Gertrud Fussenegger

Gertrud Fussenegger (8 May 1912 – 19 March 2009) was an Austrian writer and a prolific author, especially of historical novels. Many commentators felt that her reputation never entirely escaped from the shadow cast by her enthusiasm, as a young woman, for National Socialism.

Life Provenance and early years Gertrud Anna Fussenegger was born in Pilsen, a flourishing manufacturing city in Bohemia which at that time was a Crown land of the Austrian Empire. She came from a military family. Emil Fussenegger, her father, was an Imperial and Royal army officer originally from Vorarlberg. Her mother, born Karoline Hässler, was from Bohemia. She grew up in Neu Sandez (then in Galicia), Dornbirn (Vorarlberg) and Telfs (North Tirol). She enrolled at the Mädchen-Realgymnasium (girls' secondary school) in Innsbruck in 1923. It was at the "Reform-Realgymnasium" (school) in Pilsen that Fussenegger completed her schooling, passing her Matura (school final exams) in 1930. 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 the Czech language.

Politics Fussenegger joined the Austrian National Socialist party – still at this stage formally separate from its German counterpart – in May 1933. Membership was still illegal in Austria. For the avoidance of doubt, she also wrote a "hymn" eulogising Adolf Hitler. The marriage was not happy.

Her second marriage was to another sculptor. In 1950, Gertrud Fussenegger married Alois Dorn. This marriage resulted in the birth of her second son and fifth child.

In 1961, she relocated with her family, settling this time in Leonding, a small town near Linz.

Memberships and recognition Gertrud Fussenegger was a member of the Austrian P.E.N. association, of the Humboldt Society, of the Sudeten German Academy and an honorary member of the Austrian Writers' Association. Between 1977 and 1979, and again from 1984 until 1985, she was a jury member for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, awarded each year in Klagenfurt. In 1991 she was a jury member for the Franz-Grillparzer Prize of the Alfred Toepfer foundation. In 1978 she was honoured with an award from the Humboldt Society.

Gertrude Gussenegger's literary archive is held by the Upper Austria Literature Archive at the Stifterhaus in Linz.

Artistic output Fussnegger began her writing career with historical novels, set in various different epochs. Her stories were influenced by her Catholic 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").

Gertrud Fassenegger authored more than sixty books, alongside various shorter prose pieces and poems, published, according to at least one source, by 25 publishers and translated into eleven languages.

Fussenegger and the Third Reich Fussenegger's relationship with National 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 the NSDAP in Austria in 1933 and rejoined it in Germany after the Anschluss in 1938. In 1939 she became a member of the government-created Reich Chamber of Literature. She took part on the Weimar Poets' Congress in 1938 and again in 1939, and was in touch with well-known "völkisch" authors such as Ina Seidel, Lulu von Strauß und Torney, Will Vesper and Wilhelm Pleyer. Controversy about this particular work resurfaced in 1993 in connection with proposals to award Fussenegger the Weilheim Literature Prize and the Jean-Paul Prize awarded by "The Free State of Bavaria".

Many of Fussenegger's other pieces, mostly during this period religiously contextualised novels, poems and reviews, found their way into important party newspapers and journals. Most (in)famously, her poem "Stimme der Ostmark" ("Voice of the Ostmark") was printed in 1938 by the Völkischer Beobachter. The poem attracted huge criticism after 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"). In her more political moments she identified Adolf Hitler as a healing figure. In Vienna, too, several of her works were placed on the "List of banned authors and books".

During the postwar period Fussenegger repeatedly wrestled with the "German guilt" question. 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"). Other less hostile commentators saw this autobiographical work as a kind of literary penance. During the Hitler years she had included in a 1943 travel report a powerfully horrific description of a Jewish cemetery she had visited in Prague. In it she had employed National Socialist antisemitic shibboleths 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.

