Three  Race and Destiny in Die Weissagung (The Prophecy) and Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief (Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter)

Apparently some of Schnitzler’s contemporary reviewers already observed that his volume Dämmerseelen (Dozing Souls, 1907) features allusions to German Romanticism, particularly to E. T. A. Hoffmann. Josef Körner, however, vehemently opposed this interpretation:

Schnitzlers ‘Dämmerseelen’ sind, […] wiederholt mit den Gespenstergeschichten der deutschen Romantiker, insbesondere mit denen E.T.A. Hoffmanns verglichen worden; ein sehr unglücklicher und völlig unzutreffender Vergleich. Der Romantiker sieht Wunder, von denen Schulweisheit sich nichts träumen läßt, mit gläubigem Gemüt, hofft gerade von der Nachtseite der Seele her in ihr Geheimnis eindringen zu können, er schaut in den grauesten Alltag die goldensten Phantasien hinein, weil sich in jedem Endlichen ihm das Unendliche spiegelt. Von all dem ist beim Verfasser der ‘Dämmerseelen’ im geringsten nicht die Rede. Der unheimliche Zweifel, ob ein nüchtern-natürlicher Zusammenhang zwischen den Dingen besteht, dieser Zweifel, der den Leser Hoffmannscher Spukgeschichten hin und her schaukelt, bis ihm schwindelig wird, kommt bei Schnitzler kaum auf. Oder doch nur ein einzigmal: in der technisch meisterhaften Schicksalsnovelle ‘Die Weissagung’.¹

Schnitzler’s ‘Dozing Souls’ has been repeatedly compared to the ghost stories of German Romanticism, particularly those of E. T. A. Hoffmann; an extremely infelicitous and completely unjustified comparison. The Romanticist’s faithful mind accepts miracles, which rational, conventionally educated people cannot even imagine. He hopes to be able to access the secrets of the soul precisely from its dark side, he projects the most golden fantasies into the greyest of all quotidian lives, because for him, the eternal is mirrored in each and every finite being. The uncanny doubt, whether there is a sober-natural causal connection between the things – this doubt, which rocks the reader of Hoffmann’s phantom narratives back and forth until he feels rather dizzy, this doubt never emerges in Schnitzler’s stories. Or, at least, only one single time: in the expertly crafted novella of destiny, ‘The Prophecy’.

While Körner’s assessment that Schnizler’s texts do not endorse an affirmative fascination with mysticism is certainly correct, he overlooked the fact that the Romanticist’s faithful mind is nevertheless to be found in the texts – not on the authorial level, but on that of the characters. Schnitzler’s texts display a tendency to mystical beliefs, particularly the emphatic evocation of destiny, through the perspective of their protagonists. And because the narratives are very often rendered entirely in this perspective of the unreliable protagonists, readers can indeed at times find it hard to decide whether the text confronts them with a realistic setting or not, particularly in the novellas compiled in Dämmerseelen (Dozing Souls).2 Körner was, however, right to stress a fundamental difference between Schnitzler and the Romantics. Schnitzler’s texts do not promote any kind of ‘new mythology’ as a reaction to the Enlightenment and its degradation of the mythos as pre-rational form, as was the case in the theoretical and meta-poetic works of the Romantics.³ However, like many other scholars, Detlef Kremer stresses that Romanticism is not only to be understood in contrast to the Enlightenment, but rather as a form of self-reflection of Enlightenment itself (‘Selbstreflexion der Aufklärung’). This aspect of self-reflection can certainly be found in Schnitzler’s texts as well. They introduce and expose the irrational tendencies of the rationalist, post-Enlightenment bourgeois ideology. In fact, Schnitzler’s texts critically address the ‘myths of today’, following Roland Barthes,⁴ particularly those hidden in the form of stereotypes of ‘otherness’. The narratives in the volume Dämmerseelen are concerned with the influence of these stereotypical ‘myths’ in connection with the fate-like function of ‘social destiny’ in the Bourdieusian sense on the one hand and the belief in a metaphysical destiny on the other.

This chapter is concerned with stereotypes of race addressed in the narratives Die Weissagung (The Prophecy) and Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief (Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter).5 In Die Weissagung (Die Prophecy), which will be the main focus of the chapter, anti-Semitic stereotypes are incorporated in an ostensibly fantastic tale about the higher power of destiny. Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief brings to the fore the influence of stereotypes of Blackness in connection with the ‘fatal’ force of ‘social destiny’: being confronted with the impossibility of bringing his own individual situation into congruence with the requirements of the bourgeois male norm, the protagonist experiences the fate-like necessity of his suicide as a last performance of masculinity. Both texts avail themselves of elements alluding to Schauerromantik, which underlines their own fictional quality and brings to the fore the constructedness of the stereotypical cultural narratives they address. That this kind of self-referentiality is in itself an essential element of Romantic irony has already been argued in the first chapter on Der Weg ins Freie (Road into the Open). The first narrative I will analyze, Die Weissagung (The Prophecy), for which even Joseph Körner concedes a Hoffmannesque character, is in turn probably one of the most paradigmatic examples of irony in Schnitzler’s texts.

Destiny and Stereotypes of Jewishness in Die Weissagung (The Prophecy)

The short narrative Die Weissagung (The Prophecy) was first published under the simple title Erzählung (Narrative) in the Christmas issue of the journal Neue Freie Presse in 1905, before it was included in the 1907 collection of narratives, Dämmerseelen (Dozing Souls). The text contains three narrative perspectives: first, the first-person narrator, second, the protagonist Umprecht in the story-within-a-story, and third, the fictional editor, who provides an after-word claiming that everything told in the story is true. In the beginning, the narrator tells the reader that he has written a play for the art lover and Freiherr (baron) von Schottenegg. On the day of the performance, Schottenegg’s nephew Franz von Umprecht, who also is the lead actor in the play, tells the narrator the following story: ten years before, to the day, he was confronted by the Jewish magician Marco Polo with an allegedly prophetic image, which showed him on his deathbed, surrounded by a mourning woman and two children, exactly ten years from the premonition. The so-called prophecy took place in a rather isolated Polish village, where Umprecht was based as a lieutenant of the Austrian army. From then on, Umprecht lived his life in fear and tried at all costs to prevent this destiny from coming true. However, only when he learned about the narrator’s play did he feel that there was hope: the last scene appears to be identical with the prophetic image. He then hopes that by playing the lead role, thus enacting the prophecy in a fictional setting, he will prevent the realization of his destiny. Although doubtful at first, the narrator is finally convinced of the truthfulness of Umprecht’s story. For him, one curiosity seems to suffice as evidence: Umprecht even knows of a character who had appeared in the last scene of a draft version of the play, but had been erased in the final version. Later, when this character nevertheless actually appears on stage at the appointed moment (in the person of a flautist from the orchestra), the narrator accepts this as the realization of Umprecht’s destiny. And indeed, despite all his attempts at avoiding the prophecy, Umprecht dies on stage.6

The novella has been extensively discussed with regard to the opposition of determinism and free will, which is raised by implication of this narrative elaboration on the topic of destiny. In Schnitzler’s papers on Die Weissagung (The Prophecy), one note reads: ‘Prophezeiungen, [sic] die, wenn sie sich erfüllen, eine andere Bedeutung annehmen, als man anfangs geglaubt’ (CUL A255,2) (Prophecies, which, when they come true, adopt a meaning different to what one had initially assumed). This effect is indeed yielded by the narrative in terms of the reading expectations it evokes. Almost no critic fails to quote Freud’s judgement of the narrative, in which he claims it left the reader dissatisfied and with a feeling of having been betrayed, because it initially pretended to stay in the realistic realm only to then include fantastic elements, which ‘flirt’ (‘liebäugeln’) with the supernatural.⁷

Earlier critics seem to follow Freud, when they lament Schnitzler’s ‘Unentschiedenheit’⁸ (indecisiveness) or speak of an ‘Unklarheit’⁹ (lack of clarity) which derived from the usage of occult elements. Most of the later critics, however, seem to agree that the play with the occult in the novella has to be read ironically.10 Several critics interpret this irony as a satirical criticism of mysticism and occult tendencies. Many scholars also share the assumption that Umprecht’s own acceptation of the prophecy has to be understood as the driving force of the apparently fateful events and their deadly outcome.¹¹ This (unconscious) participation of Umprecht leads some critics to find a relativist position between human autonomy and determination of fate in the novella.12 Others even claim that a completely rational explanation of the events is possible. According to Louis Gerrekens, even the entire debate about free will and determinism in the novella does not make any sense: in fact, there is no prophecy in Die Weissagung (The Prophecy), because all three narrative perspectives deconstruct themselves in the end by virtue of various inconsistencies and signals of irony.¹³ It is certainly true that the narrative displays a large set of paralogisms and inconsistencies that should alert the reader to question the credibility of the three narrators and their insistence on the presence of a ‘higher power’ being involved in the course of events. An affirmative reading of the superstitious narrative perspectives is therefore indeed misplaced. However, it is nevertheless important to interrogate the function of the play with fantastic or occult elements and the topic of destiny in the text, which – as it seems to me – addresses more than a rejection of mysticism and a defence of rationality. Also in this text, the protagonist’s fascination with destiny is linked to a weakened identification with his own position in the social order. Anti-Semitic stereotypes serve again as compensation for this insecurity. And just like in the previous chapters, the position of the stereotyped ‘other’ has nevertheless also a certain seductive effect, which informs the idea of a higher power of destiny.

Destiny as Revenge of the ‘Other’

Umprecht, who does not hide his anti-Semitic attitude, and the narrator, who sympathizes with Umprecht, both accept the presence of a higher power as an explanation of the events. Michael Rohrwasser has pointed out that this links anti-Semitism to irrationality and superstition, which highlights its anti-modern tendencies.¹⁴ This link between the representation of anti-Semitism and the question of destiny in the text can be carried further. It has been convincingly argued that Marco Polo’s premonitions serve as a form of revenge against the anti-Semitic slurs of the military officers.15 However, the aspect of revenge in the narrative goes beyond the simple immediate payback: I see here the link between this revenge for anti-Semitism and the topic of destiny.

After having been threatened by the colonel of the regiment and called pejoratively ‘Jud’ (W605) (Jew) by another lieutenant, Marco Polo foretells the colonel’s lethal destiny. The reaction of the bystanders is significant: ‘ich versichere Sie, uns allen war, als ob der Oberst in diesem Moment gezeichnet worden wäre’ (W606) (I assure you, we all felt as if the colonel had been marked in this very moment). The idea of being marked and thus being assigned an unchangeable destiny recalls the way Jewishness had become a marker of difference that is comparable to an unchangeable destiny.¹⁶ Marco Polo’s prophecy therefore mirrors the effects that anti-Semitic discourse has on the Jews. This is underlined by the fact that the first prophecy of the Oberleutnant’s death follows directly on an act of insulting mimicry on his part: challenging Marco Polo to read his hand, the colonel imitates Marco Polo’s Yiddish accent when he says: ‘Nu, lesen Sie’ (W605) (Go ahead, read).

Shulamit Volkov has suggested that we should understand anti-Semitism at the beginning of the twentieth century as a cultural code well accepted in Austria and Germany rather than an extremist political movement.¹⁷ Marco Polo’s prophecies are also mimicries of this cultural code, particularly with its implications of biological difference: central for the development of anti-Semitism at the beginning of the twentieth century was the debate about the ‘biology of the Jews’, and thus genetic predispositions associated with Jewishness as a ‘race’.¹⁸ A biological predisposition is inescapable, and cannot be shed like a religious confession or lost like the citizenship of a nation state. Thus, no matter what a Jewish person does, no matter how they may strive for ‘assimilation’ or ‘acculturation’, if the racial difference is established as biological fact, they will remain excluded from the non-Jewish norm. This established difference can then be ideologically used to legitimate the marginalization and denial of recognition of Jews in an anti-Semitic society. This is precisely played out in Umprecht’s description of Marco Polo. Although Umprecht clearly perceives his appearance as utterly strange, it nevertheless bears unequivocal signs of the assimilated Jew: he has shaved his beard and wears elegant western clothes, a top hat and waistcoat under a dark coat.19 Umprecht indicates that ‘seine Erscheinung augenblicklich auffiel’ (W604) (his appearance was immediately noteworthy) due to the ‘lächerlichen Eleganz’ (W604) (ridiculous elegance) of his apparel. In the perspective of the anti-Semite Umprecht, the assimilation fails completely. Marco Polo’s apparent striving to get rid of the typical Jewish attributes not only makes him ridiculous in Umprecht’s eyes but also seems to aggravate other traits associated with the stereotype of ‘the’ Jew, above all that of weakened masculinity: as ‘ein kleiner, magerer, bartloser Mensch’ (W604) (a short, skinny, beardless person), Marco Polo hardly fulfils the ideal of the masculine norm. The appellation ‘Jud’ is thus not only pejorative, it also produces a reduction of every aspect of the individual to Jewishness. Even though Marco Polo demonstrates with his appearance that he is not religious, his identity is perceived by the colonel and the others as dominated by his Jewishness. When Marco Polo refuses to accept the injurious appellation by insisting on the name he has given himself (‘Mein Künstlername ist Marco Polo’ (W605) (My stage name is Marco Polo)), he is not only defending himself against the anti-Semitic insult, but also insisting upon his right to an individual and freely chosen identity. The appellation ‘Jud’ was an attempt to put Marco Polo in his place, to remind him of the social status he has as a Jew and of the limited potential of individual development, and ‘marking’ the colonel with the prophecy is thus a direct payback.²⁰

Anti-Semitic Stereotypes as Coping Mechanism

Marco Polo is not presented as a real character – we only get to know him through Umprecht’s perspective. This narrative effect exposes the Jew’s function as complementary ‘other’ that is used to define the norm and endow its representatives with a clear sense of self. However, this mechanism is disrupted from the beginning. The situation in which Umprecht receives the prophetic image is significantly one in which representatives of the ‘norm’ – non-Jewish Austrian males – find themselves isolated and in the minority.

