Heide Kunzelmann

Austrian Studies Vol. 29 Heide Kunzelmann

Austrian cultural production after 1945 has been enduringly haunted by unsavoury truths. The fraught relationship of post-war Austria with its own history and the collective denial of responsibility for National Socialist crimes informed a cultural discourse that was polarized between apologetic or extremely judgmental viewpoints (Fliedl 1998). Towards the turn of the new millennium, however, research began to discern alternatives in the steadily growing number of phenomena and artefacts that accept the uncanny core of a dialectical, integrative approach to Austria's difficult history (W. G. Sebald 1991).