Austrias literary System 1933/38-1945

The fifth volume of this seminal work, which follows in the wake of volumes addressing the provinces or "Reichsgaue" of Styria, Carinthia, Upper Austria/Upper Danube and Vienna, takes as its focus the general conditions governing literary creativity from 1933 onwards, which culminated in National Socialism: censorship and sponsorship were used to existentially divide authors into those who were integrated and those who were forced into silence or persecuted and expelled, the civic, multifaceted creative autonomy of the associations was destroyed or stripped-down to subsidiary institutions, and efforts were undertaken to establish a new canon by means of anthologies. These subject areas serve as central factors for the contextualisation of literary production during this period, which is of significant importance, above all as the pre-history and post-history of the Austrian 2nd and 1st Republics respectively. Drawing on a broad range of sources (archival records, printed matter), the volume attempts to develop a value-neutral, comprehensive inventory within the meaning of basic research. Using the scholarly literature favoured by German studies, the novel methodological approach enables a description of the entire spectrum of literary activity as well as an understanding of its institutional interconnections within a limited space and period of time. The literature of National Socialism thereby becomes visible as an independent, intentionally closed system within the framework of a media dictatorship.