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Austria Historical Setting
Austria - Unavailable
Coat of arms of the province of Styria
GERMANIC TRIBES WERE not the first peoples to occupy the eastern
Alpine-Danubian region, but the history and culture of these
tribes, especially the Bavarians and Swabians, are the foundation
of Austria's modern identity. Austria thus shares in the broader
history and culture of the Germanic peoples of Europe. The
territories that constitute modern Austria were, for most of
their history, constituent parts of the German nation and were
linked to one another only insofar as they were all feudal
possessions of one of the leading dynasties in Europe, the
Habsburgs.
Surrounded by German, Hungarian, Slavic, Italian, and Turkish
nations, the German lands of the Habsburgs became the core of
their empire, reaching across German national and cultural
borders. This multicultural empire was held together by the
Habsburgs' dynastic claims and by the cultural and religious
values of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation that the
Habsburgs cultivated to provide a unifying identity to the
region. But this cultural-religious identity was ultimately
unable to compete with the rising importance of nationalism in
European politics, and the nineteenth century saw growing ethnic
conflict within the Habsburg Empire. The German population of the
Habsburg Empire directed its nationalist aspirations toward the
German nation, over which the Habsburgs had long enjoyed titular
leadership. Prussia's successful bid for power in Germany in the
nineteenth century--culminating in the formation in 1871 of a
German empire under Prussian leadership that excluded the
Habsburgs' German lands--was thus a severe political shock to the
German population of the Habsburg Empire.
When the Habsburg Empire collapsed in 1918 at the end of
World War I, its territories that were dominated by non-German
ethnic groups established their own independent nation-states.
The German-speaking lands of the empire sought to become part of
the new German republic, but European fears of an enlarged
Germany forced them to form an independent Austrian state. The
new country's economic weakness and lack of national
consciousness contributed to political instability and
polarization throughout the 1920s and 1930s and facilitated the
annexation (Anschluss) of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938.
As part of Germany, Austria came under Nazi totalitarian rule
and suffered military defeat in World War II. To escape this Nazi
German legacy, Austrians began to seek refuge in a national
identity that emphasized their cultural and historical
differences with Germans even before the end of the war. Thus,
the population welcomed the 1945 decision of the victorious
Allied powers to restore an independent Austria.
The bitter experience of the Anschluss and World War II
enabled Austrians to overcome the extreme political polarization
of the interwar years through a common commitment to
parliamentary democracy and integration with the West. The close
cooperation of the two major parties, the Socialist Party of
Austria (Sozialistische Partei Österreichs--SPÖ) and the Austrian
People's Party (Österreichische Volkspartei--ÖVP), helped Austria
frustrate Soviet efforts after World War II that might have seen
the country's absorption into the Soviet bloc or division into
communist and noncommunist halves. The signing of the State
Treaty in 1955 ended Allied occupation of Austria and any
immediate danger of communist dictatorship and/or partition. But
the occupation era and the continuing Cold War shaped the
country's identity and self-understanding as it positioned itself
as a neutral country bridging East and West.
This new Austrian cultural, political, and international
identity laid the foundation for a stable democracy, a strong
economy tied to the West, and neutrality between communist and
democratic Europe. At the same time, however, it discouraged
close examination of the role played individually and
collectively by Austrians in Nazi aggression and war crimes.
Revelations about the wartime record of Kurt Waldheim during the
presidential election in 1985 thus initiated a painful
reassessment of Austria's Nazi past. Moreover, the end of the
Cold War has undercut Austria's self-appointed mission as a
bridge between East and West. A redefinition of Austrian
nationalism and its international role thus seems likely in the
1990s.
Data as of December 1993
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