2 - Vater, Landesvater, Gottvater: Musil and the Ancien Régime

Summary

Vater, Landesvater, Gottvater: es war die Tonleiter des alten Österreich in der Kindheit meines Vaters. […] Und während die Kinder aufwuchsen, wandelte sich das alte Österreich; Gottvater tat der Autorität des Landesvaters Abbruch.

— Musil, Tagebücher, 1:963

The End of Patriarchal Authority: Ulrich's Father in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften

THE ANCIEN RÉGIME WAS, in Musil's opinion, an interlocking patriarchy. A gradual but inexorable process of erosion of authority brought about its decline and fall, leading to a general crisis, a facet of the modern condition that may be characterized as “fatherless-ness.” The First World War literally produced that condition in the millions of missing fathers, but it was also a spiritual condition for which Austria, lacking an emperor, was a compelling example. Broch summed up the absence of authority in his image of empty Hoflogen and Hofwartesalons, understood as symbols of the “leergewordene Schema der monarchischen Barockgeste.” The crisis was general because the “trinity of fathers” once encompassed all of society. There was, first of all, the son's questioning of his father's beliefs and authority, as evidenced by Musil's inability to follow in the footsteps of his own father, a professor of engineering science. Carl Schorske sees this generational conflict as a reflection of a deeper cultural crisis: “The young were revolting not so much against their fathers as against the authority of the paternal culture which was their inheritance.” Second, the authority of the Landesvater — for Musil identified with the aging emperor Franz Joseph — had been called into question and his dynastic realm was being challenged by forces of modernity that it could not withstand.