In the days of the old Austrian Empire, it was said: "the Orient begins at the Landstrasse." The Landstrasse, in the southern environs of Vienna, was then a point of departure for the Hungarian or South Slav crownlands. Though no political border existed for hundreds of kilometers, the saying illustrates the common perception that Vienna lay and still lies on an ethnic, linguistic and cultural border between German-dominated Central Europe and the exotic East.

Following the First World War, when the Austrian Empire disintegrated under the impact of the centrifugal self-determination of its non-German nationalities, the German-speaking Austrians who remained, were left without a country. Historically they identified themselves with the Habsburg dynasty and the multi-national empire it had assembled. With both now gone, for the German-speaking Austrians who were left, so was Austria. An independent existence was unthinkable and joining the German Republic then forming to the north, just as their ethnic, cultural and linguistic neighbors in Bavaria had joined the German Reich formed by Bismarck forty-eight years before, seemed the only logical possibility. In 1945, after the immigrant Austrian, Adolf Hitler, had made Germany the pariah of the world, Austrians set about distancing themselves from the country which a quarter of a century before they had so eagerly wanted to join. The border they had once regarded as a razor slash through the body of a living nation, then became a bulwark behind which a new national identity has grown. The borders to the east and south remain, as they were in 1919, congruent with the ethnic, cultural and linguistic border of German-speaking Central Europe. But even in 1990, when the end of the Cold War permitted the two post-war German states to merge into one Germany, there was not even a suggestion that there was yet a third border still dividing the German nation. Austrians were happy for their neighbors, but remained proudly aloof from German unification, making it clear that out of the German-Austrians of 1918 and 1938 had developed a self-confident political nation comfortable in its newly developed identity. Such a deliberate substitution of one national identity for another is perhaps unique in the history of modern nationalism and deserves closer scrutiny at a time when long-standing consensus's on matters of nationality and borders have again been called into question.

Many factors enter into building a consensus on what constitutes a nation. Virtually all of those that might have cemented a sense of German national identity in Austria were extant after 1918, except the crucial experience of a common political history. The unlinking of the traditional determinants of national identity such as language, culture and ethnicity from the matter of state borders came about as the consequence of historical conditions which excluded German-Austrians from the German state for the greater part of the period after unification in 1871 and incorporated them in 1938 under circumstances that ultimately crystallized the desire for exclusion and a separate national identity. This paper will first analyze Austria's role in German history and the significance of German nationalism in the relationship between the two states in the modern era and then discuss Austria's motives, techniques and success in inculcating a new, national identity.

For over a millennium before nationalism reworked the map of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Austria was an integral part of the German nation that was understood to be a loose confederation of the sovereign states that made up the Holy Roman Empire. The incorporation of the territory that constitutes modern Austria began already in the eighth century under Charlemagne and by the thirteenth century its rulers were among the most powerful German princes. By the turn of the sixteenth century, the Habsburgs had forged the concept of a distinct Austrian state within the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation and their capital at Vienna had become the preeminent southern German trade metropolis and one of the main centers of culture and learning for all of German-speaking Europe. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Holy Roman Emperors attempted to use power of their Habsburg dynastic holdings to transform the illusion of an empire of German principalities into a political reality. Although they failed, Austria remained the most important German state and became something much more as the consequence of its incorporation of Bohemia, Hungary and later much of the Balkans in the wake of the ebbing of Ottoman power. With this expansion of Austria from a southern German state into an eastern and southeastern empire, the "Greater-Austrian" idea of a pluralistic, supranational empire replaced that of the pre-national, but nevertheless German, Austrian state. Germanized elites from the newly incorporated areas moved into important positions in the bureaucracy, the Church, and the economy and although Vienna did not cease to be one of the most important German cities, it did take on a cosmopolitan character that set it apart. Nowhere was this more evident than in the cultural sphere. By the turn of the nineteenth century a German high culture had begun to emerge and Vienna was one its most important centers. German-Austrians like Haydn, whose hymn has been used and abused as the German national anthem, and Mozart, as well as "non-Austrian Germans" like Gluck and Beethoven flocked to the Austrian capital which was graced by many of the finest architectural examples of the German Baroque and Rococo. The German National Theater, founded by Joseph II in 1776, became the leading stage in German-speaking Europe, but with the difference that in addition to important works of the general German Enlightenment, dramas in German by Austrian authors on Magyar and Slavic historical themes were also produced .

In the early stages of the crystallization of German nationalism, Austrians still had no problem of identity. They were Germans or Magyars or Czechs, or Slovenes, etc. who were also Austrians. It was only as the idea developed that the borders of the political nation [Staatsnation] should, to as great a degree possible, encompass all people of the same language, culture and ethnicity Kulturnation], that a problem of identity developed. The unification of the German Reich by Bismarck in 1871 ended the quest of most Germans for national identity, but left nationally conscious German-Austrians torn between their attraction to the Reich and loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty and its institutions.

The time for this ambivalence seemed ended in 1918 when in the final days of the First World War the non-German territories of the Empire seceded to form their own nation-states. Shorn of the territory that for centuries had defined their country, Austrians knew who they were largely only by who they were not. In its commentary to a public opinion poll on what to call what was left of the old empire, an Innsbruck newspaper wrote: "We and the world know only, that were are not Hungarian-, but also not Czech-, Polish-, or South Slavic-Austria, but rather German-Austria . . . ." No one at the time seriously contemplated the idea that the German-speaking Alpine lands of the old empire could possibly constitute a viable state. The provisional government declared the area to be "German-Austria," but as a part of the German Republic reconstituting itself out of the remnants of the Bismarckian Reich and the Innsbruck newspaper that had conducted the opinion poll refused to have anything to do with what it considered to be the "tainted old name" of Austria. In 1919 however, the victorious Allies denied Austria the right to join the German nation and make its political borders those of the linguistic, ethnic and cultural nation as well. Although this "state that no one wanted" was forced to remove even the word German from its name, it continued to consider itself "the second German state," and after Hitler had destroyed the Weimar Republic, "the better German state." With the Anschluß of Austria in March of 1938 and the incorporation of most remaining German-Austrians as a consequence of the annexation of the Sudetenland approved in Munich the following September, the congruence of the Kulturnation with the now National Socialist political nation was almost complete; by 1945 the demographic impact of Nazi relocation and extermination policies was that Austria had become more German than at any time in the past four hundred years. Paradoxically, it was this realization of Greater-German unity by the Austrian emigre Adolf Hitler, that started Austria on the road out of the German nation and towards a new, national identity of its own.

