Romsics Gergely: The Memory of the Habsburg Empire in German, Austrian and Hungarian Right-Wing Historiography and Political Thinking 1918 - 1941 - East European Monographs 773. Atlantic Studies on Society Change 137. (New York, 2010)
III. The Memory of the Habsburgs in Austria - 1. The Dilemmas of Austrian Idengity and the Austrian Past in Political Discourse - The State that No One Wanted: German Austria and the Question of Identity Following 1918
Gergely Romsics 196 three larger right-wing parties supported union, at least in principle. As early as 1920 the Greater German People’s Party [Grossdeutsche Volkspartei] proclaimed the demand for Anschluss, and the Landbund, a farmers’ party affiliated with it, officially supported the union, as did the national liberals [Nationalliberalen] (formally declaring their pro-Anschluss position in 1922), although with time they became less and less significant. The Christian Social Party was the only party not to take an unambiguous stand on the issue. While their parliamentary representatives had supported union with a three-fourths majority in 1921, in their manifesto of 1926 they only came out in support of the right to self-determination, although attempts to obtain a maximum number of votes and the expectations abroad stemming from the position of the government may have played a role in the ambiguous phrasing of the program.3 This ambivalence is significant for two reasons: first, the Christian Social Party constituted the strongest political power, and second, as a result of their ambivalent position, they were able to integrate into their ranks figures and groups that bore legitimist sympathies. The confusion of the constructions of Austrian political identity was augmented by the profound economic crisis that accompanied the dissolution of the Monarchy. This is problematic from the point of view of the analysis here, because the question as to whether rump Austria would prove viable or would only be able to recover with the help and support of Germany obviously left its mark on the discussions concerning Austrian identity and Austrian history.4 This line of thought existed symbiotically in Austrian public thinking with the political memory shaped by the natural tendency deriving from the fact that “it is difficult to part with the memory of periods of history presented as golden ages.” The latter suggested two possible courses of action: it would be possible to break free from the “shackles” of the peace of Saint-Germain either by rediscovering the German community of old or by recapturing the allegedly most valuable dimension of the Habsburg legacy—the Danubian project of organizing the small peoples of the region. As is well known, this dilemma was only resolved “at the price of the fall of the republic” in 1938, or rather 1945.5