Awards and honours

1942 First Prize in "The twentieth century novella" competition 1951 Adalbert-Stifter prize 1956 Sponsorship award from the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater 1962 National East German writing prize 1958 Nordgau-Kulturpreis der Stadt Amberg ("Poetry" category) 1963 Adalbert-Stifter prize 1969 Johann-Peter-Hebel Prize 1972 Andreas-Gryphius-Preis 1972 Hauptpreis des Sudetendeutschen Kulturbundes 1972 Main Arts Prize of the Sudetendeutschen Landsmannschaft 1972 Verleihung des Professorentitels h. c. 1979 Mozart-Preis der Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S. 1979 Humboldt-Plakette 1981 Österreichisches Ehrenzeichen für Wissenschaft und Kunst 1983 Konrad-Adenauer-Preis der Deutschland-Stiftung (which she turned down) 1984 Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 1st class 1987 Heinrich Gleißner Prize 1992 DANUBIUS Donauland non-fiction prize 1993 Weilheim Literature Prize 1993 Jean-Paul-Preis 1999 Arts Medal of Upper Austria 2002 Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold with Star for Services to the Republic of Austria 2004 Decoration of Honour for the Tirol 2007 Pontifical Equestrian Order of Saint Sylvester Pope and Martyr from Pope Benedict XVI 2007 Egerländer Kulturpreis Johannes-von-Tepl, Arbeitskreis Egerländer Kulturschaffender

Output (selection)

… wie gleichst du dem Wasser. Novellas. Munich 1929 Geschlecht im Advent. Roman aus deutscher Frühzeit. Potsdam 1936 Mohrenlegende. Potsdam 1937 Der Brautraub. Erzählungen. Potsdam 1939 Die Leute auf Falbeson. Jena 1940 Eggebrecht. Erzählungen. Jena 1943 Böhmische Verzauberungen. Jena 1944 Die Brüder von Lasawa. Novel. Salzburg 1948 Das Haus der dunklen Krüge. Novel. Salzburg 1951 In Deine Hand gegeben. Novel. Düsseldorf/Köln 1954 Das verschüttete Antlitz. Novel. Stuttgart 1957 Zeit des Raben, Zeit der Taube. Novel. Stuttgart 1960 Der Tabakgarten, 6 Geschichten und ein Motto. Stuttgart 1961 Die Reise nach Amalfi. Radio play. Stuttgart 1963 Die Pulvermühle. Detective novel. Stuttgart 1968 Bibelgeschichten. Vienna/Heidelberg 1972 Widerstand gegen Wetterhähne. Lyrische Kürzel und andere Texte. Stuttgart 1974 Eines langen Stromes Reise – Die Donau. Linie, Räume, Knotenpunkte. Stuttgart 1976 Ein Spiegelbild mit Feuersäule. Ein Lebensbericht. Autobiographie. Stuttgart 1979 Pilatus. Szenenfolge um den Prozess Jesu. Uraufgeführt 1979, verlegt Freiburg i. B./Heidelberg 1982 Maria Theresia. Vienna/Munich/Zürich/Innsbruck 1980 Kaiser, König, Kellerhals. Heitere Erzählungen. Vienna/Munich/Zürich/New York 1981 Sie waren Zeitgenossen. Roman. Stuttgart 1983 Uns hebt die Welle. Liebe, Sex und Literatur. Essay. Vienna/ Freiburg i. B./Basel 1984 Gegenruf. Poems. Salzburg 1986 Jona. for young people. Vienna/Munich 1987 Herrscherinnen. Frauen, die Geschichte machten. Stuttgart 1991 Jirschi oder die Flucht ins Pianino. Graz/ Vienna/ Cologne 1995 Ein Spiel ums andere. Erzählungen. Stuttgart 1996 Shakespeares Töchter. Three novellas. Munich 1999 Bourdanins Kinder. Novel. Munich 2001 Gertrud Fussenegger. Ein Gespräch über ihr Leben und Werk mit Rainer Hackel. Vienna/ Cologne/ Weimar 2005