Given the historical tradition until 1938 and a different course of events after the Anschluß, it is conceivable that Austria would have been perceived as one state of the divided German nation after the war, just as were the Federal and Democratic Republics. In 1945 however, at a time when the Cold War was making European nations subordinate elements in the East-West power struggle Germany existed no more, Austrians then found it expedient to jettison their commitment to the idea of a Kulturnation and to identify with the new Austrian Republic. Many Austrians had indeed gone jubilantly "home into the Reich" in 1938, but they had not anticipated that in the process of finally becoming Germans, they would cease to be Austrian. But not only was the border to Germany extinguished, even the name Austria was replaced with the designation Ostmark; later, all sense of historic unity was destroyed when the territories were downgraded into simply the Danube and Alpine Gaue of the Greater German Reich. National unity came to be seen as "the Nazi Occupation" and after six years of imposed military service, most Austrians had had enough of the Germans and resigned themselves to either live with or overcome the ambiguity of nation and state. The German language, which previously had been one of the main determinants of national consciousness, remained monolithic in Austria, but German-nationalism, tainted as it was by National-Socialism, was largely dead. De-Nazification also brought "de-Germanization" and a campaign to substitute the western understanding of the word nation as equivalent to state for the historic concept of a politically transcendent Kulturnation determined by language, culture and ethnicity was initiated.

Already before the Anschluß, a handful of ideologues in the monarchist wing of the Christian-Social Party and also in the Communist party had separately begun, out of a common hatred and fear of Nazi-dominated German nationalism, to promote the idea of a distinct Austrian nation. During the Nazi "Occupation" and war, more politically conscious Austrians came to embrace the dream of an independent Austrian nation, built on a "social partnership" that would end the civil war mentality that in the First Republic had made Anschluß ultimately appear the only salvation. Austrian Communist émigrés in the Soviet Union also impressed this vision of an independent Austria on Stalin and at the Moscow Conference in October, 1943 Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov rejected wording for a final declaration by the Britain and the United States that would have implied acceptance of the legitimacy of the Anschluß. The final text implied instead, support for future independence by describing the Anschluß not as a "union" of the "Austrian people" with Germany as in the Anglo-American draft, but as an "annexation" making Austria ". . . the first free country to fall victim to Hitlerite aggression." This Moscow Declaration became one of the first "myths of creation" for the new Austrian nation that was fabricated after 1945 and fit into the post-war policies of both East and West as the realities of the Cold War precluded other alternatives for restructuring Central Europe. In reality however, as new research by Keyserlingk proves, the Moscow Declaration was simply a propaganda ploy intended to stimulate an Austrian revolt against Hitler and created no legal precedent for independence. Indeed Keyserlingk cites a 1944 State Department planning report complaining that "The Moscow Declaration poses the Austrian question without specifying a clear-cut solution" and proves that at least the United States was still considering the possibility of a confederation of the old Habsburg succession states or even another Anschluß with Germany.

In 1945 however, it suited the purposes of the Soviets, and ultimately the Western Allies as well, to lend legal substance to their off-handed appearance of support for Austrian independence given in the Moscow Declaration in the decidedly different political environment of two years before. Less than three weeks after the Red Army had liberated Vienna from German military control, Dr. Karl Renner, as provisional State Chancellor, renounced the validity of the Anschluß and on the same spot from which he had declared the creation of German-Austria in November of 1918, he now proclaimed the reestablishment of the Republic of Austria, albeit with authority only over the territory liberated by the Soviets. In the wake of the liberation of western Austria by the other Allied forces, provisional state governments also arose. It was fortuitous that the Allies found the reestablishment of the old Länder or states to suit their purposes, thus promoting a federal structure for the nascent nation that largely coincided with the historic identities of the regions as they had been knit together into the First Republic. Although not without difficulty, it was also agreed to restore the constitution of the First Republic in its amended 1929 version, providing further continuity for the new state. On November 25, a parliament was elected to replace the provisional government and proceed with the business of reconstructing the shattered state.

Despite the illusion that Austria was restoring itself to its former status, something distinctly new was beginning. By 1918, Austrians had for centuries been used to great power status and had sought to compensate for their loss of importance by becoming Germans. In 1945, they fled from Germany and set about defining an identity for Austria, consistent with its small state status. Austrian Communist intellectual Ernst Fischer picked up the ideological campaign begun by his party's illegal organ Weg und Ziel in 1937/38 which was designed to rewrite history so as to justify an independent Austrian nation. On the right, Alfred Missong, founded Österreichische Monatshefte as the ideological organ of the Christian-conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), at least in part, to present the arguments that he and Habsburg-monarchist E.K. Winter had made in 1927, to the effect that Austrians were different from Germans by virtue of their history, their ethnic character and their humanity. Whether on the right or the left, politicians and journalists vigorously promoted the idea of the Austrian nation, and academicians discovered new sources and reinterpreted old ones in order to document a sense of Austrian identity separate and distinct from that of Germany. German was equated with Prussian and in then in turn with pan-Germanism and Nazism. To argue that Austrians were part of a culturally transcendent, even if politically divided, German nation was to risk charges of neo-Nazism. An example of the ludicrous extremes to which this effort to distance Austria from the Germans, was the insistence by the ÖVP Minister of Education, Felix Hurdes, that school classes in composition and grammar be called "Instruction in Language" [Unterrichtssprache] rather than "Instruction in German" [Deutschunterricht]. Wags dubbed this new "Austrian" language Hurdestanisch.

