Clara K. Pollaczek und Arthur Schnitzler gehen ins Kino

It is a well-known fact that many authors of the Vienna Fin de Siècle were both interested and actively using the new media of their time. In particular, this applies to Arthur Schnitzler. Schnitzler`s involvement with film industry and the cinema makes him an outstanding example. No other writer of Viennese Modernism has embarked on a similar scale with the film industry of his time, and more importantly, no other author of his time was such an avid movie-goer. However, film and cinema are not as important as motives in Schnitzler`s work, hence literary scholars and critics put little emphasis on researching on his movie-going. The picture is clarified if we take into account Schnitzler`s relationship with Clara Katharina Pollaczek. Pollaczek Clara (nee Loeb, 1875-1951), an almost forgotten Viennese author, was a close acquaintance of both Schnitzler and Hofmannsthal already in young years, when she published a "female response" to Schnitzler`s "Anatol" ("Mimi") in S. Fischer`s "Neue Deutsche Rundschau". Later on, in the 1920s and `30s, she was Arthur Schnitzler`s company when going to the movies - more 600 visits to cinemas are recorded in their diaries. This volume provides a synopsis of the diary entries of Pollaczek and Schnitzler related to cinema. In the ideal case, both record their visit to the film, name the cinema, the film and take note of the location of their dinner after the movie. Sometimes, Pollaczek goes beyond this factual reporting: "A. ist manchmal wie ein kleines Kind" ("A. is like a small child sometimes")... In contrast to Schnitzler`s other work, these records of Pollaczek and Schnitzler reflect the passionate and sophisticated interest in the new medium. Even in the letters between Pollaczek and Schnitzler (to be published for the first time in the present book) there is a constant reflection on cinema and film. The correspondence of the two is kept in the manuscript archives of Vienna City Library together with Pollaczek`s diary. Clara Katharina Pollaczek donated this manuscript, entitled "Arthur Schnitzler und ich" ("Arthur Schnitzler and myself") to the city of Vienna in the early 1950s. The protocols of their cinema visits are generally only brief and far from comprehensive. Therefore, this information is enriched from other sources (e.g. from reviews and movie listings of the "Neue Freie Presse") to add information on the specific cinema Schnitzler and Pollaczek visited and on the film they watched. Filmographic data and a content description are both included from "Paimann`s Filmlisten" - a contemporary Viennese cinema and movie magazine. In addition to the main part, the book contains three essays: one (by Stephan Kurz) focuses on the biography of Clara Katharina Pollaczek and also provides an extensive annotated bibliography of her literary works; the other (by Michael Rohrwasser) elaborates on Schnitzler`s relationship to film and cinema and follows the question of "what draws Schnitzler into cinema". The third essay (by Werner M. Schwarz) elaborates on the context of history of cinema in Vienna, focussing on the 1920`s and early 1930`s. The volume is supplemented by several appendices: They list Schnitzler`s movie visits before the time recorded in the main part (1904-1923), and those both Pollaczek and Schnitzler undertook without each other. Another appendix provides facts about the cinemas mentioned in their diary entries. The book is completed by previously unpublished photographs of Schnitzler, Pollaczek and others, and by a series of original movie posters from the time (which are kept in the Vienna City Library`s poster collection), and some contemporary photos of cinemas Pollaczek and Schnitzler have been to. A comprehensive index gives the names of all actors, directors, screenwriters, and the persons mentioned in the diary entries.