Hermann Broch: Austrian writer (born: 1886 - died: 1951)

Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on May 30, 1951 Austrian novelist (Sleepwalkers) Hermann Broch died at the age of 64.

Ethics and Literature in Austria: 1900-1938/1939
On May 20, 2014, Prof. David Luft gave the penultimate lecture in the 2014 Horning Lecture Series.
This lecture commemorates examines the importance of ethics in the generation of Austrian intellectuals who reached maturity in the decade before the First World War including Robert Musil, Hermann Broch, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Franz Kafka.
David Luft is one of two Horning Professors in the Humanities at Oregon State University. He is a modern intellectual and cultural historian who works primarily on modern Central European history, including Germany, Austria, and the Habsburg Monarchy.
https://youtu.be/HKkdLDrPpsU?t=375




Images:
1. Hermann Broch, Austrian writer [österreichischer Schriftsteller.], in 1935.
2. Hermann Broch
3. Hermann Broch 'No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.'
4. Professor Jen Jenkins at the grave of Herman Broch in Connecticut.

Biographies:
1. firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/broch.htm
2.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/broch-hermann-1886-1951]

1. Background from {[https://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/broch.htm]}
Prose & Poetry - Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch Austrian writer whose reputation rests on a number of formally inventive and intellectually ambitious novels.

The dilemma of the artist in a period of historical crisis is the subject of Broch's (1886-1951) masterpiece Der Tod des Vergil (1945, The Death of Virgil). Broch's attempts to reconcile the scientific worldview with a mystical conception of experience is at times reminiscent of his Austrian contemporary Robert Musil, who also came to literature after first pursuing a technical and commercial career.

"Oh, Augustus, der Schreiber lebt nicht; der Erlöser hingegen lebt stärker als alle, denn sein Leben ist seine Erkenntnistat, sein Leben und sein Tod." (from Der Tod des Vergil)

Hermann Broch was born in Vienna into a well-to-do Jewish family. His father was Josef Broch, an industrialist, and mother Johanna Schnabel Broch. He was first educated privately and then his education was intended to prepare him for an administrative position in his father's textile factory in Teesdorf.

Broch studied at the Imperial and Royal State Secondary School (1897-1904), the Technical College for Textile Manufacture (1904-06), and Spinning and Weaving College in Mülhausen (1906-07). During World War I he served as an administrator for Austrian Red Cross. From 1907 to 1927 he administered family's factory in Teesdorf.

In the cafes of Vienna Broch met such intellectuals as Musil and Franz Blei. In 1919 he was a reviewer at Moderne Welt. After working for many years in the family textile firm, Broch devoted himself from the age of 40 to intellectual pursuits.

Broch divorced in 1923 and sold the factory in 1927. From 1926 to 1930 he studied mathematics, philosophy, and psychology at Vienna University, where the highly influential Vienna Circle was organized in 1929.

Its members, including Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and Friedrich Waismann, and other logical positivist, campaigned against metaphysics as an outdated precursor of science, and attempted to add the technical equipment and logical rigour of modern mathematical logic to the empirical tradition of Hume, Comte, and Mach.

Broch himself saw that the unique task of literature was to deal with problems whose solutions elude the "hard" sciences. Disappointed with his professors' reluctance to consider metaphysical questions, Broch abandoned his studies.

At the age of forty-five Broch published his first novel, the trilogy Die Schlafwandler (1931-32), which reflected the author's Spenglerian conviction that history progresses in cycles of disintegrating and reintegrating value systems. Its central subject was the disintegration of cultural values in Germany in the period between 1880 and 1920.

According to Broch, the characters in the novel experience the social, political, and economic troubles as periods of personal difficulties and transition. Paserow, a Prussian aristocrat and a military officer, breaks with the oppressive conventions with the Bohemian prostitute Ruzena, but ends in a joyless marriage with Elisabeth, his neighbour and social equal.

Esch, the impetuous bookkeeper, is a transitional figure. His world falls apart when he is fired from his job. At the end of a period of wandering, he marries a restaurant owner. Huguenau is the 'value-free' person, who swindles and murders his way to social and financial success.

He epitomizes a social system devoid of traditional values. Huguenau deserts the army, kills Esch, rapes Frau Esch, and becomes a respected businessman. The structure of the novel is loose, fragments of philosophical essays, pieces of journalism, sections of dialogue, and fantasies follow each other.

