Contents
From the Editors
Articles
"Ich verstehe die Welt nicht mehr. Sie ist mir abhandengekommen." Zur Krankheit des Vergessens und ihrer Darstellung in der deutschen und österreichischen Literatur
Gerd K. Schneider
The percentage of the elderly in Germany and Austria is increasing; people are having fewer children and some immigrants return home again. It has been estimated that by 2030 the population of people 65 and older in both countries will be about 17 percent. As seniors live longer‚ the number of age-related illnesses increases‚ esp. Alzheimer’s disease. This places an enormous burden on the health care systems and on the family members who are acting as care givers. The literatures of Germany and Austria have taken up this topic, producing works that describe the various stages of this illness and offer hints for taking care of these seniors.
The Anschluss as Film Noir: Reading Leo Perutz's Novel Fragment Mainacht in Wien as Cinematic Text
Robert Dassanowsky
Leo Perutz's Mainacht in Wien is a novel fragment of three chapters written in 1938; it was abandoned when the author and his family managed to secure exile in Palestine. The unfinished novel is perhaps the most intriguing attempt at fictionalizing the immediate atmosphere of Nazi Vienna. Despite the time of its origin, Mainacht in Wien avoids direct political commentary and instead conveys a disaster in its strikingly visual literary style that approximates cinematic language. Tracing Perutz's attempted transformation from author of historical novels written in Austria into writer of film scenarios allows for a glimpse into the politics and logistics of film production on the eve of Europe's Nazi cataclysm.
Blick as the Border of Authenticity in Christoph Ransmayr's Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes
William M. Mahan
This article investigates a problematics of authenticity as the source of Angst in Christoph Ransmayr's 2012 travelogue Atlas eines ängstlichen Mannes, allocating existing discourse concerning borders within the text as a springboard from which to dive into the divide created between the tourist's gaze and its object. It considers Ransmayr's larger (postmodernist) engagement with (Holocaust) memory reflected in narration and his relationship to the conventional, globalized, digitally and medially engaged tourist. Ransmayr's tenuous relationship toward visually oriented technologies reflects a larger ambivalence concerning ocular means of recording experience as well as the eye as a metaphor for retrospective apprehension of history and memory. Ransmayr's refusal to engage more extensively with such technologies, despite signaling their presence, can be seen as his refusal to engage with conventional literary genre forms as well as forms of cataloguing and mapping. Atlas reveals Ransmayr's apprehension toward touristification and, through the tourist-as-metaphor, the decline of humanity.
The Demonic Comedy of Thomas Bernhard
Mikkel Frantzen
Relating the works of Austrian author Thomas Bernhard to Søren Kierkegaard's concept of despair as presented in The Sickness Unto Death, this article claims that Bernhard's body of work is to be understood as a demonic comedy. For Kierkegaard, demonic despair emerges when a person in despair clings to his or her own despair. The despairer loves to stay close to things he hates and would rather be right than be redeemed. This is the paradoxical and comical logic of demonic despair and also the essence of the literature of Thomas Bernhard. The article attempts to discuss the issue of comedy as it relates to demonic despair, in the Kierkegaardian sense just indicated—the central argument being that the structure of that form of despair is precisely a comic structure. In this way I hope to correct the prevalent conception, also among Bernhard scholars, of Bernhard as merely a misanthropic singer of darkness and death.
Tribute to Egon Schwarz
Egon Schwarz, the great literary scholar who was forced to flee his native Austria after the assumption of power by the National Socialists, died in 2017, leaving behind a legacy of essential scholarship and devoted and successful students. The Journal of Austrian Studies pays tribute to Dr. Schwarz with a memorium by Helga Schreckenberger and an interview with him conducted shortly before his death.
In Memoriam: Egon Schwarz (August 8, 1922 to February 11, 2017)
Helga Schreckenberger
"Für mich war Literatur alles Mögliche, auch Eskapismus." Interview mit Egon Schwarz
Michael Omasta and Ursula Seeber
Reviews
Wolfgang Matz, Adalbert Stifter oder Diese fürchterliche Wendung der Dinge: Biographie. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2016. 391 pp.
Pamela S. Saur
Pamela S. Saur, The Spiritual Meaning of Material Things in the Novels of Adalbert Stifter (1805–1868): A Study in Poetic Realism. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2015. 212 pp.
Matthew J. Sherman
John Deak, Forging a Multinational State: State Making in Imperial Austria from the Enlightenment to the First World War. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2015. 355 pp.
Peter Höyng
Elfie Poulain, Einführung in die Literaturpragmatik mit einer Beispielanalyse von Kafkas Roman Der Prozess. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015. 110 pp.
Pamela S. Saur
Joachim Kersten and Friedrich Pfäfflin, Detlev von Liliencron endeckt, gefeiert und gelesen von Karl Kraus. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016. 464 pp.
Vincent Kling
Stijn de Cauwer, A Diagnosis of Modern Life: Robert Musil's "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" as a Critical-Utopian Project. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2014. 278 pp.
