Franz Werfel Research Articles

Zwischen Glauben und Verzweiflung. Franz Werfel und Søren Kierkegaard

Abstract The Austrian-Bohemian writer Franz Werfel (1890 – 1945) was part of a group of writers and thinkers that were inspired by Søren Kierkegaard’s works. While some attention has been paid to Werfel’s religious thinking, there’s a lack of studies that treat his at the time highly successful literary works. After discussing the context in which Werfel’s reception took place, this paper analyzes three novels in which Werfel implicitly refers to Kierkegaardian concepts. At stake is the idea of becoming (or failing to become) a self and the ensuing types of despair or fear, concepts that also captivated Werfel’s literary contemporaries such as Max Brod and Franz Kafka.

GUILT IN FRANZ WERFEL’S NOVEL “CLASS REUNION”

20. yüzyıl romanı, var olan sinema tehdidine rağmen güçlü bir şekilde gelişmiş ve Don Kişot’tan bu yana romanın, bir tür olarak bütününün sağlam bir zemine oturmasını sağlamıştır. Özellikle ilk çeyrekte ortaya çıkan isimler ve yapıtlar, ele aldıkları teknikler ve temalar itibarıyla bu olguya katkı sağlamışlardır. Yeni izlekleri yeni anlatım teknikleriyle buluşturma bu açıdan romana katkı sağlamıştır. Bu izleklerden biri de aslında her zaman var olan suç olgusudur. Suç olgusunun, önceki dönemlerin aksine, 20. yüzyıl romanın birtakım örneklerinde temelden sorunsallaştırıldığını görmek mümkündür. Bu gerçekte 20. yüzyıl insanı ve yaşantılarının payı büyüktür. Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, James Joyce yapıtlarının bazı örneklerine paralel olarak Franz Werfel’in Mezunlar Günü romanında suçun sorunsallaştırıldığı görülmektedir. Romanda, gençliğinde başvurduğu suçun farklı boyutlarından kurtulamayan bir yargıç konu edilmektedir. Roman zamanına göre güncelde yargıç olarak çalışan, konumu ve ilkeleri itibarıyla suça mesafeli olan bir figürün suçla ne denli yoğrulmuş olduğu ele alınmaktadır. Bundan dolayı da figür, zaman zaman şizofreni hali içerisine girebilmektedir. Bu çalışma, Franz Werfel’in Mezunlar Günü romanında suç izleğini irdelemektedir. Suça mesafeli ve suçun içerisinde olma halini sorgulamaktadır. Dr. Ernst Sebastian ve Franz Adler figürleri üzerinden suçun farklı boyutlarını incelemektedir.

Perpetual Exile: Legacies of a Disrupted Century

The transnational configuration of contemporary German literature cannot be detached from its historical continuum, since such a separation would render the archive of histories of exile in and out of Germany inconsistent and incomplete. Bringing literary histories of exile in a dialogue, in this instance, Exilliteratur, represented by prominent German authors, who, during the Second World War, immigrated to Southern California (Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Franz Werfel, among others), as well as Anna Seghers and Stefan Zweig, who went into exile in Mexico and Brazil, respectively, and the emerging literature of contemporary transnational or so-called hyphenated German (“Bindestrich-Deutsche”) writers would enable an inclusive paradigm that communicates across communities of research. To that end, I briefly review one novel each by Anna Seghers and Lion Feuchtwanger and essays by the Iranian-German poet SAID, which exemplify the two distinctive genres of exile literature: the long-established Exilliteratur and what I elsewhere described as transnational literature of writers mostly from the non-Western world, who in the latter part of the twentieth century began immigrating to the West. While I acknowledge the different circumstances and historical imperatives that have dictated the features of the two genres, I foreground the ethical implications and the cautionary tales the respective works of Exilliteratur authors and transnational writers share.

