Journal of Austrian Studies最新文献

{"title":"Vielfalt ordnen. Das föderale Europa der Habsburgermonarchie (Vormärz bis 1918) by Jana Osterkamp (review)","authors":"Andrei Corbea-Hoisie","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a929393","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a929393","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Vielfalt ordnen. Das föderale Europa der Habsburgermonarchie (Vormärz bis 1918)</em> by Jana Osterkamp <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Andrei Corbea-Hoisie </li> </ul> Jana Osterkamp, <em>Vielfalt ordnen. Das föderale Europa der Habsburgermonarchie (Vormärz bis 1918)</em>. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2. unveränderte Auflage, 2021. 531 S. <p>Der von Jana Osterkamp gewählte Titel ihres Buches, das innerhalb von wenigen Jahren schon zwei Auflagen erreicht hat, kündigt bereits die Thesen an, die im letzten, unmissverständlich benannten kurzen Kapitel “Ausblick: das föderale Haus Europa” ausführlich formuliert und entwickelt werden. Die alte Weisheit <em>Historia magistra vitae</em> könnte als ideales Motto für ein Werk dienen, das in Bezug auf die derzeitigen Herausforderungen des noch längst nicht abgeschlossenen Prozesses der Einigung Europas vorschlägt, die <em>exempla</em> der Vergangenheit gar nicht für obsolet zu halten. Ganz im Gegenteil, wenn man bedenkt, so die Autorin, dass in dem langen 19. Jahrhundert vom Wiener Kongress bis zum Ausbruch des 1. Weltkriegs Föderationen, neben Imperien und aufkeimenden Nationalstaaten, die Formen europäischer Staatlichkeit geprägt haben. Unter jenen stelle die Habsburgermonarchie laut Jana Osterkamp vielleicht das eklatanteste Beispiel einer “gelebten Föderation” dar, denn im Laufe der wechselnden politischen Umstände seit der Vormärz-Epoche, die von dem wachsenden Bewusstsein begleitet wurden, das Überleben des vom Mittelalter geerbten staatlichen Gebildes hänge von seiner Reformierung ab, wurde diese zu einem durchaus “innovativen Ort des Nachdenkens über Föderalismus”. Ähnlich wie das heutige europäische Konstrukt, das eine “föderale Verfasstheit” aufweist, auch ohne über eine föderale Verfassung zu verfügen, erlebte das mitteleuropäische “Altösterreich” eine bewundernswerte organisatorisch-bürokratische Dynamik in dem vielfältig “kooperativen Zusammenwirken” der stufenweise aufgebauten Teile dieser “konföderativen Union, deren Ordnungsleistung oft übersehen” werde. Darum könnte das Nachdenken darüber, wie auch jenes über die zahlreichen Gründe des endgültigen Scheiterns des Modells, auch <strong>[End Page 130]</strong> die gegenwärtigen Debatten über die nächsten Schritte in der Gestaltung eines “einheitlichen” Europas produktiv befruchten. In der Folge einer über 400-seitigen historisch-juristischen Untersuchung aller Facetten jener komplexen Bauart eines Rechts, das das wirtschaftliche, soziale und politische System des Habsburgerreiches in seiner letzten Existenzphase antrieb und funktionsfähig machte, klingt Jana Osterkamps Schlussfolgerung, dass das “Haus Österreich”, wie es Ingeborg Bachmann zu nennen pflegte, als “Baukasten für Reformentwürfe” und damit als ein “wichtiges Erbe für Europa” gilt, keinesfalls plakativ!</p> <p>Als Inhaberin","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"117 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141259548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Celebrity Monarch: Empress Elisabeth and the Modern Female Portrait by Olivia Gruber Florek (review)","authors":"Hansjakob Werlen","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a929392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a929392","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Celebrity Monarch: Empress Elisabeth and the Modern Female Portrait</em> by Olivia Gruber Florek <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Hansjakob Werlen </li> </ul> Olivia Gruber Florek, <em>The Celebrity Monarch: Empress Elisabeth and the Modern Female Portrait</em>. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2023. 248 pp. <p>In posthumous fame and adulation, no monarchical figure can compete with Empress Elisabeth of Austria. The enduring worldwide fascination with the beautiful Bavarian duchess that began with Ernst Marischka’s 1950s trilogy of <em>Sissi</em> films has only increased since, as various media forms (musical, concert, TV/streaming program, tabloid serial) craft new variations of the empress’s persona for an eager public. Extricating Elisabeth from the carapace of innumerable mythologizing, commercializing, and kitschifying representations is one of the many achievements of Olivia Gruber Florek’s thoroughly researched study, <em>The Celebrity Monarch</em>.</p> <p>As the title indicates, the study demonstrates how Empress Elisabeth transformed the iconographic traditions of royal portraiture into representations of evolving celebrity culture and, through her interventions in and contributions to the creative process of her portraiture, established a visual style that exerted its influence on modern paintings of female portraits.