On the evening of November 15, 1961, the phones on Austrian public television were running hot, outraged viewers were calling. A certain Mr. Karl – the archetype of the petty-bourgeois Viennese, played by the universally popular Helmut Qualtinger – reminded them of something they certainly did not want to be reminded of again.
This seminar will consider what the extraordinarily critical potential of this text, conceived as a provocation and impulse for debate – not only about the past – stems from. How do we read and understand this classic by Helmut Qualtinger and Carl Merz today? To what extent does the criticism of Austrian post-war society expressed in it still remain relevant? And can it really be applied exclusively to Austria?
The first online event on 29.3.2021 of the new cycle “Arbeitskreis österreichisches Theater” initiated by the German Studies Department of the University of Warsaw at the virtual Austrian Cultural Forum Warsaw will seek answers to these questions together with an interested Polish public.
