3 The Austrian Problem

The multilingual Hapsburg state could have made itself indispensable to the grand design. It could have created a constitution that enabled people of different tongues to live peacefully under one commonwealth. Perthaler’s constitution of 1867 was an attempt at just that, but it was destined for failure. The Sudetenland’s barons and their dominant party fought liberalism with all means at their disposal.

In 1900, Austria was an entity unwanted by its subjects. The nationality principle¹ denied the state its justification for existence, and everyone was counting on its forthcoming dissolution.

It was only in Vienna that there was still a small number of people who concerned themselves with methods of preserving the state. The destruction of the Hapsburg monarchy and the events it triggered later revealed that these men took pains to save Europe and all of civilization from great catastrophe. But lacking in any sustainable ideological base, their efforts were destined to be in vain.

This lack was clearly seen in no one’s wanting to allow for sincerity on the part of those who had Austria’s future at heart. One was permitted to be a “good” German; that is, a nationalistic German, Czech, or Pole, or the like. One could be, for example, a German cleric or a Bohemian landowner and be colorless, linguistically speaking, yet look out for the interests of one’s own region or social class alone. But he who thought as an Austrian was considered someone who only wanted to endear himself to the powers that be. In reality, the “crown” did not give preference to such strident loyalists; it favored “moderate” irredentists.

No one in Vienna was able to avoid concern with the problems of nationalism during this period. Otto Bauer and Karl Renner first presented their ideas promoting a program of national autonomy, which later appeared in book form, within the context of the Sozialwissenschaftlichen Bildungsverein.² Ludo Hartmann also reported on his investigations into the problems of linguistic assimilation, but these, unfortunately, were never published. Professor of public law, Adolf Bernatzik, steered my attention toward the problem of the “national land registry,” which was to yield the basis for uniform election standards.

I tracked all of these efforts with great interest, but I had my doubts as to their potential for success. It was not to be denied that the peoples of the Donaumonarchie³ wanted to see its destruction. Was defending a state run by frivolous, uneducated counts and ambitious but characterless civil servants really worth the effort? Events leading to the downfall of the Koerber administration made a deep impression on all of those concerned with the preservation of the state. Among the many prime ministers who governed the old Austria during its last twenty-five years, Ernest von Koerber was the only one who pursued policies to that end. Rudolf Sieghart, his brilliant and gifted senior cabinet member, supported his efforts; Böhm-Bawerk was his minister of finance. Koerber had instructed his district attorneys to adopt a policy of leniency when it came to shutting down newspapers. Thus it happened that when one of Vienna’s German nationalist papers published an article denigrating the Sacrament of the Altar, the article went unchallenged. Opponents of Koerber seized the opportunity to topple his administration: confessors and ladies at the court of the Arch Duchess busied themselves feverishly with denouncing the “Jew” Koerber (one of his grandmothers or great grandmothers had been Jewish) as a desecrator of the Church. In so doing, the last man genuinely concerned with the continuation of the state was forced out of office.

I must admit now that I judged the shortcomings of Austrian affairs too severely at the time, and that conditions abroad, which I knew only from books or short, superficial visits, appeared to me in too rosy a light. But this did not change the facts. The Hapsburg state, lacking an ideological basis of national unity, could not cope with the same degree of political mismanagement that seemed reasonable for other countries. Errors endurable by others could prove fatal to Austria. Faulty politics would undo her more quickly than it would English or French states.

The fact that state and national lines did not overlap in Austria prompted the study of problems that were not readily observable in other countries. The English and French languages are to this day lacking in expressions that make possible a correct representation of the economic and political problems that arise from such dualism.

I thereby concerned myself primarily with the consequences of interventionism. Each individual interventionist measure would affect the balance of power in a nationally mixed state. Austrian politicians were acutely aware of this, and the minutes of parliamentary proceedings as well as the press were rich with material on the matter. I recognized the full scope of these problems for the first time when I became a member of the Handelspolitischen Zentralstelle⁴ in the Viennese Handelskammer⁵ in 1909.

My plan was to investigate these problems in great detail. I conducted my first university seminar during the academic year 1913–1914, and selected four young scholars to do research on the position of Germans, Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians with regard to the foreign trade policies of the Austro-Hungarian customs union. With these policies, the Hungarian government and the autonomous provincial governments sought measures to create administrative protection benefiting their respective nationals. I hoped to find a fifth collaborator who would concentrate on the Italian position. I, myself, wanted to write a comprehensive report that would be published along with the work of my colleagues.

Of the four young scholars, two fell during the early weeks of the war. A third was reported missing in action in the Carpathian Mountains during the winter of 1914–1915. The fourth was taken prisoner by the Russians at Volhynia in July of 1916. He was never heard from again.