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The Man Without Qualities
''The Man Without Qualities'' (; 1930–1943) is an unfinished modernist novel in three volumes and various drafts, by the Austrian writer Robert Musil. The novel is a "story of ideas", which takes place in the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's last days, and the plot often veers into allegorical digressions on a wide range of existential themes concerning humanity and feelings. It has a particular concern with the values of truth and opinion and how society organizes ideas about life and society. The book is well over a thousand pages long in its entirety, and no one single theme dominates. Plot summary Part I, titled ''A Sort of Introduction'', is an introduction to the protagonist, a 32-year-old mathematician named Ulrich who is in search of a sense of life and reality but fails to find it. His ambivalence towards morals and indifference to life has brought him to the state of being "a man without qualities", depending on the outer world to form his character. A kind of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Musil
Robert Musil (; 6 November 1880 – 15 April 1942) was an Austrian philosophical writer. His unfinished novel, ''The Man Without Qualities'' (), is generally considered to be one of the most important and influential modernist novels. Family Musil was born in Klagenfurt, Carinthia (state), Carinthia, the son of engineer Alfred ''Edler'' Musil (1846, Temeswar/Timișoara – 1924) and his wife Hermine Bergauer (1853, Linz – 1924). The Oriental studies, orientalist Alois Musil ("The Czech Lawrence Of Arabia, Lawrence") was his second cousin. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Komotau/Chomutov in Kingdom of Bohemia, Bohemia, and in 1891 Musil's father was appointed to the chair of Mechanical Engineering at the German Technical University in Brno, German Technical University in Brünn/Brno and, later, he was raised to hereditary nobility in the Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was baptized ''Robert Mathias Musil'' and his name was officially ''Robert Mathias E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people held by a host. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" (Latin: ''aut delectare aut prodesse''). Salons in the tradition of the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries are still being conducted. Historical background The salon first appeared in Italy in the 16th century, then flourished in France throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. It continued to flourish in Italy throughout the 19th century. In 16th-century Italy, some brilliant circles formed in the smaller courts which resembled salons, often galvanized by the presence of a beautiful and educated patroness such as Isabella d'Este or Elisabetta Gonzaga. Salons were an important place for the exchange of ideas. The word ''salon'' first appeared in France in 1664 (from the Italian ''salone'', the large reception hall of Italian mansions; ''salone'' is actually the augmentati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sleepwalkers (Broch Novel)
''The Sleepwalkers'' () is a 1930s novel in three parts, by the Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch. Opening in 1888, the first part is built around a young Prussian army officer; the second in 1903 around a Luxembourger bookkeeper; and the third in 1918 around an Alsatian wine dealer. Each is in a sense a sleepwalker, living between vanishing and emerging ethical systems just as the somnambulist exists in a state between sleeping and waking. Together they present a panorama of German society and its progressive deterioration of values that culminated in defeat and collapse at the end of World War I. An English translation in 1932 by Edwin and Willa Muir received good reviews and the work has been admired since World War II by serious European critics, who put Broch in the company of Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Robert Musil as well as James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Plot 1888: Joachim von Pasenow The first part, set mostly in Berlin and an unnamed eastern province of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch (; 1 November 1886 – 30 May 1951) was an Austrian writer, best known for two major works of modernist fiction: '' The Sleepwalkers'' (''Die Schlafwandler,'' 1930–32) and '' The Death of Virgil'' (''Der Tod des Vergil,'' 1945). Life Broch was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately. As the oldest son, he was expected to take over his father’s textile factory in Teesdorf; therefore, he attended a technical college for textile manufacture and a spinning and weaving college. In 1909 he converted to Roman Catholicism and married Franziska von Rothermann, the daughter of a knighted manufacturer. The following year, their son Hermann Friedrich Maria was born. His marriage ended in divorce in 1923. In 1927 he sold the textile factory and decided to study mathematics, philosophy and psychology at the University of Vienna. He embarked on a ful ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fin De Siècle
"''Fin de siècle''" () is a French term meaning , a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom '' turn of the century'' and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context, the term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought to be a period of social degeneracy, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning. The "spirit" of ''fin de siècle'' often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and "a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence." The term is commonly applied to French art and artists, as the traits of the culture first appeared there, but the movement affected many European countries. The term becomes applicable to the sentiments and traits associated with the culture, as opposed to focusing solely on the movement's initial recogni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer. Mann was a member of the Hanseaten (class), hanseatic Mann family and portrayed his family and class in his first novel, ''Buddenbrooks''. His older brother was the radical writer Heinrich Mann and three of Mann's six children – Erika Mann, Klaus Mann and Golo Mann – also became significant German writers. When Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler's rise to power, came to power in 1933, Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out in 1939, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugenie Schwarzwald
