Josephine Mutzenbacher or The Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself () is an erotic novel first published anonymously in Vienna, Austria, in 1906. The novel is famousLexikon. WAS IST SOLLIZITATION? Wien im Rosenstolz 2006 ERBzine 0880: Mahlon Blaine Bio and Bib. Erbzine.com (5 June 1917). Retrieved on 28 November 2011. in the German-speaking world, having been in print in both German and English for over 100 years and sold over 3 million copies,Zensur.org – Bahle: Zensur in der Literatur . Censuriana.de. Retrieved on 28 November 2011.TRANS Nr. 14: Donald G. Daviau (Riverside/California): Austria at the Turn of the Century 1900 and at the Millenium becoming an erotic bestseller.Felix Salten, Bambi, Walt Disney – Biography – Famous People from Vienna, Austria . Actilingua.com. Retrieved on 28 November 2011.Mutzenbacher, Josefine Mutzenbacher, Erotische Führung, Wienführung, Führungen in Wien, Anna Ehrlich . Wienfuehrung.com. Retrieved on 28 November 2011.
Although no author claimed responsibility for the work, it was originally attributed to either Felix Salten or Arthur Schnitzler by the librarians at the University of Vienna. Today, critics, scholars, academics and the Austrian Government designate Salten as the sole author of the "pornographic classic".Archivmeldung: Felix Salten: "Von Josefine Mutzenbacher bis Bambi". Wien.gv.at. Retrieved on 28 November 2011. Ungeheure Unzucht – DIE WELT – WELT ONLINE. Welt.de (3 January 2007). Retrieved on 28 November 2011.Olympia Press Ebooks: $1 Literary and Erotic Classics From The Fabled Olympia Press . Olympiapress.com. Retrieved on 28 November 2011. In 2022, a stylometric analysis showed that Felix Salten is the most probable author of the novel, the final pages excluded.
The original novel uses the specific local dialect of Vienna of that time in dialogues and is therefore used as a rare source of this dialect for linguists. It also describes, to some extent, the social and economic conditions of the lower class of that time. The novel has been translated into English, Swedish, Finnish, French, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Dutch, and Japanese among others,Felix Salten: A Preliminary Bibliography of His Works in Translation. and been the subject of numerous films, theater productions, parodies, and university courses, as well as two sequels.
A critical, annotated edition of the German-language text was only published in 2021.
Contents Plot The publisher's preface – formatted as an obituary and excluded from all English translations until 2018 – tells that Josefine left the manuscript to her physician before her death from complications after a surgery. Josefine Mutzenbacher was not her real name. The protagonist is said to have been born on 20 February 1852 in Vienna and died on 17 December 1904 at a sanatorium.Josefine Mutzenbacher oder Die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dirne von ihr selbst erzählt (1906), pp. v–vi.
The plot device employed in Josephine Mutzenbacher is that of first-person narrative, structured in the format of a memoir. The story is told from the point of view of an accomplished aging 50-year-old Viennese courtesan who is looking back upon the sexual escapades she enjoyed during her unbridled youth in Vienna. Contrary to the title, almost the entirety of the book takes place when Josephine is between the ages of 5–13 years old, before she actually becomes a licensed prostitute in the brothels of Vienna. The book begins when she is five years old and ends when she is thirteen years old and starts her career as an unlicensed prostitute with a friend, to support her unemployed father.
Although the German-language text makes use of witty nicknames – for instance, the curate's genital is called "a hammer of mercy" – for human anatomy and sexual behavior, its content is entirely pornographic. The actual progression of events amounts to little more than a graphic, unapologetic description of the reckless sexuality exhibited by the heroine, all before reaching her 14th year. The style bears more than a passing resemblance to the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom in its unabashed "laundry list" cataloging of all manner of taboo sexual antics from children's sexual play, incest and rape to child prostitution, group sex, sado-masochism, lesbianism, and fellatio. In some constellations, Josefine appears as the active seducer, and sex is usually depicted as an uncomplicated, satisfactory experience.
Illustrations
The original Austrian publication was unillustrated, but a later pirated edition from 1922 contained black-and-white drawings, entirely pornographic as the text. These illustrations were bound in the archival copy of the first edition at the Austrian National Library, and have been reproduced at least in the hardcover edition of the 2018 English translation and in a 2019 Finnish translation, erroneously dated to 1906. Another illustrated German-language edition was published in the late 1960s in Liechtenstein with images by Jean Veenenbos (1932–2005).
Other illustrations have been created as well. The first English translation of 1931 was quickly pirated in New York and illustrated by Mahlon Blaine (1894–1969). The 1973 translation, Oh! Oh! Josephine, is illustrated with photographic stills from "the continental movie" of 1970, Josephine Mutzenbacher a.k.a. Naughty Knickers by Kurt Nachmann.
Also a Danish translation of 1967 contains illustrations. An incomplete Swedish translation from 1983 contains random photographs of prostitutes with scathing comments.
