Hermann Broch
Encyclopedia
Hermann Broch was a 20th century Austria
n writer, considered one of the major Modernist
s.
to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately. He was predestined to work in his father’s textile factory in Teesdorf
, therefore, he attended a technical college for textile manufacture and a spinning and weaving college.
In 1909 he married Franziska von Rothermann, a daughter of a knighted manufacturer. The following year, their son Hermann Friedrich Maria was born. Later, Broch began to see other women and the marriage ended in divorce in 1923.
He was acquainted with Robert Musil
, Rainer Maria Rilke
, Elias Canetti
, Franz Blei
and his devoted friend and inspiration, writer and former nude model Ea von Allesch and many others. In 1927 he sold the textile factory and decided to study mathematics
, philosophy
and psychology
at the University of Vienna
. He embarked on a full-time literary career only around the age of 40. At the age of 45, he published his first novel, The Sleepwalkers
.
With the annexation of Austria
by the Nazis
(1938), Broch was arrested, but a movement organized by friends – including James Joyce
– managed to have him released and allowed to emigrate; first to Britain and then to the United States
, where he finished his novel The Death of Virgil
and began to work, similarly to Elias Canetti
, on an essay on mass behaviour, which remained unfinished. He converted to Roman Catholicism.
Hermann Broch died in 1951 in New Haven, Connecticut
. He is buried in Killingworth, Connecticut
, in the cemetery on Roast Meat Hill Road. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature
.
(Der Tod des Vergil), which he began to write while imprisoned in a concentration camp, was first published in the U.S., in an English
translation, in 1945. This great, difficult novel, in which reality, hallucination, poetry and prose mingle, reenacts the last hours of life of the Roman
poet Virgil
in the port of Brundisium (Brindisi
), where he accompanied Augustus
, his decision – frustrated by the emperor – to burn his Aeneid
and his reconciliation with his destiny. The French composer Jean Barraqué
composed a number of works inspired by The Death of Virgil
.
Erich Heller
observed that if "The Death of Virgil is his masterpiece... it is a very problematical one, for it attempts to give literary shape to the author's growing aversion to literature. In the very year the novel appeared, Broch confessed to 'a deep revulsion' from literature as such – 'the domain of vanity and mendacity'. Written with a paradoxical, lyrical exuberance, it is the imaginary record of the poet’s last day and his renunciation of poetry. He commands the manuscript of the Aeneid to be destroyed, not because it is incomplete or imperfect but because it is poetry and not 'knowledge'. He even says his Georgics are useless, inferior to any expert treatise on agriculture. His friend the Emperor Augustus undoes his design and his works are saved." (Erich Heller, "Hitler in a very Small Town", New York Times, January 25, 1987.)
Other important works by Broch are The Sleepwalkers
(Die Schlafwandler, 1932) and The Guiltless (Die Schuldlosen, 1950). The Sleepwalkers
is a trilogy, where Broch takes "the degeneration of values" as his theme. The trilogy has been praised by Milan Kundera
, whose writing has been greatly influenced by Broch. Broch demonstrates mastery of a wide range of styles, from the gentle parody of Theodor Fontane
in the first volume of The Sleepwalkers through the essayistic segments of the third volume to the dithyramb
ic phantasmagoria of The Death of Virgil.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n writer, considered one of the major Modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
s.
Life
Broch was born in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately. He was predestined to work in his father’s textile factory in Teesdorf
Teesdorf
Teesdorf is a town in the district of Baden in Lower Austria in Austria....
, therefore, he attended a technical college for textile manufacture and a spinning and weaving college.
In 1909 he married Franziska von Rothermann, a daughter of a knighted manufacturer. The following year, their son Hermann Friedrich Maria was born. Later, Broch began to see other women and the marriage ended in divorce in 1923.
He was acquainted with Robert Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
, Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
, Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".-Life:...
, Franz Blei
Franz Blei
Franz Blei was an essayist, playwright and translator from Vienna...
and his devoted friend and inspiration, writer and former nude model Ea von Allesch and many others. In 1927 he sold the textile factory and decided to study mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
at the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
. He embarked on a full-time literary career only around the age of 40. At the age of 45, he published his first novel, The Sleepwalkers
The Sleepwalkers (Broch)
The Sleepwalkers is a novel by the Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch...
.
