AUSTRIA.

The evolution of Austria is exemplary in the way it reflects the extreme experiences of European nations during the "short twentieth century." Once part of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had a population of fifty two million, Austria in the early twenty-first century was a republic and corporate state of slightly more than eight million; the former centerpiece of Mitteleuropa (central Europe) now forms the eastern border of the European Union. An uncommon feature of Austria's development is that in the twentieth century it came into being both as a nation with a unique identity and as a sovereign state.

FROM MULTINATIONAL EMPIRE TO THE
FIRST AUSTRIAN REPUBLIC (1890–1918)

Austria-Hungary occupied a unique place in central Europe, and Austria (Cisleithania) constituted the western portion of the Dual Monarchy. Political reorganization in 1867 stirred up the separatist tendencies of nationalist movements, especially among Czechs and Germans, groups that comprised 22 and 35 percent of the population, respectively. The existence of these movements underscored the inability of the imperial system to contend with national identities, particularly since Austria was struggling with democratization. Emperor Francis Joseph I (r. 1848–1916) exercised executive power while sharing legislative power with the Reichstag (parliament) . With the establishment of universal male suffrage in 1906, the rule of the country started to catch up to its reality: the influence of the nobility waned in favor of the social democrats, Christian socialists, and Deutschnationalen (members of the German National People's Party) . The Christlichsoziale Partei, or CSP (Christian Social Party), founded in 1891, presented itself as reformist, supported by the petty bourgeois and the peasantry. The Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei, or SDAP (Social Democratic Workers' Party) was born of an older movement but had only recently organized (1889–1890) as the party of Austro-Marxism, first under Victor Adler, then under Otto Bauer. It mobilized ninety thousand members around three demands—universal suffrage, the eight-hour workday, and social security. The Deutschnationalen came together under the leaders Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Karl Lueger and were united around what they rejected, exemplified in the anti-Semitic slogan: "Gegen Juda, Habsburg, Rom/bauen wir den deutschen Dom" (Against Judah, Habsburg, and Rome/we build the German cathedral). The slogan reflected the fact that Austrian Jews, representing 4.5 percent of the population, completely embraced the Habsburgian state and were its most faithful subjects.

While the imperial-appointed governments remained solely under the rule of the kaiser, conflicts grew between new political forces that lacked a track to power and traditional groups that had lost their legitimacy—namely, the bureaucracy headed by the emperor, the nobility, and the clergy. The absence of a democratic culture rendered the parliamentary system ineffective and this led Austrians to be suspicious of parliamentary government. Faced with these divisions, Kakania (Robert Musil's pejorative term for the Austrian state) offered as unifiers the Habsburg dynasty, the Catholic Church (which brought together all the major nationalities), and the army (obligatory military service functioned to assimilate the populace). In any event, no genuine Austrian nation existed and the affirmation of its Germanic character served only to associate it with a national entity larger than itself.

On the economic plane, Austria's relatively late industrialization led to rising social discontent. At the same time, the fin de siècle fueled a creative intellectual boom in Vienna: in psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud), in literature (Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal), in music (Johannes Brahms, Johann Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg), in painting (Gustav Klimt), and in architecture (Josef Hoffmann and Otto Wagner).

The Habsburg Monarchy tried to overcome the various internal tensions through a risky foreign policy directed against the Slavic nationalists in the Balkans—Bosnia-Herzegovina was annexed in 1908—whose aspirations had been encouraged by Russia. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, on 28 June 1914 and Austria's alliance with Germany and Italy dragged Europe into World War I. Outmoded ways of thinking about defense in Europe, Austria's economic interests in southwestern Europe, and the socio-imperialist ambitions of its elites all explain why the empire chose war.

After four years, however, the empire was obliged to sign the Armistice on 4 November 1918. The price in human lives was enormous: 180,000–190,000 military dead, with 90,000–95,000 women left widowed and three times as many children orphaned. The death of Emperor Francis Joseph I in 1916 and a food shortage beginning that year, together with decisions by his heir, Charles I (r. 1916–1918), fractured the monarchy. Charles (who was beatified by the Catholic Church in 2004) made peace proposals to the Allies while the Völkermanifest (a declaration Charles made on 16 October 1918 calling for the nationalities of Austria to form assemblies [nationale Räte]) transformed the monarchy into a federal state. Between 21 and 31 October 1918, the various nationalities one by one proclaimed their independence. For the first time since 1526, Austrian Germans lived in an independent state, the Republic of Austria.

