Journal of European Studies

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Book Review: In the Shadow of Empire: Austrian Experiences of Modernity in the Writings of Musil, Roth and Bachmann. By Malcolm Spencer. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. Pp. ix + 254. 50.00
Ritchie Robertson Journal of European Studies 2009 39: 394 DOI: 10.1177/00472441090390030906 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jes.sagepub.com/content/39/3/394.citation

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JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES 39(3)

Carlotta Sorbas piece on Novel, Drama, and Music in Mazzinis Work, an approach that would be worth pursuing for other writers. JEREMY BLACK

In the Shadow of Empire: Austrian Experiences of Modernity in the Writings of Musil, Roth and Bachmann. By Malcolm Spencer. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. Pp. ix + 254. 50.00. The authors core denition of modernity, explained in the introductory chapter, includes a crisis of patriarchal authority; a spiritual void resulting from the collapse of belief systems; nostalgia for a supposedly more ordered past; and a sense of homelessness in the modern world. It was specic to Austria, he argues (following Edward Crankshaw), that an essentially eighteenth-century ancien rgime collided with the twentieth century. This forms the prelude to a detailed account of the perception of Austria by three major writers. For Musil, symbols of an intact pre-modern Austria, such as the Hofburg, formed a highly visible contrast to the fragmentation apparent from his experience, while the memory of the multi-ethnic state represented a lost totality. Joseph Roths nostalgia accompanies a tendency to demonize modernity, most strikingly in his treatise Der Antichrist (1934). Ingeborg Bachmann, born in 1926, experienced the Third Reich as a teenager: her awareness that Nazism, while regressive, also promoted such aspects of modernity as immigration to cities and radio ownership, gave her a profoundly ambivalent view of modernity. Spencer concentrates on three interlinked texts which use the relationship between parents and children as a focus for historical change. Ulrichs relation to his father in Musils Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften is compared with the relation between Carl Joseph and the Bezirkshauptmann in Radetzkymarsch. The encyclopaedic form of Musils novel illustrates his acceptance of modernity, while Roths retention of narrative closure signies his rejection of it. Bachmann in Drei Wege zum See responds to Roth but criticizes his nostalgia; Herr Matrei, Elisabeths father, is based on the Bezirkshauptmann. The account of Ulrich and his father, and of Musils non-ctional writings on Austria, can especially be recommended. Less so, perhaps, the chapter examining how three of Musils pseudo-thinkers, examples of modernity gone wrong, absorb and distort aspects of Nietzsche,

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for of these characters, two Feuermaul and Schmeisser are too marginal to the narrative. (The third, Hans Sepp, is irritatingly called Sepp, as though that were his surname.) The framing argument is debatable, for the modernization of Austria begun under Maria Theresa and forcefully continued under Joseph II created a responsible civil service which survived the political reaction that followed Josephs untimely death. Nineteenth-century Austria too saw its full share of economic expansion. Spencer fairly presents how Musil and his colleagues viewed Austrias recent history, but their view is almost certainly biased by two factors. One is the success of conservative Habsburg propaganda. The other is the perception of Austria, since its defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, as a backward nation left behind by the thrusting energies of Germany. If this is so, one needs to investigate how these authors perceptions of recent Austrian history came to be distorted. This study is conspicuously well written; the author is sensitive and perceptive in his handling of literature; the comparisons he makes are illuminating. There is too little reference to the state of research to make clear what is original in his approach, and little sense of dialogue with other scholars, particularly with historians. Nevertheless, his chapters mostly form excellent introductions to the texts discussed. His book would be a rewarding and stimulating companion to a course of seminars on modern Austrian literature. RITCHIE ROBERTSON The Womens Movement in Wartime. International Perspectives, 191419. Edited by Alison S. Fell and Ingrid Sharp. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp xi + 272. 50.00. Fifteen chapters explore the responses of the womens movements to the war in all of the major belligerent nations (p. 1). The repetitive use of the plural form is important. It signals the variety of reactions to WWI among feminist organizations, and serves as a powerful reminder that feminism is a pluralistic reality, equally enriched and thwarted by the political, social and cultural conditions in which it emerges. As the editors introduction shows, feminist movements across nations shared a common interest in access to education, the improvement of working conditions and legal reforms. Yet, they were often

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