“Als Wildwuchs der Mehrheitssprache”: Interview with Author Maja Haderlap

The prize-winning author Maja Haderlap was born in 1961 in Železna Kapla / Eisenkappel, Carinthia. Growing up in a rural Slovenian-speaking community, Haderlap quickly became fluent in German after entering the bilingual one-room elementary school in Lepena. Her teacher Florjan Lipuš, himself a published writer, encouraged Haderlap’s parents to send her to the Slovenian Gymnasium in Klagenfurt. The opportunity for a higher education brought with it separation from her family, newfound freedom, and the confrontation with the more hostile German-speaking Klagenfurt. The first in her family to attend Gymnasium, Maja Haderlap was also the first to receive a university degree. After receiving her PhD in 1988 at the University of Vienna with the dissertation Die Grundzüge der slowenischen Kulturpolitik in Kärnten von 1946 bis 1976 und der Funktionswandel des slowenischen Laienspiels sowie seine Bedeutungfür die slowenische Kulturpraxis in Kärnten, Haderlap assumed multiple roles in a variety of cultural arenas. She worked as a dramatic advisor and production assistant in theaters in Trieste and Ljubljana and as an editor for mladja, the Carinthian-Slovenian literary magazine, where her poetry was also published. From 1992 to 2007 she was the chief dramatic advisor at the Stadttheater in Klagenfurt. Since 2007 she has devoted herself to writing.

Haderlap has long been an important voice from the Slovenian community. When the trilingual volume of her poetry Gedichte. Pesmi. Poems appeared in 1998, Helmut Gollner noted, “Haderlaps Gedichte sind Dokumente nicht nur eigener Individualbefindlichkeit, sondern auch slowenischer Kulturbefindlichkeit” (8). This role increased tenfold when she was awarded the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis in July 2011 with her debut as an author of German prose at the Tage der deutschsprachigen Literatur. The novel, Engel des Vergessens, which was published in 2011 by Wallstein Verlag, was subsequently awarded the Bruno-Kreisky-Preis for the best political book and the Rauriser Literaturpreis in 2012. The novel is a moving account of a contemporary Slovenien family in Carinthia and the impact of local history on the characters’ lives. With the Nazi takeover, Austrian Slovenes were forced to leave the border area. Those who didn’t faced persecution and deportation, and many joined forces with or sympathized with the partisans. In the Second Republic the contributions of Austrian Slovenes to resistance during the National Socialist regime was overlooked or reinterpreted as communist agitation. Consequently, the Slovenes were all too often denied their rights. In an 2000 article, “Aus dem Winkel Mitteleuropas,” Haderlap argues, “Die privaten Erzählungen und Erinnerungen an die Nazizeit unterschieden sich zu sehr von den offiziellen Geschichten, die den Menschen in Kärnten und im offiziellen Österreich als Geschichtsbild angeboten wurden, und dieser Widerspruch, wie auch die Widersprüche der slowenischen Geschichte forderten mich, je tiefen ich die Zusammenhänge zu begreifen begann, heraus” (217). Like the family in the novel, her family’s history is inextricably bound up with the history of Slovenes in Carinthia. While she acknowledges the connection of her narrative to the stories of her family and her community, Haderlap emphasizes the literary aspects of the novel: “Das Faktische sind die Mosaiksteinchen, die dem Text zugrunde liegen. Was ich über Verwandte und Nachbarn erzähle, ist tatsächlich passiert. Alles andere aber ist Literatur, eine Inszenierung, Zuspitzung. Insofern bewegt sich der Roman über das autobiografische Erinnern weit hinaus” (“Deutsch hält mich” 25). In considering the autobiographical nature of the novel, she also explains how the story took on a life of its own:

Diese Geschichte, diese Szenen haben viel mit meiner Biografie zu tun. Während des Schreibens hat sich die Geschichte jedoch verselbstständigt, ist zu einer literarischen Erzählung geworden. ‚Engel des Vergessens’ ist kein simples Erinnerungsbuch. Ich erzähle dieses Mädchen, es erzählt sich nicht selbst, und ich versuche auf Distanz zu den Geschehnissen zu bleiben. Genau diese Distanz lässt mich die Spuren deutlich sehen, die der Krieg in den Menschen hinterlassen hat.

(“Engel der Erinnerungen” VIII)

Through the eyes of the female protagonist, from young child to adult, Haderlap presents a nuanced view of this history. In an interview with Uschi...