Unsere Kaserne lag außerhalb des Dorfes, das aus höchstens dreißig verstreuten Häusern bestand; die nächste Stadt, eine Reitstunde entfernt, war schmierig, widerwärtig, stinkend und voll von Juden. Notgedrungen hatten wir manchmal mit ihnen zu tun – der Hotelier war ein Jude, der Cafetier, der Schuster desgleichen. Daß wir uns möglichst beleidigend gegen sie benahmen, das können Sie sich denken. Wir waren besonders gereizt gegen dieses Volk, weil ein Prinz, der unserem Regiment als Major zugeteilt war, den Gruß der Juden – ob nun als Scherz oder aus Vorliebe, weiß ich nicht – mit ausgesuchter Höflichkeit erwiderte und überdies mit auffallender Absichtlichkeit unseren Regimentsarzt protegierte, der von Juden abstammte. (W603f)21

Our barrack was located outside a village, which consisted of at most thirty scattered houses; the next town, an hour on horseback away, was sleazy, disgusting, smelling and full of Jews. Out of necessity we sometimes had to engage with them – the hotelier was a Jew, the owner of the coffee house, the shoemaker and so on. You can imagine that we treated them as insultingly as possible. We were particularly irritated by this people, because the prince, who had been allocated to us as our major, always responded to the Jews’ greetings with a special politeness. Moreover, he was particularly protective of the regiment’s physician, who was Jewish.

What is striking in the first instance is the casual way in which the narrative introduces anti-Semitism: when Umprecht tells the narrator the background story of the prophecy, not only Umprecht’s own anti-Semitic sentiments but those of the entire regiment are exposed. The description of the Polish village evokes the stereotypical picture of the Eastern-Jewish way of life.²² The Eastern-European Jew as the ultimate target of anti-Semitism was a commonplace in Schnitzler’s time,23 so that Umprecht’s description of the offensive behaviour towards them might have indeed not be surprising for contemporary readers. Umprecht’s anti-Semitism is not problematized by the narrator, who later speaks of the ‘günstigen Eindruck, den ich von der Person des Herrn von Umprecht gewonnen hatte’ (the positive impression which Umprecht had made on me, W615). Schnitzler’s novella thus imitates the cultural code of anti-Semitism by using the voices of the narrator and Umprecht. However, by ‘quoting’ this code, the text also displays its inherent paralogisms or logical shortcuts: anti-Semitism does not have to explain itself any more because it is handled as a given (‘daß wir uns möglichst beleidigend gegen sie benahmen, können Sie sich denken’ – you can certainly assume that we treated the Jews as offensively as possible). Readers of 1905 might have recognized the anti-Semitic discourse as something so familiar that it could even pass unnoticed, so that ‘können Sie sich denken’ (you can certainly assume) would implicitly also address them. Used to trusting the authority of the narrator, the readers might follow the initial invitation of the text and identify with Umprecht. Only when it could already be too late, at the end of the novella, might they realize their mistake – that they are like Umprecht himself deeply ‘im Unrecht’ (in the wrong).²⁴ As the ending of the novella suggests, Umprecht’s mistake lies in the assumption that by performatively re-enacting what he saw in the image, he can avoid any real consequences. Playing a role may be understood metaphorically in the context of Umprecht’s social status which turns out to be less secure than his privileged position as representative of the norm (as opposed to Marco Polo’s position as ‘other’) might initially suggest.

In this context, it seems significant that Umprecht mentions the emptiness of the military service, ‘der nicht immer anstrengend genug war’ (which was not always exhausting enough, W603). This state of boredom does not sufficiently distract from the restrictions of individual choices. It is crucial to notice Umprecht’s somewhat hopeless situation when he meets Marco Polo: he and the other soldiers in the regiment are confronted with their lack of autonomy, as they are ‘kept’ in the village by the anonymous authority of the military. This seems to produce an uncanny, almost Kafkaesque sensation of being held in place by an obscure bureaucratic power – ‘Überdies hatte man die Möglichkeit vor Augen, jahrelang hier festsitzen zu müssen’ (W604) (Moreover, one was faced with the possibility of being stuck here for years). The exercises of the military service start to appear like empty performances which have no other purpose than keeping the military system alive. While the military structures are obviously based on a certain amount of open coercion, their functioning nevertheless depends on a general acceptance of the necessity of this coercion. If this is no longer fully the case, as in the situation described by Umprecht, the very legitimacy of one’s own function and of the system in its entirety becomes questionable, which is bound to produce feelings of anxiety.

This is also how we have to understand the irritation Umprecht and his comrades feel against the Jews precisely when their superior proves to be strikingly respectful towards the Jews. To witness this form of mutual recognition (in the Hegelian sense) between the prince and the Jews seems to upset the members of the military company. The prince’s respectful treatment of the Jews is perceived as an attack on the stability of their own social status. When Marco Polo enters the officers’ mess, they are surprised not only by his appearance but also by his non-submissive attitude. The fact that the prince not only invited the Jew but greets him by a handshake (an act of mutual recognition) is interpreted by Umprecht as provocation: ‘Er [Marco Polo] wandte sich dabei an den Prinzen, der auf ihn zutrat und ihm – natürlich ausschließlich, um uns zu ärgern – die Hand schüttelte’ (W604) (With this, he addressed the prince, who came up to him and shook his hand – of course only to irritate us). Umprecht and his comrades seem to be irritated by the shift of what they perceive as the normal world order: the Jews, by whom they find themselves surrounded, get the protection and recognition of the authority, instead of being subject to discrimination. In this way, the order imposed by the self–other recognition is here challenged. The recognition between the prince and Marco Polo points to the arbitrariness of the positions within the social order and reveals its instability. Umprecht and his comrades, then, feel surrounded by Jews whom they habitually think of as inferior, and are irritated by their major’s respectful attitude towards the Jews. The dismissive typecasting of the Jews can thus be understood as a poor attempt at regaining security concerning their own status.

Transgressions of the Norm

This general insecurity explains the range of incidents in the village, in which several members of the regiment transgress the normative boundaries of their social roles in the form of alcoholism, uncontrolled violence, insanity, and even suicide:

Mein Regiment lag damals in einem öden polnischen Nest. An Zerstreuungen gab es außer dem Dienst, der nicht immer anstrengend genug war, nur Trunk und Spiel. Überdies hatte man die Möglichkeit vor Augen, jahrelang hier festsitzen zu müssen, und nicht alle von uns verstanden es, ein Leben in dieser Trostlosigkeit mit Fassung zu tragen. Einer meiner besten Freunde hat sich im dritten Monat des dortigen Aufenthalts erschossen. Ein anderer Kamerad, früher der liebenswürdigste Offizier, fing plötzlich an, ein arger Trinker zu werden, wurde unmanierlich, aufbrausend, nahezu unzurechnungsfähig und hatte jenen Auftritt mit einem Advokaten, der ihm die Charge kostete. Der Hauptmann meiner Kompanie war verheiratet und, ich weiß nicht, ob mit oder ohne Grund, so eifersüchtig, daß er seine Frau eines Tages zum Fenster hinunterwarf. Sie blieb rätselhafterweise heil und gesund; der Mann starb im Irrenhause. Einer unserer Kadetten, bis dahin ein sehr lieber, aber ausnehmend dummer Junge, bildete sich plötzlich ein, Philosophie zu verstehen, studierte Kant und Hegel und lernte ganze Partien aus deren Werken auswendig, wie Kinder die Fiebel. (W603)

My regiment was stationed then in a boring Polish one-house town. We had nothing to distract us except for the service which was not always exhausting enough. Moreover, one had to face the possibility of being stuck here for years. Not everyone knew how to maintain their composure living in such desolation. One of my best friends shot himself at the end of his third month there. Another comrade, previously the nicest officer, suddenly began to drink heavily, he lost his manners, became choleric, almost unaccountable and finally had this encounter with an advocate, which cost him his charge. The captain of my company was married and – whether he had reason for it I don’t know – he was so jealous that one day he threw his wife out of the window. Magically, she wasn’t injured in the process, but her husband died in an asylum. One of the cadets, up until then a very nice, but exceptionally stupid boy, suddenly thought himself capable of understanding philosophy – he studied Kant and Hegel and learnt entire passages from their works by heart, like children do with their textbooks.

These cases of ‘acting out’ demonstrate the threat of a general state of crisis, which becomes urgent when members of the norm begin to cross the boundaries into the realm of the ‘other’.25 While philosophical reading does not necessarily strike one as ‘deviant behaviour’, the way the cadet seems to engage with the texts, by learning whole passages by heart, appears more like lacklustre repetition compulsions than the active understanding process of the autonomous enlightened subject. In fact, the practice of the cadet is strikingly reminiscent of a strategy adopted by Daniel Paul Schreber, whose psychical symptoms can be interpreted as a reaction to his crisis of investiture, as we know from the last chapter:

Ich habe eine größere Anzahl von Gedichten, namentlich Schiller’sche Balladen, größere Abschnitte aus Schiller’schen und Göthe’schen [sic] Dramen, aber auch Opern-Arien und Scherzgedichte […] auswendig gelernt, die ich dann im Stillen verbotenus [sic] aufsage. Auf den poetischen Werth der Gedichte kommt es dabei natürlich an und für sich nicht an; jede noch so unbedeutende Reimerei […] ist als geistige Nahrung immer noch Goldes werth gegenüber dem entsetzlichen Blödsinne, der sonst meinen Nerven anzuhören zugemuthet wird.26

I have learned by heart a large number of poems, particularly Schiller’s ballads, longer passages from Schiller’s and Goethe’s plays, but also opera arias and joke rhymes. The aesthetic value of these poems is rather insignificant; every meaningless rhyme […] as food for my mind is worth a ton of gold as compared to the terrible nonsense which my nerves have to listen to otherwise.

Schreber thus counters the feeling of heteronomy engendered through his compulsive repetitive thoughts by the active and self-inflicted repetition of poetic language.²⁷ Similarly the cadet might counter the automated repetition compulsion of the military service with the mindless repetition of the works of Kant and Hegel. That he chooses these two out of all philosophers might be understood as a hint that the crisis present among the regiment has to be regarded in a broader context: I have already mentioned in the last chapter that the dependency of social identities on repeated performative rites of institution poses a paradox, as it contradicts the Kantian claim of autonomy upon which the post-Enlightenment bourgeois order relies. The Kantian subject does not just carry out a mimetic repetition of the moral law, but has to become the law himself. The mimetic repetition of the law as an externally imposed system is in turn a marker of ‘otherness’ – the practice of women and Jews who were denied the capability of active self-legislation and accordingly had to ‘act as if’.28 Thus, the cadet’s philosophical reading habit fits cleanly into the list of transgression into the realm of the ‘other’ committed by the others in the regiment.

In contrast to these rather remarkable ‘exits’, Umprecht’s behaviour seems to follow quite the opposite ‘strategy’. He does not ‘act out’, even though he describes his own reaction idiomatically as boredom close to madness: ‘Was mich anbelangt, so tat ich nichts als mich langweilen, und zwar in einer so ungeheuerlichen Weise, daß ich an manchen Nachmittagen […] fürchtete, verrückt zu werden’ (W603) (As where I was concerned, I did nothing but feel bored, and I was bored in such a terrible way that I feared on some days that I would lose my mind). This might still hint at unstable mental health, as various critics have pointed out,²⁹ but with regard to the numerous other cases of mental health problems around him, it is important not to reduce the plot of the novella to the description of an individual pathology, but rather to stress that this instability appears to be a symptom of that of the dominant order and its interpretative patterns. If the performative demands of one’s social role begin to feel like a heteronomous force, its fate-like quality becomes palpable, which seems to produce the desire to ‘act out’ in one way or the other. We have already seen in the last chapter that this desire, which results from a weakened identification with one’s own social position, may lead to an idealizing mystification of the place of the ‘other’. This explains the rather uncanny and ambivalent role of Marco Polo: he appears as both challenger and seducer by unsettling the (power) structures of the dominant order and by promising insight into a realm inaccessible to those aligned with the norm.³⁰

The Seductive Horror of ‘Otherness’

Marco Polo’s performance is accompanied by the obligatory moment of Grauen (horror): ‘Nicht ohne Grauen sahen wir alle zu, wie der philosophische Kadett, in Schlaf versetzt, den Befehlen des Zauberers gehorchend, zuerst durchs offene Fenster sprang’ (W605) (We observed, not without a feeling of horror, how the philosophical cadet was put into a somnambulist state and, following the magician’s orders, jumped out of the window). The uncanny moment is thus engendered by a demonstration of one of them succumbing to a heteronomous force: without even knowing, the cadet obeys Marco Polo’s orders and displays a completely automated conduct under the suspension of his autonomy. This is, then, a classical uncanny moment that brings to the surface what is familiar and known but has been repressed, particularly in evidence in the compulsion to repeat.31 The confrontation with this performance of heteronomy touches on the repressed repetition compulsion connected to the symbolic function of the members of the military and their social destinies in the broader sense. Thus, the Grauen (horror) sets in because the automated conduct displayed by the cadet is a symptom of (Romantic) madness, as we have seen in the last chapter, but is at the same time also uncannily familiar to their own life in the barracks. The prince’s question, with which he comments on the events during Marco Polo’s performance, is crucial in our context: ‘Wo fängt das Wunder an?’ (W606) (Where does the miracle begin?). According to Manfred Schneider, the ‘Wundersinn ersetzt den Kontingenzsinn, um den Verstand vor dem Grauen zu bewahren’ (the sense for miracles replaces the sense for contingency, in order to protect reason from horror).³² In this narrative too, then, the complete abolition of any sense of contingency follows an experience of Grauen (horror), when Umprecht from this moment on experiences everything in relation to his ‘destiny’.

