information to users

INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.

University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700

800/521-0600

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.


O rd er N u m b er 9331758

M obilizing the aristocrat: Pre-war Vienna and the poetics of belligerence in Herzl, Hofm annsthal, Kraus, and Schaukal Burri, Michael Austin, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 1993

Copyright © 1993 by Burri, M ichael A ustin. A ll rights reserved.

UMI

300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106



MOBILIZING THE ARISTOCRAT: PRE-WAR VIENNA AND THE POETICS OF BELLIGERENCE IN H ERZL, HOFMANNSTHAL, KRAUS, AND SCHAUKAL

Michael Burri

A DISSERTATION in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory

Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

1993

Supervisor of Dissertation


COPYRIGHT © M i c h a e l Austin Burri 1993


In memory of my grandmother Dem Andenken meiner Grossmutter


iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It is a pleasure to call to mind those people who have contributed in important ways to this dissertation. At Penn, Professor Frank Trommler has been a prompt reader, a generous adviser, and an exemplary director over the course of this project; Professors Peter Steiner and Gerald Prince have also stood ready with intellectual and institutional support and I should like to thank them for their help. In New York, Ernst Aichinger has made himself available on a number of occasions and I would like to acknowledge here both his kindness and the support of the Austrian Institute. In Vienna, the comments and advice of Professor Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler have been a source of scholarly inspiration and insight. While working on this project,

I have also benefitted from discussions with

Jonathan Hess, Shawn Parkhurst, Matt Simon, Melissa Sternberg, and Vladislav Todorov. JoAnne Dubil has been a conscientious and supportive administrative assistant in the Comparative Literature office and I would like to acknowledge her kind help as well. Finally, I am happy to thank my father, Jack Samuel Burri, and my mother, Jacquelyn Clara Burri, for their patience and good will.


V

ABSTRACT MOBILIZING THE ARISTOCRAT: PRE-WAR VIENNA AND THE POETICS OF BELLIGERENCE IN HERZL, HOFMANNSTHAL, KRAUS, AND SCHAUKAL MICHAEL AUSTIN BURRI FRANK TROMMLER

This project is a study of the attitudinal and aesthetic aspects of the "aristocrat" in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Drawing upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias, I take the "aristocrat" both as a model for identity formation and as a habitus, a kind of body disposition to be imitated or "self-fashioned." Such self-fashioning unfolds, I contend, against the background of a general aristocratism at the turn of the century, as well as within a dense patchwork of individual and collective initiatives in Austria. Around 1900, to adopt the conduct and carriage, the manner, etiquette, and life-style of a noble fulfills a complex behavioral imperative, indeed, represents a nuanced form of socialization. Viennese literature of these years marks an experimental field upon which the figure of the aristocrat is "made" and "remade." The research presented in this dissertation begins from the premise that elite self-fashioning involves not


only titled nobles but a much broader variety of figures who appropriate for themselves the public posturings, the imaginary identifications and the ritual displays of an "aristocrat." That the aristocrat served as a kind of imaginary ideal for bourgeois artists and intellectuals around the turn of the century is, of course, a central theme in the work of Carl Schorske. Yet while Schorske sees the ambition to style oneself as an aristocrat as a withdrawal from social activism into a private aestheticism, I argue that Viennese writers claim for themselves a far more engaged aristocrat from the Austrian past. The aristocratic h abitus, I contend, is aggressive and offers a symbolic pose for the expression of belligerent impulses and combative attitudes. From this perspective, I suggest, the "aristocrat" presents a link between what are often seen as two unrelated moments: the fin de siecle and the outbreak of war (from Vienna)

in

1914.


vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapters 1.

2.

Introduction I.

The Pre-War A r i s tocrat .......................... 1

II.

Vienna After Schorske........................... 4

III.

Das "andere" W i e n ? ..............................10

Vienna, Aristocratic Self-Fashioning, and the Making of the Belligerent Decadent

3.

I.

The New Feudalism............................... 16

II.

Aristocratic Self-Fashioning...................23

III.

The Decline and Fall of Decadence............. 34

The Soldier-Aristocrat and the Ethos of Nobility: Ferdinand von Saar I.

The Military M a n ................................ 51

II.

The Footprints of Warri o r s..................... 57

III.

Anatomy of an Aristocratic Fantasy: Leutnant B u rda...................................61

4.

IV.

The New "Noble" and the Duel Society.......... 81

V.

A Changed G u ard................................. 87

VI.

The Military-Aristocratic Ethos................96

Fin-de-siecle Aggression and the Aristocratic Front: Richard von Schaukal and Theodor Herzl I.

Self-Made Aristocrats.......................... 110

II.

Richard von Schaukal: The Very Last Knight...118

III. Noble Wrath: "Scenes from Society"........... 129 IV.

Theodor Herzl: An Old-New Aristocrat......... 136

V.

Aristocratic Assimilation?.................... 140

VI.

Herzl and the Aristocratic State..............146

VII. Literary Honor and the Duel: Das neue Ghe t t o................................ 151


viii VIII. Conclusion: A Great W a r ...................... 158

5.

Exkurs: The Striking Pose of a Non-Aristocrat: The "Staackmann"

6.

I.

The Devil You K n o w ..............

168

II.

Publishing Types............................... 171

III.

Getting the Picture........................... 174

IV.

A Striking Pose................................ 183

Antiquity and the Aggressive Impulse: Hugo von Hofmannsthal

7.

I.

The Noble Entail............................... 192

II.

A New Classicism?..............................198

III.

Nichts als eine Bluttraumerin?............... 204

IV.

The Orestia and Elektra....................... 216

V.

The Greek Tradition ofW a r ..................... 220

VI.

The Classical Battle.......................... 226

The Noble Ultimatum: Karl Kraus I.

8.

Adel und Ideale................................ 233

Works Cited..........


239

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Otto Ernst: "A Striking P o se" ...........


Chapter One INTRODUCTION

I. The Pre-War Aristocrat Von gewissen Existenzen unserer Zeit (fur welche ein Beispiel der anmassende Edelmann) kann man sagen, dass in ihnen nicht sie selbst, sondern ihre verstorbenen Vorfahren wirksam^sind: aus ihnen kommen Reden und Gebarden Verstorbener heraus, vie die Reden und Gebarden der Rolle aus einem Schauspieler [1]. Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1905)

This dissertation is a study of the attitudinal and aesthetic aspects of the "aristocrat" in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Drawing upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias, it takes the aristocrat both as a model for identity formation and as a habitus, a kind of body disposition to be imitated or "self-fashioned." Such self-fashioning unfolds,

I contend, against the background

of a general aristocratism at the turn of the century, as well as within a dense patchwork of individual and collective initiatives in Austria. Around 1900, to adopt the conduct and carriage, the manner, etiquette, and life-style of a noble fulfills a complex behavioral imperative, indeed, represents a nuanced form of socialization [2]. Viennese literature of these years marks an experimental field upon which the figure of the aristocrat is "made" and "remade."


2 The research presented in this dissertation begins from the premise that elite self-fashioning involves not only titled nobles but a much broader variety of figures who appropriate for themselves the public posturings, the imaginary identifications and the ritual displays of an "aristocrat." That the aristocrat served as a kind of imaginary ideal for bourgeois artists and intellectuals around the turn of the century is, of course, a central theme in the work of Carl Schorske [3]. Yet while Schorske sees the ambition to style oneself as an aristocrat as a withdrawal from social activism into a private aestheticism, I argue that Viennese writers claim for themselves a far more engaged aristocrat from the Austrian past. The aristocratic h a bitus, I contend, is aggressive and offers a symbolic pose for the expression of belligerent impulses and combative attitudes. From this perspective,

I suggest, the "aristocrat" presents a link

between what are often seen as two unrelated moments: the fin de siecle and the outbreak of war (from Vienna)

in

1914. Traditional approaches to literature are ill-equipped to address the self-styling of belligerent and aggressive "aristocrats." Scholars and critics of literature in the Anglo-American system, for example, are trained in large measure to attend to the contours of language, rather than to scarcely articulated symbols of distinction, ciphers of


3 membership, and norms of behavior. Much as historians, especially since Ranke, have focused on explicit documentation, literary scholars have tended to concentrate on the kinds of things that are "said," rather than the kinds of things that are "done" —

a

generalization no less applicable to theorists of "ideology" and "discourse." It is indicative of the priorities involved here that the account of aristocratic behavior most familiar in an Anglo-Saxon context is that of Nancy Mitford. Her analysis of the English class system relies precisely on formal criteria of word choice and pronunciation to distinguish between elites and non-elites. The distinction between "U" (upper-class) and "non-U" language functions as a credible standard because, as she puts it, "it is solely by their language that the upper classes nowadays are distinguished (since they are neither cleaner, richer, nor better-educated than anybody else)" [4]. Social status is expressed solely as an abstract use of language. The subtle gestures that convey "belonging:" the manner of speaking —

for example, ease,

and what Nietzsche called "the slow gestures, the slow glance" of nobility in contrast to the agitation, haste, and uncertainty of the non-elite —

are reduced to a

single style sheet [5]. The art of conversation, a practical ideal of conduct among many elites, is also, for Mitford, not a part of "language."


4 II.

Vienna After Schorske

A central text for the scholarship and research that has developed over the last thirty years on Vienna around 1900 is the work of Carl Schorske. His essays, collected in the volume Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, have served as a general reference point for the topic and have, to a large degree, helped to create a contemporary notion of the aesthetic, cultural, and political phenomenon "fin-de-siecle Vienna." Of course, it may be true as Michael Steinberg argues in his retrospective look at the essay collection of Schorske that "the paths of Austrian cultural and intellectual historiography from 1980 to 1990 suggest, a fortiori, that no working fin-de-sidcle Vienna paradigm formed" [6]. Still, it would be difficult to overestimate the reception Fin-de-siecle Vienna has found both inside and outside academe. Nearly every major study in the field in English, French, and German engages the book, and more than a few scholars have treated its conclusions less as critical constructions than as established wisdom. Indeed, the criterion of "paradigm" may be misleading with respect to Schorske. It is doubtful, after all, whether any modern work in literary studies or history could meet this standard. To suggest that Fin-de-siecle Vienna —

which sold more than

15,000 hardbound copies just months after its release, a number well-above the most optimistic projections of its


publishers —

5 failed as a "paradigm" is, in some sense, to

obscure its remarkable impact [7]. The interest generated in the writers, artists, and composers, the architects, politicians and other cultural figures of turn-of-the-century Vienna by the work of Schorske is to be welcomed. The scholar who grumbles about the "commercialization of Vienna" or notes that a "show such as the Vienna exhibition seems especially suited to a public obsessed with cultural consumerism," while himself or herself earning a salary off the "Vienna Fascination" does not need a Karl Kraus to remind them of their basic bad faith [8]. The book Fin-de-siecle Vi e n n a , no less than exhibitions devoted to the topic in Europe and North America, has energized scholarship and helped writers, critics, and other intellectuals to grasp aesthetic and cultural issues in a clear and cogent manner. At the same time, the work of Schorske has provoked a strong critical response. Because this dissertation is also intended as a challenge to some of the central propositions, themes, and conclusions of Fin-de-siecle Vi e n n a , I would now like to situate my own research in the broad context of that study as well as current Anglo-American, Austrian, and German scholarship on Vienna. An early dissent from the Schorskean thesis on the impact of Austrian history for Viennese writers and thinkers at the turn of the century was registered by the


6 historian Peter Gay. Writing on Freud, Gay declared quite polemically that the Viennese founder of psychoanalysis belonged to a German rather than Austrian or German-Austrian intellectual tradition; and while he acknowledged that he had "learned much from" Schorske and his "subtle essay" on Freud, the direction of his argument was clear enough [9]. On the other hand, some of the more recent research on Vienna has faulted Schorske for misjudging the specificity of the Viennese context. Steven Beller has shown how Jews in Vienna gave the liberal bourgeoisie its ideological and demographic profile and argues that Schorske neglects this salient fact in a number of important ways [10]. For his part, Beller summarizes quickly and, at times, fairly inaccurately the position of Schorske. In the "Introduction," for example, Beller writes that "Schorske claims that Vienna's liberal bourgeoisie found in the city an aristocratic and amoral Gefuhlskultur which contradicted their moral-scientific liberalism and was never successfully overcome by them. To an extent uncommon elsewhere in Europe, the bourgeoisie ended up imitating the aristocracy, not vice versa" (Beller 1989, 3). This characterization of Schorske plainly misstates his argument. Schorske in no way claims that elsewhere in Europe the aristocracy "ended up" imitating the bourgeoisie —

a claim that would indeed be

uncommon.


7 In Political Radicalism in Late Imperial V i e n n a , John Boyer presents a carefully documented history of the Christian Social party and Karl Lueger that suggests some qualifications to the politics in a sharp "new key" described by Schorske [11]. Setting the development of party and politician against the backdrop of post-1848 liberalism in Austria, Boyer traces the modernization of Austrian politics achieved by Lueger through issue politics, an effective use of the rhetoric of a unitary Burqertum, and a dedication to political endeavor unmatched by any of his predecessors. Here, Boyer finds less what Schorske calls a "murky transition from democratic to protofascist politics"

(Schorske 1981,

138-139) than that "Lueger1s model for competitive politics in the bourgeois mode was deeply rooted in nineteenth-century traditions and values... The political mode employed was,

if anything, baroque, not fascistic"

(Boyer 413). For Boyer, moreover, the general theme of withdrawal from politics advanced by Schorske tends to ignore the new and subtle means of integration between party politics and imperial government. writes,

"Indeed," he

"the standard wisdom about the 1depoliticization'

of Austria after 1896 needs a serious reassessment"

(Boyer

318). In his review of the scholarly literature on Austrian liberalism, Harry Ritter also notes how Schorske remains


8 bound to the political discourse he inherits. According to Ritter,

"The key images and phrases used to explain

liberalism today, — 'myopia,' the lot,

e.g.,

'paralysis,'

'decline,'

'bankruptcy,' and perhaps the most threadbare of 'crisis,' are basically the ones introduced

before the Great War" [12]. By reproducing too literally the "figurative language of pathology invented in some cases, and broadcast by insecure or disillusioned turn-of-the-century liberals themselves," Schorske and other contemporary interpreters of Austrian liberalism have not necessarily clarified their object of study. Literary scholars have also been forthcoming in their critique of Schorske and have been careful to warn against the implications of his argument. Donald Daviau, for example, has criticized the Schorskean thesis that fin-de-siecle writers met the social conflicts of the 1890s by fleeing to a hermetic realm of art and has stressed the commitment to the social in the works of Hermann Bahr, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler and others [13 ]. In a more philosophical vein, the generally affirmative review of Michael Steinberg,

"'Fin-de-siecle

Vienna' Ten Years Later: Viel Traum, Wenig Wirklichkeit," suggests that the fin de siecle presented by Schorske is the product of a nineteenth-century w o r l d . According to Steinberg, the case studies of Schorske mark a variety of

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout permission.

9 modernisms, but no modernity; that is, they represent "models of culture still conceived according to aesthetic principles of form," rather than attempts to engage the new and unstable experiences of modern life a la Baudelaire. The consequence of this approach is that far "from exposing the roots of the twentieth century, Schorske's Fin-de-siecle Vienna puts such a project out of reach." Such an emphasis, moreover, has contributed to "an enormous, aestheticized rendition of the 'modern1 as invented in Vienna.

"The result," as Steinberg notes in a

sentiment that is a topos of scholarly writing on Austria, "has been the commodification of fin-de-siecle Vienna" (Steinberg 1991,

154).

The importance Steinberg gives to the aesthetic aura surrounding Vienna in the work of Schorske is a useful emphasis. To be sure, Schorske did not invent the symbolic identity of fin-de-siecle Vienna as a "beautiful illusion." Nor should one be too quick to counter the "aestheticism" of Vienna with some more definitive and essential "reality." Indeed, Theodor Adorno was correct in observing that it would unfair to praise or blame the aestheticism of the literary Symbolism and Neo-Romanticism for "what they themselves would have readily admitted — that they preserved the beautiful while the Naturalists resigned themselves to the barren life of industrial society. The renunciation of the beautiful," he continues,


10 "can preserve its idea more powerfully than the illusory conservation of disintegrating beauty" [14]. At the same time, however, fin-de-siecle Vienna persists in the popular and scholarly imagination as an enclave of nonviolence, a place of repressed conflict and aesthetically productive displacement. It is an overrepresentation of these themes, together with an iA

undervaluation of what Hilde Spiel has called "Die Damonie w

der Gemutlichkeit" and the genuine cultural, social, and political conflicts of the turn of the century, that Steinberg rightly singles out for criticism [15].

III. Das "andere" Wien? This dissertation responds in part to the image of elegant indifference, fading grandeur, and non-aggression that prevails in discussions of Vienna around 1900. In particular, it questions the relationship between aestheticism and the figure of the aristocrat, inasmuch as both are taken by Schorske and other scholars to be an expression of "weakness," "withdrawal," and "disengagement." My project is intended to be "xevisionary" rather than "reconstructive"; that is, it reads against what I take to be a dominant discourse on Vienna rather than, for example, re-assembling the writers,

issues, and context of a specific movement.

