Ernst Vasovec

Ernst Josef Vasovec (born September 21, 1917 in Müglitz an der March , † December 14, 1993 in Vienna ) was an Austrian writer .

Life

Ernst Vasovec was the son of a factory worker who came from Carinthia and moved to Moravia . His birth mother died when he was little. He attended the elementary and community school in his hometown Müglitz and in 1931 moved with his family to Vienna. There he graduated from the federal teacher training institute in Hegelgasse in 1937 . He then worked for a short time as a teacher at the boys' school for school sisters in Vienna.

Vasovec joined the NSDAP in 1938 . He had five daughters with his wife Luise Vasovec, whom he married in the same year. Due to illness, he was not admitted to military service. He suffered from syringomyelia the rest of his life . In 1938 he got a job as a teacher in Minty in East Prussia . He was considered politically unreliable within the NSDAP and was transferred to Unterpulsgau in Lower Styria in 1942 . From there he fled to Vienna in 1944. Vasovec first moved to Neudau in 1946 and took a teaching qualification test for secondary schools the following year . From 1949 he worked as a secondary school teacher in Hartberg .

He now began to publish his first literary texts. In it he dealt with the horror of war and questions of human existence. In 1964 he retired from school due to illness and moved to the Floridsdorf district of Vienna . He found a job in the Austrian National Library . The novel trilogy The Stone of Sisyphus , Sodom or The Predetermined and the Added and From the End of the World , published in 1969, 1978 and 1981, is considered to be his main work. Therein Vasovec linked philosophy of history Austrian time history with elements from the ancient mythology and the Bible . In the last years of his life, his health continued to deteriorate.

Ernst Vasovec died at the age of 76 and was buried at the Stammersdorf-Ort cemetery in Vienna-Floridsdorf.

Works

• The way down. Novellas . Schöningh, Paderborn 1949.
• Way home to Agathe. Narration . Wancura, Vienna / Stuttgart 1953.
• The incomprehensible. Novella . Schöningh, Paderborn 1953.
• The enchanted pond and seven other stories . Wancura, Vienna 1953.
• The silver candlestick. Poems . European publisher, Vienna 1954.
• The desertion. Two novels . Bergland, Vienna 1958.
• The divine opportunity. Six novellas . Bergland, Vienna 1966.
• The stone of Sisyphus. Novel . Claasen, Hamburg / Düsseldorf 1969.
• Sodom or the predetermined and the added. Novel . Schneekluth, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-7951-0515-3 .
• From the end of the world. Novel . Schneekluth, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7951-0744-X .
• Beyond the edge. Stories, short stories . Schneekluth, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7951-0793-8 .
• Far too great a gift . In: Ernst Schönwiese (ed.): Sense and sense image. Festschrift for Joseph P. Strelka on his 60th birthday . Lang, Bern 1987, ISBN 3-261-03782-2 , pp. 335-342 .
• The tower and other stories . Drei-Ulmen-Verlag, Munich / Vienna 1990, ISBN 3-926087-10-2 .
• The night outside the window. Novel . Styria, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-222-12070-6 .

Awards and honors

• Austrian Promotion Prize for Literature (1953)
• Promotion Prize of the City of Vienna for Literature (1965)
• Professional title Professor (1977)
• Sudeten German Culture Prize for Literature (1977)
• Andreas Gryphius Prize (1981)
• Name of the street of Ernst-Vasovec-Gasse in Vienna-Floridsdorf (2007)

literature

• Agnes Bernhart: Ernst Vasovec - a lonely prophet. A memory of my father, a post-war writer . In: The literary wren . No. 3 , 2017, p. 17–19 ( digitized version [PDF; accessed March 9, 2020]).
• Josef Walter König: Ernst Josef Vasovec - in memoriam. A thought for the 80th birthday . In: North Moravian Homeland Book . tape 44 . Preussler, Nuremberg 1997, p. 45-46 .
• Krzysztof Lipiński: Ernst Vasovec - a Styrian cross-border commuter . In: Maria Kłańska (Ed.): Border Crossings and Border Crossers in Austrian Literature. Contributions to the 15th Austrian-Polish meeting of Germanists in Kraków 2002 . Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Cracow 2004, p. 223-230 .
• Gerhard Trenkler: Ernst Vasovec. Life and work . Thesis. University of Graz, Graz 1999.
• Franz Zeder : About Ernst Vasovec (1917–1993) . In: literature and criticism . No. 507–508 , 2016, pp. 99-110 .

Web links

• Ernst Vasovec. Franz Nabl Institute for Literary Research, University of Graz 
• Vasovec, Ernst. In: Austria Lexicon . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Agnes Bernhart: Ernst Vasovec - a lonely prophet. A memory of my father, a post-war writer . In: The literary wren . No. 3 , 2017, p. 17–19 ( digitized version [PDF; accessed March 9, 2020]).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ernst Vasovec. Franz Nabl Institute for Literary Research, University of Graz, accessed on March 9, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Vasovec, Ernst. In: Austria Lexicon . Retrieved March 9, 2020 . 
4. ↑ Ernst Vasovec in the search for the deceased at friedhoefewien.at, accessed on March 9, 2020.
5. ↑ Outstanding Artist Awards. Federal Chancellery, accessed on March 9, 2020 . 
6. ^ Peter Autengruber : Lexicon of Viennese street names. Meaning, origin, earlier names . 9th edition. Pichler, Vienna / Graz / Klagenfurt 2014, ISBN 978-3-85431-687-9 , pp. 84 .