Transformative Podcast

Author: recet

Welcome to the Transformative Podcast, which takes the year 1989 as a starting point to think about social, economic, and cultural transformations on a European and global scale. This podcast is produced by the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) and its managing director Irena Remestwenski. Our patron is Philipp Ther, and we could not do it without Leonid Motz, Jannis Panagiotidis, Rosamund Johnston, Sheng Peng, and Jelena Dureinovic.
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Language: en

Genres: Science, Social Sciences

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How Music Shaped the Habsburg Empire (Philipp Ther)
Episode 72
Wednesday, 12 November, 2025

In this episode, Hannah Käthler (RECET) talks to RECET's Founding Director Philipp Ther, whose newest book Der Klang der Monarchie (Suhrkamp, 2025) tells the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the prism of the music it created and was shaped by. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were instrumental in holding the empire together. "Habsburg Pop" reached the masses and became a global export. The Habsburg Empire hummed, sang, danced, drummed, and only went under when its great musical means failed in the Great War. Philipp Ther teaches Modern European and East European History at the University of Vienna. He has published five books in English, and his publications have been translated into various other languages. He has received several prizes and awards, including the 2015 Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair for Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent, which was also shortlisted for the Prix du livre européen. Furthermore, his work has earned him the Richard G. Plaschka Prize (2006) and the Wittgenstein Prize (2019). He is the founder of the Research Center for the History of Transformations at the University of Vienna.