The fact that Marco Polo presents himself as puppet master is a further threat to the superior position of the gentiles. This is stressed even more when Marco Polo goes on to assume the role of Umprecht’s challenger by implicitly calling him a coward: ‘Der Herr Leutnant haben Angst’ (W606) (You are afraid, Lieutenant). For Umprecht, this challenging statement may release a repressed fear of the revenge of the suppressed ‘other’, in line with the Hegelian master–slave dialectic. By performing a speech act that he (as both a civilian and a Jew) officially has no legitimate right to perform, Marco Polo also undermines the power of investiture. While the right to perform certain acts – like a challenge for a duel – depends on the symbolic function of the individual, performing an act one is not legitimately allowed to not only functions as a form of appropriation of that right but also points to the ‘missing link’ at the origin of the chain of performances in every legal system.33 Umprecht’s reaction is conditioned by the military code of honour: to feel fear might be understood as cowardice, which is not acceptable for a lieutenant. Thus he turns around quickly, to see whether anyone could have heard the magician’s verdict – ‘aber wir waren schon durch das Kasernentor geschritten und befanden uns auf der Landstraße’ (W606) (but we had already gone through the gate of the barack and were standing on a country road). Marco Polo has led him out of the realm of military structures and it seems as if the codes and rules have momentarily lost their power. In this way, Marco Polo threatens not only Umprecht individually but also the entire system, in which the latter is a representative of the norm while Marco Polo is restricted to the place of the ‘other’.

While this place of the ‘other’ is represented in Schnitzler’s narratives generally as precarious, a certain element of freedom also appears to be suggested in this novella. Umprecht and his comrades are entrenched in the village, while Marco Polo travels, returning to the village only during the summer. This might explain why, while on the surface of it Marco Polo seems to repulse Umprecht and the other members of the regiment, they also seem to be fascinated by the magician. Especially when Umprecht asks him secretively to foretell his future, the encounter between the two men seems almost of an erotic intimacy.³⁴ Before presenting Umprecht the prophetic image, he tells him: ‘Kommen Sie hinaus, […] in den Hof. Mir is lieber bei Mondschein’ (W606) (Come outside, Lieutenant, into the courtyard. I prefer the moonlight). And von Umrecht remembers: ‘Er hielt mich an der Hand, und ich folgte ihm durch die offene Tür ins Freie’ (W606) (He was holding my hand, and I followed him through the open door outside). Marco Polo leads Umprecht outside of the determining military structures into the court, scene for a certain kind of ‘courtship’. The seductive element of this moonlight encounter lies in the possible mystification of the outsider position of the ‘other’, which seems to hold a space for freedom and emancipation independent from the restrictions of social norms, but is also linked to knowledge. Marco Polo seems to have access to an understanding of something that lies outside the social order, because he himself is not securely located within it. His knowledge (or alleged knowledge) is seductive, because he promises to make sense of a chaotic and incommensurable reality: by foretelling Umprecht’s destiny, he would assure him of a life individually mapped out for him, of a secured position in the world, which seems to be no longer provided by his status in the military.

We see here once more how the stereotype of the ‘other’ is ambivalently charged and also contains elements of idealizing mystification. The position of the ‘other’ stands outside of the norm and is thus obviously precarious. However, as seen in the previous two chapters, for Schnitzler’s protagonists, there seems to be a potential freedom of transgression associated with this position, which gives ‘otherness’ an additional positive connotation. For Umprecht, Marco Polo seems to have the ‘privilege’ of not being determined by a symbolic function within the norm due to his position of alterity. It thus appears once more that the actual higher power that determines the behaviour of people like Umprecht is attributable to the performative restrictions and instructions of their social role. This would also explain why – despite his initial aversion – Umprecht actively seeks out Marco Polo and asks him to tell him his future.

The Higher Power of Destiny and the Enlightened Subject

I suggest that we should understand Umprecht’s acceptance of Marco Polo’s image as his destiny in this way: the assumption of a metaphysical higher power gives an explanation for the feeling of restraint and brings relief from the claim of autonomy the post-Enlightenment order relies on. When Umprecht claims, ‘Und mir war es immer klarer, daß ich mit irgend einer unbekannten höhnischen Macht in einem ungleichen Kampf begriffen war’ (W612) (and it became clearer and clearer to me that I was fighting an uneven battle with an unknown taunting power),35 this is strikingly reminiscent of the ‘obscene and malevolent presence that appears to have a direct hold on one’s inner parts’ of which Santner speaks with regard to the repetition compulsion of social destinies.³⁶ Umprecht’s belief in destiny is thus presented in the novella as a form of escapist coping strategy: while others around him escape into alcoholism, madness, and death, Umprecht becomes obsessed with the idea of the power of destiny. Even though seeing himself on his deathbed is obviously uncomfortable on a conscious level, the fact that Umprecht accepts the image as prophecy so willingly, and that he from then on arranges his life accordingly, hints at the possibility that he also gains something from this terrifying idea: not only does the assumption of destiny give an explanation for the feeling of heteronomous coercion without calling the dominant order into question, it also provides Umprecht with the sensation of being somewhat ‘special’ or ‘chosen’. In this way, it reassures him of his individuality as opposed to the uncanny feeling of being reduced to performing a social role, while being denied any individual agency.

Moreover, unlike the other forms of escapism, the belief in destiny does not require any form of ‘acting out’ or transgression: it becomes clear in the text that Umprecht is most concerned with hierarchical structures and the code of honour. There is a range of passages in which he is afraid that his behaviour might be seen as deviating from the requirements of the norm. Thus, while others around him escape from the uncomfortable situation via transgression, Umprecht clings to the social structures. In this way, Marco Polo’s allegedly prophetic image turns out to be the perfect replacement for the weakened function of his social destiny. In the end, it literally provides him with a new role, including stage directions and the requirement of repetitive performances: ‘Wir probieren seit einigen Wochen Tag für Tag, ich habe die Situation, die mir heute bevorsteht, schon fünfzehn- oder zwanzigmal durchgemacht’ (W613) (We have been practising every day for a few weeks, I have gone through the situation, which is lying ahead of me today, already fifteen to twenty times). This is, ironically, highly reminiscent of the repetitive exercises of the military service that Umprecht dreaded so much at the time.

Umprecht’s life is highly influenced by maintaining appearances, giving performances, in order to play the part of the independent self-determined male subject that the norm requires him to be. It has to be ascribed to this role when he desperately stresses his autonomy, claiming: ‘Vor allem war es mir klar, daß ich mein Schicksal vollkommen in der Hand hatte’ (W609) (above all, it was clear to me that I was in full control of my destiny). It is striking that this statement, which is the direct reaction to Marco Polo’s image (read from his hand), mirrors and contradicts his other, later utterance quoted above: ‘Und mir war es immer klarer, daß ich mit irgend einer unbekannten höhnischen Macht in einem ungleichen Kampf begriffen war’ (W612) (and it became clearer and clearer to me that I was fighting an uneven battle with an unknown taunting power). Significantly, both utterances seem to describe what Umprecht perceives as reality: ‘it was clear to me’ can be used as a synonym for ‘I knew’, which generally implies that what the subject thinks to be true actually is true. Thus, Umprecht as narrator does not maintain any authorial distance to what he is recounting retrospectively: in both cases he presents what he thought to be true as knowledge so that it sounds as if he still believes it to be true.

It is the tension between these two contradictory sentences that marks Umprecht’s conflict. He is supposed to represent the rational and enlightened subject, thus expected to be responsible for his own actions, to be autonomous in his decisions. The first of the sentences can thus be seen as a kind of knee-jerk reaction in which Umprecht reminds himself of his social role: he claims his rationality and autonomy as an enlightened male subject. The second sentence demonstrates that this feeling of autonomy has become unstable. This is why we could read Umprecht’s conflict as the looming sensation of his incapability to fulfil the demands of the role of the Kantian subject, which I have already mentioned earlier and which Santner has proposed to be ‘the central paradox of modernity: that the subject is solicited by a will to autonomy in the name of the very community that is thereby undermined, whose very substance thereby passes over into the subject’.37 While the secular societies of the post-Enlightenment eras are based on the idea of the autonomous subject, the functioning of the same societies depends on the submission of individuals to norms and regulated performances. This is why too radical an understanding of autonomy threatens the social order. In order to maintain the idea of the enlightened and autonomous subject, the community, i.e. the social order, has to ‘pass over into the subject’,³⁸ thus be fully internalized and incorporated as ‘natural essence’ on the one hand, or freely chosen on the other. The process of internalization is obviously not only the case in modern and post-modern societies, but rather seems to be the foundation of any social order. However, the claim of autonomy requires a much higher level of identification with the given structures and one’s own position within them. When those structures cease to be able to address the subjects sufficiently, this identification is weakened.

In Umprecht’s case, it becomes clear that despite his strong conscious identification with the social norms, he nevertheless also feels the urge to overcome the role of the enlightened male subject and that the insecurity concerning his social status is not only tied to the specific situation in the Polish village. Even years after the frustrating military service, when he is married and can call himself a proud land owner, he seems to feel the longing to escape this bourgeois existence. Significantly, the looming fulfilment of the prophecy gives him the licence to have thoughts of transgression. Since the prophetic image showed him on his deathbed surrounded by mourning wife and children, he imagines: ‘wenn ich mich von meiner Frau und den Kindern trennte, so müßte ja all die Gefahr schwinden und ich hätte das Schicksal zum Narren gehalten’ (W610) (if I left my wife and children, all the danger would have to vanish, and I would have fooled destiny). The use of the word ‘destiny’ may have a double meaning here. It obviously refers to the higher power Umprecht assumes to be behind Marco Polo’s prophecy. However, what this fantasy entails is in fact the avoidance not only of what he assumes to be his metaphysical destiny but also of his social destiny in the Bourdieusian sense. While he does not give in to the temptation and tries to rationalize his superstitious fears, and so, at this point, remains within the boundaries of the norm, such a transgressive act is precisely the scenario he re-enacts in the play written by the narrator: here, a man finds himself suddenly longing for adventures and leaves his family behind. However, alone on the first day of his escape he experiences so many atrocities that he decides to return home only to fall victim to a murder.

Thus, the moral of the play seems to be: if you fail to perform the duties of your social role (in this case, head of the family, husband, father), you will be punished. However, this is not congruent with Schnitzler’s narrative itself, even though it does conclude with Umprecht’s real death. Taking into account the conventional narrative style of Die Weissagung (The Prophecy), we might suspect another, rather ironic narrative voice behind the apparent one of the narrator, which exposes the narrator and his perspective as conservative and narrow-minded.39 Thus, while the play within the novella condemns the urge to transgress the boundaries of the norm, the novella itself does not give an equally clear-cut moralistic answer. Umprecht’s eagerness to play the role can be explained by the fact that the play allows him to transgress the boundaries of the norm in a fictional frame – thus to make believe. At the same time, he has a role to play, to follow the script and stage directions – to do what he has been assigned to do. Nevertheless, his participation in the play makes it possible for him to keep up the illusion of his own autonomy: after all, playing the part is understood as a strategy to beat his destiny at its own game. In this way, he presents himself as an active subject who takes his destiny into his own hands. However, all of Umprecht’s strategies to regain a secured sense of his own position within the norm as autonomous subject turn out to be a dead end. Schnitzler’s protagonist never reaches a critical position towards the normative restrictions of his social role, which is why he proves to be indeed unable to escape his destiny. That this failure has much to do with the power of cultural narratives will become clear in the next section.