</p> <p>While Elisabeth’s reclusiveness and her controversial eschewal of representational duties are well known, <em>The Celebrity Monarch</em> shows a woman who, although constrained by imperial etiquette, deliberately subverted courtly norms of representation to fashion a novel image: the celebrity monarch. Gruber Florek, in her analysis of the famous Franz Xaver Winterhalter paintings, demonstrates Elisabeth’s creative contributions to the startling changes of monarchical representation and the role of the rapidly evolving medium of photography in this transformation. <strong>[End Page 127]</strong></p> <p>The book is first and foremost an art-historical study, but its findings extend to many other histories, among them of the late Habsburg empire, of psychiatry, of photography, and of emerging celebrity culture. Key works in these fields as well as references to important theorists provide scaffolding for the study’s central contentions. This expansive approach, well documented in the lengthy final bibliography, allows Gruber Florek to engage Winterhalter’s paintings of Elisabeth in a dialogue that not only considers their novel and subversive iconography but also interprets their visual features for messages relevant both to the personality of the empress and the sociopolitical, artistic, and historical developments of Habsburg Austria in the second part of the nineteenth century.</p> <p>The title of Chapter 1, “Staging the State Portrait,” points to the dual n","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"30 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141259413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rose Ausländers Leben im Wort by Olena Staranchuk, Oleg Gryshchenko und Oxana Matiychuk (review)","authors":"Martin A. Hainz","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a929397","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a929397","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Rose Ausländers Leben im Wort</em> by Olena Staranchuk, Oleg Gryshchenko und Oxana Matiychuk <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Martin A. Hainz </li> </ul> Olena Staranchuk, Oleg Gryshchenko und Oxana Matiychuk, <em>Rose Ausländers Leben im Wort</em>. Graphic Novel. Übersetzt von Kati Brunner. Ulm: danube books, 2021. 56 S. <p>Das Leben Rose Ausländers ist eines im Wort, schon, ehe sie es in einem Gedicht so umschreibt. Es beginnt mit den Geschichten des Vaters und den Gedichten, die ihre Mutter ihr vorliest. Ihre Geschichte und das Lyrische trotz der dunklen Zeiten fängt der vorliegende Band ein, worin Oxana Matiychuk das Leben der Lyrikerin erzählt, die Illustrationen von Olena Staranchuk und Oleg Gryshchenko setzen alles in Szene und bieten dabei expressive Bilder in eindrücklichen Farben. Dabei wird natürlich manches ausgespart—aus Platzgründen, aber vielleicht auch, um Leser:innen manches zu ersparen.</p> <p>Denn ein Ereignis kurz vor der Geburt der Dichterin wäre beispielsweise durchaus relevant, welches die Idylle stört, mit der dramaturgisch alles beginnt: “An einem Februarnachmittag des Jahres 1901 kommt es in Czernowitz zu einem schrecklichen Unfall. Das Kindermädchen der Familie Scherzer und der von ihr betreute erste Sohn des Ehepaares, der damals 18 Monate alt ist, werden beim Verlassen des Volksgartens von einem durchgehenden Pferdegespann niedergerannt und von dem schweren Fuhrwagen überrollt”, wie man bei Helmut Braun <em>(“Ich bin fünftausend Jahre jung.” Rose Ausländer. Zu ihrer Biographie</em>. Stuttgart: Radius 1999) erführe: “Das Kindermädchen überlebt schwer verletzt; der kleine Junge stirbt noch an der Unfallstelle. Die Mutter des Jungen ist damals im sechsten Monat schwanger”. Helmut Braun nennt in der Folge Rose Ausländer das vielgeliebte “Ersatzkind”, das vielleicht auch darum ein Spannungsverhältnis zu den Eltern erlebt.</p> <p>Jedenfalls folgt der Band Rose Ausländer auf der Flucht von Czernowitz nach Wien und nach der Rückkehr und dem frühen Tod des Vaters in die USA. Die Ehe mit Ignaz Ausländer, dem Rosalie Scherzer ihren Namen—kein eigentliches Pseudonym—verdankt, wird realistisch geschildert, ebenso die große Liebe zu Helios Hecht. Außerdem wird sehr liebevoll das Milieu eingefangen: Karl Kraus, Stefan George, Else Lasker-Schüler, Constantin Brunner und, “allen voran, Rainer Maria Rilke”, wie man Rose Ausländer hier zitieren könnte. Man könnte übrigens auch Heine anführen, den sie in Czernowitz gegen Karl Kraus’ <em>Heine und die Folgen</em> verteidigte. Seine “Schlußfolgerungen überzeugten mich nicht”, schreibt sie, nachzulesen im Band <em>Die Nacht hat zahllose Augen</em>, sie “focht” für Heine trotz “aussichtslose[r] <strong>[End Page 143]</strong> Kampfposition: Hatte Heine nicht frischen Wind, einen neuen, rebellischsarkastischen Ton in die deutsche Dichtung gebra","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141258538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"Wouldn't It Be Smarter to Let the Malay Colonize Europe?