Abstract
The author Ilse Aichinger was ‘half-Jewish’ (her word), and lived in Nazi-ruled Vienna in 1938–1945. She left the city in 1950, but returned in 1988. This chapter analyses Aichinger’s memories of Nazi-era Vienna in two collections of short pieces, Film and Fate: Camera Flashes Illuminating A Life (2001) and Improbable Journeys (2005), and in interviews given after 1988. The chapter discusses Aichinger’s ambivalent feelings towards Vienna, and her sense that the Nazi past remains present in the city, that the post-war Austrian state does not remember this past in appropriate ways, and that Austrian society remains marked by anti-Semitism. The chapter also examines Aichinger’s view of the fluidity of individual memory and the significance which she accords to the cinema in her own remembering.
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Notes
- 1.
With the exception of Caruth’s book, Friedlander’s chapter and Uhl’s article (which are cited once each), all primary and secondary sources cited in this chapter are in German. All translations from German are my own. Although I have published translations of all the texts by Aichinger which are cited here, in the interests of consistency, all page references to those sources are to the original German texts.
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- 3.
For similar references to the Central Cemetery, see Fässler 2011a, pp. 46, 63 & 163. A cemetery also plays a major role in the third chapter of The Greater Hope, ʻThe Holy Landʼ (pp. 52–80).
- 4.
Vienna’s Burg Cinema (Burg Kino 2018) has held regular screenings of The Third Man since 1980, and at the time of writing is showing the film every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday: see Fässler 2011b, p. 238; and https://www.burgkino.at/movie/third-man viewed 29 August 2018.
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References
Aichinger, I 1987, Kleist, Moos, Fasane, 2nd ed, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
Aichinger, I 2003, Film und Verhängnis: Blitzlichter auf ein Leben, 2nd ed, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
Aichinger, I 2007, Unglaubwürdige Reisen, 2nd ed, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
Aichinger, I 2012, Die gröβere Hoffnung, 12th ed, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.
Berbig, R 2011, “20. März 1996”: Ilse Aichingers unveröffentlichter Initialtext zum Spätwerk, in Ivanovic C & Shindo S (eds.), Absprung zur Weiterbesinnung: Geschichte und Medien bei Ilse Aichinger, Stauffenberg Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 51–64.
Burg Kino (Vienna), viewed 29 August 2018, https://www.burgkino.at/movie/third-man.
Caruth, C 2016, Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history, 2nd ed, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Fässler, S 2001, Die Orte, die wir sahen, sehen uns an, in Aichinger I, Kurzschlüsse: Wien, 2nd ed, Edition Korrespondezen, Vienna, pp. 65–78.
Fässler, S 2007, Vorwort, in Aichinger I, Unglaubwürdige Reisen, 2nd ed, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 7–12.
Fässler, S (ed.) 2011a, Es muss gar nichts bleiben: Interviews 1952–2005, 2nd ed, Edition Korrespondenzen, Vienna.
Fässler, S 2011b, Von Wien her, auf Wien hin: Ilse Aichingers ‘Geographie der eigenen Existenz’, Böhlau, Cologne.
Friedlander, S 1995, Trauma, memory, and transference, in Hartman GH (ed.), Holocaust remembrance: The shapes of memory, 2nd ed, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, pp. 252–63.
Ivanovic, C 2011, Masse. Medien. Mensch: Ilse Aichingers bioskopisches Schreiben, in Ivanovic C & Shindo S (eds.), Absprung zur Weiterbesinnung: Geschichte und Medien bei Ilse Aichingeri, Stauffenberg Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 173–84.
Nieberle, S 2001, ‘Ilse Aichinger im Kino des Verschwindens’, in Herrmann B & Thums B (eds.), ‘Was wir einsetzen können, ist Nüchternheit’: Zum Werk Ilse Aichingers, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, pp. 127–46.
Uhl, H 2016, ‘From the periphery to the center of memory: Holocaust memorials in Vienna’, Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 221–42.
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Wilkes, G. (2020). ‘The Most Intimate Familiarity and the Most Extreme Existential Alienation’: Ilse Aichinger’s Memories of Nazi-Era Vienna. In: Hubbell, A.L., Akagawa, N., Rojas-Lizana, S., Pohlman, A. (eds) Places of Traumatic Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52056-4_8
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