Few Austrians at this time still longed to be part of any German state, but as yet there was no general consensus that the romantic concept of a Kulturnation should be surrendered. The reasons for the rather flaccid development of Austrian national consciousness for the first two decades after the 1945 rest not only in the strong sense of Greater-German nationalism that had taken hold after the First World War, but also in the contradictory relationship between the Republic's democratic institutions and the decidedly undemocratic and hypocritical elements upon which it was based.

In April of 1945, when the elites of the two, formerly hostile Austrian political camps put together the Provisional Government that ultimately became the foundation for the Second Republic, they were determined to avoid the civil war environment of the First Republic. Because Austria had modernized only relatively recently, when independence was thrust upon it in 1919, its society was an unstable mix of pre-modern and modern elements starkly divided and vertically integrated into three, mutually hostile political camps: 1) the Christian-conservative, encompassing most of the peasantry as well as the entrepreneurial classes, 2) the anti-clerical, German-National-liberal, composed of professionals, small businessmen and civil servants and 3) the avowedly Marxist social-democratic. The political parties representing the two bourgeois groupings grudgingly cooperated for a time, but by the late 1920's economic crisis eroded the fragile consensus that had momentarily stabilized the society. The National-liberals defected to the Nazis and made war on the Republic from the underground and from Nazi Germany across the northern border, while the Christian Socials dictatorially crushed the Social Democrats after 1933.

Despite five years of "clerical fascist" and seven years of Nazi dictatorship, in 1945, the social-political cleavages of Austrian society still remained. With a Soviet-dominated Peoples' Republic the only other possibility, the founders of the new Austrian Republic set about creating an independent, democratic state. The social-economic and political homogeneity necessary for a mature democracy was however not yet extant. The technique devised to horizontally link the still vertically divided society has become known as "social partnership." This was achieved through Proporz, a system by which adherents of the Christian-conservative Peoples' Party (ÖVP) and the Socialist Party (SPÖ) were appointed in pairs to posts from the highest government offices down to the lowest administrative positions in the bureaucracy, nationalized industries and educational institutions in numbers and responsibility proportional to the relative strength of their respective parties in the parliament. This permitted party elites to woo the faithful with ideological and class-based rhetoric during election campaigns, while guaranteeing that after the elections they would close ranks at all levels of society. All decisions were made behind closed doors based on secret coalition agreements making the putatively democratic institutions of the Republic into a sham.

Until the economic revival of the 1950's removed the anxiety about basic survival, ideological concerns about individual freedoms, democracy and national identity were secondary. Indeed, a survey of public opinion polls conducted by the U.S. Occupation suggests that ". . . a majority appears to have supported an ideology diametrically opposed to the institutional structure of the second Republic." In addition to the Proporz and the "Social Partnership" of the two political camps making up the coalition government, Austrian identity was also built upon what might be called the "myths of creation" of the new Republic. According to Salzburg historian Gerhard Botz, by accepting the myth (Lebenslüge) that it had been the victim of Hitlerite aggression as asserted in the Moscow Declaration, Austria was condemned to live the lie that it was liberated and therefore not a willing part of the German nation defeated by the Allies. Thus Austria had to flee from its past and create another upon which to build the Austrian nation of the future. The consequence of this failure to "conquer the past" has been a fragility of national self-confidence that can be seen in the hyper-sensitivity of Austrians over the Waldheim affair and in recent challenges to two other "myths of creation," the Austrian State Treaty and "permanent neutrality" that will be discussed below.

Another Austrian historian, denies that Austrians did not feel themselves liberated in 1945. While this is doubtlessly true, any counter contention that they also believed that the Austrian state had become a separate nation is not. In 1956, eleven years after the declaration of the Second Austrian Republic and the year after full sovereignty had been achieved through the State Treaty, the first public opinion poll on national identity showed only 49 per cent of those questioned convinced that Austrians were a separate people, while 46 per cent still identified themselves as part of the German people. Since 1945, but most particularly after the signing of the State Treaty, the resources of the government, public education and the media have been mobilized to create a new sense of Austrian national identity. The campaign seems to have been an enormous success. In a 1989 poll, 78 per cent expressed the belief that "The Austrians constituted a nation," and another 15 per cent believed that "the Austrians are beginning, slowly to perceive themselves as constituting a nation." Only 4 per cent contended that Austria was not a nation and 2 per cent had no opinion. The next section of this paper will trace this transformation of public opinion using Peter Katzenstein's four-stage model for the progressive development of national consciousness as the vehicle for analysis.

Katzenstein's first stage is institutional commitment, which ". . . represents the psychological support for the institutions through which the political system is organized." The fact that a majority of Austrians polled in 1956 still did not identify Austria as a separate nation, even after eleven years of independent existence and a year after the signing of the State Treaty, the end of the Allied Occupation and the declaration of "permanent neutrality," speaks to the validity of Katzenstein's thesis that national consciousness is tied to the progressive development first of a commitment to the institutions of the state and then of a functional commitment ". . . that evolves from the multiplicity of roles individuals assume in economy and society." When this has been accomplished, people begin to identify the state as a political nation, in the western sense, separate and distinct from other political nations without regard to transcendent cultural factors. Certainly the State Treaty and the voluntary declaration of neutrality that had been necessary to achieve it have become important "myths of creation" that stimulated the initial commitment of Austrians to the institutions of their nation. Economic stability and political security were however necessary for the development of a functional commitment.

