Publisher Description

Austria 1867-1955 connects the political history of German-speaking provinces of the Habsburg Empire before 1914 (Vienna and the Alpine Lands) with the history of the Austrian Republic that emerged in 1918. John W. Boyer presents the case of modern Austria as a fascinating example of democratic nation-building. The construction of an Austrian political nation began in 1867 under Habsburg Imperial auspices, with the German-speaking bourgeois Liberalsdefining the concept of a political people (Volk) and giving that Volk a constitution and a liberal legal and parliamentary order to protect their rights against the Crown. The decades that followed saw theadministrative and judicial institutions of the Liberal state solidified, but in the 1880s and 1890s the membership of the Volk exploded to include new social and economic strata from the lower bourgeoisie and the working classes. Ethnic identity was not the final structuring principle of everyday politics, as it was in the Czech lands. Rather social class, occupational culture, and religion became more prominent variables in the sortition of civic interests, exemplified by theemergence of two great ideological parties, Christian Socialism and Social Democracy in Vienna in the 1890s. The war crisis of 1914/1918 exploded the Empire, with the Crown self-destructing in the face of militarydefeat, chronic domestic unrest, and bitter national partisanship. But this crisis also accelerated the emergence of new structures of democratic self-governance in the German-speaking Austrian lands, enshrined in the republican Constitution of 1920. Initial attempts to make this new project of democratic nation-building work failed in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in the catastrophe of the 1938 Nazi occupation. After 1945 the surviving legatees of the Revolution of 1918 reassembled underthe four-power Allied occupation, which fashioned a shared political culture which proved sufficiently flexible to accommodate intense partisanship, resulting, by the 1970s, in a successful republicansystem, organized under the aegis of elite democratic and corporatist negotiating structures, in which the Catholics and Socialists learned to embrace the skills of collective but shared self-governance.

Author Biography

John W. Boyer is the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago and an Editor of the Journal of Modern History. A specialist in Central European history, Boyer has written three books in the field of Austrian political and social history, most recently Karl Lueger (1844-1910): Christlichsoziale Politik als Beruf, published in 2010. In 2015 he published The University ofChicago. A History. Boyer has received the Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class, from the Republic of Austria, in recognition of his scholarly work on the Habsburg Empire. He is also a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy ofSciences. Since 1992 he has served as Dean of the College at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Terms of Austrian History1: The Settlement of 1867 and the Creation of a Liberal Constitutional Order2: Liberalism Ascendant: State Politics and Administration in the Austrian Lands, 1867-18793: The Era of the Iron Ring: State Consolidation and the Emergence of Civic Radicalism, 1879-18954: Two Decades of Constitutional Upheaval, 1895-19145: Late Imperial Society and Culture: The Crucible of Vienna6: The Monarchy in the First World War7: The Revolution of 1918-19198: The First Austrian Republic, 1920-19329: The Catholic Dictatorship and the Nazi Occupation, 1933-194510: The Reconstruction of a Republican Political System, 1945-1955Conclusion: The Construction of a New Political Culture, 1955-1983

Review

In his brilliant opus magnum John Boyer shows why Austria needed three attempts to build a stable democracy and how co-operation of formerly antagonistic political elites finally succeeded in the years after World War II. * Michael Mesch, Wiener Geschichtsblätter, Vol. 78/3 *
This volume offers a very comprehensive analysis of Austrian history. The extensive bibliography and index add to its usefulness for scholars. Given the in-depth coverage, the text will be most useful to those who are already familiar with the basics of Austrian history. * Choice *

Long Description

Austria 1867-1955 connects the political history of German-speaking provinces of the Habsburg Empire before 1914 (Vienna and the Alpine Lands) with the history of the Austrian Republic that emerged in 1918. John W. Boyer presents the case of modern Austria as a fascinating example of democratic nation-building. The construction of an Austrian political nation began in 1867 under Habsburg Imperial auspices, with the German-speaking bourgeois Liberals definingthe concept of a political people (Volk) and giving that Volk a constitution and a liberal legal and parliamentary order to protect their rights against the Crown. The decades that followed saw the administrative and judicial institutions of the Liberal state solidified, but in the 1880s and 1890s themembership of the Volk exploded to include new social and economic strata from the lower bourgeoisie and the working classes. Ethnic identity was not the final structuring principle of everyday politics, as it was in the Czech lands. Rather social class, occupational culture, and religion became more prominent variables in the sortition of civic interests, exemplified by the emergence of two great ideological parties, Christian Socialism and Social Democracy in Vienna in the 1890s. Thewar crisis of 1914/1918 exploded the Empire, with the Crown self-destructing in the face of military defeat, chronic domestic unrest, and bitter national partisanship. But this crisis also accelerated the emergence of new structures of democratic self-governance in the German-speaking Austrian lands,enshrined in the republican Constitution of 1920. Initial attempts to make this new project of democratic nation-building work failed in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in the catastrophe of the 1938 Nazi occupation. After 1945 the surviving legatees of the Revolution of 1918 reassembled under the four-power Allied occupation, which fashioned a shared political culture which proved sufficiently flexible to accommodate intense partisanship, resulting, by the 1970s, in a successful republicansystem, organized under the aegis of elite democratic and corporatist negotiating structures, in which the Catholics and Socialists learned to embrace the skills of collective but shared self-governance.

Feature

The first book to analyse comprehensively the political history of modern Austria on both sides of the traditional chronological divide of 1918, connecting the Imperial and Republican periods in one systematic narrativeDraws on a large array of primary archival sources (diaries, autobiographies, diplomatic archives, administrative reports, Cabinet minutes, etc.), many of which have not been systematically surveyed and evaluated in the pastEngages with the thorny and ever controversial question of the way in which Austrians refused after 1945 to come to terms with their nation's involvement in the Nazi regime of the Third ReichContributes to the ongoing debate about the capacity of the Habsburg Empire to survive into the twentieth century, arguing that the strong leadership of the prospective Emperor, Franz Ferdinand, would have been critical to the ability of the regime to hold the Empire together

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