Austria The Society and Its Environment
Coat of arms of the province of Vorarlberg
AUSTRIA'S SECURITY AND PROSPERITY during the second half of the
twentieth century are a striking contrast to the instability and
poverty of the first half of the century. Between 1914 and 1950,
Austrians had five different forms of government and four
different currencies. After enduring much hardship during World
War I, they experienced the collapse of Austria-Hungary (also
seen as the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the proclamation of the
Republic of Austria. In the early 1920s, they endured
hyperinflation and in the 1930s the Great Depression. The end of
Austria's fledgling democracy and the establishment of an
authoritarian regime in 1934 were followed by the demise of
Austria altogether when Nazi Germany occupied the country in
1938. The proclamation of the Second Republic in 1945 began a
long period of peace and prosperity. However, the republic's
first years were a difficult time of economic and social
reconstruction that occurred while Austria was occupied by the
Four Powers (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United
States). War, inflation, unemployment, poverty, authoritarian and
totalitarian rule, and foreign occupation formed the average
Austrian's experience during the first half of the twentieth
century.
The new state of Austria that emerged out of the chaos of
World War I faced such serious structural problems that many of
its citizens doubted it could survive. Social and economic
relationships that had evolved over centuries either ended or
were greatly altered. Moreover, the regions of this small Germanspeaking "rump state" did not join together well to form a new
nation. Austria's rural areas, populated predominantly by
peasant-farmers, were underdeveloped, most notably in the Alpine
regions of western and central Austria. They did not mesh well
with the large urban and industrial centers in eastern Austria,
especially Vienna, which had evolved to meet the markets and
needs of an entire empire, not a small state. The virtual absence
of an Austrian national identity merely aggravated concerns about
the state's viability.
The events of the late 1930s and 1940s proved these concerns
justified, but by 1955 Austria had regained its independence,
laid the foundations for decades of sustained economic growth,
and established a system of cooperation among rival political
parties, interest groups, and government bodies that brought the
country an unprecedented degree of stability. Stability did not
bar change, however, and Austrian society changed greatly as a
thriving, continuously modernizing economy altered the way
Austrians earned their living and the way they lived.
The number of Austrians engaged in agriculture and forestry
fell from more than 60 percent at the end of World War II to 7
percent by the beginning of the 1990s. More and more Austrians
came to live in urban areas, and over two-thirds of the country's
population was concentrated in the valleys and lowlands of
eastern Austria. The initial industrial growth was followed by a
pronounced shift to the service sector, and peasant-farmers or
blue-collar workers, who had frequently lived and worked under
abject conditions, increasingly were replaced by white-collar,
service-sector employees. By the early 1990s, this sector
employed more than 50 percent of the labor force in a society
that was predominantly middle class.
The country's population reflects the political and economic
traumas that occurred between 1914 and 1945. Austria has been by
turns a land of immigration and emigration. After the two world
wars and during the Cold War, it was a haven for many refugees
from Eastern Europe. Before and during World War II, however,
many Austrians fled for racial or political reasons. During the
1960s and later, an increasing number of foreigners from
southeastern and Eastern Europe settled in Austria. Their
presence offset to some degree the negative growth rate of the
country's indigenous population.
The Austrian family has also changed, both in size and in
structure. During the last generation, it has became smaller.
Traditional family values and life-styles are in a state of rapid
transition, as evidenced by the increasing number of people
living alone, childless marriages, and steadily increasing rates
of divorce and illegitimacy. Although Austria is a predominantly
Roman Catholic country, these changes show that religion no
longer plays as important a role as in the past.
Social change has led to a much more open, democratic,
socially mobile, and prosperous society in which there are few
rigid class distinctions. Traditionally, disadvantaged groups
have had greater access to secondary and university education.
Furthermore, Austria has a highly developed welfare state that
provides a broad spectrum of social security and health care
benefits. As a result, in the early 1990s the quality of life in
Austria was rated the world's ninth best by Washington's
Population Crisis Committee.
Austrians have also developed a new and unprecedented
national consciousness. For the first time, they have come to see
themselves as a distinct people separate from their German
neighbors. They have also found a new European role as a neutral
state between the East and the West. However, the anticipated and
unanticipated dynamics of West European and East European
development--European economic and political integration and the
opening of Eastern Europe--have changed the hopes and
expectations Austrians have entertained, as well as the nature of
their fears and anxieties.
Data as of December 1993
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