Eugenie Schwarzwald,(née Nußbaum) (4 July 1872 - 7 August 1940) was a progressive Polish philanthropist, writer and pedagogue, who founded the innovative Schwarzwald school and developed education for girls in Austria and was one of the most learned women of her time. Early life Eugenie Nußbaum was born in Polupanivka, a village near the Zbruch River in Austria-Hungary (now Ternopil Raion, Ukraine). She left home in 1895 and studied German and English literature, philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Zurich. She received her doctoral degree in 1900. At that time, women were not allowed to study at Austrian high schools and universities and Eugenie was one of the first academically educated women in Austria-Hungary. In 1900 she married Dr. Hermann Schwarzwald (1871–1939). Innovative educator Schwarzwald felt Polish and was known as an innovative educator. In Austria, in 1901 she became head of the Girls' Secondary School and in 1911 of the Girls' College. Her ai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brno
Brno ( , ; ) is a Statutory city (Czech Republic), city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava (river), Svitava and Svratka (river), Svratka rivers, Brno has about 403,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic after the capital, Prague, and one of the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 100 largest cities of the European Union. The Brno metropolitan area has approximately 730,000 inhabitants. Brno is the former capital city of Moravia and the political and cultural hub of the South Moravian Region. It is the centre of the Judiciary of the Czech Republic, Czech judiciary, with the seats of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic, Supreme Court, the Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic, Supreme Administrative Court, and the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office, and a number of state ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. Its larger metropolitan area has a population of nearly 2.9 million, representing nearly one-third of the country's population. Vienna is the Culture of Austria, cultural, Economy of Austria, economic, and Politics of Austria, political center of the country, the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, fifth-largest city by population in the European Union, and the most-populous of the List of cities and towns on the river Danube, cities on the river Danube. The city lies on the eastern edge of the Vienna Woods (''Wienerwald''), the northeasternmost foothills of the Alps, that separate Vienna from the more western parts of Austria, at the transition to the Pannonian Basin. It sits on the Danube, and is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernst Kaiser
Ernst David Kaiser (3 October 1911 – 1 January 1972) was an Austrian writer and translator. Early life Ernst David Kaiser was born in Vienna. His father, a Jewish merchant, came from the Slovak part of Hungary, and his mother from Brno. At birth he was Hungarian, but his father later opted to be Austrian. Ernst Kaiser grew up in Vienna, attended high school, passed the Matura, did his military service and studied German. Austria was annexed by the German Reich on 12 March 1938, before he was able to complete his doctorate. A few months later Kaiser fled to Poland via Prague and from there by ship to Southampton in the United Kingdom. He settled in London. He found a job in a slaughterhouse where he dragged pork and sides of beef in cold storage. When the war began Kaiser was interned "and then served for almost six years in the British Army in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany; afterwards in the military government in Hamburg as an interpreter with the rank of sergeant." Later, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eithne Wilkins
Eithne Wilkins (born Ethne Una Lilian Wilkins; 12 September 1914 – 13 March 1975) was a Germanic Studies scholar, translator and poet from New Zealand. Life and work She was born in Wellington to Edgar Wilkins, an Irish doctor, and his wife Eveline (Whittaker); her younger brother was the Nobel laureate Maurice Wilkins. In 1923, when she was almost nine, she moved to Dublin with her family and shortly after they moved again to London, followed again by a move to Birmingham, where her father started work as a school doctor. She studied languages and literature at Somerville College, Oxford and later worked as a journalist and translator in London and Paris before World War II. During the war, she taught at the Emanuel School, which evacuated to Petersfield in 1939. From the mid-1930s to the late 1950s, Wilkins wrote poetry, publishing about 40 poems in various literary journals, including the poetic sequence "Oranges and Lemons". Several of her poems were included in Kenne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Realpolitik
''Realpolitik'' ( ; ) is the approach of conducting diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly following ideological, moral, or ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. While generally used as a positive or neutral term, ''Realpolitik'' has been also used pejoratively to imply policies that are perceived as being coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian. Prominent proponents of ''Realpolitik'' include Otto von Bismarck, Henry Kissinger, George H.W. Bush, George F. Kennan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Deng Xiaoping, Charles de Gaulle, and Lee Kuan Yew. The opposite of ''Realpolitik'' is '' Idealpolitik''. Etymology The term ''Realpolitik'' was coined by Ludwig von Rochau, a German writer and politician in the 19th century. His 1853 book ''Grundsätze der Realpolitik angewendet auf die staatlichen Zust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
