The Hermeneutics of Democracy: Nestroy, Horvath, Turrini and the Development of the "Volksstück"

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In November 1970, the Institut fur Osterreichkunde held its tenth Literarhistorikertagung in St. Polten. One of the speakers at that conference, Burgtheater dramaturge Heinz Gerstinger, presented a paper entitled Das auf dem gegenwartigen Theater. Gerstinger began his discussion of the genre and its place within the theatre by noting that, Noch vor wenigen Jahren ware ein Referat mit dem Titel `Das auf dem gegenwartigen Theater' bestenfalls bei einem Kursus fur Dilettantenbuhnen moglich gewesen, dort, wo man kritiklos akzeptiert (93). Gerstinger's remarks allude to the way in which the Volksstuck was changing the literary landscape of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. At the same time, his comments also indicate how these changes were altering the concept of the Volksstuck itself. Within a few years a dramatic form once rejected as gesunkenes Kulturgut had been elevated to such an extent that the title of a 1978 article proclaimed: Heute sind alle guten Stucke Volksstucke (Profitlich). Two major developments advanced the rehabilitation of the Volksstuck. In the mid-sixties, theatrical producers and literary critics rediscovered the dramas of Odon von Horvath and Marieluise Fleiser. The reemergence of these texts, in turn, provided a new generation of playwrights with the impetus to create a Volksstuck addressing contemporary socio-political realities. Authors such as Peter Turrini, Wolfgang Bauer, and Harald Sommer in Austria, together with Franz Xaver Kroetz, Martin Sperr, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder in West Germany, contributed to reestablishing the Volksstuck as a viable and popular literary genre.