Cultural memory and intellectual history: locating Austrian literature

Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, Wntr, 2007 by David S. Luft

Only rarely are women (or themes related to gender) mentioned in these essays, although Heer does present an argument about the traditional male/female balance of Austrian humanity that has been disturbed in the modern world. It seems right to say that historically Austrian literature, like many other literatures, has been conceived as male. By the 1960s, Fanny von Arnstein, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (the woman most frequently mentioned), Rosa Mayreder, Ingeborg Bachmann, and even Hilde Spiel had still hardly made their mark on this tradition. There was not much reference to the theme of gender at all, or, for example, to writers such as Otto Weininger, who took this theme seriously; and gender issues were not likely to be what was discussed in writers like Musil, who were concerned with the subject. (20) Heer argues that Austrian writers testified to "the power of being of the woman," and that the loss of balance between male and female brought forth many important women in Austria (78); (21) however, he discusses women mainly in the context of his theme of a way of living and concentrates on the practical accomplishments of Austrian women in the early twentieth century rather than their contributions to literature, mentioning Auguste Fickert, Adelheid Popp-Dworak, Mariane Hainisch, and Bertha von Suttner, but also Rosa Mayreder and Paula von Preradovic (81-83). This discussion is not central to Heer's argument, but there is a certain morphological affinity between his views on Austria and women. He contends that the traditional balance of male and female has been disturbed since the sixteenth century by the one-sided emphasis on the male and the abyss between Europe and the rest of the world (77), and he argues that Austria resisted this tendency in its Mediterranean way--a kind of conservative resistance to modernity, against the ideological, activist, expansive style of the late nineteenth century.

Eisenreich was more concerned than Heer with the contributions of women to Austrian literature, and he located women writers within his generational scheme, especially those who reached maturity after 1945. Women writers are integrated into his argument early in his essay, when he discusses the epochs of Austrian literature in generational terms. He includes a number of women in his catalogue of the fourth generation, born in the early twentieth century: Martha Hofmann (1905), Erika Mitterer (1903), Gertrud Fussenegger (1912), and Lilly von Sauter (1913), although two of them seem to him to belong more to the next generation: Christine Busta and Christine Lavant (1915). His fifth generation (his own) reached maturity after the Second World War and identified with "the grandfathers" of the early twentieth century: Jeannie Ebner (1918), Marlen Haushofer and Doris Muhringer (1920), Ilse Aichinger and Irmgard Beidl-Perfahl (1921), Fredericke Mayrocker (1924), Ingeborg Bachmann (1926), and Hertha Kraftner (1928). (22) It is apparent from this list how important women seem to have become for Eisenreich, and his argument recalls the degree to which the advocacy of Austrian literature was the form in which his generation of intellectuals came to terms with the historical experience of the early twentieth century. From one point of view, Austrian literature is an imperial literature, and accounts of it can suffer in this respect from triumphalism, false consciousness, or apologetics. On the other hand, Austrian literature is in some respects a minor literature that is poorly integrated into established canons--somewhat like female authors or minority writers.