Austrian People Research Articles

Walking the talk? The educational agenda of the Austrian populist radical right: From discourse to policymaking

This paper explores the educational policy positions in programmatic and parliamentary discourse by the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and their actual policy measures implemented in executive office. The FPÖ is one of the most successful populist radical right parties (PRRPs) in Western Europe and also served in two periods of government with the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) (2000–2005; 2017–2019), providing a fruitful record over time. Our analysis over three decades (1990–2018) reveals that even though it’s not a highly salient policy issue, education policy has indeed become an ideological battleground for the FPÖ. At large, it uses education policy claims to substantiate the ideological core pillars of PRRPs, yet it also delivers on many of these claims once in government. This is particularly true for its culturalist claims, which trigger an increasing convergence by the centre-right partner. In contrast, the always-existing congruence of redistributive claims results in several policy decisions in both periods of government.

Quo vadis, Republic of Austria?

The article examines the problems of the ruling coalition of the Austrian People’s Party and the Greens, led by Chancellor Karl Nehammer. In the context of growing escalation in Europe and the world, it is becoming more difficult for Vienna to maintain its previous position as a neutral state. Will the ruling circles take into account the voters’ request to preserve the previous comfort of life and the worthy position of Austria on the continent will be shown by elections to the European Parliament and the National Council in 2024.

Transforming Marginalised Politics into Mainstream Agenda—“Shameless Normalisation”

In this paper, I discuss the swing to the (far-)right in (Austrian) party politics during the election campaign and national election on October 15, 2017. This transformation is caused, I claim, by a process of normalisation, an accommodation to the, sometimes also extreme-right, agenda of formerly right-wing populist parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). The election campaign of both the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the FPÖ focussed primarily on migration and refugee politics, based on a politics of fear and resentment. After first attempting to define the phenomenon of right-wing populism, I trace how tabooed and extreme right contents slowly became acceptable, as soon as the ÖVP shamelessly integrated some (not all) aspects of the FPÖ’s election program.

Migration debates in the political party arena during the Covid‐19 pandemic in Austria

AbstractThe Covid‐19 pandemic highlighted the economic contribution of migrant workers in maintaining essential services and access to goods. This new perspective on migrants as essential workers raised expectations in migration studies that it could reinvigorate an inclusive setting in terms of migration debates and policies. Building on this potential, we examine migration debates in the political party arena with a focus on centrist parties. The analysis focuses on Austria, a country with a high dependence on migrant labor in key sectors and a long‐standing contestation of migration across the political party spectrum. Drawing on an analysis of parliamentary contributions and press releases by the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) during the pandemic, the study finds that the debates did not change fundamentally. Whilst external shocks such as the Covid‐19 pandemic have a limited potential to reverse the focus on unwanted migration in European party politics, crises can lead the political center to reemphasize bifurcation strategies in response to shifts in public discourse, as this study of the Austrian case during the pandemic suggests.

Back to the Stone Age: Europe's Mainstream Right and Climate Change

AbstractWhile populist radical right parties’ stances on climate change are well‐researched, accounts of Europe's mainstream right parties’ actions in this policy area are less common. This article provides a survey of the approach of four European centre‐right parties—the Christian Democratic Union in Germany, the Moderate Party in Sweden, the People's Party in Spain and the Austrian People's Party—to climate change in recent years. It examines some of the key strategic challenges that mainstream right parties are facing and their implications for climate policy, finding evidence of common approaches among this party family to climate policy.

Austria: Political Developments and Data in 2022

AbstractAustrian politics in 2022 was affected by high levels of public dissatisfaction. The year was dominated by pandemic fatigue, rising inflation and the reconditioning of the so‐called Austrian People's Party/Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) corruption‐affaire. Consequently, the national government parties of the Christian‐Democratic ÖVP and the Greens/Die Grünen–Die Grüne Alternative (GRÜNE) further lost at the polls, while the main opposition parties—especially the right‐wing Austrian Freedom Party/Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs—gained public support. The presidential election in October confirmed a second term for the sitting President, Alexander Van der Bellen. The regional election in Tyrol brought severe losses for the regional (and national) governing parties, ÖVP and Greens. Despite its losses, the ÖVP secured its position in regional government and formed a coalition with the Austrian Social Democratic Party/Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs after the election in Tyrol.

