Austrian Lives

Contemporary Austrian Studies Vol. 21

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.

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Global Austria. Austria's Place in Europe and the World.

Contemporary Austrian Studies
Volume 20

After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Austria transformed itself from an empire to a small Central European country. Formerly an important player in international affairs, the new republic was quickly sidelined by the European concert of powers. The enormous losses of territory and population in Austria’s post-Habsburg state of existence, however, did not result in a political, economic, cultural, and intellectual black hole.

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Volume 19: From Empire to Republic: Post-World War I Austria

The breakup of the Habsburg Dual Monarchy and the redrawing of the political map of East Central Europe constituted a major experiment in “destroying the old, and creating the new” (O. Hwaletz). Historians are more inclined to study the rise of empires than their demise and aftermath.

The eighteen essays in this volume offer fresh perspective and innovative scholarship on the difficult transition from empire to republic for the small state of Austria, newly created by the Allied peacemakers in Paris in 1919. These essays also deal with complex challenges of nation building after a major war as well as the ambiguity inherent in the creation of new institutions in politics, economics, social life and culture.

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Volume 18: The Schüssel Era in Austria

Contemporary Austrian Studies
Volume 18

Featuring essays by Peter Gerlich, Fritz Plasser/Peter Ulram, Heinrich Neisser, Reinhard Heinisch, Heinrich Niesser, Johannes Ditz, Josef Leidenfrost, Anton Pelinka et al., as well as a FORUM on the “disturbing creativity” of Austrian artists, book reviews and the review of Austrian politics.

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Volume 17: New Prespectives on Austrians and World War II

For more than a generation after World War II, official government doctrine and many Austrians insisted they had been victims of Nazi aggression in 1938 and, therefore, bore no responsibility for German war crimes. During the past twenty years this myth has been revised to include a more complex past, one with both Austrian perpetrators and victims.

Part one describes soldiers from Austria who fought in the German Wehrmacht, a history only recently unearthed. Richard Germann covers units and theaters Austrian fought in, while Thomas Grischany demonstrates how well they fought. Ela Hornung looks at case studies of denunciation of fellow soldiers, while Barbara Stelzl-Marx analyzes Austrian soldiers who were active in resistance at the end of the war.

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Volume 16: The Changing Austrian Voter

Topical Essays

• Introduction

• Oliver Rathkolb                     
  The Changing Austrian Voters: A Historical Typology

• Wolfgang C. Müller:              
  Elections and Party System Dynamics

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Volume 15: Sexuality in Austria

Scholars have increasingly been investigating human sexuality as an important field of social history in particular national cultures. This volume examines both continuities and changing patterns of sexual behavior in Austria.

Sexuality in Austria reflects the broad variety of such recent research. David Luft introduces the volume with an essay on sexuality and gender in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Scott Spector traces the emergence of homosexuality in tabloids at the same time.

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Volume 14 - Austrian Foreign Policy in Historical Context

Contemporary Austrian Studies
Volume 14

This volume covers foreign policy in the 20th century and offers an up-to-date status report of the study of Austria’s foreign policy trajectories and diplomatic options both in the historical and political sciences. Eva Nowotny, the current Austrian Ambassador to the U.S., introduces the volume with an analysis of the art and practice of Austrian diplomacy in historical perspective. Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch analyses recent Balkans diplomacy from his personal perspective as an EU-emissary in the Bosnian and Kosovo crises.

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Volume 13 - Religion in Austria

Like most European countries, Austria does not have a strict separation between state and church. Since the counter-reformation, it has been considered a country strongly influenced by Catholicism. Austrian attitudes towards religion derive from the Habsburg experience, when emperors and the Catholic Church acted in complete unison. This new volume in the Contemporary Austrian Studies series reevaluates this age-old tradition.

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Volume 12: The Americanization/Westernization of Austria

Political, economic, social, and cultural modernization dramatically transformed twentieth-century Austria. Innovative new methods of production and management, such as the assembly line, changed Austrian business after World War I. At the same time, jazz, Hollywood movies, television programming, and mass commodities were as popular in Austria as elsewhere in Western Europe.

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Volume XI: The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria

The Years of Chancellors Dollfuss and Schuschnigg’s authoritarian governments (1933/34-1938) have been denounced as “Austrofascism” from the left, or defended as a Christian corporate State (“Ständestaat”) from the right. Austria was in a desperate struggle go maintain its national independence vis-à-vis Hitler’s Germany. In the end, the Nazis invaded and annexed Austria (“Anschluss”). The essays in this volume stay away from these heated historiographical debates and look at economic, domestic, and international politics sine ira et studio.

