Vanishing Vienna: Modernism, Philosemitism, and Jews in a Postwar City – Frances Tanzer

Frances Tanzer will discuss her new book, Vanishing Vienna: Modernism, Philosemitism, and Jews in a Postwar City (University of Pennsylvania Press), which traces the reconstruction of Viennese culture from the 1938 German Anschluss through the early 1960s. The book reveals continuity in Vienna’s cultural history across this period: a framework for interpreting Viennese culture that has relied on antisemitism, philosemitism, and a related discourse of Jewish presence and absence. As she shows, antisemitism and philosemitism were not contradictory forces in post-Nazi Austrian culture. They were deeply interconnected aspirations in a city where nostalgia for the past dominated cultural reconstruction efforts and supported seemingly contradictory impulses. Philosemitism was much more than a simple inversion of antisemitism—instead, Tanzer argues, philosemitism defined Vienna in the era of postwar reconstruction. Vanishing Vienna uncovers a rarely discussed phenomenon of the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust—a society that consumes, redefines, and bestows symbolic meaning on the victims in their absence.

Frances Tanzer is the Rose Professor of Holocaust Studies and Jewish Culture at Clark University in Massachusetts and associate professor of history. Her book Vanishing Vienna: Philosemitism, Modernism, and Jews in a Postwar City was published with University of Pennsylvania Press in 2024. She has received support for her research from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Remarque Institute at NYU, and others. Her new project is entitled: Klezmer Dynasty: An Intimate History of Modern Jewish Culture, 1880-2019.

Thursday, February 19, 2026 • 314 Royce Hall • 2 PM  
Vanishing Vienna: Modernism, Philosemitism, and Jews in a Postwar City

Frances Tanzer (Clark University)
Moderator: Michael Rothberg (UCLA)

The 1939 Society Program in Holocaust Studies

RSVP