Wiederholtes Weltende in anderen Breitengraden. Neapel in Franz Werfels Zeit- und Familienroman Die Geschwister von Neapel

In The Pascarella Family, Franz Werfel’s family novel about the Neapolitan society of the late 1920s, it is actually not Napoli that prevails but Italy more generally, according to the author himself who commented his work in an interview in 1931. This assessment confirms the problematical status of Napoli which, although physically in the foreground, quite vanishes in the background on a symbolic level. Whereas the capital of Campania appears along with the main characters in the original German title (Die Geschwister von Neapel) and constitutes the framework and scenery of almost every chapter in Werfel’s novel, the heterogeneity in the perception and representation of the town gives rise to mixed feelings in the reader, who is hence justified in questioning Werfel’s relationship to Napoli and attendant issues such as modernity, tradition or tourism. Our analysis of the way Napoli has been depicted by Werfel, or rather by his characters (the members of the Pascarella family), should help understand why Italy significantly prevails over Napoli in his literary attempt of re-presenting (that is showing once again) the fall of a world similar to what Werfel experienced less than 20 years earlier with the end of the Austro- Hungarian Empire, and what this changing of places and latitudes (from Austria to Southern Italy) eventually implicates in his eyes.