Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler (15 May 1862 – 21 October 1931) was an Austrian author and dramatist.

Arthur Schnitzler

Arthur Schnitzler, ca. 1912

Born 15 May 1862[1]

Vienna, Austria

Died 21 October 1931 (aged 69)

Vienna, Austria

Occupation Novelist, short-story writer and playwright

Language German

Nationality Austrian

Genre Short stories, novels, plays

Literary movement Decadent movement, Modernism

Notable works Dream Story, Reigen, Fräulein Else

Biography
 Schnitzler's birthplace Praterstrasse
16

Arthur Schnitzler was born at Praterstrasse 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, capital of the Austrian
Empire (as of 1867, part of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary). He was the son of a
prominent Hungarian laryngologist, Johann Schnitzler (1835–1893), and Luise Markbreiter
(1838–1911), a daughter of the Viennese doctor Philipp Markbreiter. His parents were both
from Jewish families.[2] In 1879 Schnitzler began studying medicine at the University of
Vienna and in 1885 he received his doctorate of medicine. He began work at Vienna's
General Hospital (German: Allgemeines Krankenhaus der Stadt Wien), but ultimately
abandoned the practice of medicine in favour of writing.

On 26 August 1903, Schnitzler married Olga Gussmann (1882–1970), a 21-year-old aspiring

actress and singer who came from a Jewish middle-class family. They had a son, Heinrich
(1902–1982), born on 9 August 1902. In 1909 they had a daughter, Lili, who committed
suicide in 1928. The Schnitzlers separated in 1921. Schnitzler died on 21 October 1931 in
Vienna of a brain hemorrhage. In 1938, following the Anschluss, his son Heinrich went to the
United States and did not return to Austria until 1959; he is the father of the Austrian
musician and conservationist Michael Schnitzler, born in 1944 in Berkeley, California, who
moved to Vienna with his parents in 1959.[3]

Literary works

Schnitzler's works were often controversial, both for their frank description of sexuality (in a
letter to Schnitzler Sigmund Freud confessed "I have gained the impression that you have
learned through intuition – although actually as a result of sensitive introspection –
everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons")[4] and for their
strong stand against anti-semitism, represented by works such as his play Professor
Bernhardi and his novel Der Weg ins Freie. However, although Schnitzler was Jewish,
Professor Bernhardi and Fräulein Else are among the few clearly identified Jewish
protagonists in his work.
Schnitzler was branded as a pornographer after the release of his play Reigen, in which 10
pairs of characters are shown before and after the sexual act, leading and ending with a
prostitute. The furor after this play was couched in the strongest anti-semitic terms.[5]
Reigen was made into a French language film in 1950 by the German-born director Max
Ophüls as La Ronde. The film achieved considerable success in the English-speaking world,
with the result that Schnitzler's play is better known there under its French title. Richard
Oswald's film The Merry-Go-Round (1920), Roger Vadim's Circle of Love (1964) and Otto
Schenk's Der Reigen (1973) also are based on the play. More recently, in Fernando
Meirelles' film 360, Schnitzler's play was provided with a new version as has been the case
with many other TV and film productions.

In the novella Fräulein Else (1924) Schnitzler may be rebutting a contentious critique of the
Jewish character by Otto Weininger (1903) by positioning the sexuality of the young female
Jewish protagonist.[6] The story, a first-person stream of consciousness narrative by a
young aristocratic woman, reveals a moral dilemma that ends in tragedy.

In response to an interviewer who asked Schnitzler what he thought about the critical view
that his works all seemed to treat the same subjects, he replied "I write of love and death.
What other subjects are there?"[7] Despite his seriousness of purpose, Schnitzler frequently
approaches the bedroom farce in his plays (and had an affair with Adele Sandrock, one of
his actresses). Professor Bernhardi, a play about a Jewish doctor who turns away a Catholic
priest in order to spare a patient the realization that she is on the point of death, is his only
major dramatic work without a sexual theme.

A member of the avant-garde group Young Vienna (Jung-Wien), Schnitzler toyed with
formal as well as social conventions. With his 1900 novella Leutnant Gustl, he was the first
to write German fiction in stream-of-consciousness narration. The story is an unflattering
portrait of its protagonist and of the army's obsessive code of formal honor. It caused
Schnitzler to be stripped of his commission as a reserve officer in the medical corps –
something that should be seen against the rising tide of anti-semitism of the time.

He specialized in shorter works like novellas and one-act plays. And in his short stories like
"The Green Tie" ("Die grüne Krawatte") he showed himself to be one of the early masters of
microfiction. However he also wrote two full-length novels: Der Weg ins Freie about a
talented but not very motivated young composer, a brilliant description of a segment of pre-
World War I Viennese society; and the artistically less satisfactory Therese.

In addition to his plays and fiction, Schnitzler meticulously kept a diary from the age of 17
until two days before his death. The manuscript, which runs to almost 8,000 pages, is most
notable for Schnitzler's casual descriptions of sexual conquests; he was often in
relationships with several women at once, and for a period of some years he kept a record
of every orgasm. Collections of Schnitzler's letters also have been published.

Schnitzler's works were called "Jewish filth" by Adolf Hitler and were banned by the Nazis in
Austria and Germany. In 1933, when Joseph Goebbels organized book burnings in Berlin
and other cities, Schnitzler's works were thrown into flames along with those of other Jews,
including Einstein, Marx, Kafka, Freud and Stefan Zweig.[8]

His novella Fräulein Else has been adapted a number of times, including the German silent
film Fräulein Else (1929), starring Elisabeth Bergner, and the 1946 Argentine film The Naked
Angel, starring Olga Zubarry.