Biofiction as Cultural Intervention: The Tragic Failure of Lion Feuchtwanger’s Jud Süß

As a literary form, biofiction started to dominate in the 1990s, and over the last ten years, biofiction studies has surged dramatically. While scholars acknowledge that there were some important biofictions in the nineteenth century, the form first started to catch fire in the early twentieth century, especially among German writers who emigrated to the United States during the Nazi era. Klaus Mann, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Franz Werfel, Bruno Frank, and Bertolt Brecht are only a few who published noteworthy biofictions, but it was Lion Feuchtwanger who had perhaps the biggest impact, with the 1925 publication of Jud Süß, a biographical novel about the famous court Jew. This novel was a best-seller, which, in part, contributed to the massive surge in the publication of biofictions during the 1930s. But there are some serious concerns revolving around the work, which became most obvious after the release of Veit Harlan’s 1940 film Jud Süß. By analyzing the novel and film in relation to the Nazis‘ anti-Semitic political agenda, I clarify why Feuchtwanger’s novel not only failed tragically to accomplish what it set out to do, but also contributed significantly to an agenda that it sought to resist and debunk. This essay focuses primarily on Feuchtwanger’s novel in order to clarify what biofiction is, how it uniquely functions and signifies, and some of the potential problems with the genre.

The Armenian Model (The Epic Narrative of Franz Werfel and Armenian Identity)

"This essay analyses the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel through the lens of rediscovering the Armenian identity, both individually and collectively. Does a people have the right, through its political (and religious) leaders, to decide to exterminate another people? This is the acute problem raised by Franz Werfel’s novel, which is simultaneously a political, sociological, psychohistorical, anthropological and ethical novel."

Translation as Conversion: Richard Wilhelm’s Bekehrung and the Bekehrter

Translation as Conversion: Richard Wilhelm’s <i>Bekehrung</i> and the <i>Bekehrter</i>

Juarez and Maximilian. Stories and interpretations in film and literature

This paper approaches the relations between history and fiction through analysis of two works: the Franz Werfel drama’s Juarez und Maximilian (1924), and the Miguel Contreras Torres movie’s, Juárez y Maximiliano (1934). Both works intend to tell us the happened during the Second Mexican Empire, Werfel with the Austrian gaze and Contreras with the Mexican gaze. We go inside to biography and context of authors, as well as the reception of the drama and movie in the local press, to understanding the political implications of the representations of the past. Finally, we analyze the philosophy of history implied in both Werfel and Contreras, and your relations with creation’s context.

Tradução da novela Der Tod des Kleinbürgers, de Franz Werfel, para o português

Franz Werfel nasceu em 1890 em Praga. Sua família pertencia à comunidade judaica da Boêmia alemã. Poeta, contista e romancista, era membro do grupo de Praga, contemporâneo de Franz Kafka. Seu romance mais conhecido é Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh. Foi editor de grandes poetas em língua alemã tal como Georg Trakl. Na década de 1920 casa-se com Alma Mahler e vivem em Viena até perceberem como se tornara perigoso ser judeu em territórios sujeitos à Alemanha nazista. Emigram para os Estados Unidos, onde tornou-se cidadão norte-americano em 1941. Morreu em 1945, com 54 anos, de ataque cardíaco. Publicada em 1926, a novela “A morte do pequeno burguês”, está ambientada no período após a Primeira Guerra, época de grande movimento demográfico nas nações que se originam do Império Austro-Húngaro, caracterizada por uma forte imigração da população tcheca de origem germânica para Viena. A rápida modernização urbana não é acompanhada pela geração de empregos necessários para a população. Com o esfacelamento do império austro-húngaro os militares perdem a utilidade e o prestígio. Muitos tiveram de ser demitidos e se tivessem sorte receberiam um posto como funcionários públicos. Segue a tradução do capítulo 01 da novela.

Juárez y Maximiliano. Contrastes de la narración en el cine y la literatura

This paper is a study of comparative literature, which it approaches the relationship between literature and cinematographic art. It develops one narratological analysis of drama piece Juárez y Maximiliano (1924), by Austro-Hungarian writer Franz Werfel, and the movie “Juárez y Maximiliano. La caída del Imperio” (1934), by director Miguel Contreras Torres. Examining the two works, and more precisely, the close dialogue between the literary work and the film, it analyses representation of protagonist and antithetical figures of the Second Mexican Empire: the president Benito Juarez and the Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg. To establish similitudes and difference between both works, and consequently, differentiated historical representation of Juarez and Maximilian it´s used the framework of the chronotope theory and the theorizations about intersemiotic translation, which allowed to establish a dialogue between both semiotic systems, the literary and the cinematographic.

