This series of essays attempts to revise the widespread view of Austria as the "first victim of Hitler" and thus place the events of the 1930s and the Anschluss of March 11, 1938 into a more accurate perspective. The articles fall into three groups: those dealing with events leading up to the Anschluss, those concerned with the Anschluss directly, and those presenting the retrospective views of contemporary authors toward the Anschluss. The presentations make clear how the Nazi takeover was prepared and how the political events of the 1930s and the Anschluss still influence contemporary Austrian society adversely.

"I am different. I am different. I am different. I wrote it on a piece of paper. In the evening I would take the paper out of my pocket and look at it ..". Sebestyen's novel is the story of a young man whose physical appearance proclaims to the world that he stands apart from the norm. Everything is seen through the eyes of the albino protagonist. His physical vulnerability is matched by a psychological sensitivity which Sebestyen uses to present his protagonist's response to his environment and his predicament with a movingly lyrical intensity. The albino could stand for any outsider. The novel does not examine the hostility or persecution that creates the outsider, but focuses on the debilitating effect on a person of being unable to belong to normal society.

A varied, vivid view of the literary culture of the often-neglected interwar Austrian republic. The literary flair of fin-de-siècle Vienna lived on after 1918 in the First Austrian Republic even as writers grappled with the consequences of a lost war and the vanished Habsburg Empire. Reacting to historical and political issues often distinct from those in Weimar Germany, Austrian literary culture, though frequently associated with Jewish writers deeply attached to the concept of an independent Austria, reflected the republic's ever-deepening antisemitism and the growing clamor for political union with Germany. Spanning the two momentous decades between the fall of the empire in 1918 and the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, this book explores work by canonical writers suchas Schnitzler, Kraus, Roth, and Werfel and by now-forgotten figures such as the pacifist Andreas Latzko, the arch-Nazi Bruno Brehm, and the fervently Jewish Soma Morgenstern. Also taken into account are Ernst Weiss's "Hitler" novel Der Augenzeuge and 1930s works about First Republic Austria by the German Communist writers Anna Seghers and Friedrich Wolf. Andrew Barker's book paints a varied and vivid picture of one of the most challenging and underresearched periods in twentieth-century cultural history. Andrew Barker is Emeritus Professor of Austrian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

These essays deal with the interaction between culture and politics during the period of the Austrian Corporate State, the five years preceding the Anschluss in 1938. The contributions show that no aspect of literary and cultural life remained unchanged by the National Socialist infiltration that took place in the 1930s. All Austrian writers, publishers, theater directors, and film makers had to decide whether to face economic penalty by opposing National Socialism and being blacklisted in Germany or to seek financial advantage by joining the Nazi movement. Jewish writers and political activists had no choice but were forced to flee into exile or face imprisonment in concentration camps after the Anschluss.

How did Austrian writers grapple with their country's problematic twentieth-century history? Nine scholars investigate how the complex role of the national past changed the content and context of Austria's literature. Contributions range from Klaus Zeyringer's aggressive argument for an authentically Austrian literature, to the late Harry Zohn's autobiographical insights of a transplanted Viennese. Probing essays examine the Liberal and the National-Socialist era writers in exile and in their roles as post-war social critics. Shadows of the Past also puts the authors themselves in the spotlight: A «mini-reader» of hard-hitting as well as humorous narrative texts complements the literary history that begins the volume. Written by Barbara Frischmuth, Elisabeth Reichart, and Erich Wolfgang Skwara, these six texts are accompanied by helpful introductions to each author. As a further aid for English-speaking readers, the original in German literary and critical texts are translated for the first time. Shadows of the Past allows students of European culture and comparative literature to experience a dramatic century in Austrian literature and history.

Essays that focus specifically on major Austrian writers and the influence of their work on German literature as a whole.