For more than 40 years, the cultural department of the City of Vienna has been donating in honor of the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Elias Canetti, a scholarship for Viennese authors. To promote larger literary work for a period of one year each and can be extended to up to three years. Authores who can already show a representative list of works are given the opportunity to concentrate intensively on their writer work over a longer period of time. The scholarships are paid out monthly and are endowed with a total of 18,000 euros each.
Ljuba Arnautović, Anna Felnhofer and Friederike Gösweiner received the Elias Canetti scholarship 2025 for the first time, Paul Ferstl’s scholarship is extended by one year. The scholarship holders were recommended by an independent jury of experts, who justified their decision as follows:
“Rieger”
With her trilogy “in secret”, “Junischnee” and “first daughters” Ljuba Arnautovic Contemporary writing in Austria enriches an autobiographical -historical approach in which autofictional elements, embedded in a carefully researched context, makes the history of the 20th century – and above all its fault – can be tangible as individual history, free of speculation and resentment. With the “Rieger” novel project, which is in progress, she leaves her own biographical trace, but uses the Protestant pastor Hans Rieger, who, as a prison pastor, is active from the estate to the National Socialism to the second republic, how much fate can be and how much the Own history related to that of apparently foreign individuals: How individual history is ultimately also a collective story
“Ristrot” – Paul Ferrstl
Without exaggeration, “rust red” can be described as a huge literary project, which is unique in its dimension in Austrian literature, in which narrative means about the connection between industrialization and political and thus social development. Using the example of the Styrian Eisenstrasse Paul Ferrstl – Always along historically documented events and people- the history of an industrial region between 1933 and 1950 from different perspectives and thus creates a workers’, entrepreneurial, resistance, fellow runner and reconstruction agent, which tries nothing less than the fragile, sometimes questionable And yet sustainable foundation of the second republic.
“Simple air columns” – Anna Felnhofer
The hearing as the socialest human sense illustrates its own position in society in “simple air columns” and so the pathological hypersensitivity towards certain noises alienates the protagonist of everything and all around her. In the layer of an alpine hut, reality and imagination are increasingly blurred. The title of Anna Felnhofers The novel project comes from an essay by the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy to the hearing, the questions of the constitution of subjectivity and the author continues and represents the author in a precise literary language. Felnhofer has already translated diagnostic procedures into a very own poetic language in her debut novel – the jury is convinced that it is the psychological phenomena, mythological tracks and contemporary framework with the striving for uniqueness and fame, competition in science as well as in the couple relationship in all complexity will confidently bring together narrative together and drive into the absurd.
“Zeitenossenschaft” – Friederike Gösweiner
On the faults of the present and its effects on the individual Friederike Gösweiner A pronounced literary interest since her debut “sad freedom”. She once again assumes that her enlightening essayist project “Zeitenossenschaft” is the assumption that the global order is about to fail because of its faulty basic narratives – such as growth and performance society – and an increasing anti -science. As a philosopher, Gösweiner thinks the worst case, the “worst possible case to find out how something should be”. The literary search for the saving promises “Zeit-Neossenschaft” on two levels: formally, in view of the urgency, in view of the urgency, appeals to her personally indefinite counterpart (“to whom it may concern”) and with the letter or the message new and at the same time select very old form. And in terms of content by using the utopian potential of literature to tell of alternatives and a better social mode of coexistence.
More information
Elias-canetti-pay: https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Elias-Canetti-Stipendium
Funding recommendations, advisory boards and juries: https://www.wien.gv.at/kultur/abteilung/foerderungen/foerderempfehlungen-literatur.html
All funding from the cultural department: https://www.wien.gv.at/kultur/abteilung/foerderungen/#literatur