Experimenting with time: therapeutic spaces in the German interwar novel

Abstract

In the German novels of the beginning of the twentieth century, therapeutic spaces such as sanatoria, psychiatric hospitals or therapist’s offices were used prominently as the setting of the novel or of crucial scenes. Reflecting the ambivalence of modernity, these therapeutic settings were on the one hand spaces where one could escape from the hectic pace of modern life and on the other hand spaces in which the most modern innovations (new theories about the psyche, new technologies, new architectural principles…) were deployed. In this article the function of the sanatorium in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg and the psychiatric hospital in Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften will be studied in the light of a crisis in the experience of time. Both these novels begin with staging a crisis in the experience of continuous linear time, which is in both cases staged in architectural terms. The fact that the protagonists of both novels are unable to take up their intended social position, following their fathers, is presented as the crisis of a specific conception of temporality and interiority. The therapeutic settings function as literary devices which allow for the exploration of different responses to this crisis. Neither a flight from modernity nor a picture of a society gone mad, these settings contain elements from different temporal regimes, existing side by side. The therapeutic spaces are experimental spaces characterized by multitemporality where the impact of modernity on the tradition can be assessed and different responses to the crisis of time explored.

Keywords:

• Therapeutic spaces
• temporal regimes
• sanatorium
• psychiatric hospital
• Der Zauberberg
• Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften

Notes

1. For more about the politics of illness and spatiality in medical spaces in Europe, see Eschenbruch, Hänel and Unterkircher (eds.) (2010), and Blackshaw and Wieber (eds.) (2012).

2. The full name is Lower Austrian State Provincial Institution for the Cure of the Mentally and Nervously Ill “am Steinhof”.

3. For examples, see Blackshaw and Topp (eds.) (2009), and Sass (1992).

4. As Georg Lukács had argued, the demise of the old world view and the old conception of time caused a crisis in the modern novel, especially in the function of the ending (Lukács 1974). It is no coincidence that in each of the novels mentioned here, the author was struggling to find a suitable ending for the constantly expanding novel.

5. For a good overview of the popularity of sanatoria in the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, see “Travel to the Spas: The Growth of Health Tourism in Central Europe, 1850–1914” by Jill Steward (in Blackshaw and Wieber, eds., 2012, 72–89).

6. Nicola Imrie has shown that these sanatoria were often built in the style of grand hotels, to attract visitors from a wealthy social class and to create a specific milieu in which they would feel at ease (Blackshaw and Wieber, eds., 2012, 58–71).

7. In the Viennese literature and theory of this period, a critique of the prevailing style was common. For a good overview of the problem of style in nineteenth-century Vienna, see Janik and Toulmin (1973).

8. Specifically, the members of the Parallel Campaign prepare the celebrations of the seventieth anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph’s coronation, which was supposed to take place in 1918, hoping to outdo the similar German plans to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of their Emperor Wilhelm II’s reign. Of course, that seventieth anniversary would never take place because of the collapse of the empire in the First World War.

9. For more about this, see De Cauwer (2012, 2014).

10. For more about this, see Blackshaw and Topp (eds.) (2009).

11. For a theoretical analysis of Musil’s usage of clouds, see Serres (1979).

12. The strict rejection by Musil of all forms of eschatology and teleology does not come as a surprise if we consider the strong influence of Nietzsche on his thought. In Morgenröte, Nietzsche describes what happens when people are finally freed from teleological thinking: “We have reconquered our courage for error, for experimentation, for accepting provisionally… And it is precisely for this reason that individuals and generations can now fix their eyes on tasks of a vastness that would to earlier ages have seemed madness and trifling with Heaven and Hell. We may experiment with ourselves!” (Nietzsche 1982: 501).

13. As with all the fragments, it is unclear what Musil ultimately wanted to do with the chapter (integrate it into the novel, change the draft or simply not use it all). Nevertheless, the many fragments left behind after his death are now considered to be a part of the complex text which is Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften.

14. For a good analysis of this fragment, see McBride 2000.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stijn De Cauwer

Stijn De Cauwer is Postdoctoral Researcher in literary studies and cultural studies at the University of Leuven. His research project Rethinking Immunity in the German Novel between 1918 and 1942 is funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). He obtained his PhD on the work of Robert Musil at the University of Utrecht. [email protected]