“Der große Edle der Wiener Lässigkeit” – the great nobleman of Viennese nonchalance – that is how Falco was once described by H.C. Artmann, who never doubted that Falco was a true poet. This is the central theme of the book: Falco, the poet. His talent for blending languages and his infamous style of German, settled somewhere between Manhattan and Schönbrunn, made Falco an international innovator and remixer of the art of language. He was the missing link between pop and avant-garde, between hits and experiment, between local slang and Esperanto. Where else could you find lines like “der schlange kur / ist nur l’amour / for sure / / der schlange kur / toujours / anacondamour“?
Eight renown scholars for German studies, among them Klaus Kastberger, Günter Zimmermann and Peter Ernst, explore poetological aspects of Falco’s texts and come to surprising conclusions. How could it be any different – after all, the legend is alive!
