Robert Musil (pronounced "moo-sil" or "zil"; in Austrian German, [ˈroːbɛrt ˈmuːzɪl]) was born on November 6, 1880, and died on April 15, 1942. He was an Austrian writer who focused on philosophy. His unfinished novel, The Man Without Qualities (German: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), is often considered one of the most important and influential modernist novels.

Family

Robert Musil was born in Klagenfurt, Carinthia. His father was engineer Alfred Edler Musil, who was born in Temeswar (now Timișoara) in 1846 and died in 1924. His mother was Hermine Bergauer, born in Linz in 1853 and died in 1924. Alois Musil, an expert in Eastern cultures known as "The Czech Lawrence," was Robert's second cousin.

After Robert was born, his family moved to Komotau (now Chomutov) in Bohemia. In 1891, his father was chosen to teach Mechanical Engineering at the German Technical University in Brünn (now Brno). Later, his father was given the status of hereditary nobility in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Robert was baptized with the name Robert Mathias Musil. From October 22, 1917, until April 3, 1919, his official name was Robert Mathias Edler von Musil. This change happened because his father was given noble status (made Edler) in 1917. However, in 1919, Austria banned the use of noble titles.

Early life

Musil was short in height but strong and skilled at wrestling. By his early teens, he became too much for his parents to manage. They sent him to a military boarding school in Eisenstadt from 1892 to 1894 and then to another in Hranice from 1894 to 1897. His experiences at these schools influenced his first novel, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless (The Confusions of Young Törless).

Youth and studies

After graduating, Musil attended a military school in Vienna during the fall of 1897. However, he later changed his major to mechanical engineering and joined his father’s department at the Deutsche Technische Hochschule. During his university years, he studied engineering during the day and spent his evenings reading literature and philosophy, attending theater performances, and visiting art exhibitions. He was especially interested in the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ernst Mach. Musil completed his studies in three years and, from 1902 to 1903, worked as an unpaid assistant to Professor Carl von Bach in Stuttgart. During this time, he began writing his first novel, Young Törless.

Musil also invented the Musil color top, a motorized device that mixed colors by using two rotating discs with different colored sections. This invention improved upon earlier models by allowing users to adjust and measure the proportions of the mixed colors precisely.

According to his own records, Musil’s personal life around the turn of the century involved relationships with a prostitute, which he viewed partly as a way to explore his own experiences. He also had a deep admiration for Valerie Hilpert, a pianist and mountaineer who he saw as having mystical qualities. In March 1902, Musil received treatment for syphilis using mercury ointment. Around the same time, he began a relationship with Hermine Dietz, a woman who later inspired a character in his 1923 novel. Hermine experienced a miscarriage in 1906 and died in 1907, which may have been linked to an infection from Musil.

Musil grew tired of engineering and the limited perspective he felt engineers had. He began new doctoral studies in psychology and philosophy at the University of Berlin under Professor Carl Stumpf from 1903 to 1908. In 1905, he met Martha Marcovaldi, who was seven years older than him, had previously been married, had two children, and later became his wife. His first novel, Young Törless, was published in 1906.

Author

In 1909, Musil finished his doctorate with a thesis about the philosopher Ernst Mach. Professor Alexius Meinong offered him a job at the University of Graz, but Musil refused it to focus on writing. Over the next two years, he wrote and published two stories, "The Temptation of Quiet Veronica" and "The Perfecting of a Love," which were later collected in a book called Vereinigungen (Unions) published in 1911. In the same year, Martha completed her divorce, and Musil married her. Because Martha was Jewish and Musil was Roman Catholic, they both changed their religion to Protestantism to show their unity. Before this, Musil had been supported by his family, but he later found work first as a librarian at the Technical University of Vienna and then as an editor for a Berlin literary journal called Die neue Rundschau. He also worked on a play titled Die Schwärmer (The Enthusiasts), which was published in 1921.

When World War I began, Musil joined the army and was stationed first in Tirol and later at Austria’s Supreme Army Command in Bozen (Italian: Bolzano). In 1916, Musil visited Prague and met Franz Kafka, whose work he greatly admired. After the war ended and the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, Musil returned to his writing career in Vienna. He published a collection of short stories, Drei Frauen (Three Women), in 1924. He also admired the Bohemian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whom Musil called "great and not always understood" at Rilke’s memorial service in Berlin in 1927. Musil said Rilke "perfected the German poem for the first time," but by the time of Rilke’s death, his work had become "a delicate, well-matured liqueur suitable for grown-up ladies." However, Musil believed Rilke’s work was "too demanding" to be "considered relaxing."

