Abstract:

The article examines references to the Habsburg myth in selected works by the author Ingeborg Bachmann. The texts that are mainly analyzed are the short stories from Simultan and the novel Malina. The texts are chosen based on Bachmann’s confrontation with the Austrian past and only texts with explicit examples of this matter are taken into consideration. Specific examples of the Habsburg myth in the author’s works indicate that Bachmann’s analysis of Austrian society after the Second World War drew attention to the causes and consequences of this catastrophe and linked it to the First World War. It warns against the glorification of the past and the lack of confrontation with one’s own history and guilt, which are particularly characteristic of Austria. It is shown that Bachmann does not continue the Habsburg myth, but demands a critical handling of this phenomenon which is also the way of the younger generation of authors in the Austrian literature who reject mythologizing the past. Bachmann creates the utopian idea of a House of Austria, which serves as a mental homeland for her protagonists and is not to be equated with the actual empire that has perished. She distances herself from the perpetuation of the Habsburg myth by calling for a confrontation with one’s own past instead of an idealization of the past.

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