Saturday, March 15, 2014
Senate (Omni Shoreham)
The year is 1945 A.D. Austria declared itself to be the first victim of National Socialism.
The country prevented its citizens from learning from its past. Well, not entirely. One small
group of indomitable intellectuals held out against historical amnesia. Despite the state’s
paradigm, writers and artists have worked continuously since then to prevent self-righteous oblivion and to broaden the understanding of the insoluble conundrum of how
National Socialism and its atrocities could have unfolded in this brutal manner precisely in
the land of poets and thinkers, of which the modern Austrian nation-state is one of the
heirs apparent.
In my research project, I am able to show on the basis of a two-year cultural
anthropological field study what importance writers have for the Austrian collective and its
nation-state in dealing with historical experiences and how history is negotiated in
literature as part of the public sphere. Until today, no topic has been more often cited to
criticize civil society deficits than National Socialism and the Holocaust. In Austria, an
increasingly powerful minority that has gained strong governmental support is currently
teaching these lessons from the past in order to fight against the exclusionary and
xenophobic opinions that still prevail in Austrian society. The topic is particularly current
because the economically powerful country recently has had to deal with an increased
number of immigrants.
The country prevented its citizens from learning from its past. Well, not entirely. One small
group of indomitable intellectuals held out against historical amnesia. Despite the state’s
paradigm, writers and artists have worked continuously since then to prevent self-righteous oblivion and to broaden the understanding of the insoluble conundrum of how
National Socialism and its atrocities could have unfolded in this brutal manner precisely in
the land of poets and thinkers, of which the modern Austrian nation-state is one of the
heirs apparent.
In my research project, I am able to show on the basis of a two-year cultural
anthropological field study what importance writers have for the Austrian collective and its
nation-state in dealing with historical experiences and how history is negotiated in
literature as part of the public sphere. Until today, no topic has been more often cited to
criticize civil society deficits than National Socialism and the Holocaust. In Austria, an
increasingly powerful minority that has gained strong governmental support is currently
teaching these lessons from the past in order to fight against the exclusionary and
xenophobic opinions that still prevail in Austrian society. The topic is particularly current
because the economically powerful country recently has had to deal with an increased
number of immigrants.
