Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Dates and Translations
- Key Dates
- Introduction
- 1 Drama in Austria, 1918–45
- 2 Austrian Prose Fiction, 1918–45
- 3 Publishers and Institutions in Austria, 1918–45
- 4 Popular Culture in Austria: Cabaret and Film, 1918–45
- 5 The Politics of Austrian Literature, 1927–56
- 6 Austrian Poetry, 1918–2000
- 7 Writing in Austria after 1945: The Political, Institutional, and Publishing Context
- 8 Austrian Responses to National Socialism and the Holocaust
- 9 Drama in Austria, 1945–2000
- 10 Austrian Prose Fiction, 1945–2000
- 11 Popular Culture in Austria, 1945–2000
- 12 Shifting Boundaries: Responses to Multiculturalism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
- Further Reading
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
7 - Writing in Austria after 1945: The Political, Institutional, and Publishing Context
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the Dates and Translations
- Key Dates
- Introduction
- 1 Drama in Austria, 1918–45
- 2 Austrian Prose Fiction, 1918–45
- 3 Publishers and Institutions in Austria, 1918–45
- 4 Popular Culture in Austria: Cabaret and Film, 1918–45
- 5 The Politics of Austrian Literature, 1927–56
- 6 Austrian Poetry, 1918–2000
- 7 Writing in Austria after 1945: The Political, Institutional, and Publishing Context
- 8 Austrian Responses to National Socialism and the Holocaust
- 9 Drama in Austria, 1945–2000
- 10 Austrian Prose Fiction, 1945–2000
- 11 Popular Culture in Austria, 1945–2000
- 12 Shifting Boundaries: Responses to Multiculturalism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
- Further Reading
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
AUSTRIA WAS LIBERATED FROM German occupation in May of 1945. By July of that year, while cities such as Vienna were still struggling with the ravages brought about by the fierce defense of the Reich's eastern borders, and some 34,000 Austrians had been killed in air-raids alone, the debate on the future and the function of literature in postwar Austria was already receiving considerable attention from Austrians of all political persuasions. Immediately after the war Viktor Matejka had become head of Vienna's Department for Culture and Adult Education. He had been interned in Dachau by the National Socialists and was to emerge alongside Ernst Fischer as one of the best known of the Austrian Communists in the early postwar period. On 25 July 1945 Matejka gave a lecture in Vienna entitled “Was ist österreichische Kultur?” (What is Austrian Culture?), in which he rejected as a point of contact any of the many fateful dates in Austria's history, including the emergence of the First Republic following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the First World War, or the Austria immediately before the Nazi occupation:
Mögen große Teile unseres Volkes Kultur rein sentimental als Erbe auffassen, wir sehen hier eine Aufgabe, die auf einem Ruinenfeld noch dringlicher geworden ist […]. Es gibt daher kein Zurück auf 1789 oder 1848 oder 1918 oder 1934 oder gar 1938. Wir müssen uns unsere Kulturwelt selbst bauen.
[Even if large parts of the population regard culture in purely emotional terms as something inherited, we see here a challenge that has become more urgent, set, as it is, amidst a sea of destruction … For this reason there will be no going back to 1789 or 1848 or 1918 or 1934, let alone 1938. We must be the constructors of our own cultural world.]
Remarkably similar in both content and tone was a speech delivered before the Austrian Parliament by another former inmate of Dachau, Leopold Figl; on 21 December 1945, a day after he had become the conservative chancellor of the first freely elected postwar Austrian government, he declared:
Das Österreich von morgen wird ein neues, ein revolutionäres Österreich sein. Es wird von Grund auf umgestaltet und weder eine Wiederholung von 1918 noch von 1933, noch eine von 1938 werden […] Wir wollen das neue, das junge Österreich!
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- A History of Austrian Literature 1918-2000 , pp. 163 - 180Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006
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