The spread of fascism made Broch abandon his literary projects and in 1937-38 he worked on the Völkerbund-Resolution (Resolution for the League of Nations), suggesting that the international recognitions and enforcement of human rights might stem the tide of fascism.

Broch's interest in the collective psychological sources of Nazism was also later expressed in Massenpsychologie (1951), which was written with the aid of several American foundations during and after World War II.
Die Verzauberung (1976) was a novel about mass psychology. The story was set in a small Tyrolean mountain village where farmers fall for the promises of a fanatic fundamentalist and even participate in the ritual murder of a young girl. Broch worked on the book periodically since the 1930s, but it was left unfinished. At the time of his death, he was going through the third version of the text.

Broch was arrested by the Nazis on the day of the German annexation of Austria and detained briefly in 1938. Inspired by the visions of impending death in the prison in Altaussee, he wrote a few elegies, which became the core of Der Tod des Vergil. With the help of James Joyce and other writers, Broch was allowed to emigrate from Nazi Austria. He moved to London, then to Scotland, and finally to the United States, where he settled first in Princeton, New Jersey.
Because Broch did not have academic degrees, he was unable to obtain regular faculty appointments at Princeton or Yale. He received a series of stipends from various fellowships, including Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Bollingen, Oberlander, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1940 Broch was involved in refugee work, and much of money he gave to other European refugees of the war.

The Death of Virgil, one of the great monuments of exile literature, was completed in the United States. The four parts of the book are ruled by the four elements - water, fire, earth, and air. The first section consist of the poet's return to Italy through filthy and noisy streets of the port - he is carried from his boat to the palace in Brundisium.

The second is predominantly a fevered dream in the palace of the emperor Augustus. The third consists of Virgil's decision that the Aeneid must be destroyed because society is doomed and poetry is useless, and his struggle with the emperor who wants the work preserved. In the last chapter Virgil finally accepts death in a fantastic cavalcade that reverses the creation of the universe.
Within the framework of eighteen hours, the dying poet is engaged in long philosophical conversations with his physician, with the emperor, and with his friends. The conversations with Caesar deal partly with the nature of totalitarianism and the relationship of religion and the state.
In this work Broch attempted to represent the transition from life to death through a musical and poetic technique. Long, almost unstructured sentences, convey the complexity and emotional and aesthetic content of a single thought.
Added with recursive language, the novel is a difficult read. Hannah Arendt and Aldous Huxley greatly admired Broch's treatment of the idea of art as "an affiliation with the human community, which was the aim of real art in its aspiration toward humanity." On the other hand, Huxley was bewildered by many of the the quasi-poetic sections of the novel.

Broch was among those intellectuals who were convinced of the decay of the West, but he hoped for a rebirth of Western culture. He saw that in the Middle Ages there was a real totality. The nineteenth century was for him one of the most miserable periods in world history. Wagner was "an unmusical genius of music and an unpoetic genius of poetry" and Baudelaire paved the way for the darkest anarchy of the twentieth century.
Totality was a central term in Broch's literary criticism. According to Broch, "art which is not capable of reproducing the totality of the world is not art." He condemned the search for beauty - it can only lead to kitch. The term in his writings refers to repetition.
"In science and art alike the important thing is the creation of new expressions of reality." - "Kitch is certainly not 'bad art'; it forms its own closed system, which is lodged like a foreign body in the overall system of art, of which, if you prefer, appears alongside it." (Broch in Kitch: an Anthology of Bad Taste by Gillo Forfles, 1969)
Broch spent the last years of his life in close contact with Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. In 1949 he became a fellow at the Saybrook College. On the eve of a planned return to Europe he died of a heart attack on May 30, 1951. Although Broch had converted to Catholicism as a young man, at the time of his death he was planning a return to the Judaism of his childhood.

2. Background from{[https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/broch-hermann-1886-1951]}
"Hermann Broch
PERSONAL: Born November 1, 1886, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria); died of a heart attack May 30, 1951, in New Haven, CT; married Franziska von Rothermann, December 11, 1909; children: Hermann Friedrich Maria. Education: Studied textile engineering at Mulhausen (now Mulhouse, France) and in Alsace; attended University of Vienna, 1925-30.
CAREER: Textile engineer, novelist, poet, and essayist.

AWARDS, HONORS: Literary prize, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1942, for The City of Man: A Declaration on World Democracy.

