Reinvigorating Albert Ehrenstein’s Tubutsch through Nietzsche’s “Eternal Return of the Same”

Abstract

Albert Ehrenstein was widely published in the early 20^th century but is now read so rarely as to be considered one of Austria’s “forgotten” literary figures. His early prose work Tubutsch comprises a justifiably popular exception thanks to its remarkable proto-existentialist undertones. Like many writers classified as “Expressionist,” Ehrenstein’s works reveal some signs of Nietzsche’s influence. Indeed, Ehrenstein appears to make a direct reference to the “eternal return of the same,” Nietzsche’s difficult “thought of thoughts,” in Tubutsch. Ehrenstein’s indirect and seemingly discursive, even humorous, approach to the “ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen” might offer an alternative to dealing with troublesome philosophical matters like Nietzsche’s. Language has limitations when attempting to describe explicitly such cogitations, and when the “ewige Wiederkehr” is mentioned in Tubutsch, Ehrenstein implicitly suggests that some mediation is required to communicate the “thought of thoughts”—such as metaphors, intoxication, questioning, humor, and/or non-verbal, visual arts.