate the profound message from the messenger, who was deeply flawed.

Mary Stewart was such a huge talent. She wrote in more than one genre but I am most drawn to her gothic novels like this one.

The original vintage cover from 1965 presents what it is: 60s style, castle parapets (pivotal scene in novel), and that Fawcett Crest price tag!

(And can we just take a moment here to recognize that the original covers were always the best ones in this genre of reads?)

Stewart was a genius at spinning out a mystery that keeps the reader guessing. This novel is no exception to that and adds in that gothic flavor with just the right touch.

Take Hayek’s market economy as a Bohemian accordion orchestra.

As its instruments produce music, each elongates, pulls in air (analogous to money), and compresses, expresses air (money). Air-in (savings) is equal to air-out (investment). Fluctuating elongations and compressions are an essential feature of the orchestra (the economy).

For Hayek, interference with harmonious accordion (economic) activity infusing or restricting air (money) would spoil the music.

Economic fluctuations stem from preferences, spending for present enjoyment, or saving for future gains. Relative demands for end products or capital impact relative prices, costs, and returns, affecting savings/investment. Investment money, as IOUs, flies where returns are highest.

Hayek engages readers to prove that bank interventions’ tinkering with money is as capable of producing compassionate social outcomes as free individuals using their earnings as they wish.