The Ethics of Empathy and the Correspondence Culture in Arthur Schnitzler’s Der Weg ins Freie

At the beginning of chapter two of Arthur Schnitzler’s often misunderstood and underappreciated first novel, Der Weg ins Freie (1908), Else Ehrenberg asks her mother whether they should telephone Georg to ask if they can expect to see him that evening at the family’s fashionable salon. Else is secretly in love with the twenty-seven-year-old Georg Freiherr von Wergenthin-Recco, to give the promising, but some feel dilettante composer his full, sumptuous title. Her mother knows why she is interested, but seems not to consider him to be a suitable match for her daughter. Georg has recently begun an affair with Anna Rosner, a part-time singing teacher who caught his eye at an Ehrenberg function the previous spring, as Else’s mother calculated she would. Other characters often intervene in Georg’s life in this manner – his father’s friend Hofrat Eißler smooths his way to becoming Kapellmeister at the court theatre in Detmold, and Frau Golowski senior offers to find the house on the edge of Vienna where Anna can have their baby. Georg barely notices, believing such things happen without anyone needing to expend any effort, which is why he rarely says thank you. Frau Ehrenberg explains to Else why she believes a telephone call will do no good on this occasion, and thus she draws attention to one of numerous forms of written communication that are one of the two linked themes of this article: “Du erinnerst dich, was für einen wirklich charmanten Kondolenzbrief ich ihm geschrieben und wie dringend ich ihn in den Auhof eingeladen hab. Er ist nicht gekommen, und seine Antwort war auffallend kühl. Ich würde ihm nicht telephonieren” (64).

Schnitzler’s characters in Der Weg ins Freie reveal much about themselves through their failure to communicate with one another meaningfully in writing. Furthermore, this failure has far-reaching consequences for relations between the sexes, the social classes, and, most poignantly, between Jews and gentiles. Letter writing is connected directly with the novel’s major theme – what this article defines as the “ethics of empathy.” This term designates the ability to understand another human being, to engage with him or her, respect his or her wishes and feelings when deciding on a course of action – in other words, to attempt to see the world and society from another’s point of view and to act on that knowledge. Every transaction in the novel is determined by the degree of mutual comprehension or miscomprehension that it entails, that is by the characters’ capacity for empathy. Written and oral communication are not clearly distinct from each other for these purposes, but Schnitzler, through his representation of personal correspondence, is highlighting, at the time in which the novel is set, a general interpersonal and social breakdown. This is why written communication plays such a central role throughout the novel, whether it be a telegram, a note scribbled on a visiting card, or any one of the many types of personal, handwritten letter. With one exception, which is reproduced at the end of this article, these letters are not quoted directly, but referred to, reported on, or summarized. This is an innovative narrative procedure that marks Der Weg ins Freie as a modernist rather than a realist novel.

Schnitzler’s use of letters in his fiction has recently received some critical attention (Ritz). Realist novelists of the previous century often employed letters as narrative devices that could serve a number of useful functions. Theodor Fontane (1819–98), for whom personal correspondence was at least as important as for Schnitzler, proves aware in his last novel, Der Stechlin (1898), that the letter is being challenged by the telegram. The elderly Dubslav von Stechlin sees the new medium as an opportunity rather than a threat. Yet handwritten letters still have similar purposes in the novel to those they had in fiction through much of the nineteenth century: they convey invitations or contain advice or information and opinions; they let readers know what characters are doing when they leave the main...