Introduction: politics and culture in Germany and Austria today

The essays in the this volume show the different ways in which cultural production in Germany and Austria engages with contemporary politics. In their discussions of literature, film, theater, and art, they consider a number of interrelated topoi that are both political and subject to politicization: identity, memory, language, nationalism, Europe, transculturalism, globalization, and migration. They highlight how the relationship between culture and politics is marked by the movements and tensions between the national and the European, the local and the global, that define Germany and Austria today. While the eurozone crisis and Brexit have polarized opinion on the European Union and soured relations between European neighbors, both the belief in and abandonment of the European project as postwar legacy are shaped as much by events triggered beyond as within EU borders. The so-called migrant crisis that began in 2015 (the focus of two of the chapters in this volume) has provoked significant political change and division in Germany and Austria. This humanitarian crisis, the debates surrounding it, and the attendant polarization of political positions in both countries have all left their mark on cultural production, whose scope, influences, and reach extend consequently beyond a national paradigm.