The origins
A glaring example of these dissensions is a very old manuscript which was used in the 20th century as a political argument, but this does not detract from its value or from the fact that it is partly set in Vienna, a region with which the anonymous author seems to be very familiar. His Nibelungen Song is certainly in the tradition of the French chansons de geste and is undoubtedly inspired by Scandinavian legends, although some have tried to attribute a historical origin to it. This Middle High German text, which recounts the adventures of Siegfried, has been estimated to date back to the very early 13th century
Walther von der Vogelweide may also have been of Austrian origin, as some of his verses, which allude to his youth and the "merry court of Vienna", seem to attest. However, several countries still claim to have seen him born, proof if any were needed that his posterity has crossed the centuries. His political and romantic works are, like those of Henrich von Melk and Ulrich von Liechtenstein, considered to be among the greatest of the Middle Ages, an era that appreciated Minnesang, that lyrical poetry close to our courtly love. A variant, the Dörpeliche, is said to have been born of the imagination of Neidhart von Reuental, who amused himself by portraying peasant love affairs that were far from chivalrous. His pen was skilful and he did not hesitate to embrace several styles, but he knew how to be socially critical, as in the Meier Helmbrecht attributed to Wernher der Gartenaere, who was born near Lake Constance, although it is not clear whether it is on the German or the Austrian shore. He evokes the ambitions of a peasant's son who dreamed of being a knight, the moral of this sad story will not prove him right. A later Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/77-1445) was a native of the Tyrol, but his long journeys took him to the four corners of the world and earned him as much admiration as the quality of his poetry
The taste of the troubadours and other court poets for orality was transformed over the centuries into an appetite for the theatre, and it was the popular vein that Josef Anton Stranitzky (1676-1726) and Gottfried Prehauser (1699-1769) explored in turn. The former gave life to Hans Wurt, a jester whom he enjoyed making evolve in parodies of French and Italian courtly operas, which he translated for the occasion, and in plays(Haupt und staatsaktion) that left much to improvisation. As an actor and puppeteer, and occasionally as a tooth puller, he gave up the wooden sheds on the Neer Markt, one of Vienna's oldest squares, to take over the Theater am Kärntnertor. The latter was his worthy successor, and he began his career by playing "Jean-Saucisse", a role that earned him recognition. In 1725, he joined Stranitzky in Vienna and replaced him at his death the following year as director of the theatre. He developed the staging, in particular by calling on the ingenious Josef Félix von Kurz (1715-1784), an ace pyrotechnician and genius of the machinery. Their antics came to an end with the death of Charles VI: the entertainment venues closed and his daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria, who succeeded him in 1740, did not appreciate these impromptu performances, as she was no doubt not in the mood for laughter. In literature, the period also coincided with a break with Germany, as the great currents that were stirring the latter - the Sturm und Drang and Romanticism - were hardly emulated. Once again, it was not a time for celebration, especially if one followed the prescriptions of Gerard van Swieten, the empress's personal physician, who simply suggested banning books he did not approve of, and there were many of them, according to Voltaire, who mocked him in his pamphlet De l'horrible danger de la lecture (1765).
From Biedermeier to Realism
Definitely, a certain classicism is imposed and embodied by Franz Grillparzer, born in 1791 in Vienna where he died in 1872. The first work that earned him some consideration was the funeral oration he wrote for Beethoven in 1827, which fits rather well with his visceral pessimism. Before that, however, he was praised for his play Das goldenes Vlies, a trilogy inspired by Greek mythology and its tragedies, which had been performed six years earlier, in 1821, in his native city. However, it was only in 1847 - the year of his admission to the Imperial Academy and the publication of his novel Der Arme Spielmann - that he really became famous. He who had never dared to marry his childhood sweetheart was intimately associated with a school of thought that praised marriage, petty bourgeois comfort and encouraged people to turn away from the public sphere, the Biedermeier, which is generally considered to have run from 1815 to 1848, although his most representative work is slightly later: Adalbert Stifter's L'Arrière-saison, published in 1857. French readers will be able to form their own opinion by discovering this novel published by Gallimard. In any case, it was the subject of much debate, with some people seeing only sentimentality in this story of friendship, and others admiring the aestheticism of this very long story in which, admittedly, not much happens, but which advocates simple values and pure pleasure
The very name Biedermeier is charged with a certain irony, and was given retroactively, at the very beginning of the 20th century, by Adolf Kussmaul and his colleague Ludwig Eichrodt, who had invented an eponymous character, a caricature of a backward-looking schoolteacher, rather mean-spirited and foolishly happy to make do with little. But one would have to justify this immobility, which seems to sclerotize literature, by the political weight that Klemens Wenzel von Metternich brings to bear on Austria. Indeed, any work deemed even slightly revolutionary was doomed to censorship. The playwright Johann Nestroy had to be very skilful in order to remain critical while avoiding the controversy. He used a humorous approach - a far cry from the enchantment of Ferdinand Raimund, the former artistic director of the Volkstheater - and his comedies can be counted by the dozen(Der Talisman, Der Zerrissene, etc.). The poet Nikolaus Lenau was certainly less accommodating (or less subtle), but this was in keeping with his taste for revolt. Unstable, physically and then psychologically, his painful and desperate poetry inspired the souls of musicians
The revolution that was rumbling in 1848 loosened the grip a little, and the defeat at Sadowa in 1866 changed the situation. Until the end of the century, writers explored Realism, whether bourgeois or poetic, and prepared for the Naturalism that would take hold at the turn of the century. Literary history has remembered August Silberstein's (1827-1900) love of the countryside and the influence he had on Peter Rosegger (1843-1918) who shared this ideal, it also remembers Ludwig Anzengruber (1839-1889), who had some rare successes on the theatre stage(Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld, Der Meineudbauer), and above all Ferdinand von Saar (1833-1906), who, in 32 short stories, painted as many pictures of Habsburg society. Psychoanalysis, for its part, does not forget the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), brought to light again by Polanski in 2013 with the adaptation of his most famous novel, The Furry Venus (1870). But the one who truly personified change and the entry into modernity was Hermann Bahr, born in Linz in 1863.
