Ernt Karl Winter: AUSTRIA
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(1. Teil eines Manuskripts verfasst 1945 in den USA, redigiert bis Seite 236 )

Table of Contents
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Preface
Introduction
Part One
The Shadow ofYesterday (§§ 1-2) 17
Chapter One. The Monarchy (§§ 3-21) 29
Chapter Two. The Republic (§§ 22-33) 109
Chapter Three. The Authoritarian Regime (§§ 34-47) 167

Part Two. Austria as it is (§§ 22) 237
Chapter Four. Civilization (§§ 23-38) 242
Chapter Five. Catholicism (§§ 39-50) 341
Chapter Six. The Jews (§§ 51-60) 405
Chapter Seven. The Germans (§§ 61-77) 459
Chapter Eight. The State (§§ 78-95) 540
Chapter Nine. The Family (§§ 96-104) 645 Part Three. The Dawn ofTomorrow (§§ 105-109) 711
Chapter Ten. Foreign Policy (§§110-118) 731
Chapter Eleven. Economic Policy (§§ 119-130) 791
Chapter Twelve. Interior Policy (§§ 131-137) 849
Epilogue In Quest of the Fourth Austria 887
A Sequel The Image of Austria, (p. 1 -21) 898
The Image of Austria. Notes (p. I-XXIV)

Preface#

Since the two ancient eagles of Rome and Byzantium expanded the eyries of Mediterranean civilization to the North, and the legions of the South amalgamated their own mettle with the vitality of the barbarian races, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, Tartars, the Danube region has been the most pivotal spot beyond the Alpine and the Balkan ranges, where West and East are meeting. Here during the later Ancient Ages, the side-scenes of the Mediterranean world, out of which once in primordial, times the heroic races of Greece and Italy stepped into the light of history, were transubstantiated into the heart of the future European continent. This is the very theme of Danubian civilization since the dawn of European history. The term "Danubian", however, is not quite appropriate. The pivot of the pivot has always been in fact, where the spurs of the Eastern Alps descend to the middle Danube, and not always all and not only always Danubian countries gravitated towards this center. This is the place where Vienna grew on the slopes of the Alpine hills and forests and on the bank of the Danube river out of its Celtic, Roman and Byzantine past into the dimmer light of the early Ages, when nearly at the same time the Slavs, the Tartars, the Teutons gave her a native name: Viden-Becs-Wenia (Wien). At the same time again, the name of Austria was born a thousand year, ago and this name was to remain to indicate whatever kind of Commonwealth, empire or ideology would crystallize around Vienna: the Eastern Alpine Commonwealth in the Middle Ages and in our time again, - the empire of the House of Austria during five hundred years of modern European history, - the European ideology of the Respublica Oecumanica, alive in so many "Viennese schools" of modern thought, political and scientific, in our generation. Of all these historic realities and tendencies, Austria with Vienna, as they are, still is the heir. Her place seems more than ever in the midst of West and East. The whole world as never once before seems now to be forced to care for what will happen in and to Austria. Thus, it seems worth-while to find the place of the Austrian idea in European history at large down to the present, in order to ascertain its function in the future, near or far, when West and East will have to converge right here for peace or war. Each phase of European history which aimed at any type of imperialism has necessarily set out to conquer this pivot and to rule through it the continent, the Center, the East and the West. Charlemagne tried to build up here his spring-board into the Byzantine Empire, the legitimacy of which he wanted to absorb into his own might. The Hohenstaufen longed to cement here their German-Italian axis. The Habsburgs succeeded to rule from here the Holy Roman Empire and through its mysticism the European family of nations, for six hundred years. Charles V rooted one of the two columns of Hercules, Symbols of the universal monarchy in which the sun never set, in this soil. Louis XIV symbolizes the French mobilization of both the Swedes and the Turks against it. Both Gustavus Adolphus and Kara Mustafa nearly reached their goals, to anchor either the Nordic empire or the Oriental empire on the middle Danube, but under the walls of Vienna their plans were wrecked eventually. Napoleon thought to i have gained subsequent legitimacy for his scheme of uniting Europe by conquest, after he entered Vienna, only to find here his master. All these imperialisms have failed in the end conspicuously. This judgment includes as well the Austrian variant of imperialism which was Habsburg’s, although probably it was the most humanitarian type of all. They all represent the Teutonic millennium which so far has been identical with Western Christianity, against which modern man has stood up in defiance, since he awakened to his consciousness. In fact, the Austrian eternal struggle against imperialism, even in the dressing of Austrian pseudo-imperialism, has always largely been identical with this fight of modern man against tyranny. Two old-age types of Imperialism have succeeded for a while on the middle Danube, while two modern types of imperialism, after they have eliminated their predecessors, have now to