Doctors talking to doctors in Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi

Arthur Schnitzler has long been regarded as a key figure in the development of Austrian realism, and especially in drama, where the movement was catalyzed by the Viennese ‘Ibsen week’ of April 1891. This chapter investigates four aspects of Schnitzler’s realism: medical hierarchies and structures of authority; doctors talking about their work; factionalization; and the breakdown of professional relations. For its early audiences, especially in Vienna, Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi offered realistic insight into an unfamiliar medical milieu within which, regrettably, the more familiar and divisive politics of the larger public sphere were reflected. Setting apart Mrs Emil Pohli’s text and that of William L. Cunningham and David Palmer, which both offer only a taster of the larger work, English-language versions of Professor Bernhardi fall into two categories: complete literary translations, and shorter stage adaptations. The meeting is the structural core and dramatic highpoint of Professor Bernhardi and tends to be only lightly abridged, even when radical cuts are made elsewhere