Die Unsinnsgesellschaft: Franz Schubert, Leopold Kupelwieser und ihr Freundeskreis (review)

Die Unsinnsgesellschaft: Franz Schubert, Leopold Kupelwieser und ihr Freundeskreis. By Rita Steblin, with Erich Benedikt, Walther Brauneis, Ilija Dürhammer, Herwig Knaus, Michael Lorenz, and Gerhard Stradner. Vienna: Böhlau, 1998. [xiv, 490 p. ISBN 3-205-98820-5. DM 99.]

Franz Schubert's involvement with the secret society known as the Ludlamshöhle, dissolved by the police in 1826, has long been acknowledged, and the Unsinnsgesellschaft (Nonsense Club), linked to Schubert by actor Heinrich Anschütz, was thought to be another name for the same group. The documents reproduced in the volume under review indicate instead that the Unsinnsgesellschaft was an earlier organization--a Viennese club of between twenty-five and thirty people who met weekly in 1817 and 1818 to partake in various activities and festivities dedicated to the god Unsinn, or Insanius. The members, who all had pseudonyms for club purposes, were in their twenties and early thirties. All but one, the proprietress of the inn where they met, were men, although two took women's names within the club. Most were artists--particularly painters (about twelve), but also actors and writers; others were tradesmen, soldiers, and businessmen, most of these being close relatives or neighbors of one or more of the artists in the group.

The Unsinnsgesellschaft has not been the subject of previous studies because its separate existence has not been recognized. Only recently did scholars in Vienna realize that two sets of materials in different libraries--some handwritten newspapers and a group of watercolors--were linked to the same organization, and it then became possible to put together a relatively full picture of the club and its activities. Rita Steblin's book presents these materials in their entirety. The volume comprises an introduction; brief biographies of all identifiable members of the group; the texts of the twenty-nine extant weekly newspaper issues, each with an accompanying illustration; and the watercolors and texts depicting the club's two special festivities. All the original materials have been extensively annotated by the team of scholars listed above, each bringing a different area of expertise to the enterprise.

The newspaper, entitled Archiv des menschlichen Unsinns: Ein langweiliges Unterhaltungsblatt für Wahnwitzige (Archive of Human Nonsense: A Boring Entertainment for Crazy People), is an excellent parody of early-nineteenth-century periodicals. Including political reports, literary contributions, scientific articles, advertisements, and announcements, it aptly represents the chatty style and far-ranging subject matter typical of contemporary journals.

The content, however, is always satirical. Here is a favorite passage of mine from a series of articles on natural history: "Alle Fische können schwimmen und leben weder von Suppe, Rindfleisch und Zuspeis, noch von ihrem Gewerbe, sondern von Insecten, welche sie in der Luft im Fluge erhaschen. Sie halten sich meistens in hohlen Bäumen und auf Feldern auf, wo sie häufig Erdäpfel fressen. Der Fisch stirbt nie an der Lungensucht, weil er keine Lunge hat." (All fish can swim, and they do not live on soup, beef, and side dish, nor on their professions, but on insects that they snatch from the air in flight. They mostly live in hollow trees and on fields, where they commonly eat potatoes. Fish never die of lung disease, for they have no lung [p. 211; my translation]). This passage conveys what makes this material, at its best, both funny and telling. Its sheer ridiculousness is delightful, but it also spoofs bourgeois habits and attitudes (a typical meal, the importance of one's profession) and touches on the high mortality from lung disease in nineteenth-century Vienna. The author of the article, Ferdinand Dörflinger, alias "Elise Gagernadl geborne von Antifi," died of a lung hemorrhage within six months of writing it. Although he was a bookkeeper at the time, his contributions to this newspaper suggest that he might have developed into a significant humorist.

Other highlights of the written materials include a number of extremely silly plays; anthropological accounts of travel through...