FROM DISAPPOINTMENT WITH THE
REPUBLICAN MODEL TO THE STÄNDESTAAT (1918–1938)

The provisional social democratic government of Karl Renner consolidated the regime, overcoming the threat by the Austrian republican councils during June and July 1919 while marginalizing the communists. Although agricultural production had dropped by half since 1913, the country avoided famine. Most important, the new government signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain in October 1918. The Austrian republic, one of the seven states created from the old empire, would be compelled to pay reparations. Anschluss (union) with Germany was forbidden.

The government initially engaged in unprecedented social and political reform. It established the eight-hour workday, provided unemployment benefits and paid vacations, granted women the right to vote, and gave organized labor an advisory role in the working environment. To many observers, however, the new republic's economic situation did not appear viable. In 1920, when Austria reorganized its territory, cosmopolitan Vienna was disproportionately large; it contained more than one-third of the population.

The National Constituent Assembly, with a majority of social democrats and Christian socialists and a right-wing coalition led by the latter from 1920 to 1938, broke entirely with old imperial Austria. By according parliament a leading role, the Constitution of October 1920 attempted to reconcile the principle of federation (Austria's division into Länder, or autonomous regions) with republicanism and the principle of centralization. Europe's parliamentary crisis in the interwar period would considerably weaken the new republic, which installed twenty-two successive governments from 1918 to 1933.

Political life was dominated by the Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei, or SAP (Socialist worker's party). The majority of its seven hundred thousand members were recruited from the working class and from Vienna, whose mayor, Karl Seitz, developed a social welfare (Wohlfarhtstaat) policy in 1919. Opposition grew between "Red" Vienna and the rest of Austria, which was more conservative. Meanwhile, the Christian socialists, backed by civil servants and clerics, were solidly allied with the Bauerbund, or farmer's association, which was anticapitalist and pan-German. Nationalists supported reunification with Germany but, because of inner strife, they lacked political power. Although these movements supported the new institutions, none was able to offer an "Austrian alternative." Constituting the new republic of Austria had more to do with creating a form of government than with founding a nation-state.

The 1920s were marked by the personality of the chancellor, Monsignor Ignaz Seipel (1876–1932), a Christian socialist who defended independent Catholic Austria against the Prussian Reich, which was under the sway of the Protestant tradition. The Seipel governments improved the economy, controlling hyperinflation and launching the schilling with loans from the League of Nations in 1922. This entailed an austerity policy with heavy social costs, however. From 1924 on, the social democrats took advantage of widespread dissatisfaction, which forced the chancellor to form a coalition with the Germanophile nationalist parties. It was within this context that paramilitary groups appeared on the scene: the socialist Republikanischer Schutzbund (Republican defense league) in 1920; the far right-wing Mussolini-supported Heimwehr (Home guard) in 1925, which aimed at the destruction of the social democracy; and the Nazi Marschformationen (paramilitary groups).

In 1927, when bloody riots pitted Christian socialists, or "Blacks," against social democrats, or "Reds," Chancellor Seipel became the "prelate without mercy" and his actions caused the working-class party to abandon the government; successors continued his get-tough policy. The 1929 world economic crisis hit Austria hard; the failure of the banking giant Creditanstalt was the largest in history, and by 1933 six hundred thousand people were unemployed. In 1932 a new loan negotiated with the League of Nations by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss (1892–1934) further compromised the country's sovereignty. The failure of a plan for a customs union with Germany and for government centralization in 1931 only aggravated the economic and political crisis.

It should be added that this was also the heyday of the Wienerlied (popular songs in the Viennese dialect) and the apotheosis of the cabaret scene in Vienna, with artists such as Fritz Grünbaum. There was also the circle of logical positivists, including Moritz Schlick and Kurt Gödel, and the macroeconomic school of Joseph Schumpeter, both also centered in the capital. But that did not prevent the rise of regional centers of culture, with events such as the annual Salzburg Festival and the New Realism movement associated with Herbert Reyl-Hanisch.

