TESTI / 1 / Vivian Liska
“The Places that we Saw now Look at Us”. Vienna in contemporary Austro-Jewish literature
Contemporary Austrian-Jewish literature is characterized by an emphasis on the destruction of the Jewish population of Vienna in the period of the national-socialist reign of terror. The official sites of remembrance inspire this literature only where they are seen in conjunction with the everyday streets and squares that retain the past through their continuous presence and remain, for the Jewish-Austrian authors of the post-war generation, haunted by the past. This experience of the Austrian capital is paradigmatically evoked in poetic texts by Robert Schindel, Doron Rabinovici and above all Ilse Aichinger, who survived the Nazi occupation in Vienna as a youngster. In their texts, these authors collect traces of the past in the streets and places of the Austrian capital, turning them into a soberly mournful revelation of events that have been repressed in Austria for too long, but are still lingering under the veneer of a city known for its charm and beauty.