Finally, by stressing the complicity between aestheticism,


11 aggression, and the aristocrat, I attempt to suggest ways to bridge the literature and culture of the turn of the century with Expressionism, which has always been considered a more "violent" trend, and the Austrian entry into war in August 1914. The research presented here is by no means the first to argue against the overemphasis of asthetic principles in Vienna. Recent scholarship, particularly in Austria, has taken significant steps toward developing an alternative account of Vienna — andere Wien" —

what has been called "das

around 1900 [16]. Surveys of everyday

life, including studies of housing shortages, the placement of cemeteries, work hours, and so forth, have already helped to produce a counterweight to the received wisdom on fin-de-siecle Vienna. Yet to the exent that this research proceeds through the metaphor of an "other" Vienna, it tends to obscure the very problem it means to illuminate. First, the "one-side/other-side" dichotomy reproduces the opposition, already central to the turn of the century, between high and low culture, between a beautiful superstructure and a corrupt base. Secondly, the conventional division between the "sociological"

(bad) and

the "literary" (good) is uncritically reproduced here. In contrast to this dissertation, canonical works and writers are barely addressed by scholars of "das andere Wien," thus preserving the idea of "literature" as the


12 representative of the "best and most humane impulses." Meanwhile "minor" literature and sub-genres are made to reflect the "dark" side [17]. Against the research of the "other" Vienna, it is my argument here that literary scholars would be better served by ridding their thinking of the metaphor of the the "other" side and the language of authenticity that accompanies it. Likewise, the ritual citation of this research trend needs to be replaced by more concrete analyses of how high literature and cultural figures contributed to the misery of fin-de-siecle Vienna and beyond. Charles Baudelaire often observed that every age had its own gait, glance, and gesture [18]. Around 1900 in Vienna, as Hermann Broch once pointed out, it was the "nobility" who supplied the step, furnished the look, and the set the posture of the age. "Der viktorianische und der franzisko-josephinische Adel war 'popular,'" he wrote, "weitaus popularer als das okonomisch immer verdachtiger * verdende Burgertum dieser Periode, und wo erne Oberklasse popular wird, da wird die Art ihrer Lebenshaltung fur alle andern Stande richtunggebend" [19]. This dissertation is an exploration of how habit, convention, and life-style, comportment, etiquette, and manner represent a significant register of motifs in Austrian literature and social practice. It argues that self-presentation and the


creation of an aggressive aristocrat mark an important moment in Austrian cultural and literary history. These, as much as the series of oppositions usually structuring discourse on Austria —

Jew/Catholic, outsider/insider,

mute/expressive (the Lord Chandos problematic), barrenness/decoration —

merit investigation [20].


14 Notes [lj^Hugo von Hofmannsthal, "Aufzeichnungen,11 Reden und Aufsatze III, Gesammelte W e r k e , ed. Bernd Schoeller and Ingeborg Beyer-Ahlert, 10 vols. (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1980) 10:457. [2] On Hungarian aristocratism, see Viola Finn, "Zsigmond Justh: In Search of a New Nobility," Intellectuals and .the Future in the Habsburg Monarchy 1890-1914, eds. Lazio Peter, and Robert B. Pynsent, (New York: St. Martin's, 1988) 129-151. Lorant Czigany, "The decline of the gentry and the novel," Oxford History of Hungarian Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) 233-246. [3] Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siecle Vie n n a : Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1981). [4] Nancy Mitford, "The English Aristocracy," Noblesse Oblige, ed. Nancy Mitford (1955; New York: Harper, 1956) 25. [5] Cited in Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critigue of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984) 177. [6] Michael Steinberg, "'Fin-de-siecle Vienna' Ten Years Later: Viel Traum, Wenig Wirklichkeit," Austrian History Yearbook XXII (1991): 151. [7] Leon Botstein, "The Viennese Connection," Partisan Review 2 (1982): 262. [8] Steven Beller, "Modern Owls Fly by Night: Recent Literature on Fin de siecle Vienna, The Historical Journal 31 (1988): 665. Beth Bjorklund, "Museum of Modern Art's 'Vienna 1900': Conception and Reception," Modern Austrian Literature 23.1 (1990): 103. See also Russell A. Berman, "The Vienna Fascination," Telos 68 (1986): 7-38. [9] Peter Gay, "Sigmund Freud: A German and his Discontents," F reud, Jews and Other Germans (New York: Oxford UP, 1978) 32. [10] Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews 1867-1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). [11] John Boyer, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vie n n a : Origins of the Christian Social Movement 1847-1897 (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981).


15 [12] Harry Ritter, "Austro-German Liberalism and the Modern Liberal Tradition," German Studies Review 7.2 (1984): 238. [13] Donald G. Daviau, "Introduction," Major Figures of Turn-of-the-Century Austrian Literature, ed. Donald G. Daviau (Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1991) i-lxi. [14] Theodor Adorno, Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (1981; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984) 218. H

Jl5] Hilde Spiel, "Die Damonie der Gemutlichkeit," Die Damonie der Gemutlichkeit: Glossen zur Zeit und andere Pr osa , ed. Hans A. Neunzig (M&ichen: List, 1991) 15-22. [16] Glucklich ist, wer verqisst...? Das andere Wien urn 1900, eds. Hubert Ch. Ehalt, Gernot Heiss, Hannes Stekl (Wien: Bohlau, 1986). [17] An exception to the avoidance of canonical literature for "das andere Wien" is Armin A. Wallas, "Gewalt und Zerstorung: Zur Thematisierung von Violenz in der osterreichischen Literatur der Jahrhundertwende," Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philoloqie 108 (1989): 198-221. [18] Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays," trans. Jonathan Mayne (1964; New York: Da Capo, 1986) 14. [19] Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Z e i t , Schriften zur Literatur 1: Kritik, ed. Paul Michael Lutzeler (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975) 167. [20] See Michael P. Steinberg, The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival: Austria as Theater and Ideology, 1890-1938 (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990) 170.


16

Chapter Two Vienna, Aristocratic Self-Fashioning, and the Making of the Belligerent Decadent

Seltsames Schauspiel, zugleich Verwunderung und Arger, Unglauben und Heiterkeit ^ erregend, diese mittelalterliche Komodie mitten in unserer neuzeitlichen Kultur! Max Nordau, "Die monarchischaristokratische Lugen" [1]

I. The New Feudalism For much of the European high bourgeoisie, the decades opening on to the First World War were a time of vivid experimentation with aristocratic habits, styles, and conventions. It speaks for the success of this bourgeoisie and its experiments that even now, a century later, an aristocratic aura continues to hover over these years. Indeed, more than a footnote to the recent flourish of exhibition catalogs, historical studies, and literary monographs on Europe before the war is the astonishing persistence of the upper class as a representative image [2]. Today, the phantasm of a charmed pre-war aristocracy survives as if in a storybook looking glass. From it is reflected back to the present an approximate ideal of the noble life. A vision of taste, leisure, and independence within reach of anyone who would have it; a picture of a middle class that, for once, lived as real bourgeoisie


17 should —

in the midst of elite traditions, feudal

legacies, and the rites of nobility.

It is a looking glass

created by a high bourgeoisie who, during the fin de siecle and years afterward, held up to themselves their own image and saw an ancient aristocrat. Pre-war experimentation with noble forms and practices was not, to be sure, confined to a narrowly cultural or non-political frame of reference. In Germany, men such as Guido von List and the British-born Houston Stewart Chamberlain based their theories of an ur-German ruling caste upon a virulent aristocratic racism [3], while in Hungary, Istvan Czobel presented his ideas for the social and political regeneration of the aristocracy by focusing on its origins in a warrior caste [4]. To suggest a loose coherence to a variety of phenomena and to mark their emergence as a general trend, critics have referred in this context to a "feudalization of the bourgeoisie." Toward the mainstream of this trend, so it might be summarized, individual bourgeoisie acquire aristocratic totems and cultivate a noble life-style. Those well-endowed and ambitious enough to do so, for example, obtain titles and buy country villas, they arrange elaborate hunting expeditions, desire admission to the best clubs and put on fine parties [5]. In a further step, as Jost Hermand has described, German writers such as Arthur Bonus, Georg Hauerstein, Wilhelm Schwaner, and


18 Philip Stauff agitate for the reestablishment of aristocratic families (Hermand 1988, 75). Meanwhile,

"the

estate," the traditional symbol of aristocratic life is redrafted to smaller scale. The private bourgeois house around 1900 becomes an architectural project in itself, as the creation of an individualized domestic space, in contrast to the Bauhaus projects after the war, stresses quality, taste and economic utility [6]. Emergent social ideals, ambitions, and patterns of consumption worked to recenter "the aristocracy" toward the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. New alliances between trade and finance confirmed this trend [7]. Meanwhile, norms codified in conduct and behavior gave the aristocracy a more attractive profile. Indeed, ceremonial occasions that underscored the legitimacy of traditional forms of rule were staged and reproduced across Europe, as a receptive audience breathlessly awaited these striking reassertions of aristocratism. In Britain, for example, David Cannadine has recounted how "Between the late 1870s and 1914... there was a fundamental change in the public image of the British monarchy, as its ritual, hitherto inept, private and of limited appeal, became splendid, public and popular" [8]. "Invented" rituals such as these were high occasions for spectators and participants to carry out the roles granted to them. And from the idolatry of the upper


19 nobility to the fledgling cults of monarchy and the persistence of an Untertanengeist, the bourgeoisie struck a composed attitude of admiration and deference in the presence of the aristocracy [9]. How such norms came to be acquired at all is a complex issue. Arno Mayer has argued that because the new industrial and financial bourgeoisie lacked a coherent and firm social or cultural footing of their own, they had no choice but to remain locked in a posture of obsequiousness; having no world-view or social code of their own, they emulated that of the aristocracy [10]. Yet, the cultural endowments of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie need not be drawn so sharply —

as a

matter of haves and have-nots; an exchange between social groups predates the nineteenth century and might be considered in its own right. Certainly, in Germany the fin-de-siecle vogue for noble accent, manner, and etiquette marked a reversal of an earlier bourgeois critique of the aristocratic habitus. Norbert Elias has written, for example, on the formation in the second half of the eighteenth century of "ein ausgesprochen burgerliches Selbstbewusstsein, spezifisch mittelstandische Ideale und ein pragnantes, gegen die hofische Oberschicht gerichtetes Begriffsarsenal"

[11].

Motivated in part by their own exclusion from court circles, the bourgeoisie of this period found in their own tastes, attitudes, and moral codes the basis for a


20 counter-image to the "aristocrat" of the German court. This aristocrat is arrogant, aloof, and Francophile; against him, the new bourgeois character-type takes shape. Already quite evident in the work of bourgeois writers from Sophie de la Roche to Goethe, this character-type embodies resistance and refusal, a resistance and refusal that finds expression not in an open challenge to aristocratic hegemony but in behavioral norms. Opposed to the artificiality, distance, and snobbism of the aristocrat, so Elias, are the "sincerity"

(Aufrichtiqkeit)

and "openess" (Offenheit) of the bourgeois figure (1:38). By the late nineteenth-century,

it is once again the

aristocrat who is worthy of imitation: deferred to in public by the aspiring bourgeoisie,

"distant," "snobbish"

and "artificial" in the literature of symbolism and decadence. A behavior that pays tribute to the aristocracy by imitating it was by no means new [12]. Aristocratic ideals came into being and continued to exist partly to distinguish the aristocracy and nobility from commoners; an essential, if hardly startling, aspect of these ideals, then, was that for centuries commoners had tried to imitate them. In a historical context, in fact, aristocratic ideals represented social ideals for nobles as well as commoners. That a noble belonged to the nobility,

it should be recalled, never made the noble an


21 aristocrat, just as being an aristocrat did not always mean that one was a noble [13]. To be an "aristocrat" traditionally entailed the ownership of a tenanted estate; from the ownership of an estate, privilege was granted in the form of seigneurial rights. Likewise, the privileges of nobility derived from a noble patent and these were formalized as noble rights. The rights of an aristocrat were, in other words, not

necessarily the rights

of a

noble: a noble could be, and not infrequently was, penniless, while still belonging to the nobility. Yet, to hold an estate required a

real measure of wealth and

represented an ideal even

for nobles.

An aristocratic life-style was a style to which nobles did not have to subscribe to, but usually did if they could afford it [14]. Complicating the picture, and "continually upstaging the aristocratic noble, was the aristocratic commoner" (Bush 1988, 110). This historical figure was a direct precursor to the wealthy commoner of the fin de siecle, who, though he could maintain himself in the circumstances of an "aristocrat," had not yet been ennobled. True, many high bourgeoisie of the pre-war years did acquire noble patents; still, like the aristocratic commoner before them, they had no interest in being a noble if that did not also mean the ability to pursue an aristocratic life-style. Around the turn of the century,


22 the noble held a noble patent and the high bourgeoisie held wealth: both could hope to become an "aristocrat." An ideology of aristocracy exercised a powerful influence over the fin-de-siecle imagination. That it did not cast its spell over the entire social and cultural landscape, however,

is clear. Resentment, refusal, and the

Burqerstolz of an earlier age survived among much of the bourgeoisie. And already in 1880s, the Hungarian critic Max Nordau had linked theories of degeneration with the aristocracy in a polemic that anticipated the conjuncture of these terms in the literature and criticism of the next decade (Nordau 1884, 155-167). It should be observed as well that a persistent, if not always heard, critique of aristocracy and aristocratic pretension did exist. High-bourgeois social rituals, life-styles, and ideals are parodied, for example, in the turn-of-the-century Berlin novel of Heinrich Mann, Im Schlaraffenland, as they had been earlier by Flaubert and Maupassant in France. And not everyone sought ennoblement. Karl Wittgenstein, the independent-minded father of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Theodor Gomperz, the noted classical scholar, distinguished themselves in Vienna by their refusal of a noble grant. For those with the motivation, the will, and the prestige, it was possible, of course, to refuse. The pre-war era was a age of aristocratic experimentation, not one of


23 aristocratic compulsion.

Still, the pointed observation of

Mayer registers a notable feature of these years, 1914," he writes,

"Down to

"even the most zealous and brazen social

climbers were rarely satirized as vainglorious fools, there being few Figaros to taunt and trick counterfeit nobles without falling prey to their wiles"

II.

(Mayer 88).

Aristocratic Self-Fashioning

Literary writing in Austria during this period meets the symbolic rematerialization of the aristocracy with a varied response. One way to study the response to this aristocratism would be to monitor societal interaction as it is represented in literature. A pronounced circulation of near-nobles, aristocratic social types, and people of "better society" would surely seem to be a vital source of narrative and dramatic interest in Austrian literature — from Adalbert Stifter to Ferdinand von Saar and Marie Ebner-Eschenbach, Hugo von Hofmannsthal to Robert Musil and Heimito von Doderer. Indeed, for a period which covers the eclipse of the aristocracy, defined as a politically and socially privileged ruling class fixed in associations determined by tradition, this circulation would in itself have to be considered a chief function of the noble estate [15]. Of course, whether local traffic between aristocrats and bourgeoisie in Vienna ever approached the informal


24 merging suggested in, say, the socially astute works of Arthur Schnitzler may well be doubted [16]. Certainly the rigid calibrations of rank within the nobility give little to encourage the idea that anyone, bourgeois or aristocrat, found movement within the aristocracy less than difficult. Receiving a noble patent (Adelsbrief), the main ennobling device in the modern era, did not, after all, mean open admission into a single aristocratic estate. From the reform of the nobility undertaken by Maria Theresa in the mid-eighteenth century until noble honorifics were "permanently" abolished by the Austrian parliament in 1919, to become an "aristocrat" generally meant to become part of the so-called "zweite Gesellschaft" [17]. This fixed "second society" consisted of the three lowest grades of nobility: the simple aristocracy, knights, and barons

(einfacher A d e l , Ritter,

Freiherren) . Though their noble patent set them above most non-noble commoners, members of this order had neither the social prestige nor the high imperial sanction of the "first society" [18]. Indeed, to mix into the caste-bound "erste Gesellschaft" of count and prince (Graf and Furst), however much it might have fulfilled the design of the Enlightenment reformer or the ambition of the excluded noble, would have been a rare accomplishment. One of the least mutable features of the Austrian social landscape during the last century-and-a-half of


25 Habsburg rule, the "second society" underwrote the image of an aristocratic "first society" of almost mythic grandeur. At the same time, they effectively barred themselves from gaining entrance to this society. For while the pre-reform members of the nobility were generally being promoted to the "erste Gesellschaft," the second society swelled with new nobles from the army and the state bureaucracy [19]. This latter service nobility (Dienstadel) became a genuine social force in the late nineteenth century. That it made few social inroads into the old nobility, found little recognition among elites, and had no prospects for advancement created frustration. And in the end, perhaps it was precisely the unwillingness of the old nobility in Austria to open access to its upper levels that doomed it (Bush 1988, 142). Within the Austrian social pyramid the aristocracy was both closed to the bourgeoisie and visibly divided against itself. Being a patented "aristocrat" in such a context did imply certain things about one. What these things were and what consequences they would have for their certifiably aristocratic owner was far from assured. It seems unlikely, in any case, that the simple fact of a noble title would vindicate some of the more sweeping claims made by scholars about aristocrats or "the" / / aristocracy [20]. Istvan Deak has, for example, shown how scholars have systematically failed to distinguish between


26 "old" and "new" aristocracy [21]. Meanwhile, Adam Wandruszka has warned, "Es ist ein haufiger Irrtum von mit l/\

v\

#

9

den osterreichischen Verhaltnissen nicht Vertrauten, dass sie etwa in der Geschichte der Habsburgermonarchie prominente Personlichkeiten, nur weil sie den Titel eines Freiherrn (Baron) trugen, als Angehorige der Aristokratie Oder des Adels bezeichnen"

[22]. Two nominally

"aristocratic" cabinet ministers in the conservative post-1848 government, he notes by way of example, were actually being widely cited at the time as evidence for the participation

of thesocial-climbing bourgeoisie

the government of

Prince Felix Schwarzenberg.

in

Much as "vertical" indicators of rank imperfectly refract the place the holder of a noble title socially, "horizontal" distinctions served to punctuate a developed aristocratic hierarchy, while at the same time inhibiting access to it. For

if the formal stratification of peerage

worked to produce

a caste system among nobles, sharp

distinctions between aristocrats of the same order also existed. Aristocrats with a public ruling function, for example, outranked those with no public authority, those with land stood above the landless, and large estates were preferable to small ones. Yet because "nobilities liked to present themselves as a unity," differentiation among nominally comparable levels of nobility has also tended to be reproduced in scholarship (Bush 1988, 6). M.L. Bush has


27 argued, for example, that the nobility consistently presented the poor noble as an anomaly, a victim of economic misfortune or personal inadequacy, while,

in

fact, this impoverished figure constituted a natural and significant element in the aristocracy.

