Fictions from an Orphan State: Literary Reflections of Austria between Habsburg and Hitler by Andrew Barker (review)
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In Fictions from an Orphan State: Literary Reflections of Austria between Habsburg and Hitler, Andrew Barker sets out to redress an imbalance in the study of German-language literature of the interwar period, which has until now focused heavily on texts produced in the Weimar Republic. Addressing the immediate experience and impact of World War I, as well as the economic troubles of the 1920s that led to the rise of National Socialism and the eventual Anschluss with Germany in 1938, Fictions from an Orphan State examines the unique responses to these events in Austrian literature (and literature about Austria). Barker emphasizes that despite a shared language and cultural heritage with Germany, there were indeed a different set of social and political concerns facing Austrians during this time. His analysis reveals, for example, tensions between the dominance of socialist politics in "Red Vienna" and the conservatism of the provinces, and examines nostalgia for the Habsburg Empire in light of growing support for a greater Deutsch-Österreich. In addition, Barker focuses on watershed moments in Austrian politics that received little attention in the works of Weimar authors, such as the burning of the Palace of Justice in 1927 and the subsequent limitations placed on democratic government that led to the civil war in February 1934.
The title of Barker's study aptly evokes the image of the First Republic as a nation cut off from its past and facing an uncertain future, and echoes of this fractured national identity reverberate in the texts that he analyzes. Ernst Weiss's novella Franta Zlin (1919) highlights what Barker describes as the "constant interplay between the psychological and the social" in Austrian literature (14), as the effects of the protagonist's physical and mental war wounds on his interpersonal relationships appear to prefigure Sigmund Freud's concepts of Eros and Thanatos, the love and death drives. A nostalgic longing for the days of the Dual Monarchy, popularized by Claudio Magris's concept of the "Habsburg Myth," emerges in Franz Werfel's Der Tod des Kleinbürgers (1927), where the author's depiction of the symbiotic relationship between Jews and Christians reflects an idealization of the former empire's multicultural identity. Moreover, Bruno Brehm's "de-nazification" of Die Throne stürzen (1931-33/1951) after World War II and Heimito von Doderer's "conversion" [End Page 706] from fervent Nazi to Austrian patriot par excellence reveal the ambivalent legacy of literature written during the First Republic in the postwar period. The revision and rewriting of history, both personal and political, in the second half of the twentieth century, reflects the struggles of the "orphan state" to confront and work through its troubled past. As Barker notes in his postscript, this lack of Vergangenheitsbewältigung continues to surface in the political, social and literary scene of contemporary Austria.
One of the great strengths of Barker's work is that he focuses on works that have received less critical attention, such as Andreas Latzko's war reflections in Menschen im Krieg (1917). He does well to contextualize these lesser-known works with contemporary, more canonical texts, such as Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch (1932), which is often mentioned as a work of comparison. Moreover, Barker's study reveals the intricate web of literary allusions employed by writers at this time, such as Soma Morgenstern's near quotations from Kafka's short story "Ein Landarzt" (1917) in Der Sohn des verlorenen Sohns (1935) and Doderer's reference to Werfel's character Klara Wewereka in Die Wasserfälle von Slunj (1963). Also noteworthy is Barker's choice in his chapter on the events of 1934 to include the works of two German writers, Anna Seghers and Friedrich Wolf. Acknowledging that there was very little response by Austrian writers to the civil war in its immediate aftermath—he writes that the events went "virtually unrecorded in Austrian literature" [121])—Barker...
