Gertrud Fussenegger | |
|---|---|
| Born | Gertrud Anna Fussenegger (1912-05-08)8 May 1912 |
| Died | 19 March 2009(2009-03-19) (aged 96) Linz,Upper Austria, Austria |
| Occupation | Writer-novelist |
| Spouse(s) | 1.Elmar Dietz 2.Alois Dorn |
| Children | Traudi Ricarda Dorothea Raimund Lukas |
| Parent(s) | Emil Fussenegger Karoline Hässler |
Gertrud Fussenegger (8 May 1912 – 19 March 2009) was an Austrianwriter and a prolific author, especially of historical novels.[1][2] Many commentators felt that her reputation never entirely escaped from the shadow cast by her enthusiasm, as a young woman, forNational Socialism.[3][4]
Gertrud Anna Fussenegger was born inPilsen, a flourishing manufacturing city inBohemia which at that time was aCrown land of theAustrian Empire. She came from a military family. Emil Fussenegger, her father, was anImperial and Royalarmyofficer originally fromVorarlberg. Her mother, born Karoline Hässler, was fromBohemia.[5][6] She grew up inNeu Sandez (then inGalicia),Dornbirn (Vorarlberg) andTelfs (North Tirol). She enrolled at theMädchen-Realgymnasium (girls' secondary school) inInnsbruck in 1923.[5] After her mother died in 1926 she moved back toPilsen – by now part ofCzechoslovakia – where she lived with her grandparents.[7] It was at the "Reform-Realgymnasium" (school) inPilsen that Fussenegger completed her schooling, passing herMatura (school final exams) in 1930.[8] She later confided in her diaries that she sometimes felt a little regretful, listening uncomprehendingly to the chattering of her grandparents'Bohemian-born domestic servants, that having lived almost all of her first fourteen years in other parts of Austria, she had not more effectively mastered theCzech language.[8]
She went on to study history, art history and philosophy atInnsbruck (7 terms) andMunich(1 term).[5] It was from theUniversity of Innsbruck that in 1934 she received her doctorate.[6] Her dissertation concerned theRoman de la Rose byJean de Meun ("Gemeinschaft und Gemeinschaftsbildung im Rosenroman von Jean Clopinel von Meun").[5]
Fussenegger joined the AustrianNational Socialist party – still at this stage formally separate fromits German counterpart – in May 1933.[4][9] Membership was still illegal inAustria.[10] In May 1934 she participated in a demonstration inInnsbruck at which, it was reported, she had joined in singing of theHorst-Wessel song and gave aHitler salute. She was charged, convicted and fined.[9] According to one source she was also banned from further study at any Austrian university.[3] In February 1935 she was still a member of another Austrian National Socialist student group, but later that year, in or before November, she relocated toGermany.[9] In March 1938, following an invasion from the north that met with little practical resistance,Austria wasincorporated into anenlargedGerman state, albeit under very different circumstances from those that most nineteenth century proponents of such a "solution" would have anticipated. Gertrud Fussenegger, who by now was probably living inMunich, "rejoined" theruling National Socialist party: her membership number was 6,229,747, which is consistent with her having joined the party in 1938.[11] For the avoidance of doubt, she also wrote a "hymn" eulogisingAdolf Hitler.[9][11] In 1938 the first newspaper to publish her poem "Stimme der Ostmark" ("Voice of theOstmark") was theVölkischer Beobachter ("Popular Observer"), the mass-circulation daily newspaper of theNSDAP.[1]
In 1935 Fussenegger married theBavarian sculptorElmar Dietz. By the time it ended in divorce twelve years later the marriage had produced four recorded children, including the artistRicarda Dietz.[12] The marriage was not happy.[13] In 1943 she left Munich and settled atHall in Tirol where she lived with her four children as a single parent.[13]
Her second marriage was to another sculptor. In 1950 Gertrud Fussenegger marriedAlois Dorn. This marriage resulted in the birth of her second son and fifth child.[7] Divorce at this time was unusual, especially for a committed member of theRoman Catholic Church. Fussenegger's own insights, reported by aCatholic newspaper, are instructive:
In 1961 she relocated with her family, settling this time inLeonding, a small town nearLinz.[15]
Gertrud Fussenegger was a member ofthe Austrian P.E.N. association, of theHumboldt Society, of theSudeten German Academy and an honorary member of theAustrian Writers' Association. Between 1977 and 1979, and again from 1984 till 1985, she was a jury member for theIngeborg Bachmann Prize, awarded each year inKlagenfurt. In 1991 she was a jury member for theFranz-Grillparzer Prize of theAlfred Toepfer foundation. In 1978 she was honoured with an award from theHumboldt Society.
