Alpine Clichés and Critiques: 
Developments and Tensions in 
German-Language Literature
Johann Georg Lughofer
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of German, Dutch, and Swedish, Aškerčeva 2, 
1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8319-6616
johann.lughofer@ff.uni-lj.si
This article argues that the role of the Alps in German-language literature is 
embedded both in a socio-historical context and in the topoi or commonplaces 
that emerged from that context. Using examples drawn primarily from two very 
different Austrian authors of the interwar period—namely, Joseph Roth (1894–
1939) and Ödön von Horváth (1901–1938)—as well as from their German-
speaking predecessors and successors, the aim is to show the literary approaches 
used to undermine traditional topoi. Today, the Alps are the quintessential 
defining landscape for the Republic of Austria as well as for Austrian literature, yet 
they were demystified already in the literature of the interwar period. The themes 
and literary strategies of these literary works anticipate post-1945 literature, 
while showing surprising breadth in their approach to the Alps. Much of what is 
commonly understood today as a reaction to the use of the Alpine and of alpinism 
for Nazi propaganda belongs in fact to older traditions.
Keywords: literature and alpinism / Austrian literature / national identity / cultural 
stereotypes / The Alps / Roth, Joseph / Horváth, Ödön von
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Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 45.1 (2022)
Introduction
It is particularly rewarding in German literary scholarship to study 
landscape and topography.1 This area connects the German-speaking 
countries while also separating them with a mountain range that is dif-
ficult to pass: the Alps.
The importance of the Alps for the issues of identity, the self-percep-
1 This article was written at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, in the 
framework of the research project Mountaineering Literature: Slovenia and Beyond 
(J6-1808) and the research program Intercultural Literary Studies (P6-0265), both of 
which were funded by the Slovenian Research Agency.
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44
tion of nations and cultures, and the perception of others is shown 
in the frequent subsuming of German culture under Bavarian culture 
via such Alpine stereotypes as Lederhosen, wooden architecture, and 
the Gamsbart; in Austria, one sees the one-cent coin with its Alpine 
gentian (which evokes the Schilling), the famous picture of Empress 
Sisi with edelweiss in her long hair, and one hears the Austrian national 
anthem, Land of Mountains, Land by the River (Land der Berge, Land 
am Strome, 1947); the Swiss Psalm (Schweizerpsalm, 1840), meanw-
hile, with the verse about the splendid glow of the Alps places this 
landscape at the center of yet another instance of identity formation. 
Many other examples, including Switzerland’s political and commer-
cial symbolism—from the politicization of the Saint-Gotthard Massif 
to the iconic Matterhorn in advertisements for cheese, chocolate, beer, 
watches, and banks—could be listed.
Clearly, mountains make for excellent landmarks and symbols. 
And yet this enthusiasm for mountains seems to be a peculiarity of the 
German-speaking countries. France and Italy, where a significant part 
of the Alps rests, have never imbued the mountain range with any iden-
tity-creating significance. (Slovenia, though, is more interested in the 
Alps in identity terms—a fact that is evident, not least, in the depiction 
of Mount Triglav on the state’s coat of arms.)
This semantization of the Alps and the notions and ideas accom-
panying the Alps are by no means static. There have been several—
sometimes opposing—trends. Because literature has always played an 
important role in shaping and changing the image of the Alps, scruti-
nizing literary works proves more revealing when it comes to the Alps 
than it is for any other landscape.
Formation and Consolidation of Alpine Topoi and Clichés
The transformation of the Alps from a terrifying landscape to a sublime 
one began as early as the sixteenth century, and the idea solidified in the 
eighteenth century. With the rise of tourism, the once dreaded locus 
horribilis slowly became a popular destination for travel and even rec-
reation—a locus amoenus. For many, the Grand Tour, leading to the 
final destination of Italy, necessarily took travelers through the Alps. 
The Alps generally became a landscape of longing for middle-class and 
aristocratic audiences—and thus a travel destination of choice. By the 
end of the eighteenth century, well-heeled English, French, German, 
and Russian visitors had made the Alps and especially Switzerland 
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
45
the ultimate travel destination in Europe. (In the eighteenth centu-
ry, for example, the term “Switzerland” was found even in Bavaria’s 
“Franconian Switzerland” and Saxony’s “Saxon Switzerland.”) Broader 
social strata increasingly sought out the Alps for research and educa-
tional purposes and as a source of inspiration for artistic pursuits—
among them Sophie von La Roche and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 
whose Letters from Switzerland (Briefe aus der Schweiz, 1775) brought 
Weimar Classicism closer to the Alps.
This helped consolidate various images of the Alps, and submerged 
customs were staged as a living tradition. In 1805, only two alphorn 
players could be found for the Unspunnen Festival near Wilderswil; in 
1808, only one player could be found—a stark indication of the degree 
to which this signal instrument had fallen into insignificance. But the 
tourism constructed around a supposedly authentic Alpine backdrop 
prompted a renaissance of the alphorn, so much so that a few decades 
later an ordinance had to be issued in the Bernese Oberland “against 
so-called ‘begging players’” (Risi 18).
Literature played an important role in shaping concepts and images 
of the Alpine. For example, The Alps, a didactic poem written in 1732 
by the Bernese polymath and Enlightenment poet Albrecht von Haller, 
found a large audience throughout Europe and, as a kind of literary 
unveiling of the Alps, became a key text of the eighteenth century. 
Anticipating many of the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was to 
cross the Alps himself on foot, von Haller’s poem praises the happiness 
of the people in the mountains, the simple, pristine life, the beauty 
and grandeur of the landscape, and the community living under shared 
arduous conditions, a community whose moral integrity contrasted 
with that of the townspeople, who were ruled by vanity, envy, vice, 
abundance, and worries. The poem was an enormous success. Despite 
the fact that it was obviously not in tune with the reality of life among 
the Alpine population, The Alps went through thirty editions and 
numerous translations during von Haller’s lifetime alone.
