Post-World War I Austria

From Empire to Republic: Post-World War I Austria Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser (Eds.) Peter Berger, Guest Editor CONTEMPORARY AUSTRIAN STUDIES | Volume 19 innsbruck university press Copyright ©2010 by University of New Orleans Press, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Printed in Germany. Cover photo: A severely wounded soldier from the battle on the Isonzo front awaits transport to the hospital on 23 August 1917. (Photo courtesy of Picture Archives of the Austrian National Library) Published in the United States by Published and distributed in Europe University of New Orleans Press: by Innsbruck University Press: ISBN: 9781608010257 ISBN: 9783902719768 ŽŶƚĞŵƉŽƌĂƌǇƵƐƚƌŝĂŶ^ƚƵĚŝĞƐ ^ƉŽŶƐŽƌĞĚďǇƚŚĞhŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚǇŽĨEĞǁKƌůĞĂŶƐ ĂŶĚhŶŝǀĞƌƐŝƚćƚ/ŶŶƐďƌƵĐŬ Editors Günter Bischof, CenterAustria, University of New Orleans Fritz Plasser, Universität Innsbruck Production Editor Copy Editor Assistant Editor Bill Lavender Lindsay Maples Alexander Smith University of University of UNO/Universität New Orleans New Orleans Innsbruck 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 Peter Pulzer University of Chicago Oxford University Gary Cohen (ex officio) Oliver Rathkolb Center for Austrian Studies Universität Wien University of Minnesota Sieglinde Rosenberger Christine Day Universität Wien University of New Orleans Alan Scott Oscar Gabriel Universität Innsbruck Universität Stuttgart Franz Szabo (ex officio) Reinhard Heinisch Wirth Institute for Austrian and Universität Salzburg Central European Studies Pieter Judson University of Alberta Swarthmore College Heidemarie Uhl Wilhelm Kohler Austrian Academy of Sciences Universität Tübingen Ruth Wodak Helmut Konrad University of Lancaster Universität Graz Publication of this volume has been made possible through generous grants from the Austrian Ministries of European and International Affairs through the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York as well as the 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 as did the Cultural Office of the City of Innsbruck. WƌĞĨĂĐĞ 'ƺŶƚĞƌŝƐĐŚŽĨ The breakup of the Habsburg Dual Monarchy and the redrawing of the political map of East Central Europe constituted a major experiment in “destroying the old, and creating the new” (O. Hwaletz). Historians are more inclined to study the rise of empires than their demise and aftermath. The eighteen essays in this volume offer fresh perspective and innovative scholarship on the difficulttransition from empire to republic for the small state of Austria, newly created by the Allied peacemakers in Paris in 1919. These essays also deal with complex challenges ofnation building after a major war as well as the ambiguity inherent in the creation of new institutions in politics, economics, social life and culture. In 1919 the government of the instable and fledgling Republic of Austria faced the task of integrating more than a million of returning war veterans and taking care of 110,000 wounded veterans returning from the frontlines. The government was also confronting revolutionary turmoil in the streets of Vienna, a near-total collapse of the agricultural and industrial economies and near-mental breakdown from the trauma of defeat. Hyperinflation produced a financial crisis in the early 1920s and major economic challenges in the banking and industrial sectors. The redrawn borders produced loss of German ethnics and major demographic shifts. Pan-Germanism was an ideology popular in all political camps. “Austrians”²no longer dominant in a vast empire² were searching for a new identity. After four years of war, Austrians had to confront defeat and constructed a national memory from painful personal remembrances. Most families were dealing with family members returning from a long and destructive war with limbs missing and souls deranged. In spite of ideological conflict between the major political camps, a national cultural revival ensued and new educational institutions were born. The idea for this volume arose after a reception by the Austrian Cultural Forum at the end of a long day during the annual German Studies Association Meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota, in early October 2008. Over a beer, I conversed with John Deak, Patrick Houlihan and Ke-chin Hsia—all of them very bright PhD students mentored by John Boyer at the University of Chicago. They told me excitedly about their fascinating dissertation research. As it happened, all of them worked on topics of the immediate post-World War I period. That same evening I began to map out in my mind a CAS volume on Austria dealing with the consequences and legacies of World War I. CAS had covered the “Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era” in volume 11 (2003); individual essays had covered the two decades between the wars in various other volumes (on identity and memory, foreign