The Creation of the Postwar Austrian Nation Dissertation
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The creation of the postwar Austrian nation Dissertation to obtain the doctoral degree at the Institute of Political Studies Polish Academy of Sciences University of Rostock submitted by mgr Piotr Andrzejewski Supervisors: Prof. Piotr Madajczyk Prof. Stefan Creuzberger Supporting supervisor: Dr Paweł Popieliński 2019 1 2 Author’s declaration I declare that this thesis was composed by the candidate, Piotr Andrzejewski, and has not been accepted in any previous application for a degree. The research for this thesis was undertaken by the candidate. All quotations have been distinguished by quotation marks or indentation and the sources of information used for my research have all been specifically acknowledged. SIGNED…………………………………….. DATE…………………… 3 Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 5 1. Methods and theories ..................................................................................................................... 8 1.1 State of the art – the Austrian nation .......................................................................................... 8 1.2 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 11 1.3 Basic terminology ........................................................................................................................ 13 1.4. Not so basic terminology - the significance of nation ................................................................ 19 1.5 Ride through history – the changing understanding of nation ................................................... 23 1.6 Nation as a principle of organisation of society .......................................................................... 38 1.6.1 How it is made? – Main narratives of the origins of nation ................................................. 39 1.6.2 Organizing society ................................................................................................................ 46 1.6.3 Nationalism as a way of organising society .......................................................................... 62 1.7 Closing comments ....................................................................................................................... 74 2. History ............................................................................................................................................... 76 2.1 The role of history in nation formation ....................................................................................... 76 2.2 A short construction of Austrian history ..................................................................................... 87 2.3 Austrian case of transitional justice .......................................................................................... 104 2.4 Historiography of the Austrian nation ....................................................................................... 117 2.4.1 Austrian historiography before 1938 – lack of nation formation ....................................... 117 2.4.2 Legitimising the status quo - Austrian historiography after 1945 ...................................... 123 2.5. Closing comments .................................................................................................................... 151 3. Politics ............................................................................................................................................. 155 3.1 Political elites ............................................................................................................................. 155 3.2 The parties of Consensus – ÖVP and SPÖ ................................................................................. 157 3.2.1 The polices of nation-making ............................................................................................. 168 3.2.2 Education policies of nation-building ................................................................................. 176 3.2.3. Textbook analysis .............................................................................................................. 181 3.3 Breaking the consensus. Failed opposition - FPÖ...................................................................... 204 3.4. Closing comments .................................................................................................................... 215 4. Conclusions and closing comments ................................................................................................. 218 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 229 List of Abbreviations: ........................................................................................................................... 242 4 Introduction The idea to create this thesis was born a long time ago in 2008 when I was an exchange student in Austria. Not only had I had the chance to witness the reaction of the Austrian society to the death of a controversial politician Jörg Haider, but also to experience the political influences of the populist right in the alpine republic. It was then that I noticed the fact that there are some bewildering issues with the national identity of the Austrians. Haider had rejected the mainstream vision of Austrians as an independent nation and claimed they were still part of the greater German nation. Through many discussions with my Austrian friends I was confronted with an identity that, at least in my opinion, was undefined and feeble, quite the opposite of the Polish national identity which for me was set in stone. When writing my master thesis about Haider and the radical right I delved into the topic even deeper. What I found fascinating that in fact there is a massive collection of literature regarding the Austrian national identity, much more in fact than in the Polish case. Of course there are monographs published about the character of the Polish nation, how it was perceived by various writers, politicians etc. But I have never found works that either tried to prove the existence of the Polish nation or on the other hand questioned its existence. The more I read about the Austrian case the more questions were raised. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the formation of the modern Austrian nation which is a process that started in 1945. Any researcher, be it a historian or a political-scientist, will immediately see how complex and difficult task it is. The studies regarding nations, nationalisms and national identity could come from fields like: history, political sciences, sociology, anthropology, psychology, linguistics, economics or even biology. Each provides a distinct methodology which makes it almost compulsory to make any nation research either interdisciplinary or highly focused on one aspect. Then issues with the understanding of basic terms come. Not only there is little consensus about what a nation really is but there is also little agreement among Austrians themselves. Those issues will be discussed in the following theoretical chapters. Anyone who wishes to investigate the Austrian case will be confronted not with the lack of sources but with the abundance thereof. And yet there was one thing lacking in all of the research. For example in the fundamental comparative study of Miroslav Hroch there was no mention of the Austrian case. He did not forget the Baltic nations (Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians) but omitted the Austrians. A similar omission was made by a Polish scholar Józef Chlebowczyk, who trying to find patterns in the development of small 5 nations. The only mentions of Austria were regarding the ill-fated Austro-Hungarian Empire and refer to the German speaking population of that country as German-Austrians1. Somehow the inclusion of the Habsburg realm seemed to be sufficient and it is hard to blame anyone as the empire crumbled under the pressures of different national groups within and it provides more examples and stories that can be digested by scholars. And yet the complex history of the role of nations and nationalism in the fall of the Austrian Empire obscures the role that Austrian-Germans played, and in fact it is often overlooked. At the same time Austrian researchers tend to focus on proving the existence of the Austrian nation before the II World War and while they provide magnificent works the theory of nation building is often set aside. Paradoxically the Austrian example created one of the most ground-breaking works in regards of national identity: the discursive analysis2. The Austrian case is interesting in the way it contrasts with other nations and nationalism in Europe (or even just in Central Europe). The nationalist movements and modern nation building did not occur as is in other cases in the XIX century it appeared in the second half of the XX and was compressed to the lifespan of barely two generations. The goal of this thesis is to fill in the gap and to confront the findings about the formation of the Austrian nation with the theories of nation formation. Only in this way, I believe, the answer to the question, how the Austrian nation was made, could be provided. The theories will be validated or falsified by the Austrian case-study and in a reflexive way the Austrian nationhood will be validated (or not) by the theories.