Policy Entrepreneurs of European Disintegration? The Case of Austrian Asylum Governance After 2015

The re-establishment of border controls in the Schengen Area since 2015 and repeated contestation of the Common European Asylum System have made the policy sector of migration and asylum a topic of growing importance for European (dis)integration research. This article investigates differentiated disintegration and the factors that facilitate member states’ counter-projects to core-EU integration trajectories. Drawing on the concept of policy entrepreneurship and based on an analysis of policy documents, we use the case of Austria to examine how the government coalition, the Austrian People’s Party, and their chairman, Sebastian Kurz, have shaped European governance of asylum and borders in the aftermath of the 2015–2016 crisis. We first show how the Austrian government performed a shift towards bilateralism and multilateralism outside the EU framework by using transnational party alliances. Second, we outline a policy discourse that justified Schengen-internal bordering based on asylum politics, which eventually served to delegitimize Schengen’s enlargement in 2022. The article contributes conceptually to understanding differentiated disintegration in the sector of migration and asylum, and points to potential drivers of this development.

The Purdue Pegboard Test: Normative Data From 1,355 Healthy People From Austria

Abstract Importance: The Purdue Pegboard Test (PPT) is widely used as a measure of manual dexterity. Declining manual dexterity may predict cognitive decline among elderly people, but normative data for this population are scarce. Objective: To identify demographic and clinical predictors of PPT results in normal middle-aged and elderly Austrian people and to provide norms stratified by significant determinants. Design: A prospective, community-based cohort study using baseline data of participants from two study panels (1991–1994 and 1999–2003). Setting: Monocentric study Participants: 1,355 healthy, randomly selected, community-dwelling people ages 40 to 79 yr. Method: Extensive clinical examination, including completion of the PPT. Outcomes and Measures: The number of pegs placed within a 30-s time limit on four subtests: using the right hand, left hand, both hands, and assembly (within 60 s), respectively. Demographic outcomes were the highest grade achieved. Results: For all four subtests, increasing age (βs = −0.400 to −0.118, SEs = 0.006 to 0.019, p < .001) and male sex (βs = −1.440 to −0.807, SEs = 0.107 to 0.325, p < .001) was related to worse test results. Among vascular risk factors, diabetes (βs = −1.577 to −0.419, SEs = 0.165 to 0.503, p < .001) was related to worse test results but explained only a small portion (0.7%–1.1%) of the variability in PPT performance. Conclusions and Relevance: We provide age- and sex-specific norms of the PPT for a middle-aged and elderly population. The data represent useful reference values when assessing manual dexterity in older age groups. What This Article Adds: Advancing age and male sex relate to worse performance on the PPT in a community-dwelling cohort without signs and symptoms of neurological disease. Vascular risk factors explain only very little of the variance of test results in our population. Our study adds to the limited age- and sex-specific norms of the PPT among middle-aged and older people.

From private phones to public screens: Cross-media recontextualization of chat discourse in the case of the Austrian ÖVP corruption affair

The profound establishment of text-based interaction via mobile messenger services has not only changed interpersonal communication, but also reshaped its quotability. Drawing on the notion of recontextualization, this paper investigates the cross-media transfer-and-transformation of text messages from their former confidential contexts into public media environments. The data are drawn from the media discourse on the corruption affair of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), which was triggered by the publication of confidential chat messages in the fall of 2021. Comparing the presentation of text messages in the journalistic media with their intertextual antecedents (in investigative files and related documents), the analysis highlights several linguistic and visual transformations. The findings demonstrate how formerly private chat interactions have been represented in media discourse and reveal different multimodal forms of cross-media quotation, ranging from linguistic replay and visual restaging to elaborate forms in which text messaging is audio-visually re-enacted. These modes of cross-media recontextualization differ in the degree to which the mediality of the digital chat discourse is conveyed or imitated. Through this media linguistic lens, the study contributes to the theory of recontextualization and raises the question what concept of quotation and re-enactment is appropriate and linguistically due in the age of a deep digitalization of everyday communication.

HRIŠĆANSKA DEMOKRATIJA U AUSTRIJI

The aim of this scientific paper is an understanding and an explanation of the place and the role of the Catholic Church in Austrian society but also in the Austrian political system for which say that is secular. After the introductory part which indicates on the opposition of the Catholic Church according to communism and liberalism in the past and which underlines the so-called Catholic third way actually the way of Christian Democracy, the first part of the scientific paper describes in detail the basic elements that led to the creation of Christian Democracy, among which is primarily the continuous Political Catholicism from which grew up the so-called Catholic Corporatism, and then follows the second part of the scientific paper which explains the implementation of such Political Catholicism in the Austrian political system through a formation of the so-called Social Partnership which forms the fondation of the Austrian political system and which is in fact the successor of Catholic Corporatism. Key words: Political Catholicism, Catholic Corporatism, Austrian People`s Party, Social Partnership, Christian Democracy.

