| - | Studies (among others The Heathen Village, The Timber Forest, My Great-Grandfather’s Briefcase) |
| - | Coloured Stones (with the prologue to the so-named ‘Gentle Law’, Granite, Limestone, Rock Crystal etc.) |
| - | Indian Summer (Bildungsroman) |
| - | Witiko (a historical saga) |
Stifter belongs today to the great writers in Austrian literature and given the number of translations in many world languages, he can be justifiably regarded as an important figure in world literature. He was originally regarded as a so-named ‘homeland writer’ with his Bohemian-Austrian roots also as an author portraying the Biedermeier epoch, the idylls of the natural world, a moral educator and a seeker after harmony.
‘Existenzerfahrung’.
In 1949 Thomas Mann summed up his impressions of Stifter in one remarkable sentence: “Stifter is one of the most remarkable, most enigmatic, inwardly bold and strangely enthralling story tellers in world literature, critically too little penetrated.”
Friedrich Nietzsche had long before drawn attention to the high quality of Stifter’s prose which led later and after the two world wars to a critical and wide-ranging re-evaluation of Stifter’s work.
His categorization as a simple regional writer was based on a misunderstanding of his oeuvre, widely interpreted as the creation of countryside idylls. The backdrops of his life – the Bohemian forest and the imperial and capital city, Vienna and the Upper Austrian province from the Mühlviertel to the foothills of the Alps and on to the Salzkammergut – were the main scenes in his literary work.
In his Vienna period and far from his homeland, Stifter wrote the stories in his “Studien” in which he depicted the vivid pictures of the countryside from which he had come, of complicated destinies, failed artists and frail and weak individuals who are driven into the ground psychologically or manage to escape the worst effects of fate.
The “Studien” with their several stories of the Bohemian forest such as “Das Heidedorf”, “Der Hochwald,” “Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters” made his name.
After the revolution of 1848/9 when he had an important position as Inspector of Schools in Upper Austria, his interests concentrated on aesthetic-ethical education and child development and this is reflected in his main works. The story of “The Coloured Stones” which introduced the prologue of the “Gentle Law” and the narratives such as “Granit”, “Limestone” and “Bergkristall” deal with saving children from elemental dangers often with the curious partly tragic stories underlying them.
The Bildungsroman “Der Nachsommer” represents a compendium of aesthetic-cultural forms of social life in a utopian realm and his great historic prose-work “Witiko” as an ideal type contrast to the emerging nationality conflict in Bohemia, a historical novel depicting the beginnings of the mediaeval Witigonen domination of South Bohemia.
Adalbert Stifter’s art principally its aesthetic-linguistic quality - is widely appreciated and admired today by Austrian and German writers despite areas of critical controversy. This is evidenced by examples, for instance Peter Handke, Peter Rosei and Julian Schutting and likewise by authors such as Hermann Lenz and the Swiss, E.H. Meyer who have all analyzed his work and come to regard him as a literary model.
IMPRESSUM
© 2008 StifterHaus – Zentrum für Literatur und Sprache in OÖ.