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Long description: Der Dresdener Pfarrer Paul Zimmermann (1843–1927) wirkte in Wien an der evangelisch-lutherischen Stadtkirche. In einer Ära des Aufbruchs in die Moderne förderte er die Gründung eines Evangelischen Krankenhauses. Als Geistlicher und Konsenior, später auch als Oberkirchenrat, begegnete er bedeutsamen Vertretern des Protestantismus in Wien: Er vollzog die Einsegnungen Theophil Hansens, Theodor Billroths, Johannes Brahms’ und den Sohn von Johann Strauß, taufte Heimito von Doderer sowie Grete Schütte-Lihotzky und traute den Staatsrechtslehrer Hans Kelsen. Auch in der Wissenschaft hinterließ der Religionsphilosoph seine Spuren. Zimmermann verfasste Schriften über Platons Jenseitsphilosophie, die Reformation, das Vaterunser und den Protestantismus in Frankreich. Trotz seiner großen Verdienste geriet er nach seinem Tod bald in Vergessenheit. Gerhard Strejcek folgt den bereits stark verwischten Spuren. Zimmermanns Wirken für Kirche, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft sowie eine politische Verortung seines Handelns stehen im Mittelpunkt dieses Buches. Biographical note: Gerhard Strejcek, * 1963 in Wien, ist Jurist, Kulturpublizist und Dozent (ao. Prof.) am Institut für Staats- und Verwaltungsrecht an der Universität Wien. Regelmäßig schreibt er Beiträge für Tageszeitungen (Der Standard, Wiener Zeitung, NZZ). Er veröffentlichte rechtsdogmatische, aber auch biographische und bildungshistorische Texte. In wertfreier Darstellung das Verschüttete vor dem Vergessen zu bewahren, ist sein Credo.

Although we usually think of the intellectual legacy of twentieth-century Vienna as synonymous with Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic theories, other prominent writers from Vienna were also radically reconceiving sexuality and gender. In this probing new study, David Luft recovers the work of three such writers: Otto Weininger, Robert Musil, and Heimito von Doderer. His account emphasizes the distinctive intellectual world of liberal Vienna, especially the impact of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in this highly scientific intellectual world. According to Luft, Otto Weininger viewed human beings as bisexual and applied this theme to issues of creativity and morality. Robert Musil developed a creative ethics that was closely related to his open, flexible view of sexuality and gender. And Heimito von Doderer portrayed his own sexual obsessions as a way of understanding the power of total ideologies, including his own attraction to National Socialism. For Luft, the significance of these three writers lies in their understandings of eros and inwardness and in the roles that both play in ethical experience and the formation of meaningful relations to the world-a process that continues to engage artists, writers, and thinkers today. Eros and Inwardness in Vienna will profoundly reshape our understanding of Vienna's intellectual history. It will be important for anyone interested in Austrian or German history, literature, or philosophy.

Heimito von Doderer has been regarded primarily as the author of sizeable novels representing the bourgeois society in Vienna between the wars. Two of his most impressive smaller works, the story “Das letzte Abenteuer” (“The last adventure”) and the short novel “Ein Umweg” (“A detour”), however, depict a somewhat enchanted late medieval and early modern society. Foregrounding Doderer’s historical knowledge and interests, this article investigates possible sources for these historical stories. Comparing Doderer’s texts with Johan Huizinga’s “Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen”, the German translation of which Doderer read in 1927, the influence of Huizinga on Doderer becomes apparent. Close text analysis can show that, in spite of differences between the two authors concerning a general philosophy of history, especially “The last adventure” and “Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen” share a number of motifs, particularly the choice of single colors and metaphors. In “The last adventure” and “A detour”, Doderer combines his historical interests and his typical aesthetic strategy of creating poetical metaphors with questions of personal development and self-insight of the author himself and the leading protagonists.

