830 Literaturen germanischer Sprachen; Deutsche Literatur
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Em "Der Fall Maurizius", romance de Jakob Wassermann de 1928, parcialmente ambientado em 1908, à época da República de Weimar, o autor critica o pragmatismo alemão, apoiado numa burocracia de estado que, mesmo depois do fim do Império, continua a exercer o poder de maneira absoluta. Wassermann revolta-se contra a má administração da justiça, e contra o caráter perverso daqueles que, tendo se apoderado do aparelho estatal, arrogam a si mesmos o papel de representantes dos melhores princípios do humanismo alemão. O pragmatismo, assim, apresenta-se como a falsificação daqueles valores que supostamente o legitimariam – notadamente, do princípio de Justiça, "Gerechtigkeit". A inocência de um adolescente, Etzel von Andergast, filho de um grande promotor, é o que traz à luz este estado de adulteração. Ao mesmo tempo, a figura de Waremme, descendente de judeus provenientes de regiões da Polônia ocupadas pela Prússia desde 1772, é uma figura sinistra, que rompeu com o legado ético de seus antepassados, pretendendo exercer um papel de destaque no movimento nacionalista alemão, para frustrar-se e ocupar posição marginal numa sociedade repleta de desencaminhados e perplexos. Desta forma o autor representa as aporias de uma geração que sente na pele esse exílio da justiça e a crise generalizada de valores.
This article takes a new look at the novels of the Austrian Jewish writer Adolf Dessauer (1849-1916). Dessauer wrote an ironic chronicle of his contemporaries' world in turn-of-the-century Vienna. A banker by profession and an amateur novelist, he published two novels in his lifetime ("Götzendienst", in 1896, and "Großstadtjuden", in 1910), both taking place in the Habsburg capital, which was then undergoing a process of rapid economic and social change. Though his books are nowadays virtually forgotten, Dessauer was a very accurate chronicler of the customs of the social class which ascended with economic liberalism, and which became increasingly close to the empire's declining aristocracy, mimicking its tastes and habits.
As opposed to what happened in other European nations, the bourgeoisie in the Habsburg Empire never attempted to construct its own aesthetic and cultural repertoire, but consistently imitated the aristocratic patterns of its time. Dessauer makes a biting and ironical portrait of this class and its attempt at aristocratic appearances.
He also shows how Karl Lueger's Christian anti-Semitic party in Austria recruited its voters from the impoverished class of artisans, which had lost space as a consequence of the establishment of a new economic order. Lueger's political campaign was directed towards this growing class, and he identified the rise of liberal capitalism with Jews and Judaism.
In "Großstadtjuden" Dessauer looks at the same phenomena, but does so from a strictly Jewish point of view. His second novel portrays the reactions of a number of Jewish families from Vienna to rising anti-Semitism. This historical aspect of the Viennese Jewish community, which was Europe's numerically largest after Warsaw's, is a striking prelude to the history of European Jewry in the 20th.century, thus giving Dessauer's work an unexpected afterlife.