prove before history that they like once Rome and Byzantium will be able to create another millennium. This is where Austria and Prussia in the meaning of the 18th and 19th Century have now been superseded and relieved by the English speaking and the Russian speaking worlds. The variant of imperialism embodied by Austria certainly was unique in its defensive character, in its agglutinative method of expansion and in its triumphs over many much more aggressive types of imperialism throughout the centuries. Thus, there was a very natural affinity between the Austrian empire and Western European ideas, upon which modern man was to rely. The culmination of this affinity was the post Napoleonic period, in which for an interlude the Austrian imperialism of the old type and the Western European Imperialism of the new type, then incamated primarily in the British Empire, even cooperated. As a matter of fact, this Cooperation was the very basis of the peace and progress which, In spite of various local wars of far-reaching consequences indeed, ruled the European Commonwealth of Nations from the Congress of Vienna to the brink of World War I. The anonymous genius of the British, the symbol of which was the gold Standard of the Bank of England, succeeded for the same Century, in which also the architectural genius behind the Congress of Vienna (whom the French call Talleyrand, while the Austrians call him Metternich) was able to build the European concert of powers as the very basis of the first modern international Order of the continent. It was the most prosperous Century of European history, still the mother of all achievements of which Europe may boast, and perhaps the model, to which the coming Century may well aspire. The main achievement of this Century certainly was that it was able to cope with the vitality which emerged from the racial symbiosis between the German rulers and the Slavonic masses under Prussian leadership, and thus to domesticate what proved to be the demon of modern European history. It was domestication, not exorcism, however. Since the middle of the 18th Century, Prussia had emerged on the Central European scene besides and against Austria, backed in succession by the French, the British, the Russians, and by this support had established herseif as the second Central European great power. Two Central European great powers instead of one perhaps was an advantage for the whole of Europe, as long as their competition would not destroy its very heart. The peace order of the Congress of Vienna and of the Bank of England in ii the 19th Century was in fact able to neutralize the impacts of the Prussian demon, to make some concessions to it, but eventually to incorporate it into the European Commonwealth of Nations for three generations. Both Frederick II and Bismarck, who elevated Prussia-Germany to her new rank by means of force, were able to unchain Machiavellian aggression, yet to chain it again afterwards. The philosopher of history may rightly say (as history has proved indeed) that, at least within the psychology of a nation, the demons unchained will never be chained again in reality without atonement and reparation. Not only the political leader, but also the political educator, however, obliged to reckon with their own generation and not more, will gladly accept the compromise with the evil, leaving the weed with the wheat, if only the chance remains that the sleeping demon might be more easily exorcised than the roaming one. Only if the exorcists fall asleep as well, this chance really dies. It was not this compromise, therefore, but the demon of Prussia which finally started to break down the European balance of power limiting its own ränge of arbitrary expansion. The emancipation of Prussia-Germany from the European Commonwealth of Nations was a long process. Although it certainly began with the Seven Years' War in the 18th Century, and was continued with the three little wars of 1864, 1866, 1870/71, the most decisive tum came only afterwards. It was exactly the political System which Bismarck built up as his most genuine contribution to peace, centering around the unification of the Germanies, the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise and the Triple Alliance, and thereby shifting the center of the Central European block, the former Holy Roman Empire, from Vienna to Berlin. Even if the representatives and leaders of this block of might would have genuinely wanted nothing eise than peace, they could not help sowing war by the very existence of their political System A in the heart of Europe. The real bids for world power by the Prussian demon, sleeping only with half-closed eyes, came with World War I, the end of which was the end of the Habsburg MOnarchy, and with World War II, the end of which is the end of Bismarck Germany. Hitler and his heir might have enjoyed the reality of greater Germany for another fifty years, if he would only have been as great as Bismarck and Frederick, or if the disappearances of the Habsburg Monarchy would not have been the temptation for him to combine the functions of the two Central European empires which even Bismarck was still eager to keep separated. Less moderate than his two predecessors, Hitler destroyed his own creation after seven years. This