Religion without Content in Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften

Religion and science, war and peace, love and hate, chance and determinacy – these are a few of the many topics Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (Vol. 1, 1931 / Vol. 2 Part 1, 1933)1 – an unfinished philosophic and poetic masterpiece spanning more than one thousand pages – addresses, as it communicates the narrator’s efforts to think more precisely and more accurately about elemental aspects of the human experience. In his monumental tome, Robert Musil presents numerous figures who espouse a broad range of ideas proliferating within the society of “Kakanien”, representative of the Habsburg Empire in 1913/1914. Musil’s fictional rendition of this milieu focuses particularly on the intellectual mood pulsating throughout Austro-Hungarian society during the twelve months preceding the outbreak of World War One; the novel’s first paragraph ends with the following statement: “Es war ein schöner Augusttag des Jahres 1913” (9). In July of the following year, mayhem breaks out. What were people thinking before the violence erupted? What influential ideas were proliferating and, indeed, may have been adopted prior to the catastrophe known as the Great War? Meticulously and perspicaciously, Musil textually articulates – and experiments with – those concepts permeating throughout the pre-war Austro-Hungarian empire, in order to investigate which of them may have been fallaciously used and, consequently, led to the ensuing disaster. Simultaneously, through his narration, he offers an aesthetic framework for considering the possibilities of more refined thinking, which, if embraced and actualized, may have brought about a more intellectually consistent society that would have been able to stave off the horrific crisis that occurred. Contextually, it is important to keep in mind that he writes about 1913/1914 from the perspective of 1931/1933: the “Weimarer Republik” and the “Erste Republik Österreich” are both on the verge of dissolution; fascism in Germany and Austria is on the rise; and the “Militarisierung Deutschlands” is readily evident.2 Musil is keenly aware of the similarity in circumstances. For this reason, he projects the failures apparent in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s back onto 1913/1914, when the Habsburg Monarchy and the German Empire could not provide a counterforce to the developing war machine.3 Writing in the shadow of a past war and with the looming sense of imminent danger, Musil generates impassioned essays,4 endeavoring to think in an informed, dynamic, and new manner about the situation in which he finds himself, hoping that his exploration of ideas will actualize the dissemination of peace.5