252 Reviews 'Reisen ist leben, dann wird das Leben reich und lebendig. ' Der d?nische Dichter Hans Christian Andersen und ?sterr?ch. By Sven Hakon Rossel. (Wechsel beziehungen Osterreich - Norden 3). Vienna: Edition Praesens. 2004. 157 pp. 26,10. isbn 3-7069-0264-8. Outside Denmark, the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is almost exclusively known for his fairy tales. However, Andersen was also the author of several novels and plays, of travel books, autobiographical works, and hundreds of pages of diaries and correspondence, which show him as a man who travelled widely throughout Europe and beyond and thereby established a network of contacts that furthered his reputation outside his home country. Sven Hakon Rossel's study focuses particularly on Andersen's six journeys toAustria between 1834 an(^ 1872. The seven chapters of the book follow the journeys chronologically, endeavouring to analyse the reasons for Andersen's frequent choice ofAustria as a travel destination and to examine his behaviour en route. Rossel paints the picture of a somewhat hyperactive traveller who takes in asmany sights, people and cultural events as he possibly can, who spends time in intellectual circles inwhich he becomes increasingly respected and admired as an important and internationally renowned writer, who is particularly interested in the performing arts and therefore a frequent guest inVienna's theatres, but who also proves to be a precise and sensitive observer of everyday lifeon the streets around him. Rossel repeatedly comments on Andersen's ambivalent attitude to travelling, apparent in the mixture of positive and negative reactions to his experiences inAustria and elsewhere, and in the contradiction between the longing for the stimulating impressions that his travels offered him, and the frequent complaints about the discomforts that travel in the nineteenth century could mean. According toRossel, this ambivalence is typical ofAndersen's personality. Another important aspect of Rossel 's study is the comparison between the different ways inwhich Andersen reflected on his journeys in his diaries, travel books and autobiographies. Rossel seems to suggest thatAndersen's notations in his diaries or letters can be taken as 'authentic', as opposed to the 'fictionalized', more elaborate and embellished version in a travelogue likeEn Digters Basar [A Poets Bazaar, 1841] or in an autobiographical novel likeMit Livs Eventyr [The Story ofmy Life, 1855]. This is a somewhat questionable assumption, especially when presented without any theoretical underpinning. A study that focuses on travel and on literary travel discourse cannot completely ignore any theoretical framework in thisfield, even if it ismainly driven by a biographical interest, as Rossel 's observations undoubtedly are. Simply to state thatAndersen's travels provided him with motifs and themes for his works, and were represented in a more poetic and more elaborate way in his travel books and autobiographies than inhis diaries, undervalues the richness and interest of thematerial that has been examined for this study. Overall, the study is thus descriptive rather than analytical, and unfortunately it also does not really provide any new insights into the nature and status of foreigners' perceptions of Austria. More than once, analytical insights are promised and references to later pages are given in brackets, but then these AUSTRIAN STUDIES, I3, 2OO5 253 insights do not materialize, or at least are not linked clearly enough to the earlier promise. This lack of coherence, as well as some grammatical and orthographical errors, should have been rooted out by a more thorough proofreading of the manuscript. Finally, in a study that relies so heavily on sources originally written in another language, itneeds to be made quite clear where any translations of given quotations are taken from, or if the translations provided are the author's own. As a source of interesting little anecdotes and details of Andersen's connection with and travels inAustria, as well as an example of the networking of European writers and intellectuals in the nineteenth century, Rossel 's study provides informative material. Any analytical conclusions from thismaterial, however, especially against the background of travel literature, will have to be largely drawn by the readers themselves. University College Dublin Sabine Str?mper-Krobb Habsburg postcolonial. Machtstrukturen und kollektivesGed?chtnis. Ed. by Johannes Feichtinger, Ursula Prutsch and Moritz Cs?ky. (Ged?chtnis ? Erin nerung...