Lichtspielkunstwerk und Sprachkunstwerk. Zur Funktion und Rolle des Films im oeuvre von Gerhard Roth:the function and role of film in the oeuvre of Gerhard Roth

This article examines the multi-layered interrelation between Gerhard Roth’s writing and film. It charts the corresponding relationship of his early books to their accompanying television documentaries. The main focus of this essay however is on the film adaptation of Stille Ozean (1980) and Landäufiger Tod (1984), the two major novels in his cycle Archive des Shweigens. Supplemented by a look at the two radically different adaptations of his volume of topographical essays on Vienna called Eine Reise in das Innere von Wien (1991), the article also provides a summary overview of the seven dramas written by Roth for Austrian television in the 1990s, some of which were directed by his son Thomas. Finally Roth's approach to the medium of film is being discussed by drawing on the 59 reviews he published between 1995 and 1997 as a film critic for the Austrian magazine NEWS.

Unterwelten:Zu Leben und Werk von Gerhard Roth

An introduction to one of the most important German-speaking writers of the 20th and 21st century. With his literary cycles “Orkus” and “Die Archive des Schweigens” Gerhard Roth consolidated his status as one of the most important authors of contemporary German literature. For more than three decades, his literary oeuvre has been dedicated to the fight against neglecting historical responsibility. He is also an avid contributor to ongoing political debates. The study grants insights into the author’s work and demonstrates its role as an artistic tracing of the dark past. Gerhard Roth’s literary work can be read as a project, as an alternative to official historical interpretations and as a multilayered oeuvre that gives a voice to the persecuted, forgotten and alienated.