The origins
German-language literature has its roots in medieval Austria, when Walther von der Vogelweide (early 13th century) wrote chivalric songs and poems, the most famous of which is The Song of the Nibelungen, an epic that includes elements of earlier Germanic myths. In modern times, the humanist Conrad Celtis founded the Danube Literary Society, whose lyric poems written in Latin resonated throughout Europe. Since the dawn of Austrian literature, religious theater has occupied a prominent place in written productions: first in medieval Tyrol, then at the time of the Catholic revival, the Jesuit order popularized the theatrical genre, which was gradually popularized from Latin to German. The eighteenth century saw the construction of large theaters, including the Burgtheater and, at the very end of the century, the Theater an der Wien.
The 19th century
The 19th century saw the democratization of entertainment. As they became more accessible, they diversified: popular farces and other comic, sometimes even satirical, plays flourished, contrasting with the historical works commissioned by the Habsburgs. In 1815, Metternich took control of artistic creation and introduced censorship, turning creators into civil servants. In response, the generation at the end of the 19th century proved exceptionally fertile in terms of both diversity of talent and individual intensity. In Prague, this effervescence gave rise to Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Franz Kafka is best known for works such as The Trial and The Metamorphosis. His oeuvre is vast, but most of his novels were published posthumously. Kafka had a decisive influence on the development of the modern novel. He is a writer of the absurd, brilliantly depicting the loneliness and anguish of the world. Rainer Maria Rilke, meanwhile, is the creator of a new, formal poetry. His poetry is understood for its sentimental effusion and authenticity of approach, while his essays and audacities are forgotten or ignored. He began writing poetry at an early age, and in 1895 entered Carl-Ferdinand University in Prague to study art history, literature and philosophy. In 1901, he married one of Rodin's students, Clara Westhoff, and had a daughter. He also published an essay on the artist(Sur Rodin), for whom he became secretary. 1905 saw the publication of Le Livre d'heures, written after a trip to Russia in 1899-1900, during which he met the Russian literary giant Leo Tolstoy. In 1910, Les Carnets de Malte Laurids Brigge, written in prose, was one of his key texts. In 1916, he was requisitioned for military service. In 1922, he wrote Sonnets à Orphée. This work made him one of the most important figures in contemporary European literature. He died of leukemia in December 1926 in Val Mont (Switzerland).
But the 19th century was also a time of Romanticism, which was sweeping across Europe. The social reality of Austria is described with finesse and sometimes irony, in the novels of Rudolf K. Bartsch, Marie von Ebne and others. Bartsch, Marie von Ebne-Eschenbach and Ludwig Anzengruber. This approach heralded the arrival of Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), who revolutionized the Austrian novel by introducing a sociological and psychological vision of his characters, just as psychoanalysis was taking hold in Vienna. After becoming a doctor, psychologist and writer, he quickly became the leader of the "Young Vienna" movement, joined by Zweig and Hofmannsthal. Schnitzler's affinity for one-act plays, reflecting the Viennese fin de siècle spirit, brought his characters to life in a tone of irony, worldly grace and fatalistic insouciance. He was the first to use interior monologue in his short stories. Freud, who had great admiration for him, wrote: "When I read Schnitzler, I'm afraid of meeting my double." The suicide of his daughter and the death of his friend Hofmannsthal left him bitter and obsessed with death. Discover his novels and short stories (Le Livre de poche, "La Pochothèque" collection).
The twentieth century
The first decades of the 20th century in the capital marked a period of great artistic and intellectual ferment, against a backdrop of growing anti-Semitism. Hugo von Hofmannsthal for opera, Karl Kraus for satire and politics, Felix Salten for theater, Rainer Maria Rilke for poetry, Stefan Zweig and Robert Musil for their atypical works...: Viennese literature enjoyed a golden age.
Let's start with Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929). Born in Vienna, he studied law and obtained a doctorate in philosophy. A precocious composer, he wrote his verse between the ages of 16 and 25. In 1892, he founded a literary magazine with the German Stephan George. He collaborated on Richard Strauss's successes, writing most of his librettos, including, in 1911, Le Chevalier à la rose. The capital praised this young prodigy, who was very close to Arthur Schnitzler. He began a series of tragedies inspired by Elizabethan and ancient theater. His most accomplished plays, The Great Salzburg Theater and The Tower, were staged in front of Salzburg's Baroque churches. The Salzburg Festival, of which he was one of the founders in 1920, staged his Jedermann or the Rich Man's Death Game every year. He did not survive his son's suicide and was struck down by a heart attack. His most important work is Andreas et autres récits , published by Gallimard.
