Robert Musil Commemorative Plaque
Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Straße 3-5
Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Straße 3-5
Musil was born in Klagenfurt, Carinthia, but after only one year he moved with his parents to Steyr, Upper Austria, and finally to Brno, Moravia, in 1891. He wrote about his boarding school experiences in his first novel The Confusions of Young Torless (Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß, 1906).
His essays The Nation as an Ideal and as a Reality (Die Nation als Ideal und als Wirklichkeit) and Helpless Europe (Das hilflose Europa), published in the early 1920s, are among the most clairvoyant works on the intellectual situation of the interwar period. In 1921, his first play The Enthusiasts (Die Schwärmer) was plublished. Then, in 1924, he published Three Women (Drei Frauen) a collection of novellas. As of the mid-1920s, he was working on his novel The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, 1930). Although the novel has remained a fragment, it is one of the most important works of literary modernism.
Reference to Ischl
In the last decades of the 19th century, it was considered 'chic' to spend one's holidays in Ischl. For this reason, Alfred Musil and his wife Hermine travelled to Ischl with their son Robert in 1894. This stay was followed by three more summer stays. As a result, adult Robert visited Ischl again as an adult, such as on 9 October 1930, when he and his wife Martha can be found in the list of spa guests.
Note: The Hotel Post accommodated many other writers:
Felix Salten, Heimito von Doderer, Hermann Bahr, Daniel Spitzer, Franz Grillparzer, Arnold Zweig and Moritz Gottlieb Saphir.
The commemorative plaque was unveiled on 29 June 2018.
