Der Traum einer neuen Ordnung für Europa. Allegorische Orte und kulturelle Räume in der ersten Fassung von Hofmannsthals "Turm"

Abstract

In his main work of the Twenties, the baroque tragedy "Der Turm", Hugo von Hofmannsthal broaches the topic of a very "singular" place: a tower as the jail of an innocent prince in the Kingdom of Poland in the 17th Century. Unlike his literary source, "La vida es sueño" by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and as the title suggests, Hofmannsthal's Turm centres on this "singular" place as well as on prince Sigismund's destiny as an allegory of the political issues of the 20th Century. Hofmannsthal's answers to these issues in his late literary writings and essays focus on a cultural utopia based on the concept of a plural Europe, a concept which refers to the past of the Habsburg monarchy but at the same time is projected towards an ideal future. This article dwells on the tension between the singular place mentioned in the title of Hofmannsthal's "Turm" and the plural idea of Europe which constitutes the theoretical background of this drama, with regard to Hofmannsthal's cultural-political projects in his late work from the 1st World War onwards.