The origins
The Nibelungen Song, one of the oldest German-language texts, is certainly in the tradition of the French chansons de geste, and is undoubtedly inspired by Scandinavian legends, although some have sought to attribute a historical origin to it. This Middle High German text, which recounts the adventures of Siegfried, is thought to date back to the very early 13th century.
Walther von der Vogelweide may well have been of Austrian origin, as some of his verses allude to his youth and the "merry court of Vienna". And yet, several countries still claim to be his birthplace, proof if any were needed that his posterity has spanned the centuries. His political and romantic works, like those of Heinrich von Melk and Ulrich von Liechtenstein, are considered to be among the greatest of the Middle Ages, a period that appreciated Minnesang, that lyrical poetry close to our courtly love. A variant, the Dörpeliche, is said to have originated in the imagination of Neidhart von Reuental, who enjoyed portraying unchivalrous peasant love affairs. His writing was skilful, and he didn't hesitate to embrace several styles, but he knew how to be socially critical, as in the Meier Helmbrecht attributed to Wernher der Gartenaere, born near Lake Constance, although it's unclear whether this was on the German or Austrian shore. He evokes the ambitions of a peasant's son who dreamed of becoming a knight, but the moral of this sad story will not prove him right. The later Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/77-1445) came from the Tyrol, but his extensive travels took him to the four corners of the world, earning him as much admiration as the quality of his poetry.
The oral taste of troubadours and other court poets was transformed over the centuries into an appetite for theater, and it was the popular vein that was explored in turn by Josef Anton Stranitzky (1676-1726) and Gottfried Prehauser (1699-1769). The former gave life to Hans Wurst, a jester he enjoyed making his own in parodies of French and Italian courtly operas, which he translated for the occasion, and in plays(Haupt und Staatsaktion) that gave pride of place to improvisation. Actor, puppeteer and occasional tooth puller, he gave up his wooden cabins on the Neuer Markt, one of Vienna's oldest squares, to head the Theater am Kärntnertor. The latter was his worthy successor, and he began his career playing "Jean-Saucisse", a role that won him acclaim. In 1725, he joined Stranitzky in Vienna, replacing him as director of the theater after his death the following year. He improved the staging, in particular by calling on the ingenious Josef Félix von Kurz (1715-1784), an ace pyrotechnician and machinery genius. Their antics came to an end with the death of Charles VI: the entertainment venues closed down, and his daughter Maria Theresa of Austria, who succeeded him in 1740, did not appreciate these impromptu events, as she was no doubt not in the mood for laughter. In literature, the period also coincided with a break with Germany, where the great currents of Sturm und Drang and Romanticism were hardly emulated. Once again, this was not a time for celebration, especially if one followed the prescriptions of Gerard van Swieten, the Empress's personal physician, who simply proposed banning all books he didn't approve of - and there were many, if Voltaire is to be believed, who mocked him in his pamphlet De l'horrible danger de la lecture (1765).
From Biedermeier to Realism
Franz Grillparzer, born in Vienna in 1791, where he died in 1872, was the embodiment of a certain classicism. His first work of note was the funeral oration he wrote for Beethoven in 1827, in keeping with his visceral pessimism. Before that, however, he had won acclaim for his play Das goldene Vlies (The Golden Fleece), a trilogy inspired by Greek mythology and its tragedies, performed six years earlier, in 1821, in his home town. However, it was not until 1847 - the year of his admission to the Imperial Academy and the publication of his novel Der Arme Spielmann - that he really came into his own. A man who had never dared marry his childhood sweetheart, he was closely associated with the Biedermeier school of thought, which praised marriage, petty-bourgeois comfort and a retreat from the public sphere, and which generally ran from 1815 to 1848, although its most representative work was slightly later: Adalbert Stifter's L'Arrière-saison, published in 1857. French readers will be able to form their own opinion when they discover this novel published by Gallimard. In any case, it was the subject of much debate, with some seeing nothing but sentimentality in this story of friendship, while others admired the aestheticism of this very long narrative, in which, admittedly, not much happens, but which advocates simple values and uncluttered pleasures.
The very name Biedermeier is laden 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 stupidly happy to make do with little. However, the political weight that Klemens Wenzel von Metternich brought to bear on Austria had to be taken into account to justify this immobility, which seemed to sclerotize literature. Indeed, any work deemed even remotely revolutionary was doomed to censorship. The playwright Johann Nestroy had to be extremely skilful to remain critical while avoiding polemics, using a humorous approach - a far cry from the enchantment of his former artistic director at the Volkstheater, Ferdinand Raimund - and writing dozens of comedies(Der Talisman, Der Zerrissene, etc.). The poet Nikolaus Lenau was certainly less accommodating (or less subtle), but this reflected his taste for revolt. Unstable, both physically and psychologically, his painful, desperate poetry inspired the souls of musicians.
