Reclaiming Moral Individualism: Jewish Identity in Arthur Schnitzler'sProfessor Bernhardi

Abstract

The protagonist of Arthur Schnitzler's playProfessor Bernhardi(1912) falls victim to an anti‐Semitic smear campaign that costs him his career. Bernhardi's unwavering adherence to his ethical principles and the triumph of his opportunistic detractors has been linked to the crisis of liberalism in Austria at the end of the nineteenth century. This article reads Bernhardi's individual ethics in the context of contemporary discourses on the relationship of the individual and society that surfaced in response to the increasing anti‐Semitism in Europe such as Émile Durkheim's defense of individualism in “Individualism and the Intellectuals” (1898) and Werner Sombart's discussion of Jewish contribution to society inDie Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben(1911). It argues that Bernhardi's insistence on moral individualism should not be read as Schnitzler's mourning of a failed political ideal but as his reclaiming of the values of Enlightenment for Jewish identity.