About the work
“Die größere Hoffnung” (The Greater Hope) is the only novel by the Austrian writer Ilse Aichinger. She gave up her medical studies to write it, drawing on her own persecution as the daughter of a Jewish mother in Nazi-ruled Vienna. The book was published in 1948 by Bermann-Fischer in Amsterdam, and in 1960 Aichinger produced a revised, more condensed version. A stage version by Sara Ostertag and Julia Engelmayer premiered at the Landestheater Niederösterreich in St. Pölten on 1 December 2023.
Plot
Ellen has two “wrong” grandparents and is left on her own after her mother emigrates to America; her attempt to obtain a visa from the consul fails. She joins a group of Jewish children who are barred from park benches and can only play in the cemetery, and she pins the yellow star on herself in order to belong. After deportations and the death of her grandmother, who takes poison to escape being taken away, Ellen is caught up in the final battles of the war and is killed while carrying a message at a contested bridge. The city is never named, and the story unfolds in ten chapters woven from dream, fairy-tale and real-life images.
Cultural significance
The novel is regarded as the starting point of Austrian post-war literature and as an early literary testimony to the persecution of Jewish children; instead of realistic description it relies on allegorical, dreamlike images. It was translated into English in 1963 as “Herod's Children” and in 2016 as “The Greater Hope”.