Joseph W. Moser, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Thomas Bernhard’s Romanticized View of Austria-Hungary

Throughout his literary work Thomas Bernhard presents an idealized and romanticized view of Austria-Hungary’s past before 1914. Bernhard blames all contemporary problems on the failings of the “Vätergeneration,” while he praises his grandfather’s generation. This is largely due to the fact that Bernhard had a very close relationship to his grandfather, Johannes Freumbichler, while he never knew his father who had abandoned his mother. After World War II and the Holocaust, Bernhard sees very few redeeming qualities in his country and his compatriots, but in his novel Frost he idealizes the fairy-tale-like time before the war, when Austria was still an important multi-ethnic force in Europe. The protagonists and narrators in his novels describe the former Empire as a country that filled its citizens with pride.

In this paper, I will examine Bernhard’s romanticized view of Austria-Hungary and contemporary Central Europe by examining his novels and short stories from Frost to Auslöschung. I will investigate how Bernhard portrays the various nationalities of the characters in his novels. I will prove that he favors the former nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy over German characters in his works. Bernhard’s protagonists in Extinction (Auslöschung) are particularly fond of Poles and Italians, as they feel connected to these nationals through their histories. Bernhard’s positivist historical conceptualization of the Habsburg Empire serves to boost Austria’s self-image over the unspeakable crimes committed in the country’s more recent past.

While Bernhard’s view of history is certainly naïve, he holds a view that defines Austrian nationality through the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and consequently rejects nation ties to Germany.