The Werner Schwab estate

Born in Graz, Werner Schwab (1958-1994) quickly conquered the German-speaking and in some cases international stages and was considered the most successful and most frequently performed contemporary German-language playwright at the beginning of the 1990s. The author's plays were noted for their novel theatrical style and, above all, a completely original theatrical language, for which the term "Swabian" was soon coined. At the time of his early death at the age of 35, a total of fourteen plays were available, initially collected in a three-volume edition published by Droschl (supplemented in 1996 by an adaptation of Schnitzler's Reigen-Stück). Since 2007, the same publishing house has been pursuing an edition project over several years with a total of 11 volumes.

Werner Schwab's estate has been stored at the Franz Nabl Institute for Literary Research since September 2010, after it was acquired by the Province of Styria in a purchase agreement (dated March 8, 2010). It comprises 100 archive boxes and was finely indexed at the Institute from 2011 to 2013 and recorded in an inventory register. The typescripts of his stage plays and the extensive, only partially published prose writings are certainly essential parts of the estate.

The aim of this project is to evaluate the prose writings found in the estate, which the author wrote before his breakthrough in the theater. The focus is on the first and early prose, which has hardly been considered by research to date and will be subjected to intensive linguistic and textual analysis for the first time. The focus is therefore primarily on linguistic, but also textual and work-genetic issues. Particular attention will be paid to the genesis of Schwab's original language, as it can be found in the author's plays. This particular linguistic form obviously developed over several years. Individual lexical, morphological etc. Individual lexical, morphological etc. phenomena of Swabian are already recognizable in the early texts. Schwab's early prose language already leaves an extraordinarily hyperplastic impression and thus forms a largely hermetic linguistic space.

The early prose drafts already contain individual plot elements, themes, characters, motifs and constellations of the later drama, whose respective transformation process will be analyzed. In addition, the focus will be on any linguistic/philosophical theorems that may have at least influenced the author's concept of language and his poetological self-image (his "theory of language"). At best, Schwab's position in the tradition of modern (preferably experimental) Austrian narrative literature should also be determined.