„Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun...“ - Opfermythos und Sündenbockritual in Hermann Brochs Die Verzauberung
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this thesis I try to examine the role and function of victim and sacrifice in Hermann Broch's novel Die Verzauberung. Since this text has been widely interpreted both with a political and religious approach, my aim is to add a more general perspective on the principles of ritual sacrifice and its depiction in modern literature. An important factor is the setting of the novel which takes place in a small country village. However it does not fulfil the usual genre conventions of a “Dorfroman”. Following the introduction and the research overview, the third chapter of my thesis will deal with how certain ambiguities concerning traditional concepts associated with the genre of “Heimat” are present in the novel. \nFor my analysis I use Renè Girard's theory of the mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism, a complex post-structural model which connects mass psychology, anthropological observations, literary studies and biblical criticism. On the basic assumption that society experiences a spiritual crisis together with a threat of uncontrolled violence from time to time and hence uses a ritual of sacrifice to redeem the order, I investigate the different indications the novel gives or leaves out for this systematic interpretation. In conjunction with my analysis of the overall plot, the elements that induce the crisis and the ritual of sacrifice itself, I also scrutinize the central characters: The narrator, Mutter Gisson, Marius Ratti and the two victims, Irmgard and Wetchy. \n\tI conclude that there is indeed strong evidence of both behaviour driven by mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism. The depicted action can be read as a systematic ritual to restore order and prevent further chaos and aggression. But this goal is not achieved, because the violence within the village continues over the course of several events. The spiritual crisis of the modern world is evident, but the ritual sacrifice is not an effective way to cope with the loss of a “Zentralwert.”
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".