Let's turn now to Karl Kraus (1874-1936). In 1899, he founded the magazine Le Flambeau (Die Fackel), which he edited until his death, a period of almost forty years. Designed to attack the press and ideas of the day, he became its chief editor and publisher. Authors such as Heinrich Mann, August Strindberg and Adolf Loos contributed to the magazine. Published irregularly, the magazine could contain three or four hundred pages! Les Derniers Jours de l'humanité (1919) is his major work. It's a twenty-hour play supported by sixty actors, with two hundred different scenes, and a multitude of popular songs and classical pieces. In it, Kraus denounces the negligence of those in power, as well as high finance.
Robert Musil (1880-1942) was born in Klagenfurt. He was destined for a military career, but soon abandoned it to become an engineer. He left for Berlin to study philosophy and psychology. At the age of 26, in 1906, he made a name for himself with the publication of his novel Les Désarrois de l'élève Törless, which denounced the sadism of the military establishment. In Le Merle, he evokes the war in Tyrol. In 1933, while living in Germany, Nazism - which banned his books - forced him to return to Vienna, from where he was expelled in 1938. He ended his life, exiled and forgotten, in Switzerland. He worked on his major work, The Man Without Qualities, for twenty years. When he died in 1942, the book remained unfinished. Musil's characters seem to border on the mentally ill. Obsessive, manic, they try to remedy their own nothingness with dreams of grandeur or ideological whims. Musil demystifies the Europe of the 1930s, aware of its irremediable decay.
Then there's Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), the most widely read Austrian writer of any generation in France. Born in Vienna, he came from a wealthy Jewish family. At the age of 20, he published his first collection of poems, Les Cordes d'argent (1901). While pursuing his studies in literature, he translated Baudelaire and Verlaine. At the age of 23, he defended his thesis on the philosophy of Hippolyte Taine. The same year saw the publication of his first collection of short stories. Zweig was to try his hand at every genre: translations, novels, theater, literary and critical studies, historical biographies. Like most Viennese intellectuals, he allowed himself to be lulled by the gentleness of the cosmopolitan capital, by the "joyous apocalypse", without fully appreciating the warning signs of the rise of barbarism. Deeply affected by the 1914 war, he wrote a highly acclaimed article entitled À mes amis de l'étranger (To my friends abroad). At the end of the war, he translated another great pacifist, Romain Rolland, with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. In 1919, he moved to Salzburg, and in 1920 wrote the novelized biographies of Balzac, Dickens and Dostoyevsky, depicting the psychological journey of individuals in the face of their destiny. In his house on Kapuzinerberg (Capuchin Hill), known as the "Villa of Europe", he welcomed Europe's intellectual elite: Mann, Valéry, Joyce, Paganini, Freud, Gorky... His friend Richard Strauss, who was triumphant at the time, asked him to write the libretto for The Silent Woman. But in 1933, Zweig's books were burned. Desperate for the return of brutal forces, persecuted by the police, he decided to go into exile for good. He never saw Austria again. After a long period of wandering, Brazil granted him a permanent visa in 1936. He discovered this country, where his books were a huge success. The attraction was mutual, and he wrote Brésil, terre d'avenir. He continued to write like a madman, as if to lose himself, despite the growing grip of depression. He suffered to see Austria enslaved by fascism. In 1942, he committed suicide with his wife, Lotte. In his last message, Zweig wrote: "I greet all my friends, may they see the dawn after this long night. I, who am too impatient, am taking the lead." The Brazilian authorities organized a state funeral for him and turned his house into a museum.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, culture was devastated. After the reconstruction of Viennese theaters, new talents emerge from the chaos, marked by a fatalism and pessimism about the individual and society. Suicide, suffering and death haunt the productions of the moment, with Paul Celan, Fritz Hochwälde, Franz Theodor Csokor or the great Thomas Bernhard in the theater, Friedrich Heer, etc., for the novel. Let's focus for a moment on Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), the egocentric, death-obsessed Austrian born in the Netherlands, who by the 1960s was recognized as the most important Austrian writer of his generation and one of the most original German-language writers. Bernhard hates Austria and Austrians (as his compatriots are wont to admit), and his books are provocative. His play Helderplatz caused a resounding scandal, and the police had to intervene to protect the theater during the premiere. Most of his work is published by Gallimard: Le Gel, La Plâtrière, L'Extinction, La Perturbation.
Among our contemporaries is Elfriede Jelinek, novelist, poet and playwright, known for her incisive style, highly critical of Austria. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004.
