New book

August Schmölzer: “Home is not a drawer”

The Styrian actor and author August Schmölzer

(Bild: moving-stills.at/Maximilian Mandl)

In his new novel, actor August Schmölzer takes a loving but also critical look at his homeland. The "Krone" met the Styrian and spoke to him about his relationship to home and politics.

"For me, home is where I experienced my first great happiness - but also my first great pain," says August Schmölzer. At a time when the term "home" has become a fighting concept, the Styrian actor has written a novel entitled "Heimat". "I was away for many years and moved back to St. Stefan ob Stainz a few years ago. And that brought back a lot of feelings that I associated with home - both positive and negative. I wanted to describe them."

"I am a storyteller"
However, it was not intended to be an autobiography. "I don't find that interesting. I wanted to put my feelings into a story, I'm a storyteller," he says. And so he invented a story about a retired gendarme who takes up residence on the farm of an old farmer's wife in south-western Styria, where he witnesses how wounds from the past, big and small, reopen when a corpse turns up. "But it's not a classic crime thriller," says Schmölzer. In it, he describes people's everyday lives, talks about love and also politics: "They all have different ideas about what home is - and how they can explain and use it for themselves, that's what interested me."

Schmölzer himself describes the book as a "declaration of love" - even if he has packed a lot of criticism into it: "I'm not interested in being either a homebody on the one hand or an indictment on the other, but in taking an honest look at our lives. Home is not a drawer, but the world that surrounds us."

"A loving but ambivalent view"
The fact that his book is being published just before the state elections in Styria may be a coincidence, but for Schmölzer it is nevertheless fitting: "There are some crazy things being claimed and demanded in the name of homeland during the election campaign. So it's important for me to take a loving but ambivalent look at the homeland in my book," says Schmölzer.

August Schmölzer's "Heimat" (224 pages, €24) has been published by Edition Keiper.

(Bild: Edition Keiper)

Although he himself advocates a "liberal democracy", which he sees as most likely to be fulfilled in Styria "in a grand coalition between the ÖVP and SPÖ", he also says: "If things turn out differently, we will survive. I just hope that it won't cost us too much money and won't be too heavy-handed." He continues: "If society doesn't want the FPÖ to go out and implement its ideas, then it must also be brave enough to stand up against them. Because we still decide for ourselves what home is and what it looks like."