In 1930 and 1933, Musil’s most famous work, The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), was published in Berlin in two volumes with three parts, totaling 1,074 pages. Volume 1 included parts titled "A Sort of Introduction" and "The Like of It Now Happens," while Volume 2, which was unfinished, included "Into the Millennium (The Criminals)" and had 605 pages. Part III of Volume 2 did not include 20 chapters that were removed from the 1933 printer’s proofs. The novel describes the moral and thinking problems of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the eyes of its main character, Ulrich, an ex-mathematician who struggles to connect with the world around him. The story takes place in Vienna just before World War I.

The Man Without Qualities did not bring Musil much commercial success. Although he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he felt he was not recognized enough. He sometimes expressed frustration at the success of more famous writers like Thomas Mann or Hermann Broch, who admired his work and tried to help him with money and support his writing, even though Musil was initially critical of Mann.

In the early 1920s, Musil lived mostly in Berlin. In Vienna, he often visited the salon of Eugenie Schwarzwald, who was the model for a character named Diotima in The Man Without Qualities. In 1932, the Robert Musil Society was created in Berlin with the help of Thomas Mann. That same year, Mann was asked to name outstanding contemporary novels and mentioned only one: The Man Without Qualities. Throughout his life, Musil had many health problems, including issues with his teeth, gallbladder, digestion, syphilis, high blood pressure, and two minor heart attacks in 1929. In 1936, Musil suffered a stroke while swimming in Vienna. This happened despite his strict exercise routine, which made him train like an athlete.

Thought

Robert Musil addressed a major issue in his writings: the challenges faced by Enlightenment values in Europe during the early 1900s. He supported the Enlightenment goal of freeing people from oppression but also questioned its flaws using a thoughtful and critical approach. Musil believed that the problems of the time required new ideas about society and personal values that would use science and reason to improve life for people. He wrote:

Musil criticized the confusing and incorrect ideas about culture and society spread by nationalist groups. He wrote a strong critique of Oswald Spengler titled "Mind and Experience: A Note for Readers Who Have Escaped the Decline of the West," in which he explained how Spengler misunderstood science and used incorrect thinking to explain human behavior. Musil aimed to show the complexity of people and support a philosophy that considers causes and effects.

Musil was troubled by the poor social conditions in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and predicted its collapse. He observed the changes in Europe during the 1910s and 1920s and hoped that countries could find a way to work together to avoid the problems caused by nationalism. In 1927, he supported the Austrian Social Democratic Party by signing a public statement in favor of it.

Musil valued individual freedom and opposed control by both right-wing and left-wing groups. A common topic in his speeches and writings during the 1930s was protecting personal freedom from the growing influence of groups that promoted control over individuals in countries like Germany, Italy, Austria, and Russia. In 1935, he joined the International Writers' Congress for the Defense of Culture, where he spoke about the importance of artistic freedom and the need to protect creativity from government, class, national, and religious influences.

Later life

The final years of Musil's life were influenced by Nazism and World War II, as Nazi leaders banned his books. From 1931 to 1933, Musil lived in Berlin and directly experienced the early years of Nazism. In 1938, when Austria was taken over by Nazi Germany, Musil and his Jewish wife, Martha, moved to Switzerland for safety. Musil died there at the age of 61. Martha wrote to Franz Theodor Csokor that Musil had suffered a stroke.

Only eight people attended Musil’s cremation. Martha scattered his ashes in the woods of Mont Salève. From 1933 until his death, Musil worked on Part III of The Man Without Qualities. In 1943, in Lausanne, Martha published a 462-page collection of material from Musil’s literary remains. This included 20 galley chapters removed from Part III before Volume 2 was published in 1933, as well as drafts of the final incomplete chapters and notes about the novel’s development. Martha died in Rome in 1949.

Legacy

After Musil died, his work was nearly forgotten. His writings began to be read again in the early 1950s. The first English translation of The Man Without Qualities was published by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins in 1953, 1954, and 1960. A revised translation by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike, which included many parts from drafts that had not been published before, was released in 1995. Since then, Musil's work, including its ideas about philosophy, has received more attention. Milan Kundera said, "No other novelist means as much to me," and Thomas Bernhard said he was "very interested in" Musil. A major philosophy journal, The Monist, published a special issue on "The Philosophy of Robert Musil" in 2014, edited by Bence Nanay.

