Maybe paradoxically, maybe not so, it is in this exact period of decline, and in an increasingly obdurate and introverted late biedermeier culture, that the Austrian intelligentsia and art had its most prominent representatives, as if they took nourishment from precisely this “voluntary enlightenment”, from the dark carpets, wallpaper and fur­ni­tu­re of their homes, which later always seemed to be repositories of most horrible secrets and repressions.