2 - The First Critical Monographs

Summary

On May 12, 1933, the newspaper Neuköllner Tageblatt reported that students had burned books the previous night, stoking a blaze as a Nazi band beat out march music. One student, for example, flinging books of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser and Erich Kästner into the flames, shouted his incantation against moral decadence: “Gegen Dekadenz und moralischen Verfall! Für Zucht und Sitte in Familie und Staat!” This fiery ritual not only pronounced the literal loss of free speech, but also the style of criticism under National Socialism, which was in fact no criticism at all, but evidence of hegemonic power scattering the opposition to clear the way for one oppressive ideal. The cremation of intellectual property was also the inevitable outcome of decadence rhetoric during Schnitzler's lifetime, no matter how innocent its critical intentions early on.

This escalating suffocation of criticism is documented in Rolf Geissler's account of the Nazi dichotomy of decadence and heroism. Geissler argues that to survive, criticism must recognize historical truth in retrospect, because it cannot rely on pure assertions. A judgment about art becomes criticism only when it corresponds to internal properties of the work that are independently verifiable. Openness to the historical nature of truth runs counter to the polemics of authoritarianism, of course; criticism becomes superfluous when all opposing interpretations have been defamed or their authors convinced to conform.

In Nazi criticism Schnitzler was remembered as little more than the decadent author of Reigen, an author whose works such as Der Weg ins Freie (1908) or Professor Bernhardi (1912) were variations on the theme of Entartung (degeneration).