Austrian Lives by Günther Bischof, Fritz Plasser, and Eva Malschnig, eds. (review)

Acknowledging the dearth in Austria of biographies of recent historical and cultural figures, volume 21 of Contemporary Austrian Studies offers what Günter Bischof describes as a “cross section of Austrian lives and biographical approaches to recent Austrian history” (xi). To that end, he assembled a wide spectrum of contributors in various academic disciplines from both Europe and America. The lack of Austrian biographies is explained as resulting from a peculiar lag in Austrian scholastic circles to accept the biography as a viable and worthy literary genre. A number of the contributors display a defensive posture concerning the biographical impulse, reflecting on the genre per se prior to getting down to the task at hand. Bischof traces the book’s origins to a May 2011 discussion with Bernhard Fetz, director of the Austrian Literature Archives, and he uses a translation of one of Fetz’s essays as what he terms a “subtle” introduction. Briefly, Fetz highlights the confusing contradictions of the biographical endeavor by juxtaposing the genre’s rich dichotomies as observed by Nietzsche, Freud, and more contemporary critics like Leon Edel. This whirlwind theoretical tour does not leave a reader on very stable ground, especially in the atmosphere of academic hesitancy to accept the genre. However, Fetz brings the age-old question of Dichtung and Wahrheit into the present by pointing to the opening of the secret police files after the Wende and how these provided a splash of cold evidence into the comfortable constructions of memory. In that sense, the introduction perfectly prepares the reader for a multifaceted, contradictory, methodological mix of essays, which, though having little in common, somehow provide the reader with a mosaic of a problematic cultural identity in the turbulent twentieth century. The origin and perhaps the intent of the book is to show the value of biography, in all its varied forms and methodologies, as a tool for enriching our understanding of the complexity and contradictions of Austrian history and identity since World War I. In this it succeeds admirably.

Seventeen essays, varying in methodology and quality, are presented in English. The collection is divided into three categories: “Political Lives,” “Lives of the Mind,” and “Common Lives.” The opening two essays in “Political Lives” are well matched, as John Deak’s portrait of Ignaz Seipel and Ernst Hanisch’s Otto Bauer show us in the lives and clashes of these two political foes a spectrum of political thought that shaped the First Republic and led to its downfall. The section continues chronologically and offers a diversity of perspectives. The early feminism of Therese Schlesinger is interpreted by Gabriella Hauch, who meticulously examines the career and writings of this “radical seeker.” The Socialist leader and activist in the First Republic, Joseph Buttinger, was driven into exile during the Dollfuß regime. His fate and transformation into an American citizen and Vietnam scholar is presented in Philipp Luis Strobl’s essay. Johannes Koll offers insight into the career of the infamous Arthur Seyß-Inquart, who laid the groundwork for the Anschluss and Austria’s transformation into the Ostmark. The section ends with another set of contrasting politicians, this time in the Second Republic: Elisabeth Röhrlich’s biographical approach of the Social Democratic chancellor Bruno Kreisky and the essay by Martin Eichtinger and Helmut Wohnout who evaluate the career and contributions of the Christian Democrat leader Alois Mock. Under “Lives of the Mind,” the biographic essays highlight those cultural personalities who are either outsiders or whose contributions deserve greater attention for the role they played in the postwar Austrian psyche. It begins with Deborah Holmes’s presentation of a less-known figure of the finde-siècle salons, Eugenie Schwarzwald, and the importance of her educational reform activities. Günter Anders, while recognized in philosophical circles is neglected by cultural historians, but he is viewed in Jason Dawsey’s essay as “an acknowledged chronicler and interpreter of the...