\": Postcolonial Critique, Antiglobalism, and Racism in the Travel Books of the Bohemian- German Author Richard Katz (1888–1968)","authors":"Jeroen Dewulf","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a921898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a921898","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>The travel books of the Bohemian-German author Richard Katz (1888–1968) were once among the most popular publications in German literature but have since been forgotten. This essay intends to reread, from a postcolonial perspective, Katz’s work from the interwar period. It focuses on his book about the Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia, <i>Heitere Tage mit braunen Menschen</i> (1930), in order to explain how and why the early form of postcolonial and antiglobalist critique we find in Katz’s writings could coexist with other ideas that reiterated nineteenth-century colonialist and racist conceptions about the indigenous Other and people of mixed race. The latter is all the more intriguing considering that Katz himself, being Jewish, was soon to become the victim of a political ideology marked by ideas similar to some of the ones he defended when writing about Southeast Asia.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140076673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Die Zerstörung der Demokratie: Österreich März 1933 bis Februar 1934 ed. by Bernhard Hachleitner et al (review)","authors":"Vincent Kling","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a921913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a921913","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Die Zerstörung der Demokratie: Österreich März 1933 bis Februar 1934&lt;/em&gt; ed. by Bernhard Hachleitner et al &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Vincent Kling &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Bernhard Hachleitner, Alfred Pfoser, Katharina Prager, and Werner Michael Schwarz, eds., &lt;em&gt;Die Zerstörung der Demokratie: Österreich März 1933 bis Februar 1934&lt;/em&gt;. Wienbibliothek im Rathaus and Wien Museum. Vienna: Residenz Verlag, 2023. 328 pp. &lt;p&gt;If each generation gravitates toward the history enacting the closest parallels to its present, it is no wonder that the erosion—nay, the destruction of democracy by small stages—occupies the mind of present-day historians. The short Austrian Civil War of February 1934 has always intrigued commentators, and there is no dearth of literary and journalistic records about those few ominous days. Anthologies like Februar 1934: Schriftsteller erzählen, edited by Ulrich Weinzierl or Im Kältefieber: Februargeschichten 1934, edited by Erich Hackl and Evelyne Polt-Heinzl, offer vivid and harrowing accounts of the days that solidified Fascist rule in Austria. And while historians working from a more discipline-specific approach have written illuminating accounts of the civil war and the time leading up to it, the edited volume Die Zerstörung der Demokratie, the catalogue of a large-scale exhibition, will for a long time serve as the indispensable source covering every aspect of the topic, thanks to its slow, steady, all-encompassing and chronological datelining of events; its painstaking source documentation; its inclusion of every aspect from popular culture to the arts to legislation to personalities; its lively and mercifully jargon-free writing; and its unprecedented wealth of graphics—photographs, posters, drawings, graphs, reproductions of newspaper pages, many seemingly published here for the first time.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;From the very first, parallels with the world of 2023 are made explicit. In their foreword (11), Matti Bunzl, director of the Wien Museum, and Anita Eichinger, director of the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, note that ninety years after the event “berichten Gymnasial- und Universitätslehrer*innen, dass die meisten ihrer Schüler*innen und Student*innen mit dem Namen Engelbert Dollfuß wenig bis gar nichts anfangen können [. . .].” If this statement implies that those who do not remember history are bound to repeat it, the point is made very clear in the next paragraph: “Denn die autoritäre Versuchung ist in unserer politischen Gegenwart angekommen. Auf nahezu allen Kontinenten greifen Regierungen zwecks Machterhalts in die Gelenkstellen der Demokratie ein”—what American reader would fail to connect these words with events in the United States since 2016? &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 131]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The end of the volume as well, in the short fifth section, “Debatte” (313–21), specifically links t","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140070155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kafkas Zeiten ed. by Alexander Kling and Johannes F. Lehmann (review)","authors":"Ruth V. Gross","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a921909","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a921909","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Kafkas Zeiten&lt;/em&gt; ed. by Alexander Kling and Johannes F. Lehmann &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Ruth V. Gross &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Alexander Kling and Johannes F. Lehmann, eds., &lt;em&gt;Kafkas Zeiten&lt;/em&gt;. Forschungen der Deutschen Kafka-Gesellschaft 7. Edited by Agnes Bidmon und Harald Neumeyer. Würzburg: Königshausen &amp; Neumann, 2023. 