period of Hitler’s Germany dominating Europe is characterized by two symbolic dates: the conquest of Vienna by Hitler Germany in March 1938 and the liberation of Vienna by Soviet Russia in April 1945. Vienna was the symbol of Hitler's rise and fall as no other city. Vienna opened to the Germans the chance of a "German age" of Europe which could have lasted seven times seven years, if its use would have been moderate and organic. In his lust for power, Hitler destroyed not only himself, but also two centuries of a much more patient work, by which his predecessors prepared the "German age", and by these deeds of self-destruction took with him the last residua of the 19th Century into the abyss. With Austria eliminated after World War I and with Prussia-Germany following after World War II, five hundred years of modern European history have disappeared. So terrible is this outlook iii to the history-minded man that he might have been glad to pay a high price and to suffer adaptations to realities he never liked, if only this vacuum could have been prevented. The misuse of German power by the Germans accelerated their fall. Thereby the "Russian age" of Eastern, Central and perhaps even Western Europe has begun quite automatically. After World War I eliminated the five hundred years of the Habsburg MOnarchy and World War II did so with the two hundred years from Frederick II over Bismarck to Hitler, it means in fact that the Teutonic millennium is over and that the Central European power which existed from Charlemagne to Hitler had disappeared for good. The millennial fancies of Hitler really bore fruit in the retroactive elimination of the millennial nucleus of power In Central Europe, the usufructuaries of which were the German language and the German speaking people. The vacuum which the two modern Central European powers of the last two centuries, Austria and Prussia, have left, is logically filled by Russia which thereby not only has become the heir of Habsburg and Hohenzollern, but also of a pivotal position ,to which from Charlemagne to Napoleon all the rulers of Europe have aspired. After the perspicuous failure of the Habsburg Monarchy in its last phase under German tutelage and after the still more perspicuous failure of Prussia-Germany, in its last phase under the leadership of a frustrated Austrian, there is in the realm of power only Russia left which has the secular chance to do better.

There is no escape in history from the facts of power politics which may be tamed, but never can be eradicated. The history of civilization is identical with the gradual growth of international law to regulate and domesticate power politics, but not to extirpate it. Breton Woods, Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco are a new proof for an old wisdom. The justified objection against them is not that they wisely reckon with the fact of power politics, but that they try to veil it by a legal screen, instead of distinguishing courageously between the most natural alliances in the sphere of power politics and the always only asymptotic realization of international law. At any rate, the concert of power which existed after the Congress of Vienna, organized by Metternich, Talleyrand and Castlereagh, exists now again, with the only difference that the former five European powers have been succeeded by five world powers. While once the three Eastern monarchies were confronted by the two Western democracies, so are now the three Western democracies confronted by two Eastern empires sui generis. Although the Western powers have remained "democracies", they are now "on the Right" of the Eastern powers, where they once have been "on the Left”. Only the Substitute for the Bank of England has to be found yet. In both respects, the international Organization and its economic background, the world function of the United States is conspicuous. While Great Britain and France are still on their old places, the New World has surpassed them in representing Western civilization. The Roman substance of the English speaking world today is in its former colonies, Eastern not in the mother countries. The three, eastern monarchies of old have disappeared and Soviet Russia in fact has filled the vacuum. The Russian-speaking iv world has well expanded to Berlin and Vienna. Thus, the old scene still shows the old equilibrium of power, yet new forces in the foreground and in ascendancy over the whole world. The game of Metternich is played again with different kings and queens, but with the same pawns. The players sit around the same table, wherever they meet. The problem is to leam from the analogy of history instead of committing twice the old blunders. There still is the old element of power, according to which now Soviet Russia has the chance to succeed, where the Habsburg Monarchy and Hitler Germany have failed: in the Organization of Central and Eastem Europe, by which logically the Organization of Western Europe is influenced as well. In the success or failure of Soviet Russia in this respect, there Alies the answer, whether the age of catastrophes has terminated or is simply interrupted by another hiatus. After World War I has started, because negatively Vienna failed to solve the national problems of the Habsburg Monarchy, and