HELLMUT BUTTERWECK'S „POSSIBILITIES“

What would have happened if Hitler had won the war?

In his journalistic work, the 98-year-old journalist and contemporary witness Hellmut Butterweck has dealt intensively with the National Socialist evil spirit and its continuing effects in the Second Republic.
Expelled from school, forcibly recruited to work in the German war industry in 1944 and suspected of sabotage, Butterweck evaded service in the German Wehrmacht. From 1948 onwards, he wrote reviews, commentaries, satires, reportages and essays on various topics for numerous media, as well as articles on contemporary history and statements against anti-democratic, anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi tendencies. For many years, Butterweck was responsible for contemporary history, literature and theatre criticism in the weekly newspaper „Die Furche“ and also wrote plays, radio plays and novels

His work has earned him the Vienna Art Fund Prize, the Theodor Körner Prize, the City of Vienna Prize for Journalism and the Theodor Kramer Prize in 2025.

Hellmut Butterweck's recently published book “Möglichkeiten” is also about the Nazi legacy. The scenario of the novel: Hitler has won the war thanks to the „miracle weapon“, but after the celebrations for his 100th birthday, the Nazi empire collapses. It bids farewell in a similar way to the GDR a few months later in real history: people are fed up, take to the streets and bring down the state in a bloodless manner.

The fact that Hitler is long dead is a state secret and he is constantly being replaced by doubles: old fools who think they are him and whom „Big Little“ keeps in stock in the Vienna Fools' Tower. Now everything is exposed and Reichsmarschall Kraut can only proclaim democracy.

This enchantingly narrated, burlesque plot finds its tender counterpart in the love story between the SS man Horst and the Jewish woman Esther. It causes his memorised image of Nazi history to collapse with a crash.
Hellmut Butterweck's novel is a wild game with „POSSIBILITIES“ that the world has been spared.

About the author Hellmut Butterweck:
Rudolf Scholten, President of the Bruno Kreisky Forum

Introduction:
Richard Pils, Publisher Library of the Province

Reading:
Cornelius Obonya, chamber actor

Musical accompaniment:
Gernot Winischhofer, Violin
Endre Guran, Viola

Hellmut Butterweck
Possibilities
ISBN 978-3-99126-421-7
Publishing house Bibliothek der Provinz, Weitra, 2026