While encouraged by his father to study business so he could work at the family textile factory, Broch hoped to study in the humanities. After learning engineering at Mulhausen (now Mulhouse), he traveled to the United States on the premise of uncovering means of producing cotton and returned to become an administrator at the factory in Teesdorf. Having converted to Catholicism, Broch was finally able to marry Franziska von Rothermann in December, 1909. The following October, Franziska gave birth to their only child, Hermann Friedrich Maria. They divorced in 1923, as Franziska's could not adapt to the simple life at Teesdorf.
After his brother, Fritz, joined the Austrian air force, Broch assumed all of the responsibilities of running the family business. Broch then began visiting the literary cafes in Vienna, and in 1918, he published "Eine metholodogische Novell" in Summa, a journal of literature. Enrolling at the University of Vienna in 1925, Broch studied mathematics and psychoanalysis, eventually concluding that his instructors were downplaying metaphysical and ethical considerations. Hoping to study these fields in depth, Broch turned his attention to literature.
In 1930 Broch was introduced to Daniel Brody, whose publishing company produced James Joyce's Ulysses in a German translation. They planned to publish Broch's novel trilogy Die Schlafwandler and came to a contract agreement on Pasenow oder die Romantik, the initial installment. Broch's constant revisions forced publishing delays in the book and the following two segments. The book was not available for Christmas, as planned; the reworking did not stop until April 1932, when the final part was at last published. Broch hurt himself financially with these delays, and this trend would continue throughout his literary career.
In Die Schlafwandler, translated as The Sleepwalkers, Broch illustrates Germany's development in three stages: romantic, anarchistic and objective. Michael Winkler commented in the Reference Guide to World Literature, "The Sleepwalkers is a work of high intellectual ambition." Intellectuals liked Broch's work, but the public at large had little exposure to his novels, and the result was a financial disaster. Broch's finances did not improve over time, and in fact worsened as his work drew more literary acclaim. Broch, looking for revenue, began speaking at the Ottakring Adult Education Center in Vienna, where he read several of his essays. Hoping to publish these essays in a compilation, Broch spoke to Brody. Believing the project would not be profitable, Brody denied Broch's request.
Next, Broch tried writing plays. Die Entsühnung was his first product, but the play was not performed until March 1934, in Zurich, after the producer eliminated the scene Broch considered most important. When the production was canceled shortly thereafter, Broch continued working on his next play, Aus der Luft gegriffen. When this attempt was deemed unsuitable for the stage, Broch turned to writing novels.
Published in 1933, Die Unbekannte Grösse, translated as The Unknown Quantity, recounts the life of Richard Hieck, a mathematician determined to control life through the rational application of science. Broch himself was dissatisfied with the conclusion of the novel, and it did poorly in Germany and America, although Harald Strauss in a review for the New York Times called it "an exquisite and delicate adventure into the distant recesses of the human spirit." Broch then authored poetry, some of which was included in Patmos: Zwolf Lyriker, an anthology edited by Ernst Schönwiese. He also produced five shorter novels and made a vain attempt to have these published in a single volume. After writing a screenplay for director Berthold Viertel, Broch adapted Die unbekannte Grösse into a screenplay. The film was never produced, and nothing ever came of an offer from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to film The Sleepwalkers.
Recovering from these disappointments, Broch began working on Die Verzauberung, (translated as The Spell in 1987) which was published in 1976. Hoping to find peace so he could complete his work, Broch moved to the country, but stopped work on the novel to write "Erwagungen zum Problem des Kultertodes," "Considerations on the Problem of Cultural Death", published in 1936 in Silberboot. Returning to work on his novel, Broch finished the initial draft and sent it to Brody in January. Having planned that Die Verzauberung would be the first section of a trilogy, Broch never completed the third version, which was published posthumously. The narrator is a doctor who has escaped to a quiet town in the mountains to practice medicine. A stranger, Marius Ratti, comes to the town and disturbs the region's serenity. Ratti, who is modeled after Adolf Hitler, persuades the village to return to the pre-industrial era and open the dormant gold mine. Soon, the entire town is in hysteria, and a young girl is sacrificed. Ratti's nemesis, Mutter Gisson, represents the true order of life, the opposite of Ratti's antiquated, dangerous philosophy. It is thought that Broch's use of a symbolic relationship between the natural and political world was a retort aimed at the National Socialists' support of "Blut-und-Boden"—blood and soil—motif in literature.
In the following years, Broch spent much time attempting to settle his father's estate. Moving to Alt-Aussee in Syria, he continued work on Die Heimkehr des Vergil, (Vergil's Return, 1973) a short novel he had begun after reading Vergil: Vater des Abenlandes by Theodore Hacker. After German soldiers marched into Austria in 1938, Broch was imprisoned after his postman reported him for receiving the controversial literary magazine Das Wort. Continuing to work on his novella, he was eventually released and ordered to report to the police in Vienna. Instead of following these orders, he stayed in seclusion with friends. Through the help of various acquaintances, Broch received an exit visa and moved to Great Britain. After obtaining an American visa, Broch left for New York, where he met Jean Starr Untermeyer, the poet who would translate his novel about Vergil.
With German novelist Thomas Mann's help, Broch obtained a Guggenheim fellowship stipend until 1941 and continued his research in the psychology of the masses. He also collaborated with Antonio Borgese to compile a book promoting democracy. The City of Man: A Declaration on World Democracy was released by Viking Press in 1940. Through this work, Broch was able to obtain further financial support for his study of psychology, a project that was never completed. In 1942, his Der Tod des Vergil was awarded a prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Broch was able to pay his debts. The novel was finally published in 1945. There were few reviews of the novel in German, but Broch's popularity in the United States had grown and there were more than thirty reviews of the novel in America. Orville Prescott, a critic for the Yale Review, wrote "There is a dark beauty in these cloudy pages."
After rejecting a position in literature and psychology at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, East Germany, Broch continued to live on a stipend he received each month from well-to-do German exile Wilhelm Roth. Hospitalized for a broken leg, Broch began writing about Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The completed study was published after his death as Hugo von Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit in 1975 and was translated as Hugo von Hofmannsthal and His Time, in 1984. His next effort was a collection of short stories titled Die Schuldlosen, published in 1950, one year after his marriage to Anne Marie Meier-Graefe.
When he died in 1951, Broch had received neither fame nor wealth from his literary achievements. The public overlooked his forthright interpretation of social issues and his experimental writing. In more recent years, however, he has been cited as one of the most astute social critics of his time.
SIDELIGHTS: Poor and relatively unknown outside literary circles, Hermann Broch was nevertheless an influence in philosophy, social studies, and nontraditional writings. Broch may have limited his readership through his use of experimental forms and predilection for philosophy, but these qualities have made his work increasingly significant to scholars since his death in 1951.

