From Karl Kraus and Michael Kohlhaas to stubbornness and The Taming of the Shrew: Daniela Strigl explores the crucial importance of defiance.

A defiant person is one who clings to something unreasonable, sometimes against their better judgement. Defiance is associated with stubbornness, obstinacy, and yet it’s also a prerequisite for resistance: to defy someone is to resist them, which may include those with more power. In this essay, Daniela Strigl grapples with the historical and literary phenomenon of rebellion against authority. Troublemakers may have a bad name and ‘lateral thinking’ is perhaps increasingly discredited these days, but mavericks still command our respect. Free-thinking women, in particular, have long been considered especially provocative. But does all this make defiance a virtue? And doesn’t art in a hostile environment depend on defiance?

A remarkably modern author and her sophisticated work Rediscovering Ebner-Eschenbach is more than worth it, in both a feminist and literary sense… [Elfriede Hammerl, Profil]

Austria's most famous female author of the 19th century was underestimated as a "poet of kindness & grace", yet she was so much more: Poetic realist, playwright, aphorist, proponent of women's rights, fighter of anti-Semitism, officer's wife, trained watchmaker, animal friend, and avid horseback rider. In the first German biography since 1920, Daniela Strigl traces Ebner-Eschenbachs life from her birth in Zdislavice castle to her late fame as an author. The multi-faceted author was always torn between her aristocratic background and her socialist opinions, between ethics and irony, ambition and humility, social obligations and her passion for writing. Maria von Ebner-Eschenbach unwaveringly held on to her goals, despite resistance from her family and bad reviews from theater critics. "If there is a belief that can move mountains, then it is the belief in one's own strength."

Das vielfältige Werk der Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach mit seiner feinen Psychologie und seiner klar formulierten Gesellschaftskritik verdient eine aktuelle Lesart. Gerade die Geschichte von Pavel, dem „Gemeindekind“, der von der Gemeinschaft ausgestoßen wird, dem aber gegen alle Widerstände ein sozialer Aufstieg gelingt, ist von bestürzender Modernität. Auch das unkonventionelle Debüt der Autorin – die 1858 anonym erschienene Briefnovelle „Aus Franzensbad“ – demontiert erfrischend scharf und voller Sprachwitz den damaligen Zeitgeist. Beide Werke zeigen ihren wachen Blick für die brennenden Fragen der Zeit und ihre kritische Haltung zu den Konventionen ihres eigenen Standes.