Volume 10: Austria in the European Union

Michael Gehler, co-editor

 

Austria joined the European Union in 1995, with the overwhelming support of its citizenry. In June 1994, a record of 66.6 percent of the Austrian population voted in favor of joining the Union, and Austria acceded on January 1, 1995. Only three years later, in the second half of 1998, Austria assumed its first presidency of the European Union. Its competent conduct of the Union's business enhanced reputation. The sense that Austria was a role model collapsed overnight: after a new conservative People's Party (ÖVP/FPÖ) coalition government was formed in Austria in early February 2000, Austria became Europe's nightmare.

Volume 9: Neutrality in Austria

After Stalin's death, during a respite in Cold War tensions in 1955, Austria managed to rid itself of a quadripartite occupation regime and become a neutral state. As the Cold War continued, Austria's policy of neutrality helped make this small country into an important mediator of East-West differences, and neutrality became a crucial part of Austria's postwar identity.

In the post-Cold War era Austrian neutrality seems to demand redefinition. The work addresses such issues as what neutrality means when Austria's neighbors are joining NATO. What is the difference between Austrian neutrality in 1955 and 2000? In remaining apart from NATO, do Austrian elites risk their nation's national security? Is Austria a "free rider," too stingy to contribute to Western defense? Has the neutralist mentality become such a crucial part of AUstrian postwar identity that its abandonment will threaten civil society? 

Erika Thurner, co-editor

Volume 8: The Marshall Plan in Austria

Perhaps no country benefited more from the Marshall Plan for assistance in reconstruction of Europe after World War II than Austria. On per capita basis, each American tax-payer invested $80 per person in the Plan; each Austrian received $133 from the European recovery program, more than any other of the sixteen participating countries.

Without the Marshall Plan, the Austrian economic miracle of the 1950's would have been unthinkable. Despite this, contemporary Austria seems to have forgotten this essential American contribution to its post-war reconstruction. This volume in the CAS Series examines how the Plan affected Austria, and how it is perceived today.

Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, Dieter Stiefel, editors

Volume 7: The Vranitzky Era in Austria

Franz Vranitzky was chancellor during ten years (1986-96) when the world dramatically changed in the aftermath of the cold war. The chapters in this volume try to assess Vranitzky's central role in recent Austrian and European history. Contributors include Richard Luther, Eva Novotny, Fritz Plasser, Irene Etzer-dorfer, Sonja Puntscher-Riekmann, Brigitte Unger, Peter Rosner, Alexander van der Bellen,and Georg Winkler. 

Ferdinand Karlhofer, co-editor

Volume 6: Women in Austria

This volume deals with the position of women in Austrian society, politics, and in the economy and shows that it follows the familiar trajectory of Western societies Women were expected to accept their"proper" place in a male patriarchal world.

Achieving equality in all spheres of life was a long struggle that is still not complete in spite of many advances. The chapters in Women in Austria attest to the growing interest and vibrancy in the areas of women's studies in Austria and present a cross-section of new research in this field to an international audience.

Erika Thurner, co-editor

Volume 5: Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity

After World War II, Austrian elites constructed a new identity based on being a "victim" of Nazi Germany. Cold- war Austria, however, envisioned herself as a "neutral island of the blessed" between and separate from both super- power blocs. Now, with her membership in the European Union secured, Austria is reconstructing her painful historical memory and national identity.

Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, editors

Volume 4: Austro-Corporatism - Past - Present - Future

This effort in particular reflects the uniqueness of the Austrian corporation, and looks at its deep historical roots from a comparative continental European perspective.

Austro -Corporatism will be of intense interest for foreign policy analysts, historians, and scholars concerned with the unique elements in Central European politics.

Volume 3: Austria in the Nineteen Fifties

Unlike in America, the decade of the 1950's was not remembered for affluence and harmony. Austria emerged from World War II with tremendous war-related destruction and a four-power occupation that would last ten years. In 1955 Austria regained her sovereignty; however, general affluence would not be realized until the 1960's and 1970's.

Rolf Steininger, co-editor

Volume 2: The Kreisky Era in Austria

This volume is dedicated to on of the country's greatest statesmen of the post-war period. Bruno Kreisky's career spans the turmoil that has confounded Austrian history throughout the 20th century. Through his Middle East detente, and third world initiatives, Kreisky achieved world-class status as a statesman.

Oliver Rathkolb, co-editor