Such rosy perceptions of the Alps soon became a topos. In addi-
tion to von Haller’s The Alps, Salomon Geßner’s once-heralded Idylls 
(Idyllen, 1756) celebrated a Golden Age of undisturbed harmony in 
Switzerland. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure’s 1799 book Voyage dans les 
Alpes (Voyage in the Alps) mingled philosophical contemplations with 
scientific observations, finding avid reception even in German-speaking 
lands. The Zurich natural scientist and medical doctor Johann Jakob 
Scheuchzer also brought the Alps to a broad reading public through 
his research excursion reports. The mountainous terra incognita thus 
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became a terra poetica (see Raymond 60). Nature offered an escapist 
retreat from the city, and even scientific studies perpetuated such topoi. 
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the mountains were 
to play a central role in the aesthetic discourse about the sublime: sub-
lime nature was mostly associated with highlands, in glaciers, firn and 
rocky cliffs, which only the rationally and morally acute subject was in 
a position to recognize as beautiful.
These and similar images of the Alps remain formative to this day. In 
the context of Romanticism and the Romantics’ enthusiasm for nature, 
an extremely positive aestheticization of the mountains anchored itself 
in the minds of educated citizens and aristocrats. The beauty of the 
Alps was enthusiastically celebrated in weekly magazines, travelogues, 
and novels alike.
The Society and Politics Inscribed in the Alps
The Alps became charged with political, religious, and social signifi-
cance. Increasingly, the Romantics rediscovered the mythical quality 
of the mountains that once served as the seat of weather-determining 
gods and a place of both havoc and salvation. In Hartmut Böhme’s 
words, “[m]ountains lead to transcendence, they are—even visually—a 
medium of ascent, surpassing, and transgression” (Böhme 48).
Ludwig Tieck imbued his novella Rune Mountain (Der Runenberg, 
1802) with the Romantic natural philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm 
Joseph Schelling. If the Romantic tale allows for the ambivalence of a 
demonically destructive and a truly divine view of the Alps, it is clear 
that the Alps are seen as the gateway to the primal forces of nature. The 
same applies to Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802). Although 
the hero, who is on his way to Augsburg to fulfil his vocation as a poet, 
does not reach the Alps, he heartily adopts the teachings of a hermit 
living inside the mountain. And while mountains exert a great fasci-
nation on the hermit, he never succumbs to greed for the wealth and 
riches that lay within; he prefers the values of conviviality, light, and 
air. Joseph von Eichendorff, meanwhile, had his Romantic journey-
men wander through the Alps, and Friedrich Hölderlin drew a heroic 
picture evoking traces of the Swiss Confederates and freedom fighters.
Around the same time, Friedrich Schiller created his last great drama, 
Wilhelm Tell (1804), celebrating the struggle of the Swiss for freedom 
in their Alpine setting. The mountains are thoroughly inscribed into the 
play’s story and history: it is only in this heroic landscape that the fugi-
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
47
tive Melchthal can secretly assemble fighters, the captive Tell can jump 
from a boat onto a rocky ledge, and the nefarious Gessler must pass 
through the famous “deep defile” or “hohle Gasse” (Schiller, “Wilhelm 
Tell” [Complete Works] 631; “Wilhelm Tell” [Sämtliche Werke] 123). 
Here, the enthusiasm for the Swiss mountains is interwoven with a 
thirst for freedom and republicanism. To his son who wants to leave 
the land of threatening avalanches, glaciers, and mountain peaks, Tell 
explains that it is better for these threats to lurk behind one’s back than 
evil men (see Schiller, “Wilhelm Tell” [Complete Works] 620; “Wilhelm 
Tell” [Sämtliche Werke] 86).
Later, Bettina von Arnim celebrated not only the landscape but also 
the struggles of the Tyroleans against Napoleon—and exaggerated this 
struggle into an expression of the Alpine dwellers’ general love of free-
dom. To this day, the inhabitants of Alpine lands such as Switzerland 
and Tyrol are associated with independence and resolute resilience.
In works such as Rock Crystal (Bergkristall, 1845), Adalbert Stifter 
presented the sublime, beautiful, and daunting nature of the moun-
tains, while granting much laudatory space to the religious commu-
nity which copes communally with dangers and is capable of coming 
together to save two endangered children. The local mountain is the 
pride of the village and an early site of regional tourism. Below it lies a 
simple community that lives in solidarity and in accordance with the 
cyclical Christian calendar. In terms of topoi, this association is mar-
ried to that of a freedom-loving society.
In addition to the aforementioned positions, more conservative 
stances on the Alps—especially in Switzerland—have manifested and 
entrenched themselves. There, the Alps developed into an expansive 
national symbol, with the Gotthard Military Fortress becoming a pri-
mary symbol. Literature was once again at the forefront of the construc-
tion of myths. Focusing on the writings of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, 
Franz Loquai argues that it is no longer a matter only of “mountain 
romance, but . . . of downright ‘Alpine theology’” where “the mountain 
landscape becomes an experience of faith,” with the Alps functioning 
as “the cathedral of nature.” (Loquai 462) This attitude by no means 
disappeared in Switzerland in the twentieth century; it was perpetu-
ated by, among others, Leonhard Ragaz and Meinrad Inglin, with the 
mountain world being positioned not only as a counter-world to the 
world of modernity but also as a metaphysically charged starting point 
for a cultural renewal in society as a whole (see Wiegmann-Schubert).
The Alps became a literary point of reference and have remained so. 
Myths of mountains and mountaineering have taken many forms. In 
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Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (Zauberberg, 1924), a cocoon-
like, sickly world is depicted at high altitude. What was originally 
planned as a satirical counterpart to the tragic novella Death in Venice 
(Der Tod in Venedig, 1911) became one of the great epochal testaments 
of the interwar period, and Mann worked on his novel for ten years. 
