Archive of the Rauris Literary Festival
(Rauriser Literaturtage)

The  Rauris Literary Festival, which has been held annually since 1971, documents the development of recent German literature, as well as the literature of Europe as a whole. Starting from the initiative of the Salzburg journalist and writer Erwin Gimmelsberger and Dorothea Granegger from Rauris, the event has developed into an important festival of culture. Until 1988 it was directed by Gimmelsberger, in 1988/89 by Franz Mayrhofer, in 1990 Brita Steinwendtner took over the intendancy, she was followed in 2013 by Manfred Mittermayer and Ines Schütz.
In the early 1970s, Ilse Aichinger, Gerhard Amanshauser, H. C. Artmann, Alois Brandstetter, Günter Eich, Barbara Frischmuth, Bodo Hell and Franz Innerhofer read in Rauris alongside Thomas Bernhard and Peter Handke – names that are often associated with Salzburg. From Germany and Switzerland came – among many others – for example Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Günter Herburger, Uwe Johnson, Reiner Kunze, Jürg Laederach or Adolf Muschg. The Nobel Prize winners Herta Müller and Svetlana Alexievich have also been guests in Rauris; the list of prominent authors can be continued to the present day – more than 450 by the year 2020.
The extensive archive materials on the „Rauriser Literaturtagen“ are a donation, on the one hand, from the cultural association Forum Rauris – this stock also contains many documents already compiled by Dorothea Granegger (including those on the intermittent “Literary Weekends” and other activities of the cultural association) – and, on the other hand, from Brita Steinwendtner. These two large holdings were supplemented by documents from other individuals (Hildemar Holl, Rita Krackl, and others).
The holdings of the archive of the Rauris Literary Festival, which have been stored in the Literature Archive Salzburg since 2019 and were viewed and sorted in the course of the preparations for the 50th anniversary of the Rauris Literary Festival, include:

• Correspondence with individual authors,
• program folders,
• posters,
• program drafts,
• meeting protocols of the cultural association,
• an extensive photo documentation,
• an extensive press and review collection,
• audio documents (recordings of readings and conversations, individual ORF broadcasts by Brita Steinwendtner and Karin Buttenhauser on the Literary Festivals, etc.).

A viewing list of the collection is searchable (only in German). Other ORF broadcasts by Brita Steinwendtner on the Rauris Literary Festival can also be found among Brita Steinwendtner’s radio works. The archive holdings on the Rauris Literary Festival will be continuously enriched at the Literature Archive Salzburg from 2020 onwards.

Rauris Literary Festival, Hotel Grimming – Photo: David Sailer