Description
Book Synopsis Following the transformations and conflicts of the first half of the twentieth century, Austria’s emergence as an independent democracy heralded a new era of stability and prosperity for the nation. Among the new developments was mass tourism to the nation’s cities, spa towns, and wilderness areas, a phenomenon that would prove immensely influential on the development of a postwar identity. Revisiting Austria incorporates films, marketing materials, literature, and first-person accounts to explore the ways in which tourism has shaped both international and domestic perceptions of Austrian identity even as it has failed to confront the nation’s often violent and troubled history.
Trade Review “Gundolf Graml’s book presents a fresh, enterprising assessment of the role played by tourism in the construction of ‘Austrianness’ under the Second Republic…[It] offers much to mull over and invigorates both tourism and Austrian history with new approaches.” • Journal of Austrian Studies
“Revisiting Austria is one of the best works that I have read on the issue of coming to terms with the Nazi past—in this case, Austria’s difficulty in confronting it. The author’s suggestions that this legacy is less repressed than disruptive is a significant contribution.” • Shelley Baranowski, University of Akron
“This is an impressive piece of interdisciplinary work, drawing on a range of diverse sources and demonstrating a confident command of the literature. Despite covering quite a lot of ground, it is a pleasurable and easy read.” • Tim Kirk, Newcastle University
Table of Contents List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
Part I: “Where is this Much-Talked-Of Austria?” Remapping Post–World War II Austria
Chapter 1. ‘We Love Our Heimat But We Need Foreigners!’: Tourism and the Reconstruction of Austria 1945–55
Chapter 2. Destination Heimat: Mobilizing Identity Discourses in Counsillor Geiger [Der Hofrat Geiger] (1947)
Chapter 3. German Tourists as Guardians of the Austrian Heimat: Renegotiating German – Austrian Relations in The Forester of the Silver Forest [Echo der Berge/Der Förster vom Silberwald] (1954)
Part II: Dark Places: Tourism and the Representation of Austria’s Involvement in National Socialism and the Holocaust
Chapter 4. Linz09: Tourism and History on a Local, Regional, and European Level
Chapter 5. Alpine Vampires: The Haunted Landscapes of Elfriede Jelinek’s Children of the Dead
Chapter 6. The Blind Shores of Austrian History: Christoph Ransmayr’s Morbus Kitahara
Part III: Austrian Narratives of Place and Identity in the Context of Globalization
Chapter 7. Trapped Bodies, Roaming Fantasies: Mobilizing Constructions of Place and Identity in Florian Flicker’s Suzie Washington
Chapter 8. The Copy and the Original: The Sound of Music and Austrian National Identity
Conclusion: When Austria Moves to China