Austria: Political Developments and Data in 2021

AbstractThis entry includes data on changes in national government composition, party leadership changes and parliamentary composition in Austria in 2021, as well as election results from a subnational election. It covers the Austrian coalition government between the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Greens, led by Sebastian Kurz, in the second year of handling the Covid‐19 pandemic. Judicial and parliamentary investigations of politicians and Cabinet officials from the Austrian People's Party, including Federal Chancellor and ÖVP party leader Kurz, resulted in the latter's retreat from politics. Over the course of the year, the federal government was led by three different Federal Chancellors from the ÖVP.

Proměny právního postavení ženy v Rakousku ve 20. století

For a long time, legislation codified the unequal status of women in Austrian society in relation to men. Nevertheless, in the early 1970s, some blatantly discriminatory provisions based on the General Civil Code (1811) and the Criminal Code (1852) were still in force. Although Austria was one of the first European states to grant women universal suffrage, their position did not improve significantly in fact or in law during the First Republic. After World War II, the ruling coalition of the Austrian People’s Party and the Socialist Party of Austria became aware of the archaic nature of family and criminal law. Substantial changes in this area were hindered / prevented by the need for government compromise. During the one-color social democratic governments led by Bruno Kreisky, several important legal norms were adopted. For example, the reform of the criminal law brought about the legalization of adult homosexuality, zoophilia, the introduction of fines instead of imprisonment, and above all, the legalization of abortion. The reform of family law meant, for example, the equalization of illegitimate children with children born in marriage, the introduction of the principle of equal rights in marriage for men and women, and changes in the area of community property and divorce. From the mid-1980s to the end of the millennium, women’s issues policy was based on the renewed cooperation between the SPÖ and the ÖVP at the federal level. The grand coalition continued to separate the policies in support of women and family policy. There was the introduction of marital and partner rape into the criminal code, as well as the possibility of equal maternity leave for men and women. Despite significant progress, the lower woman’s financial remuneration for identical work persisted, as did their rather negligible representation in politics at federal, state, and municipal levels, not to mention their attainment of leading positions in state-owned enterprises and private companies.

Between opportunities and constraints: right-wing populists as designers of migrant integration policy

ABSTRACT Anti-immigrant claims are seen as key to the success of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) in parliamentary opposition. Yet migrant integration policies adopted by PRRPs in executive power are still a blind spot in research. Some scholars assess their policy impact as weak and attribute this to a lack of robust policy suggestions, others point to their taming by mainstream coalition partners and by government responsibility. Recently though, PRRPs have found more favourable political opportunities in the increased salience of migration and a rightward shift of centre-right parties. Drawing on policy documents from the Austrian coalition government of the radical right Austrian Freedom Party and the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (2017-2019), this paper investigates policy designs and constraints in the area of migrant integration. Our study points out the impact of PRRPs in government on integration policy through strengthening regulatory instruments, weakening distributive instruments and using organizational instruments to centralize policy implementation at the expense of NGOs. Yet this approach not only alters the substance of policy designs, the radical right also imprints a populist mode of confrontational and accelerated policy-making. Against these changes, taming is left to political and especially institutional constraints at national and international levels.

