Ödön von Horváth: Edition and Dissemination

Ödön von Horváth (1901-1938) is a classic of modernism. His plays have been among the most frequently performed in the German-speaking world for many decades. His novel Jugend ohne Gott (Youth without God ) is an integral part of the (school) reading canon. The present project serves to complete the historical-critical edition, which has been published by de Gruyter in Berlin since 2009 and of which three volumes are still outstanding. In addition, the project is dedicated to expanding the author's digital drama edition, of which only the author's most famous play, Tales from the Vienna Woods, has been published to date. The dissemination of the research results will be aided by the production of a handbook, the lack of which in the case of Horváth has long been lamented by scholars. The completion of the edition, which is one of the largest edition projects on 20th century literature currently underway, will be framed by an international symposium.

Ödön von Horváth's historical-critical edition places particular emphasis on the presentation of the genesis of the text and thus sharpens our view of the production methods of some of the most influential texts in German-language literature. In a total of nineteen volumes, the edition includes all of the author's completed and fragmentary works as well as all notebooks, letters and life documents. It thus offers literary and theater studies research a complete and reliable text and source basis for the first time and provides cultural studies research interested in questions of the materiality and genealogy of writing with an important corpus. The edition has direct application beyond the field of specialist studies in the area of contemporary theater practice. Several productions at major German and Austrian theaters have proven this in recent years.

The digital edition (currently available at: https://gams.uni-graz.at/context:ohad) will be extended to all of the author's plays as part of the project. Specific tools (such as the possibility of creating figure networks) make the author's works and their structures accessible in paradigms set by the digital humanities. One aim of this project is to demonstrate the potential of such approaches and at the same time to discuss them against the background of classical editorial methodology and interpretation.