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)

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

1. THE DILEMMAS OF AUSTRIAN IDENTITY AND THE AUSTRIAN PAST IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE The State That No One Wanted: German Austria and the Question of Identity Following 1918 The literature on Austrian national identity between 1918 and 1938 is a literature of crisis, or rather a literature explaining an absence. According to the quasi-canonical view (represented primarily by the earlier generation of post-1945 historians), the Austrian nation came into being only as a response to the trauma of the Second World War. The contention was that the years of “occupation” were necessary in order to deprive the “grossdeutsch dream” of the appeal that it had acquired in 1918-1919.1 More recent historiography throws this interpretation into question, but this does not entail any claim of firm institutionalization of national identity in the history of the First Republic.2 This is hardly surprising: the uncertainty of national belonging constituted a continuous dilemma even for contemporaries, as the numerous texts written between 1918 and 1938 grappling with the dilemmas of identity indicate. On November 12, 1918, the Austrian Republic (German Austria) was proclaimed in front of the building where the Imperial Assembly had formerly convened. Following the fall of the shortlived Social Democrat-Christian Social -grossdeutsch coalition, the republic came under the continuous rule of the right-wing coalition of the Greater Germans and the Christian Social Party until its fall in 1934. For the better part of this period, every significant political force in the republic supported union with Germany in some form. The negotiations in Berlin in 1919 among representatives of social democracy under the leadership of Otto Bauer determined the pro-Anschluss stance of the democratic left for some time, and the 1927 Linz program merely codified the consistent view of the party concerning the necessity of union with Germany. Similarly, the