In his main work of the Twenties, the baroque tragedy "Der Turm", Hugo
von Hofmannsthal broaches the topic of a very “singular” place: a tower
as the jail of an innocent prince in the Kingdom of Poland in the 17th Century. Unlike his literary source, "La vida es sueño" by Pedro Calderón de la
Barca, and as the title suggests, Hofmannsthal’s Turm centres on this “singular”
place as well as on prince Sigismund’s destiny as an allegory of the
political issues of the 20th Century. Hofmannsthal’s answers to these issues
in his late literary writings and essays focus on a cultural utopia based on
the concept of a plural Europe, a concept which refers to the past of the
Habsburg monarchy but at the same time is projected towards an ideal
future. This article dwells on the tension between the singular place mentioned
in the title of Hofmannsthal’s "Turm" and the plural idea of Europe
which constitutes the theoretical background of this drama, with regard to
Hofmannsthal’s cultural-political projects in his late work from the 1st
World War onwards.