WRITINGS:
Die schlafwandler: Eine Romantrilogie, 3 volumes, Rhein (Munich, Germany & Zurich, Switzerland), 1931-1932, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir as The Sleepwalkers: A Trilogy, Little, Brown (New York, NY), 1932.
Die imbelammte Grösse: Roman, Fischer (Berlin,Germany), 1933, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir as The Unknown Quantity, Viking Press (New York, NY), 1935.
James Joyce und die Gegenwart: Rede zu Joyces 50. Geburstag, Reichner (Vienna, Austria, Leipzig, Germany & Zurich, Switzerland), 1936, translated by Maria and Eugene Jolas as "James Joyce and the Present Age," in A James Joyce Yearbook, Transition Press (Paris, France), 1949.
Der Tod des Vergil: Roman, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1945, translated by Jean Starr Untermeyer as The Death of Vergil, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1945.
Die Schuldlosen: Roman in elf Erzählungen, Weismann (Munich, Germany), 1950, translated by Ralph Manheim as The Guiltless, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1974.
Gesammelte Werke, Rhein (Zurich, Switzerland), Volume 1: Gedichle: Mit 9 Bildern und 2 Hand-schriftproben des Autors, edited by Erich Kalher, 1953, Volume 2: Die Schlafwandler, Romantrilogie, 1952, Volume 3: Der Tod des Vergil. Epische Dichtung, 1952, Volume 4: Der Versucher: Roman, edited by Felix Stössinger, 1953, republished as Demeter, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1967, Volume 6: Dichten and Erkennen: Essays, edited by Hannah Arendt, 1955, Volume 7: Erkennen und Handeln: Essays, edited by Arendt, 1955, Volume 8: Briefe: Von 1929 bis 1951, edited by Robert Pick, 1957, Volume 9: Massenpsychologie: Schriften aus dem Nachlass, edited by Wolfgang Rothe, 1959, Volume 10: Die unbekannte Grösse und frühe Schriften, edited by Ernst Schönwiese, and Mit den Briefen an Willa Muir, edited by William Herd, 1961.
Nur das Herz ist das Wirkliche, edited by Ernst Schonwiese, Stiansny (Graz, Austria), 1959.
Die Euts¨hnung: Schauspiel, in der Hörspielfassung, edited by Ernst Schoenwiese, Rhein (Zurich, Switzerland), 1961, translated by George E. Wellwarth and Broch de Rotherman as "The Atonement in German Drama Between the Wars," edited by George E. Wellwarth, Dutton (New York, NY), 1972.
Die Heimkehr: Prosa und Lyrik. Auswahl aus dem dichterischen Werk ergänzl durch den Vortrag geist und Zeitgeist, edited by Harald Binde, Fischer (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1962.
Der Dichter: Eine Auswahl aus dem dichterischenWerk, edited by Harald Binde, Rhein (Zurich, Switzerland), 1964.
Der Dichter: Eine Auswahl aus dem essayistischenWerk und aus Briefen, edited by Harald Binde, Rhein (Zurich, Switzerland), 1966.
Short Stories, edited by Eric William Herd, Oxford University Press (London, England), 1966.
Die Idea ist ewig: Essays and Briefe, edited by Harald Binde, Deutscher Taschenbuch (Munich, Germany), 1968.
Zur Universitatsreform, edited by Götz Wienold, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1969.
Bergroman: Die drei Originalfassungen, 4 volumes, edited by Frank Kress and Hans Albert Maier, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1969.
Gedanken zur Politik, edited by Dieter Hildebrandt, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1970.
Barbara un andere Novellen: Eine Auswahl aus dem dichterischen Werk, edited by Paul Michael Lutzeler, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1973.
Völkerbund-Resolution: Das vollst&aouml;ndige politische Pamphlet von 1937 mit Kommentar, Entwurf und Korrespondenz, edited by Paul Michael Lutzeler, Müller (Salzburg, Austria), 1973.
Kommentierte Werkausgabe, 17 volumes, edited by Paul Michael Lutzeler, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1974-1981, Volume 1: Die Schlafwandler: Eine Romantrilogie, 1978, Volume 2: Die Unbekannte Grösse: Roman, 1977, Volume 3: Die Verzauberung, translated by H. F. Broch de Rothermann as The Spell, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1987, Volume 4: Der Tod des Vergil: Roman, 1976, Volume 5: Die Schuldlosen: Roman in elf Erzählungen, 1974, Volume 6: Novellen; Prosa; Fragmente, 1980, Volume 7: Dramen, 1979, includes Die Entsühnung,, Volume 8: Gedichte, 1980, Volume 9, Schriften zur Literatur: Kritik and Schriften zur Literatur: Theorie, both 1975, Volume 10, Philosophische Schriften: Kritik and Philosophische Schriften: Theorie, both 1977, Volume 11: Politische Schriften, 1979, Volume 12: Massenwahntheorie. Beitraege zu Einer Psychologie der Politik, 1979, Volume 13: Briefe 1913-1938, Briefe 1938-1945, and Briefe 1945-1951, all 1981.
Psychische Selbstbiographie, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1999.

