Whether in food, personal care, or medicine, our modern lives are built on hygiene—a concept that, historically, is relatively new. Well into the second half of the 19th century, household wells in tenement buildings were often located dangerously close to cesspits, creating breeding grounds for deadly infections. This was starkly evident during the 1873 World Exhibition at the Donau Hotel near the Prater, where cholera epidemics claimed tens of thousands of lives. Salvation came with the Vienna Mountain Spring Pipeline, which brought clean alpine water to the city, finally freeing it from this scourge.

Hospitals of the time were no better. Handwashing was dismissed as eccentric, and gynecologists unwittingly transferred cadaveric toxins from autopsies to the blood of laboring mothers, many of whom succumbed to puerperal fever.

This episode follows two pioneers of Austrian hygiene—epidemiologist Anton Drasche and surgeon Ignaz Semmelweis—in their tireless fight for cleanliness and the lifesaving changes it brought to society.

When the assassin Bogdan Zerajić fired at the Habsburg governor in Bosnia in 1910, he could have sparked the global conflagration that erupted four years later with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. But Zerajić missed his target and turned the gun on himself. Meanwhile, unrest simmered across other regions of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly among the Czechs, who were awakening to their national identity.

Through dramatic re-enactments from these hotspots, this episode chronicles the tumultuous decades when ethnic fault lines within the Habsburg state became increasingly pronounced. The Ottoman Empire's retreat from the Balkans primarily benefited Russia, which shifted from being Austria's long-standing ally to its fierce strategic adversary—largely due to missteps in Habsburg Balkan policy. This pivotal shift set the stage for World War I. The national states we know today are direct outcomes of these historical developments.