68

This article looks at Thomas Bernhard’s play, Heldenplatz, which he wrote in 1988, on the anniversary of the Third Reich’s 1938 annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The play, which explores Jewish history through the lens of a Jewish family in Vienna, provoked a heated debate. The scandal caused by the play can be seen as a  Kulturkampf over the meaning of the fifty-year period in Austrian history leading up to 1988. Heldenplatz is not directly about the Holocaust. However, Bernhard uses the play to address Austria’s attitude toward its Nazi past and its post-war guilt.