Eingeborene im Paradies

At the beginning of this postdoctoral thesis there is a methodological introduction, attempting to prove the practicability of the approach of cultural studies in the context of intercultural hermeneutics for a concrete analysis and interpretation of texts. It continues with a historic-cultural survey of travelling in the Alps, which points out the great contribution of artists and poets to the change in the perception of the alpine territory from a "locus horribilis" to a "locus amoenus" as well as the consequences of thecapturing of the Alps. Mountaineering transformed summer recreation to mass tourism and until this day it has shaped the Alps as an anthroposphere (environment) as well as a sphere where ideal concepts of a landscape of desire clash with modern leisure society. Another chapter presents an excursive survey of the Alps as a literary landscape. It begins with the poem "Die Alpen" by Albrecht von Haller, reflects on the influence of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the functionalising of the Alps in the works of Ferdinand Raimund and Adalbert Stifter. Furthermore it focuses on the trivialising of the myth of the Alps in Johanna Spyri`s "Heidi"-novels as well as on the Alps as a screen for psychological projections (A. Schnitzler) and the mountain as a political platform in the work of Ödön von Horvth. The principal part consists of a caleidoscope of literary analyses: the periodical "Simplicissimus" is used for a kind of literary fieldwork concerning the clash of rural or lower middle class attitudes with bourgeois habits. Reimmichl`s (i.e. Sebastian Rieger`s) scenario of the threatened native culture in the tradition of the "Kulturkampf" and Ludwig Thoma`s warning that the old bavarian way of life might be endangered present stereotypes and polarisations that still figure prominently in the discussion of mass tourism today. In view of the "economic miracle" and the economic boom resulting from it in the fifties and later on, literature again and again throws critical glances at the "backstage", behind the ideal world of advertising, and presents the suffering of the local characters as well as being sarcastic and satirical (Gstrein, Mitterer). After all literature is interested both in exposing trivial patterns and in the complexity of the myth of the Alps, its medial and mental (re)production of the Alpine landscape as well as its commercialisation (n.c. kaser, Jandl, Jelinek).