Recognition Scenes

The definite turning point, sealing Umprecht’s inferior position in view of the power of destiny, is the moment when Umprecht receives his scar: in his premonition he sees himself on his presumed deathbed, bearing a scar on the forehead. In the years following the premonition he tries to avoid situations in which he is more likely to be injured in the face. However, perhaps significantly on a train journey,40 Umprecht becomes the victim of an apparently arbitrary attempted act of assassination. A sharp stone thrown through the window of the speeding train injures him on the forehead, which results in the dreaded scar. For Umprecht, this signifies the definite turning point, which seems to seal his defeat against the malicious power of destiny. The scar belongs to the classic properties of a recognition scene, and we might understand this passage as such: Umprecht recognizes the scar as a further completion of what he assumes to be a prophecy. When he looks into a mirror, he recognizes his own face as the one he saw in the image induced by Marco Polo. Terence Cave describes recognition scenes as a shift from ignorance to knowledge,⁴¹ and Umprecht seems indeed to experience precisely such a shift:

Nach ein paar Wochen leuchtete sie [the scar] auf meiner Stirn an derselben Stelle, wo ich sie in jenem Traume gesehen hatte. Und mir war es immer klarer, daß ich mit irgend einer unbekannten höhnischen Macht in einem ungleichen Kampf begriffen war, und ich sah dem Tag, wo das letzte in Erfüllung treten sollte, mit wachsender Unruhe entgegen. (W612)

After a few weeks the scar was shining on my forehead precisely on the spot which I had seen in my dream. And it became clearer and clearer to me that I was fighting an uneven battle with an unknown taunting power, and so I anticipated the day when the last part should become true with increasing dread.

We have already seen that this statement is paired with an earlier one, directly after he is confronted with Marco Polo’s prophetic image: ‘Vor allem war es mir klar, daß ich mein Schicksal vollkommen in der Hand hatte’ (W609) (above all, it was clear to me that I was in full control of my destiny). This indeed seems to mark, then, a shift from ignorance to knowledge (‘klar’ – ‘klarer’, ‘clear’ – ‘clearer’), but we have also seen that the second sentence does not fully erase the truth-value of the first one, as Umprecht also does not distance himself from it. This, however, seems to be in line with Cave’s description of recognition scenes, as the knowledge provided through them is always a shifting one:

[…] recognition scenes in literary works are by their nature ‘problem’ moments rather than moments of satisfaction and completion. Anagnorisis seems at first sight to be a paradigm of narrative satisfaction: it answers questions, restores identity and symmetry, and makes a whole hidden structure of relations intelligible. Yet the satisfaction is somehow excessive, the reassurance too easy; the structure is visibly prone to collapse. An ignorance which was never wholly innocent turns for the moment into an implausible and precarious knowledge; the apparently opposite poles of knowledge and ignorance meet in surreptitious complicity […].42

Umprecht’s quick jump to the conclusion that the scar proves that there is a higher power at work can be understood as such an ‘excessive’ recognition scene. It provides Umprecht with an ordering frame and a prompt explanation for his feeling of lack of autonomy. If we bear in mind that this negation of contingency can be considered a symptom of Romantic madness that is supposed to keep the sensation of Grauen (horror) at bay, it is safe to assume that the causal structure Umprecht constructs here is indeed ‘prone to collapse’.

Umprecht’s death, finally, is the result of a very similar excessive recognition scene: in his prophetic image, he sees a bald man with a green shawl and glasses running towards the death scene. However, while this is not part of the narrator’s script, it turns out that he had planned initially that ‘der wahnsinnige Vater der Frau, von dem im ersten Akt die Rede ist, […] zum Schluß auf die Szene stürzen sollte’ (W614) (the woman’s insane father, who is mentioned in the first act, was supposed to run on stage at the end of the play). When Umprecht performs the last scene of the play, a man who perfectly fits the description actually appears on stage. He turns out to be the flautist in the orchestra. The wind has blown away his wig, and, as he runs after it, he involuntarily and unknowingly takes on the role of the ‘insane father’. This seems to seal Umprecht’s fate: ‘seine Blicke sind starr, wie verzückt auf den Mann gerichtet; er will etwas reden – er vermag es offenbar nicht – er sinkt zurück’ (W617) (his gaze is transfixed on the man, almost rapt; he tries to speak – is apparently unable to do so – he is sinking back).⁴³ Umprecht recognizes the man as the last detail of his vision. The bald man is thus the figure that explains Umprecht’s death in both readings: for Umprecht himself, and as the narrator suggests, he is proof that a force outside the grasp of rationality must have been at work in the line of events that necessarily leads to his death. Critics have argued convincingly that this must be the moment where Umprecht completely surrenders, accepts his ‘fate’, and accordingly he dies, as Robert Weigel puts it, ‘medizinisch gesprochen durch Herzversagen’ (from the medical perspective, because of heart failure).44 This statement implies that we have to assume that the novella’s course of events can be attributed to the phenomenon of autosuggestion. Seen in this way, we can find a rational explanation of Umprecht’s death: he believes that his fate has been sealed, when he sees the bald man, and this is why he dies, not because there is actually a higher power at work. However, it seems to me that such a rationalist approach would be more appropriate if we were confronted with a newspaper report that turned out to be a hoax (‘this is not what actually happened, what actually happened is this …’). As Schnitzler’s text is a work of fiction, we should perhaps be less concerned with finding a way to explain what ‘actually’ happened, but rather with the way the text itself highlights its own fictional quality: the scenes of recognition that only seemingly motivate the plot as well as the three narrators, precisely by claiming plausibility and authenticity, draw the reader’s attention on the paralogical structure of the narrative.

The novella as a whole fits Cave’s description of recognition very nicely: in various moments the three narrators seem to provide evidence for the inevitability and truthfulness of the events, which do not hold out against a closer scrutiny.⁴⁵ Moreover, the text provides multiple recognition scenes for the reader, especially on the level of genre and the association thereof with certain reading expectations. Freud’s comment on the text implies that it initially had him expect a realistic setting, which made him wait for the rational explanation in the end. Stylistic elements, like the conventional narration or the description of social milieus and issues (military hierarchy, anti-Semitism), must have raised that expectation – they were recognized as markers of a certain narrative genre. At the same time, the text introduces more and more elements generally attributed to fantastic fiction and that of Schauerromantik, which invites a completely different reading. Thus, the reader, like Umprecht, is confronted with moments of apparent recognition (‘first I thought this was a realistic narrative, but now I recognize that it must be a case of fantastic literature’), which, however, do not provide complete satisfaction. This is why neither an affirmative reading of the text as fantastic novella, nor the completely rational denouement of the events,46 seems absolutely convincing.

For Cave, the motif of recognition can be seen as synechdoche for literature as a whole, in the sense that it ‘represents the most quintessentially fictional type of plot: it is the signature of a fiction, the local detail that stands for the whole’.⁴⁷ This means that recognition scenes within the plot are also recognition scenes on the level of narrative structure – narrative turns that we recognize for what they are and that we are ready to accept in and as fiction. This yet again engenders an effect of Romantic irony, in the sense that the literary text itself refers to its own constructedness. And indeed, besides the moment of Grauen (horror) already mentioned, we recognize in the text a range of Romantic and Hoffmannesque elements: through the play-within-a-story as well as the story-within-a-story-within-a-story (evoked by the three narrative perspectives of the editor, the narrator, and Umprecht himself), the aesthetic and fictional quality of the narration is emphasized.⁴⁸ And of course, Umprecht’s strategy to transform the prophetic image into an aesthetic one by re-enacting it on stage takes up Hoffmann’s fascination with the scenic and spectacle.⁴⁹ Moreover, this transformation from a prophetic image into an aesthetic one is precisely the process described by the stranger in Hoffmann’s Doge und Dogaresse (Doge and Dogaressa) already mentioned in the last chapter: the artist ‘receives’ an image (‘daß in dem Gemüt des Künstlers ein Bild aufgeht’)50 and thus inspired creates the artwork. The artist and his artwork, then, become a sort of medium through which reality becomes perceivable: according to this kind of Romantic theory, art is understood as ‘wahrnehmungsermöglichendes und wahrnehmungserweiterndes Organ’ (an institution/organ, which enables and amplifies cognition).⁵¹ The artist thus functions as medium of a higher power, while art is a mimetic or providential representation of human destinies.

This understanding of art became popular again in Schnitzler’s time.⁵² Also the narrator in Die Weissagung (The Prophecy) is clearly influenced by it. He admits that he is partly glad to accept Umprecht’s account of a higher power, as it allows him to see himself as an instrument ‘eines über uns waltenden Willens’ (W615) (a will ruling over us). However, through the multiple inconsistencies in the novella that seem to undermine both the narrator’s and Umprecht’s perspective, Schnitzler’s text mocks the tendentious mystification easily deduced from this kind of reflection on art. Thus, besides the boundary between norm and ‘other’, Die Weissagung (The Prophecy) also addresses another kind – that between life and art or between reality and fiction. The theme of bringing images to life and capturing life in aesthetic images is prefigured in the performances at the estate of Freiherr von Schottenegg: the narrator remembers Umprecht from his participation in ‘lebenden Bildern’ (W601) (living images). Also, Umprecht’s attempt at avoiding his real death by enacting it on stage, and the failure of this attempt, bring to the fore the blurred demarcation lines between reality and fiction.⁵³

As in Flucht in die Finsternis, we are confronted here with an uncanny fading of differences. As this merging of play and reality reaches its climax when Umprecht really dies just moments after performing his death on stage, it might not be surprising that the sensation the narrator feels as a witness is the by now notorious Grauen (horror): ‘Ich selbst bin am selben Abend noch ins Tal hinuntergeeilt, von Entsetzen geschüttelt. In einem sonderbaren Grauen habe ich mich nicht entschließen können, das Schloß wieder zu betreten’ (W618) (I myself hurried down to the valley on the same night, shivering with terror. Feeling a strange horror, I have not been able to make myself set foot in the castle again). It has become clear by now that the Grauen (horror) is a recurring Romantic element in Schnitzler’s texts. It thus engenders a moment of recognition for the reader, referring both to the Romantic fiction it seems to be ‘borrowed’ from and also to other Schnitzler texts that feature similar scenarios of Romantic affect. It therefore takes on the function of the scar motif in classical recognition plots: ‘The scar is a mark of treacherously concealed narrative waiting to break the surface and create a scandal, it is a sign that the story, like the wound, may always be reopened’.54

I would like to suggest that Grauen (horror), like the scar, also refers to the ‘scandal’ that disturbed Freud and other critics. The fading of differences between reality and fiction (or between a realistic and a fantastic plot on the level of the reader), which occurs in Die Weissagung (The Prophecy), is a necessary part of our perception of reality. ‘We all create images of things we fear and glorify’, Gilman writes about the production of stereotypes, ‘[t]hese images never remain abstractions: we understand them as real-world entities’.⁵⁵ The merging of constructed images and our experience of reality is thus a process that is happening all the time. However, when this process becomes conscious it can obviously have an unsettling effect on our perception of the social reality around us and of our position within it. The way Die Weissagung (The Prophecy) plays with the blurring of generic boundaries may remind us of the presence of this process in our own perceptions of reality.

As we will see in what follows, the short narrative Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief is also concerned with the blurring of boundaries and the fading of differences on several levels, resulting in the familiar sensation of Grauen (horror). While this text does not explicitly play with the fantastic, it nevertheless uses Gothic elements precisely when the protagonist is confronted with the shattering of the boundaries that secure the ‘self’ as distinct from the ‘other’.

Male Suicide as Destiny and Stereotypes of Blackness in Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief (Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter)

The short narrative Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief (Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter) was first published in 1902 in Die Zeit. In contrast to Die Weissagung (The Prophecy) with its three narrative levels, this text is not framed by any authorial narrative voice and consists only of the suicide note of the lower-middle-class bank accountant Andreas Thameyer. He claims that he has to commit suicide in order to re-establish his honour and that of his wife, who has given birth to a Black child.56 Despite the fact that he and his wife are both white, Thameyer dismisses any rumours of her infidelity. Referring to the allegedly scientifically confirmed phenomenon of maternal impression (‘Versehen der Frauen’ – literally: female ‘mis-seeing’), he argues that the reason for the child’s skin colour is the shock his wife experienced when looking at a group of Black men who were camping in the Viennese Prater. This is certainly a reference to the so-called ‘Völkerschauen’ (Peoples Shows) between 1896 and 1901, where members of the Ashanti people were literally exhibited and allegedly ‘authentically’ staged on open display for the Austrian onlookers.⁵⁷ To support his point, Thameyer mentions so-called scientific sources and other writings, which all promote the theory of maternal impression: the possibility of an unborn child taking on the looks of someone or something who or which had left a deep impression on the pregnant woman. Thameyer’s theoretical sources range from anecdotes by Martin Luther and the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) to writings by the contemporary scientists Julius Preuss and Gerhard von Welsenburg, who indeed published studies on the hypothesis of maternal impression in the 1890s.58 Despite his own proclaimed conviction of his wife’s fidelity and the theoretical backup for this conviction, however, Thameyer insists on the necessity of his suicide. Only his death, it seems, can seal the re-establishment of his family’s reputation and honour.

My reading of this short text will be tripartite. First, I will focus on the power of social destiny that is expressed in the text through Thameyer’s insistence on the absolute necessity of his suicide. Compared with the other Schnitzlerian protagonists analyzed in this study, Thameyer represents an interesting exception: he does not explicitly turn to his metaphysical destiny in order to escape the normative pressure of his social destiny. Rather, he embraces his social destiny with such devotion that he decides to sacrifice himself when he is no longer able to fulfil it. Thameyer’s letter demonstrates that social destinies are indeed ‘fatal – by which I mean mortal’, as Bourdieu would have it.⁵⁹ The second part of my reading is thus concerned with how the text addresses the way these knowledge systems inform the cementation of stereotypes. The ironical use of the theory of maternal impression points up the way stereotypes are reinforced through concepts of biological difference, but are challenged when biological sameness between self and ‘other’ becomes evident. The third section of my analysis will then turn to the way the text blends not only literary and non-literary discourses, but also blurs generic boundaries. I will show that the text uses elements of the Gothic to negotiate Thameyer’s unsettling experience with ‘otherness’.

