There hasn't been much to laugh about in Jörg Haider's Austria in the year since the party he put on the political map made its entry into government. With diplomatic ostracism, EU sanctions and a steady flow of humiliating reprimands from the international community coming their way, Austrians have had more than enough reason to be in a sour mood.

But around April of last year, there finally came a reason to chuckle, in the form of a slim, unassuming hardcover book entitled Jörgi, der Drachentöter (Jörgi, the Dragon Slayer). Under the guise of children's literature and within only a few pages, this medieval fairy tale summed up Austria's contemporary political situation more acutely than any scholarly analysis.

No ordinary bedtime story

One need look no further than the bottom right-hand corner of the book's cover to see that this is no ordinary children's story. There, under the illumination of a single lantern, in the otherwise greyish-blue dusk of a medieval town square, a tiny, tanned likeness of the Carinthian governor and former Freedom Party (FPÖ) front-man stands beaming from ear to protruded ear, a small sausage by his side (which, as it turns out, will never be far off throughout the tale).

Our Jörgi is a small lad who stands apart from the other boys and girls in his village in wanting to be a dragon slayer rather than a cobbler, a tailor, a locomotive driver or the like.

"Slay this, white boy!"

This makes him the butt of all jokes, as we see in one particularly vivid illustration which shows Jörgi standing alone and red-faced as a cheeky neighbourhood boy brings him a chicken marked "Drache" (dragon) and a gaggle of kids cracks up in the background.

But alas, the Jörgster will have none of it, plunks a pot on his head, grabs the lid for a shield and, wielding an enormously long lance, sets out for the castle, where he insists that the king hire him as his dragon slayer in residence.

The catch, however, is that the only dragon far and wide is the king himself. No problem, Jörgi tells the king, I'll just have to kill you. The king gets a good laugh out of that one and decides to keep Jörgi on for amusement, as the court jester's jokes are getting old anyway, and this new guy's a gas. He dismisses his advisors' concern with a "Come now, he is completely harmless and, in a way, quaint."

Jörgi's no dummy and knows he can't go it alone, so he does the castle rounds to rally supporters. Rejected by both the chaplain and the chef, he wins over the princess, who, entourage in tow, is up for what looks to be a fun new game.

Jörgi wins the villagers' hearts

"Oh, Jörgi, tell me more!"

Soon, Jörgi is drinking it up with the locals at the beer hall and telling it like it is, namely, that the dragon's to blame for everything. In a flash of inspiration, he throws in the Chinese, too, who run a restaurant in this rather progressive medieval kingdom and, as Jörgi explains, are stealing all the tavern's business. With scapegoats like this on offer, Jörgi has won all the villagers' hearts in no time and inspired some eloquent inflammatory graffiti.

The court jester is aghast to see "Death to the Dragon!" and "Down with the Chinese!" painted on the door of the Chinese restaurant, but when he tells the king's son, the prince dismisses it all as silly boy antics.

Jörgi's biggest coup comes when he convinces the night watchman that the dragon—and the Chinese, of course—is the cause of all the worries he never even knew he had and as a result gets the keys to the armoury.

After a failed run at he castle—foiled by the princess's change of heart and turn of coat—Jörgi and his troops retreat but soon find a new ally in the prince, who makes a bargain with the fearless leader, offering his help in return for the throne. So, with the aid of the prince and the night watchman, Jörgi finally topples the king, literally.

"I'll huff and I'll puff and blow your crown down."

However, the plan soon backfires against our shrewd prince-turned-king when he starts sprouting wings and spouting fire from his nostrils, looking suspiciously more and more like a dragon. This leaves him exposed to our favourite dragon slayer, who overthrows him, too, and begins ruling the land with an iron fist.

A time of darkness descends on the formerly cosy kingdom. With all the children longing to become dragon slayers, not even the new king/dragon himself is happy. He forbids all mention of his dragonhood and purges his castle of all mirroring surfaces.

The jester saves the day

Just when things look their grimmest,

"Who me, wings?"

the court jester, who has been watching all this with dismay, appeals to the people to wake up and recognize a simple equation:

throne+crown=dragon

As word spreads from princess to peasant, the simple truth dawns on the kingdom—every dragon slayer is bound to become a dragon—and its inhabitants happily hurl the incriminating objects into the ocean, transforming the scary, autocratic dragon back to just the same old loveable Jörgi.

And so everything is back where it belongs: namely, in the kitchen. With helmet and shield turned pot and lid and that elusive sausage in its proper place—that is, in the pot—Jörgi pensively pronounces, when asked again what he wants to be, "Hmmm... I don't know, maybe a chef."

And there ends this simple tale, or at least the text portion of it. Gerhard Haderer's accompanying illustrations go on to tell a whole other story, for the characters of what would otherwise appear to be an innocent fairy tale wear the faces and mannerisms of Austria's political elite.

