Häuserkampf. Musil und das Neue Wohnen

In the etymological tradition of the word, polemic must be understood not so much as a rhetoric strategy but rather as a philosophical and intellectual struggle. Looking at them in that way, most texts by Robert Musil basically are not polemic in style but become polemic if one puts them in their discursive and socio-political context. In this article I argue that Musil’s contributions to the ongoing public debate on modern dwelling and housing in the Weimar Republic turn out to be polemic in this interactional sense. As their literary conception and reception were ruled by the growing impact and complexity of new media in the daily newspapers and cultural magazines, special attention will be payed to the interplay of Musil’s critical essays about domestic architecture and the swarming mass of images that surround them