Der historische Roman der Ersten Republik Österreich in ideologiekritischer Sicht by Aneta Jachimowicz (review)

The works of Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig are typically offered as the best representations of interwar Austrian literature, yet this excellent study by Aneta Jachimowicz makes a compelling case for us to look toward this era’s historical novels instead. While these books were often dismissed as trite melodramas by literary scholars, and at times even by their own authors, Jachimowicz deftly argues that they provide insight into Austrian society as it coped with the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy, the trauma of World War I, and the uncertainty of its future. In fact, even though these novels might be set in the past, Jachimowicz proves that they were reflections of contemporary anxieties.

Historical novels were ubiquitous during the period of the First Republic, with over 370 published in Austria alone, providing plenty of material for Jachimowicz to analyze. In addition to the novels themselves, she utilizes hundreds of reviews from a variety of newspapers to gauge how these novels were promoted and received. In fact, one of the most important arguments of this work is that these reviews reveal Austria’s deep political divisions and the degree to which historical novels reflected the contours of social, political, and economic debates. Jachimowicz devotes considerable time and effort, well over a third of the book, to examining reviews from the newspapers of four “political camps”: the bourgeoisie, the German nationalists, the conservative/Christian Socials, and the Social Democrats. She contends that newspapers promoted novels that supported their respective worldviews and that their reviews were colored by their respective political perspectives. So, for example, the German nationalist press championed novels that promoted historical episodes that would generate a German national “awakening” in Austria, while the Christian Social press used their reviews to advance their traditional, pro-Catholic vision of Austrian culture.

Jachimowicz demonstrates that few newspapers, regardless of political orientation, could resist drawing parallels between a novel’s historical setting and the problems gripping interwar Austria. In this way, a novel set during the Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia invited comparisons with the carnage of the First World War and the impact of the Treaty of Versailles. For Jachimowicz, the ability of historical novels to use the past as a mirror for the present helps to explain their popularity. They were a way to help make sense of an uncertain present.

The remainder of her work offers insight into this assertion, starting with the ways in which historical novels represented the strong desire of many Austrians for an Anschluss with Germany. Even though Anschluss found support from a broad cross-section of Austrian society, among authors, the cause resonated strongest with German nationalists, who used historical settings to stress the notion of German unity. In addition to the Thirty Years’ War, it was common for these works to be set during the Enlightenment, when Prussia first began to challenge the Austrian influence over the German states. In such works, the wars between Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa became a struggle between boldness and innovation versus tradition and caution, resulting in this historical competition serving as a proxy for the fight between German nationalists and the Christian Socials during the First Republic.

In Jachimowicz’s view, historical novels also attempted to make Austrians comfortable with the idea of their eventual inclusion into Germany. They emphasized Austria’s past as a German power and were hostile toward nostalgia for the Habsburg Monarchy. Considering the strong scholarly focus on the works of authors who idealized the reign of Franz Joseph, this focus on voices critical of the Habsburg state offers fresh insight to our understanding of interwar Austrian literature. Jachimowicz shows that novels set during the mid-nineteenth century often featured characters who grow increasingly disillusioned with the Habsburg state, characterized by its failed wars and efforts to restrain the growth of German nationalism.

German nationalist authors were not the only ones who used historical settings to fight against...