A Poet and a Gentleman

With a body of work including novels, plays, collections of poems, and film scripts, Alexander Lernet-Holenia is one of the most productive and successful Austrian writers of the 20th century.

He was a person who did not fit into his time, who through the decades remained faithful to himself as well as to the idea of the "Emperor's Austria" without adapting to ideologies. He was, in fact, the embodiment of the old traditions.

Lernet-Holenia was so much representative of the Emperor's time that it is no accident Billy Wilder made him the model for the proud Baron Holenia, a member of the snobbish nobility around the Emperor he pokes fun at in his Hollywood movie The Emperor Waltz (1948).

Apart from the émigré writers, he was the only writer of stature who survived World War II without being tainted by National Socialist sentiments. Moreover, he authored the only Austrian resistance novel Mars im Widder (1941; trs. Mars in Aries in 2002). The book was banned by the Ministry of Propaganda.

As a leading personality in Austrian literature, he was the president of the Austrian PEN Club from 1969 to 1972. He resigned from the position out of protest when the Nobel Prize was awarded to Heinrich Böll, a writer he considered an ideological adherent of the terrorist Red Army fraction. Outraged by Lernet-Holenia, Alfred Kolleritsch, Ernst Jandl, and Peter Turrini founded the "Grazer Autorenversammlung" as an anti-PEN Club for the writers of the Austrian Moderne.

In his later years, Lernet-Holenia was not only regarded as difficult: his conservative views were contrary to the spirit of the times. He was a gentleman who didn't seem to be part of the First and even less the Second Republic. He had an acute sense for the obligations of the aristocracy, even of the military. Literary circles dismissed him as outmoded soon after his death.

Although Lernet-Holenia was by no means writing only for posterity and never shied away from the lighter muse, his writings betray his distinct elegance of form and his understanding of the big picture. And now, one hundred years after his birthday, Lernet-Holenia is finally experiencing the renaissance in Austria that is long overdue because the deeper dimensions of his work, replete as it is with Austrian history and tradition, have become the focus of a growing body of literary and sociocultural analysis.

Alexander Lernet was born on October 21, 1897 in Vienna. His mother, the widowed Baroness Sidonie Boyneburgk-Stettfeld, née Holenia, was married to the navy lieutenant Alexander Lernet for only a short time. This fact generated rumors that Lernet-Holenia was not the lieutenant's son but the illegitimate child of a Habsburg archduke. While Lernet-Holenia neither denied these stories nor proved them to be true, he almost encouraged them in his novel Die Inseln unter dem Winde.

In 1916, after the outbreak of the Great War, Lernet, having first decided to study law, joined the 9th Cavalry Regiment as a one-year volunteer. By the summer of that year, he did duty in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Ukraine, and Russia. Time and again, he described these landscapes and war-time experiences in his books.

After the war, the young officer was adopted by his mother's affluent Carinthian family, which made him take the double name of Lernet-Holenia. He soon decided to become a freelance writer. He had his first success in 1926 with the ironic plays Ollapotrida and Österreichische Komödie, a farce that was strongly influenced by Hugo von Hofmannsthal.

From 1926 on he lived in his mother's mansion on Lake Wolfgang in the Salzkammergut, where he counted among his friends important literary figures like Carl Zuckmayer, the dramatist Ödon von Horváth, and Stefan Zweig.

Lernet-Holenia didn't lead an idle life behind drawn blinds. He published numerous successful books that provided him with the means to live according to his station. Among his most renowned novels are Die Abenteuer eines jungen Herren in Polen (1931), Die Auferstehung des Maltravers (1936; trs. as The Resurrection of Maltravers in 1988), and Die Standarte (1934; trs. as The Glory Is Departed). Referring to Lernet-Holenia's novella Der Baron Bagge (1936; trs. Baron Bagge in 1956), Stefan Zweig once said in a letter: "When you wrote Bagge you were in a state of grace... It can only be compared with Kleist's Marquise of O."

He was drafted again when World War II broke out in 1939, but was wounded on the second day of the Poland campaign. Soon after, he was made the chief dramaturge of the Heeresfilmstelle in Berlin and was given carte blanche to wield his penchant for romanticizing the military, ostensibly in favor of the Third Reich. Ironically, the film version of his novel The Glory Is Departed, which was titled Mein Leben für Maria Isabell (1935), had been banned by the Nazis. Among other projects he was involved in during his stint as chief dramaturge, he developed the basic concept for the movie Die große Liebe. It starred Zarah Leander and was released in 1942.

Although working in the film industry was quite lucrative, Lernet-Holenia never got involved in National Socialism and never became a party member - in spite of the fact that he worked at the heart of the Nazi establishment. His novel Mars im Widder (1941; trs. Mars in Aries) is the only Austrian resistance novel and hinted at the impending downfall of the Third Reich. Cuba, the coquettish protagonist who turns the head of Officer Wallmoden, comes across as an adventuress, but there is some indication of an Austrian resistance movement within her mysterious circle of friends. Lernet-Holenia describes the attack on Pland in all its cruelty and pointlessness, and shows great sympathy for the Polsih people. He managed to publish the novel as a series in the magazine Die Dame, but the first edition of the book was destroyed before it reached the public; and it was not reissued until 1947.

Not unlike Willi Forst in the film business, Lernet-Holenia managed to remain true to himself above all. His elitist views did not jibe with National Socialism. He didn't contribute to the notorious Bekenntnisbuch, a publication in which numerous writers showed their admiration for Hitler, something they later deeply regretted.

After the war, Lernet-Holenia received many honors and was given an apartment in the Chancellery at the Vienna Hofburg, where he spent the winter months with his wife. The American government categorically cleared him of any Nazi sympathy and in 1950 invited him on a four-week tour of the United States. He was offered the ambassadorship in Washington, but graciously declined.

Between 1954 and 1967 he published the renowned intellectual magazine FORVM together with Friedrich Torberg. His former lodgings, which are now part of the Vienna University's School of Drama, are marked by a plaque next to Batthyanystiege.

The booming Austrian film industry of the postwar years also showed great interest in Lernet-Holenia's writings. No less than three of his books were filmed in 1948 alone: Maresi (titled Der Angeklagte hat das Wort in Germany), based on the novella of the same name, was directed by Hans Thimig and starred Maria Schell, Attila Hörbiger, and Siegfried Breuer. Der 20. Juli (aka Das andere Leben) was produced by the film studio of the Theater an der Josefstadt and directed by Rudolf Steinböck. An klingenden Ufern was directed by Hans Unterkircher and starred Marianne Schönauer and Curd Jürgens.

Lernet-Holenia wrote the script for one of the most important Austrian films of the fifties, Spionage. It was directed by Franz Antel, starred Ewald Balser, Oskar Werner, and Rudolf Forster, and deals with the great scandal in the Austrian general staff during World War I.

Lernet-Holenia died in Vienna on July 3, 1976. The first biography of Lernet-Holenia will be published this fall to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Die neun Leben des Alexander Lernet-Holenia was written by the Austrian author Roman Rocek, a long-time friend of the poet and editor of his collected poems.