The State Treaty and neutrality insured Austria's security as a state and the accelerating economic prosperity of the late 1950's and 1960's began to break down the social cleavages between the political camps. In 1963, the SPÖ, for the first time in the history of the Second Republic, broke with its coalition partner to vote with the German-national FPÖ. Three years later, the remnants of the civil war mentality of the First Republic had abated sufficiently to permit the election of the Second Republic's first single-party government. These are clear indicators that Austria was evolving from a vertically structured consociational democracy, where horizontal integration occurred only among the elites, into a centripetal democracy in which government could be entrusted to whichever set of elites was elected by the people. Even the concept of political camps to which one was ideologically loyal with almost military discipline was fading and electoral patterns were beginning to reveal significant movement of voters between parties on the basis of contemporary issues and personalities. Similarly, sporting, cultural and other associations that previously had made up the support networks of the individual political camps became depoliticized. In short, the vertically integrated structure of Austrian society was breaking down and horizontal integration promoted the development of the functional commitments necessary for the perception of the existence of a political nation. Evidence of the degree to which these commitments had been made can be found in a 1964 poll that showed 47.37 per cent to believe that the "Austrians constituted a nation" and another 23.05 per cent that they were "slowly beginning to perceive themselves a nation." By 1970 the responses to the same questions had increased to 66 per cent and 16 per cent respectively, causing Katzenstein to conclude that Austria had become a Staatsnation.

The perception of a nation as culturally unique however, requires a deeper, sentimental and psychological identification. Katzenstein sees these as cultural and symbolic commitments:

Cultural commitment is a psychological attachment to the special qualities and products of a national culture-- to its leaders, language and literature; to its religious and philosophical traditions; and to goals which have guided the nation in the past. Symbolic commitments refers to the individual's role participation in the national system which has become an important part of his self-definition.

Testing the degree to which the values corresponding to these commitments to a nation perceived in this deeper sense has been made difficult by the fact that almost uniformly the political, cultural, educational and media establishments have deliberately employed the word nation in all references to the Austrian state, thus virtually erasing the older, Romantic distinction between a political and a cultural nation from public consciousness. Although public opinion polls also rarely make this distinction, some instruments provide data that can help measure the growth in cultural and symbolic commitments. One such poll in 1963 asked for responses to the assertions: "The Austrians are just as German as the other German tribes, for example, the Bavarians, the Swabians, etc." and "The Austrians are in no way German, but rather constitute their own nation." The "German" position was held by 51 per cent, the "Austrian" position by 41 per cent with the remaining 8 per cent having no opinion. This indicates that a majority at that time still accepted the existence of a transcendent Kulturnation, despite the 1964 poll data showing that institutional and functional commitments to the Austrian political nation were highly evolved. Similarly, a Gallup poll, commissioned by the American political scientist William T. Bluhm in 1966, illustrates that for most Austrians a distinction still existed between the nation as a cultural and a political concept. Bluhm posed the question:

Many people say: The Austrians constitute their own nation. Others contend: the Austrians are part of the German nation. Between these two positions there are many nuances of opinion. What do you believe?

The answers with percentage responses were as follows: %

• Austria is entirely its own nation and not a part of the German nation. 35
• Although Austria belongs to the German language and cultural community, Austria is its own nation. 29
• Although Austria is an independent state, Austria belongs to the German nation. 11
• Although the Austrians constitute a political nation and support the independence of the state, the still belong to the German nation. 9
• Although the Austrians belong to the German language and cultural community, they are beginning slowly to perceive themselves as a nation. 8
• Other opinions. 8

While the evolution of the concept of the nation has developed to such a point that it is synonymous with the Austrian state, some suggestion of a transcendent German cultural community can be inferred from polls in 1980 and 1987 which by a large margin confirmed the Federal Republic of Germany as the country with which "Austria has the greatest internal relationship" (70 % and 64%) and "Germany" as the "nation" towards which the respondents were the most sympathetic. The fall of the Iron Curtain which is leading to the restoration of normal neighborly relations with Czechoslovakia and Hungary led to an increase in sympathy values from 2 % and 16% respectively in 1987 to 7% and 23 % in 1990, with a corresponding drop for the now united Germany from 64% to 60%. Perhaps the real prospect of closer ties with these former Habsburg crownlands is working to supplement the largely intellectual efforts to link modern Austria with the "Greater-Austrian" past as a substitute for greater-German identity. Herein however is no nostalgic justification for a recreation of the Monarchy. Between 1987 and 1990 the preference for the small-state status of Austria in contrast to great power it had been before 1918 had climbed from 78 % to 85%.

Assessing symbolic commitments as a measure of the growth of cultural nationalism is more difficult than that of political nationalism because of the lack of comparative data over the years. In 1974, Katzenstein saw only a slow growth in symbolic commitments, citing the late date and the rancorous tenor of the debate over whether and when a national holiday should be celebrated as evidence. Although not mentioned by Katzenstein, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) even protested that the holiday be designated national, preferring state holiday instead. Although the FPÖ still continues its pro forma refusal to use the term national holiday, hardly anyone today gives any thought to the question whether the existence of Austria as a nation or a state is being celebrated. On the other hand, Katzenstein saw a rather high degree of symbolic commitment in the willingness of 64 per cent in a 1964 poll to verbally protest and another 12 per cent to take physical action if foreigners were to desecrate the Austrian flag. One wonders if the operative word in this question was not foreigners? This suspicion seems born out by the fact that in a 1985 poll that asked for responses to a hypothetical situation in which a part of the population or an organization were trying to abolish Parliament, only 22 per cent indicated they would take action and another 42 per cent indicated they would be opposed, but only passively. Similarly, in a poll conducted from 1986 to 1989, only 33 per cent indicated a willingness to bear arms to defend the country, and 7 per cent to take an active role in politics. To be sure, 58 per cent declared, in a 1987 poll, that they were "unconditionally proud" and another 34 per cent that they were "predominately proud," to be Austrian. Nevertheless, another, admittedly an older poll from 1975 regarding what Austrians were proud of, calls into question whether this pride can be seen as a indicative of either the "individual's role participation in the national system" as a measure of symbolic commitment or the "psychological attachment to the special qualities and products of a national culture" necessary to cultural commitment." 55 per cent were most proud of the country's natural beauty, followed by famous musicians and skiers tied at 31 per cent and neutrality at 25 percent. Similar comparative polls for the years 1980 and 1987 asking about what Austrian achievements the respondents were the most proud, the rankings were as follows:

