The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch

First published:Die Schlafwandler, 1931-1932 (English translation, 1932); includes Pasenow: Oder, Die Romantik-1888, 1931 (The Romantic, 1932); Esch: Oder, Die Anarchie-1903, 1931 (The Anarchist, 1931); Hugnenau: Oder, Die Sachlichkeit-1918, 1932 (The Realist, 1932)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Philosophical

Time of plot: 1888-1918

Locale: Germany

Principal characters

• Joachim von Pasenow, a young lieutenant
• Herr von Pasenow, his father
• Bertrand, his friend
• Esch, a bookkeeper
• Frau Hentjen, his wife
• Huguenau, a businessman

The Story:

The Romantic. In 1888, Joachim von Pasenow is a lieutenant in the German army. Wearing a uniform for a long time, he looks on it as his natural dress. He believes a uniform hides a man’s nakedness; unlike civilian clothes, it makes a man amount to something. His friend Bertrand left the army and now wears mufti all the time; it seems indecent. Joachim feels a little insecure about his honor, too. His brother Helmuth was killed in a duel, and his father makes much of Helmuth’s unsullied honor.

Herr von Pasenow comes to Berlin to visit Joachim. He is a funny little man, rotund and intent, and his son is a bit ashamed of him. At a casino they meet Ruzena, a Bohemian girl. Von Pasenow strokes her familiarly and gives her money. She accepts the attentions easily, but when the old man jokes about marriage she goes into the lavatory to cry. Later, perhaps as a kind of penance, Joachim takes Ruzena as his mistress.

Bertrand, too, takes a friendly interest in Ruzena, and he helps her get on the stage. Ruzena is happy with Joachim, but she begins to distrust Bertrand. He lets slip the suggestion that she should leave the chorus and go into a notion shop. Joachim leaves Ruzena at times to visit his family, for his father is anxious that he should resign from the army and look after the family estate. He is also anxious that Joachim marry Elisabeth.

When Bertrand meets Elisabeth, he speaks to her eloquently of a love based on renunciation; the innocent girl is upset. Ruzena, convinced that Bertrand is the evil genius separating her from her lover, shoots him in the arm. She then leaves Joachim and goes back to work in a café. Joachim, also believing that Bertrand is a bad influence, settles money on Ruzena and proposes to Elisabeth. With this deed he breaks with his past, for he does not ask Bertrand’s advice about the marriage.

Before accepting Joachim, Elisabeth visits Bertrand in the hospital. He declares his love for her but is resigned to her marriage with Joachim as inevitable. For a time after their marriage, Joachim thinks of Elisabeth as an unapproachable madonna. They do not have their first child for more than one year.

The Anarchist. In 1903, Esch is dismissed from his post as a bookkeeper at a shipping concern in Cologne. Martin, a crippled socialist, somehow learns of Esch’s dismissal and tells him of a better job in Mannheim. They discuss the matter in Frau Hentjen’s restaurant. Esch knows he will have to have a reference. He finally gets a good one by threatening to expose the crooked manager under whom he worked.

In Mannheim, he finds employment in a large firm owned by Bertrand. He makes friends with Korn, a customs inspector, and with Lohberg, a pallid tobacconist. In a short while, he goes to room with Korn and his sister Erna. Erna is unattractive but wants desperately to marry, and Korn hopes to acquire a brother-in-law in Esch. At last, Esch answers her provocations by going into her bedroom, but Erna reserves her favors until they are married.

By helping Gernerth, a theatrical manager, with his shipping, Esch receives passes to a show and takes Korn and Erna with him to the performance. The star attraction is Teltscher, a Hungarian knife thrower, and Ilona, his flashy blond target. Becoming acquainted with Korn and Esch, the actors visit them at Korn’s house. For a while, Esch hopes to win Ilona, but she shows a preference for Korn; at last she sleeps with him openly.

Arriving in Mannheim during a strike, Martin is arrested at a workers’ meeting. Esch is convinced that Bertrand hired baiters to trap Martin and that Bertrand should be imprisoned instead. Feeling restless, he accepts Teltscher’s offer to join him in the theatrical business. They plan to operate in Cologne. Esch feels an odd responsibility to get Teltscher away from Ilona, because the knife-throwing act endangers Ilona’s safety.

Back in Cologne, Esch spends much time with Frau Hentjen, and in time he overcomes her scruples against taking him as her lover. She does not like his new job, which is to hire lady wrestlers. Esch writes an article protesting against Martin’s false imprisonment, but the socialist newspaper refuses to print it. During his wandering through the town, he stumbles on evidence that Bertrand is a sodomite, but again the paper refuses to print his story.

