ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how a conflation of the 'Catholic' forms with particular emphasis on the notion of theatre as a Baroque symbol of totality, increasingly converged with the newly 'Austrian' orientation at the Burgtheater. It focuses on areas of overlap in the cultural agendas of Left and Right beyond the rhetoric of ideological antagonism emphasized by commentators, analysing more closely the ambiguous nature of 'Catholic' cultural forms and how they came to be promoted by both sides. The discussion rests on a familiar distinction between 'Catholicism' as a political and as a broader cultural phenomenon, beyond its primary function as a religion. Dispassionate secondary literature on Catholicism in Austrian culture, understood as a broad and far-reaching phenomenon, remains sparse. On aspects of Catholicism and politics in the theatre, Judith Beniston has worked to fill the gap. Franz Werfel's problematic relationship with Catholicism, in art as in life, has been covered extensively by commentators and biographers.
