Elisabeth Reichart (born 1953,

Steyregg Steyregg is a municipality in the district of Urfahr-Umgebung in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. History The town was once part of the territory owned by the Princes of Liechtenstein There have been 16 monarchs of the Principality of Liec ...

Upper Austria Upper Austria (german: Oberösterreich ; bar, Obaöstareich) is one of the nine states or of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, a ...

) is an Austrian author.

Biography

Reichart's grandmother survived the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

occupation of Austria The Allied occupation of Austria started on 8 May 1945 with the fall of Nazi Germany and ended with the Austrian State Treaty on 27 July 1955. After the in 1938, Austria had generally been recognized as part of Nazi Germany. In 1943, however, ...

and strongly influenced the life of Reichart. Reichart wrote her dissertation about the

Austrian resistance The Austrian resistance launched in response to the rise in fascism across Europe and, more specifically, to the Anschluss in 1938 and resulting occupation of Austria by Germany. An estimated 100,000 people were reported to have participated i ...

movement and the silence of Austria during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. Soon after, she began writing her first novel, ''

February Shadows ''February Shadows'' (German: ''Februarschatten'') is a 1984 historical novel by award-winning Austrian author Elisabeth Reichart. She wrote it as a response to her discovery of the Mühlviertler Hasenjagd ("rabbit hunt of the Mühlviertel regi ...

.'' Reichart developed into a well-known Austrian writer after the release of ''February Shadows'', a historical novel which dealt with the

Mühlviertler Hasenjagd The Mühlviertler Hasenjagd () was a war crime in which 500 Soviet officers, who had revolted and escaped from the Mühlviertel subcamp of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp on 2 February 1945, were hunted down. Local civilians, soldiers and ...

("The Rabbit Hunt of the Mill District"), and has since produced five novels, a book of short stories, several dramas, and a collection of radio plays.

Awards

In 1993, she received the Austrian National Prize for the Promotion of Literature and in 1995, she was awarded the prestigious Elias Canetti Grant, named for Nobel Prize winner

Elias Canetti Elias Canetti (; bg, Елиас Канети; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994) was a German-language writer, born in Ruse, Bulgaria to a Sephardic family. They moved to Manchester, England, but his father died in 1912, and his mother took her t ...

. In 2000, she received the

Anton Wildgans Prize The Anton Wildgans Prize of Austrian Industry is a literary award that was endowed in 1962 by the Federation of Austrian Industry. The prize is worth 15,000 Euro and is granted by an independent jury to a young or middle-aged writer of Austrian c ...

Literary works

*''Februarschatten'' 1984 (''

'') *''Komm über den See'' 1988 (''Come Across the Lake'') *''La Valse'' 1992 *''Fotze'' 1993 *''Nachtmär'' 1995 (''Nighttale'') *''Das vergessene Lächeln der Amaterasu'' 1990 (''The Forgotten Smile of the Amaterasu'')DeMeritt

References

Bibliography

* DeMeritt, Linda.
The Art of Confronting Taboos.
Department of Modern and Classical Languages of Allegheny College. 2000. * Michaels, Jennifer E. "Breaking the Silence: Elisabeth Reichart's Protest against the Denial of the Nazi past in Austria." ''German Studies Review.'' Vol. 19, No. 1 (1996): pp. 9–27. ''JSTOR.'' German Studies Association. March 31, 2010. * Wolf, Christa. "Afterword." ''February Shadows.'' Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1989. 1953 births Living people 20th-century Austrian novelists Austrian women novelists Anton Wildgans Prize winners 20th-century women writers Psychological fiction writers {{Austria-writer-stub