Doderer-Lektüren: Die Romane nach 1945, neu gelesen by Stefan Winterstein (review)

Though younger than most Heimitists, Winterstein has been writing and publishing on Doderer for some fifteen years. Even as a Gymnasiast, he was gathering knowledge by volunteering at the Doderer memorial rooms in the Alsergrund district museum; along with the late Engelbert Pfeiffer and others, he helped make the rooms into a center of international note.

Winterstein’s main approaches often call on local geography, topography, and history. It was only natural, then, that the commemorative reprint of Doderer’s Die Strudlhofstiege (C. H. Beck, Jubiläumsausgabe 2015) should appear with “einem topographischen Anhang von Stefan Winterstein” (910–34) as well as detailed text and numerous photographs. Winterstein, after all, had published in 2010 a comprehensive book on the steps, with a wide array of illustrations and essays by himself and Dietmar Grieser, Franz Himmelbauer, and Gerald Sommer, a work notable for its orientation to realia, to the kinds of documentary research that archivists or editors of critical-historical editions pursue.

The volume reviewed here has a characteristically thorough appendix (113–18) with photographs and a sketch of Theodor Johann Jaeger’s original design for the steps, but Winterstein is not locked into any one approach. An earlier book by him takes a highly independent stance, one its title reveals: Versuch gegen Heimito von Doderer: Über “Ordnungspein” und Faschismus (2014). His thesis is that literary critics are often coopted by Doderer’s own terms into seeing the author’s work only as he himself wanted it seen. Winterstein strives to discover more balanced viewpoints and readings. His insights on the links between the pedant and the fascist, the bureaucrat and the monster, for example, illuminate much of the fiction in new ways that a more “compliant” reading would not enable.

This present book combines Winterstein’s two main complementary strengths, intrinsic critical reading and external historical and cultural context. His concern here is to find essences, points of departure that justify treating a thousand-plus-page novel adequately in a twelve-page discussion: “Ziel der vorliegenden Essays [ . . . ] ist es, jeweils einen verborgenen [ . . . ] Sinn der Romantexte herauszuarbeiten, der diese in ihrer jeweiligen Gesamtheit charakterisieren könnte” (10).

Judging by that criterion, four of the five essays are decidedly successful. Winterstein proceeds from an unexpected, seemingly narrow viewpoint to an ampler reading than his limited space would seem to allow. The success arises from the pertinence of his chosen points of departure.

With extraordinary persuasiveness, “Beim Fernsehen abgestürzt! Die erleuchteten Fenster (1951)” (11–37) establishes parallels between the effects his voyeurism has on the main character and the brilliant critique of television offered decades ago by Günther Anders, whose work was in Doderer’s personal library. Passivity, imposition of an image on the helpless viewer, constriction—these are among the results that make the similarities astonishingly appropriate; kudos to Winterstein for discovering this connection.

“Wie man als Dichter ein Bauwerk annektiert: Die Strudlhofstiege (1951)” (39–54) specifies Doderer’s own “ethisch-ästhetische Programm” as he ascribes it to the architect-designer of the steps, the admiring but thorough coopting of Jaeger that makes the actual steps in Alsergrund as much an invention of the author as of the architect, including a verbal revamping of actuality to fit the narrative design. Pointing out that Doderer was the son of an architect-engineer (54), Winterstein documents the thoroughness with which the author “die ungefähre Geschichte dieses Bauwerks [ . . . ] recherchiert und skizziert hat” (45–46).

Any scholar would envy the minute, observant research found in “Was wurde aus Mary K.? Die Dämonen (1956)” (55–71), filled with Winterstein’s typically painstaking primary documentation. But the novel is not best served; this essay offers a classic instance of a tail wagging the dog, as Die Dämonen relegated to a jumping-off point for research about the life of Mary Kornfeld, the original of Mary K. Tracing her to Riverside Drive in New York (70–71) is a feat, but one that...