About the work
Elfriede Jelinek's play was written in 1982 and premiered in 1985 at the Schauspiel Bonn — for a long time unstageable in Austria itself. In it the author works through the biographies of Austrian Burgtheater actors of the Nazi era, in particular Paula Wessely, Attila Hörbiger and their family. The work is a sharp reckoning with the life-lie of Austria's cultural elites after 1945.
Plot
At the centre stands the actor family "Burgtheater" — recognisable as the Hörbiger-Wessely dynasty — in the Vienna of the 1940s. Käthe and Istvan, celebrated stars on stage and screen, profit from the Nazi regime. Their sister Mizzi, naive and dependent, becomes the family's victim. After the war they all repress their role in National Socialism and play the exonerated. Jelinek has her figures speak in an artificial language of dialect, theatrical mannerism and bad puns that at once conceals and exposes their moral bankruptcy. There is no linear plot, but a montage of scenes that parades the hypocrisy of ever-new generations.
Cultural significance
Burgtheater caused a nationwide scandal in Austria at its premiere and was condemned as "fouling one's own nest". To this day it is regarded as a key text on Austria's refusal to confront its past after 1945. Jelinek's language montages helped shape the documentary and post-dramatic theatre of the following decades. The author received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, in part for precisely this unflinching engagement with the dark spots of Austrian history. Performances in Vienna took place only after many years — once the debate could finally be held.