Hermann Broch

Hermann Broch was a novelist, playwright and Austrian essay writer , born on November 1st 1886 with Vienna (Austria), dead the May 30th 1951 with New Haven (Connecticut).

Hermann Broch is born in a family from the rich person industrial Jewish middle-class from Vienna where his/her father has a textile factory. Hermann follows studies of textile engineer whom it finishes in 1907. He takes shortly after the succession of his father to the head of the factory until in 1927.

Without it being possible to explain its reasons, Broch gives up the direction of the family factory and follows starting from 1928 of the studies of Mathématiques, Philosophie and Psychologie. In 1931, Broch moves towards the trade of writer (it publishes texts in reviews since the years 1910).

At the age of forty-five years, in 1931, Broch publish its first novel, the trilogy the Sleepwalkers ( Die Schlafwandler ), it develops a new form of narration to with it on the premonitory topic of the dilapidation of the values of the contemporary company through a table of the German Empire during the reign of Guillaume II of 1888 to 1918.

Broch is also interested in the questions of philosophy related on the culture, the training, the knowledge and the mass psychology, marked by the rise to power of Fascisms in Europe. It is close in this respect other large novelist Viennese to the time, Robert Musil.

The German Nazis annex fascistic Austria in 1938 and Broch is arrested and imprisoned. With the assistance of his friend the novelist Irish James Joyce, it succeeds in being made release quickly and emigrating with the the United States. After having received a price of the Foundation Rockefeller for its studies on the mass psychology, it obtains an honorary post of professor with the Université Yale in 1950 before dying one year without to have later completed its work on the Tentateur .

Its major work, the Death of Virgile ( Der Tod of Vergils ) was published in first in the United States in 1945, in a translation English E, before being published in German after the war.

This novel in which reality and hallucinations, poetry and prose are inextricably mixed, recalls the last hours of the life of the Roman poet Virgile, in Brundisium (Brindisi), where he discusses lengthily with his friends and Auguste, trying to obtain from this last that he lets it destroy his manuscript of the Énéide , before raviser and to offer it to Auguste, then to reconcile itself at the end with its destiny.

Works

the Sleepwalkers ( Die Schlafwandler ; 1928 - 1931);
Evil in the system of the values of art ( Das Böse im Wertsystem der Kunst ; 1933);
“the Atonement” ( Die Entsühnung (Denn sy wissen nicht, was sy tun) ; 1933);
James Joyce and time present” ( James Joyce und die Gegenwart ; 1936);
“Spirit and spirit of time” ( Geist und Zeitgeist ; 1943);
“the Death of Virgile” ( Der Tod of Vergil ; 1945);
“Irresponsible” (the Die Schuldlosen ; 1950) translated into French in 1961 of which a part was useful for a play " The Zerline" maidservant; with the actress Jeanne Moreau;
“the Tempter” ( Der Versucher ; 1954), 1960 translates into French in 1960;
“literary Creation and knowledge” ( Dichten und Erkennen ; 1955), collection of tests;
“Hofmannsthal and its time” ( Hofmannsthal und the Seine Zeit ; 1955);
“Letters” ( Briefe ; 1957) 1961;
“Mass psychology” ( Massenpsychologie ; 1959);
“unknown Size” ( Die unbekannte Grösse ; 1961) translated into French in 1987;
( Der Bergroman ; 1969);
( Massenwahntheorie ; 1979).

Hermann Broch. Letters, 1929-1951. Published and presented by Robert Pick. Translated from German by Albert Kohn . Paris: Gallimard, coll “Of the Whole world”. 526 p. Traduit into French in 1961.
unknown Size / Écrits youth / Lettres in Willa Muir . Gallimard, coll “Of the Whole world” - Translated into French in 1987

Works to be reclassified chronologically:

Logical of a declining world , test. Editions of the Glare, coll “Philo.imaginaire”
On the kitsch , test. Editions Combined, “Small Collection”

nonexhaustive List: many of its works, in particular among the tests, were not translated yet into français.

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