Modern era and protest
The man had travelled when he returned to Vienna, he had also experienced some political wanderings, but from Paris and Berlin he brought back a new aestheticism that would have to be described as avant-garde. It was therefore quite natural that authors gathered around him and had them published in the Moderne Dichtung or Die Zeit. The "Young Vienna", as they called themselves, took up residence at the Café Griensteidl from 1891 onwards. Richard Beer-Hofmann, who was to become a theatre director, the impressionist writer Peter Altenberg, but also Felix Salten, the future father of Bambi, the existentialist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and a dissident, Karl Kraus (1874-1936), who very quickly exercised against Hermann Bahr the sharp pen that earned him his terrible reputation as a pamphleteer. The group also welcomed Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), whose La Ronde was soon censored for offending public decency. Despite this endless scandal - it took ten years for the dialogues to be performed on stage! - He won over the public with his plays (L'Appel de la vie, La Comédie des séductions, etc., published by Actes Sud) and his novels (Mademoiselle Else, Gloire Tardive
, published by Livre de Poche), whose psychological finesse even impressed Freud, the champion of psychoanalysis, who also found himself in Schnitzler's passion for dream interpretation.Vienna was not the only sphere of influence in Austria at the time, as Prague could boast of having seen the birth of some great authors - Rainer Maria Rilke (The Sonnets to Orpheus, Letters to Lou Andreas-Salome, Letters to a Young Poet) in 1875, Leo Perutz (The Third Ball, The Snow of St. Peter) in 1882, Jaroslav Hasek (The Brave Soldier Shveik) and Franz Kafka (The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Prison Colony) in 1883, Franz Werfel (The Death of the Petty Bourgeois, The Stolen Paradise) in 1890 - and to have welcomed Gustav Meyrink for 20 years, who used it as the setting for his masterpiece, The Golem,
published in 1915. Three years later, Prague became the capital of Czechoslovakia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up.The inter-war period was still fruitful, but National Socialist ideology infiltrated and exploded the world of Austrian literature. Many writers chose exile, while others preferred to leave for good. Hermann Broch went to the United States, where he published his greatest book, The Death of Virgil, in 1945, while Ödön von Horváth (Youth without God, A Son of Our Time) and Joseph Roth (Hotel Savoy, The Legend of the Holy Drinker) chose Paris, where they died before the war broke out. As for Robert Musil, the Anschluss convinced him to return to Geneva, leaving most of his manuscripts in Vienna and perhaps hoping for a return that would not happen. He took with him only The Man Without Qualities, considered his masterpiece, a meagre consolation in the anemic life that would be his until his brutal end in 1942. Musil's aestheticism and erudition have made him one of the greatest writers in international literature. Finally, Ernst Weiss (The Eyewitness) took his own life, as did Stefan Zweig with his wife on February 23, 1942 in Petrópolis, Brazil, leaving a place that will never be filled. Born in 1881 in Vienna to a Jewish family of Moravian origin, he had received a secular and strict education, a guarantee of integration according to his father. Attracted to poetry at a very young age, he became a doctor of philosophy and rubbed shoulders with the world on his travels, but the first world conflict left him distraught and found him deeply pacifist. Amok, in 1922, brought him success. From then on, most of his texts - from his short stories (The Confusion of Sentiments, The Chess Player, etc.) to his biographies (Mary Stuart, Magellan, etc.) and his famous essay The World of Yesterday -
are considered classics. Reconstruction will be slow although the literary scene is supported by a government that is once again seeking to forge an identity. The suffering Christine Lavant was discovered in 1945, and she was to receive many honours until her death in 1973. Gerhard Fritsch's post-war novel Moos auf den Steinen seemed to bring everyone together, but from 1955 onwards the agreement between the state and the writers broke down. It was time for experimentation, if not protest, and the Wiener Gruppe became the symbol of this new research inspired by surrealism, among other things. Many people were involved in this circle: Hans Carl Artmann(Die Sonne war ein grünes Ei), the visual poet Gerhard Rühm, the post-modern theorist Oswald Wiener, Friedrich Achleitner, who wrote in dialect, the champion of concrete poetry Ernst Jandl and his wife Friederike Mayröcker, winner of the Georg-Büchner prize in 2004. The break between Austria and its writers was complete when Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) began publishing his misanthropic characters, who never hesitate to criticize their country. In this critical vein, a second group will emerge, the Forum Stadtpark in Graz, which will be joined by Peter Handke, Nobel Prize winner in 2019, and with which Elfriede Jelinek, Nobel Prize winner in 2004, will be associated.
