Austrian Lives

Austrian Lives Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser, Eva Maltschnig (Eds.) CONTEMPORARY AUSTRIAN STUDIES | Volume 21 innsbruck university press Copyright ©2012 by University of New Orleans Press, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to UNO Press, University of New Orleans, LA 138, 2000 Lakeshore Drive, New Orleans, LA, 70119, USA. www.unopress.org. Printed in the United States of America. Book and cover design: Lauren Capone Cover photo credits given on the following pages: 33, 72, 119, 148, 191, 311, 336, 370, 397 Published in the United States by Published and distributed in Europe University of New Orleans Press: by Innsbruck University Press: ISBN: 9781608010929 ISBN: 9783902811615 Contemporary Austrian Studies Sponsored by the University of New Orleans and Universität Innsbruck Editors Günter Bischof, CenterAustria, University of New Orleans Fritz Plasser, Universität Innsbruck Production Editor Copy Editor Bill Lavender Lauren Capone University of New Orleans University of New Orleans Executive Editors Klaus Frantz, Universität Innsbruck Susan Krantz, University of New Orleans Advisory Board Siegfried Beer Sándor Kurtán Universität Graz Corvinus University Budapest Peter Berger Günther Pallaver Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien Universität Innsbruck John Boyer Joseph Patrouch (ex officio) University of Chicago Writh Institute for Austrain and Gary Cohen Central European Studies University of Minnesota University of Alberta Christine Day Peter Pulzer University of New Orleans University of Oxford Oscar Gabriel Oliver Rathkolb Universität Stuttgart Universität Wien Malachi Hacohen Sieglinde Rosenberger Duke University Universität Wien Reinhard Heinisch Alan Scott Universität Salzburg Universität Innsbruck Pieter Judson Heidemarie Uhl Swarthmore College Austrian Academy of Sciences Wilhelm Kohler Ruth Wodak Universität Tübingen University of Lancaster Helmut Konrad Universität Graz Publication of this volume has been made possible through generous grants from the Austrian Ministry of European and International Affairs through the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York as well as the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research. The Austrian Marshall Plan Anniversary Foundation in Vienna has been very generous in supporting CenterAustria at the University of New Orleans and its publications series. The College of Liberal Arts at the University of New Orleans and the Auslandsamt of the University of Innsbruck provided additional financial support. Table of Contents PREFACE ix INTRODUCTION Bernhard Fetz: Biographical Narrative between Truth and Lies, Production and Authenticity xix POLITICAL LIVES John Deak: Ignaz Seipel (1876-1932) Founding Father of the Austrian Republic 32 Ernst Hanisch: Otto Bauer (1881-1938) Politician and Public Intellectual 56 Gabriella Hauch: “Against the Mock Battle of Words”—Therese Schlesinger, neé Eckstein (1863-1940), a Radical Seeker 71 Philipp Strobl: Thinking Cosmopolitan or How Joseph Became Joe Buttinger 92 Johannes Koll: From the Habsburg Empire to the Third Reich: Arthur Seyß-Inquart and National Socialism 123 Elisabeth Röhrlich: A Century in a Lifetime: Biographical Approaches to Bruno Kreisky (1911-1990) 147 Martin Eichtinger/Helmuth Wohnout: Alois Mock— Pioneer of European Unity 164 LIVES OF THE MIND Deborah Holmes: “Genia” Schwarzwald and Her Viennese “Salon” 190 Jason Dawsey: Where Hitler’s Name is Never Spoken: Günther Anders in 1950s Vienna 212 Timothy Pytell: Viktor Frankl: The Inside Outsider 240 Stefan Maurer: Wolfgang Kraus: Impresario of Austrian Literature and Cold Warrior 256 COMMON LIVES Wolfram Dornik: Torn apart between time and space? A Collective Biography of Austro-Hungarian Military Personnel on the Eastern Front, 1914-1918 280 Wilfried Garscha: Ordinary Austrians: Common War Criminals during World War II 304 Günter Bischof/Barbara Stelz-Marx: Lives behind Barbed Wire: A Comparative View of Austrian Prisoners of War during and after World War II in Soviet and American Captivity 327 Hans Petschar/Herbert Friedlmeier: The Photographic Gaze— Austrian Visual Lives during the Occupation Decade: A Cross-Section of Ordinary Austrians Photographed by American and Austrian Artists 359 Ernst Langthaler: Balancing Between Autonomy and Dependence Family Farming and Agrarian Change in Lower Austria, 1945–1980 385 Oliver Rathkolb et al: Attitudinal Lives: A Survey of Austrian Students Attitudes towards Muslims and Jews, Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung and World War II, and Democratic Dispositions 405 BOOK REVIEWS Peter Berger: Ernst Hanisch, Der große Illusionist: Otto Bauer, 1881-1938 