Poets and intellectuals brushed shoulders in bustling coffeehouses, young avant-gardists heralded a new era in social and sexual liberalism, waltzes resounded through the Ringstrasse, the Vienna Secession preached: "To every age its art -- to every art its freedom;" and tremors warned of looming political disintegration when the Austrian capital passed into a new century. Across economics, science, art, and music, Vienna blossomed into a "laboratory...