The Collector Journal for Swedish Literature Science Research

Kristina Fjelkestam, ”Bli sångerska eller gå under”. Nysaklighet och konstnärskap i Vicki Baums Karriär. (“Become a Singer or Perish”. Neue Sachlichkeit and Artistry in Vicki Baum’s Die Karriere der Doris Hart.)The focus of this study is the German novel Die Karriere der Doris Hart which was published in 1936. It was written by the presently neglected, but at the time best-selling author Vicki Baum. Die Karriere der Doris Hart tells the dramatic success story of an opera singer, and it is told in a fashion where the critical objectivity of the neue sachlichkeit clashes and breaks with an older romantic ideal of the artist. However, in the end the traditionally romantic ideal persists and this essay tries to answer how and why this is the case.The essay opens with a presentation of Baum’s authorship during the inter-war period. Then the formal criteria of the literary neue sachlichkeit are discussed and compared to the novel which made Baum’s breakthrough, stud. chem. Helene Willfüer from 1928. The actual analysis of Die Karriere der Doris Hart begins with a historical survey of the genre of the Künstlerroman, and is concluded with a comparative analysis of a novel considered to be its intertext, namely Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark from 1915.