Perpetuation and New Start

On the Vienna Ring there is on one side the monument to Goethe seated (unveiled in 1900) and on the other side that to Schiller standing (unveiled in 1876), and a little further downtown, on Vienna's Judenplatz, the monument to Lessing (planned from 1910, unveiled in 1935). Monuments to authors who were to point to the common origin of German and Austrian literature and to the close ties between Austrian literature and German literature, and who, on the other hand, as playwrights performed in Vienna, also had a practical value for Austrian cultural life. While Austrian playwrights were certainly made visible in public space through monuments, as with the Raimund Monument at the Vienna Volkstheater (unveiled in 1898) or the Nestroy Monument at Nestroy-Platz (unveiled in 1929) and the Grillparzer Monument in the Vienna Volksgarten (unveiled in 1889), book authors remained relegated to memorial plaques as well as to stone busts on stelae.

The 1848 revolution did not leave Austrian literature unscathed, censorship disappeared temporarily and quickly returned, the number of Austrian publishers, publications, authors increased. In 1867 the Austrian fundamental rights and freedoms were created, freedom of art was not granted, it was added more than 100 years later, in 1982. The permanent abolition of censorship did not begin until 1955, when Austria regained its sovereignty, in the Second Republic.