Under the Sky so Blue
Today we--yes, the royal we--are playing hot lava. Anywhere that the sun is not shining is the hot lava, and must be avoided at all costs. The only exceptions are class periods, and getting my coffee cup refilled.
I find the sunshine most conducive to thought, including thoughts which should have occurred to me some time ago. Today, in particularly, it was just something regarding my research, which I really grasped for the first time. I had previously realized that Austrian national identity was poorly defined prior to the end of WWII and the Austrian Victim narrative. I had failed to reconcile, however, the real import of this. Austria is almost completely a post-WWII concept. The Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburg dynasty was a broad collection of regions, united under a central bureaucratic mechanism. Within that Empire, regions ethno-cultural likeness were organized into provinces; there was no Austria, as such, but Tirol, South Tirol, Salzburg, and Vienna, amongst numerous smaller entities.
The connection between these provinces broke down with the collapse of the Empire the borders of Austria were drawn rather arbitrarily, and there were almost no impetus toward a unification. Austro-Fascism was an attempt at achieving national unity, but suffered from minority support, even among Austrian Fascists, many of whom preferred a Pan-Germanistic union.
The disunity of Austria is further shown at the end of WWII. It was not a given that Austria would reunite as one, although we treat it that way now. Tirol, particularly, debated on whether to acknowledge an "Austrian" authority, or to assert Tirolean sovereignty. Similar discussions permeated the political spheres of the time.
Germany, and the Anschluss, entered at the very height of Austrian Ego-permeability. The vacuum left behind the Hapsburg Empire remained unfilled until the time of Adolph Hitler's annexation of his homeland to a "Greater Germany," and I am of the mind--though this must remain always a speculation--that a Nazi victory would have lead to the contented erasure of separate Austrian identity from a broader German identity. The Nazi defeat, however, left Austria in the ruins of a second fallen empire, and a second economic depression.
The shift of fortunes which came with victim-hood and the Marshall Plan could not have been more perfectly timed. It coupled economic recovery with a distancing from the idea of Greater Germany, and security against a clearly hostile Soviet Army.
One might question how this resulted in Austria, as opposed to a federation of Austrian provinces, which was the Allied plan originally. The answer lies in necessity. Too large a part of the Austrian population had been complicit in campaigns of Nazism, both foreign and domestic, and in addition, some provinces were much guiltier than others: South Tirol is pterhaps the one place where any credence might be lent to the idea of Austrian resistance to Nazism. But to punish some and not others would have damaged any attempt to create Austrian unity, which--due to recent developments--had become a source of preoccupation for the West, which was swiftly coming to desire an independent and neutral Austria.
I am of course alluding to the Cold War and the threat of extended Soviet influence in middle Europe. The Allies, or those of republican constitution, recognized the utility of a strong buffer nation between the communist satellite-states and the impressionable and often idiotic peoples of Italy and Greece.
In order to create such a nation, it was not expedient to cause any division amongst the provinces. The so called victim-hood of the provinces, then, was to be cast as a corporate martyrdom of the Austrian people: whole and undivided.
The provinces readily excepted this story: first, because it absolved them of their wrongdoing; Second, because it came with generous economic aid; and third, because it was a shield against soviet occupation.
What I had previously underestimated, was the malleability of the Austrian Persona, and that it had failed to take shape after the Great War. The legacy of Austrian-wictimhood may thus be considered, not as the termination of an identity crisis beginning with the Anschluss, but as the final resolution of the identity crisis left by the fall of the Hapsburgs.
There are the attendant issues of never being able to deal with the Austrian war-criminals properly, leading to celebration of Austrian service in the Wehrmacht, and ultimately Waldheim--along with who knows what other cultural disease, but it remarkable how fast the victim narrative allowed them to coalesce. They went twenty years before the Anschluss without figuring it out, but it took them months after the end of WWII to solve the problem. Remarkable.
I suppose it is nearing time for class. Time to make an end of it and enjoy these last few minutes in the sun.
I find the sunshine most conducive to thought, including thoughts which should have occurred to me some time ago. Today, in particularly, it was just something regarding my research, which I really grasped for the first time. I had previously realized that Austrian national identity was poorly defined prior to the end of WWII and the Austrian Victim narrative. I had failed to reconcile, however, the real import of this. Austria is almost completely a post-WWII concept. The Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburg dynasty was a broad collection of regions, united under a central bureaucratic mechanism. Within that Empire, regions ethno-cultural likeness were organized into provinces; there was no Austria, as such, but Tirol, South Tirol, Salzburg, and Vienna, amongst numerous smaller entities.
The connection between these provinces broke down with the collapse of the Empire the borders of Austria were drawn rather arbitrarily, and there were almost no impetus toward a unification. Austro-Fascism was an attempt at achieving national unity, but suffered from minority support, even among Austrian Fascists, many of whom preferred a Pan-Germanistic union.
The disunity of Austria is further shown at the end of WWII. It was not a given that Austria would reunite as one, although we treat it that way now. Tirol, particularly, debated on whether to acknowledge an "Austrian" authority, or to assert Tirolean sovereignty. Similar discussions permeated the political spheres of the time.
Germany, and the Anschluss, entered at the very height of Austrian Ego-permeability. The vacuum left behind the Hapsburg Empire remained unfilled until the time of Adolph Hitler's annexation of his homeland to a "Greater Germany," and I am of the mind--though this must remain always a speculation--that a Nazi victory would have lead to the contented erasure of separate Austrian identity from a broader German identity. The Nazi defeat, however, left Austria in the ruins of a second fallen empire, and a second economic depression.
The shift of fortunes which came with victim-hood and the Marshall Plan could not have been more perfectly timed. It coupled economic recovery with a distancing from the idea of Greater Germany, and security against a clearly hostile Soviet Army.
One might question how this resulted in Austria, as opposed to a federation of Austrian provinces, which was the Allied plan originally. The answer lies in necessity. Too large a part of the Austrian population had been complicit in campaigns of Nazism, both foreign and domestic, and in addition, some provinces were much guiltier than others: South Tirol is pterhaps the one place where any credence might be lent to the idea of Austrian resistance to Nazism. But to punish some and not others would have damaged any attempt to create Austrian unity, which--due to recent developments--had become a source of preoccupation for the West, which was swiftly coming to desire an independent and neutral Austria.
I am of course alluding to the Cold War and the threat of extended Soviet influence in middle Europe. The Allies, or those of republican constitution, recognized the utility of a strong buffer nation between the communist satellite-states and the impressionable and often idiotic peoples of Italy and Greece.
In order to create such a nation, it was not expedient to cause any division amongst the provinces. The so called victim-hood of the provinces, then, was to be cast as a corporate martyrdom of the Austrian people: whole and undivided.
The provinces readily excepted this story: first, because it absolved them of their wrongdoing; Second, because it came with generous economic aid; and third, because it was a shield against soviet occupation.
What I had previously underestimated, was the malleability of the Austrian Persona, and that it had failed to take shape after the Great War. The legacy of Austrian-wictimhood may thus be considered, not as the termination of an identity crisis beginning with the Anschluss, but as the final resolution of the identity crisis left by the fall of the Hapsburgs.
There are the attendant issues of never being able to deal with the Austrian war-criminals properly, leading to celebration of Austrian service in the Wehrmacht, and ultimately Waldheim--along with who knows what other cultural disease, but it remarkable how fast the victim narrative allowed them to coalesce. They went twenty years before the Anschluss without figuring it out, but it took them months after the end of WWII to solve the problem. Remarkable.
I suppose it is nearing time for class. Time to make an end of it and enjoy these last few minutes in the sun.
Comments
Post a Comment