Dancing Congressmen & Topic Brainstorming

Sophia Swartz
Jul 27, 2017 · 6 min read
Image credit: Sophia Swartz.

When my family visited Austria two years ago, I had some preformed expectations about what we were going to see. Ice caves, dirndls, and bratwurst all figured prominently in my version of the ideal Austrian vacation. Dancing congressmen, however? Not so much.

As a Ken Burns connoisseur and geeky history buff, I nurture a deep fascination with the connections that can be found between history and the present. The prospect of discovering hidden channels of thought and memory that tie two worlds together — one lost in time, the other grounded in today — is tantalizing to me. To see history come alive in the streets of Vienna during our visit was magical.

Image credit: Sophia Swartz.

In fact, the entire city of Vienna seemed to be united by one common theme: celebrating the bicentennial of the Congress of Vienna. Dancing congressmen aside, the Congress of Vienna was a landmark diplomatic conference that revolutionized the norms of international peacekeeping. Although it involved endless masked balls and elaborate concerts, the congress was an historical turning point for more reasons than just its party-hard atmosphere. Its crowning achievement was securing a lasting 100 years’ peace, effectively laying the groundwork for future peacekeeping entities such as the EU, UN, and NATO.

Over the next four days, I embarked on a whirlwind tour of the Austrian state archives, museums, and special exhibits commemorating the Vienna settlement. The highlight of my research was taking a special guided tour through the Bundeskanzleramt, the former office of leading Congress diplomat, Klemens von Metternich, and the current office of the Austrian Chancellor. This tour also led me to my best resource, the Congress of Vienna’s Final Act, which was on display alongside a selection of national treaties utilizing congress diplomacy in a modern context.

Image credit: Sophia Swartz.

However, as I delved deeper into the Congress of Vienna upon returning to the US, it wasn’t the Bundeskanzleramt tour or the immersive light projector shows or even the Congress-themed confections that sustained my interest. It was Der Kongress tanzt (The Congress Dances), a 1931 historical musical film that explored the Congress of Vienna from a female perspective. Starring Lillian Harvey as Christel Weinzinger, a charming and witty glove seller, the film details the torrid love affair between Christel and her enigmatic lover Tsar Alexander I. Unsurprisingly, Der Kongress tanzt ends in heartbreak, with the Tsar leaving Vienna to vanquish Napoleon following his escape from Elba. Christel is left without her Tsar, but is not deprived of her happy ending: Prince Metternich’s secretary, Pepi, quickly swoops in to take the Tsar’s place by her side.

What stuck with me from Der Kongress tanzt was not the elaborate sets, intricate costumes, or sophisticated dance numbers — it was the film’s portrayal of women during the Congress of Vienna. Although it was true that women frequently used their sexuality to gain favor or sway negotiations, it was also true that women exercised considerable diplomatic agency outside of the realm of corkscrew curls and flowing hoop skirts. As salon hostesses, women occupied the epicenter of intellectual exchange among diplomats, musicians, aristocrats, and intellectuals, creating unprecedented opportunities for informal encounters unrestricted by negotiating table etiquette.

This reality, however, has never been accurately conveyed by numerous film and theater interpretations. From a 1955 reboot of Der Kongress tanzt to a 1965 adaptation titled Der Kongress amusiert sich (The Congress Is Amusing) to a 2016 theater remake of Der Kongress tanzt, a common theme has prevailed: women were passive witnesses to peace who, at best, served as titillating distractions and, at worst, nurtured materialistic instincts that threatened to bankrupt the emperor. The overall message was clear: women are accessory elements to the peace-building process.

But based on my analysis of primary source material, the exact opposite appeared to be true. Key diplomats such as Talleyrand insisted that

“Wise and brilliant ladies are often better politicians than most men; I only wish to speak with them about the most important things!”

As curators of open and tolerant salons where virtually all topics found a receptive audience, women were essential ingredients to the Congress of Vienna’s success. Their influence as political confidantes supervising a risky experiment into a new form of diplomacy, however, has been erased from popular memory. Who remains is not Fanny von Arnstein, a salonnière who pushed for Jewish rights, or Germaine de Staël, who agitated for political reform, but Christel Weinzinger.

Image credit: Christine Wallner.

Flash-forward two years later. After contacting a local university professor and taking a Sociology course, I found a new lens for analyzing the female role at the Congress of Vienna. With my final project looming in Sociology, I decided to explore the effect of female participation on diplomatic outcomes in the modern world. Inspired by the stories of the Congress’ unseen political architects, I wanted to know if including women in peace negotiations would stabilize or increase the longevity of the resulting agreement.

To begin my research, I reviewed current work on social construction theory and rationalized my topic choice using the conflict perspective, arguing that reinforcing traditional gender roles would cause more disfunction than function in high-stakes diplomatic scenarios. I also parsed through data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union on the number of female seats held in national parliaments and the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap statistics. From this, I found evidence of what I call the “female mediator effect.”

Through the process of socialization, people develop gendered identities that reflect specific character traits. Men are expected to be competitive and independent. Women are expected to be maternal and nurturing. When reading through NATO and CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) reports, I found statistical evidence of a potential linkage between the female mediator role and successful conflict resolution. According to Jamille Bigio’s 2016 article on a CFR symposium dedicated to women’s participation in security processes, peace agreements that incorporate female perspectives are 35 percent more likely to last at least 15 years and 64 percent less likely to fail. However, women represented fewer than four percent of signatories between 1992 and 2011. Based on my research, I concluded that despite the demonstrated value of the female mediator role, there continues to be a pressing need for more female inclusion in peacekeeping and peacemaking.

Taking a Sociology course at my high school not only helped me refine my interests in the Congress of Vienna, but also inspired me to pursue alternative research projects that combined my love for languages, foreign policy, and history. Currently, I am exploring a new direction for my research that addresses how changing political climates might affect female participation in foreign policy and security initiatives.

However, I’m still brainstorming exactly how to tackle this topic in an historical context. Although the Congress of Vienna would seem like a natural choice, there are multiple issues that complicate its use as an historical model. Most worryingly, women’s participation in peace-making at Vienna was never officially recognized or recorded, so it would be very difficult to argue that they contributed substantially to the Vienna settlement’s enduring 100-years-peace. Additionally, the Congress of Vienna was a reactionary conference that attempted to reinstate the conservative world order. Its corresponding ideologies all condemned women to the domestic sphere, where they wielded no actual political influence.

Currently, I’m working through comparative government and European history textbooks in hopes of finding a strong historical model to support my research. I know I want the model to be a transitional point in time where political ideologies were under flux and women received the unique opportunity to publicly voice their opinions. So far, I’ve thought about pursuing the European policy of Ostpolitik during the Cold War, but haven’t settled on anything definitive yet. I’ll keep you posted as I muddle through the topic brainstorming process.

Sophia Swartz

Written by

Sciences without cease, sociologies on the side, and seen public speaking sometimes.

Peace, Interrupted

Highlighting the value of female participation in peace-building processes.

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