Selected works

Plays
…
Anatol (1893), a series of seven acts revolving around a bourgeois playboy and his
immature relationships.

Flirtation (Liebelei – 1895), also known as The Reckoning, which was made into a film by
Max Ophüls in 1933, and Pierre Gaspard-Huit in 1958 (Christine), and also adapted as
Dalliance by Tom Stoppard (1986)[9] and Sweet Nothings by David Harrower for the
Young Vic in 2010.[10]

Fair Game (Freiwild – 1896)

Light-'O-Love (1896)

Reigen (1897), more usually called La Ronde is still frequently presented. Max Ophüls
directed the first movie adaptation of the play in 1950; Roger Vadim directed a second
version in 1964, and Otto Schenk a third version in 1973. In 1998, it was reworked by
British playwright David Hare as The Blue Room.[11] It was also adapted by theatrical
songwriter Michael John LaChiusa into an Off-Broadway musical called Hello Again in
1994. Suzanne Bachner did a modern adaptation called "Circle" about 21st-century
sexual mores in 2002.

Paracelsus (1899)

The Green Cockatoo (Der grüne Kakadu – 1899). Composer Richard Mohaupt adapted
the play and created 1954–1956 the one-act opera Der grüne Kakadu, which premiered at
the Hamburg State Opera on September 16, 1958.
 The Lonely Way (Der einsame Weg – 1904)

Intermezzo (Zwischenspiel – 1904)

Der Ruf des Lebens (1906)

Countess Mizzi or the Family Reunion (Komtesse Mizzi oder Der Familientag – 1907)

Living Hours (1911)

Young Medardus (Der junge Medardus – 1910)

The Vast Domain (Das weite Land – 1911). The play was adapted as Undiscovered
Country by Tom Stoppard (1979).[12] Three film versions of this play have been made, the
first by Ernst Lothar in 1960 with Attila Hörbiger as Hofreiter, the second by Peter
Beauvais in 1970 with O. W. Fischer, the third one in 1986 by Luc Bondy and starring
Michel Piccoli.

Professor Bernhardi (1912)

The Comedy of Seduction (Komödie der Verführung – 1924)

Comedies of Words and Other Plays (1917)

Novels
…
The Road into the Open (Der Weg ins Freie – 1908)

Therese. Chronik eines Frauenlebens (1928)

Memorial in Vienna

Short stories and novellas

…
Dying (Sterben – 1895)

None but the Brave (Leutnant Gustl – 1900)

 Berta Garlan (1900)

Blind Geronimo and his Brother (Der blinde Geronimo und sein Bruder – 1902)

The Prophecy (Die Weissagung – 1905)

Casanova's Homecoming (Casanovas Heimfahrt – 1918)

Fräulein Else (1924)

Rhapsody – also published as Dream Story (Traumnovelle – 1925/26), later adapted as

the film Eyes Wide Shut by American director Stanley Kubrick

Night Games (Spiel im Morgengrauen – 1926)

Flight into Darkness (Flucht in die Finsternis – 1931)

The Death of a Bachelor

Late Fame (2014)

Nonfiction
…
Youth in Vienna (Jugend in Wien), an autobiography published posthumously in 1968

Diary, 1879–1931

References

o. "This day, May 15, in Jewish history" . Cleveland Jewish News.

p. "The Road to The Open (JC Verite European Classics Book 1) – Kindle edition by Arthur
Schnitzler, J. Chakravarti, Horace Samuel. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @
Amazon.com" . amazon.com.

s. "Archived copy" . Archived from the original on 20 February 2012. Retrieved

2012-01-25.

t. Schnitzler's hidden manuscripts explored Archived 15 March 2010 at the Wayback

Machine at research-horizons.cam.ac.uk

u. Arthur Schnitzler scandal Archived 28 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine at

virtualvienna.net

v. Barker, Andrew (2001). "Race, Sex and Character in Schnitzler's Fräulein Else." German
Life and Letters. v. 54(1):1–9.

w. Nicholas., Parsons (2009). Vienna : a cultural history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN 9780195376067. OCLC 221155367 .
 x. Liukkonen, Petri. "Arthur Schnitzler" . Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland:
Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 6 February 2012.

y. Dalliance was staged at the National Theatre by Peter Wood. It opened in the Lyttelton
Theatre 27 May 1986.

oz. Sweet Nothings was directed by Luc Bondy at the Young Vic and opened on 25
February 2010.

oo. The Blue Room was staged at the Donmar Warehouse in London by Sam Mendes,
opening on 22 September 1998.

op. Undiscovered Country was staged at the National Theatre by Peter Wood. It opened in
the Olivier Theatre 20 June 1979.
Further reading
 Theodor Reik, Arthur Schnitzler als Psychologe (Minden, 1913)

H. B. Samuel, Modernities (London, 1913)

J. G. Huneker, Ivory, Apes, and Peacocks (New York, 1915)

Ludwig Lewisohn, The Modern Drama (New York, 1915)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Arthur Schnitzler.

Wikisource has the text of a 1921 Collier's Encyclopedia article about Arthur
Schnitzler.

Works by Arthur Schnitzler at Project Gutenberg

Works by Arthur Schnitzler at Faded Page (Canada)

Works by or about Arthur Schnitzler at Internet Archive

Works by Arthur Schnitzler at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Arthur Schnitzler at the Internet Broadway Database

Works by Arthur Schnitzler at Open Library

Additional works by Arthur Schnitzler (eLibrary Projekt – eLib)

Schnitzler Archive, a research institution at the german Freiburg University which holds a
copy of Schnitzler's literary estate such as drafts of his works and some unpublished
works

PushkinPress.com English editions of works by Pushkin Press