Juárez y Maximiliano: cruces entre la literatura y el cine, 1924-1933

A través del análisis comparado y la teoría de la recepción se analizan dos obras, Juarez und Maximilian, drama escrito en Viena por Franz Werfel; y “Juárez y Maximiliano” película dirigida por Miguel contreras Torres en México. Aunque se trata de obras que reflejan el contexto en el que se desarrollaron sus autores tienen similitudes profundas, por lo que su análisis nos permite adentrarnos a las líneas de pensamiento presentes en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Al estudiar la recepción de estas obras podemos entrever los fines que sus autores prefiguraron en el momento de su elaboración, así como la aceptación o rechazo que recibieron. Finalmente, el análisis permite reconocer factores en los procesos de consolidación que se vivieron en el periodo respecto a la concepción del nacionalismo, la identidad nacional y la historia patria.

Iconic Character of Bestiary Images in the Novels of F. Werfel and E. Canetti

The anthropomorphic depiction of animals bearing allegorical meanings is the well-represented and actively demanded bestiary of world literature. It reflects the mythological thinking of writers and is an integral part of the worldview basis on which literary works are based. Bestiary images in the artistic text acquire the status of universal representative symbols. This study discusses bestiary images in novelistic works of Austrian writers, Franz Werfel (1890-1945) and Elias Canetti (1905-1994). Using the semiotic approach, the researchers define a range of images and meanings that are related to these two writers as representatives of the era of historical upheavals and individual authorial purposes that reflect the basis of the worldview of each of them. A bestiary image in a literary text can function as an iconic sign, which, on the one hand, reflects the material object in its materiality, and on the other hand, contributes to the emerging of "new", constructed by analogy, aesthetic reality. The similarity to the referent, in this case, is included in the overall system of ontological values. An iconic sign, after Ch.S. Pierce, refers to a simple sign based on the similarity to a thing and participating in the creation of symptoms of a higher order – symbols. Bestiary images in a literary text acquire the status of universal representative characters. The functioning of animal images in the text, their nomination, combinatorics, communication with the elements, time periods, and behavioural patterns are the way of the study of the philosophical foundations of the author's world picture. Canetti’s bestiary is represented by metaphorical images of a monkey, a cat, a pig, and a tortoise, which are used as a tool for analysing various psychic and psychological states of the characters of the novel "Blinding" (Die Blendung, 1931-1932). Multiple forms of anthropopathy and zoomorphism are based on the writer's attitude towards the initial "equality" of man and animal. The study of zoopoetics (the term of J. Lacan) of Werfel’s novel "Barbara, or Piety" (Barbara oder die Frömigkeit, 1929) helps to reveal the axiological foundation upon which the writer constructs his novels. The functioning of images of animals, a horse, for example, is related to the semantics of sacrifice that is rethought and acquiring new meanings in a new historical context. Composite images connecting different characteristics and associated with various natural elements are important. It is apparent that the study of the works by Werfel and Canetti, given the iconic nature of bestiary images, seems relevant to detect common patterns of development of European literature and culture of the first third of the 20th Century.

Jacques and Jacqueline Groag: Architect and Designer — Two Hidden Figures of the Viennese Modern Movement by Ursula ProkopLaura McGuire Jonee TiedemannLaura McGuire