Gertrude Gussenegger's literary archive is held by the Upper Austria Literature Archive at theStifterhaus inLinz.[16]
Fussnegger began her writing career with historical novels, set in various different epochs. Her stories were influenced by herCatholic provenance. She was conscious of her reliance on the"renouveau catholique" movement which had originated in France but during the twentieth century became more of an international phenomenon. That reliance is particularly pronounced in her novel "Zeit des Raben, Zeit der Taube" (1960:"Time of the raven: time of the dove").[17]
Gertrud Fassenegger authored more than sixty books, alongside various shorter prose pieces and poems,[10] published, according to at least one source, by 25 publishers and translated into eleven languages.[18]
Fussenegger's relationship withNational Socialism did much to define both her early writing career and a degree of controversy around her person which never completely went away. She joined theNSDAP in Austria in 1933 and rejoined it inGermany after theAnschluss in 1938. In 1939 she became a member of the government-createdReichsschrifttumskammer (loosely, "national chamber of writers" / RSK).[19] She took part on theWeimar Poets' Congress in 1938 and again in 1939, and was in touch with well-known"völkisch" authors such asIna Seidel,Lulu von Strauß und Torney,Will Vesper andWilhelm Pleyer.[19] And yet, despite her commitment to the regime, literary objections to her work came out of the "Office for the Care of New Literature" ("Amt Schrifttumspflege") which operated under the direction ofHans Hagemeyer and, less directly, of the influential party ideologueAlfred Rosenberg.[9] Two years after its publication one of her first books, "Mohrenlegende" (1937:loosely "Legends of the dark skinned ones") was (belatedly) banned by the party experts who now identified it as criticism ofofficial race ideology and "Catholic dross" ("katholisches Machwerk").[20] Controversy about this particular work resurfaced in 1993 in connection with proposals to award Fussenegger theWeilheim Literature Prize and theJean-Paul Prize awarded by"The Free State of Bavaria".[19][21]
Many of Fussenegger's other pieces, mostly during this period religiously contextualised novels, poems and reviews, found their way into importantparty newspapers and journals. Most (in)famously, her poem "Stimme der Ostmark" ("Voice of theOstmark") was printed in 1938 by theVölkischer Beobachter. The poem attracted huge criticismafter 1945, because it celebrated the"peaceful annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany" and it eulogised Hitler. Around fifty years later Gertrud Fussenegger's comment on the affair was capable of various interpretations, but it fell short of an unambiguous recantation. She regretted having "wasted so much thinking time on something so loathsome" ("viele gute Gedanken verschwendet ... auf eine Sache, die dann ein Greuel war").[10]
Fussnegger's attitude during theNational Socialist period remains controversial. Between 1937 and 1941 27 of her contributions appeared in theVölkischer Beobachter. Other publications with similar political slants that published her work included "Wille und Macht" and"Das Reich".[19][22] In her more political moments she identifiedAdolf Hitler as a healing figure.[11]
After 1945 theAnschluss was undone. Thewestern two-thirds of Germany and thepre-1938 territory of Austria were both divided into military occupation zones, withBerlin andVienna sub-divided between armies of the same four occupying powers. In Germany'sSoviet occupation zone two of Fussenegger's novels, "Der Brautraub" ("The Bride Robbery": 1939) und "Böhmische Verzauberungen" ("Bohemian Enchantments": 1944) were included in the official four volume"List of Discarded Literature".[23][24] In Vienna, too, several of her works were placed on the "List of banned authors and books".[1]
The postwar decades were productive ones for Gertrud Fussenegger as a novelist. Yet as late as 1952 she published a brief self-portrait in a literary journal which contained phrases chillingly redolent ofNational Socialist race ideology. She belonged to a race characterised by "fair skin, bright [blue] eyes, sensitive to bright light, a hybrid of nordic and dinaric features" ("... hellhäutig, helläugig, empfindlich gegen die Wirkung des Lichts, ein Mischtyp aus nordischen und dinarischen Zügen").[25]
During the postwar period Fussenegger repeatedly wrestled with the"German guilt" question.[26][27] One literary critic,Klaus Amann, described her 1979 autobiography "Ein Spiegelbild mit Feuersäule" (loosely, "mirror image with pillars of fire") as "overall a cringe-worthy offering of suppression and obduracy" ("...insgesamt ein peinliches Dokument der Verdrängung und der Verstocktheit").[28] Other less hostile commentators saw this autobiographical work as a kind of literary penance.[29] During the Hitler years she had included in a 1943 travel report a powerfully horrific description of a Jewish cemetery she had visited inPrague. In it she had employed National Socialist antisemiticshibboleths and stereo-types to condemn the city's Jewish community for the dire condition of the place. In her 1979 autobiographical work she reproduced that description of the Jewish cemetery in Prague three and a half decades earlier, but she had "cleaned it up". She still reported "overflowing tombs", but removed references to Jewish differentness and degeneracy. The overall tone of the text was completely transformed.[19][30]
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