In Austria, the

system of noble promotion actually rejected poverty as an obstacle to ennoblement [23]. Finally, it should be recalled that positions parallel to the nobility without a transferable title such as Privy Councillor commanded great prestige [24]. These non-aristocratic appointments in court and state, which in Austria did not necessarily entail ennoblement, often bestowed upon the appointee status above that of a noble. To move toward some critical assessment of how Austrian literary writers and intellectuals engage in their texts the broader fin-de-siecle ideologies of aristocratism, and to ask what this engagement suggests for our present grasp of authors and movements,

it would

seem problematic to begin by simply looking at literature for "aristocrats." A deep inventory of noble figures might, of course, be compiled from sources in art as well as literature, operetta as well as folklore in Austria. The problem would remain, however, to devise a taxonomy of minimal traits —

date of noble patent, means of

ennoblement, public profile, and so forth —

that would be

adequate to describe their relative significance as


28 aristocrats. This is not to say that generalizations about aristocrats in literature cannot be usefully made. It is to say, however, that only a relatively small number of these generalizations can be sustained. Many and probably most aristocrats set in fiction are so indistinctly drawn that their social profile is beyond the reach of investigation. Unlike literary representations of artisans, clergymen, and the petit-bourgeoisie,

for

example, that acquire meaning as subjects when connected to the Christian Social political movement and its leader Karl Lueger, or domestic workers and heavy laborers that become historical agents in the Social Democratic party, aristocrats have no collective destiny in the last half-century of the Habsburg monarchy —

except, perhaps,

as symbols of disintegration, decline, and fall. And yet, if aristocrats in fiction are difficult to pin down, from another perspective they are all too identifiable. In Vienna around the turn of the century, as scholars from Arnold Hauser to Carl Schorske, as well as journalists, travel columnists and novelists have noted in different ways, aristocrats and an aristocratic setting exert a powerful influence in literature and the cultural imagination [25]. The high incidence of aristocrats in fin-de-siecle culture suggests a final argument against studying the textual representation of aristocrats as a basis for -


29 well-founded observations on the actual circumstances of the nobility or the bourgeoisie. A portrait of the Habsburg capital taken from the works of Arthur Schnitzler, for example, would offer some very unlikely scenes [26]. In this Vienna, the bourgeoisie socializes more or less unself-consciously with a generalized aristocracy; bourgeois individuals enter and exit various status groups with honor intact; love and social interactions, though sometimes ending tragically, rarely have any public consequences. Admittedly, as critics have often noted, such social unreality may reflect much better the dissolution of social barriers in a Schnitzlerian aesthetic of the erotic; this, however, would confirm rather than deny the point that these are aristocrats in a nonspecific rather than a specific sense [26]. More particularly for Schnitzler, who at times did wish to underscore the confinement of social relations, there is a tremendous floating of aristocrats.

"Die adeligen

Gestalten in diesem Einakter" as Egon Schwarz has perceptively remarked of Komtesse M i t z i , "sollen im selben \A

Licht erscheinen wie die burgerlichen" [27]. A literary landscape draped in a fine mesh of aristocracy and bourgeoisie clearly afforded a pleasant and welcome prospect for turn-of-the-century Vienna. And "Im \A

kunstlerischen Gemeinwesen von Schnitzlers Gnaden verkehren sie mit grosster Ungezwungenheit miteinander;

Reproduced with permission o f the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

30 unbefangener als es im Wien der Jahrhundertwende je geschehen konnte, f m d e n sich m Theater, in den Kasernen, zusammen"

* der Oper, auf Ballen, im

im Prater, in den Hotels

(57).

Pleasant and welcome as it seems to have been in literary scenarios, to be recognized in social situations not only as an aristocrat but as the right kind of aristocrat must have been a burdensome obligation. Few public occasions offered the kind of affirmative recognition so frequently bestowed upon aristocrats in literature. That institutions and practices to enhance such recognition had come into full flourish around the turn of the century, however, is clear. A secondary or parallel site for aristocratic behavior, for example, might well be seen in the celebrated coffee house of "fin-de-siecle Vienna." For whatever other set of images it may suggest —

rational discourse, the well-turned

phrase, a compliant waiter or marble tabletops —

the cafe

provided high visibility to a certain group of men, men whose collective presence reinforced an impression of dignity and prestige beyond any disagreement. Where social standing is important, yet insufficiently visible, opportunities are created to accomodate suitable recognition. A primary site for high aristocratic visibility was surely the phenomenon of staged noble ceremonies —

jubilees, pageants, weddings,


31 coronations —

that swept Europe from 1848 up to the First

World War [28]. These occasions were formalized events. They required a code of conduct that derived from specific and validated rules; it required and produced a demonstrative self-presentation of the individual as a member of noble elite society [29]. With respect to high aristocratic visibility, the jubilee in 1908 celebrating the sixtieth year of the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph, for example, was an impressively arranged display. At the gala evening for the occasion held at the Hofoper, higher officers of the army and general staff stood; dignitaries, including active and former ministers, Hungarian magnates, and Catholic prelates occupied the better orchestra seats; the mayor of Vienna, Dr. Karl Lueger and the police chief of the Habsburg capital were in loges on the third floor, while the highest aristocracy and leading ambassadors took their places on the second floor box seats; finally, on the first floor boxes were the archdukes, Friedrich, Eugen, Rainer, Leopold Salvator, Karl Stephan, Josef Ferdinand, and Peter Ferdinand (Mayer 142). Not only at the time, but in the public memory, the splendor of the event was preserved. Postal authorities contributed to this preservation, for example, by memorializing the occasion as a "tradition:" though the first postage stamp in Austria had been printed in 1850, the first historical stamp was not issued until the jubilee (Hobsbawm 281).


32 Indeed, the commemoration of aristocratic authority and the display of cohesion among elites underscored in such ceremonies marks a particularly Austrian "invention of tradition" that survived well beyond the demise of the monarchy. On the other hand, the attempt to be recognized as an aristocrat could be less an obligation than an advantageous social venture. After 1848 and particularly after 1868, all legal distinctions between nobles and commoners in Austria had been eliminated. By the turn of the century, no advantage could be derived from legal privileges. Still, patents of nobility continued to be granted and it does seem certain that their new owners acquired some economic and social benefit from them. How, in this instance, Austrian nobles of dissimilar rank actually converted their (new or upgraded) titles into symbolic and economic benefits is crucial to what it means to be an "aristocrat." How, it might be asked, did an aristocratic presence become marked here and how did nobles go about styling themselves as proper aristocrats? Of course, non-nobles might well behave in a similar manner. Whether implicitly or explicitly, they too could assert an aristocratic claim, a claim to the symbolic and economic benefits of an "aristocrat.” To this point, I have offered some critical remarks on Austrian aristocrats and their literary and social


33 representation. Such representation,

I have argued, takes

shape against the background of a general aristocratism at the turn of the century, as well as within a dense patchwork of individual and collective initiatives in Austria. Literature here marks a kind of experimental field upon which the figure of the aristocrat is modeled and remodeled. To adopt the conduct and carriage, the manner, etiquette, and life-style of a noble becomes an expressive and highly nuanced form of socialization in Vienna at the turn of the century [30]. Indeed, to an extent perhaps unsurpassed elsewhere, both non-nobles and nobles in Viennese fin-de-siecle literature engage in what might be called an aristocratic self-fashioning. In what follows, I would like to consider the background in literature and scholarship to the "problem" of aristocratic self-fashioning in Vienna. My remarks begin from the premise that such self-fashioning involves not only titled nobles but a much broader variety of figures who appropriate for themselves the public posturings, the imaginary identifications and the ritual displays of an "aristocrat." It is my argument that around the turn of the century, a keen attentiveness to the rapport between a "noble" pedigree and modes of personal conduct and comportment flourished in Vienna. A variety of literary types embody this wished-for agreement between aristocrat and distinctive bearing. In "decadence," for


34 example, a particular aristocratic type becomes manifest in individual carriage, demeanor, and style. Indeed, the "decadent aristocrat" is a figure that has been described again and again in scholarship of the period. At the same time, decadence has been understood as an "aristocratic" trend in literature, a trend characterized as well by a tendency to adopt a number of stylistic poses [31].

III.

The Decline and Fall of Decadence

Scholars of modern art have for at least several decades stressed the kinship between "the aristocratic" and "the decadent." More than forty years ago in The Social History of A r t , Arnold Hauser described in impressionism the rudiments of a new aristocratic aesthetic that extended through aestheticism and decadence to works of the fin de siecle [32]. Largely the creation of artists from the lower and middle bourgeoisie, this aesthetic acquired its most pronounced character toward the end of the century [33]. Aestheticism and decadence, for example, share many features of the new aristocratism. Both express a contemplative attitude toward life, both elevate the "artificial" over the "natural," and each can claim Des Esseintes, the protagonist of Huysmans* A Rebours, as an exemplary figure. More importantly, it is the still more distinct aristocratic profile of decadence that separates it from aestheticism. Hauser notes in


35 particular how, unlike the aestheticism that had preceded it, decadence turns its focus to elegance and overrefinement, exquisite taste and infirmity. He writes, "whereas people in former times had deeply lamented the fate of belonging to an ageing culture, as Musset had done for instance, the idea of intellectual nobility [Geistesadel1 is now connected with the concept of old age and fatigue, of over-cultivation and degeneration"

(Hauser

4:186). Decadence evokes an atmosphere of cultural decline and crisis, an "awareness" of standing as a witness to the disintegration of civilization. The "aristocrats' style" (Aristokratenstil) of impressionism,

"elegant and

fastidious, nervous and sensitive, sensual and epicurean... bent on strictly personal experiences, experiences of solitude and seclusion and the sensations of over-refined senses and nerves"

(Hauser 4:176), is

inflected here with an elite pessimism. In France, the place the Budapest-born Hauser seems to know best, artists become in the 1880s the heralds of an emergent decadent sensibility.

"Among the upper

classes," as Walter Benjamin once observed of that country after mid-century,

"cynicism was the norm"

[34]. Elsewhere

in Europe, decadence marks its beginnings only from the 1890s; thus, as late impressionism starts to pull back in France, a convergence of decadent style and an aristocratic temperament of passivism and withdrawal takes


36 shape across the continent.

In contrast to Bergsonian

vitalism and the Catholicism and royalism of the Action francaise, which in French literature contribute to a language of activism, Viennese, German, Italian and Russian literary impressionism now present "a philosophy of complete surrender to the immediate environment and of unresisting absorption in the passing moment"

(Hauser

4:206). For the decadent writer, the sensation of being overcome by the "environment" is doubled in being overcome by the "moment"; space and time combine in a disorientation that is perceptually complete. It is, moreover,

in the "ancient and tired culture" of Vienna

that this sensation finds its most consequent expression. In this milieu, the detached artist draws upon a feeling of cultural exhaustion to create the "purest form of the impressionism which forgoes all resistance to the stream of experience"

(Hauser 4:207). In Vienna, so Hauser,

"the

latent content of every kind of impressionism... becomes the basic experience." Though the trope of "surrender" that pervades critical writing on decadence somewhat conceals it, what Hauser describes in The Social History of Art is a vigorous,

flourishing form of artistic practice. Rather

than "weak" in the usual sense, decadence establishes an identity in literature and makes available to writers creative positions that are both sovereign and innovative


37 [35]. Yet because decadent style is grounded in an aristocratic imaginary/ and because for Hauser the "aristocratic1' cannot be strong, decadence itself appears to be weak. It remains precisely within the field of my current concern to ask whether this "strong weakness" of decadence is indeed "weak" in the way suggested by Hauser. For the moment, however,

I want to keep in view the two particular

claims of Hauser: first, that the decadent movement is the setting for an expressly aristocratic style, and second, that in Central Europe is represented the highest expression of aristocratism and decadence. The investigations between the individual subject and aesthetic taste are also frequently taken to connect decadence and "the aristocratic." One general feature important for decadence that connects directly to the individual, important because in some sense other features presuppose it, is the (over-)cultivation of sensitivity. Arnold Hauser, as we have seen, posited an individual overcome in a rush of sensation. Likewise Erwin Koppen has shown how a focus on individual debility, often those very nervous disorders Cesare Lombroso and Jacques Moreau took to be synonomous with genius, as well as an "ubertrieben(e) feine Empfindlichkeit" (Alfred Kubin), or "zu gesteigerter kunstlerischer Produktions- und Rezeptionsfahigkeit" serve as common motifs in European decadence [36]. Decadence, he


38 14 argues, produces no subculture, but an "elitare

'Supra-Literatur, 1 die den burgerlichen Habitus und das V4

burgerliche Wertsystem gleichsam 'von oben her' in Frage stellen" (Koppen 66-67). While Koppen clearly sees the aristocratic bent of decadence, he simply assimilates this to other anti-bourgeois movements, and hence dulls the edge of his insight. After all, across Europe cultural movements experimented in developing a literary alternative to the bourgeoisie;

in fact, this is

characteristic of all progressive art movements since romanticism, as Koppen himself notes (Koppen 66). Indeed, as one commentator on the movement has written,

"In fast

alien e m s c h l a g i g e n Sekundarwerken uber das it Dekadenzproblem wird die Uberfeinerung und Intensivierung der Lebens- und Kunstformen hervorgehoben"

[37].

The interpretive view that sees decadence, an exaggerated sensitivity, and weakness as the generative ground for the creation of an aristocratic social type is well-established in criticism of the turn of the century. Since the early 1960s, for example, it has been developed in the paradigm-setting work of Carl Schorske, the influential scholar of Austrian history and aesthetics.

In

his collection of essays, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, Schorske pinpoints the emergence of just this conceptual foundation as a distinguishing feature of the Viennese fin de siecle. Vienna around 1900, he argues, was


39 prophetic of modernity in that here, sooner and with greater consequence than elsewhere in Europe, the liberal synthesis accomplished in the late 1860s and in place until the 1880s had begun to rupture. For the generation of middle-class Austrians whose political and social identity had been formed in step with the progressive ideology and economic successes of liberalism, matters had been relatively coherent. Political, scientific, and aesthetic discourse were integrated in Austria to a remarkable extent, and together with the aristocracy, an engaged liberal bourgeoisie led a ruling partnership. Culture occupied a pivotal position here: Ringstrasse reconstruction,

in the

in the intensified emphasis on

the performing arts, and in a variety of practices,

its

self-conscious exercise gave to the bourgeoisie a particularly Viennese sense of assimilation to the aristocracy. A writer such as Adalbert Stifter expresses this legacy of the Enlightenment in which "the democratization of culture, viewed sociologically, meant the aristocratization of the middle classes"

(Schorske

1981, 296). For the formation of the bourgeoisie as class and as individual, the consequences of the liberal synthesis are similar: both mimic the aristocratic social performance. This performance is elusive, though distinctly theatrical and characterized by a certain flourish.

"Grace, gesture,


40 and adaptability, and the capacity to play his part were the marks of the Austrian cavalier —

attributes very

different from the stern moral and military virtues of the Prussian Junker," Schorske notes with some insistence, if also in quite traditional fashion.

"Hofmannsthal's

Marschallin in Per Rosenkavalier" he goes on, "expresses well the actor's ethos of her aristocratic class: dem w i e , da liegt der ganze Unterschied"

"Und in

[38]. Yet, the

bourgeoisie proved unable to hold the political settlement; liberal culture could reign but it could not rule. With the rise of mass movements and anti-liberal ideologies —

the "Politics in a New Key" —

in the 1880s

and 1890s, the closely integrated spheres of mid-nineteenth century culture began to dissolve. Aesthetics became detached from the political and scientific. The fracturing of these spheres and the absence of an enlightened bourgeois opposition is the invasive setting, not the remote backdrop to the fin-de-siecle crisis. Artists and intellectuals, the well-to-do bourgeois products of the earlier liberal conjuncture, met this "disintegrating society" with the response that had become second nature to them. Once again,

"art served as the crown of a perfected humanity?

once more the aristocratic tradition served the bourgeois as inspiration for an elevated mode of existence" (Schorske 1981, 302). Under these circumstances, however,


41 aesthetic culture could only record a withdrawal from politics. Except for Karl Kraus and Adolf Loos, who in some sense persisted as the lone defenders of an Enlightenment culture of ethics, law, and the word, the Austrian artists of the fin de siecle now assigned primacy to cultivated feeling and "a hedonistic self-perfection [that] became the center of aspiration"

(Schorske 1991,

30; Schorske 1981, 302). The political dimension of the withdrawal described by Schorske is registered in the high bourgeoisie as an overwhelming experience of powerless and failure, with class rather than individual alienation. The aesthetic dimension of the withdrawal parallels this experience, though with more visible and consequential results. For fin-de-siecle Vienna oversees the creation of homo psycholoqicus, psychological man, a man self-absorbed and extravagantly sensitive to psychic states. Set in an emergent "amoral Gefuhlskultur," this man — is indeed a "man" —

and here it

bears the traces of his history.

Aristocratic and with a hypertrophied sensibility, he must also be incapable of action. Self-cultivation in the Austrian aesthete is tantamount to paralysis, as Schorske describes it in his reading of Hofmannsthal, who, unlike Leopold Andrian zu Werburg, breaks with it (Schorske 1981, 302-319).

"Aesthetic culture" and the "aristocratic" here

are a conceptual pair with a notable lack of mediation:


42 the "aesthetic" is equivalent to a questionable kind of "aristocratic refinement" that knows neither resistance nor conflict. A pervasive "weakness" of the bourgeoisie understood as a class is translated at the individual level as debility and inaction. Before leaving the general argument of Schorske, it should be stressed that his thesis of an undifferentiated decline in Austrian liberalism at the end of the nineteenth century is a difficult one to sustain. There are a number of liberal organizations, after all, flourishing in Vienna at the turn of the century. Most notably, the influential and prestigious newspaper the Neue Freie Presse remained staunchly liberal, while beyond that, ninety percent of all the press organs stood on the liberal side [39]. Indeed, the collapse of liberalism, which more than developments in art or literature, seems to be the "point" of Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture, is granted far too much weight in the Viennese context by Schorske. The weakening of the Liberal party and the loss of power among the liberal bourgeoisie should not, whatever else may be concluded from it, be equated with a complete loss of influence on the part of the German-Austrian upper class. For Schorske, as for Arnold Hauser and, perhaps, an entire tradition of Austrian cultural history, the themes of aristocracy, decadence, and weakness form a single


43 storyline [39]. This narrative was echoed as well in the 1986 exhibition on fin-de-siecle Vienna at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Here, the visitor to the exhibition began their tour by walking down a long entrance corridor. On the walls were posters, chronologically arranged, by Joseph Olbrich and Gustav Klimt, up to Juqendstil and the years around 1908. "Thereafter," as Carl Schorske described it in his review of the exhibition,

"comes the denouement in posters of

Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele: the breakthrough of raw expressionism which explodes the happy integration of art and high living"

[40]. Arranged visually, the point is a

familiar one. The calm of nobility and high living that cannot be sustained: first, beauty, then,

"the explosion,"

chaos, and the beast. Karl Heinz Bohrer once astutely observed that a stereotype of discussions of aestheticism is that it is always being "overcome" [41]. To be Viennese and a decadent, in this setting, is to be a fading aristocrat, a noble who does not dance on the volcano, but sigh s , overwhelmed. In such a context, as Nietzsche might have asked, is there no strength in weakness? Only impotence? Can the sensitivity insisted upon by nearly every commentator in the field be construed without an insensitivity? Would it be possible,

in other words, to read Austrian aristocratic

schooling, as neither passive in its methods nor subdued


44 in its results? "Aristocratic" self-cultivation, as not paralytic? Descriptions such as "Anbiederungstendenzen des v\ * Burgertums an den Adel" and "Asthetisierung des Lebens," offer only partial accounts of this process For here the question persists:

(Muller 1-17).

is social withdrawal,

indifference, and passive removal into an aesthetic realm all that is at stake in the strategies of aristocratization and aristocratic self-styling? What does it mean to be an aristocrat and what takes place in the appropriation of this identity? Is it true, in other words, as Hermann Bahr used to say, that writers in the Austrian decadent style had "feine Gaumen, aber keine Fauste"? And not only is this a useful description, but does it help us to see continuities reaching past decadence —

to the new

artistic avant-gardes, to the outbreak of the war in 1914 and beyond? A more pronounced articulation of aggression in pre-war expression period is what is new. How do we account for this? Better still, how do we move aggression out of a static co-existence with the topoi of disintegration, weakness, and degeneration so apparent to scholars of decadence? What is there about either the social circumstances or the "exaggerated sensitivity" of the decadent attitude that is incompatible with a combative intellectual stance? Could it be that an


45 all-too-familiar reading of Austrian decadence situated within the narrative of a declining empire and corrupted morals, an aging monarch and the insoluble problems of nationality have been too quickly transposed onto what, in decadence, was the expression of a vigorous artistic and social renewal?