positively Berlin aimed at Pan-Germanism, and after World War II started, because negatively Austria failed to solve her main social problem and positively thus became the very prey and spring-board of Germany, - the world ought to learn looking at Austria and Vienna first, wherever there is talk and speculation about the possibility of World War III. As Austria did neither "start" the second nor the first, she will not be positively guilty in beginning any third war either. But negatively, here it will be either averted or conjured up again. The mechanism of how such things must happen again, after they have happened already twice, is not too difficult to ascertain. Negatively, the Austrian problem will always be in the center, while positively the World powers in Charge of the Austrian problem will succeed or fail in averting or bringing about World War III. The reference to the plural of the world powers certainly means that, whatever passive role Austria may have suffered, and whatever active role Prussia-Germany can claim, the other powers have surely been world partners of a common guilt. They have been guilty in World War I not to have distinguished precisely between Austria and Prussia-Germany, after they had facilitated before the growth of the latter. They have been guilty during the interwar period to have sabotaged the reorganization of the Danube Basin as the most natural check against German aggression and to have fostered the Hitler plague for many reasons instead of stamping out the original spark at the proper time. If criminals and lunatics make themselves famous by Herostratus deeds, the headquarters of the police and the department of health, forewarned in fact, are very guilty indeed. Thus again, the world powers together can avert another catastrophe or they can stumble into it by their common guilt. The problem of Austria will play a quite extraordinary role on this road of future decisions. No doubt, the problem of the next decades is not so simple merely to be another kind of Prussian-German aggression, as William II and Hitler have produced it. When World War I started because of the ill-advised policies of both Central European great powers and World War II followed because of Hitler Germany being now alone the heir of both, the forehand in avoiding or precipitating World War III will have the heir of all of them which will need thrice as much wisdom, reluctance, moderation as all of these v predecessors together should have had. The theme is up to Russia now which in the possession of Vienna has all the chances and all the temptations which she will need to do this or that, and may fail like Hitler or succeed, as after all Old Austria did throughout her older history, before she succumbed to the German tutelage. If Russia slides from her pragmatism into the German kind of irrationalism (to which Machiavellism always predestinates), and thus commits on the pivotal soil of Vienna the same blunders which Hitler committed, she will be but the trigger to new catastrophes. There are many on both sides that seem to like this vision. I do not, and I am speaking of it to do my part in making sure that it will not materialize. Those Austrian Catholics (I among them), who have always been sure that there is no identity whatsoever between Germany and Russia, who have shunned Cooperation with the former, but are preaching the same with the latter, have now to prove that they have been right or to retract their thesis. They have to bring out by their very bodies, whether they were right or wrong. In fact, there is still an elementary difference between the "German age" and the "Russian age" in Central Europe. While the Germans in their irrationalism did not hesitate to engage in the suicidal war on two fronts, in order to materialize their dreams of European anarchy at least for an interval, the Russians still show their readiness for world-wide Cooperation, by which in fact the other world powers are made co- responsible for every success or failure which will be the final outcome of this common war waged against the common foe. If there would be no peace after this war, all the world powers together would be guilty. The guilt of the Russians since the very beginning of Cooperation may lie in the fact that they want to withdraw the substance of their power politics from any impacts of international law, while the guilt of the others may lie in the fact that they have allowed to grow this ex-lex Status into legality. Sure as it is that the lapse of time will not facilitate, but aggravate the chances for understanding and Cooperation, there is no serious danger as yet that they will not be the final outcome. Only if Russia would succumb to the German virus which she finds in Eastem Germany, or would not reject the temptation which the possession of Vienna provides, she might proceed on the road, of which many think she has already entered it. Only the amalgamation between the Russian and the German ideas which would bring the latter to the surface again in another metamorphosis would really tum out to become the sword of Damocles over the destiny of Europe. This will be the problem of the next months, or years, or decades, according as rapidly as world history will progress or as tired as the world may be.

