Robert Schindel

This 660-page novel, peopled with dozens of characters, is set in Vienna, the Austrian capital. The German Claus Peymann is the director of the Burgtheater and former Nazi Kurt Waldheim becomes the country’s president. Thomas Bernhard is writing his play Heldenplatz (Heroes’ Square) and Alfred Hrdlicka is sculpting his Monument against War and Fascism. All this is duly causing a stir, even beyond the country’s borders. The time for gemütlichkeit, opera ball idylls and driving in horse-drawn carriages gives way to heated political unrest and faecal attacks.
While Schindel appears to focus on everyday Viennese life in the second half of the 1980s, he in fact portrays a whole country that has so far managed to get along quite well with the ghosts of the past. Only now, for the first time, does he attempt to break with his understanding of himself as “Hitler’s first victim”, forced to face up to historical truths and his own anti-Semitism. That is told in an exciting and humorous way, from different perspectives, in parallel stories, lively dialogues and linguistically impressive images.

Carsten Hueck: “Menschen in Wien – dürftig und bedürftig”
© Deutschlandradio Kultur, 13 March 2013