The faces behind the fairy tale

Aside from the man of the hour himself, other star appearances include: a goose-necked Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, with tell-tale spectacles and bowtie, as the prince, whose enormous crown encompasses his scrawny body, left exposed throughout the book except for black silk boxers and, occasionally, a red cape; a hunched, appeasing President Thomas Klestil as the gullible night watchman, with a red-and-white presidential sash just barely showing under his ratty bathrobe; a droopy-eyed, buck-toothed Heide

Ready and waiting

Schmidt, the former darling of the FPÖ and its 1992 presidential candidate, later founder of the breakaway Liberal Forum (LiF) and currently TV talk show host, as the princess who is first taken in by the brave Jörgi but later blows the whistle on him to the king; and, as her lady-in-waiting, a perpetually grinning Vice-Chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer, who assumed the FPÖ chairmanship after Haider's retreat to Carinthia.

There are also a few characters who are perhaps lesser known on the international stage, such as Catholic Bishop of St Pöltner Kurt Krenn, known in Austria as an ultra-

Not one to turn down a morsel

conservative advocate of many of the FPÖ's policies, who in the book is found with drumstick and wine goblet always in hand, perpetually licking his lips—and with good reason, for he seems to always be on the receiving end of the "Leckerbissen" (tasty morsels) of whichever king happens to be in power.

Haderer's detail and unmistakable facial expressions ensure that a keen Austrian political watcher will recognise several other faces among the townsfolk and the king's court.

Jörgi as archetype

But despite these concrete depictions, the book's author, Leo Lukas, is quick to point out (in an e-mail interview with Central Europe Review) that Jörgi also represents an archetype:

Everywhere on the planet, Haider, and his many brothers (and a few sisters), are so alluring, because they appeal to the Jörg-like in very many people—to an uncontemplated rebelliousness, a type of merciless missionary conviction which stretches from Gilgamesh across Jesus right down to Fidel Castro and this small Austrian.

By Lukas's own account, the idea for the story and the writing of the text itself all occurred over a span of three days, but, to his surprise, the book rode the bestseller

No.1!

lists—in both Austria and Germany—for months, selling over 40,000 copies and going into a second printing. Oddly enough, it appeared in the non-fiction rather than the fiction category, alongside such works as Forever young-Das Ernährungsprogramm (Forever Young: The Nutrition Programme) and Der Weg zur finanziellen Freiheit (The Road to Financial Freedom). Lukas explains this as a deliberate attempt on the part of the media to keep the book from actually having to be described as a "No.1 Bestseller," seeing as non-fiction works sell many more copies than fiction.

Haider even had himself photographed with the book. But apart from this incident, there have so far been no other reactions from any of the political leaders depicted, which Lukas takes as a compliment.

Cabaret takes on the conservatives

A cultural multi-tasker, Leo Lukas dabbles in virtually every art form—from song to sci-fi—but is probably most often seen on Austria's cabaret stages, either as a performer, director or composer of music for his own or his colleagues' performances. Lukas the cabaret artist is, in fact, a bit of a conglomeration of the various personas he lives out separately in other milieux, whether it be writing or staging theatre pieces, composing scores for children's musicals or writing science fiction novels in the Perry Rhodan series.

Changing faces

At 42, he is living proof that the cabaret genre is not some faint memory of the Jazz Age or the domain of the washed-ups and wannabes of the acting world and comedy club circuit. Lukas and his fellow young Austrian cabaret artists have injected a new, innovative contemporary spirit into the art form, and, in many respects, it is on the small stages of places such as the Kabarett Niedermair in Vienna that much of the creatively irreverent demontage of the country's conservative status quo thrives.

Nevertheless, according to Lukas, his previous attempts

Hašek, Haderer style

to tackle the particular topic of Haider's ascent and effect on Austrian society with song and cabaret pieces had failed. It wasn't until he teamed up, for the second time since they worked together on a highly successful musical staging of Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk in 1999, with the cartoonist Gerhard Haderer that what he—and others—had been attempting to do through various art forms finally worked.

Gerhard Haderer has long been known as a skillful cartoonist, whose work appears

Bite worse than bark

regularly in German-language magazines such as profil, Stern and Geo. He also publishes his own monthly comic, what he refers to as a "Schundheftl" (perhaps best translated as "trashy littly rag"), called Moff. His biting caricatures of politicians and popular icons and his own unique characters offer up a sometimes grotesque, always stingingly spot-on portrait of society.

In 1997, he teamed up with Austrian author Robert Menasse to illustrate a work much in the satiric spirit of the parable he later created with Lukas. Die letzte Marchenprinzessin (The Last Fairy Princess, Suhrkamp, 1997) tells the story of a kindergarten teacher turned princess, whose royal wedding and eventual tragic death capture the hearts, minds and TV sets of the public.

