Kolkenbrock - Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzlers Prose

NEW DIRECTIONS IN GERMAN STUDIES

Vol. 21

Series Editor:

Imke Meyer

Editorial Board:

Katherine Arens, Roswitha Burwick, Richard Eldridge,
Erika Fischer-Lichte, Catriona MacLeod, Stephan Schindler,
Heidi Schlipphacke, Ulrich Schnherr, James A. Schultz,
Silke-Maria Weineck, David Wellbery, Sabine Wilke,
John Zilcosky

Volumes in the series:

Vol. 1. Improvisation as Art: Conceptual Challenges, Historical Perspectives

by Edgar Landgraf

Vol. 2. The German Pcaro and Modernity: Between Underdog and Shape-Shifter

by Bernhard Malkmus

Vol. 3. Citation and Precedent: Conjunctions and Disjunctions of German Law and Literature

by Thomas O. Beebee

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by Eckart Goebel

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edited by Sabine Wilke

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by Gisela Brinker-Gabler

Vol. 7. Out of Place: German Realism, Displacement, and Modernity

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Vol. 8. Thomas Mann in English: A Study in Literary Translation

by David Horton

Vol. 9. The Tragedy of Fatherhood: King Laius and the Politics of Paternity in the West

by Silke-Maria Weineck

Vol. 10. The Poet as Phenomenologist: Rilke and the New Poems

by Luke Fischer

Vol. 11. The Laughter of the Thracian Woman: A Protohistory of Theory

by Hans Blumenberg, translated by Spencer Hawkins

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by Lorely French

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by Susan E. Gustafson

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Vol. 19. Building Socialism: Architecture and Urbanism in East German Literature, 19551973

by Curtis Swope

Vol. 20. Ghostwriting: W. G. Sebalds Poetics of History

by Richard T. Gray

Vol. 21. Stereotype and Destiny in Arthur Schnitzlers Prose: Five Psycho-Sociological Readings

by Marie Kolkenbrock

Stereotype and
Destiny in Arthur
Schnitzlers Prose

Five Psycho-Sociological Readings

Marie Kolkenbrock

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

Andrew Webber has advised me during the research for this book with knowledge and insight, utmost generosity of time and support, and also with kindness. I am deeply thankful for his mentoring, which is always motivating and inspiring, but never restrictive or determining. Moreover, I would like to thank Michael Minden and Robert Vilain for their critical reading, insightful comments, and support, as well as Peter-Andr Alt, Dagmar Lorenz, Eric L. Santner, and Norbert Christian Wolf for their stimulating input and advice. Two anonymous reviewers gave extremely nuanced and productive feedback, for which I am grateful. The series editor Imke Meyer has provided invaluable guidance throughout the publication process. I would like to thank her, as well as publisher for literary studies Haaris Naqvi, editorial assistant Katherine de Chant, copy-editor Anna Carroll, and everyone else at Bloomsbury Academic, who all have been an absolute pleasure to work with.

The full-cost scholarship from Gates Cambridge Scholarships allowed me to undertake the main research for this book. I revised the final version of the manuscript while being supported by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography, Vienna, and the Schrder Fund Cambridge. Some passages in Chapters Three and Five draw on my article Gothic Infections, published in Modern Language Review 113.1 (2018), 150170. I would like to thank MLR for the permission to reuse this material. I also would like to thank the Syndics of Cambridge University Library for the permission to cite from their archival sources.

More warm thanks go to the following people, who also had an immense (direct and indirect) influence on the progress of this book: Mirjam Berg, Andreas Gehrlach, Lukas Held, Charlotte Lee, Ina Linge, Annja Neumann, Annie Ring, Astrid Schmidt, Lizzie Stewart, Andrea Wald, and Erica Wickerson for helpful comments and encouragement. Alphia Klingenstein for a regular supply of German bread and homemade jam. Karoline Kuchenbcker and Nadja Tschentscher for sharp debates and unwavering care. Steve Ruiz for letting me talk through my ideas and for making me feel at home wherever we are.

I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of my three parents: Jutta Kolkenbrock-Netz, Maria Klingenstein, and Hansjrg Kolkenbrock.

Full bibliographical references to the texts can be found in the Bibliography at the end of this book.

Iconographical representations of so-called Viennese types were immensely popular in fin de sicle Vienna. Serial photographs of street vendors, laundry girls, knife grinders, and other characters deemed typical for the Viennese cityscape appeared in journalistic feuilletons, on postcards, and commercial advertisements.

Many of his contemporaries saw Schnitzlers writings as the literary pendant to this form of Viennese nostalgia: he was known for his would become even more prominent during the years of the First World War and, much to his dismay, would not cease to pursue him until the end of his life.

Although Schnitzler indeed remains well known for his notorious representation of such Viennese social types as the se Mdel (sweet girl), scholarship has long since exonerated him from his reputation of backwardness. He has been established as the key critical observer of Viennese bourgeois society. My suggestion is, accordingly, that rather than indulging the longing for old-Viennese cosiness through the representation of typecast figures, Schnitzlers prose reveals the psycho-sociological mechanisms behind this form of nostalgia.

In this way, the Viennese types worked to stabilize the power structures of a social order, which was increasingly under pressure.

By the time of Jacques Le Riders (1993, French original 1990) fundamental study Modernity and the Crises of Identity: Culture and Society in Fin-de-sicle Vienna