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Today, Robert Musil, a representative of literary modernism, experimental psychologist, engineer, and graduate philosopher, would have celebrated his 145th birthday. Although he became famous worldwide as the author of the novel The Man Without Qualities, Brno University of Technology can also remember him as a former student of mechanical engineering at the technical university in Brno. Philosophy and literature ultimately led him away from a technical career, but his engineering approach left its mark on his prose. „Robert Musil“ – portrait of the writer. | Author: Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons – Musil.jpg, Public Domain (free work); edited.
Robert Musil was born on November 6, 1880, in Klagenfurt, Austria, to university professor Alfred Musil and his wife Hermine. AlfredMusil, later ennobled as Hofrat Alfred Edler von Musil, worked at the then German Technical University in Brno in the field of mechanical engineering, where he dealt with combustion engines and mechanical drawing, among other things. Prof. Alfred Musil also played an important role in the history of engineering in Brno. It was he who invited engineer Viktor Kaplan to Brno University of Technology after Kaplan left the faculty in Vienna. Kaplan eventually gained space here to conduct research on water turbines – and it was in Brno that Kaplan's famous turbine was created, which later spread throughout the world. Thanks in part to Musil's father, Brno is associated with one of the most significant inventions in modern energy. Robert Musil thus grew up in the academic environment of Brno University of Technology, surrounded by technical giants and discussions about industrial progress.
His experiences from his studies in Brno and the city itself later had a significant impact on his writing. For him, Brno represented the first transition from the authoritarian world of military schools to an environment of exploration, observation, and independent thinking. In addition to the Technical University on Komenský Square, places associated with his youth include the secondary school on Husova Street and houses on Údolní and today's Jaselská Streets.
After graduating from several military schools, Musil headed to the Brno University of Technology. There, he not only gained professional education, but also a respect for facts, the ability to argue precisely, and a tendency to compare ideals with reality. At the same time, he became increasingly attracted to philosophy – he supplemented his technical education by reading philosophers and writers, including Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Ernst Mach.
Although Musil worked briefly as an engineer and later as a librarian, editor, and clerk, these jobs never represented a real career path for him. He saw them more as a means to an end, so that he could write – writing was his main profession, even though it did not bring him security or social prestige.
After graduating from Brno's technical university, he worked at the Institute for Materials Testing in Stuttgart. However, he found the work unfulfilling and began to focus on literature. It was then that he wrote his first significant novel, The Confusions of Young Törless (1906), inspired by his experiences at the military school in Weisskirchen. Shortly thereafter, he left for Berlin to study philosophy, mathematics, and experimental psychology, earning a doctorate on Ernst Mach's epistemology. As part of his research, he also developed his own scientific instrument – a chromatometer called the Musilscher Farbkreisel, used to study color perception.
After World War I, Musil devoted himself to writing and criticism. Although he was one of the most important authors of modernism, he and his family lived in long-term financial uncertainty. After the rise of Nazism, he refused to leave his Jewish wife and went into exile in Switzerland, where he died in 1942. Today, he is considered one of the most influential figures in 20th-century European literature. Memorial Plaque of Robert Musil in Brno. | Author: Dezidor, self-photographed, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0); edited.
Technical education remained part of Musil's thinking until the end of his life. What's more, it became the basis of his literary style. As a representative of modernism, he strove for an experimental literary language with which he could capture the complex flow of human experience as faithfully as possible. However, he was not only interested in the formal aspects of language, but also in ensuring that literature functioned as a tool for objective communication between people while reflecting the psychological and philosophical knowledge of his time.
He wrote his texts at a time when engineers were emerging as the new cultural and social elite. In his most famous – albeit unfinished – novel, The Man Without Qualities (1930), Musil satirically portrayed the archetype of the engineer in the form of the protagonist Ulrich – "the man without qualities." Ulrich does not fully understand why and how the real world works outside the exact laws of physics. When he looks at it through the lens of technology, he finds it "ridiculous. . .unpractical in all that concerns the relations between human beings, and in the highest degree uneconomical and inexact in its methods.
An integral part of Ulrich's character is the slide rule, which symbolizes the separation of engineers from the world of feelings and emotions and at the same time expresses a certain intellectual superiority:
"A slide-rule consists of two incredibly ingeniously combined systems of figures and divisions; a slide-rule consists of two little white-enamelled rods, the cross-section of which is a fiat trapezium, which slide into each other, a device by the aid of which one can instantly solve the most complicated problems, without wasting any thought on the matter; a slide-rule is a little symbol that one carries in one’s breast-pocket, feeling it as a hard white line over one’s heart. If one owns a slide-rule, and someone comes along with large assertions or grand feelings, one says: ‘Just a moment, please—first of all let’s work out the margin of error and the approximate value of the thing!’" (The Man Without Qualities)
Musil uses Ulrich to show that rationality alone is not enough. Ulrich is educated and capable, but he deliberately avoids firm decisions, identities, and emotions, becoming a neutral observer who reflects the desires and ambitions of others. He thus serves as a warning of what happens when precision and detachment replace participation and emotion.
The novel The Man Without Qualities thus also raises the question of the relationship between technical and humanistic thinking. Musil's legacy—in literature and in the development of the chromatometer—shows that precision, analytical detachment, and the structure of technical thinking can certainly enrich writing and our view of the world. However, technical and philosophical education are not opposites. Rather, they are two perspectives on the same world: one measures, the other seeks meaning. Their combination allows for a better understanding of both people and the times in which they live.
Sources used: Technology and Culture, Encyclopedia of the History of Brno, Musil Online, The New Criterion, Czech Radio Brno, The Man Without Qualities