GIBT ES EINE ÖSTERREICHISCHE LITERATUR?” — Is there such a thing as Austrian literature? This question, posed for a survey in 1936, was famously answered in the affirmative by Thomas Mann: “Die spezifische Besonderheit der österreichischen Literatur ist zwar nicht leicht zu bestimmen, aber jeder empfindet sie” (The specific particularity of Austrian literature is not easy to define, but everyone perceives it). The vagueness of Mann's response was not designed to lay this question to rest, and it has become a standard point of departure for reflections on Austrian literary identity. In 1976, exile writer Hilde Spiel used Mann's answer as the starting point for a history of postwar Austrian literature, and in 1995 the novelist and poet Julian Schutting asked the question afresh in his contribution to a literary anthology on Austrian literature. The parameters of the question are clear: at issue is the relationship between Austrian literature and the “German literature” that ambiguously refers both to the literature produced by the larger neighbor and to all literature written in the German language.

The question of Austrian literature's identity is of interest not because it promises a stable definition of the characteristics of the country's national literature by means of robustly defensible criteria, but because it casts the spotlight on interactions between the country's literature, its linguistic identity, its cultural constellations, and the political developments that shape a continuously changing public sphere. Moreover, the introduction to this volume ought to provide the reader with some discussion of the question even if it fails to deliver a definitive answer. For the essays in this book cover ground that has already received attention in Ingo R. Stoehr's German Literature of the Twentieth Century: From Aestheticism to Postmodernism (2001), the final part of the Camden House History of German Literature. Stoehr examines literature written in the German language in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The present volume complements his wider perspective with a closer look at the continuities and tensions of a literature that has derived strength both from its integration in the community of German speakers, and from its specific national and cultural identity.