letters
Hermann Broch—Daniel Brody: Briefwechsel 1930-1951, edited by Bertold Hack and Marietta Kleiss, Buchhändler-Vereinigung (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1971.
Hermann Broch, Briefe über Deutschland: Die Korrespondenz mit Volkmar von Zühlsdorff, edited by Paul Michael Lutzeler, Suhrkamp (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), 1986.

contributor
Wiedergeburt der Liebe: Die unsichtbare Revolution, edited by Frank Thiess, Zsolnay (Berlin, Germany), 1931.
Almanach: "Das 48. Jahr," Fischer (Berlin, Germany), 1934.
Patmos: Zwölf Lyriker, edited by Ernst Schönwiese, Johannespresse (Vienna, Austria), 1935.
(Contributor) The City of Man: A Declaration onWorld Democracy, Viking Press (New York, NY), 1940.
On the Iliad, Rachel Bespaloff, translated by Mary McCarthy, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1947.
Frank Thiess: Werk und Dichter. 32 Beiträge zur Problematik unserer Zeit, edited by Rolf Italiänder, Kruger (Hamburg, Germany), 1950.
Contributor to periodicals, including Brenner, Aktion, Summa, Rettung, Friede, Neue Tag, Neue Rundschau, Prager Presse, Kantstudien, Annalen der Philosophie, Literarische Welt, Frankfurter Zeitung, Berliner Börsen-Courier, Welt im Wort, Weiner Zeitung, Silberboot, Mass und Wert, Saturday Review of Literature, Aufbau, American Journal of International Law, Schweizer Rundschau, Literarische Revue, and Hamburger Akademische Rundschau. Work anthologized in 1860-1920, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1984."

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Thank you for the share!

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