Robert Menasse | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1954-06-21)21 June 1954 (age 71) |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Language | German |
| Citizenship | Austrian |
Robert Menasse (born 21 June 1954) is an Austrian writer.
Menasse was born inVienna. As an undergraduate, he studiedGerman studies, philosophy andpolitical science in Vienna,Salzburg andMessina. In 1980 he completed his PhD thesis "Der Typus des Außenseiters im Literaturbetrieb. Am BeispielHermann Schürrer" ("The outsider phenotype within literature").
Between 1981 and 1988 Menasse worked as a junior lecturer at the Institute of Literature Theory at theUniversity of São Paulo, Brazil. He has been working as a freelance publicist, columnist and translator of novels fromPortuguese into German ever since.
His first novelSinnliche Gewissheit, published in 1988, is a semi-autobiographical tale of Austrians living in exile in Brazil. The magazineLiteratur und Kritik published Menasse's first poem ("Kopfwehmut") in 1989. His later novels wereSelige Zeiten, brüchige Welt (1991, translated into English asWings of StoneISBN 0-7145-4295-4),Schubumkehr (1995, Engl.Reverse Thrust) andDie Vertreibung aus der Hölle (2001, Engl.Expulsion from Hell).
Menasse's language is at times playful and at times subtly sarcastic. Recurring themes in hisnovels areloneliness andalienation within human relationships and as a result of his character's lives' circumstances. In his work Menasse often criticises what he sees as the latent form ofantisemitism still widespread in the German-speaking world today.
Menasse has also written some essays on Austria (especially on Austrianidentity and history; "Land ohne Eigenschaften" (1992) a.o.). More recently, he wrote about the future of Europe and theEuropean Union, criticizing tendencies of re-nationalization (especially in Germany, but also elsewhere) and anti-European integration movements, which he interprets as a reaction to the2008 financial crisis and theEuro area crisis ("Der europäische Landbote", 2012).
Since returning to Europe from Brazil, Menasse has mainly lived in the cities ofBerlin, Vienna andAmsterdam. He currently[when?] lives in Vienna and is married.[citation needed] Since 2011 Menasse has been curating a writer in residence programme with theone world foundation in Sri Lanka.[1]
His books have been translated in over twenty languages, among others: Arabic, Bask, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Today, Menasse lives alternately in Vienna, in theWaldviertel (Forest Quarter) inLower Austria, and inBrussels. He is the son of the footballerHans Menasse and the brother of the journalist and writerEva Menasse.
Robert Menasse's first short storyNägelbeißen (Engl. Nail-Biting) was published in the journalNeue Wege in 1973. From 1975 to 1980 he worked on his unfinished and unpublished novelKopfwehmut (Engl. Mind's Melancholy), a social novel set in 1970s Vienna. His first published novel,Sinnliche Gewißheit (Engl. Sensual Certainty) appeared in 1988 as the first part of a trilogy started in BrazilTrilogie der Entgeisterung (Engl. Trilogy of Dismay), which also includes the 1991 novelSelige Zeiten, brüchige Welt (Engl.Wings of Stone, 2000), which is at once a crime story, a philosophical novel and a Jewish family saga, and finally the 1995 novelSchubumkehr (Engl.Reverse Thrust, 2000) as well as the postscript Phänomenologie der Entgeisterung (1995, Engl. Phenomenology of Dismay).
InSchubumkehr, against the background of the private life of the literature teacher Roman, who was already introduced inSelige Zeiten, brüchige Welt, Menasse describes the fall of theIron Curtain in 1989 and the breakdown of the familiar order in a small Austrian village. This novel, which is not least an artistic treatment of the spirit of the age, was awarded the Grimmelshausen Prize in 1999 and made the author a household name. As suggested already by the title of the novelSchubumkehr and in theTrilogie der Entgeisterung Menasse turns Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit on its head. In contrast toHegel, who assumes a development of human consciousness to all-embracing spirit, Menasse postulates a regressive development, whose final stage will be "sensual certainty", according to Hegel the most naïve form of consciousness.[2]
In his novelDie Vertreibung aus der Hölle (2001; Engl. Expulsion from Hell) Menasse casts doubt on the objectivity of history, coupled with the personal history of the author and his Jewish roots. As a spin-off of his researches on the character and real personMenasseh Ben Israel for his novelDie Vertreibung aus der Hölle translated in ten languages, Menasse formulated the hypothesis ofAbaelard‘s influence onMenasseh Ben Israel andSpinoza, published among others in his essayEnlightenment as Harmonious Strategy.[3] In 2007 he publishedDon Juan de la Mancha, where he tells of more or less fictitious events from the (love) life of the newspaper editor Nathan – a mixture of listlessness, drive, lust and the search for the fulfilment of love. As a character, Nathan stands for the generation that was socialised in the 1970s with the claim for the “sexual revolution".