Reviews 203 these diaries, the writing here often turns purple: Alma’s tears ‘well up’, she is ‘plunged’ into despair, while as disasters ‘loom’ storms ‘brew’ outside (pp. 42, 43). Hilmes’s work is only perfunctorily acknowledged, but Passionate Spirit reveals a certain indebtedness to Malevolent Muse, especially in the closing chapters where there is an observable material overlap between the two. For instance, both contain sections entitled ‘La grande veuve’. At all stages, however, Hilmes’s text is richer and more deeply rooted in its subject, although the comparative superficiality of Haste’s work doubtless makes for a smoother read, especially for non-specialists. Nevertheless, Passionate Spirit presents itself as a seriously researched piece of work. Haste claims ‘to have mined in more detail than previous commentators’ Alma’s early diaries (p. xi) while failing to mention that their editor also drew heavily upon them in her own (untranslated) biography. This work does not appear in the bibliography. To her credit, Haste confronts the many unappealing aspects of a personality moulded by grand passions and a brave refusal to accept the norms of a patriarchal society. It would have been hard to ignore Alma’s craving for selfgratification , her jealous urge to be the focus of attention, and a very lusty appetite for alcohol, mischief-making and revenge against any perceived slight. Where Passionate Spirit fails to impress is in its signal ignorance of the German language and the Austrian culture and localities in which Alma was grounded. It grates to read of her songs ‘Einsammer Gang’ and ‘Emtelied’, or that she spent time ‘in the Semmering’ and lived on Vienna’s ‘Elizabethstrasse’. Inevitably, ‘Hoffmansthal’ appears, but the mistranslation of ‘Wiener Stadtund Landesbibliothek’ as ‘Municipal and Rural Library, Vienna’ is a rare gem, unlike The Sisters of Naples for Werfel’s novel Die Geschwister von Neapel. Is it too much to hope that with Passionate Spirit the perceived need for Alma Mahler biographies will now have been sated? For all her artistic potential, Alma was never the ‘prolific composer’ Haste claims her to have been (p. 393), but her role as a vital accessory in the life and work of notably creative men both Jewish and Gentile (Gustav Mahler and Franz Werfel, Oskar Kokoschka and Walter Gropius) is now long established and undisputed. Time then, perhaps, for the first-ever biography of Max Bod, without whom the world would know far less of the genius of both Franz Kafka and Leoš Janáček? Andrew Barker University of Edinburgh Jacques and Jacqueline Groag: Architect and Designer — Two Hidden Figures of the Viennese Modern Movement. By Ursula Prokop. Trans. by Laura McGuire and Jonee Tiedemann. Ed. by Laura McGuire. Los Angeles: DoppelHouse Press, 2019. 272 pp. $39.95. ISBN 9780999754436. Ursula Prokop’s ambitious double biography, a translation of her Germanlanguage version with Böhlau (2005), presents the architect and designer couple Jacques and Jacqueline Groag as seminal, yet hidden, figures in Viennese modernism. Despite their linkages to Secessionist and interwar Vienna’s Reviews 204 most important artistic and cultural luminaries, the Groags’ reputation has faded in the shadow of better-known Viennese ‘superstars’. Including figures also covered in her important Zum jüdischen Erbe in der Wiener Architektur (Vienna, 2016), a panoramic study of the forgotten Jewish contribution to Viennese architecture and design, Prokop’s Groag monograph excavates the couple’s centrality to progressive interwar design in ventures like the 1932 Werkbund Exhibition in Vienna and a series of design exhibitions in post-war Britain, where the couple emigrated after the Anschluss. Groag, born into a well-connected Moravian-Jewish family, served as site architect for the legendary Wittgenstein House and Loos’s Haus Moller, a building notable for its cubic structure interrupted by a protruding window, before developing his own formal vocabulary in a series of commissions in Olmütz, Vienna and the countryside. Informed by a Loosian Raumplan liberating the architect to create free-flowing divisions between rooms, ceilings and stories, and formal ideas from contemporaries like Le Corbusier, Groag’s signature style married modernist formal purity with biomorphic tendencies in floor planning and site construction, including differentiated building heights to suit terrain and the comfortable, light adaptable...

Das Gedächtnis Zentraleuropas: Kulturelle und literarische Projektionen auf eine Region by Moritz Csáky

