AUSTRIAN LITERATURE. This literature has been closely bound up with that of the German people as a whole. Yet Austrian literature has preserved characteristics of its own, partly because of the outlying position of the country, partly because of the special position which the Habsburg prov inces occupied in the empire, partly because of the close, albeit often hostile, relations of the Austrian Germans to so many other nations, and partly also owing to the Counter-Reformation. In consequence of the latter movement, Austria was, from the end of the 16th century, divided by religious differences from south western, central and northern Germany and became the centre of a baroque culture peculiar to itself, though largely derived from Spanish and Italian sources. Catholicism has continued down to the present day to be one of the most important elements of specifically Austrian literature. Contributory factors are the dif ferent variations of the Bajuvaric, or, in the case of Vorarlberg, the Alemannic national character, and the various territorial and local traditions. Above all, the temperament and mentality of the people of Vienna, which received its definitive stamp in the era of the Counter-Reformation, have modified the Austrian de velopment of German tendencies in general. The Viennese have a vivid perception of beauty as well as of sentiment and of fun; they love music, nature and everything spectacular; they are endowed with a subtle taste in art. On the other hand they take life as easily as possible, avoiding everything unpleasant. They dis like extremes, are prone to compromise and usually take little interest in metaphysical problems. Since 1914 this mentality has undergone some change, but it will be found faithfully expressed in a great part of pre-war and post-war Austrian literature.
Owing to the outlying position of Austria, literary movements have often been late in reaching it from Germany; and though there has from the earliest times down to the present day been a constant literary give-and-take between the south-east section of the German-speaking people and the bulk of the race, it has seldom happened, and only for short periods, that the Germans of the Danube and the Alps have taken the lead in literary matters. Until the Counter-Reformation at least, the general lines of literary development are the same in both lands.
The Austrian literature of the middle ages included the religious lyric and the religious epic (the latter particularly in Carinthia and Styria), as well as the lyric of chivalry. The last-named genre enjoyed the same patronage in the court of Vienna as in the Wartburg; its Austrian representatives include such masters of different styles as Walther von der Vogelweide (q.v.) and Nithart. In the development of the great national epic of the middle ages the principal part was played by Austria proper, Styria and Tirol; the courtly epic being but scantily de veloped. Towards the end of the middle ages Austrian literature began to take on a realistic and comic colouring; but the lyric of chivalry continued to be written far longer than elsewhere, and the life of the mediaeval epic was artificially prolonged by the Emperor Maximilian I. (d. 1519). It is to Maximilian that Austria owed its brief efflorescence of humanism, and the first, though transient, period of prosperity of the University of Vienna (founded in 1365) . The university, however, derived most of its fame from the foreign scholars who taught there.
A long period of literary sterility followed, owing to constant religious conflicts and the difficulties of internal and foreign affairs. This was succeeded by the baroque period, which was specially characteristic of south Germany. The baroque style appeared simultaneously in literature, architecture, sculpture, painting and music. It was the time of the supremacy of the Jesuits, and of the rigid absolutism of the emperors, who stood in close relation to Spain. These factors help to account for the movement. There was also a marked Italian influence, affecting more particularly the popular drama. The latter genre now appeared for the first time in literary form, and continued its long and brilliant course until well into the i9th century.
About the middle of the i8th century the Au f kldrung (enlight enment) movement gradually began to penetrate Austria. This movement tended to minimize the acute difference between north and south Germany which had existed since the Counter Reformation. Its principal figure was Sonnenfels (1733-1817) who, though far less significant, may be compared with Lessing. The literature produced by his school was well intentioned though not of great permanent value. Another result of the movement was the creation (17 76) of the famous Burgtheater. In the classical period, Collin (q.v.) stands in about the same relation to Schiller as Sonnenf els to Lessing.
The Romantic movement was introduced into Austria compara tively early by its initiators, the brothers Schlegel. Austrian litera ture now enjoyed its second period of brilliance, known as the Vormdrz. The most famous names of the period are those of Bauernfeld, Raimund, Nestroy, Griin, Lenau, Stelzhamer, and— most famous of all—Grillparzer (d. 1872) and Stifter (d. 1868) . The lifetime and work of the latter writers form a con necting link with the next era, the period of constitutional liberalism, in which the best-known names are those of Hebbel, Laube and Wilbrandt—all immigrants from Germany—and, among native authors, Kiirnberger, Schindler, Hamerling, Ebner Eschenbach, Saar, Rosegger, Anzengruber, David.