Achievement Ranking Per Cent Per Cent

Popular Music, (Waltzes, Folk Music, 1980 1987 1980 1987 Change

Operetta, Viennese Lieder 3 1 81 83 +2

Medicine 2 2 82 74 -8

Classical Music 7 3 60 71 +11

Theater 4 4 73 67 -6

Science 5 5 73 66 -7

Sport 1 6 90 66 -24

Art 8 7 57 57 0

Literature 7 8 58 55 -3

Domestic Politics 6 9 72 27 -45

Polls for the years 1986-1989 on what Austrians find "very important" may serve as a cross-check for the polls on pride: Family or partnership ranked highest with values in the mid-80 per cent range, followed by work or occupation at about 50 per cent. Recreation ranked above 30 per cent with the categories such as sport (12 %), politics (9%) and the arts (6.8%).

These polls, which admittedly do not test precisely for the values contributing to Katzenstein's higher orders of cultural or symbolic commitment, seem nevertheless to confirm his proximate conclusion that Austria, by 1970, was in the process of evolving a new perception of a political community, that was neither as "warm and organic" as the Romantic, nor as "cold and pragmatic" as the political concept. Polls conducted on the question of when Austrians believed that a national consciousness had begun to develop, showed a gain in the significance of the period from 1945 through the signing of the State Treaty from 40 per cent in 1965, to 58 per cent in 1980 to 61 per cent in 1987. Passive cultural recognition of the factors that contribute to cultural commitment is relatively high, but symbolic commitment, as measured by a willingness to become politically engaged in the affairs of the nation still appears weak, sustaining Gerlach's description of Austrian national-consciousness as passive and superficial.

This relatively mild commitment to nation is undoubtedly due to the fact that Austrian national consciousness has been largely intellectually inculcated rather than developed through the crises and successes of the historical experience. Particularly since the end of the 1950's, the ideological organs of the Peoples' Party and the Socialist Party, the press and the academic community have inundated the public with arguments on behalf of the Austrian nation. A consistent participant in this campaign of public education has been the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance. With close ties to the Austrian Communist Party and the left-wing of the Socialist Party, its efforts have been focused on promoting research and publication on National Socialism and on exposing right-wing tendencies and movements in the Second Republic. Since it equates virtually any expression of German-nationalism with extremism, it has been a strong proponent of the Austrian nation. To the right of the Documentation Archive, the journals Die Republik and Die österreichische Nation devoted their efforts to the mission of promoting the concept of an Austrian nation reaching back into the Middle Ages and a new generation of historians combed the archives to find sources to support the writing of Austria out of German history. Perhaps the most candid statement of this intent was the dedication by Felix Kreissler of his book on the Austrian nation to the goal of ". . . radically destroying the legend of the `German Austrians,' yes even of the `better Germans,' and to present the establishment and development of the Austrian nation."

For forty-five years now, academics, journalists, teachers and other opinion shapers have been inculcated with the ideology of the Austrian nation while those who suggest that Austria was part of the German cultural community have been stigmatized as Nazi sympathizers and dismissed. The fact that commitment to the Austrian nation, despite its overwhelming numerical acceptance after the 1970's, remains passive and superficial may be attributed, at least in part, to the Lebenslüge as described above. Successive generations of publicists, politicians, academics, teachers and other opinion-shapers were simply indoctrinated with the self-evident truth of an Austrian nation, separate and distinct from the German and no serious debate that might have given strength to the principle in the spirit of John Stuart Mill's "free marketplace of ideas" was permitted to take place.

The only consistent opposition to the existence of an Austrian nation has come from the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). Founded in 1956, by former German-nationalists, most of whom became Nazis after 1933, and assorted disaffected elements, the FPÖ attempted to reconstruct the old national-liberal camp between the Catholic-conservative right and the Marxist left. It accepted the sovereignty of an independent Austrian state, but still asserted that it was part of the German ethnic and cultural community. In its view Austria was a third component of the transcendent German Kulturnation and the idea that it was a nation, outside of German history and culture, was seen as an opportunistic, post-war invention. Nevertheless, no lingering desire for another Anschluß can be found in either its public statements or the minutes of its closed meetings. Instead, it expressed the hope that the identity and equality of all nationalities could be realized within a United States of Europe and supported the earliest possible entry of Austria into the then developing European Economic Community. Many of the FPÖ parliamentary delegates had expressed reservations in the debate on the State Treaty the year before, because of its link to the Soviet pre-condition of "permanent neutrality" and then voted against the neutrality law, preferring an "enduring" commitment to one that would be binding on all future generations. Most Austrians at this time however wanted only to be free of the Allied Occupation and thought of little other than economic recovery. They were uninterested in splitting hairs over the meaning of the word nation or distinctions between "enduring" or "permanent neutrality" and worried only that entrance into the strongly capitalistic Common Market would threaten the comfortable "social partnership" that had developed. In short the FPÖ's appeal to ideological issues in an attempt to rebuild the traditional national-liberal camp was irrelevant to most Austrians.

