Zwischen Naturwissenschaft und Symbolik: Zum Spezifischen der Syphilisdarstellung in der Literatur um 1900

Abstract.

The particular significance of syphilis as a literary theme at the turn of the 20th century is attributable to a combination of scientific developments and social conditions which include the germ theory, the idea of biological inheritance, the bourgeois fear of degeneration and the newly emerging discipline of public health. Symptoms that ranged from physical disfigurement to neuropsychiatric manifestations, which were only linked to syphilis in the late 19th century, together with the traditional moral connotations, made syphilis a major social and literary symbol. Neurosyphilitic stimulation of the genius, such as one finds in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus; the literary use of syphilis to underline feminist interests as in the works of Henrik Ibsen or Sarah Grand; and syphilis as a symbol for the illusion of social barriers as in the play Hands Around by Arthur Schnitzler are but a few of the ways in which syphilis is used in literature around 1900.