On May 12, 1933, the newspaper Neuköllner Tageblatt reported that students had burned books the previous night, stoking a blaze as a Nazi band beat out march music. One student, for example, flinging books of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser and Erich Kästner into the flames, shouted his incantation against moral decadence: “Gegen Dekadenz und moralischen Verfall! Für Zucht und Sitte in Familie und Staat!” This fiery ritual not only pronounced the literal loss of free speech, but also the style of criticism under National Socialism, which was in fact no criticism at all, but evidence of hegemonic power scattering the opposition to clear the way for one oppressive ideal. The cremation of intellectual property was also the inevitable outcome of decadence rhetoric during Schnitzler's lifetime, no matter how innocent its critical intentions early on.

This escalating suffocation of criticism is documented in Rolf Geissler's account of the Nazi dichotomy of decadence and heroism. Geissler argues that to survive, criticism must recognize historical truth in retrospect, because it cannot rely on pure assertions. A judgment about art becomes criticism only when it corresponds to internal properties of the work that are independently verifiable. Openness to the historical nature of truth runs counter to the polemics of authoritarianism, of course; criticism becomes superfluous when all opposing interpretations have been defamed or their authors convinced to conform.

In Nazi criticism Schnitzler was remembered as little more than the decadent author of Reigen, an author whose works such as Der Weg ins Freie (1908) or Professor Bernhardi (1912) were variations on the theme of Entartung (degeneration).

As with other books in the series Literary Criticism in Perspective, the bibliography (“Works Consulted”) is arranged chronologically, not alphabetically. A few explanations are in order concerning dates and sources of materials. When introducing Schnitzler's plays, I do not use the date when the work was considered complete or when it was published commercially. Instead, I cite the year of the premiere. The exception is Anatol, a play cycle whose one-acts were printed separately as early as 1889, printed together in 1893, with the printings in every case preceding the premiere. When introducing Schnitzler's narrative works, I cite the first date of publication, usually when the work appeared in newspapers or journals before being printed separately.

My references to Schnitzler's works are from Arthur Schnitzler, Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben: Das erzählerische Werk (7 vols.) and Das dramatische Werk (8 vols.) (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1977–78), based on Fischer Verlag's Gesammelte Werke: Das erzählerische Werk (2 vols., 1961) and Das dramatische Werk (2 vols., 1962). Abbreviations are “EW” and “DW” respectively. My references to Schnitzler's philosophical writings, especially his views of criticism, are taken from Arthur Schnitzler, Über Kunst und Kritik, vol. 3 of Aphorismen und Betrachtungen, (Fischer Taschenbuch, 1993), a reprint of the original volume of 1967, which was published as vol. 5 of Gesammelte Werke. On the basis of writings unpublished during his lifetime, Schnitzler's autobiography was published in 1967 with the title Jugend in Wien: Eine Autobiographie (Vienna: Molden Verlag); my paperback version is the Fischer reprint of 1981.

In his 1919 essay “Das Unheimliche,” Sigmund Freud described the uncanny as the sudden revelation of that which has long remained hidden. “Uncanny” also describes the sensation when psychoanalysis has laid bare the determining forces that have besieged the patient. According to Michael Worbs, Freud knew what he was talking about. His long avoidance of meeting Schnitzler was an attempt to avoid the shock caused by the suddenly familiar, because he had been noticing in Schnitzler for some time those aspects in himself that had been left undeveloped, whether by choice or circumstance. Seeing his Doppelgänger Schnitzler would be an uncanny reminder of decisions he had made and subsequently repressed.