46 Notes [1] Max Nordau, "Die monarchisch-aristokratische Lugen," Die conventionellen Lugen der Kulturmenschheit (Leipzig: Schlicke, 1884) 135. [2] Femmes fin de siecle 1885-1895: Musee de la mode et du costume (Paris: Edition Paris Musees, 1990). Petr Wittlich, Prague: fin de siecle (Paris: Flammarion, 1992). Kirk Varnedoe, Vienna: Art, Architecture, and Design (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1986. Mikulas Teich and Roy Porter, eds. Fin de Siecle and its Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990). [3] Jost Hermand describes how this fin-de-siecle Adelsrassismus anticipates the later discourses of National Socialism in Der alte Traum vom neuen Reich: Volkische Utopien und Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt: Athenaujji, 1988) 65-84. See also Jost Hermand, Der Schein des Schonen: Studien zur Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt: Athenkum, 1972) 39-54. [4] Viola Finn, "Zsigmond Justh: In Search of a New Nobility," Intellectuals and the Future in the Habsburg Monarchy 1890-1914, eds. L&zio Peter, and Robert B. Pynsent, (New York: St. Martin's, 1988) 129-151. [5] See Roland Girtler, Die feinen L e u t e : Von der vornehmen A r t , durchs Leben zu gehen (Frankfurt: Campus, 1989). [6] Frank Trommler, "Vom Bauhausstuhl zur Kulturpolitik: Die Auseinandersetzung um die moderne Produktkultur," Kultur. Bestimmungen im 20. Jahrhundert, eds. Helmut Brackert und Fritz Wefelmeyer (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990) 86-110. [7] David Cannadine, "The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition,' c. 1820-1977," Inventing Tradition, eds. Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983) 281. [8] See also, G.L. Mosse, "Caesarism, Circuses and Monuments," Journal of Contemporary History 6 (1971): 167-182. On Untertanengeist, read Egon Schwarz, "Adel und Adelskult im deutschen Roman um 1900," Dichtung, Kritik, Geschichte. Essays zur Literatur 1900-1930 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982) 70.


47 [9] Arno J. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime; Europe to the Great War (New York: Pantheon, 1981) 79, 112. u [10] Norbert Elias, Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation: Sozioqenetische und Psychoqenetische Untersuchunqen, 2 vols. (1969; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991) 1:33. [11] For a pre-1914 source discussing this point: Werner Sombart, Luxus und Kapitalismus (1912; Munchen: Duncker & Humblot, 1922) 16-20. See also Maria Bogucka, "L'attrait de la culture nobilaire? Sarmatisation de la bourgeoisie polonaise au XVIIe siecle," Acta Poloniae Historica, 33 (1976): 23-42. [12] A general distinction between "noble" and "aristocrat" is well-established in critical writing on European elites. Surveys of "aristocracy" that neither acknowledge the traditional grounds for the distinction nor refer to the related contrast between noble and seigneurial privileges might well be approached with caution. See, for example, Jonathan Powis, Aristocracy, New Perspectives on the Past 2 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984). In the aristocratic self-fashioning that interests me here, the matter is rather different. Since aristocrats, nobles and commoners are in principle engaged in this self-fashioning, it has not been imperative to maintain a strict distinction between the "noble" and the "aristocrat." After the Revolution in France and certainly after 1848, in any case, discussions concerning "the aristocracy" frequently did not include land ownership in their definition. Werner Conze, "Adel und Aristokratie," Geschichtliche Grundbeqriffe Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, eds. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972-). [13] M.L. Bush, Rich N o b l e , Poor N o b l e , The European Nobility 2 (New York: St. Martin's, 1988) 173. [14] M.L. Bush, Noble Privilege, The European Nobility 1 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1983) 138. [15] Moritz Csaky, "Adel in Osterreich," Das Zeitalter Kaiser Franz Josephs. 1. Teil: Voncider Revolution zur Grunderzeit: 1848-1880. Beitraqe. Niederosterreichische Landesausstellung (Wien: NO Landesregierung, 1984) 213. [16] Egon Schwarz,

"Arthur Schnitzler und die


48 Aristokratie," Arthur Schnitzler in neuer Sicht, ed. Hartxnut Scheible (Munchen: Fink, 1981). [17] On the gradations of the noble hierarchy in Hungary, as well as the dynamics of ennoblement in that country, where nearly half of the top Jewish capitalist elite received patents of nobility, see William 0. McCagg J r . , Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern Hungary (Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1972) 15-109. [18] On privileges that divided noble orders, see Bush Noble Privilege. See also Mayer 109-119. [19] Heinz Dopsch notes the elevation of the old aristocracy (Uradel) to the Grafen- g>r Furstenstand Heinz Dopsch, "Der osterreichische Adel," Osterreichs Sozialstrukturen in historischer Sicht, ed. Erich Zollner Schriften des Instituts fur Osterreichkunde 36 (Wien: Osterreichischer Bundesverlag, 1980) 37. [20] In the study, Fin-de-siecle V i e n n a , Carl Schorske grants an exceptional significance to bourgeois-aristocratic relations in Austria. Yet, his argument that the failure of the bourgeoisie either to supplant or fuse with the aristocracy provides a stimulus for distinctively "modern" achievements in art and culture in Vienna is presented with little sustained discussion of the aristocracy. Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1981) 7-9, 193-198, 293-305. See below. [21] Istvan Deak, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps (New York: Oxford UP, 1990) 156-164. [22] Adam WandruszkaA "Die 'Zweite Gesellschaft' der Donaumonarchie," Adel in Osterreich, ed. Heinz Siegert (Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau, 1971) 60. vi

[23] Berthold Waldstein-Wartenberg, ^'Osterreichisches Adelsrecht: 1804-1918," Mitteilungen des osterreichischen Staatsarchivs 17/18 (1964/1965) 133. [24] Readers of The Sorrows of Young Werther may recall that the self-interested elision of the distinction between a Privy Councillor and a genuine nobleman provokes an agitated response from Werther. In one of the two instances of aristocratic pretension mentioned in the novel, the noble guests at the gathering of the Count continue to address Privy Councillor R. (Hofrat R.) with the noble title of Mr. von R. (Herr von R.). As Werther


49 knows only too well, of course, a Privy Councillor is no more a nobleman than he himself is. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young W e rther, trans. Michael Hulse (London: Penguin, 1989) 81. [25] See below on Hauser. [26] Horst Althaus, Zwischen Monarchie und Republik (Munchen: Fink, 1976) 39-79. [27] Emphasis in original; Schwarz 1981, 58. [28] Eric Hobsbawm, "Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914," Inventing Tradition, eds. Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983) 281. Mayer 135-37, 141-43. The great Austrian painter of high ceremony and occasion is, of course, Hans Makart. See Werner Hofmann, "Hans Makart," Experiment Weltunterganq Wien um 1900, ed. Werner Hofmann. (Munchen: Prestel, 1981) 9-20. High aristocrats staged Makart-like "lebende Bilder" in their palais during the 1860s, as well as one with Hugo von Hofmannsthal at the Palais Todesco in 1893. See Mara Reissberger, "Zum Problem kunstlerischer Selbstdarstellung in der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts — Die Lebenden Bilder," Die osterreichische Literatur. Ihr Profil_im 19. Jahrhundert (1830-1880), e d . Herbert Zeman (Graz: Osterreichische Verlagsanstalt, 1982) 741-769. [29] Norbert Elias, Studien uber die Deutschen. Machtkampfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Michael Schroter (1989? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992) 139. Franz Dirnberger, "Das Winner Hofzeremoniell bis in die Zeit Franz Josephs: Uberlegungen uber Probleme, Entstehung und Bedeutung," Das Zeitalter Kaiser Franz Josephs. 1. Teil: Von der Revolution zur Grunderzeit: 184 8-18 8 0. Beitrage. Niederosterreichische Landesausstellung (Wien: NO Landesregierung, 1984) 42-48. [30] Viola Finn diagnoses a Hungarian ideology of aristocratism that blends Social Darwinism with the promotion of Magyar-peasant vitality in the novelist and critic Zsigmond Justh. Justh, she argues, narrates the historical course of an enfeebled aristocracy in the language of decadence. This course typically leads either toward suicide and self-destruction, or, more assertively, toward a Darwinist conjugation of aristocrat and peasant, a rejection of Viennese culture, and the rebirth of the Magyar nation (Finn 129-151). On Hungarian aristocratism, see Lorant Czigany, "The decline of the gentry and the novel," Oxford History of Hungarian Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984) 233-246.


50

[31] Robert B. Pynsent, "Decadence and Innovation," Austro-Hungarian Life and Art at the Turn of the Century, ed. Robert B. Pynsent (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989) 1.42, 145-145.

vols.

[32] Arnold Hauser, The Social History of A r t , 4 (New York: Knopf, 1953) 4:165-225.

[33] On aristocratism and decadence, see from the generation of Arnold Hauser, Richard Hamann, Impressionismus (Berlin: Akademischer Verlag, 1960). [34] Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, trans. Harry Zohn (1973; London: New Left Books, 1983) 24. [35] For "decadence" and "innovation" as terms that stand in a problematic relation, see the essays collected in Pynsent 1989. Michael Poliak, "Cultural Innovation and Social Identity in Fin-de-siecle Vienna," Jews, Antisemitism and Culture in Vienna, eds. Ivar Oxaal, Michael Poliak, and Gerhard Botz (London: Routledge, 1987) 59-75. [36] Erwin Koppen, Dekadenter Wagnerismus (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973) 256-258. [37] Karl Johann Muller, Das Dekadenzproblem in der osterreichischen Literatur um die Jahrhundertwende, dargelegt an Texten von Hermann B a h r , Richard von Schaukal, Hugo von Hofmannsthal und Leopold von Andrian (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1977) 13. [38] Carl E. Schorske, "Grace and the Word: Austria's Two Cultures and Their Modern Fate," Austrian History Yearbook XXII (1991): 23. [39] Carl E. Schorske, "Moma's Vienna," rev. of Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture & Design: an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York Review of Books 25 September 1986: 19. [40] Wolf Wucherpfennig, "The 'Young Viennese' and Their Fathers. Decadence and the Generation Conflict around 1890," Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982) 26. [41] Karl Heinz Bohrer, Die Asthetik des Schreckens: Die pessimistische Romantik und Ernst Jungers Fruhwerk (Munchen: Hanser, 1978) 529.


51 Chapter Three The Soldier-Aristocrat, the Ethos of Nobility, and Ferdinand von Saar

I.

The Military Man

Walter Benjamin once observed that for Charles Baudelaire modernism marked the imposition of a new sensibility. This sensibility, according to Benjamin, was the "heroic constitution." To swallow the dust of factories, to breathe in particles of cotton, to be infused with white lead, mercury and other poisons — daily adventure of the worker —

the

required nothing less

than such a constitution. Indeed, what in early times had helped the gladiator to win applause and fame, the wage-laborer could now be said to achieve each day in his work [1]. For the Baudelaire who took note of these new gladiators, however, the heroic impulse was to find its expression elsewhere. In the flaneur and dandy, the apache and ragpicker, in the series of roles he styled for himself, so Benjamin, Baudelaire led the life of a hero. "For the modern hero is no hero," wrote Benjamin,

"he acts

heroes. Heroic modernism turns out to be a tragedy in which the hero's part is available"

(Benjamin 97).

The Baudelaire described by Benjamin gives a complex and varied performance, a performance balanced among


52 different, equally expressive heroic roles. Yet for Baudelaire, the figure who staged the part of the hero had a more specific identity. For Baudelaire, the part of the hero belonged to the dandy. Dandyism, he proclaimed in his essay "The Painter of Modern Life," is "a new kind of aristocracy"? it is the "last shimmer of the heroic in an age of decadence"

[2]. Such an identity, moreover, could

not be arrived at collectively: the dandy, unlike the "hero" glossed by Benjamin, could only be realized through the will of the individual. Thus as the presence of the wage-laborer made itself increasingly felt, the figure of the dandy went into eclipse.

"The rising tide of

democracy, which invades and levels everything," wrote Baudelaire,

"is daily overwhelming these last

representatives of human pride and pouring floods of oblivion upon the footprints of these stupendous warriors" (Baudelaire 29). The dandy of Baudelaire expressed an ethic of individualism and heroism, a new kind of aristocracy. Commentators on this figure have often seen in it an archetype of all artists, a figure dressed in one of the many disguises of the modern creator [3]. Baudelaire himself, however, suggested what is perhaps a different character-type for his dandy. For like Barbey D'Aurevilly, the direct predecessor of Baudelaire and the most influential commentator on the subject, Baudelaire did not


53 trace the dandy to the artist. The supreme figure of this type, according to D'Aurevilly, was Alcibiades, the ancient Greek general, whom Harold Nicolson once called "the very glass of fashion"

[4]. In much the same manner,

Baudelaire also understood the dandy to be a man of ancient and noble pedigree, a figure of near-mythological proportions, a military man. Of the dandy, Baudelaire noted, "Caesar, Catiline, and Alcibiades provide us with dazzling examples"

(Baudelaire 24).

The inspiration for the dandy, the model for his practice, as D'Aurevilly and Baudelaire suggest, resides less in the artist than in the army general or military strategist. And indeed, the heroic dandy did frequently project himself in roles such as these. Who else, after all, but a self-styled avatar of Caesar, Catiline, and Alcibiades would declare, in the words of the Schaukal-dandy Andreas von Balthesser, that "Man musste heute, um zum Tauglichen wenigstens wieder 1instradiert' v\ zu werden, alle Stadte m e d e r r e i s s e n , bis auf den Grund, \A

und so ziemlich alle 'gebildeten' Einwohner dieser Stadte toten" [5]. To be sure, Balthesser represents a notably savage incarnation of the dandy figure. Still, such an attitude is implied even in the dandy whose fantasies of omnipotence were not so apocalyptic. By definition, the dandy forges his identity through the aggressive pursuit of an elite consciousness, this consciousness being


54 expressed "body to body," as Barbey D'Aurevilly put it, in the staging of superior demeanor, carriage, and manner

[6 ]. To exercise control over the impression others receive of him and to wield this impression in the interests of a will to dominate and rule is the practical formula of the dandy. It is the common ground between George Brummell, the confidant of His Majesty George the Fourth, and the city-demolitionist Andreas von Balthesser. It is, in the words of Otto Mann, "Das Machtspiel des Dandy." As Mann writes of this campaign for absolute power, "Der Dandy lebt dem Ziel der Herrschaft. Diese Herrschaft soli errungen werden mit den Mitteln einer CA

U

asthetischen Haltung, sie soil errungen werden uber die Gesellschaft im Medium der Mode"

[7]. A striking instance

of the dandy's facility for rule that, in the mythology of the figure, appears as a kind of second nature is recalled by Barbey D'Aurevilly in his study of George Brummell. While training as an officer in the English army, according to D'Aurevilly, Brummell found his instincts as a dandy at great odds with military discipline.

In that

most hierarchical of all institutions, Brummell broke ranks at manoeuvres and failed to carry out the orders of his colonel. Despite such stiff-necked assertions, however, the Colonel was "under the spell" of Brummell and yielded: in three years Brummell became "the youngest


55 captain in the most magnificent regiment" in the service (D'Aurevilly 51). Only a god can resist a god. To have triumphed over his superior and to have exposed military authority as ineffective against his personal presence is the achievement of the all-powerful Brummell. In the context of the episode, Brummell becomes, symbolically speaking, the rightful commander of the English troops, since the principles of his dandyism have overturned the strict standards of army rank and discipline. By styling himself in a noble fashion and behaving in a superior manner, Brummell becomes what he appears to be. At the same time, the confrontation of the dandy and the military man here reminds us of the distance between the two types. It is the military man, after all, whose identity is defined solely by his relationship to violence. It is the soldier who holds the state-sanction to exercise lethal force and the soldier whose duty it is to remain in a state of readiness for battle. The soldier and, through him, the military is empowered to act: to make war against foreign powers, to serve as an occupying force, and to maintain internal security. The presence of the military man, unlike that of the dandy, evokes an ideal of strength and embodies national norms of prestige and standing. On balance, then, the roles of the dandy and military man both cross and diverge. On the one hand, the military


56 man occupies a different position relative to the state and violence than that of the dandy. On the other hand, there are symbolic transfers between the two figures. To the soldier, the dandy offers an aristocratic affiliation, an elevated social position, a fantasy of omnipotence that corresponds to the de facto authority of the soldier in the realm of action. To the dandy, the military man offers a legitimate role for aggressive impulses, a sanction for conduct equal to his own self-image. The identity of the dandy, like that of the military man, is manifest in his way of carrying h i mself. Much as Baudelaire underscored "the qualities and virtues which necessarily pass from the warrier's (s i c ) soul into his physiognomy and his bearing" (Baudelaire 24), it is possible to distinguish the studied casualness, the "bewusste Korrektheit" (Balthesser), the nobility that passes into the physiognomy of the dandy. A power expressed visually, a rigorous logic of self-presentation, and a narrow code of conduct characterize the dandy no less than the military man. As described by Ellen Moers, the social circumstances that produced George Brummell might well have produced an army general. writes,

"What marks Regency society as unique," she "is the determined way it went about exclusion,

the innumerable hedges against intruders, the explicit, almost codified rules for membership, and the elaborate sub-rules for the behavior of members" (Moers 246).