Even if fellow writers such as Bertolt Brecht criticized Mann’s having 
spent hundreds of pages on two pallid young men in a Swiss sanato-
rium, the book became one of the great sales successes of the interwar 
period despite the high demands it places on the reader. No other novel 
of the time could compare with it. The reading public enjoyed the 
multitude of evocations and allusions, recognizing the familiar ones, 
including the thematization of stasis and transience against a mountain 
backdrop. The mountain setting proved a perfect canvas for a playful 
portrayal of myths—note the many manifestations of the number 7 
and references to the Underworld—not least because these environs 
seemed isolated from contemporary events, while simultaneously offer-
ing an apt panoramic view of European society.
The Tendency toward Kitsch and the Trivial
Enlightenment aestheticization of the Alps also resulted in an often ex-
aggerated romanticization of the landscape. As early as the nineteenth 
century, the Alps were increasingly viewed as “a pre-civilizational, wildly 
Romantic, melancholic, enjoyable, primal poetic wonderland” (Loquai 
443). Such an image not only suited the emerging tourism industry, it 
was also adopted by locals and infused the collective self-image.
Literary trivializations of this staging can be found early on as well, 
from Heinrich Clauren’s Mimili (1815–1816) to Johanna Spyri’s 
Heidi (1880), Wilhelmine von Hillern’s The Vulture-Maiden (Die 
Geier-Wally, 1881), and Jakob Christoph Heer’s The King of Bernina 
(Der König der Bernina, 1900). Overall, in this type of light fiction, the 
homeland and with it the community purportedly made up of moun-
tain dwellers unspoiled by modern civilization continues to evoke and 
steer the topos of the Alps in a problematic direction. “Writing about 
mountains is a tightrope walk; there is always a risk of falling into 
pathos and kitsch,” wrote Emil Zopfi as recently as 2009 (Zopfi 18).
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
49
Alpinism: Self-Awareness and Male Heroism
Another important literary approach went hand in hand with the 
emergence of mountaineering or alpinism. In addition to luring guests 
who came to stare flabbergasted up from the valleys, the Alps have also 
long attracted mountaineers from all over the world. They function, 
furthermore, as a kind of meeting place at high altitude, and the term 
alpinism has become internationally recognized. The fact that alpinism, 
especially hiking in the mountains, can take on symbolic meaning and 
is considered an intellectual experience is already shown in the travel-
ogue of the poet Francesco Petrarch, dated 1336, about his ascent of 
Mont Ventoux in Provence, which serves as an allegorical representa-
tion of a life journey. Conquering a mountain—in contrast to dealing 
with the bland mediocrity of the city—has for centuries been a symbol 
of solitude, ingenuity, perspective, perspicuity, and farsightedness.
Friedrich Nietzsche has also reflected on wandering in the moun-
tains, as one reads in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra: “‘I am a wanderer and 
a mountain-climber,’ he said to his heart. ‘I do not love the plains, and 
it seems that I cannot sit still for long. And now whatever may come to 
me yet as fate and experience—a wandering will be in it and a climb-
ing of mountains.’” (Nietzsche 131) Here, wandering and climbing 
become symbols for the enrichment of life, for clarity of thought and 
action, while also serving as expressions of an ascetic attitude and a 
means of escaping from everyday life.
Mountains, moreover, are often seen as nature pitted against the 
mountaineering individual. Individual heroism comes into its own on 
the mountain, though, tellingly, these individuals are rarely mountain 
dwellers. Alpinism begins to emerge in mid-nineteenth century as a sport 
that also serves as a platform for liminal experiences. Predominantly 
English climbers—accompanied by local guides—first ascended Mont 
Blanc, and later the peaks in German-speaking regions of the Alps. 
A broad public followed the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865, 
when only two of the six participants made it back alive. Literature, 
too, has contributed to the image of the mountaineer as a modern 
hero. Moreover, from Edward Whymper to Reinhold Messner, well-
read alpinists have written exciting reports themselves. As Zopfi quips, 
“Whoever climbed a mountain for the first time during the research 
phase of alpinism in the first half of the nineteenth century wrote a 
book. Even if he didn’t quite reach the summit…” (Zopfi 15).
After the Alpine peaks had become largely accessible, within a few 
decades those mountaineers who no longer relied on guides gained 
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interpretative dominance over alpinism. The idea prevailed that the 
dangers of the high mountains both make tangible and bolster friend-
ships, resulting in a reconfiguring of Alpine heroic masculinity. This 
gave rise to bonds of masculinity, which laid the foundation for the 
heroization of mountaineers in World War I and later invited close 
links to the Nazi ideology (see Backhaus).
After 1850, soon-to-be influential Alpine clubs were founded, 
among them, the British Alpine Club in 1857, the Austrian Alpenverein 
in 1862, the Swiss Alpen-Club and the Club Alpino Italiano in 1863, 
the German Alpenverein in 1869, and the Club Alpin Français in 
1874; the first Ladies’ Alpine Club was not established until 1907. 
“Mountaineering was and is not a gender-neutral cultural practice,” 
writes Dagmar Günther (Günther 155). Indeed, in Alpine discourses, 
the mountain world is still often portrayed as a female nature that is 
conquered by men.
The symbolic world of the mountains has helped spin various topoi 
into patriotic ideals. The summit represented higher goals and motives 
for a united nation. It is therefore hardly surprising that during World 
War I, when the most terrible mountain war of all time was waged, 
mountaineers were portrayed as heroic defenders of the homeland.
Literature retained its essential role here, and it has proven to be 
dangerous. Christian Luckscheiter uses the example of the biography of 
Hans Ertl, the war correspondent and cameraman for Leni Riefenstahl 
and Erwin Rommel, to illustrate the causes of his enthusiasm for the 
mountains (see Luckscheiter). The military imagery and the sacraliza-
tion and sexualization of the Alps in these works call for loyalty to men 
who are ideologically close to Nazism.
