An Economic Spurt that Failed: Four Lectures in Austrian History
In: Eliot Janeway Lectures on Historical Economics
In: Eliot Janeway Lectures on Historical Economics
This paper discusses the over-focalisation on the Mediterranean area of historians of the early modern Euro-Ottoman relationship and it offers a critical assessment of the numerous studies conducted by historians of the Habsburg Monarchy over thirty years. It shows that the histories of the Austrian monarchy and of the Ottoman Empire were interdependent and that war is a marginal element in their relationship. This paper emphasises the political use of the Ottoman history by Austrian scholars from Hammer-Purgstall's essential enterprise to the violent contestation of Samuel Huntington and his civilizational pattern. Cultural history, trade and diplomacy appear as the three ways of the Austrian historiographical shift, which nevertheless calls nowadays for a more pragmatic approach.
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In: European history quarterly, Band 25, Heft 4, S. 583-590
ISSN: 1461-7110
In: East central Europe: L' Europe du centre-est : eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift, Band 9, Heft 1-2, S. 1-2
ISSN: 1876-3308
Purpose: On the occasion of its one hundredth birthday, the Republic of Austria has opened a history museum in November 2018 called the House of Austrian History. The considerations towards this are almost as old as the republic itself. This article shall analyze why political parties could not agree on a specific project for so long and illustrate the decision-making process and its implementation before ultimately categorizing the didactical-museographical concept of the exhibition from a historical-didactical perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The basis for the analysis is provided by Austrian daily newspaper coverage of the House of Austrian History. The body of sources limits itself to the period between January 2008 and January 2019 and has been evaluated based on the analysis of its content. Findings: In the course of the discussion, which preceded the opening of the House of Austrian History, the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) debated bitterly for decades about how to best interpret Austrian contemporary history and were unable to find common ground. Eventually, both the SPÖ and the ÖVP were able to agree on a concept whereby the museum would focus upon the controversial, politically influenced metanarratives of the Austrian interwar period themselves. With the SPÖ having departed from the government, however, the museum's future remains uncertain.
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The Republic of Austria emerged as one of the new states from the rubble of the Habsburg Empire after the First World War. Delegates from German-speaking provinces of the former Empire gathered in Vienna in October 1918 to discuss statehood. Whilst early debates focused on "German Austria" as a nation in its own right, the idea of an "Anschluss" with Germany gained ground, and soon became the prevailing political concept. Nonetheless, the State Treaty of St. Germain (1919) prohibited Austria any political association with Germany, which forced Austrians to discourse about national identity, a struggle that lasted until well after the Second World War and is still ongoing in the Austrian political far-right. Against this backdrop, Austrians embarked on an epic debate about a "national" museum as early as 1919.Recent Austrian history has since seen numerous debates about the appropriate way of visually representing national identity. Contentious issues include(d) inter alia the home-grown Austrian variation of Fascism 1934–1938, involvement in Nazi crimes, the lenient post-war treatment of Nazi perpetrators, issues pertaining to ethnic minorities, and questions of compensation and restitution for victims of National Socialism. Exactly 99 years after the idea of a "History Chamber" surfaced, the first national museum covering contemporary Austrian history opened in November 2018.Regrettably, the debate restarted just a few days ahead of the grand opening at a hastily arranged press conference, in which the Minister of Culture outlined a new concept for the museum. Claudia Leeb (Washington State University) explains these ongoing heated debates about the museum with defense mechanisms pertaining to Austria's Nazi-past, resulting in the continuing inability of contemporary Austrian society to live up to guilt and to come to terms with its past. One of the major "defense fighters" is the Freedom Party (FPO), a right-wing populist party that briefly joined the Austrian government in 2017–2018 and strictly opposes taking any responsibility for Austria's Nazi past.This paper addresses Austria's 'coming to terms with her past' in the wake of the rise of populist nationalism and examines the possible future of the Austrian culture of remembrance, particularly with regard to the fledgling Museum of Contemporary Austrian History.
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In: Historical Social Research, Supplement, Heft 28, S. 160-190
This article presents the results of an analysis of different sources concerned with the workers' revolt of July 15, 1927 (also known as the Vienna Palace of Justice fire). The author pays special attention to the socio-historical and source-critical evaluation of more than 100 photographs illustrating this fire on July 15, 1927 by using the shadows on buildings in order to establish an exact dating of the documented acts of violence. This "shadow method" he developed himself allows to clarify the motivations and social composition of the protesters and reveal the role of the police in escalating the violence. He is able to establish an exact chronology of the events and an explanation of the social dynamics leading to a death toll of 85 demonstrators and 4 police men.
In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Band 435, Heft 1, S. 338-339
ISSN: 1552-3349
In: Advances in Austrian economics, v. 14
Leading scholars consider Austrian economics from several perspectives such as characteristic themes of entrepreneurship and uncertainty, scientific methods such as mathematical complexity theory and experimental economics, and historical contexts such as pre-war Vienna and post-war France. Placing "Austrian economics" in these multiple contexts helps to reveal the rich texture of the Austrian tradition in social thought and its multiple connections to current research in diverse fields. Applications to the theory of the trade cycle and to foreign intervention suggest that the Austrian tradition contains possibilities not yet full explored and exploited. The volume gathers together papers presented at the second biennial Wirth conference on Austrian economics, held in October 2008 when the crisis of Fall 2008 was still new and shocking. This coincidence of timing makes policy issues and crisis management a kind of leitmotif of the volume. If, as keynote speaker David Colander argues, Austrians have a comparative advantage in political economy, then its stock should rise in times of crisis and political uncertainty. The volume provides evidence in favor of this view. Contributors include David Colander, Richard Wagner, Jeffery McMullen, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr., Steve Horwitz, Richard Ebeling, Chris Coyne, and Peter Boettke.
