Page - 363 - in Wien und die jüdische Erfahrung 1900-1938 - Akkulturation - Antisemitismus - Zionismus

David Vogel: Love Story in Vienna or the Metropolis the human protagonists do. Trains, subways, cars, the speed of electric trolleys, clatter and create aggression and unease. They are all in a state of flux with no stable center — a hyper-metropolis like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Gordweil is constantly in motion, like the traffic. The reason for his movement becomes more and more unclear, and the movement does not improve his condition. He moves, the urban experience becomes more and more impressionistic, the city becomes unreal although he gives detailed accounts of the streets, of the geographically precise locations. The protagonist takes us through Kärtnerstrasse, the Ring to Mariahilferstrasse and Westbahnhof, from Ta- borstrasse to Heinesstrasse, to the Prater, from Rotenturmstrasse to Ferdinandbrücke to Franz-Josephs-Kai, from Schottentor to Währingerstrasse, he passes the university, the Volksoper, Nussdorferstrasse and so on. Vogel is creating lines of traffic, lines of energy that fail to regenerate the protagonists. He is lost, he is trapped. The melan- cholic atmosphere of the city’s capricious streets becomes a trap. The streets of Vienna dissolve in parallel to the loss of reality in the protagonist’s life. He gradually becomes a sleepwalker. Gordweil is a nothing going anywhere, an empty creature drifting along past the houses and the streets. As the pages turn, Gordweil accelerates his run through the streets of the metropolis very much like the acceleration of the urban path of life — and maybe like the Wandering Jew. Gordweil is looking for protection against modern life. This is the reason for his marriage, an act of self-preservation against the threats of the ever-changing environ- ment. Marriage seemed to be an armor against the stimuli, shocks and accidents of life in the city, as he says while walking with his friends and feeling the touch of Thea’s arm linked in his, feeling secure “wie jemand der nach monatelangem Umherirren auf einem vom Kurs abgekommenen Schiff wieder festen Boden unter den Füssen hat.“ Marriage acts as an opportunity of rebirth in the decaying reality. (Upon his marriage, Gordweil has hallucinations/visions of his mother protecting him.) However, before he has had the time to create his new surroundings, to establish himself in a new stable life, he is thrown into a more cruel reality than the modern life. He was thrown into the cruel reality of the modern city — married life. Thea’s brutality and cruelty teaches him that there is no protection against the modern me- tropolis. Authentic human relationships cannot exist. Romantic love has no room in the modern metropolis. Even when at home Gordweil’s thoughts float. “Sein Mund war trocken und bitter ; er hätte gern einen Schluck Wasser getrunken, war aber zu müde zum Aufstehen. […] Seine Sinne wurden langsam taub, empfindungslos. In seinem innern herrschte Nacht. Und da begann sich die füllige Krankenschwester im Dämmern abzuzeichnen, nahm klare Form an. Ja, das war sie, […] Es verblüffte Ibid., p. 69.