The concrete politicization of mountaineering reached many spheres, 
including the expeditions to Nanga Parbat, the so-called mountain of 
destiny for Germans after the failed expedition led by Willy Merkl (see 
Höbusch). In the 1930s, German and Austrian mountaineers carried 
flags adorned with the swastika to various peaks, including the sum-
mit of the Eiger via its north face in 1938. These extraordinary Alpine 
climbs were exploited for propaganda purposes in the years leading up 
to the war. Under National Socialism, mountain literature and moun-
tain films flourished in works by Arnold Fanck and Leni Riefenstahl, 
among others, and this association brought the genre into further disre-
pute. Siegfried Kracauer was right to notice pro-fascist tendencies early 
on. Alpine literature, especially the trivial Heimatroman or homeland 
novel, provided the film industry with ready-made images and narra-
tives, with the mountaineering writer and actor Luis Trenker acting as 
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
51
the driving force behind this. That said, during World War I, the view 
of the mountains lost its innocence as terrible mountain warfare raged 
in the Dolomites and along the Soča or Isonzo River.
The Critical View in the Twentieth Century
In the twentieth century, especially in works by leading Austrian writers, 
a critical view of the Alps came to predominate. Everything, from the 
stereotyping of society to alpinism, was questioned—but not defeated.
The mythologization, romanticization, trivialization, and heroiza-
tion of the Alpine, of the Alps, and of alpinists had been parodied 
or ironized before, but only occasionally (e.g., by Heinrich Heine, 
Ferdinand Raimund, and Johann Nepomuk Nestroy). However, it was 
not until such currents as Viennese modernism that Alpine topoi were 
thoroughly scrutinized. Arthur Schnitzler himself had a lifelong fasci-
nation with the mountains and with the great Austrian mountaineers of 
his time, and he even completed a number of demanding tours. During 
his medical studies he became close friends with the avid climber Emil 
Friedmann and his brothers.
Some of Schnitzler’s Alpine-loving friends have fictional counter-
points in his works, especially in the 1911 tragi-comedy The Distant 
Land (translated as Undiscovered Country in Tom Stoppard’s adapta-
tion), which premiered simultaneously in eleven cities and with which 
the author—in contrast to his other works—stated that he was actu-
ally satisfied. The third act takes place in one of the monarchy’s most 
beautiful mountain landscapes, the Rosengarten group in South Tyrol. 
Doctor Franz Mauer adores the young Erna Wahl, who in turn is 
in love with the married industrialist Friedrich Hofreiter. The battle 
between two men over a woman in a mountain setting is of course a 
commonplace, but the lack of heroism is not. In Schnitzler’s only tragi-
comedy there is absolutely nothing of the supposed grandeur of the 
mountains; here, too, society remains caught up in its usual intrigues 
and interests (see Haase). There is no moral autonomy among Alpine 
dwellers, and no ascent can offer a superior perspective on life.
In what follows, examples from two very different Austrian authors 
from the interwar period—Joseph Roth and Ödön von Horváth—
will be used to show how their literary approaches undermined tradi-
tional topoi.
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Joseph Roth and the Alps as a National Refuge, an Obstacle, 
and a Place Removed from Culture
In the works of Joseph Roth, who liked to reside in hotels far away 
from the Alps, the mountain range is never allotted a positive role. On 
the contrary, the Alps always function as a birthplace of evil or as an ob-
stacle on the way to the sunny and cultivated south. The traditional lit-
erary topoi are taken up only to be subverted and undermined. For this 
seminal Austrian author, the Alps become a hostile breeding ground of 
nationalism. He turns the tables on the old Austrian habit of blaming 
Slavic populations’ statehood appetites for the fall of the monarchy. 
He places the blame mainly on the German-speaking Austrians—rep-
resented by inhabitants of the Alps.
In the novel The Emperor’s Tomb (Die Kapuzinergruft, 1938), Roth’s 
“mouthpiece” (Pfabigan 16) Chojnicki inveighs against the Alpine 
dwellers as follows: 
You didn’t want to understand that those fatheads from the Alps and the Sude-
ten Germans, those cretinous Nibelungen, had insulted and damaged our two 
nations for so long that they actually began to hate and betray our Monarchy. 
(Ihr habt nicht sehen wollen, dass diese Alpentrottel und die Sudetenböhmen, 
diese kretinischen Nibelungen, unsere Nationalitäten so lange beleidigt und 
geschändet haben, bis sie anfingen, die Monarchie zu hassen und zu verraten.) 
(Roth, The Emperor’s 117; Werke 315, VI)2
For Roth, the German-speaking inhabitants of the Alps are not only 
responsible for the fall of the old regime, they also strive for the end 
of the First Republic and for the Anschluss with Germany. Roth 
himself came to have a positive stance towards the monarchy, not 
least because of the threat posed by National Socialism. According to 
Chojnicki, it is through and due to this German national mindset that 
the inhabitants of the Alps hope to find their homeland in Germany; 
the idea of an independent nationality in Austrofascism is therefore 
stillborn. Chojnicki quotes his brother Joseph: “On the mountain top 
dwells stupidity. (Auf den Bergen wohnt die Dummheit.)” (Roth, 
The Emperor’s 146; Werke 337, VI) And in a feuilleton piece titled 
“Requiem Mass” (“Totenmesse,” 1938), Roth rails against the “geo-
graphically conditioned and rarely perceptible goitre (geographisch 
bedingten, selten sichtbarem Kropf Behafteten)” and “the Alpine 
2 Here and throughout, Arabic and Roman numerals respectively refer to page 
numbers and volumes in Roth, Werke.
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
53
halfwits on the right (rechten alpinen Trottel)” (“Requiem” 35; 797, 
III). His aggressive manner anticipates the hate-fueled tirades of a 
Thomas Bernhard.
Since Roth is interpreted or appropriated as a central figure of 
Austrian literature, it is fascinating how little he thought of the country 
in its post-1918 form. Roth’s Austria is the only multicultural state in 
Central Europe. Not even an emperor, to whom Roth was later com-
mitted, could guarantee the continued existence of the Habsburg state 
model in what was now a small Alpine state. In 1934, Roth wrote to 
the composer Ernst Krenek, who was of similar mind: “I know for 
sure that the Emperor of Austria, if he were to remain only Emperor 
of the Alpine imbeciles, wouldn’t be the Emperor we have in mind. 