57 II.

The Footprints of Warriors

For writers, critics, and other intellectuals in Vienna near the turn of the century,

the figure of the

soldier carried a legacy with deep resonances in Austrian literature and history. Military success, as always, was a public relations success. Army leaders fortunate enough to oversee victorious campaigns were preserved in the national memory; the life and work of these leaders, moreover, often came to embody notions of "Austrianess" and the ideals of empire. In the Prinz-Eugen poems that dated from the defense of Vienna against the siege of the Turks in 1583, for example, the military commander and statesman Prince Eugen was declared the savior of both Austria and Europe. A man of courage, perseverance, and will, the Prince was French by birth, Italian in descent, and Viennese in residence —

in other words, a man gladly

seen as "Austrian." Likewise, the verses written by Franz Grillparzer, Anastasius Grun, and others in tribute to Field Marshall Radetzky celebrated a paternal leader who stood as a father to a multi-national army and people [8]. Finally,

it was in the uniform of a soldier, as a military

leader, that Emperor Franz Joseph met with the most profound reverence from his "V o l k e r :" as an imperial commander in chief, a man to whom every recruit swore allegiance, a man who "hatte Kriege nicht gern (denn er wusste, dass man sie verliert," to speak with Joseph Roth,


58 yi "aber das Militar liebte... das Kriegsspiel, die Uniform,

U

die Gewehrubungen, die Parade, die Defilierung und das Kompanieexerzieren"

[9].

And yet, highly-decorated leaders were not the only soldiers whose presence was palpable in the fin-de-siecle imagination. To a turn-of-the-century Austrian audience, the figure of the army officer was more than familiar. After all, military magazines, novels about army life, and journalistic reports on the military flourished during these years. The daily habits of an officer, his life-style, adventures, and erotic pursuits were well-trodden subjects even for the general reader. For this reader, moreover, the officer represented here could be recognized as specifically "Austrian." The military magazine Die Muskete first published in 1905, for example, was directed to the Habsburg officer; articles and pictures reflected this pro-Austrian tendency, in which, as Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler has noted, "schwingt auch immer ein leicht anti-deutscher Unterton mit" [10]. Nor did the chronicles of the Habsburg army written by Roda Roda, with their multi-national characters and imperial settings, invite confusion with the German officer corps. Stylized as a type, the Habsburg officer of the turn-of-the century was conspicuous: he affected an aristocratic posture and had served in various regions of the monarchy, he was young, a bachelor, and a lieutenant.


59 Indeed, so identifiable was this type that Klaus Laermann has seen in him the representative figure of the entire epoch. "Wenn es fur jede Gesellschaft einen Sozialcharaker gibt," he writes, "der ohne dass sie es wollen Oder ft bemerken, fur die meisten der ubrigen Gesellschaftsmitglieder als Vorbild gilt, so scheint dies

M

M

,

,

binds Elektra to the irrepressible dreams of Klytamnestra and her search for "wer bluten muss, damit ich wieder schlafe"

(2s208), as surely as these fantasies entangle

their sister and daugher, Chrysothemis.

It is not only,

that as Alfred Kerr observed in his review of the premiere !A

of Elektra,

"Elektra [ist] nichts als eine Bluttraumerin,

von oben bis unten, von hinten bis vorne," but that a dream of blood haunts nearly everyone in this play [25].


211 Like Kerr, many of the early reviews of Elektra expressed a mixture of repulsion and disbelief at the drama. Elektra lacked motivation, critics argued, the exaggerated performance of Gertrud Eysoldt inflated an already overblown script and perversity appeared as a substitute for psychology [26]. The forthright barbarity of the play, moreover, evoked a distressed response from nearly all critics. For relatively well-disposed reviewers such as Maximilian Harden, such an interpretation of Electra was justified, however, since "den Normalgriechen aus unserer Schulstube... gab es wahrscheinlich nie" (Wunberg 84). Others were not as generous. Alfred Kerr saw parallels to D'Annunzio and observed that what Casanova was to the bodies of naked women, Elektra was to rivers of blood (Wunberg 79), while Paul Goldmann directed his remarks to the contrast between the reputation of Hofmannsthal and his current production.

"Niemand ist so

brutal," he wrote, "als der Schwache, der sich stark erweisen will"

(Wunberg 117).

Over the years, Hofmannsthal himself remained unusually preoccupied with Elektra and its characters. Though his later observations on the drama should be seen largely as the attempt of a poet to control the reception of his work,

it is interesting nevertheless to recall what

Hofmannsthal saw in his own text. Motivated perhaps by the second life the play had acquired in 1909 as the libretto


212 for the Richard Strauss opera, he often seemed concerned to harmonize the figure of Elektra with prevailing norms of classical drama. In his attempt at an interpretation of his own work "Ad me ipsum,11 for example, her character was consistently praised for its "Treue"

(10:603, 607,

610-611). With an obsessive devotion to a dead father reinterpreted as the bourgeois virtue of fidelity, Elektra thus became for Hofmannsthal a kind of modern Antigone. The drama itself underwent a similar revision in the self-assessment Hofmannsthal provided in a letter to Max Pirker in 1921. As part of a three-stage development which clearly reached its culmination in the final stage, Elektra stood in the second phase of "der grosse Anschluss an grosse Form" that followed "lyrisch-subjektive Epoche... bis zirka 1899" and, from roughly 1907,

"die

X

Erfullung traditioneller theatralischer Forderung" [27]. However influential such characterizations may have been for subsequent scholars, Hofmannsthal was not entirely consistent in his remarks on Elektra. In "Ad me ipsum," for example, he raises the issue of "Das Suchen nach der raoglichen —

notwendigen Tat," adding that,

"(...

"die der

Elektra geht aus einer Art Besessenheit hervor). Die mogliche Tat geht aus dem Wesensgrund, aus dem Geschick hervor" (10:620-621). What is this "Wesensgrund," this "Geschick" from which "the possible deed" is to arise? For Hofmannsthal at


213 the turn of the century, as we have seen, the theater represented both a personal summons to experiment beyond his previous attempts at drama and an anthropological or mythical imperative to create a sense of dread or "shudder." Much as Nietzsche had in Die Geburt der Traqodie, Hofmannsthal found in the Greek classical past the basis for a theory of drama [28]. Like Nietzsche, he too invested that past with an anthropology,

ascribed to

it a central place for myth, and provided for it a certain necessity in the theater. Yet, the aims of Hofmannsthal were very different from those of Nietzsche. Unlike Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal wanted to theatricalize his view of the past and to create a drama consistent with his theory of the origins of theater. Anthropology was to be brought to the stage. .

*

.

In "Die Buhne als Traumbild," one of several pieces on drama he wrote around the time of Elektra, Hofmannsthal tied theatrical creation to a sense of dread. A single protean prop would, in the eyes of the dramatist appear in one shape and then become transformed: "Der Anblick des wohlbekannten Baumes, den der Vollmond verwandelt, zum Konig uber seinesgleichen erhebt, muss ihn erschuttert haben" (8:493). The artist must have felt how "Liebe, Hass und Furcht... e m

gewohntes H a u s , ein hochst gewohntes w Gemach verwandeln, dass es jener Hohle des Hades gleicht, deren Wande sich grinsend verzerren, wenn der


214 II

M

bl uts c h a n d e n s c h e Muttermorder sie betritt. De Quincey, Poe, Baudelaire sind seine Lieblingsbucher"

(8:493). The

poet who has read these authors can see also see a "blood-guilty mother-murder," can see how the tree that appears in the stage directions to Elektra becomes the witness to the transformation of the stage into a site of death. A second work written around this time makes this H even more explicit. In "Das Gesprach uber Gedichte," Hofmannsthal suggests that in aesthetic works these concepts should be seen in an anthropological context. In the conversation between two speakers, Clemens and Gabriel, Clemens symbol.

presents a theory on the origin of

the

For him, the symbol acquires concreteness as

the

individual performs an act of ritual violence in sacrifice. Clemens: Mich dunkt, ich sehe den ersten, der opferte. Er fuhlte, dass die Gotter ihn hassten... Da griff er, im doppelten Dunkel seiner niedern Hutte und seiner Herzensangst, nach dem scharfen krummen Messer und war bereit, das Blut aus seiner Kehle rinnen zu lassen, dem furchtbaren Unsichtbaren zur Lust. Und da, trunken vor Angst und Wildheit und Nahe des Todes, wuhlte seine Hand, halb unbewusst, noch einmal im wolligen warmen Vliess des Widders. — Und dieses Tier, dieses Leben, dieses im Dunkel atmende, blutwarme, ihm so nah, so vertraut — auf einmal zuckte dem Tier das Messer in die Kehle, und das warme Blut rieselte zugleich an dem Vliess des Tieres und an der Brust, an den Armen des Menschen hinab: und einen Augenblick lang muss er geglaubt haben, es sei sein eigenes Blut; [29] The distinction between self-sacrifice and animal


215 sacrifice is nearly obliterated here. So intense is the compulsion to act decisively that the object of "die mogliche Tat" remains in doubt until the very last instant. Indeed, the interchangeability of human and animal, sacrificer and sacrificed, which was a principle of behavior in Elektra, is now linked to the origin of art. Violence is not the vague background but the intrusive reality of the play; sacrifice binds the audience to the stage. "Das Tier starb hinfort den symbolischen Opfertod," the passage continues, "Aber alles ruhte darauf, dass auch er in dem Tier gestorben war, einen Augenblick lang. Dass sich sein Dasein, fur die Dauer eines Atemzugs, in dem fremden Dasein aufgelost hatte. —

Das ist die Wurzel aller Poesie:"

(7:503).

Theodor Adorno once observed of this "gory theory of the symbol" that it "comprehends the sinister political possibilities of neo-romanticism"

(Adorno 223). For

Adorno, the conclusion to which modern man had brought such thinking was that, in the self-sacrifice of two world wars, man had sought to take the place of the animal and himself become the mouthpiece of things. It might also be observed, however, that in Elektra Hofmannsthal both initiates and resolves the problem of primitive violence and the ideology of sacrifice [30]. This resolution arrives with the introduction of a new male character,


216

Orest, toward the end of the play and marks a reorientation toward "heroism," "the deed," and violence.

IV. The Orestia and Elektra A brief comparison with the ancient trilogy the Orestia of Aeschylus may help to clarify both the shape and character of the resolution brought about by Orest. Along with the Elektra-drama of Sophocles, Hofmannsthal knew this work of Aeschylus; and among the Greek treatments of the Elektra-material,

it is by far the most

elaborate. The Orestia traces historical change on the political and social levels. To form an idea of how much Hofmannsthal relies in his play on a resolution through violence, one should keep in mind the conception of justice developed in the Aeschylus version. In an essay on the Elektra of Hofmannsthal, Lorna Martens misrenders the context of the drama when she recounts "the primitive conception of justice that informs the Elektra legend. this conception," she argues,

"According to

"a misdeed causes a wrong

that can be righted, effaced from the memory of the injured party, only when the criminal has been adequately punished"

[31]. In fact, the treatment of the "Elektra

legend" in the Orestia is directed precisely against such a "primitive conception of justice," in that in the drama justice begins as revenge-based and ends as mediated by


217 the institution of law. That is, Aeschylus develops a conception of justice in which the memory of the injured party need not be effaced through violence; Hofmannsthal, for reasons I shall suggest below,

(re)introduces the

"primitive" conception of justice already superseded in the Orestia♦ It should be added here that even Sophocles, who does not offer a resolution along Aeschylean lines, recognizes in a way that Hofmannsthal does not, the devastating and unstoppable consequences of revenge-based justice. As Aegisthus laments shortly before his death at the hands of Orestes, "Must this roof see/ The sorrows of Pelops age after age repeated/ To the end of time?" (Sophocles 1953, 117). For Hofmannsthal, however, this is not a problem? a wrong can be righted once and for all through the purifying effect of violence. In the Orestia, the problem that arises for Elektra and her brother Orestes follows from the murder of Agamemmnon by Clytamnestra and Aegisthius. This murder takes place immediately upon the return of Agamemmnon from the Trojan War, is organized by Clytamnestra, and has as its motivation Agamemmnon's sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia and the presence of another woman, the tragic prophetess Cassandra. While Aeschylus shows the incident in which Agamemmnon is killed, the Elektra of Hofmannsthal works from the same prehistory, and in its unfolding, holds to the central plot elements of its predecessor.


218 Indeed, to a striking extent the basic conflict of the Orestia has been handed down to Hofmannsthal: a chaos and violence reign, and a woman, Klytamnestra, has assumed the prerogative of action, even driven men out of a position of authority [32]. This feminine prerogative of authority is registered in a variety of ways by both Hofmannsthal and Aeschylus. In the Elektra of Hofmannsthal, Agisth is consistently mocked by Elektra as a feminized male. She refers to him IA

and Klytamnestra as "Die beiden Weiber"

(2:192), and tells

VI

her mother that "Es krankt mich, wahrhaft: ich finde, dass sie ihm nicht stehn. Ich finde, sie sind ihm um die Brust zu weit"

(2:200). Finally, when Elektra prophesizes to her

mother that a man will come with "Netz und Beil," K ** Klytamnestra asks "Agisth?," to which Elektra replies "Ich sagte doch: ein Mann!" (2:205). Whereas the women in this play have become active, masculinized agents, the sole man, Agisth, assumes the symbolic role of the woman. Issues of aggression, action, and conflict are played out exclusively among women in Elektra. The intensity of the verbal encounters between women, with their fierce rhetoric and their overcharged energy,

in

fact, have no counterpart in the Orestia. To resolve these issues in the plays, moreover, two very different kinds of endings are projected. In both works, the rule of women is clearly shown to have reached a state of crisis. Yet


219 whereas the Orestia proceeds from the murder of Clytamnestra by Orestes to new questions of retribution raised by that act and, finally, an order of justice based on the Eumenides, Elektra concludes with the murder of Klytamnestra and the enthronement of Orest. This ending should not be prejudged as "ultimately meaningless," according to some predefined view of what the play is about [33]. For if Aeschylus envisioned the institution of an, albeit patriarchal, law-based order that explicitly rejected the principle of revenge, Hofmannsthal produces a violent, individualistic solution. The arrival of a male agent and the masculinizing of violence, doubled by the sudden death of Elektra, stabilizes an essentially unstable situation. "Es ist kein Mann im Haus. Orest!," shouts Der Pfleqer to Orestes to signal that the coast is clear (2:229). Once missing, the purpose of Elektra is to put the man back in the house. The crisis of Elektra is, in some sense, the crisis of "masculinity" described by Jacques LeRider in Vienna around the turn of the century [34]. The "new man," of which there would be considerably fewer after 1914, is decisive, unhesitant, and not too talkative. Indeed, far less than the Orestes of Aeschylus who is ambivalent about his deed, the Orest of Hofmannsthal needs no persuasion. After the recognition


220 scene with Elektra, he does not speak again, as befits a man who lets his actions speak for him. And though throughout the play, not a single character has suggested that their deaths will serve as a liberation, in the final scene it becomes apparent that some of the servants have considered Klytamnestra and Agisth tyrants. The door that has remained closed during the play and contributed to the sense of compression and entrapment is, appropriately, now open. There is movement, a freedom from constriction. As the characters emerge "alle mit Blut bespritzt," they are reborn through a new masculine violence.

V. The Greek Tradition of War • • •

Helden sind wie Kinderschlicht Kinder werden Helden, Worte nicht und kein Gedicht Kgnnens je vermelden. "Osterreichs Antwort" Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1914) In his classic study on the age of Hofmannsthal, Hermann Broch drew a distinction between the cruelty of the citizen and the artist in turn-of-the-century Vienna. * *t "Der Burger ubt seine Grausamkeit, ob nun bewusst oder — n

haufiger —

unbewusst, unmittelbar am Nebenmenschen aus,

besonders wenn dieser von schwacherer okonomischer . Vk

Kapazitat ist," wrote Broch,

*

"des Kunstlers Grausamkeit

dagegen ist, obwohl nicht minder unbewusst, in seinem Werk sublimiert11 (Broch 125). Despite the clarity of such


221 formulations, it would appear that, at least in Elektra, the theory and practice of Hofmannsthal's drama offers little in the way of "sublimation" of "Grausamkeit." What are the sources, of this cruelty? What made antiquity an especially productive site for the staging of aggressive action? And how did models for a "lust to annihilate" develop in fin-de-siecle Vienna? The years prior to the First World War cover a period of liberal exchanges between civilian and military affairs, an age when discursive barriers were relatively permeable. With the exception of a few volumes by Napoleon or Bismarck, for example, military commanders basically formulated their preparatory strategies and battle plans according to the same canon of ancient classical writings on war —

textbooks by Sun Tsu in China (ca. 400 B.C.) and

the Late Roman Vegetius were the most popular —

that an

educated person would have read in the Gymnasium [35]. To anticipate one of the points here, announcements and reports from the battlefield were routinely understood by observers, from generals down to civil servants and agents of culture, within a framework of classical references [36]. In a distinct sense, military matters were matters of literate culture. Indeed, in a way difficult to imagine in the late twentienth century, with its trend toward the compartmentalization of military intelligence and the militarization of civil institutions, European society


222 advanced toward the First World War situated in the overlap between the civilian and the military. The ease with which matters of culture could be refitted to the objectives of war is one of the more abject lessons of the years

between 1914and 1918. Yet the

loose social mesh that webbed together diverse spheres of activity in the pre-war years also annexed military values to those of pedagogy. Memoirs written by the former students of secondary schools and gymnasia throughout the Austrian Empire confirm this point again and again. With remarkable ease, the language and culture of Greek and Latin are transmitted through the rhetoric of war. Looking back on his classical education in Prague, for example, the language-philosopher Fritz Mauthner registers precisely this shock at the placement

of Caesar onthe syllabus.

