2024-03-09 06:12:36
There is hardly a bigger Vienna fan than Dietmar Grieser. “I don’t want to be cheesy, but…” when asked, he begins a declaration of love that is intended to explain his long-standing, happy relationship with this city. When the author, who was born in Hanover in 1934, celebrates his 90th birthday this Saturday, he can mischievously declare: “Actually, I’ll only be 67.” He has only been living in Vienna since October 1957.
He has lived in his beautiful attic apartment at Arenbergpark for 40 years. “I owe it to the brothers Grimm and Goethe,” he tells the visitor. His “Locations of World Literature”, which was also made into a film, was extremely successful – follow-up orders for the “Literary Detective”, who managed to make places and their history popular, were correspondingly well-paid. His literary reports include titles such as “You Really Lived”, “The Bohemian Grandmother” and “All Roads Lead to Vienna”.
For Dietmar Grieser, it was a path into the unknown from which there was never any return. His professor in Münster had recommended Vienna instead of Berlin, Heidelberg or Tübingen for his planned semester abroad. He analyzes that there may have been two reasons why he immediately felt at home here: “Vienna was not as destroyed as major German cities. And I immediately felt a harmony with my heart. It was the attitude to life that captivated me here has.”
Among his approximately 50 book titles, which followed his first book, “From Gripsholm Castle to the River Kwai: Literary Local Dates,” published in 1973, his “12, 13 Vienna Books” occupy a special place. “I think at some point a prize from the city of Vienna would not only have been due, but also overdue. I’m a bit bitter about that. But I don’t belong anywhere…” After all, he was granted Austrian citizenship in 1977. The well-known author and critic Hans Weigel (“He was one of my biggest fans!”) provided the impetus and paved the first steps, but the authorities were initially suspicious, says Grieser: “I was overqualified.”
In 1988 he was awarded the professional title of professor, in 1991 the Donauland Non-Fiction Prize and in 1994 the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art. His archive, including correspondence with the Tucholsky widow and Brecht’s daughter, which he kept for the 1981 book “Muses live longer. Encounters with poets’ widows” (“One of my favorite books.”), is no longer directly below the roof of his apartment, but as a deposit in the Austrian National Library – not a bad feeling for someone who cites his “addiction for recognition” as one of his weaknesses.
That’s why it hit him when he was once asked by a well-meaning moderator at a reading when his “first real book” would come out. He asserts that literature that is based only on invention and not at least partly on discovery is not his concern. “I can’t do it and I don’t want to. There has never been a novel by me – and there never will be one. I am a non-fiction author. I am a reporter, a literary reporter.”
In his study there are entire shelves of books by his role models – his “library of feature writers” contains over 600 volumes. Alfred Polgar is of course among them, Egon Erwin Kisch, Raoul Auernheimer, Daniel Spitzer and Victor Auburtin, whom he particularly admires. A name that only specialists know these days. Interest in his own work also decreases. Instead of doing around 100 readings a year, he now only completes around a quarter of them, and even then he always sees familiar faces. His fans remain loyal to him. He only addresses new audiences in exceptional cases. “The boys usually lack a frame of reference for what I do. I know that I am a discontinued model.”
Dietmar Grieser says this not entirely without sadness, but also without despair. He has described the changing times himself far too often to now be fooling himself. And he is also a little proud of his special position. He assures us that his old Olivetti typewriter is still in use, and that he doesn’t have a computer to look for. And if things have to happen quickly? Then he writes a few lines by hand and goes to his neighbor, where he scans the sheet and sends it by email…
A few months ago another book by him was published. “It must be something wonderful… The Salzkammergut and its artists” is a revised new edition of his 30-year-old book “Nachsommertraum” on the occasion of Bad Ischl’s Capital of Culture title. Many will be going there this year. One person will always have been there before them: Dietmar Grieser.
(The interview was conducted by Wolfgang Huber-Lang/APA)
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