(Gewiß weiß ich, daß der Kaiser von Österreich, bliebe er nur der 
Kaiser der Alpentrottel, nicht der Kaiser wäre, den wir meinen.)” (qtd. 
in Bronsen 390) As the protagonist Chojnicki so clearly puts it in The 
Emperor’s Tomb, “Austria is not to be found in the Alps, where you can 
find edelweiss, chamois and gentians but never a trace of the double 
eagle. (Österreich ist nicht in den Alpen zu finden, Gemsen gibt es 
dort und Edelweiß und Enzian, aber kaum eine Ahnung von einem 
Doppeladler.)” (Roth, The Emperor’s 17; Werke 234–235, VI)
A disinclination for the mountains manifests itself also in Roth’s 
acerbic comments on hiking and climbing. Even in his early journalism 
he clearly sees alpinism as the essence of stupidity. He leads off one piece 
thus: “To each his own. Some look for salvation through telepathy and 
pretend to be asleep or to solve puzzles; others meet to play cards and 
to distract themselves in that way; yet others again climb mountains 
in order to fall off. (Man muss den Leuten ihr Vergnügen lassen: Die 
einen suchen in der Telepathie ihr Heil und spielen Einschlafen oder 
Rätselraten; die anderen versammeln sich beim Kartenspiel, um sich 
ebendaselbst zu zerstreuen; die dritten steigen auf die Berge, um abzu-
stürzen.)” (Roth, Werke 78, I)
In the novel Zipper and His Father (Zipper und sein Vater, 1928), 
the sport becomes a symbol of fruitless, foolish ambition (see Roth, 
Zipper 158; Werke 538, IV). And in the novel Flight without End 
(Die Flucht ohne Ende, 1927), Franz Tunda strolls through a mid-
sized German town, assembling irony-filled impressions: “A group of 
cyclists sped by ringing their bells. Men with dignified bearing and 
childish clothing, carrying rucksacks, hiked off to the mountains. 
(Eine Gruppe hurtiger Radfahrer glitt klingelnd einher. Würdig, mit 
Rucksäcken, wanderten kindlich gekleidete Männer in die Berge.)” 
(Roth, Flight 76; Werke 445, IV)
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The despised glamorous world of the stars is also tellingly depicted 
as they relax in the mountains. The calculating Erna Zipper in Zipper 
and His Father makes use of the highly touted backdrop, complete with 
Alpine attire. Roth exposes the role of the Alps in the media as an 
environment that can no longer represent a flat and mendacious down-
to-earth attitude and that testifies to the cultural emptiness of the per-
formers and consumers.
The Alps provide the backdrop for seedy events throughout the 
German-speaking world. In Berlin, Roth encounters a bock beer festi-
val with an Alpine theme, at which patriotic verses are sung. The col-
umnist Roth describes a picture that today could be placed somewhere 
between a Volksfest and the Musikantenstadl:
They build Alps out of cardboard in the hall, with narrow passes, gorges, 
peaks, and artificial snow. A few try to climb the mountains. Born in the low-
land, they are inexperienced. They are inclined to mistake plains for mountain 
ranges. If one of them manages to climb to the top of a paper-snow covered 
peak, he falls down the other side, in an avalanche of flesh and bock beer. 
(Man baut nämlich Alpen aus Pappe in den Saal, mit Engpässen, Schluchten, 
Zacken und künstlichem Schnee. Manche bemühen sich, die Berge zu erstei-
gen. Es sind Tieflandgeborene und Ungeübte. Sie sind ohnehin schon geneigt, 
Ebenen für Gebirgsketten zu halten. Gelingt es einem, eine papierschneebe-
deckte Spitze zu erklimmen, so stürzt er auf der andern Seite herunter, eine 
Lawine aus Fleisch und Bockbier.) (Roth, Werke 343, II)
Transferred to an urban stage, the Alpine becomes a backdrop for 
barbaric behavior. For example, Cuneus, a pseudonym of the journal-
ist Roth, writes the following about some evening entertainment in 
Saarbrücken:
I go into a restaurant where some sort of Bavarians or Tyrolians make music 
dressed in shirt sleeves, Yahoo, Woohoo, Yookhaydeedelday! (Ich gelange in 
ein Restaurant, in dem eine Art von Bayern oder Tirolern Musik macht, in 
Hemdsärmeln, Juchhei, Huchho, Juchheidideldei!) (Roth, Werke 785, II)
The patrons in shirtsleeves may be yodeling away, but the yodeling 
remains drab in these cultureless environs so far away from mountains. 
The Alpine becomes a generic metaphor for the staged aspect of such 
festivities—it can even be exported into realms devoid of culture:
This city is growing rapidly. That cabaret, that Tyrolean is a reminiscence. This 
floor on which we are now yodeling is hollow. (Diese Stadt wächst rapide. 
Jenes Kabarett und jene Tiroler sind ihre Reminiszenzen. Dieser Boden, auf 
dem wir jetzt jodeln, ist hohl.) (786, II)
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
55
Roth’s use of the adjective “hollow” is ambiguous: on the one hand, 
coal has been dug in Saarbrücken for 500 years, but above all Roth 
comes across a hollow and empty culture.
Identification of the Idyllic Backdrop and Submission to 
Nature in Ödön von Horváth
Another well-known author of the interwar and exile period who de-
mystified the common Alpine topoi through his texts is Ödön von 
Horváth. Although Horváth, in contrast to Roth, often climbed and 
hiked in the mountains, he was equally critical of idyllic portrayals of 
the Alps. He viewed the illusions of the hale and hearty Alpine world as 
so many fantasies of townspeople who have grown tired of civilization 
(see Vejvar).
Since 1924, the family of this genuinely Austro-Hungarian and 
Central European writer (born near Rijeka and raised in Belgrade, 
Bratislava, Munich, Vienna, and Budapest) had, in addition to a resi-
dence in Munich, a summer residence in Murnau am Staffelsee in 
Upper Bavaria. Horváth remained connected to his Bavarian abode 
over the years and spent a considerable part of the year there even after 
his theatrical success in Berlin. It was from Murnau that he departed for 
many climbing tours in the nearby Wetterstein mountains. The popular 
tourist destination often offered him raw material for his literary texts. 