Faced with political crisis, Dollfuss followed the lead of Italian Fascists by dissolving Parliament, employing the Heimwehren as auxiliary police, and opening internment camps. He remains a controversial figure. Was he democracy's chief undertaker or Hitler's greatest adversary? In any event, his clear aim was to replace the parliamentary system with a corporate and authoritarian state rooted in Christian socialism.

On the extreme right, the Nazis made important gains in elections beginning in 1932 and renewed the demand for Anschluss. Dollfuss banned the Nazi Party, the Communist Party, and the Republikanischen Schutzbund. In 1934 civil strife broke out briefly between right-wing militias supported by the army and left-wing groups, and the battles of 12–15 February ended with a victory for the Heimwehr. All unions and political organizations were banned. Dollfuss called for the formation of a patriotic front (Vaterländische Front) and transformed Austria into a Christian Ständestaat (corporate state).

Meanwhile, the ascension to power of Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) put an end to any future protection of Austria by Italy. Although Hitler's first attempt at Anschluss on 25 July 1934—during which the Nazis murdered Dollfuss—was a failure, his creation of the Rome-Berlin Axis in 1936, together with Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg's continuation of Dollfuss's policies and the effects of the worldwide economic depression, all conspired to deprive the Austrian government of popular support and threatened the new nation's independence. After 1936, a rapprochement policy with Germany turned Austria into a German satellite and augmented Nazi influence. Those who supported the Ständestaat, which gave rise to an Austrian national consciousness, mistakenly focused their propaganda efforts on the concept of a second German nation to such an extent that they essentially imitated the Nazi adversary from which they had hoped to distance themselves.

1938–1945: THE COST OF ANSCHLUSS

Encouraged by his foreign policy successes, Hitler again attempted to achieve Anschluss in March 1938. He demanded that Schuschnigg form a new government with Nazi participation. When the chancellor reacted by organizing a plebiscite, Hitler launched his invasion plan, code-named "Operation Otto," and the Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart replaced Schuschnigg; shortly thereafter the German army occupied the country. Annexation was proclaimed by plebiscite, with the Nazis claiming the approval of 99.6 percent of voters.

Austria became "Ostmark," part of the greater German Reich, its territory administered by Gauleiters, or Nazi governors, from Germany. Gleichschaltung, the Nazi euphemism for totalitarian control, followed immediately, with seventy thousand Austrians arrested and 70 percent of high-ranking public servants removed from office. The first convoys of political prisoners, Jews, and Gypsies were deported to Germany and later to the Mauthausen concentration camp (90 percent of the Gypsies and more than one-third of Austrian Jews were murdered). Germany integrated the Austrian economy into its own, pillaging its gold and natural resources, confiscating private property, and privileging Germans of the Altreich (that is, within the borders of the Third Reich as of 1937, as opposed to the territories annexed after that date) for jobs. Full employment and economic modernization also followed, with output in some industries increasing to twenty-five times its prewar level. Beginning in 1943, Allied bombing took a terrible toll in human lives. In all, Austria suffered some 247,000 military deaths; 25,000 to 30,000 civilians were also killed and 120,000 fell victim to Nazi repression.

By 1939, however, a resistance movement, consisting primarily of communists and conservative Christian socialists, began to operate with limited effectiveness. But about 20 percent of the population joined the Nazi Party; 1.2 million men enlisted in the Wehrmacht, and a number of Austrians, aside from Hitler, such as Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Adolf Eichmann, held high-ranking posts in the Reich. This number vastly exceeded the number of victims and resistance fighters in Austria, unless one is willing to apply the term Opfer to victims of the war's aftermath as well as to those of the Nazi persecution.

FROM THE COLD WAR TO EUROPEAN
INTEGRATION (1945–2004)

For Austria the postwar period entailed the creation of a viable state separate from Germany and the birth of a national consciousness, founded upon the myth that the country had been a victim of Nazism.

At the conclusion of the Moscow Conference on 1 November 1943, the Big Three declared the Anschluss null and void and decided to reestablish Austria as a free and independent country. A provisional government was set up in April 1944; as in 1918, it was headed by Karl Renner and included the major parties. The Allies divided the country into four occupation zones, while Renner ordered the reinstatement of the 1929 Constitution and totally rejected Anschluss. The Second Republic was at once parliamentary and presidential, organized as a federated state.