Reviewed by: Das Gedächtnis Zentraleuropas: Kulturelle und literarische Projektionen auf eine Region by Moritz Csáky Joseph W. Moser Moritz Csáky Das Gedächtnis Zentraleuropas: Kulturelle und literarische Projektionen auf eine Region. Vienna: Böhlau, 2019. 392 pp. Cultural definitions of Central Europe are important to Austrian Studies, with the Republic of Austria at the center of this region in Europe, and the Habsburg Empire was certainly emblematic of this territory that spread over several successor states of the Danube Monarchy and beyond. Nine [End Page 119] years before the publication of the book under review here, Moritz Csáky published Das Gedächtnis der Städte: Kulturelle Verflechtungen—Wien und die urbanen Milieus in Zentraleuropa (Böhlau, 2010), in which he examined how Vienna and Austro-Hungarian cities constituted a space of cultural memory in Central Europe, with the former Habsburg Empire at its core. In his current book, Das Gedächtnis Zentraleuropas: Kulturelle und literarische Projektionen auf eine Region, Csáky continues to examine memory in Central Europe from a cultural and literary perspective with a focus on Franz Kafka, Hermann Bahr, Joseph Roth, Miroslav Krlezas, and to a lesser degree Rilke and Hofmannsthal. The book is structured in eight chapters; the first longer chapter that comprises the first third of the book "Zentraleuropa—Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven" gives an overview of the topic. This chapter could have well been a book of its own, covering a variety of topics, which lays the foundation for the literary analysis that follows. Some of the tropes, among many in this chapter, include the role of Jews in Central Europe, a world of contradictions, and hybrid identities. The author also answers the question why he chose the term Zentraleuropa over Mitteleuropa, the latter of which derives from Friedrich Naumanns 1915 essay by the same name, which served German political and national interests, and thus does not describe this complex multicultural region. Zentraleuropa in essence is a direct translation of the English and French terms. The idea here is a multicultural region that does not serve the interests of a single nation-state. This first chapter illustrates well the depth of the author's understanding of this region. Chapters 2-5 are each devoted to Kafka's "Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer," Bahrs Austriaca, Joseph Roths Das falsche Gewicht, and Krlezas's Illyricum sacrum. With Kafka, the author illustrates China as a metaphor for multiculturality while also criticizing the monarchy. In Bahr's text, we also see the formation of a multicultural empire striving for federalization and democratization. Meanwhile, Roth's text expresses inner colonization as well as postcolonial perspectives. Chapter 6 deals with "Sprachenkonflikt und Sprachkritik im Kontext von Mehrsprachigkeit." One of the defining aspects of Central Europe is its polyglot identity, which simultaneously provides diversity and the challenge of comprehending one another across linguistic barriers. The author examines this phenomenon with Fritz Mauthner, Kafka, and Rilke as representative literary figures. Chapter 7 continues with an examination of constructions of foreignness, with an appropriately entitled chapter [End Page 120] "Konstruktion von Fremdheiten." Here the author discusses Wilma von Vukelich, Franz Werfel, Robert Michel, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The final chapter, "Zentraleuropa—Ein Laboratorium für lokale und globale kulturelle Prozesse," serves as a conclusion. This book is especially praiseworthy for its interdisciplinary approach, in which a historian uses literature to examine a cultural phenomenon. The book's strength may also be its weakness. There is a wealth of information presented in this volume by an expert who has a profound understanding of the concept of Central Europe. While the ideas of a Central European space with the former Habsburg Empire at its core are not necessarily new, the book does not so much teach Central Europe but rather elaborates an advanced theoretical understanding thereof, and it is thus not an easy read for the uninitiated, as it expects readers to cover a tremendous volume of topics, in which they must already have a strong footing, without providing clear transitions between topics. Advanced graduate students and experts in the field, however, will undoubtedly appreciate this theoretical approach, which is well researched and rounded out by a helpful bibliography and index. Joseph W...

My History: A Memoir of Growing Up

My History: A Memoir of Growing Up

PAVOL STRAUSS – A GENIUS OUTSIDER

The aim of this paper regarding Pavol Strauss‘ Literary Work in the Central European Context is to introduce Pavol Strauss as a man and a writer, who was with his heart and soul a Central European. He had a strong bound to this territory spatially and temporally. At first, he was chased as a Jew, later on in the age of 30 he converted into Catholic. During the period of Stalinism, they considered him a second-class citizen, and he was wrongly called the clero-fascists however he was a believing Catholic. He was literally active in the second half of the 1930s, when he published two poetic collections in German. His poems in German were influenced by avant-garde which he became in touch with in Prague – its literary atmosphere defined Pavol Strauss’ literary experiments and further orientation. When speaking of Prague, also think of Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel and, of course, Reiner Maria Rilke. From the literary point of view, Pavol Strauss with his literary essays reached the highest level along with famous authors (R. Musil, K. Kraus, H. Broch). For his 82 years long life, Pavol Strauss cured many patients and left rare books of a unique philosophical dimension.