Jelinek’s Rechnitz and Greenberg’s The Testament: Two Executions of One Massacre

Jelinek’s Rechnitz and Greenberg’s The Testament: Two Executions of One Massacre Hartmut Heep On March 24, 1945, approximately one thousand Jewish forced labourers were transported ten miles from Köszeg in Hungary to the Austrian border town of Rechnitz. Nazi Germany had annexed Austria on March 11, 1938, and throughout World War II, thousands of Austrians fought alongside German soldiers. Soviet troops reached the outskirts of Vienna by April 3, 1945 and liberated the Austrian capital ten days later. The deported Hungarian Jews were supposed to fortify the southeast trench of Rechnitz, in order to impede the Red Army invasion. Severely weakened and malnourished, one hundred eighty of the male Jews were considered unfit to perform this manual labour. It was decided that they had to be eliminated. That same night of March 24, 1945, the Countess Margit Thyssen-Batthyány (1911–89), the mistress of the Nazi Hans Joachim Oldenburg, hosted a soirée at her castle in Rechnitz. The countess, the daughter of Heinrich Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon, was born in the castle. In 1933, Margit married Count Ivan von Batthyány. Like the family Thyssen, the Batthyánys, whose noble roots can be traced back to the ninth century, are associated with power and money. The countess was known for her close ties to SS officers and Nazi collaborators. Among the invited regular officers was the local Nazi chief Franz Podezin, who handed out guns to the guests. The British journalist David Litchfield suggests that fourteen to sixteen of the guests murdered the one hundred eighty unfit Jews during the party. Eighteen Jews, who had been forced to bury the victims in a mass grave, were themselves killed the following day. The grave was never found, nor were the perpetrators. On March 29, 1945, Rechnitz surrendered to the Soviet Army without much resistance. Auschwitz had been liberated on January 27, 1945. The facts related to this event remain murky. Walter Manoschek, for instance, discovered inconsistencies between the official court files and the judgement of the [End Page 476] Austrian People’s Court. The German magazine Der Spiegel quotes the German antisemitism researchers Wolfgang Benz and Winfried Garscha of the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance. Both argue that the party guests did not participate in the murder. The one hundred eighty murdered Jews were too weak to work or march and therefore, according to official Nazi policy, “were murdered everywhere at the time” (Spiegel). Eventually, the South African journalist Steven Krawitz confirms Litchfield’s theory. Szilvia Pais-Horváth recaptures the research of the last descendant of a Rechnitz victim, the Hungarian surgeon Gábor Vadász. All sixteen attempts to find the mass grave have so far been unsuccessful. Pais-Horváth reports that “some of the prisoners were beaten to death; others were hunted down or shot in the head.” She also states, “prisoners from the castle cellar were ordered to dig graves. One of them told an organization helping those who had been deported in 1945–46 that they dug up nine L-shaped graves, two meters wide and two meters deep.” Franz Podezin, the alleged mastermind of the massacre, disappeared in 1945, Pais-Horváth assumes “with the help of the Baroness.” Margit Thyssen-Batthyány moved to Switzerland, where she died peacefully in 1989. This massacre has been the focus of several artistic productions. The film Totschweigen (1994), directed by Margarete Heinrich and Eduard Erne, is a documentary in search of the mass grave. Unable to find it, even though Heinrich and Erne participated in the search, the documentary shifts its focus to interviews with the local population. Katya Krylova calls Totschweigen “a powerful visual language for the repression of memory in Rechnitz” (70). The documentary leaves no doubt that the grave is a metaphor for a missing chapter in Austrian history. Elfriede Jelinek’s play Rechnitz (Der Würgeengel) (2008) presents a paradigm shift in the traditional Holocaust discussion. Neither the search for the grave nor the suffering of the Jewish victims takes centre stage. Her play intends to extort a confession from the local Austrian perpetrators, whose collective memory has gone missing just as much as the...

The Success of Sebastian Kurz in 2017 Austrian Parliamentary Elections

The article deals with the peculiarities of the extraordinary elections in the Republic of Austria in 2017, as well as the main reasons for the success of the renewed Austrian People's Party (ANP) and its leader, Sebastian Kurz, the former youngest foreign minister and chairman of the OSCE. The main results of the elections to the lower house of parliament, the National Council are in details analyzed, whrere the political parties have overcome the 4 percent barrier. The main conclusions of well-known domestic and foreign political scientists and experts are in details characterized, who evaluated the reasons for supporting of right and far- right political parties in the European countries, in particular in Austria, which have received considerable support in the elections, which was caused by public dissatisfaction with the ineffective policy of the European Union, which after the international financial crisis, terrorist threats, problems with migrants, refugees, and in recent years a rather aggressive foreign policy of Russia, is forced to face new challenges, giving an adequate response, which plays an important role for Ukraine, because our country sees its future in close multi-vector cooperation with the EU. It is important for Ukraine support of the European Union and European countries, in particular with Austria, because our country is interested in further fruitful development of bilateral relations between Ukraine and Austria and cooperation in various sectors of the economy, as well as support for European and Euro-Atlantic course. Ukraine is able to give an adequate response only in close cooperation with European countries. Ukraine is affected by domestic political changes both within the European Union and domestic political changes within European countries, namely which political parties win and which political coalitions are formed, as well as the influence of pro-Russian political forces in the party landscape.

Surveilling and Criminalizing Austrian Muslims: The Case of ‘Political Islam’

In this commentary, I deal with how the governing conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) managed successfully to fundamentally reshape the state’s politics towards Muslim communities by introducing the terminology of ‘political Islam’ in the public discourse. I show how this affected the political discourse, how the governing ÖVP has been using institutions to produce knowledge in order to criminalize Muslimness, and how this also affected the work of the domestic intelligence agency and subsequently police operations. I argue that by introducing the notion of ‘political Islam’ came a criminalization of vocal and/or organized Muslims as well as anti-racist actors.

