Angst

Irene Wagner, married and mother of two children, seemingly leads a life that fully meets the demands of bourgeois moral standards. In contrast to this life is her affair with a musician. Carefully striving for secrecy, she is confronted and blackmailed by a supposed rival during a meeting with her lover. As her husband also begins to suspect something, a conflict arises between individual passion and societal norms, creating a pull that ultimately drives Irene, consumed by fear and guilt, to the extreme. The novella by Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was created in 1910 in Vienna. It exemplifies Freud's theories of psychoanalysis through the character of Irene.