AUSTRIAN LITERATURE

Literature written in German from the 16th century to the present by authors of Austrian nationality and of distinguishable Austrian national consciousness. Although the unknown author of the medieval Nibelungenlied and the greatest German minnesinger, Walther von der Vogelweide, were Austrian, an Austrian culture distinct from that of Germany developed only after the Counter Reformation, when in the 16th century Roman Catholic Austria and Protestant Germany were separated. As Spain and Italy were at times part of the Habsburg empire, Austrian literature was influenced by both Spanish drama and Italian opera.

18th and 19th Centuries.

The first uniquely Austrian genre was the magic play of the 18th century, depicting supernatural events in allegorical terms. One that attained worldwide fame was Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, 1791), by Emanuel Schikaneder (1751–1812), set to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Ferdinand Raimund (1790–1836) elevated the magic play to tragicomedy, while Johann Nepomuk Nestroy (1801–62) wrote magic plays of political satire and literary parody. Nestroy's Einen Jux will er sich machen (He Wants to Go Off on a Spree, 1842) is the only Austrian play other than Die Zauberflöte that is widely known internationally. Adapted from the 1835 British comedy A Day Well Spent, it was revised by the American author Thornton Wilder as The Matchmaker in 1954 (film version, 1958). In 1964 it was adapted into the musical Hello, Dolly! (film, 1969). The Nestroy play was also adapted by the British playwright Tom Stoppard as On the Razzle in 1981.

Franz Grillparzer, on the other hand, fused the tradition of the German classics with the typically Austrian spirit that Roman Catholicism and the Habsburg empire had shaped. In the play König Ottokars Glück und Ende (King Ottokar: His Rise and Fall, first performed in 1825), he contrasts the arrogance of the enemies of Austria with the Christian humility of Austrian heroes. His many verse dramas treat the history and legends of various parts of the world. Like Grillparzer, his contemporary Adalbert Stifter (1805–68) demonstrated a concern for tradition, literary form, and morality. The well-ordered life is idealized in his novel Der Nachsommer (Indian Summer, 1857). Stifter's prose is an expression of the quiet desperation underlying the era dominated by the Austrian statesman Prince Klemens von Metternich. An important contribution to Austrian literature was made by the dramatist Ludwig Anzengruber (1839–89). His realistic presentation of social issues, as in Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld (The Village Priest of Kirchfeld, 1870) and Das vierte Gebot (The Fourth Commandment, 1877), mark him as a pioneer of naturalism. He is a humorous and sentimental observer of peasant life in Der G'wissenswurm (The Worm of Conscience, 1874), the forerunner of the regional Heimatkunst (“homely art”), popular tales of the late 19th century.

20th-Century Drama.

Modern Austrian literature, which was developing while the Austro-Hungarian Empire was disintegrating, began with Hermann Bahr (1863–1934). He was the author of the sophisticated comedy Das Konzert (The Concert, 1909) and the essayist who promoted impressionism and other new movements. His contemporary, Arthur Schnitzler, unmasked hypocrisy in such plays as Affairs of Anatol (1893; trans. 1911) and Reigen (1897; trans. Merry-Go-Round, 1953; filmed as La Ronde, 1950). Influenced by impressionism, Schnitzler excelled in the short dramatic episode, such as The Green Cockatoo (1899; trans. 1913), and, anticipating the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce, he used the stream-of-consciousness method in his stories None but the Brave (1900; trans. 1925) and Fräulein Else (1924; trans. 1925). An astute analyst of human behavior, Schnitzler won the praise of his countryman Sigmund Freud.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal at first turned to a new romanticism. His early verse plays, such as The Death of Titian (1892; trans. 1913) and Death and the Fool (1893; trans. 1913), were stylized legends. Later he drew inspiration, as did Grillparzer, from a universal cultural heritage. He wrote in a variety of forms, including Greek drama in Elektra (1903; trans. 1908); drawing-room comedy in The Difficult Man (1921; trans. 1963); and opera libretto. His were the librettos used by the German composer Richard Strauss for Der Rosenkavalier (The Cavalier of the Rose, 1911), Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadne on Naxos, 1912), and Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow, 1919).

For the influential critic Karl Kraus (1874–1936), the work of his contemporaries, castigated in his periodical Die Fackel (The Torch, 1899–1936), was a symptom of moral degeneration. His play Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The Last Days of Mankind, 1919–22), consisting partly of actual war communiqués and street conversations, paints an apocalyptic picture of Vienna in World War I.

Fritz Hochwälder (1911–86) achieved renown in Europe with neatly structured historical dramas. His play Das heilige Experiment (1941) was produced in New York City as The Strong Are Lonely (1953).

20th-Century Fiction and Poetry.

Universality and preoccupation with psychological analysis merge in the biographies written by Stefan Zweig. These include Erasmus of Rotterdam (1934; trans. 1934), Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles (1935; trans. 1935), and Marie Antoinette (1932). His fiction also plumbs the depth of emotional aberration, as in Amok (1922; trans. 1931), Conflicts (1925; trans. 1927), and Beware of Pity (1938; trans. 1939). In the poetry of Anton Wildgans (1881–1932) and Georg Trakl (1887–1914), and in the plays of Franz Theodor Czokor (1885–1968), the intensity of the expressionist style is evident.

Of 20th-century Austrian novelists, Hermann Broch (1886–1951) is closest to James Joyce—as was Schnitzler in drama. His Death of Virgil (1945; trans. 1946) uses an inner monologue to express the despair of the Roman poet over the discrepancy between art and truth. Robert Musil (1880–1942) wrote the monumental unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities (1931–43; trans. 1953–60), which probes the possibility of the freedom of humanity, emancipated from prejudices and habits. The novel also analyzes the process of disintegration beneath the complacency of Viennese life. Social analysis is also found in the voluminous novels of Heimito von Doderer (1896–1966): Every Man a Murderer (1938; trans. 1964) and The Demons (1956; trans. 1964). Doderer, influenced by the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the French writer Marcel Proust, used a web of human relationships to give substance and structure to his novels of Viennese life after World War II. Doderer was probably the most outstanding force in post–World War II Austrian literature.

Among later writers Ilse Aichinger (1921– ), a writer of short stories, and Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–73), a poet, were widely read. One of the versatile younger authors, who often write for television, is Peter Handke (1942– ), whose Kaspar (1969) was produced (1972) in New York City. His novel of extreme alienation, The Left-Handed Woman (1976; trans. 1978), was later made into a film. Elfriede Jelinek—best known internationally for her novel The Piano Teacher (1983; trans. 1988)—became Austria's first Nobel laureate in literature when awarded the prize in 2004.

The Prague Authors.

Austrian literature is essentially that of Vienna and the Alpine hinterland of the city. Certain writers, including Gustav Meyrink (1868–1932) and Paul Kornfeld (1889–1942), and Franz Kafka, Max Brod, and Franz Werfel, who lived in Prague and wrote in German, are usually classified as Austrian. Although Bohemia was for centuries part of the Austrian Empire, the Prague authors did not share the Austrian national consciousness; their affinity with German literature was greater.