!!!Emigranten

Emigrants: In modern use the term mostly designates persons who have 
left, or have had to leave, their home country for political, 
religious, national/ethnic or racist reasons. Emigration from Austria 
(after the expulsion of Jews under Albrecht V and 
Maximilian I) assumed major proportions in the course of the  
Counter-Reformation, when it is estimated that more than 100,000 
Protestants were forced to emigrate ( Exulanten). As late as 1731 some 
22,000 Protestants were expelled from the Pongau and Pinzgau areas of 
Salzburg (most of whom emigrated to East Prussia). Some 1,200 
Protestants from Upper Austria (Salzkammergut area) were exiled to 
Transylvania and Banat under Maria Theresia ("Landler"). 
After the Revolution of 1848 was quenched, many of its leaders were 
also forced to emigrate (H. Kudlich, J. Goldmark, A. Fuester, 
E. von Violand and others). After the February Rising of 1934 
many members of the Republikanischer Schutzbund paramilitary 
organisation left Austria, many of them for the Soviet Union.

\\
Emigration from Austria reached its peak in 1938/39 as a consequence 
of Austria annexation by Hitler's Germany  Anschluss. First and 
foremost it was "declared Jews" under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 that 
had to leave Austria (roughly 136,000, approximately two-thirds of 
Austria's Jewish population); however, there were also many other 
Austrians who, as opponents of National Socialism, had to emigrate on 
political or ideological grounds. Emigrants were scattered practically 
all over the world (even as far as China), with Switzerland, France, 
the United Kingdom, the United States and South America the main 
destinations. On account of the lack of consensus as regards political 
objectives (the Social Democrats were for the most part opposed to the 
re-establishment of an Austrian state) it proved impossible to form a 
common political organisation of exiles, even though a "Free Austrian 
Movement " was founded in Britain in 1941 (38 groups with a total of 
some 7,000 members) and the "Austrian National Committee" in the USA. 
Military units in their own right were only set up within the 
framework of the Yugoslav partisan army, while the United States 
forbade any such formation. Austrian emigrants included virtually all 
of Austria's important writers, artists, scholars (almost all Nobel 
laureates) and intellectuals. After 1945 the Republic of Austria did 
very little to encourage Austrian emigrants to return to their home 
country, a failure that has had lasting effects in that the tragic 
drain of intellectual and cultural resources persists to this day.

!Literature
E. Zoellner (ed.), Wellen der Verfolgung in der 
oesterreichischen Geschichte, 1986; F. Goldner, Die oesterreichischen 
Emigranten, 1977; H. Maimann, Oesterreicher im Exil 1934-45, 1977; E. 
Schwager, Die oesterreichischen Emigranten in Frankreich 1938-45, 
1984; F. Stadler (ed.), Vertriebene Vernunft. Emigration und Exil 
oesterreichischer Wissenschafter 1930-45, 2 vols, 1987/88.


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