422 Alexander Lassner: Peter Broucek, ed., Ein österreichischer General gegen Hitler: Feldmarschalleutnant Alfred Jansa; Erinnerungen 436 Gerald Steinacher: Evan Burr Bukey, Jews and Intermarriage in Nazi Austria 447 Berthold Molden: Dirk Rupnow and Heidemarie Uhl, eds., Zeitgeschichte ausstellen in Österreich: Museen–Gedenkstätten– Ausstellungen 452 Maria-Regina Kecht: Ingrid Schramm and Michael Hansel, eds., Hilde Spiel und der literarische Salon 457 Thomas Nowotny: Manfried Rauchensteiner, ed., Zwischen den Blöcken: NATO, Warschauer Pakt und Österreich 462 ANNUAL REVIEW Reinhold Gärtner: Austria 2011 478 LIST OF AUTHORS 484 Preface Günter Bischof Writing biographies (life stories) for a long time had been a male hegemonic project—writing the lives of great (white) men. Ever since Plutarch and Sueton composed their vitae of the greats of classical antiquity, to the medieval obsession with the hagiographies of holy men (and a few women) and saints, Vasari’s lives of great Renaissance artists, down to the French encyclopedists, Dr. Johnson and Lytton Strachey, as well as Ranke and Droysen the genre of biographical writing (“the representation of self ” or “the reconstruction of a human life”) has become increasingly more refined. In the twentieth century male predominance has become contested and the (collective) lives of women, minorities and ordinary people are now the focus of biographical writing. The writing of lives (or lives and their times) are always situated between fact and fiction, ascertainable data and the imagination of the biographer. Leon Edel, the great American biographer of Henry James and theorist of biography, insisted that a biographer must explore and immerse him/herself in the thinking and subconscious of his subject but also know him/herself. More recent postmodern theorists such as Ira Bruce Nadel focus on the narrative technique of biographical writing.1 The genre of biography has become so popular with the reading public that it is now applied to the lives of cities and entire nations.2 Biographical writing is not a forte of the historical profession in Austria. The reasons for this are manifold. Careers at the university level are made as quasi-“apprenticeships”; aspiring young scholars often pursue the latest methodological fashions and approaches in the historical sciences (next to serving the predilections and whims of mentors). Professors and the young 1. See the splendid Handbuch Biographie: Methoden, Traditionen, Theorien, ed. Christian Klein (Suttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2009) (citations 1-6, 326). 2. Simon Sebag Montefiori, Jerusalem: The Biography (New York: Knopf, 2011); Hank Heifetz and Enrique Krauze, Mexico: Biography of a Power (New York: Harper, 1998). x charges in their seminars rushed from innovations in quantitative social history in the 1960s/1970s, to the fascination with gender studies in the 1980s, to the history and memory fad in the 1990s, on to the cultural studies boom more recently. “Great men” were a negative role model through all of these historical trends. It may also be that the book market is not big enough in Austria to support independent scholars interested in writing the literate portraits of leading figures in the Austrian universe. It is astounding that some the more intriguing political figures of the two Austrian Republics (and the National Socialist past in between) have not found biographers yet. We have academic biographies of Ignaz Seipel and now of Otto Bauer3, but no adequate scholarly biographies of Engelbert Dollfuß and Kurt Schuschnigg4; nor have all the “founding fathers” of the Second Republic attracted the attention of academic biographers. Leopold Figl, Julius Raab, Karl Renner, and Theodor Körner have not been the subject of abiding scholarly biographic attention5, Adolf Schärf and Bruno Kreisky have.6 The rest of the chancellors of the Second Republic cry out for biographic attention, not to speak of their many ministers and party elites—the political figures operating in the parliamentary arena or the battle ground of party politics. The same is true for economic tycoons and intellectual and artistic leaders. When I raised the issue of a lacunae of biographical writing among historians during the first AustrianZeitgeschichtetag (Contemporary History Meeting) in Innsbruck in the spring of 1994, the response was tepid and yawning disinterest. Across the border in Germany the interest of the reading public in biographical writing is much bigger and academia allows career paths based on writing the lives of great men and women. In fact, ever since Lothar 3. Ernst Hanisch, Der große Illusionist:

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