Wiener Gruppe was a small and loose avant-garde constellation of Austrian poets and writers, which arose from an older and wider postwar association of artists called Art-Club

Art-Club

Art-Club was an association of artists during the postwar period in Vienna, Austria, in 1946–1959.-History:Art-Club was formed with the intention of fighting for the autonomy of modern art. This rather late standpoint in art history should be viewed in the light of the conditions dictated by Nazi...

 . The group was formed around 1954 under the influence of H. C. Artmann

H. C. Artmann

Hans Carl Artmann , also known as Ib Hansen, was an Austria-born poet and writer, most popular for his early poems written in Viennese , which however never after were to be the focus of his oeuvre.-Life and work:Artmann was born in Vienna as the son of shoe...

 (1921-2000) in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 and existed for about a decade . Besides Artmann are Friedrich Achleitner

Friedrich Achleitner

Friedrich Achleitner is an Austrian poet and architecture critic.Achleitner studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1950–1953. He joined the Wiener Gruppe in 1955, participated in their literary cabarets, and wrote dialect poems, montages, and concrete poems...

 (*1930), Konrad Bayer

Konrad Bayer

Konrad Bayer was an Austrian writer and poet. A member of the Wiener Gruppe, he combined apparently irreconcilable elements—violence, hermeticism, pessimism, ecstasy, banality—and influences —into a bizarre linguistic solipsism which has held increasing fascination for German writers of...

 (1932-1964), Gerhard Rühm (*1930) and Oswald Wiener (*1935) regarded as members .

This group showed interest in the Baroque literature, as well as in Expressionism

Expressionism

Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

, Dadaism and Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 . Important impulses also came from upholders of linguistic scepticism, linguistic criticism and linguistic philosophy, such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Hugo von Hofmannsthal

Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal ; , was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.-Early life:...

, Fritz Mauthner

Fritz Mauthner

Fritz Mauthner was a journalist and philosopher from Horschitz, Bohemia.He became editor of the Berliner Tageblatts in 1895, but is best known for his Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache , published in three parts in 1901 and 1902...

 or Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...

 .

The linguistic awareness of the Wiener Gruppe was also displayed in the members notion of language as optic and acoustic material . Already in the early 1950s concrete poetry

Concrete poetry

Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....

 became an exciting new element of at least the works of Rühm, Achleitner and Wiener. Readings and recordings became important parts of the activity. With the charm of novelty, several members also made use of the richness of sounds and vocabulary of their own Bavarian and Vienna dialect. Furthermore, the group was trying out text montage

Montage

-Filmmaking:*Montage , a technique which uses rapid editing, special effects and music to present compressed narrative information*Soviet montage theory in the 1920s-Other:* Montage , Documentary television series from 1960s and 1970s...

 .

As H. C. Artmann in 1958 took his own line, the suicide of Konrad Bayer in 1964 definitely put an end to Wiener Gruppe .

Literature

• Gerhard Rühm (ed.): Die Wiener Gruppe: Achleitner, Artmann, Bayer, Rühm, Wiener (Rowohlt, Reinbek 1985) ISBN 978-3-498-07300-8.
• Peter Weibel (ed.): die wiener gruppe. a moment of modernity 1954-1960 / the visual works and actions. (Springer, Wien & New York 1997) - Exhib. cat. Biennale di Venezia
• F. Achleitner and P. Weibel (ed.): Wiener Gruppe (1997)
• F. Achleitner and W. Fetz (ed.): Wiener Gruppe. (Exhib. cat., Kunsthalle Wien, 1998)
• Michael Backes: Experimentelle Semiotik in Literaturavantgarden. Über die Wiener Gruppe mit Bezug auf die Konkrete Poesie (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2001) ISBN 3-7705-3450-6.
• Thomas Eder, Juliane Vogel: „verschiedene sätze treten auf“. Die Wiener Gruppe in Aktion Profile. Magazin des Österreichischen Literaturarchivs der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Bd. 15.(Wien 2008) ISBN 978-3-552-05444-8