John Carroll University Carroll Collected History 12-1997 Challenging Political Culture in Postwar Austria: Veterans' Associations, Identity, and the Problem of Contemporary History Matthew .P Berg John Carroll University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://collected.jcu.edu/hist-facpub Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Berg, Matthew P., "Challenging Political Culture in Postwar Austria: Veterans' Associations, Identity, and the Problem of Contemporary History" (1997). History. 14. http://collected.jcu.edu/hist-facpub/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Carroll Collected. It has been accepted for inclusion in History by an authorized administrator of Carroll Collected. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Challenging Political Culture in Postwar Austria: Veterans' Associations, Identity, and the Problem of Contemporary History Matthew Paul Berg Since the Waldheim election and the almost simultaneous appearance of Jorg Haider, recent history is a permanent guest at the center of politics.1 observation, registered by Marianne Enigl and Herbert Lackner, points to an incontestable and compelling feature of contemporary THIS Austrian political culture: during the 1980s and 1990s, the first mean- ingful steps toward an Austrian Vergangenheitsbewaltigungdeveloped out of a dis? cussion of Austrians, military service during the Nazi era and its highly prob- lematic association with wartime atrocities and genocide. Exploration of this important theme had been avoided throughout the period of the Second Republic by a carefully cultivated expression of public memory. The inherent tension between the internationally sanctioned notion of Austrian victimization during the Nazi years and the pride of many Austrian veterans in having per- formed their soldierly duties (Wehrpflichterflillung) had been a taboo subject.