"Ich weiss nicht, warum wir

Buben gerade den Casar und den

U

A

A

M

Ovid lesen durften; die Feldzuge Casars sind Mannerlekture [37]. The disbelief of the philosopher notwithstanding, the simple prose of Caesar is often given to beginning readers in Latin, though these texts are, as he properly notes, marked by their long accounts of slaughter and devastation. In the study of Greek, a comparable situation would have obtained for the students. The triad of great Greek historians, Herodotus, Xenophon and Thucydides, it might be recalled,

in effect constitute war as the object


223 of historical writing and Hellenic history as the history of battle. Studies of the classics offered a literary education in heroic behavior. Indeed, in the second Letter of his wt "Die Briefe des Zuruckgekehrten," Hofmannsthal recalled through his narrator the impression classical battles made on schoolchildren. IA

Und Bildung, im europaischen, im heutigen Sinne, habe ich nicht — aber dennoch gerade in diesen Dingen, das stellt sich mir aus dem wenigen, was ich je gelernt habe, was mir da und dort hangengeblieben ist, im Innern immer etwas auf, um W£S ich nicht herum kann: wie sie, sterbende Manner und Junglinge — in den lateiniscfyen und griechischen Buchern, BruchstucKen von Buchern, die man uns Schulbuben zu lesen gibt — in ihrem Blut, am Abend der Schlacht, den Namen der Vaterstadt vor sich hin riefen, in Triumph und Todesfestigkeit an dem Klang sich weideten: Argos meminisse juvabat — woher is der Brocken? [38]. To see Greek and Roman antiquity as a site for the expression of violent impulses, as this passage suggests, Hofmannsthal did not at all need to have incorporated a Nietzschean perspective. Hofmannsthal is simply saying here what every schoolchild already knew: the pristine image of ancient Greece was always already understood as a heroic, masculine, violent place. Athens was indeed, as scholars from anthropology to classical studies, and sociology have come to recognize a "warrior society" in which physical combat, victory, and possibly murder were an essential part of prestige and standing [38], The classical dramas of Hofmannsthal are not so much a


224 re-interpretation of Greece and Rome, as they are a re-expression of what had already been learned. When in 1892, Hofmannsthal completed his studies at the Akademisches Gymnasium, the classical curriculum retained a privileged position in education. Students began with Latin, and in their first two years they had eight hours a week; for the next five years they had six hours a week, and in the last two classes, five. They took Greek from the third year on, either four or five hours a week. In contrast, first-year students received only four hours of instruction per week in German, while in each year until graduation they had three hours. Mathematics only got three hours each year, and the so-called Naturlehre (physics, but no chemistry) was given three hours in the last two classes. History and geography were not taught in the first or last year, nor was there any zoology in the last two years [40]. To be sure, students may not have enjoyed the courses they followed in Latin and Greek. From their later remarks, however, we can see to what extent this experience affected them. An interest in ancient culture, a transposition of Greek paradigms in their works and so forth mark Jung W i e n . This is not to say that the Gymnasien could match the vernacular descriptions of battle in the reading books given to pupils in the compulsory primary schools (Volksschulen) or the compulsory secondary schools


225 (Burqerschulen) , much less the Militar- Pnterrealschulen [41]. Classical education/ like military academies, systems of apprenticeship, and so forth are regimes of socialization. Additional supports for this socialization include the approach toward instruction, and the relationship between teacher and student. What this situation suggests is that for aggressive impulses in Austrian writers, one ought to look more closely at the schools. Classical education offered to students the names, places, and locations, the details, motives, and narratives of battle. This is not to say that they blindly accepted such accounts. Indeed, if it were only a matter of having learned something, by rote, in school, it would be difficult to present a claim for its efficacy. Yet classical education in the Gymnasium did have a social function. The Gymnasium prepared elites for a narrow range of careers in the civil service, clergy, and learned professions. The acquisition and public re-performance of classical knowledge played an important role here. First, it emphasized the bourgeois and upper-bourgeois origins of those who possessed it. Those with a classical education were not only better off materially, but had a kind of training that made them fit for intellectual careers rather than business and commercial activities. A principal difference between military academies, for


226 example, and Gymnasien was that the former taught classical languages and the latter did not [42]. Austria itself tended in particular to be susceptible to adopt ancient history as its own. In an age of nationalism and the emergence of national characters, for example, no single figure could represent the multi-national "Austrian" people. Unlike the "Deutsche Michel1' in Germany or John Bull in England, figures which represented neither state nor country but national character as seen by "the people" themselves, when the Greek figure emerged he remained unchallenged [43]. Textbooks used in military academies listed Greek and Roman Emperors alongside Austrian ones (Deak 88). The heavy emphasis on ancient culture,

in turn, contributed to

the backward looking view of Austrian literature and a tendency to see present issues in past terms.

VI. The Classical Battle Military motifs and classical themes coalesce in texts on the war. For Hofmannsthal, the contours of the war itself resembled ancient Greece. Much as the Peloponnesian War had represented the end of pan-Hellenism, he observed in "Die Idee Europas," the First World War indicated the end of a European idea (9:43). Such an emphasis on situations described according to


227 the coordinates of ancient literature is in part what makes the First World War, in contrast to the Second, a literary as opposed to verbal one [44]. Writers in Austria used their classical background, one they understood in violent terms, as a framework for their own presentation of the war. In much of his war reporting, Hofmannsthal saw battles as parallel to classical struggles. Es ist gesagt worden, dass man nach diesem Kriege nicht mehr von den Helden und von den Taten der Griechen und Romer sprechen werde, sondern von denen der Unsrigen; dass an die Stelle der Schlachten von Marathon und Plataa die Schlacht am San und die von Limanowa treten wurde; dass Miltiadeg und Epaminondas zehnfach von unseren gruppenfuhrern, ja Regimentskommandanten uberstrahlt seien, dass Hunderte von einfachen Offizieren mehr geleistet hatten und Schwierigeres als Leonidas, und dass ein einziger Monat des Karpathenkampfes mehr Heldentaten enthalte als alle Punischen Kriege zusammen (9:397). In what would have been an almost inevitable comment, he added, "Man hat h m z u g e f u g t ,

dass nun die Sache der

Schule sein werde, in ihrem Geschichtsunterricht hieraus das Fazit zu ziehen und die Namen und Bilder dieser nahen Heldenwelt an Stelle jener fernen in die jungen Seelen einzugraben. Stories of Austrian heroes would replace in schools the ones that had made such an impression on Hofmannsthal as a youth.


228

Notes [1] Richard von Schaukal, "Hugo von Hofmannsthal," Hofmannsthal im Urteil seiner Kritiker: Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Hugo von Hofmannsthals in Deutschland, ed. Gotthart Wunberg (Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1972) 349. Originally published in Hochland 26 (September 1929): 579-584. K [2] Richard von Schaukal, "Mein Werk: Eine gedrangte Uberschau," Beitrage zu einer Selbstdarstellung (Wien: Schaukal-Gesellschaft, 1934) 129. Originally published in Deutsche Heimat 8/9 (1933). M [3] Richard von Schaukal, "Mein Werk: Eine Ubersicht," Beitrage zu einer Selbstdarstellung (Wien: Schaukal-Gesellschaft, 1934) 61. Originally published in Die Horen (1924/25). [4] Theodor Adorno, "Hofmannsthal-George Correspondence," Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (1981; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983) 203n. [5] Peter Szondi, Das lyrische Drama des Fin de siecle, ed. Henriette Beese. Studienausgabe der Vorlesungen 4 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975) 216. [6] Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Z e i t , Schriften zur Literatur I : Kritik, ed. Paul Michael Lutzeler (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975) 185. [7] Arthur Schnitzler, "Hijgo von Hofmannsthal: 'Charakteristik' aus den Tagebuchern," ed. Bernd Urban Hofmannsthal Forschungen III (1975): 20, 45. [g] Rudolph Lothar, "Hugo v. Hofmannsthal," Das junge Wien: Osterreichische Literatur- und Kunstkritik 1887-1902, ed. Gotthart Wunberg, 2 vols. (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1976) 2:982. Originally published in Die Wage 26. Marz 1899: 210-212. [9] Though it shares the tendency of traditional literary history to treat violence and aggression as the legacy of Expressionism and Futurism, the study of Friedbert Aspetsberger on violence remains a standard. Friedbert Aspetsberger, "Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit als Problem literarischer Verfahrensweisen," Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit: Probleme des 20. Jahrhunderts, eds. H Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Grete Klingenstein, Heinrich Lutz.


229 Wiener Beitrage zur Geschichte der Neuzeit (Munchen: Oldenbourg, 1977) 143-173. [10] Werner Hofmann and Heide Eilert offer suggestive accounts of ornamentalization, Edelsteine, and kostbare Materialien. Werner Hofmann, "Das Fleisch Erkennen," Ornament und Askese: Im Zeitgeist des Wien der Jahrhundertwende, ed. Alfred Pfabigan (Wien: Brandstatter, 1985) 120-129. Heide Eilert, "Die Vorliebe fur kostbar-erlesene Materialien und ihre Funktion in der Lyrik des Fin de siecle," Fin de Siecle: Zu Literatur und Kunst der Jahrhundertwende, ed. Roger Bauer et al. (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977) 421-441. [11] See Karl G. Esselborn, Hofmannsthal und der antike Mythos (Munchen: Fink, 1969) and Walter Jens, Hofmannsthal und die Griechen (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1955). [12] Jens 126n. [13] Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Briefe 1890-1901 (Berlin: Fischer, 1935) 276-277. [14] Hugo von Hofmannsthal,rt"Aufzeichnungen," Gesammelte W e r k e : Reden und Aufsatze III, ed. Bernd Schoeller and Ingeborg Beyer-Ahlert, 10 vols. (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1980) 10:452. [15] On the background to Elektra, see Michel Vanhelleputte, "Hofmannsthals Ringen um die Tragodie," Revue des lanques vivantes 24 (1958): 231-268. [16] Wolf Wucherpfennig, "The 'Young Viennese' and Their Fathers. Decadence and the Generation Conflict around 1890," Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982): 27. [17] Hugo von Hofmannsthal, "Elektra," Gesammelte Werke: Dramen I I , ed. Bernd Schoeller, 10 vols. (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1979) 2:204. I/I

M

[18] An exception is Kate Hamburger. See Kate Hamburger, Von Sophokles zu Sartre: Griechische Dramenfiquren antik und modern (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962) 86. [19] Herman K. Doswald, "Nonverbal Expression in Hofmannsthal's Elektra," Germanic Revie¥ 44 (1969): 199-210. [20] Michael W o r b s , Nervenkunst: Literatur und


230 Psychoanalyse im Wien der Jahrhundertwende (Frankfurt: Athen&um, 1988) 279. [21] Heinz Wetzel, "Elektras Kult der Tat — 'freilich mit Ironie behandelt,'" Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts, ed. Detlev Luders (1979): 366. [22] Wolfgang Nehring, Die Tat bei Hofmannsthal: Eine Untersuchunq zu Hofmannsthals qrossen Dramen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1966). See also Wetzel 355-368. v*

[23] Wolfgang Nehring, "Elektra und Odipus: Hofmannsthals 'Erneuerung der A n t i k e 1 fur das Theater Max Reinhardts," Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Freundschaften und Beqeqnunqen mit deutschen Zeitqenossen (Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 1991) 131. [24] Nehring rightly criticizes Michael Worbs whose conclusion that "Trotz weitreichender Ubereinstimmung mit dem Fall Anna 0. hat Hofmannsthal mit der Elektra keine Illustration moderner Hysterie-Studien verfasst" places his own lengthy exposition of the parallels between Elektra and Freud's patient Anna 0. in a dubious light (Worbs 293). As to the credibility of the parallels cited by Worbs, it might be noted that certain traits in Elektra also have a precedent in the Electra of Sophocles — the most direct source of Hofmannsthal, as noted on the title-page of Elektra (Traqodie in einem Auf z u q , frei nach Sophokles) and on the original playbill. Thus, the detail that both Anna 0. and the Elektra of Hofmannsthal experience a change in emotional state — what Worbs describes as a "hypnoider Zustand" — after sunset proves little when it is recalled that the Electra of Sophocles tears her "breast until it bleeds" at the same hour. Sophocles, Electra and Other Plays, trans. E.F. Watling (New York: Penguin, 1953) 71. [25] Alfred Kerr, "Elektra," Hofmannsthal im Urteil seiner Kritiker: Dokumente zur Wirkunqsqeschichte Hugo von Hofmannsthals in Deutschland, ed. Gotthart Wunberg (Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1972) 80. [26] See the documents collected in Wunberg 1972. [27] Hugo von Hofmannsthal,u "Brief an Max Pirker," Gesammelte Werke: Reden und Aufsatze I I , ed. Bernd Schoeller, 10 vols. (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1979) 9:130. [28] Throughout its history, Elektra has been interpreted as a bright star in the constellation of works that make up the late-nineteenth century reinterpretation


231 of ancient Greece. Hermann Bahr and Georg Brandes, and more recently, Michael Worbs and Lorna Martens, for example, have stressed the particular influence of Nietzsche on the play. In this context, a context in which Martens can write, "The influence of Die Geburt der Traqodie on Elektra is obvious," a counter-reading is probably overdue. Such a reading might begin with the problematic reception of Nietzsche in Austria, where before 1900 no in-depth study of the philosopher had been written. See Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, "'Ein der Natur Misslungener Kunstler:1 Zur Nietzsche-Rezeption im Wien der Jahrhundertwende," Akten des V I . Internationalen Germanisten-Konqres ses Basel 1980, ed. Heinz Rupp and Hans-Gert Roloff. 3 vols. (Bern: Peter Lang, 1980) 3:422-428. See also Max L. Baeumer, "Das moderne Phanomen des dionysischen und seine 'Entdeckung' durch Nietzsche," Nietzsche-Studien 6 (1977) 123-153. M

W

[29] Hugo von Hofmannsthal, "Das Gesprach uber Gedichte," Gesammelte W e r k e : Erzahlunqen Erfundene Gesprache und Briefe Reisen, ed. Bernd Schoeller, 10 vols. (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1979) 7:503. [30] This reservation should also be held in mind while reading the suggestive remarks of Armin Wallas on Elektra. To think about sensations of unsubduable hate, unmasterable aggression, and irrepressible violence that were replayed in the First World War, Wallas argues, Hofmannsthal drew upon a rereading of antiquity made available largely by Nietzsche. The introduction of Orestes, a sure prototype for the World War One soldier, at the end of the drama leaves this schema of Wallas somewhat incomplete. Armin A. Wallas, "Gewalt und Zerstorung: Zur Thematisierung von Violenz in der osterreichiscljen Literatur der Jahrhundertwende," Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philoloqie 108 (1989): 200-204. [31] Lorna Martens, "The Theme of Repressed Memory in Hofmannsthal's Elektra,1' The Germany Quarterly 60:1 (1987): 41; see also 47-48. [32] On The Orestia, see Froma I. Zeitlin, "The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Orestia," Arethusa 11 (1978): 149-184. [33] Michael P. Steinberg, The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival: Austria as Theater and Ideology, 1890-1938 (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990) 149. [34] See among other essays, Jacques LeRider, "Viennese Modernity and Crises of Identity," Psychohistory Review 21:1 (1992): 73-106


232

[35] Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer, Pure W a r , trans. Mark Polizotti, Foreign Agents Series (New York: Semiotext, 1983) 8. [36] Virilio 28. [37] Fritz Mauthner, Prager Erinnerungen (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1969) 54.

A [38] Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Zuruckgekehrten," 7:556.

"Die Briefe des

[39] See, for example, Eli Sagan, The Lust to Annihilate: A Psychoanalytic Study of violence in Ancient Greek Culture (New York: Psychohistory P, 1979). [40] Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, "Decadence and Antiquity: The Educational Preconditions of Jung Wien," Focus on Vienna 1900. Change and Continuity in Literature, Music, Art and Intellectual History, ed. Erika Nielsen (Munchen: Fink, 1982) 33. [41] Thomas Winkelbauer, "Krieg in Deutsch-Lesebuchern der Habsburgermonarchie (1880-1918)," Osterreich und der grosse K r i e g , eds. Klaus Amann and Hubert Lengauer (Wien: Brandstatter, 1988) 37-47. [42] Istvan Deak, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps 1848-1918 (1990; New York: Oxford UP, 1992) 88. [43] On national symbols see: George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York: Howard Fertig, 1985) 15-16, 97-98. Eric Hobsbawm, "Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914," Inventing Tradition, eds. Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983) 276. [44] Paul Fussell, Killing in Verse and Other Essays (London: Bellew, 1990) 106.


233 Chapter Seven The Noble Ultimatum: Karl Kraus

I. "Adel und Ideale"

Perhaps more than any other writer, Karl Kraus cultivated for himself and acted out the role of "public" figure. From his early (failed) part in Die Rauber as Franz Moor to his numerous appearances in court, to his seven-hundred open readings, Kraus lived a life in front of an audience. And the performance of Kraus was commanding. Nearly everyone who heard him speak and wrote about it recalled the rhetorical power and charismatic energy of this rather diminutive man; those who were not Kraus disciples when they arrived, frequently were when they left [1]. As Elias Canetti, who attended his first Kraus-lectures in 1924 and never quite overcame the impact they had upon him, described the presence of the speaker: "Jedes Urteil war auf der Stelle vollstreckt. Einmal ausgesprochen, war es unwiderruflich. Wir alle erlebten die Hinrichtung"

[2].

For Canetti, it was, indeed, a completely convincing act. Kraus gave to his audience the sense that they were witnessing an "execution" of the enemy.

"Ich lege den

Hauptakzent in dieser Betrachtung auf den lebenden Kraus," writes Canetti,

"... Man kann es nicht oft genug


234 ^ wiederholen: der wirkliche, der aufruttelnde, der «

peinigende, der zerschmetternde Karl Kraus, der Kraus, der .

.

einem m

^ Fleisch und Blut uberging"

(Canetti 43).