The political parties were reconstituted almost exactly as they had been in the past, with the populists (as the Christian Socialists were now called) assembled under the banner of the Österreichische ÖVP (Conservative People's Party) and the Sozialistische Partei Österreichs, or SPÖ (Social Democratic Party), which replaced the SDAP. The Kommunistische Partei Österreichs, Volkspartei, or Ö(Austrian Communist Party) and the far right-wing Verband der Unabhängigen, or VdU (Federation of Independents) remained marginalized over the next four decades. Thus a new political culture emerged, characterized by coalition building among major parties. Shifting alliances among parties were replaced by an interparty concept by which the Staatspartei (party in power) assigned posts based on popular elections and a proportional system, or Proporzsystem. Legislative compromise through preliminary consensus, or Junktiemierung, was common; social partners such as the trade union federation Österreichischer Gewerkschaftsbund (Austrian Trade Federation) joined the consensus. The Grand Coalition (1945–1966) of the ÖVP and the SPÖ was succeeded by a smaller alliance between the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, or FPÖ (Austrian Freedom Party), and the SPÖ(1983–1986), and then by the new-style coalition of the SPÖ-ÖVP (1987–1999). This political culture finally led to versäulte Konkordanzdemokratie (petrified democratic consensus) characterized by the lack of transparency and an absence of alternative programs or genuine parliamentary debate.

Once the postwar leaders were in place—a People's Party chancellor would remain in power until 1970 and a Socialist president until 1986—the government attended to priorities, which included reconstructing and restructuring the economy, purging the country of its Nazi past, and introducing land reform. Ten percent of all housing had been destroyed and factories reduced to rubble, and the postwar period brought the return of displaced persons. In addition, from 1947 on Austria was a pawn in the Cold War and benefited from the Marshall Plan, which allowed the western parts of the country to rebuild their industry and infrastructure. Vienna and Lower Austria, however, were under Soviet occupation. The USIA (a Russian acronym for "Administration for Soviet Property in Austria") employed 10 or KPO percent of the workforce. The Austrian government decided to nationalize German assets in the Soviet occupation zone to avoid their being appropriated. As a consequence, the public sector became enormous, employing one in six workers.

It took much longer to eradicate the political legacy of Nazism. The Allied Occupation Law of 8 May 1945 banned the Nazi Party and instituted "People's Court" tribunals. The failure to distinguish adequately between ordinary followers (Mitläufer) of the Nazis and the real criminals, however, together with the huge number of implicated persons (estimated at 537,000), combined to undermine the effectiveness of denazification. About 7.5 percent of the active population was excluded from professional activities. Soon the Cold War put an end to the antifascist spirit of 1945, as anticommunism eclipsed the struggle against the former champions of anti-bolshevism. Amnesty laws were promulgated in 1948 and 1953, while 1949 saw the resurgence of the VdU, made up of former Nazis who rejected an independent Austria. In 1955 the VdU was re-formed as the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, or FPÖ.

On the international stage, Austria's leaders managed to ensure the country's independence by taking advantage of events such as the Soviet-Yugoslav split, the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the end of the Korean War. With the 1955 State Treaty and a constitutional law by which Austria declared itself neutral in perpetuity, the country took its place among other nations. Occupation forces withdrew and Austria joined the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe (COE), and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Neutrality, adopted as a condition of Soviet withdrawal, did not stop the country from joining the Western camp in the Cold War. The date on which the Soviets withdrew and neutrality was legally adopted, 26 October, became a national holiday.

The decade that began in 1950 was notable for the remarkable economic recovery known as "Raab-Kamitz-Kurs" (after Chancellor Julius Raab and his finance minister, Reinhard Kamitz). The government reduced expenses, established a new fiscal system, increased industrial capacity and production, and institutionalized the social partnership (Sozialpartnerschaft). Repercussions from these reforms and the repositioning of Europe on the world stage after formation of the European Economic Communities (EEC), which rendered the ÖVP more pro-European than the SPÖ, made coalition governments ever more inadequate, however. In 1966, the ÖVP obtained an absolute majority and decided to set up a populist administration. Reemphasizing the distinction between the party in power and the opposition, it launched reforms in radio broadcasting, university education, and social security for private-sector workers. Strategic errors, however, together with a wave of dissatisfaction—such as the scandals of Fried-ensreich Hundertwasser or the group Wirklichkeiten (Realities) in the arts—paralyzed the administration, allowing the SPÖto achieve an absolute majority for the first time in 1970.

