Abstract
Hugovon Hofmannsthal's attitude toward Polish Galicia and Congress Poland underwent an evolution during the years immediately before, during, and after the FirstWorldWar. While in Galicia in 1896 and 1898 for military service, he found conditions squalid and depressing. During the war, Hofmannsthal served as military correspondent and reported from the Forest Carpathians. His reports reflect an appropriative attitude toward the region. Hofmannsthal argues that Galicia, and even parts of Congress Poland, belong to Austria-Hungary by virtue of the blood his compatriots shed there and because of Austrian “elasticity” in managing such territories. After the war, Hofmannsthal nostalgically poeticizes the region in his comedies, Der Schwierige and Der Unbestechliche. In Der Turm, adapted from Calderón's La vidaes sueño, the former Kingdom of Poland becomes the locus of poetic reflections on the First World War, and Hofmannsthal foresees a space in which even greater calamities soon befall Austria.
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