Albert Drach´s Works. Study Edition III: Plays, Radio Plays, Essays, late Prose

The goal of this research project is the first edition of essays by Albert Drach (1902-1995), his prose text Kudruns Tagebuch (Kudruns Diary), the new edition of the prose text O Catilina which had been out of print for a long time, and the first complete edition of his plays. With this edition, the first scholarly commented edition of the complete literary uvre of this eminent Austrian writer in 10 volumes, published by Paul Zsolnay Verlag, can be concluded. It is intended to promote the reception of Drachs literary works, encourage further scholarly discussion, but also make his uvre available for non-academic readers. Typical (old) Austrian expressions and the historic context will be addressed and explained in a detailed commentary, to facilitate the reading of Drachs works for both the younger generation, and an audience of non native speakers. The previous editorial work has proven that commentary and the presentation of the literary genesis can make the social and political explosive force and the philosophical contents of the texts accessible; this can be assumed for the texts to be published in this edition, as well. On this basis, the text can be understood as both historically timebound, and supertemporal. Once completed, the study edition will provide insights in the intellectual world of a man who was socialized in the traditional education system of the 19th century, yet as a writer created works of the Modernity. As a persecuted, emigrant, Jew, artist, and lawyer, Drach witnessed the historic disruptions of the 20th century and integrated these experiences into his works. The entire texts will be edited based on the first printed versions respectively the final versions available in Drachs estate in the Literaturarchiv der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (LIT, Literary Archives of the Austrian National Library). Obvious misspellings of names or places, and printing errors will be corrected; linguistic idiosyncrasies and punctuation errors will be kept. The genesis of the texts, including the physical and contextual nature of the early drafts will be explained. The epilogue will explain the connections of work and biography, the reception of the works will be explained, and each text will be appraised in the context of Drachs entire uvre. Allusions to other literary works historic events or scholarly inclusions will be explained, readings will be suggested, and as an illustration, prints of manuscripts, photographs and personal documents will accompany the commentary.

The goal of the project was to complete the study edition of Albert Drach's work of ten volumes in the Paul Zsolnay publishing house. The prose book "O Catilina"/Kudrun comprises two late novels and was edited by Gerhard Fuchs in 2018 with the corporation of Alexandra Millner and Eva Schobel. it is provided with expert textual commentary to explain names, places names and old-fashioned expressions, with an interpretive epilogue, and a survey of the text origin story. Due to COVID-19 measures, the copious two-part volume of plays, edited by Millner, and the equally labour-intensive volume of essays, edited by Schobel, could not be published at the scheduled time. The plays will be published in autumn 2022, i. e. in time for Drach's 120th anniversary, the essays for financial reasons in 2023. The careful revision of the literary percursor material produced the following results: Although Drach's texts are related to well-known subject matters, they are narrated in such an unconventional way, that they can be read as criticism of contemporary sociopolitical developments. At the same time, Drach often uses motifs, subject matters, characters or plots from world literature. Using the example of the play Das Kasperlspiel vom Meister Siebentot, it could be established that Drach, in order to show how the use of language can manipulate mankind, already dealt with language in a very radical way as early as in 1935. Drach was thus two decades ahead of the language experiments in post-war Austria. In his essays, Drach relates to philosophical, political and cultural subject-matters and attempts to take a firm and tough stance towards difficult issues of his time. Analysing the unpublished plays in detail at the Literary Archive of the Austrian National Library, it turned out that Drach wrote three different types of plays: history plays, abstract plays and as yet unpublished fairy tale plays. As a result, the plays of the first two types had to be rearranged for the edition. However, the unpublished plays could not be taken onto account. Through the project, Drach gained more public attention: The joint use of the website of the International Albert Drach Association (http://www.albert-drach.at/) helped networking with people interested in the author - like experts, students, men of the theatre, readers. The website serves both as information on the author and as publishing platform. The number of seminar papers and master theses, of international papers, stage productions and readers of Drach has been increasing since. Albert Drach, who as a Jew had to flee from the National Socialist tyranny and spent almost a decade in exile in southern France, was only recently included in international research on post-exile literature.