Hörspiel

Radio Play: As a literary genre in its own right, radio plays are a mixture of dramatic, epic and lyrical elements realised through the spoken word, sound and music. In Austria, radio plays developed out of what was called "listening stage", an adaptation of stage plays. The head of the literature department of the RAVAG, Hans Nüchtern, is recognised as a pioneer of the radio play ("Der Ackermann und der Tod", 1924), which has its own dramaturgical laws and relies greatly on a sound background to create a mood. Important authors of radio plays are A. Ehrenstein, A. Bronner, R. Billinger, H. Flesch-Brunningen, F. T. Csokor and T. H. Mayer. In the 1950s, the classic period of radio plays, these "stage techniques" were eliminated in favour of the spoken word, a trend represented by I. Aichinger, H. Eisenreich, F. Hiesel, A. Giese, W. Riemerschmid, R. Bayr and I. Bachmann. While this type concentrated on the readability of texts, recent radio plays rely increasingly on purely acoustic phenomena (original sound, sound experiments, variations, "concrete poetry") as represented by P. Handke, F. Mayröcker, K. Bayer, G. Rühm, M. Scharang, B. Frischmuth and E. Jandl.

Literature: R. Heger, Das österreichische Hörspiel, 1977; Dichtung aus Österreich, Hörspiel, 1977; F. Hiesel (ed.), Repertoire 999. Literaturdenkmal Hörspiel, 1990.