Elena Messner

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Elena Messner, 2016

Elena Messner (* 1983 in Klagenfurt ) is an Austrian author , editor and literary scholar .

Life

Elena Messner grew up bilingually (Slovenian and German) in Klagenfurt, Ljubljana and Salzburg and studied comparative literature and cultural studies in Vienna , Belgrade and Aix-en-Provence . Her dissertation deals with South Slavic literature, literary sociology and intercultural literary transfer. In addition to teaching in Vienna, Berlin, Innsbruck and Marseille , the author also worked as a translator from Slovenian and Croatian / Serbian, as an editor and cultural mediator. She writes prose, essays and theater texts. Since 2007 she has worked for several years on the scientific internet project Kakanien Revisited . In 2011 Messner was co-coordinator of the appearance of Serbia as a focus country at the Leipzig Book Fair . Together with Eva Schörkhuber, she is a co-founder of the literary platform textfeld südost and organized the Vienna Sound Walks and the Sommerloch literature festival . Elena Messner taught from 2013 to 2018 in Marseille at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Aix / Marseille. She teaches regularly at the University of Klagenfurt. She lives in Vienna.

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Elena Messner publishes both as a literary scholar and as a prose author. In 2014 she published her introduction to the post-Yugoslav war prose and her debut novel The Long Echo , followed in autumn 2016 by the second novel In the Transitzone . Her debut novel was translated into French by Chantal Herbert under the title Cet écho infini .

In her fiction books she mainly deals with political and socially critical topics. The long echo deals with the First World War and tells, on the one hand, of an Austro-Hungarian soldier who was stationed in Belgrade in 1916, where he witnessed the fall of the monarchy . The second level of action is set a hundred years later and shows the director of the Vienna Museum of Military History and her assistant in a dispute about the horrors of war and its long shadow. In the online edition of the daily newspaper Der Standard said Masha Dabić , in the long echo "past and present, science and literature connect to an impassioned plea for resistance to nationalism and warmongering." Praise was also Messner's courage "differently about the war write ”, so the Ö1 editor Michaela Monschein in a radio report about the novel.

In 2020 Elena Messner expanded her literary discussion of the Army History Museum in Vienna (HGM) to include a scientific-artistic one. Under the title #hgmneudenken, she helped initiate a civic conference and exhibition at the Vienna Arsenal. The focus of the debate was the uncritical and affirmative handling of Austria's military past on the part of the HGM and its leadership.

In her second novel, In die Transitzone , Elena Messner deals with dealing with refugees . The fictional southern European port city of Makrique has declared itself to be an autonomous area. “Where parties used to be held in the yacht clubs, the locals are now searching the sea for drowned refugees. The port is shut down by strikes, the population split, "it says in the announcement of the publisher . She also dealt with the topic of migration as co-curator of the "Museum of Migration" project.

Elena Messner also deals with socially critical issues in her plays, for example in the bilingual drama Jez / Der Damm , which has been staged several times since 2015 and which deals with fascism, in the theatrical intervention Graus der Geschichte in 2015 or in the 2016 in Friuli staged the opera libretto Si, si fa , which deals with refusal to work and the ancient myth of Sisyphus .

Her third novel, Nebelmaschine , “the precise processing of a white-collar crime case [and] an irresistible homage to the assertiveness of political art and investigative theater” will be published in autumn 2020 .

Works (selection)

Editorships (selection)

  • with Eva Schörkhuber and Petra Sturm: Why celebrate. Contributions to 100 years of women's suffrage. Edition Atelier, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-903005-45-7 .
  • with Eva Schörkhuber: To other shores. Transdanubizations. special number, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-85449-508-6 .
  • with Eva Schörkhuber: Control yourself: government districts. special number, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-85449-450-8 .
  • with Eva Schörkhuber and Jenny Dünser: From all directions: Karlsplatzierungen. special number, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-85449-430-0 .
  • with Eva Schörkhuber and Jenny Dünser: Daring pavement: Museum quarters. special number, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-85449-399-0 .
  • with Antonia Rahofer: Between there and here - eight approaches to contemporary Bosnian literature. Studia, Innsbruck 2010, ISBN 978-3-902652-19-5 .

literature

  • Neva Šlibar: The Great War in the Mind. Trauma, homecoming, healing and family with Christoph Poschenrieder, Bettina Balàka and Elena Messner . In: Department of German Studies at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Zagreb (Ed.): Zagreb Germanistic Contributions (ZGB) . tape 25 , no. 1 , 2016, ISSN  1330-0946 , p. 291-313 .
  • Georg Spitaler: Haunted Future. On the theorization of hauntology, the ability to act politically and (post-) democratic feelings in the novels Das Lange Echo and Mercury Days . In: Amália Kerekes, Marion Löffler, Georg Spitaler, Sabine Zelger (eds.): Think, write, do: ability to act politically in theory, literature and media (=  Budapest studies on literary studies . Volume 20 ). Peter Lang Verlag, Berlin / Bern / Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-631-76570-8 , pp. 183-198 .
  • Katalin Teller: "Even we can be alone". The genre conventions of the historical novel rethought by Elena Messner, Clemens J. Setz and Lydia Haider In: Journal of Austrian Studies , 2019, Vol. 52 (1), pp. 63–80.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of Kakanien Revisited
  2. ↑ Culture Journal. In: Ö1 . March 18, 2011, accessed on March 28, 2020 (conversation with the host country coordinator Elena Messner about Serbian literature and its reception in the German-speaking area in the cultural journal).
  3. ^ Website of textfeld südost
  4. ↑ The long echo. Edition Atelier , accessed on March 28, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Mascha Dabić: First World War: "Today the Habsburgs like to be belittled". In: The Standard . July 4, 2014, accessed on March 28, 2020 (interview on World War I).
  6. ↑ When civil society makes a pilgrimage to the HGM. In: The press . January 22, 2020, accessed March 28, 2020 .
  7. ^ Stefan Weiss: Criticism of the Army History Museum: Initiative wants to reorganize. In: The Standard . Retrieved March 28, 2020 (Austrian German).
  8. ↑ Rethink military history. In: Wiener Zeitung . January 22, 2020, accessed March 28, 2020 .
  9. ↑ In the transit zone. Edition Atelier , accessed on March 28, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Elena Messner: It is (a) happening: Migration in the Museum. In: The speaker - art and local cultural supply. December 5, 2019, accessed on August 7, 2020 (German).
  11. ↑ JEZ - THE DAM. Kulturverein ROZ, accessed on March 10, 2019 .
  12. ↑ wienwoche | archive 2012 - 2017 | 2015 | projects | horror of history. Retrieved March 10, 2019 .
  13. ↑ SISIFA | 25052016. Retrieved March 10, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Fog machine. Edition Atelier, accessed on May 21, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Messner, Elena
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian author, editor and literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH 1983
PLACE OF BIRTH Klagenfurt