Music, National Identity and the Past in Postwar Austrian Literature by Simon Trevor Walsh A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Germanic Languages and Literatures) in The University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Vanessa H. Agnew, Co-chair Associate Professor Johannes von Moltke, Co-chair Associate Professor Mark A. Clague Professor Julia C. Hell Acknowledgments Warm thanks to my committee members for their encouragement and intellectual support. Vanessa Agnew, my supervisor for most of my time at Michigan, provided guidance, orientation and a good sense of humor from the outset. Johannes von Moltke kindly stepped in as co-chair in during the last year, allowing me to benefit fully from his gentle expertise. Julia Hell was a very incisive reader of my work. And Mark Clague was the best outside-the-department reader one could hope for. The German Department was never a dull place; frequently it was intellectually and socially stimulating. It was always a pleasure to bump into Kalli, Harmut or Andrew. My fellow students were supportive and charming: good on you Emma, Guy, Hannah, Jessica, Kathryn, Molly, Andrea and Andy. Tomek and Mary were gems who crossed my path late. I’ve loved living in Ann Arbor and have accumulated many friends outside the department, above all Kevin, always the opposite of Kevinismus; and my ever faithful euchre and squash buddies Hozi, Sunil and Sharon. Dan is a good mate as well. In the last while I’ve taken much pleasure in pondering my future at Fraser’s with Justus and Catherine – and whomever might care to join us. Whenever I was in Germany (and whenever I wasn’t for that matter) Uli, Rolf-Bernhard and Theresa were my Lebensmenschen. And when I returned home Gareth was always ready with a coffee or two, although sometimes both of them were for him. Sarah, Wenchen, Juliana and Vince are all very dear to me. I thank Nicole for her love, her example and for helping ii me through the dissertation and other dissertation-like things. And finally I thank my family – dad, mum, Alison, Kate, Damos, Levi-Lou for, well, everything! See you soon J iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………….…ii Chapter One: Introduction ………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter Two: “Alles Hören:” Postwar Austria’s Musical Monuments in Thomas Bernhard’s Late Work …………………………………………………………………………..37 Chapter Three: “Gebote, Vernetzungen, Vorschriften”: Music, Gender, and Austria in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin ……………………………………………………………..79 Chapter Four: Kein Land der Neuen Musik: Gert Jonke and Postwar Austria’s Sounds and Silences …………………………………………………………………………... 114 Chapter Five: Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………...145 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………161 iv Chapter One Introduction The Austrian-American filmmaker Billy Wilder once quipped that the Austrians are a brilliant people for having made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.1 Among other things, Wilder’s comment underscores the significant investment in and emphasis on music that has taken place over the course of Austria’s Second Republic, the Austria of today.2 In 1946, one year after the demise of Nazi Germany’s 1000-year Reich, Austria “discovered” its 950 years of history, staging celebrations prominently scored by Mozart’s music.3 After an extremely successful European tour in 1947, the Vienna Philharmonic was told by its Jewish conductor Bruno Walter that their performances had evoked considerable sympathy for the people of Vienna, and that the city remained one whose “culture and musical life evokes the 1 "Die Österreicher haben das Künststück fertig gebracht, aus Beethoven einen Österreicher und aus Hitler einem Deutschn zu machen." Cited as a footnote in Jay Julian Rosellini, “The Seminar for Freshmen as a Platform for Raising Awarenes of Austrian (and German) Studies,” Unterrichtspraxis 45 (Fall 2012), 160. Rosellini notes that Wilder’s “joke” is well-received in the classroom and hence useful as a pedagogical tool for teaching undergraduates about Austria. 2 Cornelia Szabó-Knotik, “Mythos Musik in Österreich: die Zweite Republik,” (Memoria Austriae I. Menschen, Mythen, Zeiten), ed. Emil Brix, Ernst Bruckmüller and Hannes Stekl (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 2004). 