In this historic Situation, Austria will remain a problem to the foreign Offices of many nations and to their public opinion for a long time to come. Austria may be backed only weak-mindedly, as once the regime Dollfuss-Schuschnigg was during the battle of the outposts before World War II, or she may even be surrendered in another Anschluss, or she may become, as it must be hoped by every decent man, the very theatre of worldwide Cooperation between the West and the East, the Right and the Left, in any case, she will remain a problem, a headache, an item in the news, about which precise information will always be welcome. In this perspective, a sober presentation of Austrian history, a new Interpretation, a better commentary is indispensable. Nothing has astonished this observer more than the fact, how little real knowledge about Austria he has always found in France, in Great Britain, in the United States. There is quite obviously much more now in Russia. As an exile in this country for nearly seven years, I have frequently been puzzled by the Ignorance about Austrian affairs among diplomats and politicians, joumalists and commentators. A world paper like the “New York Times” is uninformed and biased in everything concerning Austria. This ignorance is a pity and can only always be a new source of miscalculations and disappointments. As these United States have entered European wars for two times within one generation, wars which negatively at least emerged in Austria, war and a third will loom around the comer again in Austria, as long as there is no well functioning, crisis-proof international Organization amalgamating West and East, it is not superfluous to try an Interpretation of Austrian history for the American public, of which later also the Austrians themselves and other European nations may profit well. There is no other pretention In the following book than to give just this Interpretation. The following three chapters are eager to be a political presentation of the Austrian problem. That means that their analyses of history, as objective as they want to be, are made under the aspect of specific political problems which will be of relevancy to the future. Among these problems are the Cooperation between the West and the East, the Right and the Left, of which Austria knows something since her earliest memories, - the synthesis between power politics and international law Awhich just is another name for the same phenomenon deeply rooted in the course of Austrian history,- - the coincidence of democracy and socialism in the idea of social reform alive in every Austrian age, - and last but not least the Slavonic idea, not simply in its antithesis to Germanism, but also in its amalgamation with civilization leading from the Mediterranean to the European scene. All these ideas, with which our age goes impregnated, so that the future may bring forth them, have their old Austrian history which is worth-while to be known. The chances that these ideas may converge to create a new European civilization, in which also the age-old problem of the ecumenical synthesis between the Western and the Eastern Church may find its solution, are great, The Teutonic millennium will go down even in theology and the new age of the Hagia Sophia bring Christianity to its culmination. Even in this respect, Austria may be the soil, where most important contributions to this effect will be made. The value of this book is no pretended non-partisanship, but on the contrary the fact that a conservative Catholic Austrian, without leaving his native ground, has assimilated himself to the modern world, east and west, left and right. Already in 1927, I characterized this synthesis as "rechts stehen und links denken" (to stand on the Right and to think with the Left). As paradoxical as this motto seems, it only is the mirror of the paradoxes of our age between two epochs. This synthesis between the Right and the Left shows the evolution, through which Austria has gone and must still go. If she is vii guided well, it will neither mean the loss of her history or her religion, but the transformation of both into a new creature, by which alone the Austrian function can be fulfilled in the European future. There is no sense whatsoever in simply throwing over board either history or religion, as the Left in its older days and school has preached and done. Nothing is easier than to criticize both history and religion from the different point of view, to which the modern individual has easy access. But this kind of naive revolution must always lead back to reaction again, as no nation can eradicate its very soul and memory. It seems to this onlooker of history one of the greatest achievements of the "new Left" that the values of history and religion are seen under an entirely new light, are appraised and appreciated, still very differently from what conservatism has to say, but not ignored any longer. On this new basis an Interpretation of history is possible, by which the Right and the Left together create the new national consciousness There is nothing more urgently needed than the constructive synthesis between the East and the West, in the midst of which is Austria, or between the Right and the Left, the yesterday and the tomorrow, for which Austrian history provides the best examples. This is the problem of all nations during the coming age, but there is perhaps nowhere eise a higher consciousness of these factors than in Austria. The experiences of two world wars were more or less identical everywhere. But to have experienced within one generation now five forms of govemment, as the Austrians did, is something unique. The fact has made them wise indeed. Naturally gifted with the ability to arrange compromises, the Austrians have leamed the wisdom of the constructive compromise, by which even the sin of mere accommodation to the existing power may gain some aspect and finally some likeness of virtue. There is a lot of political wisdom taught by Austrian history to whoever wants to listen. There is some image of the Platonic homo_politicus in the leading Austrian figures of all centuries, whose physiognomy it is worth-while to study .Many sociological laws which have remained identical throughout the ages are revealed and confirmed by the history of the Austrian state. Although the Austrian does not like to speak too much of himself, nor is very good in doing it, he certainly is permitted to present his self-interpretation, if this is for the good of all. As the product of seven years of exile, in which the Austrian problem still remained the dearest to my heart and. the closest to my mind, in which, however, I learned to look at Austria from the outside through the Spectrum of a language more objective than the German tongue, I am gratefully offering this book to the country and to the people, in whose midst I have been able to remain free, to think free and to stick to the continuity of Austrian thought even in exile. Tenafly, New Jersey Pentecost 1945 Emst Karl Winter viii

