Abstract
The Habsburg port city of Trieste has long fascinated German‐Austrian writers. Robert Musil's travels in Italy and his military service during World War I acquainted him with the political tensions in the city. In Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Musil portrays the city of Trieste as the ultimate repository of an allegedly pre‐modern Habsburg Landespatriotismus that constituted a challenge to the rise of nationalism. In the characters of the aristocrat Count Leinsdorf and the Jewish banker Leo Fischel, Musil illustrates respectively the city's dwindling dynastic patriotism and the supranational mentality of its mercantile bourgeoisie. By depicting the Adriatic city as the last, crumbling bastion of non‐national allegiances, Musil models Trieste as a synecdoche for the empire's fate, making the city a microcosm for the Habsburg state.
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