policy, sexuality). But we had never covered the end of the war and the 1920s as a distinct era. I had just been reading Tony Judt’s Postwar, his marvelous history of post-World War II Europe. Of course, I knew that our canvas would be more modest than Judt’s. But his grand depictions of confronting the challenging political, social, and economic impacts of the Great War were there in the case study of Austria after World War I too. Also, the memory of the war—so prominent in Judt’s work—would need to be addressed. A few weeks after the St. Paul meeting I invited John Boyer to pen the introduction, and he generously agreed to do it. In a way, then, this is a volume that takes its intellectual origins in Boyer’s University of Chicago seminar. This core group of Boyer’s “Chicago boys” had met other researchers in the Vienna archives and were well connected to the community of international scholars working on post-World War I Austria; they asked some of them to contribute, too. I would like to thank them all for making this a volume of Austrian Studies that nicely demonstrates that there is a tightly woven global Austrian Studies community from Chicago via Oxford and Austria to Jerusalem in the Middle East and Taiwan and Australia in the Far East. My friend and colleague Peter Berger at the Vienna University of Economics and Business generously agreed to serve as the guest editor. He has been working on the 1920s throughout his distinguished career and brought contributors through his contacts in the Viennese scholarly community to this volume. Peter also contributed the chilling concluding essay to this volume. This intricate Jewish family portrait illustrates in a tight dramatic family saga the tergiversations and bloody culminations of twentieth century Austrian history that is usually the stuff of fiction. Sam Williamson contacted me about a piece he was writing on Count Berchtold and his role in the tragic origins of World War I—not quite a book but more than a regular journal article. I eagerly invited him to contribute it to this volume to set the stage about the prewar era, a period to which he had been making major scholarly contributions throughout his illustrious career both as a scholar and high university administrator. We cannot thank these far-flung scholars enough for the timely submissions of their contributions, along with their kind patience with our copy-editing team. This is the first volume produced “in house” from scratch at UNO and the second volume to be published jointly by UNO and iup presses. Bill Lavender at UNO Press was helpful at every step of the way from copy- editing to producing photo-ready copy to printing and distribution. Lindsay Maples worked very hard in copy-editing the entire volume and also type- setting it. At iup Birgit Holzner cooperated promptly whenever asked. Klaus Frantz, Franz Mathis and Mathias Schennach of the University of Innsbruck helped make the cooperation with iup possible. They each contributed in their own way to make this volume come together. Hans Petschar and Michaela Pfunder of the Picture Archives of the Austrian National Library were more than helpful in the search for pictures to illustrate this volume. The Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research in Vienna finances an annual “Ministry Fellow” at CenterAustria who assists me with my CAS work load. I could not have asked for a more congenial and hard-working fellow than Alexander Smith. He maintained daily contacts with some two dozen authors and shepherded every manuscript from submission to type- setting. In spite of some ups and downs along the way, he never lost his cool and good cheer. This volume would not have come together in time without his keen engagement. Whether we were working on CAS or other matters, as always Gertraud Griessner kept CenterAustria running. This volume could not have been published without the generous financial support of the University of New Orleans and the University of Innsbruck, as well as the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research and the Austrian Ministry of European and International Affairs via the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. Florian Gerhardus, Christoph Ramoser, Josef Leidenfrost, Martin Rauchbauer, Andreas Stadler and Emil Brix all deserve our gratitude for making this financial support possible. The Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation has been the most important institutional sponsor of all the work we do at CenterAustria, including the publication of CAS. Eugen Stark, the Executive Director, has been a marvelous friend and supporter over the years. Thank you all. Table of Contents INTRODUCTION John W. Boyer: Boundaries and Transitions in Modern Austrian 13 History Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.: Leopold Count Berchtold: The Man 24 Who Could Have Prevented the Great War TOPICAL ESSAYS I.

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