AUTHENTICITY AND THE CRITIQUE OF THE TOURISM INDUSTRY IN POSTWAR AUSTRIAN LITERATURE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Nikhil A. Sathe, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor John Davidson Professor Nina Berman _________________________________ Adviser Professor Linda Rugg Germanic Languages and Literatures Copyright by Nikhil Anand Sathe 2003 ABSTRACT Since 1945 the tourism industry has wielded an undeniable influence on Austrian society in social, cultural, political, and especially economic terms. This pervasive presence is evident in postwar literature as well, where numerous authors, especially since the 1970s, have addressed tourism and its myriad consequences for Austrian society. This dissertation examines three postwar Austrian texts that reflect on the impacts of the tourism industry and its imbrication in issues of national identity. This project argues that the concept of authenticity is a unifying element to these works and that it allows the artists to censure the industry and its diverse impacts, to address questions of national identity, and to pursue individual aesthetic or thematic concerns. Functioning as an index of tourism’s negative effects, the concept of authenticity enables the authors to portray the industry as transforming people and place into someone or something other than what they once were. While theorists of tourism have recognized shortcomings of this concept, such as viewing tourism as the sole catalyst of change or assuming a culture’s previous stability and wholeness, this project contends that authenticity, which must be understood as a construction serving rhetorical or ideological aims, remains integral for an understanding of the literary portrayal of tourism. The authors central to this study remain invested in maintaining a concept of ii authenticity because it serves their critique of tourism by highlighting what this industry has eroded or threatens. Since this concept is charged by tensions between an ideal and an actual condition, authenticity then functions as a vehicle with which the artists foreground figures experiencing an instability of meaning with regard to identity. Through these characters, who are unsure of who they should be, the artists treated here address questions of personal or collective identities in an exemplary manner. Hans Lebert’s novel, Der Feuerkreis (1971), depicts the development of the industry to censure Austria’s amnesia about its Nazi past and invention of a national consciousness. His novel envisions an industry that both creates false representations of Austria, which allow an erasure of its Nazi complicity, and places the host in a servile relationship. Norbert Gstrein’s story Einer (1988) gestures toward authenticity through the central character’s alienation as he struggles with the tasks of working as a host under the frayed social conditions in a Tyrolean village, where he must grapple with the constant pressures of being onstage for tourists. The structures of touristic display are replicated in the work’s formal constellation, which reinforces Gstrein’s critique of the host’s predicament and articulates his skepticism of biographical representation. Robert Menasse’s novel Schubumkehr (1995) juxtaposes its protagonist’s identity crisis with the events surrounding the conversion of an economically stagnant village into a resort specializing in soft tourism. A state of inauthenticity appears as the result of both processes because the central character and the village are altered from what they once were, illustrating his critique of history. While this study shows that the concept of authenticity serves different purposes in each author’s individual projects, it locates a strong continuity in their employment of iii this concept for the critique of tourism. Authenticity emerges as an indispensable concept for finding fault with this industry because it highlights the differences resulting from radical changes and because it facilitates the incorporation of broader questions of identity, by revealing uncertainties about who one is or should be. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures for supporting my work and providing me with a Seidlin and a Bonn fellowship. This research also greatly benefited from a Presidential Fellowship from the Graduate School of the Ohio State University. For allowing me access to their research facilities, I wish to thank the library system of the University of Salzburg, the Literaturhaus Wien, and the Innsbrucker Zeitungsarchiv. This project benefited from the kindness and wisdom of a number of scholars at the Ohio State University and other institutions. I would thus like to express my thanks to Professor Gregor Hens for his thoughts on various drafts, Professor Klaus Zeyringer for his comments on an early conception of this project, Professor Margy Gerber for sharing her research and ideas with me, and especially Professor Geoffrey Howes for his keen insights during coffeehouse conversations and for his enthusiasm for my work. I am particularly indebted to Professor Kathryn Corl, whose masterful training provided me with the skills to balance the demands of my first year teaching a full load with those of my last year working on this project. This dissertation could not have been completed without the guidance and generosity of the members of my committee. I would like to thank Professor Nina Berman for agreeing to serve on my project at a late stage in its development and v especially for her perceptive and challenging observations. My gratitude also goes to Professor Linda Rugg for helping me initiate this study and for her insightful comments on its results. For their support I would also like to thank my family and friends, all of whom cannot be mentioned here, but whose efforts and kindness are greatly appreciated. In particular I would like to thank the members of my dissertation support group, Cynthia Chalupa, Jennifer William, Yogini Joglekar, and Christine Moeller-Sahling, for their suggestions, encouragement, wit, and friendship. I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my adviser, Professor John Davidson, for his untiring patience, boundless enthusiasm, and his incisive suggestions and ideas. His generous mentoring and acumen have greatly advanced my intellectual growth and were instrumental in enabling me to complete this project. Any shortcomings or weaknesses in it are mine alone. Above all, I would like to thank Andrea Herzog for proofreading my manuscript, for discussing with me the finer points of language and the phenomenon of tourism in Austria, and especially for her patience, encouragement, and support that have nurtured and guided me through this project. vi VITA November 29, 1969............................Born – Sholapur, India 1991....................................................B.A. German/Geography, West Virginia University 1993....................................................M.A. German, Bowling Green State University 1993-5 ................................................Teaching Assistant, Fulbright Program: Austrian- American Academic Exchange Program, Austria 1995-2002 ..........................................Graduate Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University 2002-Present ......................................Visiting Instructor of German, Ohio University PUBLICATIONS 1. Review of Selbstportrait mit einer Toten, by Norbert Gstrein. Modern Austrian Literature 33: 3/4 (2000): 186-8. 2. “‘Das ganze Land aus Kunststoff:’ The Problem of Authenticity in Two Austrian Touristic Dystopias” Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Social Imagery, March 9-11, 2000: The Image of the Twentieth Century. Eds. Will Wright and Steven Kaplan. Pueblo: SISSI/University of Southern Colorado, 2000. 507-514. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Germanic Languages and Literatures vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Vita ............................................................................................................................... vii Chapters: 1. Introduction............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Authenticity and tourism’s negative effects ..............................................12 1.2 Issues of Austrian identity and tourism .....................................................22 1.3 Project outline............................................................................................29 2. “Unsere Berge sind Berge von Toten”: Hans Lebert’s Der Feuerkreis................ 37 2.1 Introduction................................................................................................37 2.1.1 The reception of Der Feuerkreis ................................................... 40 2.2 Authenticity and the critique of tourism in Der Feuerkreis .......................44 2.2.1 Anti-tourism.................................................................................. 45 2.2.2 The relation of tourism critique to questions of Austrian national identity .........................................................................................