In 2017 Menasse published his analytical novelDie Hauptstadt (The Capital), which has been described as the first novel about Brussels as theEuropean Union's capital, and which received theGerman Book Prize.[4] The story is focused on officials from the Department of Culture, who are expected to add polish to the image of theEU Commission on its birthday. The main character in this novel, Pote, explores his family's history. This is to be accomplished with a "Big Jubilee Project" event withconcentration camp survivors in Auschwitz. The life stories of characters lead the reader into six EU countries. The stage director Tom Kühnel and the dramaturg Ralf Fiedler translated the novel into a theatrical version with about twenty characters played by seven actors, which was premiered in January 2018 at theTheater am Neumarkt inZürich.[5] The English translation,The Capital byJamie Bulloch, was published byMacLehose Press in February 2019.
In his political and journalistic work, Menasse is seen as an "old-style Enlightenment thinker," whose intellectual predecessors are especiallyHegel andMarx but alsoGeorg Lukács,Ernst Bloch and the philosophers of theFrankfurt School.[6] Essays likeDie sozialpartnerschaftliche Ästhetik (1990; The Aesthetics of Social Partnership) andDas Land ohne Eigenschaften (1992; The Country without Qualities), which brought Menasse fame as an essayist, but also provoked criticism for "fouling his own nest," were followed in time by the essay collectionsHysterien und andere historische Irrtümer (1996; Hysterics and Other Historical Errors) andDummheit ist machbar (1999; Stupidity is Doable),Erklär mir Österreich (2000; Explain Austria to Me) andDas war Österreich (2005; That Was Austria). In these texts the author deals in critical-ironic way with political history, mentality history and literary history of the second Republic ofAustria, takes a position on the current cultural policy situation in his homeland and recurrently draws attention to the latent continuity ofAustrofascism.[7]
Since 2005, i.e. since his Frankfurt Poetics Lecture,Die Zerstörung der Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The Destruction of the World as Will and Representation), Menasse has increasingly devoted his essays to themes around the EU andglobalisation. In this European or worldwide context Menasse criticises in particular what he sees as the deficits in democratic policies and the idea that these deficits are structurally determined, which he argues obscures the prospects of possible alternatives. In doing so he does not oppose theEuropean Union in principle but bases his critique of democratic deficits especially in the influence and power of individual nation states, while valuing positively the purely European institutions, such as theCommission. InDer Europäische Landbote (2012; Engl. transl. 2016 asEnraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits: Or Why the Democracy Given to Us Must Become One We Fight For The European Messenger), he draws a portrait of the non-petty-minded supranational organs and bureaucracies of the EU in Brussels and further develops the "Habsburg Myth" ofClaudio Magris into a "European Myth". This also leads to a different and more positive retrospective of the Habsburg Monarchy.[8] In this connection Menasse also speaks in favour of the specific vision and its realization of a “European Republic”[9] formulated together with the political scientistUlrike Guérot on the basis of a Europe of regions[10][circular reference] beyond the nation states.[11]
In December 2018,Welt am Sonntag revealed that Robert Menasse had fabricated several quotes attributed toWalter Hallstein (1901-1982), one of the founding fathers of the EU) to support his argument for overcoming nation states.[12] Menasse had been using these alleged quotes in many of his articles, essays and speeches since 2013, and they had been taken up in parliamentary debates and publications by other authors.[13] Menasse defended himself arguing that these sentences reflected what Hallstein had meant and that Hallstein "would have had nothing against" Menasse invoking his authority in this way.[12] However, historianHeinrich August Winkler disputed Menasse's interpretation of Hallstein's actual statements on the matter.[12]
With the prize money that Robert Menasse received for theAustrian State Prize (1998) he re-founded theJean Améry- Preis für Europäische Essayistik, whose winners so far have beenLothar Baier (1982),Barbara Sichtermann (1985),Mathias Greffrath (1988),Reinhard Merkel (1991),Franz Schuh (2000),Doron Rabinovici (2002),Michael Jeismann (2004),Drago Jančar (2007),Imre Kertész[20] (2009),Dubravka Ugrešić (2012),Adam Zagajewski[21] (2016) andKarl-Markus Gauß (2018).