378 pp. &lt;p&gt;The edited volume &lt;em&gt;Kafkas Zeiten&lt;/em&gt;, a compilation of the papers presented at the eighth meeting of the Deutsche Kafka-Gesellschaft that took place, partially at the University of Bonn and partially on Zoom, from September 30 to October 2, 2021, joins the vast number of anthologized studies dealing with Kafka’s texts. It includes seventeen papers and ends with reviews of eight books dealing with Kafka that appeared between 2020 and 2022. The subject of the conference, and thus the title of the volume, points in two distinct directions: (1) to the times in which Kafka lived and wrote; and (2) to the way we experience time as an irregular and imprecise concept in many of Kafka’s texts. In other words, the subject of this book conjoins examinations of time in Kafka’s texts with the culture of modernism and its perspectives on time. The powerful new technologies that transformed the way people thought &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 121]&lt;/strong&gt; about time and space and created much of the disorientation in modernism and its art forms have been a recurring subject in Kafka studies. This volume foregrounds that theme.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Alexander Kling and Johannes F. Lehmann, the co-editors, co-authored the first chapter explaining their intention for the volume. Titled “Aus den Fugen,” it reminds us that time in Kafka’s texts is not a reliable measurement but is instead often an impediment to action. Comparing the concepts of space and time as mutually relevant conditions of modernist texts, especially Kafkan texts, the authors present examples to demonstrate how they work together, how accelerated time necessarily brings about a shrinkage in space. They also point out that in Kafka’s world structural elements that we associate with time, like routine or repetition, are often brought to a “standstill” by an important but often ordinary event, like Gregor’s awakening out of “restless” dreams in &lt;em&gt;Die Verwandlung&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;A volume like this offers commentary on various texts, and readers will most likely not read the book from cover to cover but rather approach the volume by selecting certain essays that might appeal to their own interests in one or several particular works of Kafka. In my own case, I was drawn to the essays on works that I often teach or have written about, such as Anne Fuchs on “Posthumane Figurationen von Beschleunigung: Tempo und Bewegungseuphorie in Kafkas ‘Betrachtung’”; Rolf J. Goebel’s “Zeit und Klang: Kafkas auditive Atmosphären”; Lea Liese’s “Philiströse","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140076704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Neocolonial Echoes in the Heart of Darkness: Peter Kubelka, Ulrich Seidl, and the Distrust of Sound","authors":"Arne Koch","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a921899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a921899","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>The fascination with gaining insight into the motivation of European participants for the private and secretive world of hunting safaris in Africa informs both the avant-garde short film <i>Unsere Afrikareise</i> (1966) by Peter Kubelka and the more recent documentary <i>Safari</i> (2016) by . Both films provoke audiences with an interpretive openness that nonetheless must be understood as unveiled critiques of hunting practices and neocolonial attitudes. By drawing out formal and thematic similarities and differences, this comparative film analysis of Kubelka and Seidl illuminates the function and centrality of hunting via three interconnected aspects of their films: human and nonhuman bodies of otherness as central to understanding how both filmmakers view and instrumentalize the proximity of hunting and neocolonialism; the tension between word (sound) and image, with a focus on how the whitewashing of the hunting industry and conservation practices is exposed and challenged by images; and the key role of controversial images of slayed animals, dissected carcasses, and almost completely voiceless Africans in both films, which prove paradoxically indispensable for both Kubelka and Seidl in producing works that leave viewers with more interpretive specificity than is sometimes acknowledged.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"127 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140070253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Die Macht der Kunstkritik: Ludwig Hevesi und die Wiener Moderne by Ilona Sármány-Parsons (review)","authors":"Patrick Werkner","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a921907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a921907","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Die Macht der Kunstkritik: Ludwig Hevesi und die Wiener Moderne&lt;/em&gt; by Ilona Sármány-Parsons &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Patrick Werkner &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Ilona Sármány-Parsons, &lt;em&gt;Die Macht der Kunstkritik: Ludwig Hevesi und die Wiener Moderne&lt;/em&gt;. Vienna: Böhlau, 2022. 