Page - 361 - in Wien und die jüdische Erfahrung 1900-1938 - Akkulturation - Antisemitismus - Zionismus

David Vogel: Love Story in Vienna or the Metropolis 1 marriage. Gordweil’s growing sickness and insanity within the marriage is parallel to the sickness of those in Steinhof, the mental sanatorium, which in fact is the condition of the modern man in the modern metropolis, although he does not know it. “Die Gesunden, dachte Gordweil, […] waren die in Wirklichkeit auch krank… krank, ohne es zu wissen.“ – The theme of the end of the world in the modern metropolis as portrayed by the modernist and expressionist poets, writers, painters, movie directors of the era is in Vogel’s novel illustrated by the tragic end of married life. However, there is more to Vogel’s novel as a novel on the metropolis and its relation to modern man. Like a significant number of Viennese and other writers of his time, such as Schnitzler — particularly in his novel Fräulein Else, which was written at the same time –, Döblin in Berlin Alexanderplatz, Kafka in Amerika or Joyce in Ulysses, Vogel deals with the themes of bourgeois society, loneliness, displaced intellectuals, decadent love, human relations and betrayal, the instability of the human mind, and death. All these themes are situated in a city that alternates between the real and the unreal, in a decaying metropolis that in turn animates them all. Influenced by the major accounts of perceptions of modern city life and their psychic implications such as those by Baudelaire or Benjamin, Vogel is aware that the metropolis creates psycho- logical conditions that have to do with the rapidity and crowding of changing images, with the sharp discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance, and the unexpectedness of onrushing impressions : “Sie erreichten den Ring, auf dem Automobile und voll- gestopfte Trams hin und her sausten. Gegenüber stand das Parlamentsgebäude ver- riegelt und verrammelt in aufgeblasener Arroganz, und den Passanten schlug schwere politische Langeweile entgegen. Auf dem Vorplatz vor dem Eingang patrouillierten Polizisten, um die Leere im Innern zu bewachen. In der Ferne, hinter Schottentor, blinkten — wie sich öffnende und schließende Augen — bunte Leuchtreklamen für Schicht-Seife, Salamandra-Herde und ähnliches auf. Eine Schar Neugieriger umringte einen riesigen Möbelwagen, der ein Rad verloren hatte. Nichtig all das, absolut nichts wert, wenn man die Gedanken in eine gewisse Richtung lenkte…“ Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz comes to mind when we read the description of an empty tram carriage at night. Gordweil is watching the city with its empty public places through the window with a rising sense of horror. He reads advertisements for the spring exhibition at the Secession, for the Sixth Vienna Fair to take place in the autumn, for Galapeter chocolate and Gillette razor blades, new stars of the theater, Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., p. 163.