Musil, Robert

Austrian writer, born in Klagenfurt, as the son of an engineer who later became a professor. Robert Musil received his basic education at a military school. He next studied to become a machine engineer in Stuttgart, but quit technical university in order to study philosophy instead at the university in Berlin. He obtained his doctoral degree in 1908 with a thesis on the physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach. Musil next took up residence in Vienna, where he worked as a librarian in the years 1911-1914. During the First World War, he served as an officer at the Italian front, but was wounded in 1916 and next worked as the editor of a soldier’s magazine until 1918.