Although we usually think of the intellectual legacy of twentieth-century Vienna as synonymous with Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic theories, other prominent writers from Vienna were also radically reconceiving sexuality and gender. In this probing new study, David Luft recovers the work of three such writers: Otto Weininger, Robert Musil, and Heimito von Doderer. His account emphasizes the distinctive intellectual world of liberal Vienna, especially the impact of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in this highly scientific intellectual world. According to Luft, Otto Weininger viewed human beings as bisexual and applied this theme to issues of creativity and morality. Robert Musil developed a creative ethics that was closely related to his open, flexible view of sexuality and gender. And Heimito von Doderer portrayed his own sexual obsessions as a way of understanding the power of total ideologies, including his own attraction to National Socialism. For Luft, the significance of these three writers lies in their understandings of eros and inwardness and in the roles that both play in ethical experience and the formation of meaningful relations to the world-a process that continues to engage artists, writers, and thinkers today. Eros and Inwardness in Vienna will profoundly reshape our understanding of Vienna's intellectual history. It will be important for anyone interested in Austrian or German history, literature, or philosophy.

Throughout his philosophical career, Eric Voegelin had much to say about literature in both his published work and his private letters. Many of his most trenchant comments regarding the analysis of literature appear in his correspondence with critic Robert Heilman, and, through his familiarity with that exchange, Charles Embry has gained extraordinary insight into Voegelin's literary views. The Philosopher and the Storyteller is the first book-length study of the literary dimensions of Voegelin's philosophy—and the first to use his philosophy to read specific novels. Bringing to bear a thorough familiarity with both Voegelin and great literature, Embry shows that novels—like myths, philosophy, and religious texts—participate in the human search for the truth of existence, and that reading literature within a Voegelinian framework exposes the existential and philosophical dimensions of those works. Embry focuses on two key elements of Voegelin's philosophy as important for reading literature: metaxy, the in-between of human consciousness, and metalepsis, human participation in the community of being. He shows how Voegelin's philosophy in general is rooted in literary-symbolic interpretation and, therefore, provides a foundation for the interpretation of literature. And finally he explores Voegelin's insistence that the soundness of literary criticism lies in the consciousness of the reader. Embry then offers Voegelinian readings that vividly illustrate the principles of this approach. First he considers Graham Swift's Waterland as an example of the human search for meaning in the modern world, then he explores the deformation and recovery of reality in Heimito von Doderer's long and complex novel The Demons, and finally he examines how Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away mythically expresses the flux of divine presence in what Voegelin calls the Time of the Tale. The Philosopher and the Storyteller unites fiction and philosophy in the common quest to understand our nature, our world, and our cosmos. A groundbreaking exploration of the connection between Voegelin and twentieth-century literature, this book opens a new window on the philosopher's thought and will motivate readers to study other novels in light of this approach.

The genre designation \"divertimento\" misleads readers into expecting entertaining, light-hearted fiction, but the seven divertimenti of Heimito von Doderer are marked by states of depression and atmospheres of gloom, as Martin Brinkmann points out. The clinically schizophrenic Rufina is indeed afflicted, but male power structures facilitate her lifelong hospitalization at the hands of a former lover, himself a depressive, and a psychiatrist suspiciously sure of himself. While Rufina had evoked new creativity in Adrian, his new love interest seems about to lead him back to depression. The musical form of the story mirrors the conflict and clarifies its development and outcome.

Heimito von Doderer’s 1962 novelThe Merowingians or The Total Family (Die Merowinger oder die totale Familie)begins with a scene in the clinical practice of the psychiatrist Professor Dr. Horn. The patient, Dr. Bachmeyer, describes his ailment: “Rage, Professor. I suffer heavy attacks of rage that are terribly strenuous for me and extremely exhaust me.”¹ Dr. Bachmeyer experiences rage as an exhausting disease that disrupts his psychological as well as physiological health and for this reason seeks treatment in Dr. Horn’s “Neurological and Psychiatrical Clinic” (13). Rage constitutes a pathological deviance from the norm that requires clinical treatment, since

This study focuses on the obstinate obtrusiveness of what Martin Heidegger callsZeug, a recalcitrant term that so thoroughly defies translation that only colloquial terms give some handle on what Heidegger is after. Often translated by “equipment,” the term is probably better understood as the underlying stuff of everyday life,¹ the tools and equipment that are at one’s disposal. Malicious objects refuse to disappear into their automatic, unconscious functionality and instead remain stubbornly conspicuous. Endowed with agency, these cunning and perfidious intruders into the lifeworld of the subject seem to actively interrupt his or her intentions, unleashing anger and rage