Department of Languages

Robert Musil’s epic novel "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" comes back time and again to the case of Christian Moosbrugger, an enigmatic figure accused of brutally killing a prostitute. Musil never resolved this character’s fate, or his exact significance for the novel. Despite (or precisely because of) this, the Moosbrugger leitmotif continues to provide fodder for debate. This article argues that the positioning of this “musical murderer” at the interface of law, morality, and the arts makes him the perfect vehicle for exploring the notion of responsibility in its myriad juridical, ethical, and philosophical intricacies. Underlying it all, I argue, is a deep reflection on the role of literary narratives in shaping readers’ approach to responsible reading, thinking, acting, and being in the world.

This monograph examines how the incidence and role of physical descriptions in German novels changed between 1771 and 1929 in response to developments in the study of the human face and body. In addition to engaging the tools and methods of literary analysis, the study uses a cultural studies approach to offer a constellation of ideas and polemics surrounding the readability of the human body. By including discussions from the medical sciences, epistemology, and aesthetics, the book draws out the multi-faceted permutations of corporeal legibility, as well as its relevance for the development of the novel and for facilitating inter-disciplinary dialogue.
  >>  Available through open access under https://www.transcript-publishing.com/978-3-8376-4720-4/fictions-of-legibility/?number=978-3-8394-4720-8
  >>  Reviewed in "German Studies Review": https://muse.jhu.edu/article/793489
  >>  Reviewed in the "German Quarterly": https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gequ.12212
  >>  Reviewed in "Studies in the Novel": https://muse.jhu.edu/article/841990
  >> Reviewed in Focus on German Studies (https://journals.uc.edu/index.php/fogs/article/view/4417/3331)

Sophie von La Roche's novel, which now takes pride of place in the canon of eighteenth-century German literature, was published one year before Von der Physiognomik (1772), the essay in which Johann Caspar Lavater laid the groundwork for his best-selling Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe. 1 Even though it predates Lavater's four-volume treatise, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim draws extensively on the widespread interest in reading, visuality, and the human body that propelled the Swiss pastor to fame during the 18 th century. As the present chapter will elucidate, an analysis of physiognomic and pathognomic details from this novel reveals a writer committed to making a difference in the debate surrounding human physicality, but also in the legitimation of the novel and of female authorship. I will argue that La Roche's use of physiognomy and pathognomy is intimately connected with the specific brand of multi-perspectival narration that she developed, thereby showcasing a level of literary craftsmanship that women were deemed incapable of at that time. More specifically, La Roche adopted the epistolary novel form with its connotations of femininity, naturalness, and authenticity, and she put her own spin on it by developing a polylogic narration through the voices of multiple letter-writing characters who report from different perspectives on one and the same incident. 2

may not automatically spring to mind as one of the giants of German literature, but he is undoubtedly a prominent figure in the field of narrative theory, where many regard him as Friedrich von Blanckenburg's most notable successor in the 19 th century (Blatter 1993: 132). Spielhagen was one of, if not the, most widely read German novelist of the 1860s and 1870s. He then lost his claim to fame as a fiction writer, only to be unexpectedly reinstated for his theoretical writings. As late as 1908, however, some people still heralded Spielhagen as the foremost novelist of his generation. "Enger als er war und ist wohl kein deutscher Dichter mit den Strömungen seiner Zeit verbunden, stärker als in seinen Romanen pulst wohl nirgends das äußere Leben der Nation," declared the author of a laudatory article published in the "Bayerische[r] Courier" and cited by Spielhagen's daughter on the occasion of her father's 80 th birthday (Spielhagen 1909: 169). Today Spielhagen's oeuvre can no longer inspire such enthusiasm from the margins of German literature, to which it has been relegated along with many other Realist works. The debate over why this celebrated author fell into disrepute after a promising debut lies beyond the scope of the present study. Suffice it to say that literary canonization operates in myriad, sometimes mysterious, ways, and that irrespective of the initial reasons for Spielhagen's fall from grace, most critics even today hold fast to the idea that his literary and theoretical personas are incompatible. 1 As will become evident throughout this chapter, it is not only possible, but necessary to develop an integrated approach to Spielhagen's output,

prose author, essay writer, theorist, doctor, and film buff. One name, multiple personalities-and not all of them compatible, as Döblin himself acknowledged. In an autobiographical essay from 1928, whose title "Zwei Seelen in einer Brust" is a clear riff on Faust's famous lamentation "Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Brust," the physician Döblin and the writer Döblin appear as distinct individuals talking about each other in a teasing, antagonistic manner. The publications of the latter leave the former "total gleichgültig" (Döblin 1986: 103), and the writer does not mince words either, calling the neurologist "mein gerades Gegenstück" (ibid: 105). This dramatization of Döblin's divided allegiances was originally meant to be satirical, but over time it fueled the idea of an unbridgeable gap between his medical and literary pursuits. Recent scholarship has successfully challenged this misconception. Critics have started to look at Döblin's medical writings in conjunction with his literary texts by way of demonstrating that an integrated approach is not just possible and worthwhile, but necessary in the case of someone with such varied interests. Untangling the intricacies of Döblin's thinking on psychopathology and on other pressing issues of the time can shed new light on his fictional works, as well as on the interaction between literature and other disciplines during the early 20 th century. In the spirit of this recent shift in critical paradigm, I wish to argue in this chapter that physical descriptions from Döblin's novel of 1929 relate in complex ways to contemporaneous developments in mental health, novel writing, visual media, and politics. The Case Against Psychology Berlin Alexanderplatz is widely considered the most prominent novel of German modernism. The plot is notoriously hard to follow, because it is often interrupted by info-bites, similar to the consciousness of the modern city dwellers that populate Döblin's fiction. In a nutshell, the book documents the painstaking adjustment to freedom and to life in the big city of Franz Biberkopf, who is released from prison