The Austrian People’s Party: an anti-immigrant right party?

ABSTRACT This article looks at the immigration profile of the Austrian centre right. It examines whether the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) can be considered an anti-immigrant party by systematically analysing the party’s electoral manifestos from 1994 to 2019. From previously more ambiguous positions, the article identifies an amplification of restrictive positions after 2017. In the electoral manifestos of 2017 and 2019, immigration plays a key role, with a strong focus on Muslim immigrants and their descendants as a ‘cultural other’. A major driver of the explicit anti-immigration profile was the restructuring of the ÖVP into a leadership party, which effectively side-lined concentrated interest groups. The article concludes that the party can be classified today as anti-immigrant actor, able to attract anti-immigrant votes.

The Austrian People's Party and the Creation of the Second Austrian Republic (1945—1955)

In this article, the reader is offered not just the history of the formation of the Austrian People's Party, but in a broader sense, the internal political development of the Republic of Austria after 1945. Based on a wide range of historical sources, the development of the political consensus in Austria in the post-war period, the peculiarities of the formation of the foreign policy course and the choice of the policy of neutrality by Austria are shown. Special attention is paid to major Austrian political figures and their vision of strengthening and further development of Austria after the war.

Austria in Transit: Displacement and the Nation State ed. by Deborah Holmes and Áine McMurtry

Reviewed by: Austria in Transit: Displacement and the Nation State ed. by Deborah Holmes and Áine McMurtry Katya Krylova Deborah Holmes and Áine McMurtry, eds., Austria in Transit: Displacement and the Nation State. Austrian Studies, vol. 26, 2018. 304 pp. Volume 26 of the British journal Austrian Studies, guest-edited by Áine McMurtry, brings together articles arising from papers originally presented at a three-day workshop held at King's College London in 2017. The seventeen contributions of the volume explore how writers and artists in Austria—which shares its borders wiTheight countries and has always been a key European transit point—thematize issues such as migration, flight, displacement, and persecution in their works. The volume is set against the background of the ongoing European refugee crisis, which intensified in 2015 when Austria found itself on two major refugee routes, as McMurtry traces in the volume's introduction. The desperate situation of vast numbers of refugees from North Africa and the Middle East trying to flee to safety in Europe was tragically highlighted by the abandoned truck discovered on a motorway in Burgenland on August 27, 2015, containing the bodies of seventy-one refugees who were Attempting to flee from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Lindsey Hilsum's photograph of the abandoned truck forms the volume cover image and the starting point for McMurtry's introduction. The wake of the 2015 refugee crisis saw an escalation of anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric, both on the part of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and by the centerright Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), which under the leadership of Sebastian Kurz saw the party adopt a hard-line approach toward border control, more commonly associated with the FPÖ, and ultimately form a coalition government with the far-right party (lasting until May 2019) following the 2017 legislative election. Additionally, as McMurtry highlights, Austria's tenureship of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2018 (2) has allowed the country to influence international policy on immigration and asylum on a broader European level. For this reason, in this domain, as in so many others, Austria constitutes an important case study, both in geopolitical terms and in the cultural responses from the country's writers, filmmakers, and artists to one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time. Following the introduction, the seventeen contributions to the volume encompass articles on literary texts, film, music, and photography. This diversity of the volume's contributions is one of the strengths of Austria in Transit. Beyond traditional articles, the anthology also includes an "in [End Page 109] conversation" piece between Austrian composer Thomas Larcher and musicologist Michael Haas—which is prefaced by Martin Brady's article on images and commemoration in Larcher's Symphonie Nr. 2 "Kenotaph" (2015–2016)—as well as an interview with writer Alma Hadžibeganović conducted by Iga Nowicz. The collection predominantly focuses on literary texts, with Wiebke Sievers's article providing an overview of multilingualism in the Austrian literary field, from the period following World War I to the present day. She highlights the role of institutions in affording writers of immigrant origin recognition, with Austrian multilingual writers gaining visibility only in the 1990s. Three articles on dramatic texts responding to migration and refugee movements follow. These include Monika Mokre's analysis of Homohalal (2013–2018), a theater project that grew out of the Refugee Protest Camp Vienna and that, according to Mokre, suffered from a variety of structural problems while, nevertheless, facilitating inclusion. In her discussion of Kathrin Röggla's works, Áine McMurtry positions these as "texts in transit" (72) thematizing precarious subjectivity, which is especially evident in die unvermeidlichen's intertextuality with Ingeborg Bachmann's figure of the interpreter in Simultan (1972). Concluding the section on dramatic texts, Jane Wilkinson highlights how Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek thematizes "a crisis of hospitality" (105) in her treatment of Austrian and European responses to refugees in Die Schutzbefohlenen (2013). As well as treating responses to acute refugee crises, several of the volume's contributions focus on works that thematize migrants' experiences over the longer term, particularly with regard to language. Christine Ivanovic's...