Personally persuasive and aggressive in his rhetoric, Kraus nearly takes possession of Canetti, who, finally, learns how to resist. In both print and person, Karl Kraus was one of the first writers to approach the new "public-creating" forums —

the newspaper and film, as well as publishing houses

such as Staackmann — posture.

with a belligerent and aggressive

In fact, from the outset in Die Fackel, Kraus

drew together his plans for a public-oriented venue that would accomodate outbursts of violence. As he declared in the first issue, •

•

"Das politische Programm dieser Zeitung

^

•

''V

s c h e m t somit durftig; kein tonendes aber ein ehrliches

'Was wir bring e n , 1

'Was wir umbringen' hat sie sich als

Leitwort gewahlt." Such a declaration was motivated for Kraus by what he saw as an endangered public (Offentlichkeit), a public now to be mobilized by the Kraussian battle cry (Kampfruf). "In einer Zeit, da Osterreich noch vor der von radicaler Seite gewunschten Losung an acuter Langeweile zugrunde zu gehen droht,

in

Tagen, die diesem Lande politische und social Wirrungen VI

y\

aller Art gebracht haben, einer Offentlichkeit gegenuber, die zwischen Unentwegtheit und Apathie ihr phrasenreiches oder vollig gedankenloses Auskommen findet, unternimmt es


235 der Herausgeber dieser Blatter, der glossierend bisher und an wenig sichtbarer Stelle abseits gestanden, einen Kampfruf auszustossen" (F 1:1). With Kraus as its leader, Die Fackel would work to constitute a newr public that could withstand the desired solution of the "radical s i d e ." In the years leading down to 1914, the "endangered public" Kraus hoped to re-create was, above all, the aristocracy. The means for this reassertion of aristocratic rule was not through reform, however, such as Kronprinz Rudolf had suggested in his 1878 pamphlet,

"Der

osterreichische Adel und sein Constitutioneller Beruf," M but through force and compulsion [3]. "Der Adel musste, wenn noch Adel in ihm ist," wrote Kraus in March 1914, "von mir verleitet werden konnen, dem Burgertum den Fuss auf den Nacken zu setzen, anstatt ihm die burgerlichen Ideale voranzutragen"

(F 393/394: 27). Typically, Kraus

even proposed to members of the nobility that they learn how to act like nobles by becoming part of his "public" at his lectures. Thus in an article published under the title "Adel und Ideale," Kraus linked directly his own stage performance with that of a decisive, battle-ready aristocrat. Ich wurde, wenn ich eine Versammlung von Aristokraten einberufen wollte — der Bequemlichkeit halber konnten die Herren ja meine Vorlesungen fleissiger besuchen und lernen, wie man sich gegen die burgerliche Gesinnung und


236 It

gegen die Gemeinheit des Lebens uberhaupt abzusondern bat — , ich wurde oder werde also davon sprechen, dass in dieser perversen Welt, in der^Tausende derp Typus nachstreben, der die Schandung des Mannerideals bedeutet, die zuruckhaltende, vornehme Arbeitslosigkeit des Aristokraten doppelt hoch zu schatzen ware" (F 393/394: 28). The gesture that creates the public for Kraus, it now appears, will also demonstrate both the ideal man and the aristocrat. To be sure, the critics of Kraus accused him of compromising himself to the nobility. Kraus responded to this charge in his Summer 1914 essay,

"Sehnsucht nach

aristokratischem Umgang," by affirming his radically conservative inclination. His critics, he declared, behaved as though he were a liberal.

"Sie haben geglaubt,

ich sei ein Revolutionar, und haben nicht gewusst, dass .

•

,

.

+

.

ich politisch noch nicht einmal bei der franzosischen Revolution angelangt bin, geschweige denn im Zeitalter zwischen 1848 und 1914..."

(F 400-403, 91). Kraus gladly

admitted to seeking contact with aristocrats, if he could find them. An aristocrat by association, Kraus avoided even more the company of "democrats." What did he think of the "democrats?" "Sein Blick lost Weltratsel und dreht mir den Magen urn. Er analysiert mir den Traum, in den mein Ekel fluchtet. Er erweckt mich und ich suche e m e n Konig, der eine Bombe hatte fur diesen allzu klugen Untertan" 400-403, 95).


(F

237

The last remark, as it turned out, had an unintended irony for Kraus. Less than two months later in August 1914, he would have both his "king" and his bombs —

and

he would also be awake, It is, nevertheless, the achievement of Kraus to have remained awake during the First World War and to have developed a critique of the aristocratic military type he so praised before Sarajevo. Of his pre-war views, he could only repeat with the voice of God that appears at the conclusion of Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, "Ich habe es nicht gewollt."


238

Notes [1] See Georg Knepler, Karl Kraus liest Offenbach; Erinnerunqen, Konunentare, Dokumentation (Wien: Locker, 1984). [2] Elias Canetti, "Schule des Widerstands," Das Gewissen der W o r t e : Essays (Munchen: Hanser, 1978) 41. [3] Kronprinz Rudolf, "Der osterreichische Adel und sein constitutioneller Beruf. Mahnruf an die aristokratischer Jugend," 'Majestat, ich warne S i e . ..1; Geheime und private Schriften, ed. Brigitte Hamann (Munchen; Piper, 1988) 19-52.


239 Works Cited Adorno, Theodor. "Hofmannsthal-George Correspondence." Prisms. Trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber. 1981; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984. 189-226. Aeschylus. The Orestia. Trans. Robert Fagles. York: Penguin, 1985.

1975; New

Allmayer-Beck, Johann Christoph. "Die Bewaffnete Macht in Staat und Gesellschaft." Die Habsburqermonarchie 1848-1918. Eds. Adam Wandruska and Peter Urbanitsch. 6 vols. Wien: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987. 1-141. id

Vk

•

Pet Konservatismus in Osterreich. 1959.

Munchen:

Isar,

Althaus, Horst. Zwischen Monarchie und Republik. Munchen: Fink, 1976. M Amann, Klaus, and Hubert Lengauer, eds. Osterreich und der qrosse Krieq: 1914-1918. Die andere Seite der Geschichte. Wien: Brandstatter, 1988. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt, 1979. U Arnold/ Heinz Ludwig. Karl Kraus. (Munchen: Text + Kritik, 1975. Aspetsberger, Friedbert. "Gewalt und Gewaltlosigkeit als Problem literarischer Verfahrensweisen," Gewalt und Gewaltlosiqkeit: Probleme des 20. Jahrhunderts. E d s . Friedrich Engel-Janosi, Grete Klingenstein, and Heinrich Lutz. Wiener Beitrage zur Geschichte der Neuzeit. Munchen: Oldenbourg, 1977. 143-173. (A

"Die Typisierung im Erzahlen Ferdinand von Saars," Zeitschrift fur Deutsche Philoloqie 87 (1968-1969): 246-272. Auernheimer, Raoul. "Beard of the Prophet." Herzl Year Book 6 (1964-65): 69-76. U Baeumer, Ma x L. "Das moderns Phanomen des dionysischen und seine 'Entdeckung1 durch Nietzsche." Nietzsche-Studien 6 (1977): 123-153. u Bald, Detlef. "Zum Kriegsbild der militarischen Fuhrung im Kaiserreich." Dulffer and Holl 146-160.


240 Barbey, Jules D'Aurevilly. Dandyism. Trans. Douglas Ainslie. 1897; New York: PAJ, 1988. Barea, Ilsa.

Vienna.

New York: Knopf,

1966.

Bartsch, Rudolf Hans. Das deutsche Lied. Staackmann, 1911.

Leipzig:

Baudelaire, Charles. "The Painter of Modern Life." The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. T r a n s . Jonathan Mayne. 1964; New York: Da Capo, 1986. 1-40. Bauer, Otto. Geschichte Osterreichs, Werkausgabe. Hugo Pepper. 8 vols. Wien: Europa, 1975. 1: 889-940.

Ed.

Bauer, Roger, et. al. eds. Fin de Siecle: Zu Literatur und Kunst der Jahrhundertwende. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977. Bein, Alex. Theodore H e r z l . Trans. Maurice Samuel. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1941. Beller, Steven. 1991.

H e rzl.

Jewish Thinkers.

New York: Grove

"Modern Owls Fly by Night: Recent Literature on Fin de siecle V i e n n a . The Historical Journal 31 (1988): 665-683. Vienna and the Jews 1867-1938: A Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Trans. Harry Zohn 1976; L ondon: V e rso, 1985. Berman, Russell A. (1986): 7-38.

"The Vienna Fascination." Telos 68

Bjorklund, Beth. "Museum of Modern Art's 'Vienna 1900': Conception and Reception." Modern Austrian Literature 23.1 (1990): 99-109. Blei, Franz. "Briefe an einen^strebsamen jungen Mann." Schriften in Auswahl. Munchen: Biederstein 1960. 626-637. Bogucka, Maria.

"L'attrait de la culture nobilaire?


241 Sarmatisation de la bourgeoisie polonaise au XVIIe siecle." Acta Poloniae Historica 33 (1976): 23-42. Botstein/ Leon. "The Viennese Connection." The Partisan Review 2 (1982): 262-273. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984. .

The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Alto: Stanford UP, 1991.

Palo

Boyer, John. Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement 1848-1897. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. Breisky, Arthur. "Quintessence Dandysmu." Strepy Zrcadel: Essaie. Prague: Novakovy Stovky, 1928. 93-101. Broch, Hermann. Hofmannsthal und seine Z e i t . Schriften zur Literatur 1: Kri t i k . Ed. Paul Michael Lutzeler. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975. 1:111-284. Brunner, Otto, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, eds. Geschichtliche Grundbeqriffe Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972-. Burkhardt, Carl J. "Der Honnete Homme." Gestalten und Machte: Reden und Aufsatze. Zurich: Fretz & Wasmuth, 1941. 73-96. Bush, M.L. Noble Privilege, The European Nobility 1. York: Holmes & Meier, 1983. •

New

Rich Noble, Poor N o b l e . The European Nobility 2. New York: St. Martin's, 1988.

Cannadine, David. "The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the 'Invention of Tradition,' c . 1820 -1977." Hobsbawm and Ranger 101-164. Chickering, Roger. "Die Alldeutschen erwarten den Krieg," Bereit zum Krieg: Kriegsmentalitat im wilhelminischen Deutschland 1890-1914." Dulffer and Holl 20-32. Conze, Werner. "Adel und Aristokratie." e t . al. 1-47. .

"Militarismus."

Brunner,

Brunner, et. al. 1-47.


242 Csaky, Moritz. "Adel in Osterreich." Das Zeitalter Kaiser Franz Josephs. 1. T e i l ; Von der Revolution zur Grunderzeit: 1848-1880. Beitrage. ^ Niederosterreichische Landesausstellung. Wien: MO Landesregierung, 1984) 212-219. Czigany, Lorant. "The decline of the gentry and the novel," Oxford History of Hungarian Literature. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. 233-246. Daviau, Donald G. "Introduction." Mai or Figures of Turn-of-the-Century Austrian Literature. Ed. Donald G. Daviau. Riverside: Ariadne, 1991. i-lxi. Deak, Istvan. Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps 1848j^jjyj3.. 1990; New York: Oxford UP, 1992. "The Education of Habsburg Army Officers, 1848-1918." The East Central European Officer Corps 1740-1920: Social Origins, Selection, Education, and Training. Eds. Bela K. Kir€ly and Walter Scott Dillard. War and Society in East Central Europe 24. Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1988. 73-98. "The Habsburg Army in Memoir Literature." The Mirror of History: Essays in Honor of Fritz Fellner. Eds. Solomon Wank et al. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1988. 69-89. . Rev. of Juden in der k.-(u-)k. Armee 1788-1918, by Erwin A. Schmidl. Austrian History Yearbook XXII (1991): 183-185. Dethloff, Klaus, ed. Theodor Herzl oder der Moses des Fin de Siecle. Wien: Bohlau, 1986. Dirnberger, Franz. "Das Wiener Hofzeremoniell bis in die Zeit Franz Josephs: Uberlegungen uber Probleme, Entstehung und Bedeutung." Das Zeitalter Kaiser Franz J osephs. 1. T e i l : Von der Revolution zur Grunderzeit: 18148-1880. Beitrage. Niederosterreichische Landesausstellung. Wien: NO Landesregierung, 1984. 42-48. Doppler, Bernhard . "'Ich habe diesen Krieg immer sozusagen als meinen Krieg angesehen:1 Der katholische Kulturkritiker Richard von Kralik (1852-1934)." Amann and Lengauer 1989, 95-104.


243 * * Dopsch, Heinz. "Der osterreichische Adel." Osterreichs Sozialstrukturen in historischer S i c h t . Ed. Erich Zollner. Schriften des Instituts fur Osterreichkunde 36. Wien: Osterreichischer Bundesverlag, 1980. 25-43. Doswald, Herman K. "Nonverbal Expression in Hofmannsthal's Elektra,11 Germanic Review 44 (1969): 199-210. Vi

Dulffer, Jost, and Karl Holl, eds. Bereit zum Krieg: Krieqsmentalitat im wilhelminischen Deutschland 1890-1914. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986. Ehalt, Hubert Ch., G e m o t Heiss, and Hannes Stekl, eds. Glucklich i s t , wer verqi s s t ...? Das andere Wien urn 1900. Wien: Bohlau, 1986. Eilert, Heide. "Die Yorliebe fur kostbar-erlesene Materialien und ihre Funktion in der Lyrik des Fin de siecle." Bauer et al. 421-441. Elias, Norbert. Studien uber die Deutschen: Machtkampfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Ed. Michael Schroter. 1989; Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992. v\

Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation: Sozioqenetische und Psychoqenetische Untersuchunqen. 2 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976. Erdheim, Mario. Die qesellschaftliche Produktion von Unbewusstheit: Eine Einfuhrunq in den ethnopsychoanalytischen Prozess. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982. Elon, Amos.

Herzl.

New York: Holt,

1975.

Esselborn, Karl G. Hofmannsthal und der antike M y t h o s . Munchen: Fink, 1969. /

Femmes fin de siecle 1885-1895: Musee de la_ mode et du costume. Paris: Edition Paris Muse'es, 1990. Field, Frank. The Last Days of M a n k i n d : Karl Kraus and his Vienna. London: Macmillan, 1967. Finn, Viola. "Zsigmond Justh: In Search of a New Nobility." Intellectuals and the Future in the Habsburg Monarchy 1890-191.4. Eds. Lazld Peter, and Robert B. Pynsent. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. 129-151.


244 Footman, David. Ferdinand Lassalle Romantic Revolutionary. 1947; New York: Greenwood, 1969. *1

,

*

. . .

Forster, Stig. "Alter und neuer Milltarismus im Kaiserreich. Heeresrustungspolitik und Dispositionen zum Krieg zwischen Status-quo-Sicherung undM imperialistischer Expansion, 1890-1913." Dulffer and Holl 122-145. Frevert, Ute. Ehrenmanner: Das Duell in der burqerlichen Gesellschaft. Mu n c h e n : Beck, 1991. Fussell, Paul. Killing in Verse and Other Essays. London: Bellew, 1990. Gay, Peter. Freud, Jews and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. M Gedenkblatter zum 1. Oktober: L. Staackmann Leipzig, 1869-1919. Leipzig: Staackmann, 1919. Gaisbauer,_A d o l f . Davidstern und Do^peladler: Zionismus und judischer Nationalismus in Osterreich 1882-1918. Wien: Bohlau, 1988. Geyer, Michael. "The Stigma of Violence, Nationalism, and War in Twentieth-Century Germany." German Identity. Spec, issue of German Studies Review (Winter 1992): 75-110. Gilman, Sander. 1986.

Jewish Self-!H a t r e d .

Ithaca: Cornell UP,

Gilman, Sander. "Opera, Homosexuality, and Models of Disease: Richard Strauss's Salome in the Context of Images of Disease in the Fin de Siecle." Disease and Representation: Images of Illness from Madness to A I D S . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988. 156-181. Girtler, Roland. Die feinen L e u t e : Von der vornehmen Art, durchs Leben zu g e h e n . Frankfurt: Campus, 1989. Glaser, Hermann. 1964.

Spiesser Ideologie.

Freiburg: Rombach,

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. The Sorrows of Young W e r t h e r . Trans. Michael Hulse. London: Penguin, 1989.


245 Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday L i f e . New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1959. Haas, Willy. 1983.

Die Literarische W e l t .

Frankfurt: Fischer,

W Hall, Murray. G. Osterreichische Verlaqsqeschichte, 1918-1938. 2 vols. Wien: Bohlau, 1985. Hamann, Richard. Impressionismus. Verlag, 1960.

Berlin: Akademischer

Hamburger, Kate. Von Sophokles zu Sartre: Griechische Dramenfiguren antik und modern. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962. Handler, Andrew. P o r i , The Life and Times of Theodor Herzl in Budapest (1860-1878^. University: U of Alabama P, 1983. Hauser, Arnold. The Social History of A r t . York: Knopf, [1953].

4 vols.

New

IA

Hermand, Jost. Der alte Traum vom neuen Reich: Volkische Utopien und Nationalsozialismus. Frankfurt: Athenaurn, 1988. Der Schein des Schonen Lebens: Studien zur Jahrhundertwende. Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1972. Herzl, Theodor. Briefe und Taqebucher. Eds. Alex Bein, Hermann Greive, Moshe Schaerf, Julius H. Schoeps, 5 vols. Berlin: Ullstein, 1983. Das neue G h e t t o .

Dethloff 1986, 94-155.

. Theodor Herzl oder der Moses des Fin de Siecle. Klaus Dethloff. Wien: B&hlau, 1986.

Ed.

Hinterhauser, Hans. "Der Aufstand der Dandies," Gestalten und Mythen. Munchen: Fink, 1977. 77-106. Hobsbawm, Eric. Inventing Tradition. Eds. Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Hobsbawm, Eric. "Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914." Hobsbawm and Ranger 263-307. Hofmann, Werner. 120-129.

"Das Fleisch Erkennen."

Pfabigan 1985,


246 "Hans Makart," Experiment Weltunterqanq Wien um 1900. Ed. Werner Hofmann. Munchen: Prestel, 1981. 9-20. Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. Fischer, 1935.

Briefe 1890' 1901.

Berlin:

Gesammelte Werke in zehn Einzelausqaben. Ed. Bernd Schoeller. 2nd. ed. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1979-1980. Hohlbaum, Robert. Der ewiqe Lenzkampf. Staackmann, 1912.