Due to his many allusions to the area, researchers have even referred to 
“Murnau as a model” (Tworek-Müller 38). According to Horváth biog-
rapher Dieter Hildebrandt, “[i]n Berlin he got the ‘evil eye’, in Bavaria 
the opportunity to apply it to the ideal world” (Hildebrandt 63). 
Though this assertion is somewhat off the mark (see Vejvar 205), there 
is no doubt that Horváth saw the Alpine region as an illuminating envi-
ronment for his “Volksstücke” or popular plays about ordinary char-
acters and for his prose works. Even the sports tales (“Sportmärchen,” 
1924) that launched his literary career in the Munich satirical magazine 
Simplicissimus deal, in part sarcastically, with hiking and climbing.
In Horváth’s first “Volksstück,” the 1929 piece Die Bergbahn (The 
Mountain Railway)—which was also his first stage success and the 
reason for his generous general contract with the Ullstein publishing 
group—the mountain is a protagonist of sorts. A conflict is shown 
between workers, the strength of capital represented by a supervisory 
board, and the engineer during the construction of a mountain railway 
high up in the mountains.
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56
Class struggle in the high Alpine environment imports an unfamil-
iar tone to the genre tradition of the “Volksstück”—as well as to the 
representation of the Alps. The supervisor is the only character that 
views his surroundings with rose-colored glasses. While the workers 
are toiling on the ridge, he sits in front of the hut, eats pork chops and 
vegetables, and ruminates:
Good morning! Listen, comfort looks different than this. My poor knees. It’s 
terrible! Sports everywhere. But believe me: in spite of my best efforts, I envy 
even our lowliest of workers. Always in glorious mountain air, in the midst of 
immense nature! (Na guten Morgen! Hören Sie, bequem ist anders. Meine 
armen Knie. Nein, schrecklich! Überall Sport. Aber, glauben Sie mir: trotz aller 
Anstrengung beneide ich selbst unseren letzten Arbeiter. Immer in herrlicher 
Höhenluft, inmitten gewaltiger Natur!) (Horváth, “Die Bergbahn” 113–114)
What matters most to him is dominating and subduing nature in order 
to create a resort.
A sentimental song about the beauty of the Alps in the barracks 
becomes a foreign body and is shown to be fraudulent in the course of 
the play. In the showdown between worker and engineer on the moun-
tain, the Alpine panorama is spectacularly staged and a snow storm is 
used as a dramaturgical device.
The very construction of the mountain railway refers to contem-
porary discourses of tourism and nationalism. Cable railways were the 
most visible metaphor for Alpine progress (see Tschofen 208), which 
assumed an ambivalent position between tourist-driven economic 
hopes for the future, technology-based domestication of unspoiled 
nature, and an ideology of the homeland. A worker, speaking in dia-
lect, offers this trenchant perspective:
You read everywhere about the progress of mankind and the people heap praise 
on the engineers, like they’re prize bulls, the directors bring the bags of cash 
to the bank, and tourism flourishes for the farmer. Every little screw becomes 
a “marvel of technology,” every cesspool becomes a “healing spring.” But if 
somebody sacrifices his life up for this, the blood will be sopped up! (Da liest 
überall vom Fortschritt der Menschheit und die Leut bekränzn an Ingineur, 
wie an Preisstier, die Direkter sperrn die Geldsäck in d’Kass und dem Bauer 
blüht der Fremdenverkehr. A jede Schraubn wird zum “Wunder der Technik”, 
a jede Odlgrubn zur “Heilquelle”, “Aber, daß aner sei Lebn hergebn hat, des 
Blut werd ausradiert!)” (Horváth, “Die Bergbahn” 102)
The concerns with blood are even worse than those mentioned by the 
worker. Rather than being hidden away or immediately cleaned up, 
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
57
blood is raised to an indication of quality, providing evidence of the 
technical difficulty of the undertaking. The deaths in cable railways, tun-
nels, and dams are meticulously listed, and not entirely without pride. 
The cableway that serves up tourist offerings for the rich, the enthusi-
asm for technology which proves harmful to nature, class conflict, and 
nationalism combine to create a visibly monstrous Alpine panorama.
Far from merely inviting a whimsical satirical scene, the Alpine 
world triggers a particular discourse that imbues the play as a whole. 
Horváth, like Roth, unmasks the superficiality of the scenery; the Alps 
become a facade, a paltry stage that is propped up by media images.
In his prose works, too, Horváth subverts the positions of tour-
ism and politics and does not associate the Alps with recovery or heal-
ing. On the contrary. The “fairy tale of Fräulein Pollinger,” told by 
the narrator in The Eternal Philistine, begins with the fairy tale phrase 
“Once upon a time.” Once employed as an office girl in a rental car 
company, Anna Pollinger later turns to prostitution. A partner named 
Fritz immediately takes her on a strenuous mountain route to the 
Wasserkarspitze—on All Saints’ Day, no less—so that the physical 
exertion of the descent might stave off pregnancy (Horváth, Eternal 
Philistine 49; Der ewige Spießer 790)
Hiking in the mountains for the purpose of recreation is thus linked 
to the ending of a life. The gender relationship exposed in the narra-
tive foreground to the story, the access to the female body in terms of 
goods, and the dependence of the “Fräuleins” on the men are literally 
taken to great heights.
The Alpine backdrop is laid bare in Horváth. It serves as a facade 
behind which one can peek. It is not a transposable place of action. A 
perfect mountain world is only superficially perfect, appearing only as 
an idea that has always been mediated. Horváth’s texts are therefore not 
texts about the Alps but texts about how the Alps are spoken about.
