We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
Between Two Empires — Bruno Brehm: Die Throne stürzen (1931–33/1951)
The year 1932 saw the publication of two novels that today enjoy iconic status across modern Austrian and German literature: Joseph Roth's elegaic Radeztkymarsch, and the second installment of Robert Musil's majestic fragment Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities). Sadly, neither man rated the other's work very highly. Musil dismissed Radetzkymarsch as a typical “Kasernenroman” (novel of military life); Roth was exasperated by Musil's repeated use of the word “Kakanien” to designate the Habsburg Empire whose death throes had inspired them both. Insofar as each instrumentalizes aspects of recent history, rather than dealing directly with the immediate present, the novels exemplify a widespread trend in the German-language novel of the day. It is less well remembered that 1932 also marked the publication of Das war das Ende (That was the End), the second of three ambitious historical novels charting the decline of the Habsburgs by the Slovenianborn Nazi Bruno Brehm, a writer who had found fame through the very “Kasernenromane” that Musil disparaged.
Not quite forgotten today, Brehm's trilogy opens with Apis und Este: Ein Franz Ferdinand-Roman (Apis and Este: A Franz Ferdinand Novel, 1931), a work beginning with the assassination of the King and Queen of Serbia in 1903 and climaxing in the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in June 1914. The second novel Das war das Ende examines the political machinations starting in Brest-Litowsk in December 1917 and ending with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919, the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