With the annexation of Austria
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
by the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
(1938), Broch was arrested, but a movement organized by friends – including James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
– managed to have him released and allowed to emigrate; first to Britain and then to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, where he finished his novel The Death of Virgil
The Death of Virgil
The Death of Virgil is a novel originally written in German by the Austrian author Hermann Broch. The English translation, and an edition in German, were both published in 1945...
and began to work, similarly to Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".-Life:...
, on an essay on mass behaviour, which remained unfinished. He converted to Roman Catholicism.
Hermann Broch died in 1951 in New Haven, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
. He is buried in Killingworth, Connecticut
Killingworth, Connecticut
Killingworth is a town in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States. The town's name can easily be confused with another Connecticut town, Killingly; or a Vermont ski area, Killington. The population was 6,018 at the 2000 census.-History:...
, in the cemetery on Roast Meat Hill Road. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
.
Work
One of his major works, The Death of VirgilThe Death of Virgil
The Death of Virgil is a novel originally written in German by the Austrian author Hermann Broch. The English translation, and an edition in German, were both published in 1945...
(Der Tod des Vergil), which he began to write while imprisoned in a concentration camp, was first published in the U.S., in an English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
translation, in 1945. This great, difficult novel, in which reality, hallucination, poetry and prose mingle, reenacts the last hours of life of the Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
poet Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
in the port of Brundisium (Brindisi
Brindisi
Brindisi is a city in the Apulia region of Italy, the capital of the province of Brindisi, off the coast of the Adriatic Sea.Historically, the city has played an important role in commerce and culture, due to its position on the Italian Peninsula and its natural port on the Adriatic Sea. The city...
), where he accompanied Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
, his decision – frustrated by the emperor – to burn his Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
and his reconciliation with his destiny. The French composer Jean Barraqué
Jean Barraqué
Jean-Henri-Alphonse Barraqué was a French composer and writer on music who developed an individual form of serialism which is displayed in a small output of highly complex but passionate works.-Life:...
composed a number of works inspired by The Death of Virgil
The Death of Virgil
The Death of Virgil is a novel originally written in German by the Austrian author Hermann Broch. The English translation, and an edition in German, were both published in 1945...
.
Erich Heller
Erich Heller
Erich Heller was a British essayist, known particularly for his critical studies in German-language philosophy and literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.- Biography :...
observed that if "The Death of Virgil is his masterpiece... it is a very problematical one, for it attempts to give literary shape to the author's growing aversion to literature. In the very year the novel appeared, Broch confessed to 'a deep revulsion' from literature as such – 'the domain of vanity and mendacity'. Written with a paradoxical, lyrical exuberance, it is the imaginary record of the poet’s last day and his renunciation of poetry. He commands the manuscript of the Aeneid to be destroyed, not because it is incomplete or imperfect but because it is poetry and not 'knowledge'. He even says his Georgics are useless, inferior to any expert treatise on agriculture. His friend the Emperor Augustus undoes his design and his works are saved." (Erich Heller, "Hitler in a very Small Town", New York Times, January 25, 1987.)
Other important works by Broch are The Sleepwalkers
The Sleepwalkers (Broch)
The Sleepwalkers is a novel by the Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch...
(Die Schlafwandler, 1932) and The Guiltless (Die Schuldlosen, 1950). The Sleepwalkers
The Sleepwalkers (Broch)
The Sleepwalkers is a novel by the Austrian novelist and essayist Hermann Broch...
is a trilogy, where Broch takes "the degeneration of values" as his theme. The trilogy has been praised by Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...
, whose writing has been greatly influenced by Broch. Broch demonstrates mastery of a wide range of styles, from the gentle parody of Theodor Fontane
Theodor Fontane
Theodor Fontane was a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist writer.-Youth:Fontane was born in Neuruppin into a Huguenot family. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an apothecary, his father's profession. He became an...
in the first volume of The Sleepwalkers through the essayistic segments of the third volume to the dithyramb
Dithyramb
The dithyramb was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the god: Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb." Plato also...
ic phantasmagoria of The Death of Virgil.
External links
- Excellent overview
- IN SEARCH OF THE ABSOLUTE NOVEL - 1985 review of The Sleepwalkers by Theodore Ziolkowski
- Hermann Broch archive at Yale University
- Some Broch quotations
- Another review of The Sleepwalkers, with useful links
- Review of Geist and Zeitgeist
- Review of Death of Virgil
- A personal page about Broch's writings, and about Broch's son, H.F. Broch de Rothermann