This thesis traces the emergence of an ‘aural imaginary’ in German-language writing of the early twentieth century, c. 1899 – 1934. This period of historical and cultural transition ushered in the need to reframe personal, political and artistic identity, to respond to innovations in culture and media, and to adapt to new social realities. Drawing on a wide range of genres, I examine the effect of these changes upon the modernist sensorium. The contribution of this thesis is distinct from, but builds upon, scholarship that has sought to investigate the new media cultures of the early twentieth century; how sound is represented by and incorporated into literary writing; and studies of music, noise and performativity in literature. By shifting the focus to hearing and listening rather than sound, I offer a new way of conceptualising a classic problem of German literary modernism: the artist as subject and creator of their work. My analyses indicate, firstly, that the aural was an important source of inspiration and imagination for these writers, and secondly, that this aural impulse produced a complex poetics of hearing, to which readers must remain attentive.

The first two chapters establish hearing as a form of discourse, working in parallel and in exchange with other orders of expression and experience, such as the visual, the gestural, and speech. Chapter 1 examines two aural figures from Rainer Maria Rilke’s early poetry: prayer (an appeal to the ear of God) and the Annunciation (the Virgin Mary’s reception of the Angel Gabriel’s message). I then follow the figure of the Annunciation into the painting of Paula Modersohn-Becker, an artist with whom Rilke discussed this motif. The life and writings of Modersohn-Becker form the focus of Chapter 2, which shows how her aesthetic aims and techniques were inspired by theories of vibration widespread in the era. I extrapolate Modersohn-Becker’s aesthetics of vibration to propose a theory of feminine vibratory subjectivity.

Chapter 3 employs a Freudian model to establish the idea of the acoustical primal scene, transformed in this period by the new medium of the telephone. I suggest that Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin understood the telephone as part of a longer tradition of listening, specifically to the sea shell, and that this blending of tradition with contemporary media discourse gave unique expression to their respective literary preoccupations. Chapter 4 explores the representation and poetological functions of overhearing and eavesdropping in texts by Robert Walser, Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann. Using approaches from queer and affect theory, I develop a notion of overhearing as generating an ambivalent form of intimacy and community. This intimacy arises in response to, then integrates, the barriers that it encounters.

Overall, this thesis challenges the abiding critical focus in literary sound studies upon the representation and integration of sound in literature (the so-called ‘objects’ of hearing), to emphasise instead the subjectivity of hearing: how writers conceive of hearing and transfigure it by means of the literary text. By taking a literary-critical approach to texts which are not traditionally considered literature (diaries; letters) and incorporating material from other genres (painting; photography), I also aim to expand the scope of the modernist literary canon, underlining its diverse and intermedial nature.