Ludwig Winders Psychogramm und seine Bezugnahme auf die Psychoanalyse in Der Thronfolger und in Die nachgeholten Freuden

Unlike other great novels on the decline and fall of the Habsburg Empire, such as Radetzkymarsch by Joseph Roth or Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften by Robert Musil, Winder's novels on this subject matter reveal a strong matriarchal determination of male protagonists which, however, is broken down in many ways. In Der Thronfolger (1937), the neurotic agility of the Austrian heir to the throne is actually an implant, or even a loan from female mother figures (including his wife) of the novel, which themselves have in turn adopted many compensational behaviour patterns originating from their fathers. Even stronger oedipal motives are exposed in the power-obsessed, capitalist siege of a small Bohemia town by Adam Dupic, a mysterious foreigner, in Winder's 1927 novel Die nachgeholten Freuden. Both novels can thus be read as a specific version of the 'Habsburg complex', displaying yet another aspect of the fragility of the modern condition in Central Europe.