Over the next thirteen years, Chancellor Bruno Kreisky presided over a vast and historic reform movement that included liberalization of the media, a family policy (including the legalization of abortion), an education system that supported low-income children, and the abandonment of the nuclear power program. Thanks to an "Austro-Keynesian" budgetary policy, he succeeded in reducing unemployment to the range of 1.6–2.5 percent. Vienna also became the United Nations' third headquarters. The chancellor dispatched Austrian UN troops to Cyprus and the Middle East and in 1972 signed the first free trade agreement with the EEC.

The Socialist Fred Sinowatz, Kreisky's successor, set up a limited coalition with the FPÖto keep ÖVP from returning to power. It soon had to confront a difficult economic situation, with mounting government debt and growing unemployment as well as political-financial scandals and, finally, the Waldheim affair. After ten years as secretary-general of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim ran for president of the Republic in 1986. Confronted with documents that implicated his wartime collaboration as a staff lieutenant in the Wehrmacht, against the partisans in the Balkans, Waldheim replied that he had only done his duty. But defense of one's nation regardless of the political system in place was no longer acceptable to many Austrians. Waldheim was nevertheless elected president on 8 June. The next day Sinowatz relinquished his post to Franz Vranitsky (SPÖ), who for the O the next ten years remained chancellor of a coalition with the ÖVP. Environmentalists from the Green Party were elected to seats in parliament. On the international scene, Austria found itself increasingly isolated, and in this context Vranitsky officially acknowledged Austria's participation in the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germany. But only in 1995 was a fund established for victims; in 2000 Austria signed an agreement by which it would compensate its former forced laborers.

The end of the Cold War opened the way for integration with other European states. On 1 January 1995 Austria became the thirteenth member of the European Union, and in 2002 it adopted the euro as its monetary currency. Austria also closely watched discussions about expanding NATO, but membership would call into question its identity as a neutral power and further weaken the Proporzsystem, already undermined by massive privatization. Meanwhile, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 placed Austria at the heart of a newly unified Europe, in which common values were to replace ethnic affiliation as the basis for one's identity, putting an end to the traditional conception of the Austrian nation.

A new domestic policy was slow in coming. As a result, the electorate mobilized in favor of the FPÖ, the opposition party that from 1986 on was headed by Jörg Haider. Attracting a growing number of voters with antiestablishment and xenophobic speeches, Haider also revived the theme of the country as victim, proposing that, while some Austrians ought to be held responsible for Nazi crimes, others should be compensated as victims of the Allied occupation. In 1999 the FPÖplaced second in the elections, behind the SPÖ. When Wolfgang Schilüssel (ÖVP) established a coalition government with Haider's FPÖ, the European Union decided on a policy to isolate Austria temporarily. As a political strategy, Haider stepped down from the government and ended the coalition. He suffered a major defeat in the 2002 elections and the ÖVP returned to the top spot. This array of forces led Schlüssel to create a second coalition with the FPÖon 28 February 2003, under the control of President Heinz Fischer (SPÖ, 2004).

In the long run, Austria's political culture evolved toward a European political model: more voters abstained from national elections; fewer people joined the various interest groups; the Lagermentalität (camp mentality) came to an end as the electorate became more independent in its voting habits; a consociational democracy replaced more adversarial politics; and the role of parliament underwent a reevaluation.

See alsoDenazification; Dolfuss, Engelbert; Germany; Haider, Jörg; Munich Agreement; Reconstruction; Salzburg Festival; Seyss-Inquart, Arthur; Sudetenland; Waldheim, Kurt.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Denscher, Barbara, ed. Kunst und Kultur in Österreich: Das 20. Jahrhundert. Vienna, 1999.

Gehler, Michael. Der lange Weg nach Europa. Österreich vom Ende der Monarchie bis zur EU. 2 vols. Innsbruck, Austria, 2002.

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Fabien ThÉofilakis