“Heldenplatz” by Thomas Bernhard or frightening ado about nothing

Abstract

This paper concerns Heldenplatz, the play by Thomas Bernhard which premiered in 1988 at the Vienna Burgtheater and provoked a big public row. The reason were offensive words about Austria and the Austrians spoken on the stage. The critics and the public interpreted the play as a way of coming to terms with the Austrian National Socialist history or as a blameworthy imposition. The analysis in the paper leads to the conclusion that the bold criticism of Austria was not the true in- tention of the playwright. His real concern was the language spoken on the stage. Its imitation of the simplistic rhetoric of the ideological patterns of the National Socialism propaganda served to test the public validity of these patterns. Bernhard showed that the public was still ready to use this kind of language, and thereby made a frightening diagnosis of the contemporary Austrian society.