Because of work like the Edenic landscapes and nudes of Ernst-Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Heckel and the tormented portraits of Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, Expressionism's highly subjective images transformed Austro-German art. Ashley Bassie's lively study analyzes the development of this movement against the background of early 20th-century Wilhelmine and Hapsburg society, and explains how the Expressionists' deep-seated tensions over sexuality, nature, civilization, and the powers of the unconscious continue to haunt Central European art.