In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Ruth Klüger on Vienna and AustriaAn Interview
• Mark H. Gelber (bio) and Ruth Klüger

Ruth Klüger (1931–2020) passed away on October 5, 2020, in the United States. Born in Vienna and deported to Theresienstadt, she survived Auschwitz and the Shoah together with her mother. After living in Germany for a short time after World War II, she immigrated to New York. She was educated in the United States and received degrees in English literature as well as her PhD in German literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at several American universities, including Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the University of Kansas, the University of Virginia, the University of California, Irvine, and Princeton University. She finished her distinguished academic career at the University of California, Irvine. She has numerous scholarly publications to her credit, mainly in the fields of German and Austrian Literatures. She is also recognized widely as a poet, essayist, and feminist critic. She returned to Europe, where she was a guest professor in Göttingen and Vienna. Her memoir, entitled weiter leben (1991), a major bestseller, was a highly regarded autobiographical account and was subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages. It has also generated a vigorous critical discussion in its own right. Ruth Klüger received numerous prestigious literary prizes and other distinctions.

In 2016 I was preparing a lecture that focused on Ruth Klüger's Zerreißproben (2013), to be delivered at a session on contemporary Austrian writing at an international conference in Europe. At one point I decided to ask her if she would agree to answer some questions about her relationship to Vienna and Austria, hoping that her replies would help me to understand her and perhaps [End Page 109] also her poetry better. I did not intend to publish the interview. After Ruth's recent death in 2020, I was going through some old correspondence and papers, and I came across that interview with her. I present it here in its entirety.

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Mark Gelber:

Please describe your feelings and relationship to Vienna and Austria today. If possible, please distinguish between the different periods of your life: childhood, after Anschluss, after deportations, during and after the war, in the U.S., after you returned to visit in Europe, and after your return to visit in Vienna, as well. My premise is that your relationship with Germany is much different from your relationship with Austria, and that your feelings about Vienna are complicated and conflicted.

Ruth Klüger:

Vienna was home only for the first years of my life. After I was six and a half, it became exile, a place one wanted to leave. That's significantly different from Walter Sokel and Egon Schwarz, who were older.¹ They both had time to bond with classmates and come to know the city without restrictions. When I was about nine, I learned about Zionism, and from then on I was firmly committed to the idea and thought I knew where I belonged. After the war, before emigration to the U.S. in 1947, I visited Vienna briefly with my mother, and I didn't like it. I had an eerie feeling that I was visiting a graveyard and that the people living there didn't know it was a graveyard.

MG:

Walter Sokel wrote that he had nagging feelings of guilt when he took up the study of German literature in the U.S., given what had taken place in Europe during and after the Shoah. Did you have similar misgivings at any time?

RK:

When I decided to write a PhD in German literature, I already had an MA in English and a librarian's degree—and a job as a public librarian. But since I had little money and the German Department in Berkeley needed teaching assistants, it seemed to me to be a chance to spend a life doing something I would love. Still, it was like indulging a vice—the love of things German. And I lost friends as a result, specifically Jews to whom I became suspect. My mother never showed the slightest respect for my profession. And...

中文翻译：

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露丝·克鲁格 (Ruth Klüger) 谈维也纳和奥地利：采访

代替摘要，这里是内容的简短摘录：

• 露丝·克鲁格 (Ruth Klüger) 关于维也纳和奥地利的采访
• Mark H. Gelber (bio) 和 Ruth Klüger

Ruth Klüger (1931–2020) 于 2020 年 10 月 5 日在美国去世。她出生于维也纳并被驱逐到特莱西恩施塔特，她与母亲一起在奥斯威辛集中营和浩劫中幸存下来。二战后在德国短暂居住后，她移民到纽约。她在美国接受教育，在加州大学伯克利分校获得英国文学学位和德国文学博士学位。她曾在几所美国大学任教，包括克利夫兰的凯斯西储大学、堪萨斯大学、弗吉尼亚大学、加州大学欧文分校和普林斯顿大学。她在加州大学欧文分校完成了她杰出的学术生涯。她有许多学术出版物值得称赞，主要在德国和奥地利文学领域。她也是公认的诗人、散文家和女权主义评论家。她回到欧洲，在哥廷根和维也纳担任客座教授。她的回忆录，题为weiter leben (1991) 是畅销书，是一部备受推崇的自传体，随后被翻译成十几种语言。它本身也引起了激烈的批判性讨论。露丝·克鲁格 (Ruth Klüger) 获得了无数著名的文学奖项和其他荣誉。

2016 年，我正在准备一场演讲，重点是 Ruth Klüger 的Zerreißproben (2013)，将在欧洲国际会议上的当代奥地利写作会议上发表。有一次我决定问她是否同意回答一些关于她与维也纳和奥地利的关系的问题，希望她的回答能帮助我更好地理解她，也许[End Page 109]也能更好地理解她的诗歌。我不打算发表采访。在露丝最近于 2020 年去世后，我正在翻阅一些旧的信件和文件，并偶然发现了对她的采访。我在这里完整地介绍它。

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马克·格尔伯：

请描述您今天对维也纳和奥地利的感受和关系。如果可能，请区分您生命中的不同时期：童年、安斯卢斯之后、被驱逐出境之后、战争期间和之后、在美国、您返回欧洲访问之后以及您返回维也纳访问之后. 我的前提是，你与德国的关系与你与奥地利的关系大不相同，你对维也纳的感情是复杂而矛盾的。

露丝·克鲁格：

维也纳只是我生命最初几年的家。在我六岁半之后，它变成了流放者，一个想要离开的地方。这与年长的 Walter Sokel 和 Egon Schwarz 截然不同。¹他们都有时间与同学交流，不受限制地了解这座城市。当我大约九岁的时候，我了解了犹太复国主义，从那时起我就坚定地致力于这个想法，并认为我知道我属于哪里。战后，1947年移居美国之前，我和母亲短暂地访问了维也纳，我不喜欢那里。我有一种怪异的感觉，我正在参观一个墓地，而住在那里的人并不知道这是一个墓地。

MG：

沃尔特·索克尔写道，考虑到大屠杀期间和之后在欧洲发生的事情，他在美国开始研究德国文学时有一种唠叨的内疚感。您是否也曾有过类似的疑虑？

RK：

当我决定攻读德国文学博士学位时，我已经获得了英语硕士学位和图书馆员学位——以及一份公共图书馆员的工作。但由于我的钱很少，而且伯克利的德语系需要助教，在我看来，这是一个机会，可以做自己喜欢的事情。尽管如此，这就像沉迷于一种恶习——对德国事物的热爱。结果我失去了朋友，特别是我怀疑的犹太人。我妈妈从来没有对我的职业表现出丝毫的尊重。和...