State award scandal

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Wolfgang Kraus and Thomas Bernhard before a reading (1968)

On March 4, 1968, the author Thomas Bernhard was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Novels in the Vienna Ministry of Education . The author's acceptance speech provoked a violent reaction from Minister Piffl-Perčević ; As a result, as well as the laudatory speech, Bernhard felt himself snubbed, and the Vienna Monday headlined: "This is how a state prize winner thanks: Insults Austria!"

This went down in Austrian literary history as a state award scandal . In 1982, Bernhard dealt with the incident in his story Wittgenstein's nephew . Years before the controversies about wood felling and Heldenplatz , the events established Bernhard's reputation as a scandal author.

prehistory

The state award scandal had its origins a good year before the award ceremony: Alfred Holzinger , Hilde Spiel and Wolfgang Kraus, three confessed Bernhard admirers, were appointed to the jury . Kraus tried to persuade Bernhard to participate in the tender. He refused a personal application after having applied for the State Prize for Poetry a year earlier . Bernhard had his brother Peter Fabjan submit a copy of his first novel Frost to the Ministry of Education. This procedure violated the terms of the tender. Nevertheless, Bernhard was awarded the state prize.

The author wrote an acceptance speech (at least) one day before the award ceremony and read it out to his "man of life" Hede Stavianicek as a test. This advised against it, but Bernhard changed nothing more. For this purpose, he made several copies of his speech, which he distributed to journalists at the ceremony on March 4 in the Ministry of Education. Possibly he was hoping for a similar sensational effect as they had previously achieved comparable appearances by Friedensreich Hundertwasser , Peter Handke or Heinrich Böll .

The ceremony

Audience hall of the Vienna (former) Ministry of Education on Minoritenplatz

At the ceremony, the minister first gave the laudatory speech . The other winners were also honored: the sculptors Alfred Hrdlicka and Josef Pillhofer , the medalist Elfriede Rohr and the composers Gerhard Wimberger and Josef Friedrich Doppelbauer , who received the state prizes for their respective fields; in addition, the author Hans Lebert was honored, who was awarded the Adalbert Stifter Medal .

In the laudation, Bernhard was referred to as a "native Dutchman", which referred to his place of birth Heerlen . Otherwise the information was correct or based on Bernhard's own information.

Bernhard's speech followed, beginning with the oft-quoted words "There is nothing to praise, nothing to condemn, nothing to accuse, but a lot is ridiculous; it's all ridiculous when one thinks of death." In the following, "[Bernhard] began to revile Austria", as the minister felt it: "You go through life, impressed, unimpressed, through the scene, everything is interchangeable, better or worse trained in the state of props: a mistake! You understand: an unsuspecting people, a beautiful country - they are dead or conscientiously unscrupulous fathers, people with the simplicity and the baseness, with the poverty of their needs. [...] We are Austrians, we are apathetic; we are the common life Disinterest in life, we are in the process of nature's megalomania-sense of the future. [...] We don't need to be ashamed, but we are nothing and we deserve nothing but chaos. "

The less than 300 word speech was politely applauded; her (corrected) text was reprinted several times in the following weeks. After the author had sat down, a second movement of a string quartet by Joseph Marx followed according to the program . Then the minister - out of the program - went to the microphone again and said (analogously) "We are nevertheless proud Austrians". Then he closed the party - as planned - and left the hall without taking part in the subsequent buffet. In this case, Bernhard was surprised to several witnesses about the reaction (s) to his speech.

Aftermath

The award ceremony appeared in the ORF's television and radio news on the same day, but neither Bernhard's speech nor the minister's reaction were mentioned.

On the following day, various newspapers published brief reports about the presentation of the state prizes and the donor medal to Hans Lebert. Only in the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten did a detailed article by Hans Rochelt appear , in which Bernhard was defended because he was accused of "his short speech as an affront". A day later a gloss followed with a similar tendency.

The first article in which Bernhard's appearance was criticized was printed on Monday in Vienna on March 11th . Instead, several reports appeared in national and international press organs in the days and weeks that followed, in which Bernhard took sides. These reports were initiated partly by Bernhard himself, partly by his publisher Siegfried Unseld .

Further criticism of Bernhard came only through a handful of letters to the editor and reports in local newspapers. The only consequence of the incident was the cancellation of the festive awarding of the Anton Wildgans Prize , which was also awarded to Bernhard. For this award, Bernhard had written a new speech after the incident on March 4, in which he wanted to defend himself and attack the minister who was also invited.

After 1968 Bernhard was awarded various prizes, the next in 1970 the Georg Büchner Prize . Many of those involved had the events of March 4, 1968 in the back of their minds: “Of course, there was no scandal like that of the 1968 Austrian State Prize in Darmstadt. No minister of culture left the hall (no one was present), no cold buffet had to be canceled (there was none). But there was no reason for violent reactions at all; because Thomas Bernhard's three-minute speech sounded like a collage from his own novels and stories. ”With this, Bernhard's version of what happened in the Vienna Ministry of Education was not only adopted, but assumed to be known. Most of the press votes sided with Bernhard. In this context, Bernhard was never referred to by the critics, as he claims, as a "nest polluter" or "bug".

Minister Theodor Piffl-Perčević went into detail on the incident of 1968 in his memoirs published in 1977. Bernhard's own literary work appeared with Wittgenstein's nephew only in 1982. This version differs significantly from his depictions from 1968 as well as from the version in My Prices , which was created in 1980 or 1981, but was not published during his lifetime.

literature

  • Thomas Bernhard: My Prices (paperback edition), Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 9783518461860 .
  • Thomas Bernhard: Wittgenstein's nephew , in: Thomas Bernhard: Works in 22 Volumes , Volume 13 (Stories III), edited by Hans Höller and Manfred Mittermayer. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-41513-9 .
  • Olaf Lahayne: Insults Austria !: The scandal surrounding Thomas Bernhard's state award speech in March 1968 . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8471-0489-6 .
  • Manfred Mittermayer: Thomas Bernhard. Life work effect . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-18211-0 .
  • Theodor Piffl-Perčević: Encouragement and contradiction . Verlag Styria, Graz - Vienna - Cologne 1977, ISBN 978-3222109935

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b N.N .: "This is how a state award winner" thanks ": Insults Austria!". Vienna Monday March 11, 1968, p. 1
  2. ↑ Thomas Bernhard: Wittgenstein's nephew , in: Thomas Bernhard: Works in 22 Volumes , Volume 13 (Stories III), edited by Hans Höller and Manfred Mittermayer. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-518-41513-9 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Olaf Lahayne: Schimpft Österreich !: The scandal surrounding Thomas Bernhard's state award speech in March 1968 . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-8471-0489-6 .
  4. ↑ a b N.N .: Presentation of the state prizes . In: Salzburger Nachrichten , March 5, 1968, p. 3.
  5. ↑ Thomas Bernhard: On the trail of truth and death. Two speeches . In: Neues Forum , Issue 173, May 1968, p. 347 ff.
  6. ^ A b Theodor Piffl-Perčević: Encouragement and contradiction . Verlag Styria, Graz - Vienna - Cologne 1977, ISBN 978-3222109935 .
  7. ↑ Hans Rochelt: Destroyed Idyll - Misunderstood acceptance speech by the state prize winner Thomas Bernhard . Upper Austrian News March 5, 1968, p. 8
  8. ↑ NN: That means ... your patron . Upper Austrian News March 6, 1968, p. 9
  9. ↑ Michael Beckert: What they are talking about . Saarbrücker Zeitung October 19, 1970