The revolution of 1848 loosened the grip a little, but the defeat at Sadowa in 1866 changed all that. Until the end of the century, writers explored Realism, whether bourgeois or poetic, and prepared the ground for Naturalism, which would take hold at the turn of the century. Literary history remembers 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 a few all-too-frequent successes on the 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, meanwhile, has not forgotten the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), brought back to light by Polanski in 2013 with the adaptation of his most famous novel, The Furry Venus (1870). But the man who truly personified change and the entry into modernity was Hermann Bahr, born in Linz in 1863.
Modern era and protest
By the time he returned to Vienna, the man had traveled extensively, and had also experienced some political wanderings, but from Paris and Berlin he brought back a new aestheticism that would come to be known as avant-garde. So it was only natural that he should gather around him a group of authors who he had published in Moderne Dichtung and Die Zeit. from 1891 onwards, "Young Vienna", as they called themselves, took up residence at the Café Griensteidl. They were joined by Richard Beer-Hofmann (later to become a theater director), impressionist writer Peter Altenberg, as well as Felix Salten (future father of Bambi), existentialist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and dissident Karl Kraus (1874-1936), who would soon turn his sharp pen on Hermann Bahr, earning him a 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 interminable scandal - it took 10 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 went so far as to impress Freud, the champion of psychoanalysis, which was also reflected in Schnitzler's passion for dream interpretation.
To be fair, Vienna was not Austria's only sphere of influence at the time, as Prague can boast the birth of a number of immense authors - Rainer Maria Rilke(The Sonnets to Orpheus, Letters to Lou Andreas-Salomé, Letters to a Young Poet) in 1875, Leo Perutz(The Third Ball, The Snow of St. Peter) in 1882, Jaroslav Hasek(Le Brave Soldat Chvéïk) and Franz Kafka(La Métamorphose, Le Procès, La Colonie pénitentiaire) in 1883, Franz Werfel(La Mort du petit-bourgeois, Le Paradis volé) in 1890 - and to have welcomed Gustav Meyrink for 20 years, who used it as the setting for his masterpiece, Le Golem, published in 1915. Three years later, Prague became the capital of Czechoslovakia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up.
The inter-war years were still fruitful, but National Socialist ideology seeped in, shattering the world of Austrian letters. Hermann Broch left for the United States, where he published his greatest book, The Death of Virgil, in 1945, while Ödön von Horváth(Godless Youth, 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, abandoning most of his manuscripts in Vienna and perhaps hoping for a return that never came. All he took with him was The Man Without Qualities, considered his masterpiece, a meagre consolation in the anemic life he would lead until his sudden death in 1942. Musil's aestheticism and erudition made him one of the greatest writers that international literature has ever known. Finally, Ernst Weiss(The Eyewitness) took his own life, as did Stefan Zweig with his wife on February 23, 1942 in Petrópolis, Brazil, leaving an unfilled void. Born in Vienna in 1881 to a Jewish family of Moravian origin, he had received a strict secular education, which his father saw as a guarantee of integration. Attracted to poetry from an early age, he became a doctor of philosophy and travelled the world, but the First World War left him distraught and deeply pacifist. Amok, in 1922, brought him success. Henceforth, most of his texts - from his short stories(La Confusion des sentiments, Le Joueur d'échecs, etc.) to his biographies(Marie Stuart, Magellan, etc.) and his famous essay Le Monde d'hier - are considered classics.
Reconstruction will be slow, although the literary scene is supported by a government that is once again seeking to forge its own identity. The long-suffering Christine Lavant was discovered in 1945, and went on to receive numerous honors until her death in 1973. Gerhard Fritsch's post-war novel, Moos auf den Steinen, seemed to put everyone on the same wavelength, but from 1955 onwards, the relationship between the state and writers began to break down. It was time for experimentation, if not protest, and the Wiener Gruppe became the symbol of this new research, inspired in part by Surrealism. This circle included Hans Carl Artmann(Die Sonne war ein grünes Ei), visual poet Gerhard Rühm, post-modern theorist Oswald Wiener, Friedrich Achleitner (who wrote in dialect), concrete poet 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 never hesitating to criticize their country. In this critical vein, a second group emerged, the Forum Stadtpark in Graz, which was joined by Peter Handke, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize, and Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize.