Interpretations The novel Josefine Mutzenbacher has given rise to a multitude of interpretations. It has been listed both as child pornography and labeled as an apposite depiction of the milieu and manners of its time in Vienna, a travesty or a parody or a persiflage of a coming-of-age story or a novel of development, and mentioned as a rare case of a picaresque novel with a female protagonist.Entscheidung Nr. 6205 vom 09.11.2017. Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien. Page 12. (In German.) It has also been praised for its criticism of the bourgeois society.
The relation of the novel to the Freudian theory of sexuality has been subject to debate. The Swedish translator C.-M. Edenborg sees Josefine Mutzenbacher as an indictment of Freud's bourgeois psychology, whereas the Austrian psychoanalyst Désirée Prosquill thinks that not only are there marked thematic correspondences between Josefine Mutzenbacher (1906) and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) but Mutzenbacher also anticipates some issues concerning infantile sexuality that Freud added to his theory only later.
Legal processes in German-speaking countries Banned in Austria, 1913–1971 The distribution of the novel Josefine Mutzenbacher was forbidden in Austria from 1913 on when it was taken into the list Catalogus Librorum in Austria Prohibitorum because of its obscenity.Reiter-Zatloukal (2019), p. 201.
In 1931, a bookseller called Josef Kunz was convicted in Vienna for a public act of obscenity because he had published a new edition of the novel, and the copies of the book were confiscated.Reiter-Zatloukal (2019), p. 204. In 1971, however, the Supreme Court of Austria decided that there was no longer any reason to punish a publisher for distributing the novel because there were artistic merits in the work. Still in 1988, there was another legal process to ban the novel because of obscenity, but this time, too, the Supreme Court judged in favour of the publisher.Reiter-Zatloukal (2019), pp. 209–210.
The Mutzenbacher Decision The Mutzenbacher Decision (Case BVerfGE 83,130BVerfGE 83,130 on-line.) was a ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht) on 27 November 1990 concerning whether or not the novel Josefine Mutzenbacher should be placed on a list of youth-restricted media. However, the significance of the case came to eclipse Josefine Mutzenbacher as an individual work, because it set a precedent as to which has a larger weight in German Law: Freedom of Expression or The Protection of Youth.
The final decision was made in 1992 at the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), putting the work once again on the list of "Media harming the youth" (Jungendgefährdenden Medien), forcing the right of Freedom of Expression (Under Article 5 III Fundamental rights) to step back.
Abstract "Pornography and art are not mutually exclusive."
Preface In Germany, there is a process known as indexing (). The Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (BPjM or "Federal inspection department for youth-endangering media") collates books, movies, video games and music that could be harmful to young people because they contain violence, pornography, Nazism, hate speech, and similar dangerous content. The items are placed on the "List of youth-endangering media" (Liste jugendgefährdender Medien).
An item will stay on the list for 25 years, after which time the effects of the indexing will cease automatically.
Items that are indexed (placed on the list) cannot be bought by anyone under 18, are not allowed to be sold at regular bookstores or retailers that young people have access to, and are not allowed to be advertised in any manner.Reiter-Zatloukal (2019), p. 213. An item that is placed on the list becomes very difficult for adults to access as a result of these restrictions.
The issue underlying the Mutzenbacher Decision is not whether the book is legal for adults to buy, own, read, and sell – that is not disputed. The case concerns whether the intrinsic merit of the book as a work of art supersedes the potential harm its controversial contents could have on the impressionable minds of minors and whether or not it should be "indexed".
The history In the 1960s, two separate publishing houses made new editions of the original 1906 Josefine Mutzenbacher. In 1965 Dehli Publishers of Copenhagen, Denmark, published a two volume edition, and in 1969 the German publisher Rogner & Bernhard in Munich printed another edition with a glossary by Oswald Wiener. The BPjM placed Josefine Mutzenbacher on its list, after two criminal courts declared the pornographic content of the book obscene.Reiter-Zatloukal (2019), p. 214.
The BPjM maintained that the book was pornographic and dangerous to minors because it contained explicit descriptions of sexual promiscuity, child prostitution, and incest as its exclusive subject matter, and promoted these activities as positive, insignificant, and even humorous behaviors in a manner devoid of any artistic value. The BPjM stated that the contents of the book justified it being placed on the "list of youth-endangering media" so that its availability to minors would be restricted.
In 1978 a third publishing house attempted to issue a new edition of Josefine Mutzenbacher that included a foreword and omitted the "glossary of Viennese vulgarisms" from the 1969 version. The BPjM again placed Josefine Mutzenbacher on its "list of youth-endangering media," and the Rowohlt Publishing house filed an appeal with the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany on the grounds that Josefine Mutzenbacher was a work of art that minors should not be restricted from reading.
The decision On 27 November 1990 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany made what is now known as "The Mutzenbacher Decision". The Court prefaced their verdict by referring to two other seminal freedom of expression cases from previous German Case Law, the Mephisto decision and the Anachronistischer Zug decision. The court ruled that under the German constitution (Grundgesetz) chapter about Freedom of Art (Kunstfreiheit), the novel Josefine Mutzenbacher was both pornography and art, and that the former is not sufficient to deny the latter.