Poetologie und Epistemologie: Schreibstragien und Autorschaftskonzepte in Arthur Schnitzlers medizinischen Texten by Klara Gross-Elixmann (review)

A considerable tome, this PhD dissertation completed by Klara Gross-Elixmann at the Ruhr University, Bochum, in 2016 is intended to give Schnitzler's medical texts the same attention as those written by his fellow author-physicians Gottfried Benn and Alfred Döblin. Schnitzler's contributions to the field appeared in the Wiener Medizinische Presse in 1886 and the Internationale klinische Rundschau from 1887 to 1894. Both publications were edited by his father, Dr. Johann Schnitzler. The young doctor wrote reviews (both detailed and perfunctory) covering some of the key medical controversies of the time, essays that took a stand on professional ethics and the state of hospitals and summaries of the proceedings of medical congresses. In addition, his first and only research paper appeared in the Internationale klinische Rundschau in 1889. Though Gross-Elixmann acknowledges the pioneering efforts of Horst Thomé, Michael Worbs, Hillary Hope Herzog, and Laura Otis, among others, in publishing and bringing attention to Schnitzler's medical journalism, she insists that their analyses lack the close scrutiny offered by literary theory. This perspective, she proposes, not only allows for subtle distinctions between Schnitzler as author (figure of authority), reviewer (knowledgeable reader), or simply messenger (performer of editorial tasks) but also highlights the narrative strategies that scientific and literary discourse share.

The five chapters cover Schnitzler's critical take in his reviews, his outlook on the relationship between doctor and patient, his use of the protocol of the case history, his language critique, and his approach to experiment in both his research and literary efforts. Three of the chapters present linear parallels between medical and literary texts, rather than the promised comparison of structural strategies. In the first, concerning Schnitzler's reviews of books on syphilis, hypnosis, addiction, and heredity, the connection to literary material relies on theme rather than structure. Gross-Elixmann cites Andreas Thameyer's letzter Brief (the power of suggestion), Mein Freund Ypsilon (genius and madness), and Reigen (which Gross-Elixmann reads, like Otis, as a metaphor for syphilitic contagion). The same can be said of her analysis of Schnitzler's skeptical views of the medical profession in his Sylvesterbetrachtungen and the reports from medical congresses. They are directly reflected in the ambiguous roles played by the physicians in Das Vermächtnis, Der Weg ins Freie, and Dr. Bernhardi, among others. And in the chapter that analyzes Schnitzler's "Sprachkritik," the link between a review rejecting euphemisms for syphilis and the criticism of communication in Das Wort is forced. The former represented an attempt to veil the truth, the latter made an irresponsible game of it.

It is in her focus on the structural influence of two medical paradigms—the case history and the experiment—that the author does present new insights into Schnitzler's techniques. For the narrative form of case histories, Gross-Elixmann relies on the four-part sequence elucidated by Nicholas Pethes: "Die Biographik, die Dramaturgie der Wendepunkte, das Interesse an Normabweichung und der Anspruch des Exemplarischen" (51). Using this framework, she presents a detailed study of the case histories in Schnitzler's research paper "Über funktionelle Aphonie und deren Behandlung durch Hypnose und Suggestion" and discusses the manner in which the genre is adapted in the novellas Sterben, Leutnant Gustl, and Fräulein Else.

In Sterben, written in 1892, the case history format leaves little room for the characters to develop in depth—as Schnitzler, himself, recognized. Gross-Elixmann cites his 1904 letter to Hugo von Hoffmanstahl years after it was published: "Es stammt aus der Zeit wo mich der Fall mehr interessiert hat als die Menschen, und ich denke das meiste aus dieser Epoche muss wie luftlos wirken." Though both Leutnant Gustl and Fräulein Else can also be tied to the same narrative structure, by the time they were written Schnitzler had figured out how to bring "air" into the medical prototype. He presented the "case" not only in the...