There are three distinct periods in modern Austrian literature. In the first period are to be found those authors who in the '8os and '9os laid the foundations of the Austrian "Moderne" on the basis of realistic or neo-romantic principles. These men have either completed their life-work or at least are not likely to reveal any new features, although their former leader, Hermann Bahr, was a perfect Proteus in versatility. There are, secondly, those writers who, between 190o and the World War, represented various aspects or combinations of realism and romanticism; and lastly, the authors of the war and post-war period; most of them, but not all, influenced by expressionism.
The next group consists of lyric poets, more or less under the influence of Hofmannsthal : Wladimir Hartlieb, Hans Muller, Alfred Grunewald, Stefan Zweig, Otto Hauser, Felix Braun, Paul Wertheimer, Max Mell and the passionate Anton Wildgans. But the third group follows the banner of expressionism, and is charac terized by deliberate disregard of the laws of logic and of metre, and an all-embracing love of the universe and of mankind as a part of it, reminiscent of Whitman and the French unanimists.
Albert Ehrenstein, Franz Werfel, Georg Trakl (d. 1914), Karl Schossleitner, Friedrich Schreyvogl, the painter Uriel Birnbaum may be mentioned here; and there is a certain affinity in matter and thought between their poems and those of the powerful satirist, Karl Kraus, and of the labour poet, Alfons Petzold (d. 1923), although in age both belong to an earlier period, as well as Peter Altenberg (d. 1919), equally original in life and art, whose short "prose poems" sometimes possess an irresistible charm and a childlike wisdom. A somewhat similar form has been adopted by the eminent thinker Josef Popper-Lynkeus (d. 1921).
Independent of these groups are Richard Kralik, Karl F. Ginzkey, Richard Schaukal, the religious poetess Enrica Handel Mazzetti, Erika Spann-Rheinsch, and the Tyrolese poets Arthur Wallpach, Karl Dallago, Heinrich Schullern, all belonging to the school of the old romantics rather than to the new.
The next group, which appeared about 1908, adopted an atti tude of tacit or outspoken opposition to the Schnitzler school; the scenes of their novels are laid for the most part, not in Vienna, but in the provinces, and the leader of this "Kailyard" movement was Rudolf Hans Bartsch of Styria, an emotional writer with a fervid imagination and a florid, sometimes ecstatic style, a master in word painting of landscapes. He had numerous fol lowers, who shared his power of giving speech to nature, and his sympathy with the life of the countryside and the provinces. These were Ginzkey, Karl H. Strobl, Franz Nabl, Robert Hohl baum, Josef F. Perkonig, Gustav Renker, Hans Sterneder, Hans Hammerstein, Paula Grogger—and again a separate group of Tyrolese: Hans Hoffensthal (d. 1915), Dallago, Schullern, Albert Trentini.
The historical fiction of Austria, after having been boycotted by "thoroughgoing" naturalism, received a fresh impetus before the war from the philosophic writers, Erwin G. Kolbenbeyer and Emil Lucka—both excelling in technique, vividness of style and depth of thought. It was also influenced by the devout Handel Mazzetti and the learned Otto Hauser—and in their wake Alma J. Koenig, Hermann Graedener, Braun and Egmont Colerus have followed. Hohlbaum wrote successful novels giving, if con sidered as a series, the historical development of the German "Geist." The last generation of novelists, the writers of the war and post-war period, are characterized either by weary resigna tion, or by passionate negation or assertion of the life force. Spiritualism, occultism and religion have become fashionable again, and are trying to find expression in novels of terror and in Wellsian Utopias. Otto Soyka, Franz Spunda, Paul Busson (d. 1924), Franz Rebiczek and Rudolf J. Kreutz, a no-more-war novelist, may be included in this category. The eminent prose work of Kraus, begun as early as 1899, stands apart from the main stream.
The Vienna Burgtheater, which formerly gave the lead to theatrical and, in some degree, to dramatic art in Germany, had already been deprived of its hegemony before 1900, and now has a dangerous rival in Max Reinhardt's Theater in Der Josefstadt. The annual summer festivals in Salzburg are also due to Rein hardt's initiative.