In: Der Donauraum: Zeitschrift des Institutes für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa, Band 6, Heft JG, S. 167-167
ISSN: 2307-289X
In: Advances in Austrian economics 14
Leading scholars consider Austrian economics from several perspectives such as characteristic themes of entrepreneurship and uncertainty, scientific methods such as mathematical complexity theory and experimental economics, and historical contexts such as pre-war Vienna and post-war France. Placing "Austrian economics" in these multiple contexts helps to reveal the rich texture of the Austrian tradition in social thought and its multiple connections to current research in diverse fields. Applications to the theory of the trade cycle and to foreign intervention suggest that the Austrian tradition contains possibilities not yet full explored and exploited. The volume gathers together papers presented at the second biennial Wirth conference on Austrian economics, held in October 2008 when the crisis of Fall 2008 was still new and shocking. This coincidence of timing makes policy issues and crisis management a kind of leitmotif of the volume. If, as keynote speaker David Colander argues, Austrians have a comparative advantage in political economy, then its stock should rise in times of crisis and political uncertainty. The volume provides evidence in favor of this view. Contributors include David Colander, Richard Wagner, Jeffery McMullen, J. Barkley Rosser, Jr., Steve Horwitz, Richard Ebeling, Chris Coyne, and Peter Boettke.
In: Contemporary Austrian Studies
Writing biographies for a long time had been a male hegemonic project. Ever since Plutarch and Sueton composed their vitae of the greats of classical antiquity, to the medieval obsession with the hagiographies of holy men (and a few women) and saints, Vasari's lives of great Renaissance artists, down to the French encyclopedists, Dr. Johnson and Lytton Strachey, as well as Ranke and Droysen the genre of biographical writing has become increasingly more refined. In the twentieth century male predominance has become contested and the (collective) lives of women, minorities and ordinary people are now the focus of biographical writing. This volume of Contemporary Austrian Studies offers a cross-section of Austrian lives and biographical approaches to recent Austrian history. Here are what may be called traditional biographies of leading political figures through the twentieth century. We also suggest that the intellectual biographies of thinkers and professionals are fertile soil for biographical study. Moreover, the prosopographical study of common folks in the Austrian population lifts these lives from the dark matter of anonymous masses and gives rich insight into the lives that ordinary Austrians have been leading. We present an array of political lives, including that of Ignaz Seipel and Therese Schlesinger-Eckstein, as well as "Lives of the Mind" which capture the lives of fascinating intellectual figures in pre- and post-World War II Vienna such as Viktor Frankl and Eugenie Schwarzwald. The approaches to writing biography taken in this volume also suggest that much work needs to be done to shed light on the lives of ordinary Austrians. In this volume we have biographical accounts detailing the lives of soldiers, prisoners of war, and farming families. The writing of lives is always situated between fact and fiction, ascertainable data and the imagination of the biographer. This volume of Austrian Lives offers an intimate look into the lives of intriguing individuals while illuminating the touching lives of ordinary Austrians in wartime Vienna. Authors: Bernhard Fetz, John Deak, Ernst Hanisch, Gabriella Hauch, Philipp Strobl, Johannes Koll, Elisabeth Röhrlich, Martin Eichtinger, Helmuth Wohnout, Deborah Holmes, Jason Dawsey, Timothy Pytell, Stefan Maurer, Wolfram Dornik, Wilfried Garscha, Günter Bischof, Barbara Stelz-Marx, Hans Petschar, Herbert Friedlmeier, Ernst Langthaler, Oliver Rathkolb, Peter Berger, Alexander Lassner, Gerald Steinacher, Berthold Molden, Maria-Regina Kecht, Thomas Nowotny, Reinhold Gärtner
In: [Elgaronline]
In: [Edward Elgar books]
In: Edward Elgar E-Book Archive
Contents: 1. Introduction -- 2. 'Red Vienna' and the roots of Austro-marxism -- 3. The young Rudolf Hilferding -- 4. Otto Bauer 1904-1914 -- 5. The economics of socialism -- 6. Otto Bauer 1917-1938 -- 7. Other voices -- 8. The heirs. I: Josef Steindl -- 9. The heirs. Ii: Kurt Rothschild -- 10. What is left -- Bibliography -- Index.
This essay intends to investigate some aspects of the multifaceted relationship between the Viennese operetta and Austrian film in the period from the 1930s to the 1950s. In particular, the essay will try to trace the influence of the operetta on the way in which Austrian films depicted the country's history. Focusing on some of the most popular Austrian films of the period, including Willi Forst's Operette (1940), Wiener Blut (1942) and Wiener Mädeln (1944-49), as well as Ernst Marischka's trilogy from the late 1950s about the Austrian empress "Sissi", the essay will critically discuss Austrian cinema's penchant for the past, investigating the affinity of the Austrian (musical) film to the Viennese operetta, which served as its ideological and aesthetic model. In its affection for the past, Austrian cinema followed in the steps of the Viennese operetta. In contrast with the Hollywood musical genre or German musical films like Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930) or Hallo Janine (1939), to mention just two of the most famous ones from the pre-war era, history was a key component of the Austrian Musikfilm. In Austria, the musical film overlapped with the historical genre, and it strongly influenced the country's memory of its past. By investigating the connection between the Viennese operetta and Austrian cinema, this essay aims to provide a better understanding of Austrian films in the cultural, political and historical context in which they saw the light of day.
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