Necessity and the Compulsive Performance of Social Destiny

Similar to Marco Polo’s challenging of the military officers in Die Weissagung (The Prophecy), the unknown father of the child has performed a right he does not have in fin de siècle Viennese society. By doing so, he has challenged boundaries that forbid such a transgression in the first place. The individual transgression makes visible the possibility of transgression of social boundaries in general and exposes the boundaries around the privileged norm as constructed. Accordingly, the legitimacy of Thameyer’s position within the norm has become questionable. The birth of the child clearly has confronted Thameyer with an experience in which the boundaries between self and ‘other’ become blurred. As Michael Boehringer puts it: ‘Via a progeny that signifies the “other”, […], the protagonist’s masculinity can no longer pass by without notice; rather, his gendered self, his experience of being a man, becomes marked and open to interrogation’.60 Thameyer’s letter may therefore be understood as an arguably failed performance of masculinity, which seeks to rehabilitate this status. Similarly to Schnitzler’s famous Leutnant Gustl (Lieutenant Gustl, 1900), we encounter here a male subject whose legitimate status (as a military officer in Gustl’s case, as a bourgeois patriarch in Thameyer’s) has been challenged in such a disruptive manner that self-annihilation seems the only possible solution to protect that status. Thus, the text demonstrates how social destinies can in fact be ‘fatal’.⁶¹ While Thameyer does not refer to his metaphysical destiny, he presents his situation as one that does not leave him any choice:

Die Menschen sind dumm und armselig, sie können, wie ich mich ausdrücken möchte, in unser Inneres nicht hineinblicken, sie sind schadenfroh und höchst gemein! Aber nun werden sie alle verstummen … ja nun werden sie alle sagen: wir haben unrecht [sic] getan, wir sehen es ein, deine Frau ist dir treu gewesen, und es war gar nicht notwendig, daß du dich umbringst … Aber ich sage euch: es ist notwendig! (AT516)

But people are stupid, and they cannot, as I should like to say, peer into our inner selves. They are malignant and mean. But now they will all be quiet…. Yes, now they will all say: ‘We have done wrong, we see now that his wife was faithful and it was not necessary for him to do away with himself.’… But I tell you it is necessary!⁶²

The emphasis on necessity, with which Thameyer repeatedly explains his suicide, implies that there is a higher power at work, which leaves him no alternative. Thameyer presents his suicide as the only possible defence of his wife’s honour. However, Thameyer concedes that the suicide cannot speak for itself either: ‘Aber ich habe das alles aufgeschrieben, denn ich finde es notwendig, daß diese Sache völlig klargestellt werde. Würde ich das nicht tun, wer weiß, ob die Leute nicht in ihrer Erbärmlichkeit nicht endlich noch sagten: er hat sich umgebracht, weil seine Frau ihn betrogen hat’ (AT519) (But I have written this all down, for I want it to be perfectly clear to the world. If I did not do it, who knows but that people in their wickedness would say: ‘He killed himself because his wife deceived him’).63 In this way, the suicide becomes a performative act which is supposed to constitute a reality, while the letter is an attempt at regulating the most obvious interpretation of the suicidal act. Of course, the mere existence of the letter is evidence of the failure of this performance: if a performative act needs further explaining it has missed its goal. Interestingly, the same can be said about art. If an artist needs to provide a manual on how the artwork has to be read, one would probably assume that the latter has failed, at least in the sense of bringing across the authorial intention. The fact that Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief is told without any narrative frame can therefore be understood as implicit aesthetic comment that the letter – in the form of a literary text – does indeed speak for itself.⁶⁴ Thameyer’s complaint that people are too stupid to understand his inner motives becomes confuted in the way that the text practically deconstructs itself before the reader’s eyes, laying open Thameyer’s real fears behind the official reasons for his suicide. As readers of the novella we are able to interpret Thameyer’s motivations and thus can at least try to look into his ‘inner self’.

Thameyer’s letter displays his struggle for agency and against the experience of loss of control. It is striking that his attempts at re-establishing his wife’s, and so his own, honour have a pointedly performative and theatrical character: ‘Daher frage ich laut: (ich gebrauche diesen Ausdruck absichtlich, obwohl dies schriftliche Aufzeichnungen sind) – ich frage mit vernehmlicher Stimme: Was soll ich tun? Was bleibt mir übrig?’ (AT517) (Therefore, I asked [sic, present tense in the original German] out loud (I use this expression on purpose) – I asked in an audible voice: ‘What shall I do? What is there left for me?’).65 With this emphasis on vocal articulation, Thameyer seems to adopt the position of the righteous Christian man who will not give up his stance even at the cost of his own life. It is certainly not coincidental that he mentions Martin Luther as one of his warrantors: the stylistic phrasing of his pseudo-rhetorical questions is reminiscent of proverbial utterance attributed to the latter: ‘Hier stehe ich und kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir, Amen’ (Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. Amen). In this way, Thameyer invokes a higher power by creating, as it were, a mise en scène of destiny. He inscribes himself into the tradition of white Christian masculinity, culminating in an act of self-sacrifice, which evokes, of course, the passion of Christ. Boehringer also claims that ‘Thameyer performs a final act of masculinity: he utilizes self-sacrifice, the ultimate discursive formulation of maleness, to prove his own manhood’.⁶⁶

While this is certainly a convincing interpretation of Thameyer’s intention, I would suggest that the gendering of the sacrificial suicide is already less unequivocal than it might seem. As Elisabeth Bronfen demonstrates, there is a long tradition in cultural representations of female (self-)sacrifice for the sake of the re-establishment of the patriarchal order.⁶⁷ In this way, we could say that even the suicidal act as alleged ‘seal’ for Thameyer’s assertions of masculinity is ambivalent in its gendered coding. If Thameyer’s suicide can function as a reaffirmation of masculinity, it is as a general concept, but not for this male subject himself: the child is not only proof of his wife’s transgression, but also a sign of his emasculation. His position as representative of the bourgeois male norm is not compatible with a Black child. Since he is no longer able to fulfil the requirements of an ostensibly superior white bourgeois masculinity, his annihilation protects the norm, but evidently not his own status within it.

For Thameyer himself, it appears that the theatrical performance of bourgeois masculinity suffices – barely – to secure his escape from the no longer bearable confrontation with the requirements of the bourgeois norm and his own insufficiency. While the transgression of the norm in his own family is the reason for the social shame he has to face, he then uses the same social structures to get the threat to his family’s reputation back under control. Although his suicide does not prove any of his unconvincing arguments for his wife’s faithfulness, he might be right in one point, at least to some extent: ‘denn wenn ich tot bin, werdet ihr meine Frau nicht mehr verhöhnen und werdet über mich nicht lachen’ (AT519) (for when I am dead you will not scoff at my wife, and you will not laugh about me).68 The social code which forbids speaking ill of the dead might indeed rein in the worst of the gossip. It will, of course, not change what people think about Thameyer’s fatherhood, but this seems to matter less, as long as the public shaming comes to an end. In this way, the text demonstrates how the social conventions, which are (no longer) apt to provide stability or reassure the individual of their secured status, nevertheless reproduce themselves through the subject.⁶⁹ Therefore, his social destiny becomes a compulsive performance that is supposed to culminate in his own annihilation.⁷⁰

The fact that Thameyer’s coping with the threatening de-legitimization of his social status does not explicitly involve the invocation of his individual metaphysical destiny may be linked to his slightly less privileged position. As a bank accountant, his social status may be described as slightly lower than the noblemen and upper-middle-class bureaucrats, doctors, and businessmen in the other prose texts. The idea of being destined for something special is a feeling of entitlement that the other characters easily accept and pursue, but it does not even occur to the less privileged Thameyer. His need to be normal is clearly much stronger than his need to be ‘special’. In want of a metaphysical higher power, he has to cling to his social destiny and to the knowledge systems that defend his legitimacy in the realm of the norm by reinforcing stereotypical ideas of racial and sexual difference.

Biological Difference and the Stereotypes of ‘Otherness’

Instead of seeking solace from a priest, Thameyer turns to his family doctor, who indeed provides a form of superficial comfort through the studies of Welsenburg and Preuss and the theory of maternal impression. Thameyer tries to negate the possibility of an active female eroticism, which would accord his wife a sexual desire independent of him, through this theory of maternal impression. This, however, must fail, as the theory implies that the woman’s gaze becomes an active force, which seems to overpower the male role in the process of reproduction.71 Moreover, in Thameyer’s case, the theory does only negate the actual intercourse between his wife and another man, but not the overpowering effect of the mere presence of the Black men. Thameyer’s description of the ‘Riesenmenschen mit den glühenden Augen und den großen schwarzen Bärten’ (AT519) (giants with glowing eyes and long black beards)⁷² barely hides the fear of a superior Black potency, which corresponds to the stereotype of ‘the black as the icon of sexuality’ in Schnitzler’s time.⁷³ In fact, this stereotype can also be found as early as in Lavater’s physiognomic fragments which I have discussed in the first chapter of this book. In Lavater’s study, the Black man is attributed ‘einem sonderbaren Gemische stumpfer Tierheit im intellektuellen, und Stärke der Leidenschaften im physischen Sinn’ (‘a curious mix of animality in the intellectual and powerful passions in the physical sphere’).⁷⁴ This racist narrative clearly influences Thameyer’s ideas of Blackness.

Thameyer’s own deficient masculinity is thus contrasted with, and further threatened by, the stereotype of Black vitalistic sexuality.⁷⁵ Disguised as a less fatal representation in contrast to purely pejorative depictions of Blackness, this stereotype is nevertheless based on the assumption of a fundamental biological difference and banishes the Black, by virtue of mystification, from the realm of the norm into that of the ‘other’. Gilman writes: ‘Fin-de-siècle Austrian liberalism trained its attention on the black as possessing an alternative, perhaps even utopian, human sexuality. The sense of difference dominates this discourse, as it does the discourse of other writers, writers whose view of human nature stresses biology and downplays culture’.76

We encounter here once again the ambivalent function of the ‘other’: the threat as well as the lure of difference. The liberal idealization of Black sexuality also relies on the assumption of a fundamental – and, in fact, biological – difference, just as much as the conservative more openly pejorative stereotypes of Blackness. Like the interplay of anti-Semitic stereotypes and scientific explorations of the so-called ‘biology of the Jew’ (discussed in the previous section of this chapter), this cementation of biological racial difference in the stereotype of Blackness provides another example of the functionalization – or, following Louis Althusser, ‘exploitation’ – of science for the manifestation of power structures.⁷⁷ Moreover, besides the assumption of a heightened and more potent sexuality, the stereotype of Blackness also contained, like that of the Jew, the higher risk of mental illness, which, in contrast to the idea of the more alive, more natural Black, enforced the ambivalent notion of the seductive and at the same time dangerous ‘other’.

This is brought into sharper relief when one considers that in Weininger’s notoriously racist and sexist work Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), maternal impression is paralleled with a related phenomenon, which he calls ‘Infektion’ (infection).⁷⁸ According to him, women who in the past had had intercourse with a Black man could become permanently infected and would from then on give birth to Black children, even if the actual father was white.79 In their introduction to the anthology Bakteriologie und Moderne (Bacteriology and Modernism), the editors Philipp Sarasin, Silvia Berger, Marianne Hänseler, and Myriam Spörri stress the central role of bacteriology for the rhetoric of discourses concerned with setting boundaries between self and ‘other’, such as colonialist and anti-Semitic discourses, but also discourses on class and gender.⁸⁰ The idea of a healthy body of the norm (e.g. ‘Volkskörper’, i.e. the ‘body’ of the nation) that had to be protected from the ‘invasion’ of germs and parasites was a very common image here. The idea of an infectious Blackness in particular corresponds on the one hand to the paranoia of colonialist Europeans. Ironically, the ‘colonized was perceived as invader’, as Donna Haraway has pointed out: ‘the “coloured” body of the colonized was constructed as the dark source of infection, pollution, disorder, and so on, that threatened to overwhelm white manhood (cities, civilization, the family, the white personal body)’.⁸¹ On the other hand, the fear of becoming infected with ‘otherness’ also resonates with the unsettling effects of the new scientific discoveries in the field of germ theory at the time. In her study Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth Century Literature, Science, and Politics, Laura Otis shows how the discovery of infectious microbes as cause for illness in the late nineteenth century revealed ‘the arbitrariness of social boundaries and the meaninglessness of social differences in the light of biological sameness’, as the pathogens could cross all socially constructed borders and infect individuals from all social classes and ethnic backgrounds.⁸² At the same time, Otis reveals how much the concept of identity around 1900 relies precisely on the ability to draw boundaries, which, as we have seen, is further supported by the scientific discourses of the time.⁸³ The transgressive quality and the invisibility of germs are linked to an imagination of boundaries, of their potential permeability, and of the need to defend them. The transgression of Thameyer’s wife and the unknown father of the child have a similar effect with regard to social boundaries: it highlights biological sameness rather than difference and therefore constitutes the permeability of these boundaries.