3 “Das offizielle Österreich berief Mozart zum Botschaftler des befreiten und bevormundeten Österreich, erkor ihn zum Genius austriacus,” wrote Gert Kerschbaumer and Oliver Rathkolb in reference to the ubiquitous presence of Mozart’s music at the official celebration in 1946 to mark Austria’s 950th birthday. Cited in “Selbstinszienierung und Handlungsbilanz,” 357. “Official Austria appointed Mozart the ambassador of a liberated Austria, chose him as the Genius austriacus” 1 greatest admiration.”4 In 1955 the signing of the Austrian State Treaty, which signaled Austria’s full restoration to sovereignty and the withdrawal of the Allies after a ten-year occupancy, merged symbolically with and was perhaps even trumped by the re-opening of the famed Vienna State Opera. And music quickly became and has remained a cornerstone of the thriving Austrian tourist industry – alone Robert Wise’s 1965 film The Sound of Music has inspired countless Anglo-Americans to pilgrim to Salzburg and surrounds. During the 1980s – the principal decade that this study engages – a promotional booklet prepared by the Austrian Bundespressedienst claimed for Austria the status of a musical superpower –“musikalische Großmachtstellung” – and referred to “music” and “Austria” as terms that were practically synonymous.5 This dissertation focuses on literary manifestation of contemporary Austria’s musical claims. As Vincent Kling has recently put it, Austrian literature is well known for having produced “an unusually large number of authors with strong musical ability and a marked tendency to adapt musical content and form to their literary work.”6 I concentrate here on three authors: Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, and Gert Jonke, each of whom belong to the second generation of Austrian authors who were raised 4 Cited in Hella Pick, Guilty Victim: Austria from the Holocaust to Haider (London & New York: Tauris, 2000), 93. 5 The full sentence reads: “Die europäische Kultur hat in den Schöpfungen der Musik einen besonders charakteristischen Ausdruck gefunden, die Musik Österreichs steht an so zentraler Stelle, daß “Musik” und “Österreich” fast als gleichbedeutend gelten.” Harald Goertz, Österreich: Land der Musik. Wien: Bundespressedienst, 1984, 5. The sentence is repeated in the equivalent Bundespressedienst document from 2000. 6 Vincent Kling “Gert Jonke.” Review of Contemporary Fiction; Spring 2005; 25, 1: 23. 2 during or after the war. The work of each is populated with musical institutions and artifacts, and by characters and sometimes also narrators who discuss, contemplate, listen to, and perform music. Much of the musical activity they describe in their work is identifiably Austrian, both in the sense that Austria invariably forms the narrative setting for their work; and in the sense that the reader often encounters references in their work to local musical venues, musical personalities, and to composers who lived and worked in Austria. The conceptual key to my inquiry lies in the notion, which I have already begun articulating above, of contemporary Austria as the “Land der Musik” or Land of Music. Mayer-Hirzberger offers us an initial purchase on the notion by parsing it into two interlacing rhetorical strands.7 According to the first, Austrians can lay claim to a musical inheritence of unrivalled quantity and quality. This inheritance is grounded in the achievements of the “master” composers of Viennese Classicism, such as Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, complimented by representatives of the Romantic era, for instance Schubert, Brahms, Bruckner, Strauss, and Mahler. Contributing secondarily to this tradition of “serious music” is a popular vein of folk or “lighter” Austrian musical production seen in musical forms such as the “Ländler” and the operetta, genres to which Johann Strauss famously contributed. The second argumentative strand holds that Austrians are an inherently musical people with a special aptitude for music. Although a belief in Austria as a particularly musical land has circulated for at least two centuries 7 Anita. Mayer-Hirzberger,“‘…ein Volk von alters her musikbegabt.’ Der Begriff “Musikland Österreich“ im Ständestaat. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008. 3 (Mayer-Hirzberger’s larger study centers on the cultural meaning of music in Austria’s Corporate State, that lasted from 1934 to 1938), my own interest is in its explicit manifestation after 1945. Bernhard, Jelinek, and Jonke exhibit a literary fixation with music that partially reproduces, even affirms a notion of Austria as the Land of Music. Under their collective pen, contemporary Austria – with Vienna and Salzburg as its sonic focal points – is arguably a country whose residents are preocuppied, whether directly or indirectly, with asserting and maintaining Austria’s status as a profoundly musical place. That said, I submit that the literary-musical participation of these three authors is propelled by much more than a benign wish to celebrate Austria’s musical heritage. My thesis is that, in reflecting ceaslessly on musical Austria, these three authors key their literary-musical accounts to postwar Austria’s troubled trajectory, more specifically to two