Martin Pollack, one of Austria’s most recognizable contemporary intellectuals, takes up family themes in his literary works, which are inextricably linked to the tragic and brutal events of the twentieth century. Pollack’s biological father, Dr. Gerhard Bast, a high‑ ranking SS and Gestapo officer, was prosecuted for war crimes after World War II. The stepfather, like the writer’s grandparents and uncles, did not renounce Nazi ideology until his death. Tabooization, denial and a conspiracy of silence were the methods used by the writer’s mother, stepfather and grandparents in the face of childhood questions about his active father during the war, in an attempt to relativize the concept of crimes and responsibility for them. Pollack built an image of his father based on conversations with witnesses to his crimes, analysis of archival documents, as well as information received from interested, often anonymous readers. The image thus created had to replace memories of the father he never met. Gerhard Bast was thus an example of the so‑called absentee father, who, due to his military and political involvement and the subsequent need to escape justice in post‑war Austria, did not participate in the upbringing of his biological son. Hans Pollack, the author’s stepfather, remarried his mother, actively participating in the upbringing of the future writer. Thus, here we have an example of the realization of two types of fatherhood, characteristic of the first half of the 20th century: an absent biological father and a legal father who assumes parental responsibilities. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the literary image of the realization of the above‑mentioned models of fatherhood (legal and biological) in selected works by Martin Pollack.