Blurred Boundaries and the Horror of ‘Otherness’

This potential alliance between two forms of ‘otherness’, Black masculinity and white femininity, is threatening for Thameyer, as it makes his own status as representative of the white masculine norm precariously expendable. The text illustrates Thameyer’s overwhelming fear of the Black men with aesthetic devices, which are once more borrowed from the Schauerromantik (Dark Romanticism). Thameyer’s terror becomes fully apparent in his description of his wife’s allegedly traumatic encounter with the Black men. No fewer than three times on the same page he mentions the ‘Grauen’ (horror, AT518) which she must have felt, ‘als sie im August mit ihrer Schwester im Tiergarten war, wo diese fremden Leute ihr Lager hatten, diese unheimlichen Schwarzen’ (AT517) (when she was with her sister in the Tiergarten last August where those miserable [rather: uncanny, M.K.] blacks had their encampment).84 However, it is clearly Thameyer’s own fear that becomes evident in his account of the events:

Hier füge ich bei, daß ich selbst diese Leute später gesehen habe […] im September […]. Anna wollte durchaus nicht mit, ein solches Grauen war ihr zuückgeblieben seit jenem Mittwoch. Sie sagte mir, niemals in ihrem Leben habe sie ein solches Grauen empfunden als an dem Abend, da sie allein bei den Negern war … (AT518)

And here let me add that I myself saw these people later […] in September […]. Anna absolutely refused to go, as she still shuddered [Grauen, M.K.] whenever she thought of that Wednesday. She told me that never in her life had she felt such a fear [Grauen, M.K.] as when she found herself on that evening alone with the blacks …⁸⁵

Here again the sensation of Grauen (horror) marks a feeling in which the boundaries that secure the perception of social reality, of norm and ‘other’, appear to dissolve. Thameyer feels Grauen (horror) at his lack of words, at something that cannot be expressed except for the repeated label of Grauen (horror). Again, the Grauen (horror) marks a moment of Entsetzen (horror), which may also here subtly refer to the experience of being deposed or deposited, thrown from one’s position.⁸⁶

Thameyer’s description of the setting in which his wife’s encounter took place is surprisingly detailed, considering the fact that he was not there himself. Moreover, the language becomes suddenly almost poetic:

Es war ein nebliger Abend, wie sie im Spätsommer zuweilen vorkommen; ich für meinen Teil gehe abends nie ohne Überrock in den Prater … ich erinnere mich, daß da auf den Wiesen oft graue Dämpfe liegen, in denen sich die Lichter spiegeln … Nun, solch ein Abend war es an jenem Mittwoch, und Fritzi [the sister] war plötzlich fort, und meine Anna war allein – mit einem Male allein … wer begreift nicht, daß sie unter diesen Umständen ein ungeheures Grauen vor diesen Riesenmenschen mit den glühenden Augen und großen schwarzen Bärten empfinden mußte? (AT519)

It was a foggy evening, as one often finds in the late summer; I for my part never go to the Prater in the evening without an overcoat … for I remember that there are often gray mists rolling over the fields … Well, Wednesday was that sort of an evening, and Fritzi was suddenly gone, and my Anna was alone – all at once alone … Who cannot conceive what a terrible fear [Grauen, M.K.] she must have had to find herself among these giants with their glowing eyes and long black beards!87

No longer just a subjective sensation of Thameyer’s wife, the Grauen (horror) seems already inherent in the grey mists (‘graue Dämpfe’) lying on the lawn.⁸⁸ In this way it becomes uncontrollably transgressive: in its non-corporeal quality it cannot be banished or fought, but can cross any boundary, even enter the body by way of mouth and lungs. This seems to evoke the idea of a miasmatic infection, which was part of the bacteriological discourse and thought to bring diseases such as typhus, diphtheria, cholera, or tuberculosis.⁸⁹ The grey steam takes on a ghost-like quality, which gives the scene, complete with will-o’-wisps, the atmosphere of a Romantic Schauernovelle (shudder novella) or, indeed, a Gothic novel.

In their respective introductory essays to the volume Popular Revenants (2012), Andrew Cusack (1–9) and Barry Murnane (10–43) describe the Gothic as a mode of literary writing, rather than as a distinct genre of a certain time period. This allows the authors to define the genres of the Schauerroman (shudder novel) and the literature of the Schauerromantik (Dark Romanticism), but also certain texts of the Realist period as forms of the German Gothic. As the Gothic imaginary experiences a sort of revival in many literary works around 1900,90 Thameyers letzer Brief seems to respond ironically to these modern forms of Gothic fiction. Not only can the colour grey be counted as a typical element of Schauerromantik, but the motif of steam, fog, or smoke as an uncanny medium of transgression of the evil ‘other’ is also a recurring motif of Gothic fiction.⁹¹

Particularly Bram Stoker’s Dracula may function as a source of inspiration in Thameyer’s imagination of Blackness. We might compare, for example, the passage in which Thameyer imagines his wife’s encounter with the Black men in the park with that in Dracula when the vampire gains access to Mina’s bedroom in the form of a foggy steam-like substance:

The gaslight which I had left lit for Jonathan, but turned down, came only like a tiny red spark through the fog, which had evidently grown thicker and poured into the room. Then it occurred to me that I had shut the window before I had come to bed. I would have got out to make certain on the point, but some leaden lethargy seemed to chain my limbs and even my will. I lay still and endured, that was all. I closed my eyes, but could still see through my eyelids. […] The mist grew thicker and thicker and I could see now how it came in, for I could see it like smoke, or with the white energy of boiling water, pouring in, not through the window, but through the joinings of the door. It got thicker and thicker, till it seemed as if it became concentrated into a sort of pillar of cloud in the room, through the top of which I could see the light of the gas shining like a red eye.⁹²

We find all the properties from the Dracula passage – fog, dim lights and even the uncanny glowing eye – in Thameyer’s imagination of the scene in the park.93 While it may go too far to suggest Stoker’s novel as an unequivocal intertext here, the parallels nevertheless reveal the stereotypical cultural sources that inform Thameyer’s perception of ‘otherness’. In this way, the text demonstrates the fictional quality and the narrative character of the stereotypes that function as cognitive ordering tools in Thameyer’s perception.

Thameyer’s account of the events thus Gothicizes the Black men and makes them appear as vampire-like creatures. Moreover, the big black beards that Thameyer observes on the men in the park seem more likely to be attributes of Eastern-European Jews. The possibility that Thameyer may here be conflating the two types of ‘otherness’, Blackness and Jewishness, supports the co-reading with Dracula: as several scholars have pointed out, the figure of Dracula bears many characteristics of the stereotype of Eastern-European Jewry.⁹⁴ Moreover, the correlation of infectious diseases with migration movements from the East (caused, for example, by the expansion of trade or anti-Semitic pogroms) was one of the most common theories at the time.⁹⁵ This fear of infection with ‘otherness’ is also taken up in Dracula, when van Helsing tells Mina: ‘He have [sic] infect you oh, forgive me, my dear’.⁹⁶ And in Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), F. W. Murnau’s film adaptation of Stoker’s novel, the vampire is even explicitly a carrier of the plague. RecallingWeininger’s contextualization of the phenomenon of maternal impression with that of ‘Infektion’ (infection), the interpretation that Schnitzler’s text plays with similar elements of the cultural imaginary as Stoker’s novel becomes plausible.

The mystification of the Black man as vampire allows Thameyer to see his wife in the same innocent light as the virtuous Mina in Stoker’s novel. However, in light of the highly sexual connotations in the Dracula passage, Mina’s character is much more ambivalent than it first might seem: she is certainly unconsciously corrupted by the virile force of Dracula, while her fiancé Jonathan is left significantly emasculated by his encounter with the vampire.97 Thus, the threat of the infectious evil other is not fully contained and persists even after the assumed victory of day over night at the end of the novel. Therefore, not even this utter demonization of the Black men is able to provide Thameyer with the complete reassurance of his wife’s faithfulness.

The function of the play with Gothic elements in Schnitzler’s text corresponds to Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick’s suggestion that ‘articulations of male paranoia’ are typical properties in Gothic fiction.⁹⁸ While Kosofsky Sedgwick refers here in particular to the heterosexual male’s homophobic fear of detecting homosexual desires within himself, one may extend this observation: as any norm is defined by its excluded ‘other’, the norm’s integrity depends on clearly drawn demarcating lines that divide self from other. Reinforced by the idea of a sexual and racial biological difference, Thameyer’s cognitive ordering tools, stereotypes of Blackness and femininity, promise such a clear line of demarcation. However, by dint of the skin colour of his child, Thameyer is confronted with the transgressability of these boundaries. Thameyer’s attempts at finding clarity in so-called scientific works give way to the overwhelming sensation of an unspecified horror (Grauen) of a strikingly literary quality. Moreover, the Gothic elements in the novella also have a meta-fictional function: they interrupt the realist narrative flow of the text and in this way could be called a form of generic infection. As Halberstam has argued, ‘Gothic is the disruption of realism and of all generic purity’.⁹⁹ Thameyer’s attempt to draw clear lines of demarcation between self and ‘other’ is thus also undermined on the generic level of the text.

For Thameyer, this permeation – or ‘infection’ – with ‘otherness’ is tantamount to ‘social death’. Thameyer’s proclamation of the ‘necessity’ of his suicide does after all reflect a reality: after the persistently visible transgression of his wife, it is impossible for him to continue existing within the limits assigned to him by his ‘social destiny’ as representative of the bourgeois male and white norm. As the analysis in this chapter has shown, his suicide can be seen as a realization of the ‘fatal’ force of ‘social destinies’ described by Bourdieu.100

Peter Schnyder concludes in his reading of Schnitzler’s text that as well as arguably ridiculing the theory of maternal impression, the text could also be read by supporters of the hypothesis as a criticism of the petty bourgeois gossip from which Thameyer suffers. He writes, ‘Schnitzler selbst hat nicht zuletzt durch den Verzicht auf jeden auktorialen Kommentar offen gelassen, welche Lesart er selbst favorisiert hätte’ (Not least by omitting any form of authorial commentary, Schnitzler himself has left it open, which of the two readings he himself would have preferred).¹⁰¹ However, since the theory had already been scientifically falsified around 1900, Aurnhammer’s interpretation is more convincing that the text has to be understood as a parodic criticism of attempts to re-establish it – like those of Preuss and Welsenburg’s.¹⁰² Moreover, I find it difficult to detect any signals in the text that would allow an interpretation in favour of the theory of maternal impression. Rather, as I hope to have shown in my reading, Thameyer’s case demonstrates that both the theory and the gossip stem from the same source: a rigid concept of the bourgeois norm of white masculinity, which the narrative calls into question. The theory of maternal impression is presented in the text as part of a larger cultural knowledge system of pseudo-scientific and socio-scientific theories which inform the stereotypical perception of biological difference. They therefore serve the idea of a clearly delineated norm that is, as it were, ‘immune’ against the infiltration of ‘otherness’. Schnitzler’s text undermines this idea, not only on the level of content, but also on a stylistic level through the play with Gothic elements that usurp the realist narrative form of the text.

We have encountered this generic ‘impurity’ also in the text discussed in the previous section of this chapter, Die Weissagung (The Prophecy). We have seen in both sections of this chapter that the protagonists apply stereotypes of racial difference, in order to defend their legitimate position within the norm. However, both texts unsettle these stereotypes of ‘otherness’ by pointing up their constructed quality. Both texts present the inescapability of social destinies and their mortal quality. While Umprecht’s death appears like the result of the escapist invocation of his metaphysical destiny, Thameyer’s emphasis on necessity, with which he repeatedly explains his suicide, invokes the higher power of social destiny. We will see in the next chapter how the protagonist in Die Fremde constructs the necessity of his suicide as destiny in order to conceal the fact that it is actually rather an escapist decision.

Stereotypes are always clichés, but not all clichés are stereotypes.103 Clichés are, by the same token, cognitive simplifications in the form of transfixed images of social reality that avoid reflection. While clichés, as a form of ‘human expression (in words, emotions, gestures, acts)’,¹⁰⁴ can have a reassuring effect of recognition, and understanding that goes without saying, they may also produce a sense of dissatisfaction. A phrase or image becomes a cliché because of its repetitive quality that empties out the original meaning. This sense of cliché may be linked to what has been said above about the feelings of repetition compulsion when the identification with one’s social ‘destiny’ is weakened. The performances carried out to uphold one’s social identity may then be experienced as a sort of cliché. Cave writes, ‘[t]he sense of cliché is the sense of being cheated, of being brought to a moment of fullness only to find that it is empty. It is also the sense of repetition, a compulsive returning to the “same” place, a place already known, as if one were discovering it for the first time’.¹⁰⁵ This sense of being ‘cheated’ evokes Freud’s comment on Die Weissagung (The Prophecy) and his feeling of betrayal. Indeed, Freud seems to accuse Schnitzler of a sort of cheap narrative trick here: as a creative writer, he can always use the supernatural as a – one could say literal – deus ex machina in order to resolve the plot. It is thus seen as a disappointing reading experience in which the constructedness of literature emerges and the reader’s absorption in the plot becomes disturbed. The same sense of cliché can be experienced when one becomes aware of narrative constructions that influence and engender social reality. This raises the desire for more ‘original’ and individualized experiences.

