DESCRIBING THE INCONGRUITIES characteristic of postwar Vienna, author, cultural critic, and feuilletonist Alfred Polgar wrote: “Die Berichte von Wiens Elend sind wahr. Die Berichte von Wiens Wohlbehagen sind auch wahr,” adding sardonically, “Der Berichterstatter muß nur definieren, was er meint, wenn er ‘Wien’ sagt” (The reports of Vienna's misery are true. The reports of Vienna's well-being are also true. The commentator must simply define what he means when he says “Vienna”). The essay in which these comments appeared, entitled “Geistiges Leben in Wien” (Intellectual Life in Vienna), published on 14 November 1920 in the Prager Tagblatt, points to the dualisms Polgar viewed as pervasive in the freshly minted capital of the First Republic. The rift between the “two Viennas” (4) — “Vorstadt” (outlying districts) versus “innere Stadt” (city center), in Polgar's categorization — found expression in all spheres of life, including the economic, political, social, and cultural.

What was the thread that held together this multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural metropolis, a city that not only tolerated but also, to some extent, thrived on its fundamental contradictions? According to Polgar, prior to the end of the First World War and the subsequent dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the link had been a distinct sense of imperial identity, whether real or imagined. Without that binding thread, it was not only the edges that threatened to fray. The tensions at play in postwar Vienna were at the heart of the city's existence.