Over the next fifteen years rising prosperity and political stability promoted the development of institutional and structural commitment to Austria, which, under the influence of the media and public education, came to be accepted as at least a political nation. What is surprising, although understandable from the predictive assumptions of Katzenstein's model of national development, is the dramatic extent to which FPÖ supporters also made the transition. According to Katzenstein, national consciousness initially arose in the modern, bourgeois sectors of nineteenth century society. German-speaking bourgeoisie had been the backbone of the national-liberal camp under the Empire and the First Republic and were, because of their dream of unification with Germany, particularly susceptible to National Socialism. It was therefore not surprising in the first years of the Second Republic, that these "moderns" remained firm in their perception of Austria as part of the German Kulturnation. But, this model also predicts that these same "moderns," because of "communication capacities and learning incentives," will far outstrip the traditional sectors in their cogitative identification with the new nation. The validity of the model was, in fact, demonstrated in the values of what Katzenstein calls "net functional commitment." The predominately bourgeois "moderns" of the FPÖ shifted from an index value of -28 to a +82 in the years from 1964 to 1970. In contrast, during the same time SPÖ sentiment rose only four points, from +84 to +88 and the ÖVP, itself partially built on bourgeois and German-national foundations, rose from +56 to +76 index points. Even in the area of cultural commitment, where the FPÖ's insistence upon Austria's membership in the German ethnic and cultural community could be expected to retard accommodation with the concept of the Austrian nation, FPÖ supporters moved from a net cultural commitment index value of -16 in 1964 to +36 by 1970, in contrast to a shift from +58 to +70 for the SPÖ and +50 to +66 for the ÖVP. By 1989, only 13 per cent of FPÖ supporters polled still rejected the statement that Austrians constitute a nation, thereby indicating their continuing commitment to the idea that Austria is part of a German Kulturnation. 64 per cent however, unreservedly accepted the idea that Austria was a nation and another 22 per cent expressed the belief that "the Austrians are slowly beginning to perceive themselves as a nation." Thus, even among the supporters of the party which still maintains a distinction between a cultural nation and a political nation in its program, it would appear that the issue has become irrelevant. Certainly the overwhelming statistical evidence indicates that support for the idea that Austria is a nation is widespread. The depth of that commitment as placed in question above has, however, not been widely discussed.

A measure of the superficiality of the national consciousness of Austrians may be seen in their hyper-sensitivity in response to a number of "Affairs" and incidents linking their country to a German and most particularly a Nazi past. In January of 1985 Austrians were confronted with one of their Lebenslügen when former SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Reder returned home from Italy where he had been serving a life sentence for war crimes. The scandal that arose out of the circumstances surrounding his return is evidence of Austria's continuing need to justify its national identity. On the surface the return of Reder should have been unexceptional. He had been convicted in questionable proceedings in an Italian military tribunal in 1951 and in 1980 was reclassified as a prisoner of war to be released in July 1985. Over the years the Austrian government, all three political parties, Cardinal König and even the Pope had requested that he be pardoned. Shortly before Christmas 1984 the Italian government informed the Austrian Foreign Ministry that Reder could be freed soon, but under the condition that secrecy be maintained until ten days after the release had been made. On January 23, only 22 hours before Reder was to arrive, SPÖ Foreign Minister Leopold Gratz turned to FPÖ Defense Minister Frischenschlager to make arrangements within the Federal Army in order to insure the secrecy of the transfer. Frischenschlager agreed to take over the operation and personally flew to a sealed off military airport near Graz where the transfer was to occur. According to the Austrian plan, Reder was to step directly from the Italian military plane into Frischenschlager's helicopter so as to avoid recognition. Unfortunately, an Italian news agency had gotten wind of the operation and shortly before Reder's plane approached Austrian air space, broke the story. As it turned out, upon their arrival in Austria, the Italian authorities required that some papers be prepared. Thus, when Reder and his escort arrived, Frischenschlager's greeting, a simple handshake as is the usual Austrian custom upon meeting someone, took place not in the privacy of his helicopter, but on the tarmac of the airport, before the eyes of the press and the world. The opposition ÖVP saw this as an opening to destroy the governing SPÖ-FPÖ coalition and made Frischenschlager's simple shake of hands with Reder into a "state reception" with a convicted war criminal. This incident was also grist for the mill of the left wing of the SPÖ which had never been comfortable in coalition with the party it still identifies as a Nazi-party. One weekly newsmagazine accused Frischenschlager of trying to make the Federal Army the legal successor to the German Wehrmacht or even the SS and another charged that Frischenschlager had received Reder as a national hero under a headline that imputed Anschluß sympathies to him. What perhaps escalated the self-exculpating criticism of Frischenschlager from all sides was the coincidental presence of the World Jewish Congress which was meeting for the first time in Vienna in order to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz forty years before. On the other side of the political spectrum, rising political star Jörg Haider courted German-national sentiment and that of those who were simply indignant at what they regarded as the persecution of a man who "had just done his military duty."

For forty years, Austria had tried to distance itself from Germany and from Nazism and impress upon the world its commitment to independence and democracy. The Reder Affair recalled darker days and tarnished the perception of Austria as a land of Alpine charm and Gemütlichkeit. The Waldheim Affair, which began the next year and obsessed Austria through the end of the decade, nearly destroyed Austria's carefully cultivated image; nevertheless, out of this crisis may have arisen a deeper sense of national consciousness than had ever existed before. For the purposes of this paper, there is no reason to discuss the complex and divergent interpretations of the Waldheim election victory. There is however, general agreement that Waldheim was the beneficiary of a patriotic indignation that arose after the New York-based, World Jewish Congress began a campaign in the New York Times that echoed throughout the U.S. and Europe to implicate him in the Nazi crimes of the Second World War. Angered by what they regarded as unsubstantiated and hypocritical attacks by countries that had cleared Waldheim for election as Secretary-General, Austrians closed ranks against what they regarded as foreign interference in the internal affairs of Austria; this can readily be seen in the campaign slogan: "We Austrians will vote for whomever we want." In explaining why Green, Socialist and indifferent voters voted for the ÖVP candidate, one analyst put it: ". . . they didn't vote for Waldheim because they wanted him, but rather because the Americans, Jews and other foreigners didn't. They voted out of spite." They felt themselves, along with the president they had elected, unjustly accused and the American decision the next year to place Waldheim on the "Watch List" only intensified this indignation as could be seen in increased anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism in the press. Throughout 1988, the year given over to contemplation about the Anschluß and its consequences, Waldheim remained a political embarrassment and source of divisiveness at home, but also became a symbol, who, if even in a negative manner, contributed to a continuing rise in Austrian national consciousness. Between 1987, when the Waldheim Affair put Austria on the front pages of the newspapers of the world, and 1990, the numbers of Austrians answering the standard poll questions on the Austrian nation rose another three points to an almost unanimous 94%. Neither the fall of the Iron Curtain on the borders to her old territories in the east, nor the unification of Germany dampened this trend. Indeed the almost universal approval, against the criticism of Europe and the United States, of Federal President Waldheim's mission to Saddam Hussein in September of 1990 to secure the release of Austrian hostages, seems to suggest that even he was becoming a positive figure for national identity. The subsequent parade of other western leaders to Baghdad on similar missions was seen to vindicate Waldheim and Austria and seemed again to illustrate the hypocrisy of his critics.

