"Heeres-Filmstelle" (the audiovisual media center of the Wehrmacht in Berlin, charged with producing propaganda films for military cinemas) after the Polish campaign. Robert Dassanowsky has stated that "[Lernet-Holenia's] early actions in the Reich were confused, appearing to vacillate between naiveté and the often clumsy, often shrewd acts of a survivalist ... a unique but not incomprehensible position." Lernet-Holenia became more outspoken as the war progressed. After his removal from his public position in 1944 he escaped service on the Eastern combat theatre through contrived illness and the help of the resistance network. Post-war period Being politically untainted, Lernet-Holenia's public recognition rose steeply once again after World War II, and he became an icon of the Austrian culture scenery. The year 1948 alone saw the casting of three films based on his novels, starring prominent actors such as Maria Schell and Attila Hörbiger. Together with Friedrich Torberg (and later with Günther Nenning) he co-edited the intellectual culture magazine Forum beginning in 1957. In 1969 he was elected president of the Austrian section of the PEN Club but resigned in 1972 in protest when the Nobel Prize was awarded to Heinrich Böll, whom Lernet-Holenia regarded as a supporter of the Red Army Faction. Private life and personality Alexander Lernet had married Lernet-Holenia's mother (the widow Baroness Sidonie Boyneburgk-Stettfeld) only shortly before his birth. Rumors that attributed biological fatherhood to a Habsburg archduke were perpetuated by biographers throughout his life and afterwards but were never substantiated. In 1923 Alexander Lernet-Holenia — originally a Protestant — converted to the Roman Catholic faith. He was married to Eva Vollbach and lived with her in St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut from 1926 until 1951 when the couple moved to Vienna. From 1952 until his death, he lived in state apartments in the imperial Hofburg Palace. Lernet-Holenia remained an outspoken political conservative and aristocratic elitist throughout his life, an attitude that brought him into increasing conflict with the prevailing left-wing culture of the 1960s, earned him a reputation as the "difficult old man of Austrian literature," and pushed him into increasing isolation during his final years. He died of lung cancer in 1976, two years after publishing his last novel Die Beschwörung (The Conjuration) under the pseudonym G. T. Dampierre. Honors and Posthumous Recognition Kleist Prize (1926) Goethe Prize of the city of Bremen (1927) City of Vienna Prize for Literature (1951) Great Cross of Merit of the