488 pp. &lt;p&gt;Ilona Sármány-Parsons is a Hungarian-born art historian who taught for many years at the Central European University in Prague and Budapest. She published extensively on the fine arts in Central Europe, especially on nineteenth-and twentieth-century art, including a book on Gustav Klimt, which has been translated into five languages. Now her &lt;em&gt;opus magnum&lt;/em&gt; has appeared, originally published in Hungarian and then recently in a (very good) German translation. The work represents the fruits of a lifelong preoccupation with Ludwig Hevesi (1843–1910), who might be described as the “critical Pope” of Viennese Jugendstil. &lt;em&gt;Die Macht der Kunstkritik: Ludwig Hevesi und die Wiener Moderne&lt;/em&gt; runs to almost five hundred pages and has more than three hundred illustrations. The book is much more than an eulogy to Hevesi, who has gone down in history as an insightful critic of the pioneering &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 116]&lt;/strong&gt; exhibitions of Vienna’s Secession. Hevesi devised the motto inscribed over the portal of the Secession Building, with which every devotee of turn-of-the-century Vienna is familiar: &lt;em&gt;“To the age its art. To art its freedom&lt;/em&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;Based on a detailed reading of Hevesi’s exhibition reviews and commentary on the contemporary art scene, Sármány-Parsons unfolds a panorama of cultural developments from 1867 to 1909. The European art criticism of the day is the background against which the author highlights the burgeoning art of the fin-de-siècle: first in Budapest, then moving the focus to the crucible of Viennese Modernism. The author adopts a cultural-historical perspective on events in the tradition of Carl Schorske, an approach that is highly appropriate to the &lt;em&gt;feuilleton&lt;/em&gt; genre written for the educated public in which Hevesi so excelled. His exhibition critiques dazzle, providing the best introduction for anyone interested in the Wiener Moderne. Hevesi’s writings and interpretations about Klimt’s ceiling paintings for the Vienna University (destroyed during World War II) represent even today a most inspiring analysis of these central works of Symbolism, notwithstanding the avalanche of commentary that has subsequently been published.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The author, however, departs from the usual chorus of panegyrics. She gives plenty of space to the decidedly unfazed conservative art criticism in marked contrast to the more “heroic” narrative of the Wiener Moderne. That victory lap was reflected in the creation of new institutions such as the Wiener Secession and the Kunstgewerbeschule, both of whic","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"86 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140070246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sigurd Paul Scheichl: Literatur in Österreich und Südtirol. Ein Panorama in 30 Aufsätzen ed. by Michael Pilz and Dirk Rose (review)","authors":"Raymond L. Burt","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a921917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a921917","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Sigurd Paul Scheichl: Literatur in Österreich und Südtirol. Ein Panorama in 30 Aufsätzen&lt;/em&gt; ed. by Michael Pilz and Dirk Rose &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Raymond L. Burt &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Michael Pilz and Dirk Rose, eds., &lt;em&gt;Sigurd Paul Scheichl: Literatur in Österreich und Südtirol. Ein Panorama in 30 Aufsätzen&lt;/em&gt;. Innsbruck: Innsbruck UP, 2022. 497 pp. &lt;p&gt;Esteemed literary scholars approaching the end of their careers may be honored by a Festschrift, in which colleagues, mentees, and former students publish their own scholarly contributions as a sign of their gratitude and appreciation. Prompted by the eightieth birthday of Sigurd Paul Scheichl, Emeritus Professor of Austrian Literary History and General Literary Studies at the University of Innsbruck, the editors of this volume have chosen to take a different path by publishing, in their “Panorama,” thirty essays selected from his more than three hundred. This choice highlights Scheichl’s long and productive career, while providing a valuable contribution to current and future scholars of Austrian literary studies. Scheichl specialized in the genre of the essay and, according to the editors, understood it as a medium of “sprachlichen Widerstands” that challenges the reader through thought-provoking questions. For example, the title of the first essay begins with the question “Konnte Grillparzer Deutsch?” This approach, together with his close readings of the literary texts, contribute to the continued relevance of these essays, whose publication dates span four decades. Schleichl not only focused his attention on “canonical” authors, such as Franz Grillparzer, Johann Nestroy, Adalbert Stifter, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Elias Canetti, and Karl Kraus, but also detailed the contributions of