Antisemitismus und Nationalsozialismus bei Doderer

This book seeks to examine the significance of Heimito von Doderer`s Nazi past and the extent to which it affected his writing, addressing the question of what initially attracted this famous Austrian writer to Nazism and what was it that ultimately repelled him. The work comprises a critical analysis of Doderer`s anti-Semitism, exploring his membership of the Nazi Party from 1933, his self-proclaimed subsequent break with Nazi ideology in 1937, his alleged involvement in the `Aryanisation` of a flat in Vienna in 1938, his service as an officer in the German army from 1940 until the end of the war, and his `denazification` in the immediate post-war years. This biographical inquiry also covers the traumatic and often fatal destiny under the National Socialist regime of Doderer`s relatives and friends of Jewish origin, who played an important role in his life and work. Particular emphasis is given to his first wife Gusti Hasterlik and her family, as well as their mutual friends. Research in this area is based on the impressive collection of Gusti Hasterlik`s letters, preserved by her niece Giulia Hine, and presented and analysed here for the first time. Other interesting documents relevant to this investigation are the post-war letters of some of Doderer`s friends, which discuss the writer, his Nazi past and his later literary success. The biographical analysis is followed by an investigation of Doderer`s writings from the same ideological angle. Of particular interest in this context is Doderer`s literary breakthrough from the 1950s on, with the publication of his novels Die Strudlhofstiege and Die Dämonen. In the original, unpublished, anti-Semitic version of his novel `Die Dämonen der Ostmark` written in the 1930s, Doderer attempted to present the thesis that the coexistence of Jews and non-Jews inevitably leads to tensions and conflicts and ultimately becomes intolerable. While writing a new chapter in 1940, however, he was already distancing himself from this anti-Semitic theme and was searching for a new approach to his novel. This transformation process is examined by a comparison with the new 1956 version of Die Dämonen. The book also includes an analysis of other related writings, including the short story `Unter schwarzen Sternen`, set in Vienna at the end of 1943 and dealing with the period of war and Nazism. The focus of this story, published in 1963, is a central topic for Doderer: life during Nazism as a `second reality`, i.e. only an apparent reality, a theme he had already developed on a theoretical basis in his essay `Sexualität und totaler Staat` (1948-1951). The Germans come out of this badly, while the Austrians by and large are presented in a positive light, emphasising an historical continuity from the time of the Austrian Empire up to the Second Republic. This volume offers a new insight into Doderer`s life and work, and differs in several respects from previous publications on Doderer`s Nazi past and his writings, taking a critical approach which, nevertheless, attempts to do justice to Doderer`s complex personality and to his achievements as a writer.