'The border took him' : the ambiguous peoples of 'der fremde Heimat'

Abstract

This article analyzes a nationalist border novel set in a German- and Italian-speaking region of the Habsburg Monarchy written during the First World War. The article seeks to uncover an unacknowledged nationalist ambivalence between nationalists’ negative and racialized descriptions of the national “other” on the one hand, and the demands of a multinational patriotism in Austria-Hungary that appreciates the contributions of all nationalities on the other hand. The wartime setting required that authors like Edith Countess Salburg celebrate the population’s loyalty and willingness to sacrifice, at the same time that this German nationalist author, for example, framed Italian-speaking Austrians in terms of their inborn capacity for treachery. Finally, the analysis also investigates the author’s incomplete efforts to define a suitable wartime role for women.