Zum Nutzen und Wert einer zuverlässigen Textausgabe für die Interpretation

When teaching literature, a well-chosen edition is of the essence. Apart from general editorial care, one crucial consideration is that editions necessarily have to balance editorial faithfulness with reader-friendliness. Regardless of specific editorial decisions taken on the relevant variables, any reliable edition for reading or study purposes must be based on the standards of editorial philology. The present article discusses how consideration of these standards affects textual interpretation through the example of Kafka’s ‚Ein Kommentar‘, a parable known as ‚Gib’s auf!‘ ever since it was first published by Max Brod. While Kafka’s text undeniably leaves room for interpretation, its dialogical relationship with a sonnet by Franz Werfel is highlighted as a particularly convincing reading. Keywords: edition, textual interpretation, Franz Kafka, Franz Werfel, ‚Ein Kommentar‘

A peace play in wartime Germany? Pacifism in Franz Werfel’sThe Trojan Women, Berlin1916

Euripides’ The Trojan Women, first performed in Athens in 415 BC, has been embraced by western culture as a peace play throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. During the First World War, the play was performed using two different versions — in 1915, British classicist Gilbert Murray’s 1905 translation from the Greek toured America and in 1916 Austrian poet Franz Werfel’s 1914 adaptation was staged in Berlin. Scholars have claimed that both were anti-war productions. This article will demonstrate that in fact neither can be interpreted unambiguously as a ‘peace play’ and that Werfel’s version in Berlin 1916 was neither presented nor understood at the time of its performance as a condemnation of the War or of Germany’s role in it. As well as shedding light on what has long been an apparently intriguing but largely unexamined anomaly in cultural censorship in wartime Berlin, this case study challenges a logocentric, literary approach to the play as text and serves to illustrate the importance of the para-textual framing, as well as the context and staging of a specific performance, in determining its reception and the meanings it creates.

ФОРМЫ ФУНКЦИОНИРОВАНИЯ БЕСТИАРНЫХ ОБРАЗОВ В РОМАНАХ Ф. ВЕРФЕЛЯ «БАРБАРА, ИЛИ БЛАГОЧЕСТИЕ» И Э. КАНЕТТИ «ОСЛЕПЛЕНИЕ»

The article deals with bestiary images in the novels by the Austrian writers Franz Werfel (1890-1945) and Elias Canetti (1905-1994). The allegorical figures of animals, endowed with anthropomorphic characteristics, constitute a wide bestiary of world literature. In the aesthetics of the novels “The Pure in Heart” (“Barbara oder die Frömmigkeit”, 1929) by Franz Werfel and “Auto-Da-Fé” (“Die Blendung”, 1931-1932) by Elias Canetti they are closely connected with the religious search of the authors, who turned not only to Christianity, but also to the Eastern religious and philosophical tradition in the early 1930s. The mechanisms of “translating” the realistic image of an animal into the subjective-psychological and symbolic-allegorical plane are studied.

The German literature in American exile – great writers and their wives: perspectives from Russian scholars

The article focuses on the life and art of the famous Germane writers, namely Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Franz Werfel. After the outbreak of WWII, when the Nazi forces invaded these lands, a lot of emigres managed to leave for the USA. For many of them, the escape route was extremely turbulent. The German writers in the USA settled closely together in California, forming a tight community. The famous Germane writers had to decide upon two principal questions: what they could do for the culture of their home country while staying in exile, and how to interact with the culture of the country where they live. In this connection, it is of great importance to analyze not their works, but the books of their wives. They took care of the house and children on a daily basis, as well as became secretaries, councilors, and closest associates of their great husbands. The authors also propose the main perspectives on a future research on this topic, focusing on the social and political phenomenon of “the community of German writers in American exile”, analyzing how the intellectual community was formed, discussing the documents of this age, studying the memories about their time in America in the context of the contemporary gender theory.

