National invective and environmental exploitation in Thomas Bernhard's frost

Sean Ireton

pp. 205-227

in: Caroline Schaumann (ed), German ecocriticism in the anthropocene, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Frost belongs to the distinctively Austrian genre of the anti-Heimat novel and as such critiques the state of affairs in the Second Republic. Bernhard specifically condemns his homeland's hypocritical stance toward its National Socialist past and its postwar attempt to reinvent itself by fetishizing its unspoiled Alpine scenery and wholesome rustic citizenry. His national invective is rooted in environmental as much as political history. In the course of the novel, forests are harvested by the cellulose industry and an entire river drainage is dammed for the construction of a major power plant, which is modeled on the Glockner-Kaprun hydroelectric facility, one of many modernization projects carried out under the mantle of a New Austria but whose origins extend back to the era of German-Austro fascism.

Cited authors

Bernhard Thomas