Interpreting Eric Hobsbawm's History of the Fin de Siècle ‘Twilight Zone’

Abstract

Abstract Eric Hobsbawm's account of the fin de siècle of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its post-First World War aftermath, raises the questions of how historians place themselves autobiographically in their histories, and how personal history informs their interpretations. A focus on the fin de siècle reveals Hobsbawm exploring a cultural social democracy as an alternative to the market capitalism that provided the turbulent dynamics tipping towards twentieth-century catastrophe. From the past Hobsbawm offered the people of his present potential alternative models of a more politically harmonious and culturally richer future, a story in which he placed himself. Elements of Hobsbawm's life story emerge in his histories and autobiography, highlighting the personal significance of memory and material objects that Hobsbawm retained – family photos, a school atlas, and his copy of Karl Kraus's Last days of humanity – reflecting an enduring presence of the past that Hobsbawm drew attention to in his work, and helping to shape significant narratives in Hobsbawm's response to the lost realm of fin de siècle Vienna; a ‘twilight zone’, in Hobsbawm's description of that pre-war world, ‘still part of us, but no longer quite within our personal reach’.