2023-09-12 14:38:15
The delay in the handover was “mainly due to Corona,” said the mayor, but the fact that the honor was publicly accepted was extraordinary. The honoree also emphasized this in her words of thanks. “It is the only honor that I have accepted since the Nobel Prize.” This is mainly due to one circumstance: “I am really Viennese,” said the woman who was born in Mürzzuschlag and whose Viennese parents owned a holiday home there. She feels very connected to the tradition of Red Vienna – and she also accepts the honor as a statement “ once morest these normality terrorists”. “I’m very surprised that in this debate regarding normality no one talks regarding the healthy national sentiment of the Nazis, because that’s where it comes from. In a country where so many state chiefs, without necessity and without coercion, go together with these people, with proto-fascists, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis even, you have to uphold this city with all of its multiculturalism and its ability to integrate foreigners.”
According to the Vienna city constitution, the local council can appoint people “who have made special contributions to the Republic of Austria or the city of Vienna” as honorary citizens. All too often this is not used. Before Jelinek, only 13 personalities have been honored in this way since 2000 – including Billy Wilder (2000), Eric Hobsbawm (2008), Friederike Mayröcker (2015), Franz Vranitzky and Heinz Fischer (2017), Hugo Portisch (2018) and Michael Häupl (2019).
The honor for Jelinek caused criticism from the FPÖ in 2021. Blue cultural spokesman Stefan Berger said she was honoring a declared “Austria hater”. The FPÖ had already attacked the writer on posters in 1995. “Do you love Scholten, Jelinek, Häupl, Peymann, Pasterk… or art and culture?” was the slogan at the time. Mayor Ludwig remembered this poster – and was pleased that ex-minister Rudolf Scholten, another person who was attacked at the time, also appeared at the honor, which was held at the request of the honored in a restaurant in Vienna-Hietzing. In addition to friends and family members, the authors Rosa Pock and Raphaela Edelbauer, the film directors Ulrich Seidl and Franz Nowotny and the former Volkstheater director Emmy Werner (who was congratulated by the mayor on her 85th birthday tomorrow) were among the two dozen guests.
Mayor Ludwig recalled that Jelinek’s works “opened many doors for the very hard discussion” regarding Austria’s past and was very proud that Jelinek had accepted the honor: “That honors us!” The award process is finally over Now it has also been formally concluded, “we already have it engraved on the marble tablet”.
City Councilor for Culture Veronica Kaup-Hasler gave the laudatory speech. Her novels would be “liked to be taken into battle and conflict even by those who haven’t read (I’m afraid there are many) and even those who are hostile to your work,” and her theater texts would be popular with “state and city theaters as well Turbulences that have inspired new experiments in form and aesthetics at the supposed edges of the artistic field,” she said. “You have an incredible instinct for acute issues. (…) You transform the current events in your perception of the world and language into a fundamental analysis of political, economic and social conditions.” Jelinek is deeply connected to Vienna. She is “in the tradition and linguistic wit of Nestroy, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and the linguistic virtuosity of the Viennese group” and has a “wonderful command of Viennese insults”.
Elfriede Jelinek was born in Mürzzuschlag in Styria on October 20, 1946, the daughter of a couple living in Vienna. Jelinek once explained that her “extremely performance-oriented” mother wanted to “train” her to be a child prodigy. She began her piano lessons at the age of six and was soon practicing on a Steinway grand piano that she had purchased herself. At 13, she became the youngest student at the music college and began studying the organ. Later she also learned viola and guitar, and at 16 she also learned composition. These experiences were reflected in her famous novel “The Piano Player” (1983), filmed by Michael Haneke.
Elfriede Jelinek did not become a musician, but rather an author. While still a student, she published her first volume of poetry, “Lisa’s Shadow,” in 1967. Both her debut novel “we are decoys, baby” (1970) and later novels such as “The Locked Out” (1980), “Lust” (1989) and “The Children of the Dead” (1995) thrilled critics, but met with the same criticism Measures of fierce resistance. In her literary work, Jelinek repeatedly criticizes male and class society and critically examines the topics of sexuality, violence and power.
“What happened following Nora left her husband or pillars of society” was Elfriede Jelinek’s first play in 1979. This was followed by countless other and repeatedly award-winning pieces – including the scandalous “Burgtheater” (1985) and “Ein Sportstück”, which premiered to great fanfare at the Burgtheater in 1998 – which increasingly developed into monologue-like text areas and a challenge for the directors. However, the author gave her every freedom.
Elfriede Jelinek has long since withdrawn completely from the public eye due to mental illness. She also gave her Stockholm Nobel Prize speech on video. All the more remarkable that she accepted the certificate in person today.
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