As Austria approaches a mature sense of identity, it is becomes necessary to revise the "myths of creation" that were used for the building of the nation. Austria had indeed been part of German history for a millennium before the military and diplomatic realities of Bismarck's day made its border to the north a national boundary. This essay is, in part, a response to Professor James Sheehan's plea for the removal of German history from the artificial categories imposed by national borders. By rejecting the role of history as ". . . a case study for the process of nationbuilding," he hoped we would

. . . gain not only a new view of the German past, but also a different perspective from which to examine the German present. From this perspective, we can see that 1945 did not mark `the end of German history,' as some have mournfully proclaimed. Nor is German history after 1945 simply the history of the Federal Republic, the `real' Germany's temporarily truncated extension. These radical expressions of discontinuity and continuity are both misleading, because both define the postwar era in terms of the old Reich. It is time to acknowledge that the present period has a historical legitimacy of its own, a legitimacy which comes not from its relationship to the old Reich, but from its place within a broader and deeper historical tradition. The German present is not a postscript to the imperial past; it is a new chapter in a much older story.

It is testimony to the still fragile national identity of Austria that challenges to the "myths of creation" still arouse enormous indignation. In August 1988, FPÖ-Chairman Haider was asked during a television talk show why his party did not recognize the concept of an Austrian nation. He responded that the Austrian nation was an "ideological miscarriage," explaining that ethnicity, a common language and culture determine nationality, which is something quite different from citizenship in a state. The media and the politicians of the ruling coalition were almost unanimous in their condemnation of Haider, with some going so far as to accuse him of fascism or neo-Nazism. The ratio of criticism to acceptance of his statement in letters to the editor of various Austrian newspapers seems however to indicate that there is far more willingness among the people to accept the idea that Austria is part of the German ethnic and cultural community, e.g. a Kulturnation, than the media or the politicians are willing to grant. Even more outrageously, Haider attacked another myth on which the nation is built. In a speech in Munich on the day that the new German peace treaty went into effect, he argued that now Austria had more limitations on her sovereignty than the united Germany. Accordingly, he called for a revision of the State Treaty and suggested that at a time when end of the of Cold War had created new conditions in Europe and with the Gulf War threatening, Austria's policy of permanent neutrality should be reconsidered. That the inviolability of the State Treaty should be questioned was met with indignation by the media and the coalition parties and the suggestion that neutrality might be ended was seen in some quarters as Haider's move towards a new Anschluß with Germany.

Those responsible for shaping and leading public opinion are clearly still obsessed with Austria's problematic relationship to Germany in the past. Their concern seems unjustified. The public opinion data cited above illustrate that Austrians have long since committed themselves to the concept of an independent nation, at least in the political sense, and are well conscious of their identity as separate and distinct from the Germans. If any sentiment for a new unification with Germany still existed, it would have been expressed in the year of German unification; it was not. Within the new "Europe of regions," where state boundaries will lose first economic and later political significance there is room for a cultural-national integration of many divided nationalities across borders that no longer have any meaning. In the same sense that in the pre- and early-nationalist era, Austrians could be Germans, or Magyars or Czechs or Slovene and still be Austrians, so too in the future can Austrians of German, Magyar, Czech or Slovene descent be Europeans. In such a Europe, Sheehan's dream could come true and Austria would become a part of a German future that would be "not a postscript to the imperial past," but continuing chapters "in a much older story."

1Presented at the Western Social Sciences Association annual meeting at Reno, Nevada, 26. April 1991, as part of the sessions organized by the Association of Borderlands Scholars.

2Quoted from the Innsbrucker Nachrichtenby Gerald Stourzh, Vom Reich zur Republik: Studien zum Österreichbewusstsein im 20Jahrhundert (Vienna: Edition Atelier, 1990), pp. 31-32.

3Ibid.

4Helmuth Andics, Der Staat den keiner wollte(Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1954).

5Gerald Stourzh, KleineGeschichte des Österreichischen Staatsvertrages mit Dokumententeil(Graz, Vienna and Cologne: Styria Verlag, 1975), pp. 14-15.

6Robert H. Keyserlingk, "Austria Abandoned: Anglo-American Propaganda and Planning for Austria, 1938-1945," in F. Parkinson (ed.), Conquering the Past: Austrian Nazism Yesterday & Today (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), pp. 225-240.

7Ibid, 236.

8Ernst Fischer, Die Entstehungs des oesterreichischen Volkscharakters, Vol.2 (Vienna, Neues Österreich, 1945).

9Fritz Fellner, "The Problem of the Austrian Nation after 1945," Journal of Modern History, vol. 60, Nr. 2 (1988), p. 269.