Adoption of the Traditional Strands after 1945
As we have seen, the Alps have been completely demythologized in 
the literature of the interwar period thanks to writers such as Roth 
and Horváth. The themes and literary strategies mentioned above 
show that a critical view of the Alps anticipates the literature published 
after 1945—and does so with surprising breadth. Much of what is un-
derstood as a reaction to the use of the Alpine and alpinism for Nazi 
propaganda has older traditions. Austrian authors such as Ernst Jandl, 
PKn, letnik 45, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2022
58
Gerhard Roth, Thomas Bernhard, Werner Kofler, Felix Mitterer, 
Elfriede Jelinek, Christoph Ransmayr, and Josef Winkler have contin-
ued these lines of thought and critique from 1945 to the present. This 
approach is accompanied by the new construction of and reflections on 
a critical and positive concept of the homeland.
The Second Republic’s need for identification reintroduced some of 
the familiar Alpine metaphors, and not only in Paula von Preradović’s 
lyrics for the Austrian national anthem. Traditional strands of the 
Alpine topoi were thus used on both the conservative and the critical 
side.
We find the national and National Socialist attitude of the Alpine 
population—with a semantically charged space—in many more recent 
authors. Political discourses on war, National Socialism, and the 
Holocaust are interwoven with the criticism of the exploitation of the 
Alpine landscape and culture for tourist purposes—the Anschluss by 
tourism being one of the tropes. In contemporary Austrian literature 
in particular, a demythologization is being promoted, and the Alps 
are becoming the locus of the displaced, of catastrophes, and of the 
dead—they represent a continuation of fascism. The landscape is, to 
use the vocabulary introduced by Martin Pollack, perceived as con-
taminated and linked to the Nazi era (see Pollack). Already in Hans 
Lebert’s 1971 novel Der Feuerkreis (The Fire Circle) we hear the follow-
ing during an interrogation: “Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead everywhere! … 
From the silence I hear their roaring rising like mountains! Our moun-
tains are mountains of the dead!! Do you understand?! Those win-
ter sports enthusiasts are sliding down mountains of corpses!! (Tote! 
Tote! Tote! Überall Tote! … Aus der Stille hör ich ihr Gebrüll wie ein 
Gebirge wachsen! Unsere Berge sind Berge von Toten!! Verstehst?! Die 
Wintersportler rutschen von Leichenbergen herunter!!)” (238) In her 
1995 novel Die Kinder der Toten (The Children of the Dead), Jelinek 
writes about a “rug made of human pulp (Teppich aus Humanmus)” 
(191) and “body meadows (Körperwiese)” (111). The sexualization of 
the Alps and of alpinism play a major role in Jelinek’s writings.
We also find Roth-like views of the Alps as an obstacle. The Swiss 
Punks, for example, disturbed the tranquility of Zurich in the early 
1980s with their Dada-like demand: “Down with the Alps—a clear 
view of the Mediterranean!” This youth movement took aim at a cen-
tral Swiss mark of identification: the mountains. The demand was argu-
ably neither mere nonsense nor a conscious reference to Roth, but an 
expression of the desire to make the Swiss open their eyes to that which 
lies beyond the Alpine border.
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
59
Roth’s negative perspective on the narrowly defined Alpine Republic, 
which for him stands in contrast to the bygone, open, multicultural 
Danube Monarchy, can be found in different guises, for example, in 
the Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke, who reflected on his Carinthian 
perspective in an interview:
Sitting on a terrace in Völkermarkt, or Velikovec, when you look into the 
Jauntal valley and see the River Drava, and beyond that the Karavanke moun-
tains, and behind them the even higher mountains, the Kamnik-Savinja Alps, 
with Mount Grintovec, looking incredibly beautiful in the distance—that 
wasn’t Slovenia for me, but the start of the great country of Yugoslavia. And 
suddenly I am struck by the thought that it’s so disappointing that it’s only 
Slovenia now […]. And now the Slovenians make themselves out to be Alpine 
dwellers […]. Slovenia isn’t an Alpine republic. Suddenly they want to become 
as stupid as the Austrians with their idiotic Alpine republic. (Handke 80–81)
From Remoteness to a Meeting Place and a Fragile Ecosystem
In addition to the ongoing distancing from the traditional topoi and 
the unmasking of the Alpine idyll, a preoccupation with the fragile ecol-
ogy of the region has begun to play a prominent role in contemporary 
literary thematizations of the Alps. The many negative consequences of 
mass tourism are well known. In addition to transit transport and the 
massive exploitation of hydropower, mass tourism is tearing apart the 
culturally constructed facade of the Alpine idyll and contributing to 
the image of an unstable, endangered ecosystem. The mountain land-
scape, once difficult to access, has become a space that can be visited 
and shaped by the masses. Indeed, streams of tourists have followed 
in the footsteps of the pioneers. Already after World War I, Austria 
established Alpine skiing as an identity-forming popular sport boasting 
school ski courses and a dense network of ski homes, huts, and youth 
hostels—an undertaking that went so far that prices of the lifts and ac-
commodation became the subject of public debate.
Other forms of alpinism have in the meantime combined with an 
interest in health, fitness, and nature, culminating in trendy sports 
such as paragliding, mountain biking, and snowboarding. The Alps are 
becoming a sports arena.
As the twentieth century drew to a close, more and more atten-
tion was paid to ecology and environmental protection. The mountains 
serve as a location for the early literature of the anthropocene, includ-
ing Marlen Haushofer’s 1963 dystopian novel The Wall (Die Wand), a 
PKn, letnik 45, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2022
60
story about a woman who is isolated while being surrounded by nature, 
as she begins a new life in an Alpine hunting lodge together with a dog, 
a cow, and a cat. The novel is critical of civilization as it approaches 
nature as the object of care and concern rather than exploitation. The 
book’s continued popularity is evident not least in the 2012 film adap-
tation by Julian Pölsler.
In his 1979 novella Man in the Holocene (Der Mensch erscheint im 
Holozän), Max Frisch uses landscape to accelerate desubjectivation, the 
physical and mental decline of the protagonists. The threatening Alps are 
no longer experienced in parallel with self-discovery and self-assertion, 
but with a loss of subjectivity. In addition, erosion evokes the coming 
disappearance of human beings—in the eternal advancement of nature.