Driven by a vague compulsion, Esch goes to see Bertrand. On the way, he stops off to see the Korns and finds Erna engaged to marry Lohberg. Erna changed; she has no compunction about allowing Esch to sleep with her. Bertrand receives Esch kindly but is evasive on the subject of the strike. Bertrand dies soon after Esch returns to Cologne. For a while, Esch plans vaguely to go to America. After Frau Hentjen mortgages her restaurant to provide theatrical capital, she and Esch are married. Eventually they lose their money, and Esch takes a good job in Luxembourg.

The Realist. Huguenau, a practical businessman, deserts from the army. By keeping an open countenance and refusing to skulk, he makes his way through Belgium to the Ardennes and back into the Moselle district. Since he is an Alsatian and knows both French and German, both sides of the Rhine are home to him. In Kur-Trier he spends enough of his carefully hoarded money to set himself up as a hotel keeper.

All about him others are questioning their beliefs during the last months of the war. Hanna, the lawyer’s faithful wife, grows more and more virginal during her husband’s absence. In Berlin, Marie the Salvation Army girl half-acknowledges her passion for a Talmudic Jew. The wounded in the hospitals have little spirit to live.

Huguenau, however, has no questions, no frustrations; he is intent only on business deals. He bluffs the military commandant, Major Joachim von Pasenow, into supporting him, and on the strength of that backing he persuades the local dignitaries to put up enough capital for him to buy control of a newspaper owned by Esch. He makes the deal easier by circulating rumors that Esch is subversive. Before long, Huguenau is editing the paper and eating Frau Esch’s good meals without payment.

Having embraced the Protestant faith, Joachim finally becomes convinced that Esch is a malcontent and Huguenau a suspicious character. In November, 1918, the workers revolt and take over the town. Joachim is hurt and carried to the basement of Esch’s printing house. Observing this, Huguenau takes advantage of the confusion and rapes Frau Esch. Then he follows Esch, who is returning to guard duty, catches up with him, and slips a bayonet into his back. After the war, Huguenau tricks Frau Esch by letter into returning the borrowed capital he invested in the paper. While he continues to amass more money, he prudently marries a German girl with a good dowry.

Bibliography

Bartram, Graham, and Philip Payne. “Apocalypse and Utopia in the Austrian Novel of the 1930’s: Hermann Broch and Robert Musil.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Modern German Novel, edited by Bartram. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. The Sleepwalkers and The Death of Virgil are analyzed and placed within the wider context of 1930’s Austrian literature in this essay about novelists Broch and Robert Musil.

Broch de Rothermann, H. F. Dear Mrs. Strigl: A Memoir of Hermann Broch. Translated by John Hargraves. New Haven, Conn.: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, 2001. Broch’s son recalls his father, focusing on the personal rather than on Broch’s writing. Describes Broch’s relationship with his father, his exile in the United States, and other aspects of his often difficult life. In both English and German.

Cohn, Dorrit. “The Sleepwalkers”: Elucidations of Hermann Broch’s Trilogy. The Hague, the Netherlands: Mouton, 1966. A close reading of Broch’s novels. Describes the mechanics of the texts’ structures and pays special attention to the importance and meaning of narrators in the novels.

Dowden, Stephen D., ed. Hermann Broch: Literature, Philosophy, Politics: The Yale Broch Symposium 1986. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1988. The Sleepwalkers is specifically discussed in several articles, and each article is paired with a response.

Halsall, Robert. The Problem of Autonomy in the Works of Hermann Broch. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Halsall argues that concerns about autonomy are central to understanding Broch’s literature and philosophy and demonstrates how these concerns are evident in his major novels, including The Sleepwalkers.

Hargraves, John A. Music in the Works of Broch, Mann, and Kafka. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2001. Although Hargraves examines music as an element in the work of three German writers, this study concentrates on Broch because Hargraves maintains that, of the three, Broch was the most interested in expressing the primacy of music in his work. Includes essays discussing Broch’s discursive writings on music and the musical elements in several of his novels.

Lützeler, Paul Michael, ed. Hermann Broch, Visionary in Exile: The 2001 Yale Symposium. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2003. Contains papers delivered at an international symposium that present a wide range of interpretations of Broch’s work. Several papers analyze various elements of The Sleepwalkers and The Death of Virgil.

Schlant, Ernestine. Hermann Broch. Boston: Twayne, 1978. A basic and general introduction to Broch and his works that also provides a sound historical context for the novels. The chapter on the “Mechanics and Metaphysics of Sleepwalking” presents a good introduction to Broch’s philosophical and aesthetic project.

Ziolkowski, Theodore. “Hermann Broch: The Sleepwalkers.” In Dimensions of the Modern Novel. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. Provides useful background on Broch’s philosophical attitudes and how they are transformed into this theoretical and essayistic novel. Argues that Broch’s novel, in its rigorous execution, is the logical end point of the modernist consciousness already put forward by Rainer Maria Rilke and Franz Kafka in their modernist novels.