{"id":1156,"date":"2026-09-15T17:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/?p=1156"},"modified":"2026-09-15T21:38:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T19:38:46","slug":"weber-alina-dana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/weber-alina-dana\/","title":{"rendered":"WEBER Alina Dana"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Prosopography and Fiction: Thomas Mann\u2019s Magic Mountain<\/em> (Der Zauberberg, 1924)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Mann\u2019s novel The Magic Mountain<\/em> (1924), a renowned work of world literature, self-identifies as a \u201cZeitroman\u201d, a portrait of an era. By narrating all aspects of everyday life at a sanatorium for pulmonary diseases frequented by middle-class patients in the Swiss Alps within a precise timeframe (from 1907 to 1914), the text identifies this bourgeois microcosm as a bygone and thus historical phenomenon obliterated by First World War. In doing so, The Magic Mountain<\/em> reconstructs the \u201ccollective biography\u201d of this social class (Broady, 13; Verboeven, Carlier, Dumolyn, 39) and thus opens itself to an approach through prosopography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper proposes an experiment in interdisciplinary analysis and methodology situated between historical research and literary interpretation: it will examine The Magic Mountain<\/em> in a prosopographic vein and reflect on the interdisciplinary benefits of this approach. I will analyze a set of significant textual elements that correspond to the parameters of a prosopography, such as the novel\u2019s historically accurate geographical and chronological settings or its design of the main protagonist as an \u201cindividual type\u201d in Max Weber\u2019s and a \u201cconstructed individual\u201d in Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s senses, i.e., as an average figuration of late 19th-century middle-class characteristics. I will further discuss how the biographies and onomastics of several characters are woven together with historical information about the era\u2019s material culture, medicine, and popular culture. The result of this investigation will reveal the novel as a sociography of the international capitalist bourgeoisie and its internal, social and ethnic divisions and power struggles in the economic context of their lifestyle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This analysis regards itself as a case study on the usefulness of modern fictions with realistic ambitions such as The Magic Mountain<\/em> for prosopography in particular and historical research more generally. When literary authors might consciously or unconsciously use methods close to or of prosopography to compose the subject matter of their fictions, their novels become documents fit for historical examination; but the literary qualities of their narratives offer additional advantages,  especially helping to avoid two pitfalls of prosopography: One, according to Weber, is the trap of \u201cobjectivity\u201d \u2013 of mistaking scientific concepts for everyday-life ones; another, according to Bourdieu, is a lack of reflection on how power struggles within a social field continuously shape this field. Obviously and unmistakably \u201cfictional\u201d, literary texts leave no doubt that their mode of language use is located somewhere between empirical reality and imagination. But precisely this creative language also connects directly to emotional and psychological truths (rather than reporting about them), thus illuminating how human tensions and conflicts, not only empirical factors, shape socio-historical phenomena.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, The Magic Mountain<\/em>\u2019s prosopographic analysis offers an instructive example for the mutual benefits of interdisciplinary cooperation between prosopography and literary research, benefits that reach beyond the unquestionably valuable cataloguing of fictional characters (cf. Soldevilla et al.) into forays into the immaterial depths of fictionalized social worlds with benefits for historical understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Alina Dana Weber is an Associate Professor of German at Florida State University (FSU) and serves as the Chair of the International Society for Cultural History. She is the author of the ethnographic and cultural-historical study Blood Brothers and Peace Pipes<\/em> (2019) and the editor of two essay volumes. Weber has published in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift<\/em>, German Studies Review<\/em>, Seminar<\/em>, and elsewhere. She has won several fellowships and awards and is currently working on new cultural-historical contextualizations of two German texts of world literature, E. T. A. Hoffmann\u2019s novella Nutcracker and Mouse King<\/em> (1816) and Thomas Mann\u2019s novel The Magic Mountain<\/em> (1924).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E-mail: aweber@fsu.edu
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prosopography and Fiction: Thomas Mann\u2019s Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg, 1924) Thomas Mann\u2019s novel The Magic Mountain (1924), a renowned work of world literature, self-identifies as a \u201cZeitroman\u201d, a portrait of an era. By narrating all aspects of everyday life at a sanatorium for pulmonary diseases frequented by middle-class patients in the Swiss Alps within a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-participants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1157,"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prosopography.zrc-sazu.si\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}