So far, the discussion here has mainly concerned repetitive performances required by the symbolic function, thus related to the ‘professional’ and more openly institutionalized aspects of social roles. If this symbolic function fails to address the subject, the desire for originality and individuality may be sought in social interactions outside the institutionalized realm of the social order. However, the emphatic evocation of one’s destiny, which is supposed to bring reassurance about one’s individuality, is no less pervaded by the repetition compulsion of stereotypical cultural narratives – clichés. Particularly, when individual destiny is equated with the ultimate ‘cosmic fate’ of romantic love, the emphatic claims of originality may be undermined by their own serial quality. In the next chapter I will explore this tension between originality and seriality in the narratives Die Fremde, Das Schicksal des Freiherrn von Leisenbohg, and Das neue Lied, which complete the compilation Dämmerseelen.

¹  Josef Körner (1921) and Michael Imboden (1971) both point out that Die Weissagung is comparable to Hoffmann’s Nachtstücke. See Körner (1921), Arthur Schnitzlers Gestalten und Probleme, Zurich, Leipzig, Vienna: Amalthea, 176; Imboden (1971), Die surreale Komponente im erzählenden Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, Bern: H. Lang, 95. See Imboden, Michael (1971), Die surreale Komponente im erzählenden Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, Bern: H. Lang, 95.

²  Another paradigmatic example here would be Das Tagebuch der Redegonda (Redegonda’s Diary, 1911), which is not part of the volume.

³  See Kremer, Detlef (2007), Romantik: Lehrbuch der Germanistik, Stuttgart: Metzler, 108.

⁴  Barthes, Roland (1972), Mythologies, London: Vintage, 109.

⁵  All translations of Die Weissagung (Prophecy) are my own. All translations of Andreas Thameyer are taken from the translation by Frederick Eisemann. See Schnitzler, Arthur (1913a), ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ Viennese Idylls, translated by Frederick Eisenmann, Boston, MA: John W. Luce & Co., 107–120.

⁶  Even more clearly than in Flucht in die Finsternis (Flight into Darkness), we find here the model of a self-fulfiling prophecy. See Lukas, Wolfgang (1996), Das Selbst und das Fremde: Epochale Lebenskrisen und ihre Lösung im Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, Munich: Fink, 232.

⁷  Freud, Sigmund (1947b), ‘Das Unheimliche,’ Gesammelte Werke, vol. 12: Werke aus den Jahren 1917–1920, ed. by Anna Freud, Edward Bibring, Willi Hoffer, Ernst Kris, and Otto Isakower, London: Imago, 227–268, 266.

⁸  Just, Gottfried (1968), Ironie und Sentimentalität in den erzählenden Dichtungen Arthur Schnitzlers, Berlin: E. Schmidt, 126.

⁹  Imboden, Die surreale Komponente im erzählenden Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, 96.

¹⁰  See Allerdissen, Rolf (1985), Arthur Schnitzler: Impressionistisches Rollenspiel und skeptischer Moralismus in seinen Erzählungen, Bonn: Bouvier, 156; Perlmann, Michaela L. (1987a), Der Traum in der literarischen Moderne: Untersuchungen zum Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, Munich: Fink, 90; Weigel, Robert (1996), ‘Schnitzlers Schicksalserzählungen Die Weissagung und Die dreifache Warnung,’ Die Seele … ist ein weites Land: Kritische Beiträge zum Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, ed. by Joseph P. Strelka, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt a. M., New York, Paris, Vienna: Peter Lang, 149–162, 150; Rohrwasser, Michael (1999), ‘Arthur Schnitzlers Erzählung “Die Weissagung”: Ästhetizismus, Antisemitismus und Psychoanalyse,’ Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 118: 60–79, 63 (Sonderheft: Zur deutschen Literatur im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Norbert Oelers and Hartmut Steinecke); Gerrekens, Louis (2011), ‘Die Weissagung oder wie aus schlecht erzähltem Theater eine spannende Novelle wird,’ Theatralisches Erzählen um 1900: Narrative Inszenierungsweisen der Jahrhundertwende, ed. by Achim Küpper, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 89–102, 106. Only Martin Brucke rejects an ironic reading, highlighting the ‘ernste Kontext des Hypnotismus’ (serious context of hypnotism) and the tragic ending of the text. See Brucke, Martin (2002), Magnetiseure: Die windige Karriere einer literarischen Figur, Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 123. See also Gert K. Schneider’s more recent monograph. Schneider, Gert K. (2014), Grenzüberschreitungen: Energie, Wunder und Gesetze: Das Okkulte als Weltanschauung und seine Manifestationen im Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, Vienna: Praesens. While Schneider explores Schnitzler’s personal position with regard to occultism in the first part of his study, the second, more extensive part provides a detailed collection of occult elements in Schnizler’s literary works. Although Schneider does not overlook the often ironic representation of these elements, he nevertheless detects the presence of a ‘kosmische Urkraft’ (cosmic primal force) in Schnitzler’s texts.

¹¹  Critics differ here as to the degree of psychologization and pathologization of Umprecht: Lawson detects an unconscious death wish linked to latent homoerotic tendencies. See Lawson, Richard H. (1963), ‘An Interpretation of “Die Weissagung”, Studies in Arthur Schnitzler, ed. by Herbert Reichert and Herman Salinger, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 71–78, 74. Allerdissen speaks of a compulsive idea, which is condensed into reality. See Allerdissen, Arthur Schnitzler: Impressionistisches Rollenspiel und skeptischer Moralismus in seinen Erählungen, 154. Perlmann agrees that it is possible to detect in Umprecht’s behaviour first signs (‘Ansätze’) of a mental illness even before his encounter with Marco Polo. See Perlmann, Der Traum in der literarischen Moderne, 92. Brucke does not necessarily assume an initial pathological condition, but stresses the possibility of post-hypnotic suggestion. See Brucke, Magnetiseure: Die windige Karriere einer literarischen Figur, 123.

¹²  See Allerdissen, Arthur Schnitzler: Impressionistisches Rollenspiel und skeptischer Moralismus in seinen Erzählungen, 157; Weigel, Robert (1997): ‘Schnitzlers Schicksalserzählungen “Die Weissagung” und “Die dreifache Warnung”,’ Die Seele … ist ein weites Land. Kritische Beiträge zum Werk Arthur Schnitzlers, ed. by Joseph P. Strelka, Bern [et al.] Peter Lang, 149–162; Brucke, Magnetiseure: Die windige Karriere einer literarischen Figur, 124.

¹³  Gerrekens provides an extensive analysis of the logical inconsistencies and ironical contradictions of the three narrative perspectives in the text. Perlmann also mentions the unreliability of all three narrators. See Gerrekens, ‘Die Weissagung oder wie aus schlecht erzähltem Theater eine spannende Novelle wird,’ 104ff.; Perlmann, Der Traum in der literarischen Moderne, 92ff.

¹⁴  See Rohrwasser, ‘Arthur Schnitzlers Erzählung “Die Weissagung”,’ 71.

¹⁵  See Brucke, Magnetiseure: Die windige Karriere einer literarischen Figur, 126.

¹⁶  See also my analysis of physiognomy in Der Weg ins Freie (Road into the Open) in Chapter One, as well as my reading of Flucht in die Finsternis in Chapter Two, in which the diagnosis of mental illness appears like a stigmatic mark.

¹⁷  See Volkov, Shulamit (2006), Germans, Jews, and Antisemited Trials in Emancipation, New York: Cambridge University Press, 115; Lipphardt, Veronika (2008), Biologie der Juden: Jüdische Wissenschaftler über ‘Rasse’ und Vererbung 1900–1935, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 21.

¹⁸  See Lipphardt, Biologie der Juden, 74.

¹⁹  See for example Joseph Roth’s (1976) description of the assimilated Jews in Juden auf Wanderschaft: ‘guterzogene, glattrasierte Herren in Gehröcken und Zylindern, die das Gebetbuch in den Leitartikel des jüdischen Leibblattes packen, weil sie glauben, man erkenne sie an diesem Leitartikel weniger als an dem Gebetbuch’ (well-mannered, clean-shaven gentlemen in coats and top hats, who wrap their prayer books in the front page of the favourite Jewish newspaper, because they think that this paper is less recognizable than the prayer book). See ‘Juden auf Wanderschaft,’ Werke, vol. 3, ed. by Hermann Kesten, Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 305). See also the following passage: ‘Die meisten frommen Juden verurteilen einen Mann aufs schärfste, der sich den Bart rasieren läßt – wie überhaupt das rasierte Gesicht das deutliche Merkmal für den Abfall vom Glauben darstellt’ (Most religious Jews utterly judge a man, who has his beard shaved – as the clean shaven face is generally the clearest indication for apostasy). See Roth, ‘Juden auf Wanderschaft,’ 308.

²⁰  Recall the way Bertolt Stauber in Der Weg ins Freie (Road into the Open) was silenced by the anti-Semitic insult ‘Jud, halt’s Maul’ (WiF657) (Hold your jaw, Jew). See Schnitzler, Road into the Open, 28. Calling Marco Polo ‘Jud’ can be seen as an attempt to exclude him as a subject of discourse. By marking the colonel, Marco Polo seems to (re-)assert himself as subject.

²¹  The Jewish physician, who has intimate insight into the soldiers as patients and has a diagnostic power over them, may be seen as a counterpart to Marco Polo.

²²  See Brucke, Magnetiseure: Die windige Karriere einer literarischen Figur, 124.

²³  See Gilman, Sander L. (1985) Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness, Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press, 178.

²⁴  The connotation of the name has been pointed out by Perlmann, Der Traum in der literarischen Moderne, 91.

²⁵  Bourdieu writes that it is ‘the function of all magical boundaries […] to stop those who are inside, on the right side of the line, from leaving, demeaning or down-grading themselves’. See Bourdieu, Pierre (1992), Language and Symbolic Power: The Economy of Linguistic Exchanges, ed. by John B. Thompson, Cambridge: Polity Press, 122. See also Santner, Eric L. (1996), My Own Private Germany, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 12. Moreover, see my analysis of Robert’s identification with the piano teacher in Flucht in die Finsternis in the previous chapter.

²⁶  Schreber, Daniel Paul (1995), Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken nebst Nachträgen, Berlin: Kadmos, 163–164.

²⁷  See Santner, My Own Private Germany, 12; Schneider, Manfred (1999), ‘Das Grauen der Beobachter: Schriften und Bilder des Wahnsinns,’ Bild und Schrift in der Romantik, ed. by Gerhard Neumann and Günter Oesterle, Würzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 237–253, 244.

²⁸  Santner, My Own Private Germany, 140. That this differentiation is not as clear-cut as the post-Enlightenment social orders want to admit is already implied by Kant when he writes: ‘Der Mensch handelt nach der Idee von Freiheit, als ob er frei wäre, und eo ipso ist er frei’ (Man acts according to the idea of freedom, as if he were free, and eo ipso he is free). See Kant, Immanuel (1972), ‘Philosophische Religionslehre nach Pölitz,’ Kants gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, ed. by Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1068.

²⁹  See Lawson, ‘An Interpretation of “Die Weissagung”,’ 74; Allerdissen, Arthur Schnitzler: Impressionistisches Rollenspiel und skeptischer Moralismus in seinen Erzählungen, 154; Perlmann, Der Traum in der literarischen Moderne, 92.

³⁰  The character of the Eastern-Jewish ‘gate keeper’ who promises access to a realm lying beyond normative boundaries returns also in Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle (Dream Story), which I will analyse in the fifth chapter of this book.

³¹  See Freud, ‘Das Unheimliche,’ 251.

³²  Interestingly, Schneider finds this concept of Romantic madness also expressed in the memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber, who abolishes the sense of contingency as well. See Schneider, ‘Das Grauen der Beobachter,’ 249.

³³  See Chapter Two.

³⁴  For a reading focused on the homoerotic subtext of the novella see Lawson’s psychoanalytically informed interpretation. See Lawson, ‘An Interpretation of “Die Weissagung”’.

³⁵  The ‘unbekannte, höhnische Macht’ (unknown, taunting power) can be seen as a distinctly Hoffmannesque formulation.

³⁶  See Santner, My Own Private Germany, xii.

³⁷  Santner, My Own Private Germany, 145.

³⁸  Santner, My Own Private Germany, 145.

³⁹  See Rohrwasser, ‘Arthur Schnitzlers Erzählung “Die Weissagung”,’ 63.

⁴⁰  See the implications of the train motif in Chapter Two.

⁴¹  See Cave, Terence (1988), Recognitions: A Study in Poetics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 27.

⁴²  Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics, 489.

⁴³  The motif of the fixed gaze can also be seen as a Hoffmannesque ‘stock image’.

⁴⁴  Weigel, ‘Schnitzlers Schicksalserzählungen Die Weissagung und Die dreifache Warnung,’ 160. A similar approach can be detected in Perlmann’s interpretation, which is otherwise convincing. See Perlmann, Der Traum in der literarischen Moderne, 91.

⁴⁵  See Gerrekens, ‘Die Weissagung oder wie aus schlecht erzähltem Theater eine spannende Novelle wird,’ 104ff.

⁴⁶  Perlmann claims that this is possible. See Perlmann, Der Traum in der literarischen Moderne, 92.

⁴⁷  Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics, 492.

