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from I. Hermann Broch: The Critic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
THERE ARE AT LEAST THREE important works on the concept of “the masses” that grew out of the context of Austrian society: Sigmund Freuds Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (1921), Hermann Brochs unfinished Massenwahntheorie (1939–1948), and, as a postscript, Elias Canettis Masse und Macht (1960). To complete the impression that Austrian intellectual culture was obsessed by the topic of the masses, I should like to add three other literary masterpieces: Ernst Weiss's novel Der Augenzeuge (1939), a psychoanalytic literary case study on Hitler, in which Weiß has integrated descriptions of masses seduced by the “Führer.” The second work is Heimito von Doderer's Die Dämonen, a novel the author started in the 1930s and finished in 1956. The architectural center of this ambitious Zeitroman is the burning of the Viennese Palace of Justice on July 15, 1927 as a result of a mass demonstration of socialist workers who were protesting against a sentence of the law-court. Doderer, a former national socialist who became an anti-totalitarian conservative, interprets the protest of the socialist workers in a negative sense as an act of an unconscious and class-oriented crowd that has no responsibility for (civil) society as a whole:
Eine von der sozialdemokratischen Führung am folgenden Tage, dem 15. Juli 1927, keineswegs vorgesehene Demonstration brachte die Arbeiter auf die Beine und in die Innenstadt. Sie marschierten nicht, weil die Mörder eines Kindes und eines Kriegsinvaliden frei gingen. Sondern weil jenes Kind ein Arbeiterkind gewesen war und der Invalide ein Arbeiter. Die “Massen” verlangten die Klassenjustiz, gegen welche einstmals ihre Führer so oft vermeint hatten, auftreten zu müssen. Das Volk schäumte gegen das Urteil des Volksgerichtshofes, gegen sein eigenes Urteil. Damit war der Freiheit das Genick gebrochen: sie hielt sich auch in Österreich nur mehr durch kurze Zeit und künstlich aufrecht. Die sogenannten “Massen” setzten sich immer gerne kompakt auf die in’s Blaue ragenden Äste der Freiheit. Aber sie müssen diese ansägen, sie können’s nicht anders; und dann bricht die ganze Krone zusammen. Wer den “Massen” angehört, hat die Freiheit schon verloren. Da mag er sich setzen, wohin er will. […] Am selben Mittage noch brannte der Justizpalast lichterloh. Im Kampfe mit der Polizei, welche vor allem der Feuerwehr den Weg bahnen wollte, gab es eine schreckliche Unzahl Toter.
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