Bøker av Hermann Broch

First published in the US in 1932, The Sleepwalkers is about three protagonists "sleepwalking", that is, living between vanishing and emerging ethical systems just as the somnambulist exists in a state between sleeping and waking. Together they present a panorama of German society and its progressive deterioration of values that culminated in defeat and collapse at the end of World War I.The novel explores what Broch described as "the loneliness of the I" in its three parts.The protagonists of the first two parts of the book are represented as holding to certain sets of values. Broch describes the struggles they undergo as their codes for living, or values, prove inadequate to the realities of the social environment they find themselves in. Joachim von Pasenow in the first part is "the romantic". In the second part, August Esch tries to live according to the motto "business is business".Eventually, in the third part, the amoral Huguenau's only standard for behavior is his personal profit. He follows this maxim in all his actions, swindling and murdering without remorse. Ultimately, he reaches a point of zero values without remorse and his dealings bring him finally to the zero point of values. Although Broch doesn't hold Huguenau up as someone to admire, he does present him as the inevitable harbinger of fascism.As one reviewer noted, "His characters are sleepwalkers because their own lives are shaped by the forces of the nightmare reality in which they live."

The series "e;QUELLEN UND FORSCHUNGEN ZUR LITERATUR- UND KULTURGESCHICHTE"e; (Sources and Research in the History of Literature and Culture), with a rich tradition stretching back to 1874, is an established feature among the renowned publications for German Literary Studies. Edited by Ernst Osterkamp and Werner Rocke at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the series presents examples of high-quality scholarship examining literary texts in conjunction with historical cultural phenomena, particularly with the other arts. There is an explicit demand for literary studies with a transdisciplinary approach. German literature from the Middle Ages to the present day forms the main focus of the series. As the historical cultural thrust of the series includes aspects of intercultural experience and national perceptions of the other, Quellen und Forschungen is also open to occasional comparative studies. The publications of the series include monographs, doctoral and professorial theses and thematically focused volumes of collected papers. Works presented for acceptance in the series are required to display scholarly relevance and excellence in method and presentation.

Richard Hieck had a difficult childhood in early-20th-century Germany. With his withdrawn mother and his enigmatic father, he studies mathematics in an attempt to find the discipline he craves. Broch examines the impossibility of life within a society whose values are in decay.