Leipzig:

Janz, Rolf-Peter and Klaus Laermann. Arthur Schnitzler; Zur Diagnose des Wiener Burqertums im Fin de siecle Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977. Jaszi, Oscar. The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1966. U Jens, Walter. Hofmannsthal und die Griechen. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1955. Kann, Robert, ed. Briefe an, v o n Aund um Josephine von Wertheimstein. 1933; Wien: Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981. Kataloq fur die Ausstellunq Kurt Wolff - Ernst Rowohlt. Marbacher Magazine 43. Marbach: Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, 1987. Kerr, Alfred.

"Elektra."

Wunberg 1972, 77-82.

Koppen, Erwin Koppen. Dekadenter Wagnerismus. de Gruyter, 1973.

Berlin:

Kraft, Werner. Das Ja des Neinsaqers: Karl Kraus und seine geistige W e l t . Edition Text + Kritik. Munchen: Boorberg, 1974. tA

Kraus, Karl. "Eine Krone fur Zion," Fruhe Schriften 1897-1900. Ed. Joh. J. Braakenburg. Munchen: Kosel, 1979. 298-314. •

Die Fackel. [1976].

1898-1936; Frankfurt: Zweitausendeins,

Lensing, Leo A. "Peter Altenberg's Fabricated Photographs: Literature and Photography in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna." Vienna 1900 From Altenberg to Wittgenstein. E d s . Edward Timms and Ritchie Robertson. Austrian Studies I. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1990. 47-72.


247 LeRider, Jacques. "Viennese Modernity and Crises of Identity." Psychohistory Review 21.1 (1992): 73-106 Loewenberg, Peter. "Theodor Herzl: Nationalism and Politics." Decoding the P a s t . New York: Knopf, 101-135.

1983.

Loos, Adolf. "Die Potemkin1sche Stadt." Die Potemkin'sche Stadt: Verschollene Schriften 1897-1933. Ed. Adolf Opel. Wien: Prachner, 1983. 55-59. Lothar, Rudolph. 979-984.

"Hugo v. Hofmannsthal."

Wunberg 1976,

Magris, Claudio. Der habsburqische Mythos in der osterreichischen Literatur. Trans. Madeleine von Pasztory. Salzburg: Muller, 1966. Mann, Otto. Der Dandy: Ein Kulturproblem der M o d e r n e . Rev. ed. 1925; Heidelberg: Rothe, 1962. Martens, Lorna. "The Theme of Repressed Memory in Hofmannsthal's Elektra." The Germany Quarterly 60.1 (1987): 38-51. Martini, Fritz. Deutsche Literatur im burqerlichen Realismus 1848-1898. 1962; Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974. Mautner, Fritz. 1969.

Praqer Erinnerunqen.

Frankfurt: Fischer,

Mayer, Arno J. The Persistence of the Old Re g i m e . York: Pantheon, 1981.

New

McCagg Jr. William 0. A History of Habsburg J e w s : 1670-1918. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. McCagg Jr., William 0. Jewish Nobles and Geniuses in Modern H u n g a r y . Boulder: East European Quarterly, 1972. McGrath, William J. Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Au s t r i a . New Haven: Yale UP, 1974. Mitford, Nancy. "The English Aristocracy," Noblesse Oblige. Ed. Nancy Mitford. 1955. New York: Harper, 1956. Mitmasser, Peter F.

"Der Gesinnungswandel von Karl Kraus


248 zu Monarchie, Kaiserhaus und Adel in der Darstellung Der 'Fackel' (1899-1936)." Diss. Universitat Wien, 1983. Moers, Ellen. The Dandy; From Brummell to Beerbohm. York: Viking, 1960.

New

Mosse, George L. "Caesarism, Circuses and Monuments." Journal of Contemporary History 6 (1971): 167-182. . "Nationalism and Respectability: Normal and Abnormal Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century." Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982): 221-245. . Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe. New York: Howard Fertig, 1985. n Muller, Karl Johann. Das Dekadenzproblem in der osterreichischen Literatur um die Jahrhundertwende, dargelegt an Texten von Hermann B a h r , Richard von Schaukal, Hugo von Hofmannsthal und Leopold von A n d r i a n . Stuttgart: Heinz, 1977. Musil, Robert. "Der Anschluss an Deutschland." Gesammelte W e r k e : Essays und R e d e n . Ed. Adolf Frise. 9 vols. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1978. Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Ed. Adolf Frise. vols. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1988.

2

VI

Nadlej, Josef. Literaturgeschichte Osterreichs. Linz: Osterreichischer Verlag f&r Belletristik und Wissenschaft, 1948. Nehring, Wolfgang. "Elektra u$d Odipus: Hofmannsthals 'Erneuerung der A n t i k e 1 fur das Theater Max Reinhardts." Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Freundschaften und Begegnungen mit deutschen Zeitgenossen. Ed. Ursula Renner and G. Barbel Schmidt. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 1991. 123-142. Die Tat bei Hofmannsthal: Eine Untersuchung zu Hofmannsthals grossen Dr a m e n . Stuttgart: Metzler, 1966. "Verganglichkeit und Psychologie. Der Erzahler Ferdinand von Saar als Vorlaufer Schnitzlers." Ferdinand von Saar: Ein Wegbereiter der Literarischen M o d e r n e . Ed. Karl Polheim. Bonn: Bouvier, 1985. 100-116.


249 "Von Saar zu Schnitzler: Die Ankundigung der Moderne im 19. Jahrhundert." Jahrbuch des Wiener Goethe-Vereins. 86/87/88 (1982/1983/1984): 351-359. Nicolson, Harold. Good Behaviour: Being a Study of Certain Types of Civility. 1955? Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1969). Nordau, Max. "Die monarchisch-aristokratische Lugen." Die conventione1len Lugen der Kulturmenschheit. Leipzig: Schlicke, 1884). 6-167. Pfabigan, Alfred. Geistesgegenwart. Essays zu Joseph Roth, Karl K r a u s , Adolf Loos, Jura Soyfer. (Wien: Falter, 1991. Karl Kraus und der Sozialismus: Eine politische Biographie. Wien: Europa, 1976. ,

ed. Ornament und Askese im Zeitgeist. Wien der Jahrhundertwende. Wien: Brandstatter, 1985.

Poliak, Michael, "Cultural Innovation and Social Identity in Fin-de-siecle Vienna." Jews, Antisemitism and Culture in Vienna. Eds. Ivar Oxaal, Michael Poliak, and Gerhard Botz. London: Routledge, 1987. 59-74. Powis, Jonathan. Aristocracy. New Perspectives on the Past 2. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984. Pynsent, Robert B. "Decadence and Innovation." Austro-Hungarian Life and Art at the Turn of the Century. Ed. Robert B. Pynsent. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. 111-248. Reissberger, Mara. "Zum Problem kunstlgrischer Selbstdarstellung in der zweiten Halfte des 19. ijahrhunderts — Die Lebenden Bilder," Die osterreichische Literatur. Ihr Profil im 19. Jahrhundert (1830-1880). Ed. Herbert Zeman. Graz: Osterreichische Verlagsanstalt, 1982. 741-769. . . 11 Riedl, Joachim. Das Geniale, Das G e m e m e : Versuch uber W i e n . Munchen: Piper, 1992.

Ritter, Harry. "Austro-German Liberalism and the Modern Liberal Tradition," German Studies Review 7.2 (1984): 227-248.


250 Robertson, Robbie. "The Problem of 'Jewish Self-Hatred1 in Herzl, Kraus and Kafka." Oxford German Studies 16 (1985): 86-92. Rossbacher, Karlheinz. Heimatkunstbewegung und Heimat Roman: Zu einer Literatursoziologie der Jahrhundertwende. Stuttgart: Klett, 1975. "Leutnant Burda und sein Erzahler." Die andere Welt: Aspekte der osterreichischen Literatur im 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Festschrift fur Helmuth Hirnmel zum 60. Geburtstag. Eds. Kurt Bartsch et. al. Bern: Francke, 1979. 147-163. Literatur und Liberalismus: Zur Kultur der Ringstrassenzeit in W i e n . Wien: J&V, 1992. Roth, Joseph.

Radetzkymarsch.

Koln: Kiepenheuer,

1989.

Rothenberg, Gunter E. The Army of Francis Jos e p h . West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 1976. I* Saar, Ferdinand von. Das Erzahlerische W e r k . Gesamtausgabe des erzahlerischen~Werkes. 3 v o l s . Wien: Amandus, 1959. Sagan, Eli. The Lust to Annihilate: A Psychoanalytic Study of violence in Ancient Greek Culture. New York: Psychohistory P, 1979). Sagarra, Eda. "Social Types and Social Reality in the Narrative Fiction of Ferdinand von Saar." Pohlheim 1985. 150-157. * Schaukal, Richard (von). Ausgewahlte Gedichte. Leipzig: Insel, 1904. Beitrage zu einer Selbstdarstellung. Wien: Schaukal-Gesellschaft, 1934. "Richard Schaukal-Arthur Schnitzler Briefwechsel (1900-1902)." Ed. Reinhard Urbach Modern Austrian Literature 8.3/4 (1975): 15-42. «* Das Buch der Tage und Traume. Rev. ed. 1899; Leipzig: Seeman, 1902. "Hugo von Hofmannsthal."

Wunberg 1972, 349-354.

Leben und Meinungen des Herrn Andreas von Balthesser. Um die Jahrhundertwende. (Munchen: Muller, [1966?] 231-312.


251 Meine Gar t e n .

Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler,

1897.

Scenen aus einer Gesellschaft junqer L e u t e . Fragment. Einer, der seine Frau besucht und andere S ce n e n . Linz: Ssterreichische Verlagsanstalt, 1902). m

Vom unsichtbaren Konigreich: Versuche (1896-1909). Munchen: Georg Muller, 1910. Schmidt-Dengler, Wendelin. "Decadence and Antiquity: The Educational Preconditions of Jung Wien," Focus on Vienna 1900. Change and Continuity in Literature, Music, Art and Intellectual History. Ed. Erika Nielsen. Mu n c h e n : Fink, 1982. 33. "'Ein der Natur Misslungener Kunstler:' Zur Nietzsche-Rezeption im Wien der Jahrhundertwende." Akten des V I . Internationalen Germanisten-Konqresses Basel 1980. Ed. Heinz Rupp and Hans-Gert R o l o f f . 3 vols. Bern: Peter Lang, 1980. 3:422-428. "Literatur in der Muskete, Die M u s k e t e : Kultur— und Sozialqeschichte im Spiegel einer satirisch-humoristischen Zeitschrift 1905-19-41. Eds. Murray G. Hall, et. al. Wien: Tusch, 1983. 35-50. "Die Muskete im Krieg." Amann and Lengauer 1989, 125-132. Schneider, Manfred. Die Angst und das Paradies des Norglers. Frankfurt: Syndikat, 1977. Schnitzler, Arthur. "Hugo von Hofmannsthal: 'Charakteristik' aus den Tagebuchern." Ed. Bernd Urban Hofmannsthal Forschunqen III (1975): 16-51. Leutnant G u s t l . Leutnant Gustl und andere Erzahlungen: Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben. Das erzahlerische Werk. 7 vols. Berlin: Fischer, 1987. Der Weq ins Freie, Das erzahlerische Werk 4. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1978. Schnitzler, Olga. Spiegelbild der Freundschaft. Salzburg: Residenz, 1962. Schorske, Carl E. Fin-de-siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1981).


252 "Grace and the Word: Austria's Two Cultures and Their Modern Fate." Austrian History Yearbook XXII (1991): 21-34. "Moma's Vienna." Rev. of "Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture & Design an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. New York Review of Books 33. 19-24. Schumann, Hans-Gerd. "Snob-Dandy-Playboy: Typen kultureller Transformation oder gesellschaftlicher Restauration?" Archiv fur Kulturqeschichte 45 (1963) 119-126. "Spiessburger-Philister-Spatburger: Kulturzerfall oder Dekadenz einer Klasse?" Archiv fur Kulturqeschichte 49 (1967): 115-124. Schwarz, Egon. "Adel und Adelskult im deutschen Roman um 1900." Dichtunq, Kritik, Geschichte. Essays zur Literatur 1900-1930^ Gottingen: Vandenhoeck, 1982. 69-112. "Arthur Schnitzler und die Aristokratie." Arthur Schnitzler in neuer s i c h t . Ed. Hartmut Scheible. Munchen: Fink, 1981. 54-70. Sked, Alan. The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Emp i r e . London: Longman, 1989. U Sombart, Werner. Luxus und Kapitalismus. 1912; Munchen: Duncker & Humblot, 1922. Sonnleitner, Johann. "Eherne Sonette 1914. Richard von Schaukal und der Erste Weltkrieg." Amann and Amann and Lengauer, 152-158. Sophocles. Electra and Other P l a y s . New York: Penguin, 1953. K

Trans. E.F. Watling

Vi

Spiel, Hilde. "Die Damonie der Gemutlichkeit." Die Damonie der Gemutlichkeit: Glossen zur Zeit und andere Prosa. Ed. Hans A. Neunzig. Munchen: List, 1991. 15-22. "Der Staackmann-Film." 1067-1069.

Die W a g e .

15 Nov.

1913:

Steinberg, Michael. " 1Fin-de-siecle Vienna' Ten Years Later: Viel Traum, Wenig Wirklichkeit." Austrian History Yearbook XXII (1991): 151-162.


253 The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival: Austria as Theater and Ideology. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990. Strelka, Joseph P. Karl Kraus: Diener der Sprache Meister der E t hos. Tubingen: Francke, 1990. Strobl, Karl Hans. "Deutschland an die Front." Der Turmhahn: Staackmanns Halbmonatsschrift 1 (1914): 1-8 . "Die exfig Feierlichen." Der Turmhahn: Staackmanns HaIbmonatsschrift 1 (1914) 50-52. Gluckhafte Wanderschaft: Heitere Lebensmitte. vols. Budweis: Moldavia, 1942. Das Wirtshaus 'Zum Konig Przemysl1. Staackmann, 1913.

3

Leipzig:

Szondi, Peter. Das lyrische Drama des Fin de siecle. Ed. Henriette Beese. Studienausgabe der Vorlesungen 4. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975. /^ Teich, Mikulas and Roy Porter, eds. Fin de Siecle and its Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. Chris Turner, Stephen Conway. U of Minnesota P, 1989).

Trans. Erica Carter, 2 vols. Minneapolis:

Timms, Edward. Karl K r aus: Apocalyptic Satirist. Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986. Trommler, Frank. "Joseph Roth und die Neue Sachlichkeit." Joseph Roth und die Tradition." Ed. David Bronsen. Darmstadt: Agora, 1975. IA

Osterreich im R o m a n : Eine Untersuchung zur dargestellten Wirklichkeit bei Joseph Roth, Robert Musil und Heimito von Doderer. D i s s ., Universitat Munchen, 1965. "Vom Bauhausstuhl zur Kulturpolitik: Die Auseinandersetzung um die moderne Produktkultur." Kultur. Bestimmungen im 20. Jahrhundert. Eds. Helmut Brackert und Fritz Wefelmeyer. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990. 86-110. Vagt, Hans. A History of Militarism. York: Macmillan, 1959.

Rev. ed. 1937; New


254 Vanhelleputte, Michel. "Hofmannsthals Ringen um die Tragodie." Revue des langues vivantes 24 (1958): 231-268. Varnedoe, Kirk. Vienna: A r t , Architecture, and Design. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1986. Virilio, Paul and Sylvere Lotringer. Pure W a r . Trans. Mark Polizotti. Foreign Agents Series. New York: Semiotext, 1983. Volker, Angela. "Kleiderkunst und Reformmode im Wien der Jahrhundertwende." Pfabigan 142-155. Wagner, Karl. "Heimat- und Provinzliteratur in den dreissiger Ja|iren. Am Beispiel der Rezeption Peter Roseggers." Osterreichische Literatur der dreissiger Jahre. Eds. Klaus Amann and Albert Berger. Wien: Bohlau, 1985. it

Wagner, Karl. Die literarische Offentlichkeit der Provinzlitertur: Der Volksschriftsteller Peter RoseggerT Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1991. Wagner, Walter. "Die K.(u.)K. Armee — Gliederung und Aufgabenstellung." Die Habsburgermonarchie 18?48-1918. Wandruska and Drbanitsch. 142-633. Waldstein-Wartenburg, Berthold. "Osterreichisches Adelsrecht: 1804-1918." Mitteilungen des osterreichischen Staatsarchivs 17/18 (1964/1965). 109-146. Wallas, Armin. "Gewalt und Zerstorung: Zur Thematisierung von Violenz in der osterreichischen Literatur der Jahrhundertwende." Zeitschrift fur deutsche Philologie 108 (1989): 198-221. Wandruszka, Adam. "Die 'Zweit§ Gesellschaft' der Donaumonarchie." Adel in Osterreich. Ed. Heinz Siegert. Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau, 1971) 56-67. Wassermann, Jakob. Mein Weg als Deutscher und J u d e . Berlin: Fischer 1921. Werfel, Franz. Zwischen Oben und U n t e n : Prosa, Tagebucher, Aphorismen, Literarische Nachtrage. Munchen: Langen-Muller, 1975. Wetzel, Heinz. "Elektras Kult der Tat — 'freilich mit Ironie behandelt.1" Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts (1979): 354-368.


255 Winkelbauer, Thomas. "Krieg in Deutsch-Lesebuchern der Habsburgermonarchie (1880-1918)." Amann and Lengauer 1989, 37-47. Wistrich, Robert S. The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989. Wittlich, Petr. Prague: fin de siecle. Flammarion, 1992.

Paris:

Worbs, Michael. Nervenkunst: Literatur und Psychoanalyse im Wien der Jahrhundertwende. Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1988. Wucherpfennig, Wolf. "The 'Young Viennese' and Their Fathers. Decadence and the Generation Conflict around 1890." Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982): 21-49. Wunberg, Gotthart, ed. Hofmannsthal im Urteil seiner Kritiker: Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Hugo von Hofmannsthals in Deutschland. Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1972. 4 , ed. Das junge Wien: Osterreichische Literatur- und Kunstkritik 1887-1902. 2 vols. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1976. Wuthenow, Ralph-Wuthenow. Europaischer Asthetizismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1978. Zeitlin, Froma I. "The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Orestia." Arethusa 11 (1978) 149-184. Zweig, Stefan. 109-116.

"King of the Jews."

Die Welt von Gestern. 1970.

Herzl Year Book 3.

Frankfurt: Fischer,