More recently, Haderer has crafted the Green Party's campaign posters for the upcoming regional elections in Vienna.

Portraying the Austrian political scene

In Jörgi, der Drachentöter, the cartoonist and the cabaret artist combine talents to nail down the key features that have characterised the Austrian political scene over the past decade and beyond.

The propensity of the old king (and later also the prince) to, as the chef tells Jörgi, "save all the tastiest morsels for himself and his pals" echoes the post-war

"OK, OK, I was wrong."

Proporz system of clientelism by which Austria's two ruling parties (the Social Democrats and the People's Party) divvied up virtually all important positions in the country and retained a firm, seemingly everlasting grip on power.

Similarly, the king's, and then the prince's, original dismissal of Jörgi as a silly, amusing, harmless boy are only too reminiscent of the miscalculations that not only Austrian politicians made when assessing the potential power of populist far-right parties.

The clever way in which Jörgi wins the almost accidental support of the wider public can only illicit a bittersweet chuckle for its dead-on accuracy:

"Do you know why you have to hold watch all night?" asks Jörgi of the night watchman.
"Because I'm a night watchman?" retorts the watchman.
"True, but the blame lies not with you but with the dragon. After all, he could have hired other night watchmen long ago!"

"Do you know why you limp?" Jörgi asks the stable hand.
"Because I fell drunk into the moat?" says the stable hand.
"True, but the blame lies not with you but with the dragon. After all, he could have had that moat filled in long ago!"

"Do you know why noble guests don't come to your tavern?" Jörgi asks the innkeeper.
"Because the Chinese place in the village serves better food?" retorts the innkeeper.
"True, but the blame lies not with you but with the dragon. After all, he could have had the Chinese restaurant shut down long ago!"

The Pres's pyjamas

Such exchanges are made all the more vivid by Haderer's cheeky details and colourful scenes, which portray not just Austria's main political players but span the breadth of society and reflect an entire mood. Prior to Jorgi's takeover, this mood is primarily one of a bored and sleepy land (humorously underlined by the bathrobes worn by some of the characters). Not far off the mark for anyone familiar with the recent history of the alpine republic.

Long on sarcasm; short on satire

However, although some of the faces and particular details may be specific to Austria, countries the world over could benefit from similar sharp-witted parables of their own.

The current era may be long on sarcasm, but clever political satire is not always in such abundant supply. Cartoons have long been one astute way of rendering such satire, and as a means of concise and effective social commentary, there is often no weapon like caricature.

With Jörgi, der Drachentöter, Haderer and Lukas show that it is a form adept at knocking down paper tigers, and the book's sales make a strong case for the argument that, in the end, it will be wit, not wisemen, that pulls Austria out of its slump.

As it did Haderer himself throughout the course of working on the book, explains Lukas in our interview:

Afterwards, Gerhard Haderer, the illustrator, told me that the idea, the story, had helped him get over a deep depression [he was suffering] on account of the [recent] events, and I suspect that it was the same for many others. Perhaps this was/is the truly decisive factor of this work of mine—that Haider is, in a way, de-demonised, which, despite numerous attempts, no one had succeeded in [doing] before.

When asked about today's political situation, the author expresses hope that the FPÖ's recent setbacks in regional elections and its expected loss in the upcoming elections in Vienna indicate that Haider is past his zenith and that recent stunts, such as his derogatory remarks about the leader of the Jewish community, Ariel Muzicant, are more of a last gasp than true cause for concern. Although he admits that the after-effects will pester Austria for many years to come.

Much more worrisome for Lukas is the lack of media reaction to such outbursts, which, he says, is "a sad indication of the wretched state of the current intellectual climate in the country."

"I feel that our time is distinctly sadder, less visionary, more discouraged, more self-crippling, and not as cool... as the sixties and early seventies," he adds.

Asked if there are many court jesters in today's Austria, Lukas's answer is: "Too few."

That may be so, but Leo Lukas and Gerhard Haderer are definitely two of them, and their joint effort is an attack against all that Lukas identifies as wrong with the times. It pokes fun. Its vision is a vibrant one, and it fights discouragement and paralysis by offering up a very reasonable solution. After all, who could argue that Haider wouldn't better serve his country in the kitchen?

Kazi Stastna, 12 March 2001

Also of Interest (in German):

• Buy Jörgi, der Drachentöter from the publisher, Ueberreuter, or from Amazon.de
• Learn all about Leo Lukas on his colourful Website
• Learn more about the Austrian cabaret scene
• See Gerhard Haderer's cartoons in Stern magazine
• Visit Gerhard Haderer's own monthly comic, Moff

Moving on:

• Read Magali Perrault's review of two studies of Haider's ascent
• Archived book reviews
• Archive of Kazi Stastna's articles in CER
• Browse through the CER eBookstore for electronic books
• Buy English-language books on Austria through CER
• Return to CER front page