Casual Brutalities: Hans Lebert's "Die Wolfshaut", Gerhard Fritsch's "Fasching" and Austrian Collective Memory

Abstract

Hans Lebert’s Die Wolfshaut [The Wolf ’s Fell, 1960] and Gerhard Fritsch’s Fasching [Shrovetide, 1967] are powerful narratives that address the continued existence of the fascist mentality in 1950s rural Austria. Though both contain allusions to Germany’s racial war in Eastern Europe, neither of them deals explicitly with the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the status of the Nazi period within post-war Austrian collective memory is central to an understanding of both the novels themselves and their reception history. After situating the novels in the context of post-war Austria, I analyse them from the perspective of collective memory, before turning to the question of the texts’ reception and their position within Austrian literary history.