Führerkonzepte in den Brünner Romanen von Karl Hans Strobl und Karl Wilhelm Fritsch

Abstract

The period between the two world wars in the German-speaking countries is characterised by a general political as well as social crisis, which gave particularly strong expression to hopes for the coming of a saving leading authority and inspired Max Weber to formulate his idea of charismatic leadership. But already at the turn of the century, conditions in the nationally, culturally as well as politically disrupted Bohemian lands resembled the disorientation of the interwar period and favoured calls for strong leadership personalities. These conditions condensed also in literary texts, especially those that reflected on the unpleasant German-Czech relations and sought a way out of the conflict. This issue stands in the foreground in the novels Gefährliche Strahlen (1906) by Karl Hans Strobl and Um Michelburg (1911) by Karl Wilhelm Fritsch, which on the one hand state a disastrous lack of public authorities in Moravia and on the other evoke the appearance of leading authorities, whose conceptions (each different according to the political attitudes of the authors) are examined in the study.