<p>As the bourgeois concept of "home" became problematic after important changes in German-speaking society during the 19th century, many fiction writers chose the literary setting of the hotel to explore the status of the individual and the notions of public and private. As social microcosms, hotels are fitting experimental settings for literary inquiries into the tension between the individual's quest for a place in the world and the technocratic rationalism of modern life. The book has two parts, the first establishing the cultural and theoretical context and the second providing analyses of literary works set in hotels. A brief history of commercial hospitality and a chapter establishing the theoretical framework of the hotel as a paradigmatic, ambivalent, semi-public, and stage-like modern space lead to readings of texts by Schnitzler, Zweig, Werfel, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Joseph Roth, and Vicki Baum. Bettina Matthias is Associate Professor of German at Middlebury College.</p>

The Hotel as Setting in Early Twentieth-Century German and Austrian Literature: Checking in to Tell a Story (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture, 1)

Literature & Fiction

Matthias, Bettina

History & Criticism

Camden House

<p>In 1899 Gustav Klimt's painting Nuda Veritas shook up the Austrian public with what many deem to be the painter's most political exploration of the nude female body. Klimt's provocative allegory challenged viewers to consider their own beliefs about the relationship between the nude (female) body and contemporary morality; this "naked truth" was shocking. Transcending accusations of pornography, Klimt's work paved the way for artistic examinations of the nude body as the site through which questions of freedom, desire, beauty, nature, culture, power, and their antonyms could be represented and negotiated. Taking these ideas as one critical point of departure, this volume and the accompanying exhibition feature selected prints, drawings, and watercolors by Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann and Käthe Kollwitz, among others. It explores the conceptions of the human body and the manner of its visualization in the period leading up to and following the First World War, which changed the world's notions of flesh and blood forever. </p>The book will appeal to students and scholars of German and Austrian art and culture.

Naked Truth: Approaches to The Body in Early Twentieth-Century German-Austrian Art

Arts & Photography

Garrison, Eliza

Van Dyke, James A.

Middlebury College Museum of Art

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