Anfang oder Ende? Zukunftsromane aus den Böhmischen Ländern 1918–1920
Beginning or End? Future Novels from the Bohemian Lands 1918–1920

Summary/Abstract: The future novels written in the immediate post -war period (1918–1920) in the Bohemian Lands are related by two features. On the one hand, they imagine apocalyptic doomsday scenarios that perpetuate the horror of the World War and the political upheavals of the post -war period in excessive form. In terms of content, the texts are closely tied to processing the past and coping with the present, so that they cannot activate the innovative potential of the genre’s constitutive thinking of possibility. On the other hand, the authors each tie their narratives to a guiding medium (music, theatre, film) and thus establish within the genre a literary procedure that is still used in contemporary science fiction. The analysis contrasts (together with illustrative inserts on Hans Flesch’s star utopia Balthasar Tipho) the novels Das große Wagnis (Max Brod) and Gespenster im Sumpf (Karl Hans Strobl) as they, in addition to this modernisation, shed light on the relationship between centre and periphery in the Bohemian Lands.

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