⁴⁸  Schnitzler toys with the element of the fictional editor in several prose texts, e.g. also in his novella Der letzte Brief des Literaten (The Writer’s Last Letter, 1917). In his interpretation of the intertextual references in this text, Achim Aurnhammer argues convincingly that in contrast to Goethe’s (1787), the play with different narrative levels is used to highlight the unreliability of the narrator’s voice. This calls into question the possibility of finding one unequivocal truth: ‘Der Leser gerät damit in die Rolle eines Analytikers, der aufgrund des projektiv und intertextuell überformten Materials die Wahrheit zu ermitteln sucht oder erkennen muss, dass es mehrere Wahrheiten gibt’ (Therefore, the reader is put into the position of the analyst, who, confronted with the projectively and intertextually overdetermined material, tries to find the truth – or who has to accept that there is more than one truth). See Aurnhammer, Achim (2013), Arthur Schnitzlers intertextuelles Erzählen, Berlin; Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 157.

⁴⁹  Webber writes that Hoffmann’s writings are often ‘interrupted by the figurative terms of theatrical production, drama, opera, puppet play, and tableau vivant’. See Webber, The Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature, 115.

⁵⁰  Hoffmann, E. T. A. (2001), Doge und Dogaresse, Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 4: Die Serapionsbrüder, ed. by Hartmut Steinecke and Wulf Segebrecht, Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 429–483, 430.

⁵¹  Neumann, Gerhard (1999), ‘Narration und Bildlichkeit. Zur Inszenierung eines romantischen Schicksalsmusters in E. T. A. Hoffmanns “ Doge und Dogaresse”,’ Bild und Schrift in der Romantik, ed. by Gerhard Neumann and Günter Oesterle, Würzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 107–142, 138.

⁵²  The most famous representatives of this idea are Rainer Maria Rilke and the George circle.

⁵³  See Rohrwasser, ‘Arthur Schnitzlers Erzählung “Die Weissagung”,’ 63.

⁵⁴  Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics, 24.

⁵⁵  Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 15.

⁵⁶  I capitalize ‘Black’ in order to express that it is not understood ‘as merely a color of skin pigmentation, but as a heritage, an experience, a cultural and personal identity, the meaning of which becomes specifically stigmatic and/or glorious and/or ordinary under specific social conditions’. See MacKinnon, Catharine A. (1982), ‘Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory,’ Signs 7 (3): Feminist Theory, 515–544, 516. Conversely, I chose not to capitalize ‘white,’ following Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, who argues that capitalizing both ‘seems to presume a greater parallelism between these racial designations than their histories suggest. Of the myriad differences is the fact that while white can be further divided into a variety of ethnic and national identities, Black represents an effort to claim a cultural identity that has historically been denied.’ See Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw (2011), ‘Twenty Years of Critical Race Theory: Looking Back To Move Forward,’ Connecticut Law Review 43 (5): 1253–1352, 1255.

⁵⁷  Several scholars have pointed out the intertextual reference in Schnitzler’s novella to Peter Altenberg’s Ashantee (1897). See Meyer, Imke (2010), Männlichkeit und Melodram: Arthur Schnitzlers erzählende Schriften, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 76–84, 85; Boehringer, Michael (2011), ‘Fantasies of White Masculinity in Arthur Schnitzler’s Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief (1900),’ The German Quarterly 84 (1): 80–96, 83, 90–91; Aurnhammer, Arthur Schnitzlers intertextuelles Erzählen, 103, 119.

⁵⁸  Preuss’s study Vom Versehen der Schwangeren: Eine historisch-kritische Studie was published in 1892 and Welsenburg’s book from 1899 had the title Das Versehen der Frauen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart und die Anschauungen der Ärzte, Naturforscher und Philosophen darüber. (See Schnyder, Peter (2002), ‘Im Netz der Behausung: Arthur Schnitzlers Erzählung Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive,’ Akten des X. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses Wien 2000: ‘Zeitenwende: Die Germanistik auf dem Weg vom 20. ins 21. Jahrhundert,’ vol. 6: Epochenbegriffe: Grenzen und Möglichkeiten; Aufklärung – Klassik – Romantik; Die Wiener Moderne, ed. by Peter Wiesinger, Bern: Peter Lang, 419–425, 425. Aurnhammer reveals that Georg von Welsenburg was a pseudonym of the German sexologist Iwan Bloch. See Aurnhammer, Arthur Schnitzlers intertextuelles Erzählen, 123.

⁵⁹  Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 122.

⁶⁰  Boehringer, Michael (2011), ‘Fantasies of White Masculinity in Arthur Schnitzler’s Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief (1900),’ The German Quarterly 84 (1): 80–96, 81.

⁶¹  Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 122.

⁶²  Schnitzler, ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ 122.

⁶³  Schnitzler, ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ 199.

⁶⁴  As one can see in the unpuplished drafts, Schnitzler had at first added, similar to the ending of Die Weissagung, the note of a fictional editor, which explains that the letter was found in the pocket of a young man, who had hung himself in the Wienerwald (CUL A 153, 3, pp. 42 and 43). See also Aurnhammer, Arthur Schnitzlers intertextuelles Erzählen, 109. The fact that this topical generic marker of the literary letter has been left out in the final published version may support my interpretation that the letter is indeed supposed to speak for itself. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, it is significant that Thameyer’s suicide itself is not confirmed for the reader, as it gives the narrator an un-dead – and therefore hauntingly ghostlike – quality. See Kolkenbrock, Marie (2018), ‘Gothic Infections: Arthur Schnitzler and the Haunted Culture of Modernism,’ MLR 113 (1): 150–170, 162.

⁶⁵  Schnitzler, ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ 115.

⁶⁶  Boehringer, ‘Fantasies of White Masculinity in Arthur Schnitzler’s Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief (1900),’ 82.

⁶⁷  See also my reading of Traumnovelle in Chapter Five, where Bronfen’s argument will become interesting for the interpretation of the function of the dead female body in the text. Bronfen, Elisabeth (1992), Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 181–204.

⁶⁸  Schnitzler, ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ 120.

⁶⁹  Although Meyer is obviously right when she mentions that the body of the child remains a visible disruption of the semiotic system of white bourgeois constructions of identity and enforces a continuing reflection on the foundation of bourgeois life which has been previously considered as unquestionable. See Meyer, Männlichkeit und Melodram, 102.

⁷⁰  Schnitzler describes a similar process in his novella Spiel im Morgengrauen (Game at Dawn, 1927). See also Thomé, Horst (1984), ‘Kernlosigkeit und Pose: Zur Rekonstruktion von Schnitzlers Psychologie,’ Fin de Siècle: Zur Naturwissenschaft und Literatur der Jahrhundertwende im deutsch-skandinavischen Kontext, ed. by Klaus Bohnen, Uffe Hansen, and Friedrich Schmöe, Kopenhagen and Munich: Fink, 62–87, 75–76.

⁷¹  See Meyer, Männlichkeit und Melodram, 91; Aurnhammer shows in some detail that Thameyer’s account ignores the aspect of active female sexuality raised in the very sources (e.g. in Malebranche) he uses to construct his argument, which indicates Thameyer’s repression of female eroticism. See Aurnhammer, Arthur Schnitzlers intertextuelles Erzählen, 123.

⁷²  Schnitzler, ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ 118.

⁷³  Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 120; Boehringer, ‘Fantasies of White Masculinity in Arthur Schnitzler’s Andreas Thameyers letzter Brief (1900),’ 92.

⁷⁴  Lavater, Caspar David (1968–1969), Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschnekenntnis und Menschenliebe: Eine Auswahl mit 101 Abbildungen IV, Zurich: Orell Fussli, 320.

⁷⁵  Since his marriage has remained childless for four years, the possibility of Thameyer’s impotence can be considered. See Meyer, Männlichkeit und Melodram, 98.

⁷⁶  Gilman, Difference and Pathology, 120.

⁷⁷  Althusser claims that ideology has the tendency to exploit science for the cementation of given power relations. See Althusser, Louis (1990b), Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists & Other Essays, London, New York: Verso, 120.

⁷⁸  Weininger, Otto (1903), Geschlecht und Charakter: Eine prinzipielle Untersuchung, Vienna and Leipzig: Wilhelm Braunmüller, 308. This connection to Weininger has also been made by Meyer and Aurnhammer. See Meyer, Männlichkeit und Melodram, 101; Aurhhammer, Arthur Schnitzlers intertextuelles Erzählen, 130. Aurnhammer provides a stimulating reading of the novella’s genealogy and literary and cultural-historical intertexts: by comparing Thameyer’s sources and the way he uses them to construct the argument of his wife’s fidelity, Aurnhammer shows how much Thameyer struggles to even convince himself of his own narrative. Although Aurnhammer’s own analysis critically reveals Thameyer’s racist perspective, I find it problematic that he reproduces this perspective without necessity, by using its terminology outside of direct quotations. See Aurnhammer Arthur Schnitzlers intertextuelles Erzählen, 118, 119, 125, 129.

⁷⁹  See Weininger, Geschlecht und Charakter, 307–308.

⁸⁰  See Sarasin, Philipp, Silvia Berger, Marianne Hänseler, and Myriam Spörri (eds) (2007), Bakteriologie und Moderne: Studien zur Biopolitik des Unsichtbaren 1870-1920, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 38–39.

⁸¹  Haraway, Donna (1991), Simions, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 223.

⁸²  Otis, Laura (1999), Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth Century Literature, Science, and Politics, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 119.

⁸³  See Otis, Membranes, 4–5.

⁸⁴  Schnitzler, ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ 115.

⁸⁵  Schnitzler, ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ 117.

⁸⁶  See Santner, Eric L. (2011), The Royal Remains: The People’s Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 49.

⁸⁷  Schnitzler, ‘Andreas Thameyer’s Last Letter,’ 118.

⁸⁸  See also Freud’s wordplay with Grauen (horror) in Die Traumdeutung. Freud, Sigmund (1942), ‘Die Traumdeutung,’ in Gesammelte Werke, vols 2 and 3: Die Traumdeutung/Über den Traum, ed. by Anna Freud, Edward Bibring, Willi Hoffer, Ernst Kris, and Otto Isakower, London: Imago, 1–642, 481.

⁸⁹  See Sarasin, Phillip (2007), ‘Die Visualisierung des Feindes: Über metaphorische Technologien der frühen Bakteriologie,’ Bakteriologie und Moderne: Studien zur Biopolitik des Unsichtbaren 1870–1920, ed. by Philipp Sarasin, Silvia Berger, Marianne Hänseler, and Myriam Spörri, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 427–461, 28.

⁹⁰  See Murnane, Barry (2012), ‘Haunting (Literary) History: An Introduction to German Gothic,’ Popular Revenants: The German Gothic and Its International Reception, 1800–2000, ed. by Andrew Cusack and Barry Murnane, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 10–43, 23.

⁹¹  See for example E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (1816), in which the colour grey is evidently linked to the uncanny figure of Coppelius or the grey man in Adelbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl (1813). The fog as a marker of danger and horror also appears in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838).

⁹²  Stoker, Bram (2011), Dracula, ed. by Roger Luckhurst, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 241–242.

⁹³  See also the passage in which Mina surprises Dracula as he feeds on Lucy, which, in addition to the gleaming eyes also seems to give a connotation to the ‘long black beards’ of the Ashanti: ‘[t]here was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. I called in fright, “Lucy! Lucy!” and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes’. See Stoker, Dracula, 241–242.

⁹⁴  See the overview on ‘Vampires and Anti-Semitism’ in Gelder, Ken (1994), Reading the Vampire, London & New York: Routledge, 13–17.

⁹⁵  Through Arthur Schnitzler’s own medical practice, he was of course aware of these discourses. Schnitzler, Arthur (1988), Medizinische Schriften, ed. by Horst Thomé, Vienna: Zsolnay, 282. Particularly his survey of medical daily news and notes (‘Tagesnachrichten und Notizen’), which includes two entries concerned with the cholera epidemic, is particularly interesting. Schnitzler cites here from a decree by the Austrian Prime Minister addressed to the Galician governor. Galicia is asked to act as a ‘Schutzwall’ (protective barrier) against the threat coming from the North-East in order to prevent the ‘Eindringen’ (invasion) of the illness into Austria. On this kind of militarist metaphor in the language of bacteriology, see Sarasin, ‘Die Visualisierung des Feindes,’ 459.

⁹⁶  Stoker, Dracula, 299.

⁹⁷  See Kittler, Friedrich A. (1993), Draculas Vermächtnis: Technische Schriften, Leipzig: Reclam, 27.

⁹⁸  Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1985), Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, New York: Columbia University Press, 97.

⁹⁹  Halberstam, Judith (1995), Skin Shows: Gothic Horrors and the Technology of Monsters, Durham and London: Duke UP, 11.

¹⁰⁰ Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 122.

¹⁰¹ Schnyder, ‘Im Netz der Behausung,’ 424.

¹⁰² See Aurnhammer, Arthur Schnitzlers intertextuelles Erzählen, 113.

¹⁰³ See Zijderveld, Anton C. (1987), ‘On the Nature and Function of Clichés,’ Erstarrtes Denken: Studien zu Klischee, Stereotyp und Vorurteil in englischsprachiger Literatur, ed. by Günther Blaicher, Tübingen: G. Narr, 26–40, 28.

¹⁰⁴ Zijderveld, ‘On the Nature and Function of Clichés,’ 28.

¹⁰⁵ Cave, Recognitions: A Study in Poetics, 459–460.