Jelinek, likewise, furiously attacks the exploitation of nature in Die 
Kinder der Toten, the three plays she published in 2002 under the title 
In den Alpen (In the Alps), and in the 2003 play Das Werk (The Plant). 
Criticism of tourism and of the destruction of nature can also be found 
in Ilja Trojanow’s 2011 novel EisTau (IceThaw), whose spatial repre-
sentations are an essential contribution to the inner structure of the 
novel as they connect the local with the global. The juxtaposition and 
superimposition of the Antarctic and the Alps demonstrate the global 
dimension of the problems of the Alpine region. These important ques-
tions are likely to become the main focus of literary thematizations of 
the Alps in the future.
Conclusion and Outlook
Today, the Alps are more central to literature than ever before. In the 
last few years in particular, the Alps have experienced a renaissance in 
literature and culture in general. A new Alpine vogue can be observed, 
one which is accompanied by conspicuous overlaps—an Alpinization 
of urban space (mountain film festivals, climbing gyms, Alpine archi-
tecture and clothing) and an urbanization of the Alps (restaurants, 
mountaintop techno parties). Testifying to this in the realm of media 
beyond literature in the strict sense there are, for example, successful 
broadcast formats such as “Berg und Geist” (“Mountain and Spirit”), 
in which, since 2004, Swiss intellectuals, including numerous writers, 
have been interviewed on a Swiss mountain of their choice, thus tying 
their mountain to their biography. At the same time, however, the Alps 
are still associated with a counter-world that can withstand the upheav-
als of modernity.
Johann Georg Lughofer:     Alpine Clichés and Critiques
61
In any case, the Alps remain a central point of reference for litera-
ture to this day. Recent novels by leadings authors, such as Christoph 
Ransmayr’s The Flying Mountain (Der fliegende Berg, 2006), Roman 
Graf’s Niedergang (Decline), and Thomas Glavinic’s Das größere Wunder 
(The Greater Wonder), both from 2013, evince the continued interest 
in the Alps and alpinism. Even Alpine crime novels, which are very 
popular today, have occasional instances of critical irony and ruptures 
in the idyllic fabric.
One Austrian peculiarity stands out to this day, though. The decon-
struction of myths, disillusionment, an aversion to the mountains, 
and a longing for mountainless regions remain a veritable doctrine in 
Austrian literature. The Alps seem to have been set as the crime scene 
in the literary Austria; the World Wars, among other things, have 
inscribed themselves deep in the Alps. The myth of the mountains and 
their exploitation have a special meaning for both the conservatives 
and the critics. Even in an Austria of the third millennium, an Austria 
of the European Union, these fronts seem to have become entrenched.
Although individual upcoming German and Swiss writers dare 
to pen relaxed, neutral, transcultural views of the Alps—one thinks 
of Arno Camenisch from Graubünden or Thomas Willmann from 
Munich—such a stance seems much more difficult in Austria. Vea 
Kaiser’s debut novel, the 2012 bestseller Blasmusikpop oder Wie die 
Wissenschaft in die Alpen kam (Brass Instrument Pop, or How Science 
Made Its Way to the Alps), was heavily criticized in the otherwise rather 
lenient Austrian literary review scene for drawing a benignly affection-
ate picture of an Alpine village. Neither Switzerland nor Germany seem 
to have to deal with the same thing as Austria. The current political sig-
nificance of right-wing populists has its role here: as early as 2000, the 
Tageszeitung wrote: “With the entry of the Freedom Party of Austria 
into the Austrian government, the Alps have come a little closer to us 
again.” Indeed, Party leader Jörg Haider was fond of celebrating his 
parties on mountain pastures, and the Party uses rustic, rural Romantic 
imagery at its meetings. Haider’s successors, such as Herbert Kickl 
today, have followed suit. But so have some of the other parties: before 
this abrupt departure, chancellor Sebastian Kurz liked to let himself be 
seen on mountain hikes and in Alpine milieus—and Austrian voters 
seemed to have rewarded the youngster for it. Even the Greens success-
fully positioned their 2016 presidential candidate, Alexander van der 
Bellen, between the concept of homeland, Lederhosen, and mountains, 
although this positioning was also made easier by the fact that van der 
Bellen hails from Tyrol. All of this is in stark contrast to Germany, 
PKn, letnik 45, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2022
62
and to a large extent also to Switzerland. So, it is probably not entirely 
unfounded that a primal fear of Austrian intellectuals, which has obvi-
ously existed since the culture wars of the 1920s, obviously remains: the 
fear of the country becoming corrupted by the Alpine.
Translated by Jason Blake
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Alpski klišeji in kritike: procesi in napetosti v 
književnosti v nemščini
Ključne besede: literatura in alpinizem / avstrijska književnost / nacionalna identiteta / 
kulturni stereotipi / Alpe / Roth, Joseph / Horváth, Ödön von
Članek analizira podobo Alp v literaturi v nemščini z gledišča njenega druž-
benozgodovinskega konteksta in literarnih toposov, ki so se razvili v tem kon-
tekstu. S pomočjo primerov iz opusov dveh zelo različnih avstrijskih literatov 
medvojnega obdobja, Josepha Rotha (1894–1939) in Ödöna von Horvátha 
(1901–1938), pa tudi njunih nemško govorečih predhodnikov in naslednikov 
se članek osredotoča na literarne postopke spoprijemanja s tradicionalnimi 
literarnimi toposi. Alpe, ki so danes najpomembnejša identitetna pokrajina 
tako Republike Avstrije kakor avstrijske literature, so demistifikacijo doži-
vele že v literaturi medvojnega obdobja. Teme in literarne strategije teh lite-
rarnih tekstov tako napovedujejo povojno književnost in obenem ponujajo 
PKn, letnik 45, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2022
64
presenet ljivo raznoliko podobo Alp. Tako se izkaže, da velik del tega, kar nam 
danes velja za odziv na izrabo pojma alpskega in alpinizma za nacistično pro-
pagando, v resnici pripada starejšim tradicijam.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK 821.112.2(436).09:796.52
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v45.i1.03