writers rarely covered in &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 141]&lt;/strong&gt; academic circles, thus providing a richer understanding of the complexity of literary history and its diverse scope. One striking example is the essay “Vergessene Träger des Großen Österreichischen Staatspreise in den 50er Jahren,” in which he delves into the reasons that most of the awardees enjoyed relatively little success. This volume also includes topics representing his research interests: the complex question of the canon and literary history in Austrian literature, the role of dialect and language in this history, antisemitism, Austrian national identity, and Tyrolian literary development. The essays are divided into four sections, the first six falling under the heading “Kanon—Tradition—Literaturgeschichtsschreibung.” A short review cannot discuss all essays but mentioning a few provides a glimpse into the richness of this collection. “Österreichische Literaturgeschichten—Konstrukte as ‘vaterländischer Notwendigkeit’? Der Beitrag der Literaturhistoriker zur Nationswerdung der Österreicher” was f","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"158 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140070144","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Investigating Franz Kafka's \"Der Bau\": Towards an Understanding of His Late Narrative in a Jewish Context by Andrea Newsom Ebarb (review)","authors":"Pamela S. Saur","doi":"10.1353/oas.2024.a921908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/oas.2024.a921908","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;span&gt;&lt;span&gt;In lieu of&lt;/span&gt; an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:&lt;/span&gt;\u0000&lt;p&gt; &lt;span&gt;Reviewed by:&lt;/span&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;&lt;!-- html_title --&gt; &lt;em&gt;Investigating Franz Kafka’s “Der Bau”: Towards an Understanding of His Late Narrative in a Jewish Context&lt;/em&gt; by Andrea Newsom Ebarb &lt;!-- /html_title --&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt; Pamela S. Saur &lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt; Andrea Newsom Ebarb, &lt;em&gt;Investigating Franz Kafka’s “Der Bau”: Towards an Understanding of His Late Narrative in a Jewish Context&lt;/em&gt;. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2023. 266 pp. &lt;p&gt;Franz Kafka’s unfinished thirty-nine-page story “&lt;em&gt;Der Bau”&lt;/em&gt; (published post-humously in 1931), is one of his “lesser-known” works, but it has elicited a wealth of diverse and illuminating scholarly studies, including the 2023 book at hand, &lt;em&gt;Investigating Franz Kafka’s “Der Bau,”&lt;/em&gt; an insightful, thoughtful, and well-researched volume based on a dissertation by Andrea Newsom Ebarb. While focused on a single short story, her volume also includes some background information on Kafka’s life, &lt;em&gt;oeuvre&lt;/em&gt;, and significance. The story’s protagonist is a creature of unnamed species, perhaps a badger or mole. Critics have advanced many interpretations of the story; the most common avenue of approach is to see the animal as representing Kafka himself and its lifelong task of building and maintaining a burrow as Kafka’s laborious processes of writing, revising, and editing.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;The story belongs to Kafka’s group of literary works featuring fictional animals, most of which challenge critics by displaying varied blends of human and animal attributes. The hero of “Der Bau” is a furry mammal with claws, but he possesses cognitive, emotional, and possibly spiritual abilities that enable his story to be told. He also develops relationships (chiefly involving his assumptions of enmity toward him on the part of other creatures). He builds, repairs, organizes, and decorates his burrow home and its storage areas, conducts hunting expeditions, and manages his food supply. His actions &lt;strong&gt;[End Page 119]&lt;/strong&gt; and reflections display more understanding than the mere instinctual behavior expected of all members of his species.&lt;/p&gt; &lt;p&gt;In a sense “&lt;em&gt;Der Bau”&lt;/em&gt; is the simple story of one creature, his home, and his work struggling for food and shelter. Yet as Ebarb’s book and other commentaries tell us, his life, particularly his inner life of emotion and thought, is quite complex. Moreover, Ebarb indicates that her explication does not offer the final word on the story, as we glean from the word “Investigating” in the book’s title, and the phrase “Towards an Understanding of” in its subtitle. Both wordings indicate that study and analysis of the story should and will continue. In the last sentence of the book, Ebarb concludes, “Although I offer a primarily Jewish reading of Kafka’s late narrative, my hope for this work is that it will serve as the passage of something beyond by creating a starting point for future interpretive analy","PeriodicalId":40350,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Austrian Studies","volume":"294 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140070146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}