Robert Musil

Robert Musil was an Austrian writer, playwright, and essayist.

He was the only son in the family of engineer Alfred Musil (descended from an old Austrian noble family) and his wife Hermine Bergauer. He attended secondary schools in several cities where his father worked: from 1891 in Brno, where Alfred Musil had obtained a post at the technical university; from 1892 to 1894 at a military school in Eisenstadt; and then at the Technical Military Academy in Hranice. After graduating from the academy in 1897, he decided to abandon a career as an officer and began attending the Technical University in Brno, where his father worked. In 1901 he passed the examination for the title of engineer.

In the same year he began military service in the infantry regiment Freiherr von Heß No. 49, stationed in Brno; then from 1902 to 1903 he worked as a research assistant at the Technical University of Stuttgart. Disappointed in the profession of engineer, in 1903 he began studying philosophy and psychology in Berlin, where he became friendly with the future writers Alfred Kerr and Franz Blei.

In 1906 he invented the Musil color wheel — a device of two superimposed color circles for creating a continuous range of colors. Two years later, in 1908, he defended his doctoral dissertation under the supervision of the renowned psychologist Carl Stumpf (the dissertation title: “A Contribution to the Assessment of Ernst Mach’s Teaching”). He declined the opportunity offered to him to habilitate, as he had decided to pursue a career as a writer.

In 1910 Musil moved to Vienna and became a librarian at the Vienna Technical University. On April 15, 1911, he married Martha Marcovaldi, née Heimann. Before the start of the First World War, he also worked as a journalist for various newspapers.

Musil took part in the First World War as a reserve officer and ended it with the rank of Landsturm captain (with insignia). He was stationed in South Tyrol and then on the Italian-Serbian front. On September 22, 1915, in Trento, he narrowly escaped death during a bombardment. In 1916 and 1917 he edited