Testimonies of the Occult

The research project aims to make the occult visible as a component of Viennese modernism. It connects to a research context that understands occultism and esotericism not as opposed to modernism, but rather as concepts of knowledge that promoted it. Unlike Berlin, Munich and Leipzig, Vienna around 1900 has been little researched in this context to date. This study remedies this research gap by examining an extensive and disparate corpus of texts in detail for the first time. The starting point of the study is Else Jerusalem`s novel Der heilige Skarabäus (1909), a bestseller which as the study shows - can be read as a Theosophical Bildungsroman. Theosophy was an esoteric movement that maintained lodges worldwide around 1900 and also influenced numerous artists, writers and scientists in Vienna. Based on the reading of Der heilige Skarabäus, a number of questions come to the fore that are relevant for a large number of other authors around 1900 who were inspired to produce under similar conditions to Jerusalem: Where does the theosophical, but also philosophical knowledge in the literary text come from? How and through which contacts and institutions was it conveyed? How do the concepts of emancipation, motherhood and authorship developed in the literary work relate to esoteric knowledge, which, although considered secret knowledge, was not considered to be a secret in the 19th century? The study combines close readings of texts with the analysis of discursive practices in order to trace the complex interactions between literature and esotericism on both a larger and a smaller scale. Esoteric knowledge proves to be not so much secret or hidden knowledge (Geheimwissen), but rather knowledge that crosses borders, moves between disciplines, areas of life, texts and people and challenges existing conventions (Grenzwissen). Thus, the research project asks not least how knowledge must be structured and distributed in order to identify a (literary) text as "esoteric", "occult" or "modern" or to be able to decipher it as such. In other words, it asks whether there are esoteric texts at all, rather than just esoteric readings.