Red Vienna, White Socialism, and the Blues: Ann Tizia Leitich’s America

After the First World War, Vienna was overrun by jazz, Hollywood movies, and Fordism; its citizens were both fascinated and appalled by the waves of American ideas and products. To make sense of the American phenomenon, readers turned to Ann Tizia Leitich, the New York-based correspondent for Vienna’s prominent daily Neue Freie Presse and other newspapers. Rob McFarland tells the story of Leitich’s escape, occasioned by a personal crisis, from Austria to America in 1921, and of her rise as a journalist, cultural historian, and novelist. By the early 1930s, she had met President Coolidge, Senator Sol Bloom, the writer Upton Sinclair, and the critic H. L. Mencken. Her devotedreaders - including the novelist Stefan Zweig and the Austrian chancellor Ignatz Seipl - sought in her witty, insightful descriptions of the United States some American vitality to invigorate their own moribund culture and economy. Chronicling Leitich’s career as a journalist, cultural historian, and novelist and providing close readings of her writings about America, this book reveals her as an important cultural mediator between Austria and America.

Rob McFarland is Associate Professor of German at Brigham Young University.