Studien zur österreichischen Literatur: Von Nestroy bis Ransmayr by Gabriella Rovagnati

Reviewed by: Studien zur österreichischen Literatur: Von Nestroy bis Ransmayr by Gabriella Rovagnati Cynthia A. Klima Gabriella Rovagnati, Studien zur österreichischen Literatur: Von Nestroy bis Ransmayr. Beiträge zur Text-, Überlieferungs- und Bildungsgeschichte 5. Edited by Hans-Albrecht Koch. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2016. 343 pp. Most of this collection of twenty-six articles appeared in print in German or were published originally in Italian and then translated for a German-speaking audience, while others are appearing here for the first time. The topics run the gamut, the Hapsburg era and Nestroy as “ein Künstler der Hyberbole” right through postwar Austria and Christoph Ransmayr. All of the studies are [End Page 146] organized in this text chronologically, spanning about 150 years of Austrian literature. The first five studies in this collection are devoted to Nestroy. Indeed, his presence in this volume is an effort made by the author to bring recognition of Nestroy as a powerful presence to an Italian audience. Nestroy’s work in the theater world is largely unknown to the Italian theater public. In the German-speaking world, on the other hand, Nestroy is little-known and goes mostly unnoticed. The author admits to the difficulty of translating Nestroy’s plays into Italian, a primary reason for his absence in the Italian theater realm. Further articles in this collection delve into other aspects of Austrian connections to Italy, specifically Giacomo Casanova, who fascinated the world with this descriptions of adventures, his “carpe diem” attitude before World War I and his actions shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The topic of Casanova runs into Hofmannsthal’s work Tizian, which Ervino Pocar translated into the Italian language. Hofmannsthal’s attraction to Casanova bridges the articles in the work to the studies on Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke’s relationship to Milan and his friendship with Duchess Aurelia Gallarati-Scotti cement the author’s presence in Italy. In fact, Rilke’s relationships with several Italian women made Italy one of his most beloved playgrounds. The article “Les belles infideles: Rilkes frühe Übersetzungen aus dem Italienischen” speaks to the translation of Rilke for the Italian reading audience. Four studies are presented on Stefan Zweig, who also had some connections to Italy. Zweig’s official Italian translator, Lavinia Mazzucchetti, produced the first Italian translation of Zweig’s Die Welt von gestern. In addition, Zweig’s stance on Italian fascism is also represented in this collection, as is his friendship with Benno Geiger, with whom Zweig had a long history of personal and political epistolary exchange. Franz Werfel’s relationship with Gertrud Spirk, whose letters supported Werfel while he was involved in World War I, is also explored in “Krieg und Liebe: Franz Werfel und Gertrud Spirk.” In “’Das Gegengift gegen alles Deutsche’: Verdi von Franz Werfel,” Rovagnati explores Werfel’s discovery of Verdi’s operas. Werfel was of the opinion that the world could be enriched and sustained by opera and that modern opera’s existence especially depended on the recognition of the greatness of Verdi’s operatic talent. Werfel’s work Verdi becomes the springboard from which Werfel bases his trust in Italian opera. “Die Musik Verdis wird dem Schriftsteller zum Anlass, seine Verachtung gegen den ‘deutschen Geist’ frei auszudrücken, der hier zum Inbegriff von [End Page 147] Kälte, Gefühllosigkeit und Kalkül wird. Der Drang der Deutschen zur Normierung, die absolut und universell gültige Regeln suchen, die um eine leblose Vollkommenheit ringen, ist eigentlich eine Todeskrankheit” (259). The collection ends with two articles on Thomas Bernhard and his connection to Elias Canetti. His work Immanuel Kant and his working relationship with Carl Peymann are also discussed. In the final selection in this collection, Christoph Ransmayr’s body of work, spanning from Glänzender Untergang to Morbus Kitahara, is analyzed very nicely. Although there are Italian characters in Ransmayr’s work, he has gathered little attention in Italy. Perhaps this collection will be the impetus to wider scholarly recognition in that country as well as abroad. All in all, it is admirable that Rovagnati assembled this collection of articles and indeed, it is a great contribution to Austrian literature from the perspective of...