Pulling the pants off history: politics and postmodernism in Thomas Bernhard's "Eve of Retirement"

Examines the play "Vor dem Ruhestand" (1979) by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) as an example of coexistence of multiple time schemes and modes of consciousness in postmodern drama. The protagonist, Chief Justice Rudolf Hoeller, about to retire from the bench, was a judge on the Eastern front during the war and a substitute commander of a Nazi concentration camp who, for decades, has secretly practiced the rituals of his loyalty to National Socialism. The other protagonists, his two sisters, represent two reactions: one is an eager participant in commemorating the Nazi past, while the other maintains a critical silence. Bernhard uses "taboo" texts - such as the hero's repeated references to gas, and vitriolic attacks on Jews, America, and democracy - and sensitive objects (the hero's SS uniform) ironically, forcing his audience to read an historical past and a mythicized past through each other and through their own historically/mythically formed consciousness. In the end, in a rage of pathos, Hoeller drops dead. The "heroic" Nazi body is transformed into the collapsed remains of a dying old man.