Timeline

On November 6, 1880, Robert Musil was born in Klagenfurt. His mother was Hermine, and his father was an engineer named Alfred Musil.
Between 1881 and 1882, the Musil family moved to Chomutov in Bohemia.
From 1882 to 1891, the family lived in Steyr, Austria. Robert attended elementary school and the first grade of a secondary school called a gymnasium.
From 1891 to 1892, the family moved to Brno. Robert attended a school called a Realschule.
From 1892 to 1894, Robert studied at a military boarding school in Eisenstadt.
From 1894 to 1897, Robert attended a military school in Hranice (now in the Czech Republic). During this time, he worked with artillery and discovered an interest in technology.
In 1897, Robert studied at the Technische Militärakademie in Vienna.
From 1898 to 1901, Robert left military training and began studying at the Technical University in Brno. His father had been a professor there since 1890. During this time, Robert wrote his first literary work and kept a diary.
In 1901, Robert took doctoral exams.
From 1901 to 1902, Robert joined the infantry regiment of Freiherr von Hess Nr. 49 in Brno.
From 1902 to 1903, Robert moved to Stuttgart to work at a university. He began writing his first novel, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless.
From 1903 to 1908, Robert studied philosophy, focusing on logic and experimental psychology.
In 1905, Robert began writing notes in his diary that later became Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften.
In 1906, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Torless was published. Robert also developed a tool to study how people experience color.
In 1908, Robert’s doctoral thesis was titled Beiträge zur Beurteilung der Lehren Machs. He chose to focus on writing instead of accepting a civilian rank equal to his military position.
From 1908 to 1910, Robert worked as an editor for the magazine Pan and wrote Vereinigungen and Die Schwärmer.
From 1911 to 1914, Robert worked as a librarian at the Technical University of Vienna.
On April 15, 1911, Robert married Martha Marcovaldi. Vereinigungen was published during this time.
From 1912 to 1914, Robert worked as an editor for several literary magazines, including Neue Rundschau.
From 1914 to 1918, Robert served as an officer on the Italian front during World War I and received multiple decorations.
From July 1916 to April 1917, Robert published a newspaper called Soldaten-Zeitung.
On October 22, 1917, Robert’s father, Alfred Musil, was granted a hereditary title, making Robert a member of the nobility until the title was abolished less than two years later.
In 1918, Robert returned to writing.
From 1919 to 1920, Robert worked for the Austrian foreign department’s Information Service in Vienna.
From April to June 1920, Robert lived in Berlin and met Ernst Rowohlt, who later became his publisher in 1923.
From 1920 to 1922, Robert advised on military matters in Vienna.
From 1921 to 1931, Robert worked as a theater critic, essayist, and writer in Vienna. He continued working on Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften.
In 1921, Robert’s play Die Schwärmer was published.
From 1923 to 1929, Robert served as vice-president of Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller in Österreich. He met Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who was president of the foundation.
In 1923, Robert won the Kleist Prize for Die Schwärmer. On December 4, the play Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender Männer premiered in Berlin.
On January 24, 1924, Robert’s mother died, and on October 1, his father died. Robert received an art prize from the city of Vienna. His book Drei Frauen was published.
In 1927, Robert gave a speech in Berlin after the death of Rainer Maria Rilke the previous year.
On April 4, 1929, Die Schwärmer premiered in Berlin. Robert disagreed with changes made to the play, which he found confusing. That autumn, he received the Gerhart Hauptmann award.
In 1930, the first two parts of Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften were published. Despite support from critics, Robert faced financial difficulties.
From 1931 to 1933, Robert lived and worked in Berlin.
In 1932, a group called Musil-Gesellschaft was founded in Berlin by Kurt Glaser to help Robert continue writing Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. The third part of the novel was published that year.
In May 1933, Robert and his wife, Martha, left Berlin and traveled through Czechoslovakia to Vienna.
From 1934 to 1938, a new Musil-Gesellschaft was founded in Vienna after the Berlin group was dissolved.
In 1935, Robert gave a lecture at the International Writers’ Congress in Paris.
In 1936, Robert published a collection of thoughts, observations, and stories called Nachlass zu Lebzeiten. He suffered a stroke.
On March 11, 1937, Robert gave a lecture titled “On Stupidity” in Vienna.
In 1938, Robert and Martha fled to Zürich, Switzerland, through northern Italy. Two days after arriving, they had tea at the home of Thomas Mann in Küsnacht.
In 1939, Robert moved to Geneva, Switzerland. He continued working on his novel but felt increasingly isolated