Die Figur des Ingenieurs im Kontext. Utopien und Utopiedebatten im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts

Abstract

This article analyses the role of the engineer in utopian stories (a successful genre at the beginning of the 20th century) as well as in contemporary debates on utopia. It discusses the various forms in which the engineer has been adapted against the background of the emerging technocracy movement considering 1) several pieces of utopian fiction (by Josef Andr, Carl Grunert et al.), 2) attempts to establish a scientific form of utopia (Otto Neurath), and 3) Robert Musil's argument in favor of bewuten Utopismus (conscious utopianism). Despite aesthetic and ideological differences among the texts it is argued that the engineer in all of these cases serves a key function in showing utopian worlds as actual constructable worlds and in contrast to the illusionary. It is precisely this rehabilitation of utopia in the sense of its enablement which links the development of the genre with the debates on utopia and which represents a characteristic feature of this particular phase in the history of utopias.