Robert Musil Biography

Robert Musil was the child of Hermine and Alfred Musil; his father was an engineer and later a professor at the Technical Institute in Brno (now in the Czech Republic). At the age of twelve, young Musil was sent away from home to military schools in Eisenstadt and then Mährisch-Weisskirchen, which later were to provide the setting for Young Törless. He became increasingly interested in technical subjects, and he continued his studies in mechanical engineering at Brno, where he passed state examinations in mathematics, physics, mechanics, and statistics. He was such a promising student that, after he completed his military service in 1902, he was invited to work at the Technical Institute in Stuttgart, which was then the most modern laboratory for mechanical engineering in Europe. A year later, in 1903, he moved from Stuttgart to the University of Berlin, where he took up the study of philosophy and experimental psychology. He also invented a device for use in the psychological testing of the perception of colors. Musil completed his first novel in 1905, made contacts among members of the literary circles in Berlin, and, upon completing his doctoral dissertation on Ernst Mach in 1908, decided not to pursue an academic career, but instead to try to live as a writer. He returned to an archivist’s job in Vienna in 1911, where he married Martha Marcovaldi (née Heimann), who remained his lifelong companion.

During World War I, Musil served as a captain on the Italian front and as a writer and editor for Austrian military newspapers. After the war, his time was divided between Vienna and Berlin; he was active as a playwright and essayist and as a member of various literary and journalistic organizations. The first two volumes of The Man Without Qualities appeared in 1930 and 1933. When Adolf Hitler came to power, Musil left Berlin for Vienna and continued working on his novel. He suffered a mild stroke in 1936, and in 1938, following the Anschluss (Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria), he went into exile, by way of Italy—first to Zurich and then to Geneva. His books were banned in Germany and Austria. Musil’s last years in Geneva were troubled with financial and passport worries and with the problem of carrying his novel forward. He died suddenly of a stroke in 1942. The first “complete” English-language edition of The Man Without Qualities appeared ten years later.

Living in the age of modernity, whose dizzying speed was often experienced as deeply disconcerting decline and insanity, Robert Musil was searching for what he called the “other condition,” an embodiment of utopian hope for society. The Man Without Qualities explores individual insanity (Moosbrugger, Clarisse) and collective stupidity (the Parallel Campaign) in Kakania (Musil’s ironic term for Austria), while the utopian element of the brother/sister plot is delayed, although the author had planned its failure from the beginning. Musil’s other novel, the earlier Young Törless, made the author famous with its psychological study of a schoolboy who has to deal with, among other experiences, confusing visions of the “other condition” before he can achieve an adult sense of selfhood. Törless’s attempts at finding clarity are related to Ulrich’s difficulties defining his middle-aged self.