Realismus#

Realism, in literature and the arts, a style which aims at a detailed depiction of reality and dispenses with idealist glorification of the subject. Realism is characterised by a largely objective, unbiased way of looking at the world and by openness and tolerance. In literature, realism prevailed in the period between roughly 1850 to 1885; in a narrower sense, historians of German-language literature speak of "poetic realism" on account of the predominance of a distanced and detached narrative style. The leading Austrian representatives of realism in literature are M. von Ebner-Eschenbach ("Das Gemeindekind", 1887) and F. von Saar ("Novellen aus Oesterreich", 1876), whose works present a trenchant picture of Austrian society at the end of the 19th century. The transition to naturalist prose is marked by the peasant novels of Anzengruber ("Der Sternsteinhof", 1885). The late novels by A. Stifter ("Witiko", 1865-1867), command a special place in realist literature in that their programme (the "sanftes Gesetz" - the "gentle law") hails from the author's classic-idealist stance. In the context of the literary discovery of the rural scene special interest attaches to Heimat literature and Vernacular Literature, in particular the works of P. Rosegger. Some German representatives of realism like F. Hebbel and H. Laube temporarily lived and worked in Austria. In Naturalism the truthfulness of realism gave way to a tendency to copy reality.

Further representatives: A. Christen, W. Fischer, K. E. Franzos, Maria E. delle Grazie, C. Karlweis, B. Paoli, A. Pichler, L. Sacher-Masoch, B. von Suttner; further, the critics and feuilletonists F. Kuernberger, E. Hanslick, T. Herzl, A. Kuh and D. Spitzer.

Literature#