Phantom empires

the long version

A former Austro-Hungarian officer and a nobleman, Alexander Lernet-Holenia (1897-1976) was a writer obsessed with the related concepts of postimperial Austrian national identity, Central European regionalism, and monarchism. Throughout most of his wide-ranging oeuvre, which includes novels, novellas, historical and biographical studies, short stories, essays, poetry, plays, and film scripts, he conveyed the image of an Austria inescapably haunted by the sociocultural elements of the lost Austro-Hungarian Empire. Reevaluation of Lernet-Holenia's work is overdue, because his fiction, previously understood only as imperial nostalgia, offers a significant representation of twentieth-century Austrian history from a conservative viewpoint. Using a sociopolitical approach, the present study analyzes the author's critical evaluations of post-imperial Austrian problems of national identity. Ten of Lernet-Holenia's works published between 1931 and 1969 - nine novels and one novella which deal specifically with Austrian society - are examined.