Page - 139 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

139 from grand Hotels to tiny treasures social use value was being created by the labor of scientists and doctors [, …] the labor of architects, engineers, hoteliers, entrepreneurs, and a whole host of construction workers and railway technicians was making it possible to sell […] access to it. (Frank 2012, 185) South of Vienna, tourism quickly took shape along the new rail- way line: Die erste Konzentration von Kurorten entstand durch die Südbahn entlang der Thermenlinie südlich von Wien mit Baden und Bad Vöslau. Bald folgten die Kurorte um Reichenau und schließlich das Semmeringgebiet. [The first concentration of cure towns developed on account of the Südbahn along the row of thermal baths south of Vi- enna with Baden and Bad Vöslau. Cure towns soon followed around Reichenau and finally the Semmering area.] (Vasko- Juhász 2018, 78) By 1882 the Südbahn had built a grand hotel in Semmering, which was soon surrounded by villas and three further gran- diose Kurhotels: the Panhans, the Erzherzog Johann, and the Kurhaus. Upon the completion of the latter in 1909, Semmering solidified its status as one of the leading travel destinations in Europe, attracting a wealthy clientele from the furthest reaches of the monarchy (Vasko-Juhász 2018, 225). The majority, how- ever, came from Vienna. As Frank notes, “[t]he railway made it easy to reach, but only the construction of a luxury hotel in the 1880s — interestingly enough, by the Southern Railway So- ciety itself — made it an attractive destination for Vienna’s most fashionable society; skiers and hikers joined poets and play- wrights — the works of Arthur Schnitzler and Peter Altenberg are unthinkable without it” (Frank 2012, 193). The large strokes of history Wes Anderson draws to frame his Grand Budapest Hotel loosely correspond to those expe- rienced in Semmering. By 1932, the year Edmund Goulding