Malcolm Spencer
Agata Zofia Mirecka, Max Brods Frauenbilder im Kontext der Feminitätsdiskurse einiger anderer Prager deutscher Schriftsteller. Warschauer Studien zur Germanistik und zur Angewandten Linguistik. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2014. 148 pp.
Traci S. O'Brien
Primus-Heinz Kucher, ed., Verdrängte Moderne—vergessene Avantgarde: Diskurskonstellationen zwischen Literatur, Theater, Kunst und Musik in Ősterreich 1918–1938. Göttingen: V & R unipress, 2016. 296 pp.
Dagmar C. G. Lorenz
Hannah Markus, Ilse Aichingers Lyrik: Das gedruckte Werk und die Handschriften. Edited by Beate Kellner and Claudia Stockinger. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. 336 pp.
Dagmar C. G. Lorenz
Barbara Siller, Identitäten—Imaginationen—Erzählungen: Literaturraum Südtirol seit 1965. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft—Germanistische Reihe 82. Innsbruck: Innsbruck UP, 2015. 268 S.
Maria-Regina Kecht
Esther K. Bauer, Bodily Desire, Desired Bodies: Gender and Desire in Early Twentieth-Century German and Austrian Novels and Paintings. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2014. 161 pp.
Beret L. Norman
Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman, Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War. Austrian and Habsburg Studies 18. New York: Berghahn, 2016. 295 pp.
John E. Fahey
Martin Pollack, Topografie der Erinnerung. Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 2016. 172 pp.
Joseph W. Moser
Friedrich Stadler, ed., 650 Jahre Universität Wien—Aufbruch ins neue Jahrhundert. 4 vols. Vienna: V&R unipress, 2015. 2131 pp.
Janek Wasserman
Rainer Maria Rilke, New Poems. Translation by Len Krisak. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015. 392 pp.
Della J. Dumbaugh
Wolfgang Göderle, Zensus und Ethnizität: Zur Herstellung von Wissen über soziale Wirklichkeiten im Habsburgerreich zwischen 1848 und 1910. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016. 331 pp.
John Deak
Klara Gross-Elixmann, Poetologie und Epistemologie: Schreibstragien und Autorschaftskonzepte in Arthur Schnitzlers medizinischen Texten. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016. 350 pp.
Monica Strauss
Sabine Straub, Zusammengehaltener Zerfall: Hugo von Hofmannsthals Poetik der Multiplen Persönlichkeit. Würzburger Beiträge zur deutschen Philologie XLIV. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015. 424 + XLIV pp.
Vincent Kling
Eva Demmerle, Kaiser Karl, Mythos und Wirklichkeit. Vienna: Amalthea Verlag, 2016. 228 pp.
Laura A. Detre
Michael Kessler und Paul Michael Lützeler, Hrsg., Hermann-Broch-Handbuch. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. 670 S.
Martin Klebes
Sarah McGaughey, Ornament as Crisis: Architecture, Design, and Modernity in Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 2016. 219 pp.
Richard M. Lambert III
Jacques Lajarrige, ed., Soma Morgenstern—Von Galizien ins amerikanische Exil | Soma Morgenstern—De la Galicie à l'éxil américain. Forum: Österreich 1. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2015. 498 pp.
Kaleigh Bangor
Peter Sarkany, Meaning-Centered Existential Analysis: Philosophy as Psychotherapy in the Work of Viktor E. Frankl. Translated by Emese Czintos. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016. 121 pp.
Margarete Landwehr
Wolff A. Greinert, Hans Weigel: "Ich war einmal..." Eine Biographie. Vienna: Styria, 2015. 415 pp.
Joseph McVeigh
Joseph McVeigh, Ingeborg Bachmanns Wien. Berlin: Insel Verlag, 2016. 316 pp.
Katya Krylova
Martina Wörgötter, Poetik und Linguistik: Die literarische Sprache Marie-Thérèse Kerschbaumer. Freiburg: Rombach, 2016. 445 pp.
Dagmar C. G. Lorenz
Johannes Feichtinger and Heidemarie Uhl, eds., Habsburg Neu Denken: Vielfalt und Ambivalenz in Zentraleuropa—30 Kulturwissenschaftliche Stichworte. Vienna: Böhlau, 2016. 261 pp.
Tim Corbett
Matej Santi, Zwischen drei Kulturen: Musik und Nationalitätsbildung in Triest. Studien zur Kultur, Geschichte und Theorie der Musik. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Analyse, Theorie und Geschichte der Musik an der Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien 9. Vienna: Hollitzer, 2015. 230 pp.
Steven R. Cerf
Christine Lavant, Aufzeichnungen aus dem Irrenhaus. A new edition with an Afterword by Klaus Amann. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016. 140 pp.
Francis Michael Sharp
Hermine Wittgenstein, Familienerinnerung. Edited by Ilse Somavilla. Innsbruck: Haymon, 2015. 552 pp.
Vincent Kling
