Ludwig Bauer (writer)

Ludwig Bauer, 2015

Ludwig Bauer (born August 13, 1941 in Sisak ) is a Croatian writer with German roots. Until 1992 he had the first name Ljudevit.

Professional background

After studying Slavic Philology at the University of Zagreb , Bauer first became known as a translator and author of imaginative children's books. Teaching activities took him to Prague, Vienna, London, Paris and Washington, among others. He was editor-in-chief for the Croatian publisher Globus and the magazine Naša knjiga (Our Book) before he became a freelance author. He lives and works in Zagreb .

Turning point in 1990

As a child from a mixed marriage - the father belonged to the Danube Swabian minority - he was particularly sensitive to the nationality conflict that broke out in Yugoslavia at the time . His novel "Kratka kronika porodice Weber" (Short Chronicle of the Weber Family) , published in 1990, describes the fortunes of a family of German descent in the Croatian part of Austria-Hungary and later Yugoslavia with a loose autobiographical reference . For four generations since 1848, the Webers have proven themselves as “bridge builders”, also in the concrete sense as entrepreneurs and constructors who want to create a connection between the Croatian and Serbian banks of a river that separates the ethnic groups. Despite multiple family ties in the Croatian environment, the Webers experience in every generation that their strange-sounding name alone is enough to be considered suspicious by the majority population at critical moments in history and to be discriminated against as "not belonging to the people".

Ideological positioning

In the context of the wars in the crumbling Yugoslavia, Bauer unmasked the effect of traditional enemy images. He advocates enlightened patriotism and contrasts it with the emotionally charged mythical concept of the nation. “National myths are and will remain tools of injustice. Social justice is more likely to come through industrialization, ”he puts into the mouth of a protagonist,“ I speak of progress. At one point it has to be a matter of indifference whether someone is German, Hungarian or Croatian. "However, he does not question the claim to identity in a nation-state:" ... as long as these peoples do not get their own, free and independent state, they will, I think to be second class European. "

reception

The "Weber Chronicle", as the book is abbreviated, was seen in 1990 as a humanistic document against the outbreak of war and received the prestigious award "Svjetlost - best book of the year" when it was published in Sarajevo . Almost symbolically, a large part of the first edition burned during the bombing of the city; a second edition in Croatia was only possible many years later.

The short chronicle of the Weber family is the starting point for a whole series of other novels in Ludwig Bauer's work. Between 1990 and 2017, in addition to children's books, he published 13 novels that are related to the current time and some of which are based on the Weber chronicle. The literary criticism calls them “neo-historical novels” and evaluates them as “a new chapter in contemporary Croatian literature”. Bauer's strong emotional relationship with the countries of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy has earned him the reputation of "Homo nostalgicus" [East] Central Europe.

Admission in German-speaking countries

In addition to the novel fragments of the Weber Kronik, only one novel, Score for a Magic Flute , has been published in full in German. It is set in Vienna and deals with the experiences of a refugee from Sarajevo who has to get by as a taxi driver. He gets caught up in the clutches of an American event manager. His attempt to bring about peace through a concert with traumatized people in Bosnia has turned into the opposite.

Ludwig Bauer has been to Germany and Austria repeatedly on reading tours. In 2003 he was a guest at the book fair in Leipzig, in 2006 he took part in the literary forum “New Europe” in Düsseldorf, and in 2013 a reading tour with the “Traduki” network followed. Bauer is one of the initiators of the “Germans and Austrians in the Croatian Cultural Area” forum, which has been meeting annually in Osijek since 1990 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ludwig Bauer, Brief Kronik der Familie Weber, Romanfragmente. In: reflections. Journal for German Culture and History of Southeastern Europe, 8th year, issue 3, Munich 2013, p. 250
2. ↑ In the original: Kratka kronika porodice Weber, 3rd edition, Zagreb 2007, p. 64. Translation.
3. ↑ Ibid, p. 95
4. ↑ Lidija Dujić, The Slavic-Germanic relations in the neugeschichtlichen novels Ludwig Bauer. In: Germanoslavica - Journal for Germano-Slavic Studies, (Prague), 2015, no. 2, p. 41.
5. ↑ Gwioździk, Jagoda. “He does not seem alien, but he is not ours either ...” Ludwig Bauer: a Central European homo nostalgicus ?: Faculty of Education, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek. 2017. (URL: https://hrcak.srce.hr/file/271682 )
6. ↑ Score for a Magic Flute. From the Croatian by Detlef I. and Klaus Detlef Olof. Klagenfurt: Wieser Verlag 2008.