Three undiscovered utopias in German-language literature from the Czech periphery: Moravian Wallachia and Zlin

Abstract

This study examines three literary utopias from the margins of German literature, namely German-language literature from Eastern Moravia. The works chosen for analysis are the dramatic cycle The City of People (Die Stadt der Menschen) by Moravian-born Austrian writer and visionary Susanne Schmida (1894-1981), the novel The Imperial City (Die Kaiserstadt) by the Austrian writer and diplomat Paul Zifferer (1879-1929), and the text "The City of the Future" ("Die Stadt des Kommenden") by the German-speaking Czechoslovak author Walter Seidl. In all the texts examined, the model of urban landscape is used as the location of utopia: the prototype of an abstract futuristic city (Schmida), Vienna as an exemplar of political utopia (Zifferer), and Zlin as a fully realized social utopia (Seidl). These three sites show a complementary gradation in the sense of the (potential) realization of utopian ideas, i.e. the belief that, put simply, "it was once good" (Zifferer), "it is good" (Seidl), and "it will be good" (Schmida).