Robert Musil

also called Robert, Edler (Nobleman)
Von Musil
born Nov. 6, 1880, Klagenfurt,
Austria
died April 15, 1942, Geneva, Switz.
Austrian-German novelist, best known
for his monumental unfinished novel Der
Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930–43; The
Man Without Qualities).
Musil received a doctorate from the
University of Berlin in 1908 and then
held jobs as a librarian and an editor
before serving in the Austrian army in
World War I (1914–18). (He inherited the
Edler title, awarded his father in 1917,
but did not use it as an author.) From
1918 to 1922 Musil was a civil servant
in Vienna and thereafter worked randomly
as a writer and journalist. He lived in
Berlin (1932–33) but returned to Vienna
until the Nazi Anschluss of 1938, when
he fled to Switzerland, where he lived
first in Zurich and then in Geneva.
Musil began writing as a student and
attracted some notice in the 1920s
writing various fiction and two plays,
Die Schwärmer (1920; The Enthusiasts)
and Vinzenz und die Freundin bedeutender
Männer (1924; “Vincent and the Lady
Friend of Important Men”), both of which
were performed in Berlin and Vienna. In
1924 he began his main work, Der Mann
ohne Eigenschaften, a witty and urbane
view of life in the glittering world of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, told from
the viewpoint of Ulrich, a fictionalized
Musil. The First Book was published in
1930, and part of the Second Book in
1933; a remaining portion was published
posthumously in 1943.