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Szabó'S Colonel Redl And The Habsburg Myth, Peter G. Christensen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Szabó's Colonel Redl and the Habsburg Myth," Peter G. Christensen examines issues that stem from the fact that Hungarian film director István Szabó has made a film whose protagonist departs in many respects from the real-life Alfred Victor Redl, who betrayed military secrets of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to the Russians just before the First World War. The Redl in the film is clearly an outsider, but his ethnic, class, religious, and sexual identities are not clearly established. Although Szabó expressed in interviews hostility for the character of Redl created in the film, the Redl portrayed by Klaus …