The stranger symbolizes the modern condition, evoking the image of the isolated figure among the masses. A part of the masses, yet removed from it, the stranger represents oppressive alienation of urban life but also uses it to his advantage. Although writings about the stranger often emphasize his aloofness and isolation, I argue that the stranger's relationship to modernity requires examining him as a figure who instead is able to engage with others and his surroundings in a unique way. I examine the conflicting discourses of modernity that define his participation in society, and thus focus on the stranger's position rather than the figure himself.

I investigate the crucial role the stranger's position plays in three genres—theoretical texts, travel reports and fictional texts (both literary and filmic). The stranger's position is simultaneously historically specific and privileged as well as a universal manifestation of the modern condition. I am particularly interested in the mutual dependence of the two sides. In removing the stranger's position from its historical context, these texts make claims of universality—claims specific to Germany and Austria of the early twentieth century.

Using works of Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer and Helmuth Plessner, I first explore the themes of estrangement, authenticity, society and community and analyze how the texts perform the stranger's position. Then I examine the relationship between space, history, and time in Alfred Dublin's Reise in Polen and Joseph Roth's Juden auf Wanderschaft. Döblin and Roth, assuming the roles of strangers/travelers, foreground the importance of mobility to the position. Finally, I analyze the stranger and his relationship to the city in literature and film, concentrating on Hugo Bettauer's Stadt ohne Juden and Hans Karl Breslauer's filmic adaptation of Bettauer's novel. In both, the protagonist Leo Strakosch represents and problematizes the role of the privileged stranger. By focusing on aspects of the stranger that are specific to the history and culture of the Weimar period, I work towards a more nuanced understanding of the discourses that produce the stranger's unique position in German modernity.