Literarischer Reiseführer Galizien

Galicia is an integral part of the Habsburg myth and epitomizes a world-lost seclusion, Eastern Jewish cultural traditions, a Kakan lifestyle, and indescribable poverty. Although the supranational entity known as the Habsburg Monarchy, to which Galicia belonged from 1772 to 1918, no longer exists, Galicia lives on in literature. In addition to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Ivan Franko, and Karl Emil Franzos, Joseph Roth, Bruno Schulz, Mascha Kaléko, Stanislaw Vincenz, Józef Wittlin, Hnat Chotkewytsch, Zygmunt Haupt, Stanislaw Lem, and Isaac Babel have all engaged with Galician themes. Today, this is also true for Sophia and Yuri Andrukhovych, Andrzej Stasiuk, Olga Tokarczuk, Martin Pollack, Tanja Maljartschuk, Taras and Yurko Prochasko, Ziemowit Szczerek, Natalka Sniadanko, and Maxim Biller. The book takes readers to places of European history in southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. The explorations through the natural, artistic, and literary landscape of Galicia, from Krakow through Tarnow to Brody, as well as from Lviv through Drohobych, Stanislav/Ivano-Frankivsk, and Boryslav to Zakopane, are accompanied by maps and images. Historian and Germanist Marcin Wiatr reminds readers that Galicia holds historical lessons that concern us all in Europe.