10The now standard analysis of Austrian society divided into camps was first made by Adam Wandruszka, "Österreichs Politische Struktur: Die Entwicklung der Parteien und Politischen Bewegungen," in Geschichte der Republik Oesterreich, ed. by Heinrich Benedikt (Vienna, 1954), pp. 291-485.

11Arend Lijphart, "Consociational Democracy," in Consociational Democracy,ed. Kenneth D. McRae (Toronto, 1974), pp. 70-95.

12Peter J. Katzenstein, "The Last Old Nation: Austrian National Consciousness since 1945," Comparative Politics, (1977), 155.

13Gerhard Botz, "Lebenslüge und national Identität im heutigen Österreich. Nationsbildung auf Kosten einer vertieften Aufarbeitung der NS-Vergangenheit," (paper to have been presented at the September, 1990 meeting of the International Society for the History of European Ideas in Leuven, Belgium), p. 8.

14Gerald Stourzh, Von Reich zur Republik. Studien zur Oesterreichbewusstsein im 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Edition Atelier, 1990), p. 49.

15Public opinion poll by the Fessel-Institut for Market and Opinion Research, April 1956, "Die Meinungsumfragen über die österreichische Nation (1956-1980)," in Georg Wagner, Oesterreich von der Staatsidee zum Nationalbewusstsein. Studien und Ansprachen mit einem Bildteil zur Geschichte Oesterreichs.(Vienna, 1982), p. 124.

16Peter Ulram, "Österreichbewußtsein in den Achtziger Jahren," a poll conducted by the Fessel + GFK Institut in the period from February 6 to March 2, 1989, p. 2.

17Katzenstein, 149.

18Ibid.

19Wagner, 125.

20Ibid, 128.

21Katzenstein, 156.

22Ibid, 149.

23Wagner citing Austrian Gallup Institut, Vienna; Bericht einer Spezialuntersuchung für William T. Bluhm als Teil einer Omnibus-Untersuchung, April 1966.

24Dr. Walter Fessel & Co, Oesterreichbewusstsein, 1987(Vienna, Fessel Institut für Meinungsforschung, 1987), p. 33.

25Results from follow-up polls to the Fessel polls cited above, Stourzh, Vom Reich zur Republik,108.

26Ibid., 109.

27Ibid, 164.

28"Has Austria recovered from the Nazi bacillus? An Analysis based on research conducted by the Social Science Research Association," Austria Today, (1985), p. 27.

29"How `gemütlich' are the Austrians?" Austria Today,2 (1990), p. 14.

30Fessel, Oesterreichbewusstsein, 26. Although this sense of pride far exceeds that of the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany where only 32 per cent declared themselves to be "unconditional proud" and 43 per cent as "predominately proud," the numbers had dropped substantially from the 69 and 24 per cent figures of 1982. Presumably the series of scandals that has continually rocked Austria for the past decade, along with doubts raised by the Waldheim election in 1986 may have contributed to this decline in pride.

31Wagner, 132.

32Fessel, Oesterreichbewusstsein, 28.

33"How "Gemütlich" are the Austrians?" Austria Today, 2 (1990), p. 14

34Katzenstein, 158.

35Fessel, 12.

36Peter Gerlach, "Nationalbewußtsein und nationale Identität in Österreich," in Das oesterreichische Parteien System, ed. by Anton Pelinka and Fritz Plasser (Vienna, Cologne and Graz, 1988), p. 239.

37Felix Kreissler, Der Österreicher und seine Nation: Ein Lernprozess mit Hindernissen, (Vienna, Cologne, Graz, 1984), p. 13.

38"Richtlinien freiheitlicher Politik in Österreich, 1957," in Österreichische Parteiprogramme 1868-1966, ed. by Klaus Berchtold (Vienna, 1967), p. 496.

39Ibid.

40Herbert Kraus, Untragbare Unobjektivität. Politische Erinnerungen 1917 bis 1987 (Vienna, 1988), p. 260.

41Katzenstein, 152. This summary of Katzenstein's analysis is substantially drawn from my short, earlier article on the same subject, "Austria: A Third German State at 44?" Politics and Society in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, vol. 1, no. 3 (Spring, 1989), p. 61.

42Peter Ulram, "Österreich Bewusstsein in den Achziger Jahren," (Vienna, Fessel + GFK Institut, 1989)

43Humbert Fink, "Kulturpolitische Perspektiven," transcript of a radio broadcast in ORD 1 (January 13, 1970).

44Interview with Friedhelm Frischenschlager in the FPÖ parliamentary delegation headquarters, Vienna, 9. March 1988, Peter Michael Lingens, "Grenzen der Humanität," profil, (28. January 1985), 7, 10 and Josef Votzi, "Auf Leben und Tod," profil, (4. February 1985), 11-13.

45Lingens, 10

46Votzi, 11.

47 Gerald Freihofner, "Heim ins Reich," Wochenpresse (29. January 1985), 14.

48Ernst Gehmacher, Franz Birk, Günther Ogris, "Die Waldheim-Wahl: eine erste Analyse," Journal für Sozialforschung 3 (1987), 327.

49Maximilian Gottschlich, "Die beleidigte Nation: Der `Fall Waldheim': Antiamerikanismus und Antisemitismus in österreichischen Printmedien," Journal für Sozialforschung, 3/4 (1987), 393-403.

50Stourzh, Vom Reich zur Republik, 102.

51James J. Sheehan, "What is German History?" Journal of Modern History, vol. 53, nr. 1 (March, 1981), p. 4.

52Ibid, 22-23.

53Kurier, 19. August 1988, p. 2.

54E.g. SPÖ M.P. Ernst Nedwed quoted in Wiener Zeitung, 20. August 1988, reproduced in Österreich Bericht, 20. August 1988, Bl. 1, S. 1.

55"Weiterhin Diskussion über Neutralität," Wiener Zeitung, 17. September 1990, reproduced in Österreich Bericht, 17. September 1990, Bl. 1, S. 1.

56See above, p. 4.

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