Erinnerung und österreichische Erinnerungsorte in der literarischen Tätigkeit des Literaturkreises PODIUM. Ausgewählte Aspekte

The Literary Group “PODIUM Schloss Neulengbach” is an association of originally Lower Austrian writers – in the broadest sense. This statement has far-reaching consequences, since it is not about uniting random individuals with a common desire to recollect their own memories in the literary form with a view to handing them over to descendants, but above all it is about a literary group that has existed for almost 50 years and includes about 200 active members. Over time, the Group created its history and developed its own tradition, which became the content of shared memories, evolving into a kind of “realm of memory” (lieu de mémoire) in the understanding of Pierre Nora. Through establishing a social group, individuals with their own memories transfer their experience to a wider field of unity, beginning to form a collective memory. The report focuses on the research of remembrance issues in a case study of poetic texts included in the leaflets, which Literaturkreis PODIUM publishes annually before the Poetry Day. The purpose of the report is to identify and describe the main Austrian “realms of memory” actualized in the mentioned texts, as well as to describe the specifics of their actualization. The complete analysis of all the leaflet texts dating from 1973 to 2019 made it possible to outline four specific Austrian complexes of “realms of memory” relating to the concepts as follows: SCHULD/VERANTWORTUNG, GEMÜT/KINDHEIT, HEIMAT and IDENTITÄTEN.