Kari Marie Stolzenburg and Dr. Robert McFarland, German and Slavic Languages Department

Ann Tizia Leitich was one of the most widely read Austrian newspaper article authors of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Her articles kept in dialogue with the other leading authors of her time including Stefan Zweig, Siegfried Kracauer, and Antonio Gramsci who are synonymous with criticism of mass culture. Though she participated heavily in these dialogues her works have generally been lost from public knowledge. Through this mentored research project, Dr. McFarland and I seek to bring Ann Tizia Leitich back into her rightful place in the mass culture dialogue.

In October of 2008, Dr. McFarland and I began to look through each issue of the Austrian newspaper “Neue Freie Presse” to make certain that BYU had a list of all articles authored by Ann Tizia Leitich. This had previously been a class project for some students but to make certain all articles were listed, we searched through previously viewed articles. Our efforts were met with success – we found over 10 additional articles in just the year 1928 alone.

Once in Vienna, we began to search through microfilm of newspapers published during the same time frame of 1924-1928 but as yet we have not found success there. We know that Leitich had other articles published in different newspapers but as yet we do not know where those articles are located.

Dr. McFarland and I will continue to search through the archives of the Austrian National Library to find articles written by Ann Tizia Leitich and published in the “Neue Freie Presse”, the “Wiener Tagesblatt”, the “Neues Wiener Journal”, and others.

Work on this project so far has been successful but met with some unexpected hindrances. Namely, the hours of the microfilm viewing center in the Austrian National Library are decidedly shorter than the rest of the library’s hours. These opening times happen to fall in the middle of most class hours and though it would be easy to do this research on Saturday’s when class is not in session, the microfilm archives are closed on those days. Therefore we are not able to search the libraries as easily as previously thought. Now that spring term is over and the schedule of classes has changed, Dr. McFarland and I will be able to research in the archives more easily.

Our work on this project is far from over, however, based on the success thus far in our article finds, Dr. McFarland and I expect to find continued success in our search for Leitich’s works. These findings will help us to publish a paper titled “The Eternal and the Vital: Ann Tizia Leitich and the European Reception of American Mass Culture 1924-1929.” which we will submit for publication in the German studies journal Modern Austrian Literature in November 2009.

Sources

• Bischof, Günter and Pelinka, Anton The Americanization /Westernization of Austria. Ed. London: Transaction Publishers, 2004. 38–60.
• Kernbauer, Hans, Eduard März, and Fritz Weber. “Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung.” Österreich 1918–1939. Ed. Erika Weinzierl and Kurt Skalnik. Graz: Styria Verlag, 1983. 343–79.
• Leitich, Ann Tizia. “Amerika du hast es besser! (Essays).” Sophie: Literature. 2006. Brigham Young University Departments of Humanities. 20 Oct 2008
  <http://sophie.byu.edu/literature/index.php?p=alltexts.php&titleid=120>. pg 52, 53
• Mattl, Siegfried. Wiener Paradoxien: Fordistische Stadt. Metropole Wien: Texturen der Moderne. Ed. Roman Horak. Vol. 1. Vienna: WUV Univ.-Verlag, 2000. 22–96.
• McFarland, Robert. Migration as Mediation: Neue Freie Presse American Correspondent Ann Tizia Leitich and Stefan Zweig’s “Die Monotonisierung der Welt” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies – Volume 42, Number 3, September 2006, pp. 242-260
• Zweig, Stefan. “Die Monotonisierung der Welt.” Neue Freie Presse 31 Jan. 1925: 1–4.