New Perspectives on Contemporary Austrian Literature and Culture ed. by Katya Krylova

Reviewed by: New Perspectives on Contemporary Austrian Literature and Culture ed. by Katya Krylova Helga Schreckenberger New Perspectives on Contemporary Austrian Literature and Culture. Edited by Katya Krylova. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2018. Pp. 440. Cloth $90.95. ISBN 978-304319843. The volume of sixteen essays grew out of the international conference "Contemporary Austrian Literature, Film, and Culture" held at the University of Nottingham in 2015. The aim of this conference was to examine how various shifts in Austrian society over the past thirty years find their expression in Austrian literature and culture. Indeed, starting with the Waldheim Affair of 1986–1988 that initiated the long-overdue confrontation with the country's Nazi past, Austrian society has undergone a number of important transformations. The Balkan Wars (1991–2001) and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as Austria's entry into the European Union in 1995, led to increased immigration. The influx of migrants caused a nationalistic backlash and the rise of populist right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), leading to its inclusion in two coalition governments with the conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) in 2000 and 2017. As the editor of the volume, Katya Krylova, points out, Austrian writers, filmmakers, and cultural practitioners, who were the driving forces behind the protest movement against Kurt Waldheim's presidency and his attempts to diminish his involvement with the Nazi war machine, [End Page 221] have continued in this role. They rallied against the populist anti-immigration referendum of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party in 1992/93 and protested against the FPÖ's presence in the government and against the current coalition's policies. As this volume shows, these political and social events have been refracted in Austrian literature and culture. Krylova has grouped the contributions in three parts, emphasizing their interconnectedness and highlighting points of comparison and contrast. The first part, "Austria and the World: Transnational Perspectives," focuses on works and authors with a transnational perspective. This includes changing representations of the Middle East in postwar literature (Dagmar Lorenz); Ruth Beckermann's recent documentary films, the 2011 road movie American Passages and her 2013 exploration of the European migrant crisis Those Who Go Those Who Stay (Katya Krylova); and Robert Menasse's fictional and nonfictional analysis of the European Union (Valentina Serra). The articles in part 2, "Space, Place, and Boundary Crossing in Contemporary Austrian Literature and Film," analyze ways in which films and texts claim, occupy, and subvert spaces. This includes the adaptation of the Western film genre for foregrounding the injustices of migration policies in films by Erwin Wagenhofer, Anja Salomonowitz, Florian Flicker, and Andreas Prohaska (Nikhil Sathe); the negotiation of both national borders and those between groups in Felix Mitterer's Verkaufte Heimat (Ursula Schneider/Annette Steinsiek), the importance of topography for identity constructions in Anna Kim's novels (Silke Schwaiger); and the destruction of boundaries in the texts of Thomas Bernhard and Ernst Jandl (Lydia Hayder). "Confronting the Nazi Past," the third part, demonstrates that this topic has not lost its currency for Austrian writers. The contributions in this part focus on family novels (Magdolna Orosz) and "Grossmutterliteratur" (Petra Bagley), which examine forms of personal and historical memories. In addition, Robert Schindel's novels Gebürtig (1992) and Der Kalte (2013) are read as attempts of historicizing the 1980s akin to Balzac's comédie humaine (Joseph Moser). The final article offers a convincing, clear-sighted analysis of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's flawed attempt to shed light on its activities during the Nazi era and restore its image as "national treasure" (Lauren Freede). This volume certainly does justice to its title and it impresses with those articles that offer innovative approaches and nuanced readings of the texts. Particularly successful in this regard is Anne-Marie Scholz's contrasting Ilse Aichinger's autobiographical text Film und Verhängnis. Blitzlichter auf ein Leben (2001) with the tourist industry's narrative about the film The Third Man. Brigitte Timmermann, founder of the Third Man tour, uses the cult film to forge a modernist high cultural conception of Austria that shifts away from the country's collaboration with Nazi Germany...