In his letter of May 14, 1922 extending congratulatory wishes on Schnitzler's sixtieth birthday, Freud attributes his avoidance behavior to his “Doppelgängerscheu,” because Schnitzler's discoveries through intuition and self-observation are uncanny correlates to his own clinical observations:

On July 16, 1999, the evening of the debut of Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut (based on Schnitzler's Traumnovelle), a critic on the “Charlie Rose Show” complained that Tom Cruise had played the physician Bill Harford with a disappointing lack of initiative. Such complaints echo the criticism against Georg von Wergenthin in Der Weg ins Freie by contemporaries of Schnitzler armed with theories of proper behavior for novel heroes. For anyone acquainted with Traumnovelle, however, the fact that Cruise/Harford is frequently dazzled by what happens to him is a sign he has faithfully rendered the role of a typical Schnitzler anti-hero scarcely a model physician or husband. Kubrick's painstaking deliberateness with Frederic Raphael's screen play ran against the grain of Hollywood's requisite chase scenes and blazing guns to provoke the same response felt by audiences a century earlier, when antiheroes such as Medardus (Der junge Medardus) crossed Schnitzler's stage with nuanced psychology instead of bold, resolute action. If Schnitzler could not count on having the reader of his own time understand his snapshots of the fickle soul, could Kubrick depend on a better viewer at the close of the century? Kubrick (1928–1999) died before he could see the reception of his vision in theaters across the United States.

The uncanny aspect of Traumnovelle had been its combination of dream and real world, and Schnitzler had bent the norms of the novella genre without breaking them.

Among the sites offin-de-siècle modernism in Vienna, there is not yet a museum featuring the life of the physician-turned-author Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931), who lived his entire life there. Museums that offer alternatives to imperial grandeur are plentiful enough: two radically different buildings, the Upper Belvedere and the Secession, both display the work of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), famous for his Byzantine friezes of Viennese art nouveau. Another monument to modernism is the Freud Museum at 19 Berggasse, where Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) lived and worked. Yet anyone who looks for the house of Schnitzler, whom Freud termed his Doppelgänger, will find only a plaque by the front door at 71 Sternwartestraße, because Schnitzler's museum is of a different sort. More likely his name would surface during a stroll past the Burgtheater on Dr-Karl-Lueger-Ring. Here it would not be surprising to see banners advertising his play Das weite Land (The Vast Country), which premiered in the imposing classical structure in 1911. Within walking distance from the Burg is Theater in der Josefstadt, a typical venue for one-acts from the Anatol cycle (1888–91). Somewhere near the university, a bookstore of the First District might be displaying the ten volumes of Schnitzler's diary next to eight volumes of his Ausgewählte Werke (Selected Works, 1999), or new paperback editions emblazoned with prints by Klimt. The biography section might feature Arthur Schnitzler: Ein Leben in Wien (1862–1931) by Giuseppe Farese (1999); the history section might offer the Fischer Verlag translation — “Das Zeitalter des Doktor Arthur Schnitzler: Innenansichten des 19.

In breadth and consistency, Schnitzler's diary is among the most significant of German and European literature. In 2000, the Austrian Academy of Sciences finished its project of publishing the ten 400 to 500 page volumes of Schnitzler's diary, having started in 1981 to bring order to his entries between 1879 and his death in 1931. Predictably, easier access to the diary confirmed the suspicion that Schnitzler brooded over concerns far more multifarious than love and death, something astute readers had known for decades. Beyond serving to support interpretations of texts or to prove Schnitzler was capable of diversity, the diary became an object of scrutiny in its own right, reflecting a determination, especially in Vienna, to prove that this man's legacy was worth preserving. The discipline demanded by such prolific journal writing could alter the image of a man so long considered impressionistic before the First World War and out of step afterwards. What has been shown to be consistent and trustworthy is, after all, worth preserving. In the scholarship that discusses Schnitzler the diarist and autobiographer, or in the biographical approaches that rely on these genres, an ambivalent fascination has emerged not always to the liking of Schnitzler aficionados. The turn toward non-fiction has shone the spotlight more brightly on Schnitzler's complexity, but also on his pathologies.

The Diary Project (1981–2000)

Schnitzler's diary wrote predictability into his life as a bulwark against the unpredictable. Made credible by excruciating self-honesty, the diary became his anchor against an experience of slippage rivaling that of his characters.