Leo Perutz: the Search for Identity

Leo Perutz: The Search for Identity Katerina Blazek Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Needham, MA 02492 I. INTRODUCTION Since the 15th century, when the Habsburgs rst came into power at the head of what would later become the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria played an important role in European politics. In the 19th century the monarchy was the largest and most powerful in central Europe in fact, what is today known as Central Europe is largely dened as the area formerly occupied by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The last three rulers, Maria Theresa, Josef II., and Franz Josef I., ruling during the 18th and 19th centuries, remade the old monarchy into a modern multicultural, decentralized state. German was the ocial language of the Empire and it was largely the German Austrians who were involved in government, hence they constituted the most powerful ethnic group in the monarchy. Austro-Hungary's defeat in the First World War changed his old order. Each ethnic group making up the Empire was granted its own state and the old monarchy was broken apart Austria became what was left over after each nationality claimed its territory. For the German Austrians this came as a great shock the empire, whose leaders they had been for hundreds of years, was no longer in existence and they were left with the remains. During the times of the monarchy, these citizens had always been close to Germany and thought of themselves as German there was no Austrian identity as such.1 The Treaty of St. Germain, which specied the terms of surrender for Austria-Hungary at the end of the war, mandated that the new Austrian state could not join Germany or Russia, and so the citizens of this newly created state needed to nd themselves a new identity as independent Austrians, not as Germans. During the interwar years, the political scene was dominated by the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, each of which had very strong adherents. The mutual antagonism 1 Jelavich, Modern Austria 144-7. 2 between the two parties led to a brief civil war in 1934 and the institution of a right-wing dictatorship, termed the `Ständestaat', under the leadership of the Christian Democrats. This dictatorial state nevertheless failed to prevent the encroachments of the National So- cialists and Austria was annexed to Germany in 1938 and remained a province of the Third Reich for the rest of the war. The First World War also left Austria in a deep economic crisis. Although Vienna had been the seat of administration under the Monarchy, because the old Monarchy had been strongly decentralized, the new Austrian state possessed no industry and very little agriculture the center of industry had been in Bohemia, and the center of agriculture in Hungary. Once the monarchy was broken apart, the new Austrian state had no means of supporting itself and was unable to stand on its own. This resulted in a lasting economic crisis during the interwar years, which perpetuated the political and identity crises. Out of these societal upheavals grew a new generation of literary gures of the interwar period, Leo Perutz among them, who reacted to this uncertainly through nostalgia for the past, by evoking the times of the old monarchy in their work and the world that once had been so safe and certain. However, in this nostalgia was hidden a very modern desire to make sense of the changes in society and create a new literary and political identity for Austria. Like the other authors of this interwar period, Perutz contributed to the modernization of the modern novel by creating his own particular style that melds believable historical accounts with fantasy elements and modern narrative techniques to create novels that exist on several levels of meaning and invite the reader to delve into and analyze the text. Perutz' main theme is the close relationship between history and identity, how and why history is used and manipulated to create identities. Like his contemporaries, Perutz explored the psychology of his characters, as well as his own, and sought to illustrate to his readers the process of creating identities. However, because he was comparatively popular when he was published, and because of the often thrilling and adventurous plots of his novels, he has often been classied as `only' a writer of popular ction, not one of serious literary merit. Furthermore, after the Second World War, the Viennese cultural environment in which he ourished was gone, and he found it very dicult to write. Austrian post-war concerns and problems were very dierent from pre-war ones, so Perutz' work did not make sense in the new context, and it was essentially forgotten except in translation. Only in the past fteen years has he been newly discovered and re-published in German, but despite this 3 resurgence in popularity, Perutz' work has not been subject to much critical study, and he is still relatively unknown in literary circles. It is therefore an aim of this paper to enlarge that pool of analysis. According to Perutz, each person has his own history, and his identity is built of this individual history. This thought has two corollaries: the rst is a rejection of the unity of history, of the concept that only one true, ocial history can exist; the second is an assertion of the inherent exibility of identity according to Perutz, in order to change one's identity it is sucient to change one's history, or the appearance thereof. This relationship holds for groups as well the identity of a group is built upon the collective history of that group. Perutz asserts this theme and its consequences in his novels: he employs various narrative techniques, such as the diraction of the narrative and stories from the societal periphery, to show how multi-stranded and subjective history can be. Through the main gures in his novels he shows how this subjective history can then be used to create new identities. II. PERUTZ' BIOGRAPHY Leo(pold) Perutz was born in 1882 in Prague, the oldest son of a Jewish cloth merchant. He attended the Piarist School until 1899, when his family moved to Vienna. His memories of Prague would later build the foundation of his novel Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke [At Night under the Starry Bridge]. In Vienna he attended a Gymnasium, but left school without a degree in 1902. Three years later he enrolled as a guest student at both the Technical University and the University of Vienna, where he studied insurance mathematics. After graduation he worked as an insurance mathematician in Trieste, later also in Vienna. Around the time of the rst world war appeared his rst publications, and also his st novel, Der dritte Kugel [The Third Bullet]. He served on the eastern front during the war, where he was seriously wounded; after his recovery he worked for the military press. After the war he continued his mathematical work for several years, before turning solely to writing. Perutz published many novels, plays, translations, and short works during the interwar period, but because of the rising antisemitism of the national socialists, he found it increasingly more dicult to publish in Germany and Austria. After the invasion of the German forces into Austria, he emigrated to Israel where he remained until his death. Perutz wrote very little in exile, because due to the war, the old cultural atmosphere of Vienna vanished, and along 4 with it his audience and his interactions with other writers, which were very crucial to the development of his novels. He died in 1957 in Bad Ischl, while on holiday.2 Perutz was an active member of the Viennese literary circles of the interwar period; he belonged to the regulars at the Café Central and later the Café Herrenhof, where the other literati and bohemians gathered. Among his acquaintances were Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Roda Roda, Paul Frank, with whom he wrote several plays, Franz Werfel, Richard Beer-Homann, Peter Altenberg, Alfred Polgar, who wrote many of the rst reviews of Perutz' work, and Anton Kuh. Perutz stylized himself as a literary outsider, a man on the fringes of the cultural circle; he was, however, also a brilliant mathematician (his work in the theory of functions is still used today).3 III. REJECTION OF THE `SIEGERGESCHICHTE' Perutz' main theme, that identity is dependent on an interpretation of a subjective history, is predicated on two ideas. The rst is a rejection of the unity of history, a rejection of the concept of the `siegergeschichte' the history of the `victors', the powerful middle and upper classes of society. Instead of one single, ocial history that applies to everyone, Perutz argues that each person has his own history and that these personal histories are just as important as the ocial ones written down in history books. He illustrates this idea indirectly through the narrative devices used in his novels: by violating the unity of the narrative, he draws parallels between his ctional historical accounts and real historical accounts. Through linking the form and content of his novels with historical accounts, Perutz is able to generalize features of his novels to history as a whole, and by showing the subjectivity of his novels, can then assert the subjectivity of history. His novels explicitly explore the lives of society's outsiders and alternative explanations of accepted events to further underscore that recorded, ocial history is simply a subset of all histories, and that all of these histories are equally important and valid. 2 Müller, Leo Perutz, 135-6. 3 Neuhaus, Erinnerung und Schrecken, 18.

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