Introduction#

On the very day, when the news came from Moscow that the Allied statesmen have issued a proclamation conceming Austria, I started with this book, and I have finished it on the thirtieth anniversary of the beginning of this war, when the dawn of Austrian liberty can already be seen. It is written out of the substance of an author who has been most of these thirty years a deadhead of history like all the other millions of common men, but who nevertheless has lived through this period with all the intensity and the breath, kept back of somebody highly interested and deadly involved, the Platonic homo politicas .who in the sphere of ideas sometimes experiences life more intensively than acting figures in reality are able to. In writing down the best of Austria I know for her own future sake as well as for her friends everywhere on earth, I do not contemplate, in spite of many practical items in the subsequent chapters, that this book is simply a manual for how to proceed in de- Germanizing Europe and reconstructing Austria. Nor is it merely written for the inescapable interregnum, in which Europe will be handled primarily by the world powers. On the contrary, it looks seriously forward to "a new earth under a new heaven", when the old dragon will be chained again and the very image of Europe restored .When it will be required to build a new civilization from scratch, it will not only be necessary to go back to the most fundamental ideas alive in the European substance, but it may well be possible to build a new world, in which ideas really rule reality, man reigns the earth and the human person is the sovereign of every social purpose. This book reflects a life's experience. Hence, it may be justified to begin with a somehow personal credo which, however, will serve as a clue to many otherwise paradoxical conclusions. If there is a deeper meaning in the cataclysm we are going through, it cannot be anything eise than the appeal to search the national conscience in Order that we might be able to rebuild our house on more solid foundations. Search of conscience intrinsically has a personal touch, with man face to face with man, whether they are dead or alive. Through this personal prism all history has to be looked upon inevitably. Thus, it is seemingly that the author, who does not pretend to hide behind facts but will stand firmly himself for every sentence of his book, should also speak of the architects, the square stones and the mortar of the Austrian structure in his own soul before tuming to their objectivities. During a life of contemplative politics one meets a lot of political architects, many spiritually, some empirically, a good deal of dilettanti, a handful of masters beyond doubt. Yet they all are fragments, if they do not converge into the ideal specimen, the "true statesman”, of whom Plato spoke, who in theory and practice was fully aware that no architect can build any lasting structure without square stones and mortar that the statesman architect more than anybody eise has to build this structure first of all in his own individual existence, and that there is no essential difference between the man organizing his life and the statesman organizing the state 1 constructively, squarely and decently. This is the political credo, Platonic and anti- Machiavellian with which in the background this author rather wants to lose sight of what is called Realpolitik than to lose the thread of civilized history. In the dimensions of the visible world, the families are the very square stones, yet to be cemented into a national structure only by the martyrs whom they have sacrificed. In the dimensions of the invisible world, however, in which to doubt were utter folly, it obviously must be just the opposite, the martyrs being the real square stones of the spiritual structure beyond time and space to which the unknown family of the common man, its daily life the very incense, but humbly offers the mortar. Only where these two worlds are amalgamated into one coordinated action, of which every mortal may well aspire to be the strategist, the national history will proceed Straight forward through all catastrophes, and whatever unforeseen accident, national or personal, may occur, it will be absorbed. We Austrians, experts in catastrophes, are the esoterics of this war. Later than anywhere eise World War I smoldered down in Austria, earlier than elsewhere World War II flared up there again. With our ears to ground and skies alike we heard the rumbling of tanks and the roaring of planes, when they were still blue-prints .The Austrian political parties may have been blinded as everywhere eise, yet the Austrian people knew well, who would construct and direct the weapons of the to come war. "We all have only one enemy", was the slogan of an Austrian division I belonged to in the last war, consisting of a dozen of nations which already then, defying their military and political leaders, unanimously were sure of the destructive qualities of their German ally. With gnashing teeth the sons now repeat the slogan of their fathers. Although Austria-Hungary in the last war has been the co-partner of Germany in consequence of the historic mistakes which the Austrian leaders committed, and although the Austrians together with half a dozen of their former comrades in arms in this war again are among the cannon-fodder of the German army in consequence of similar blunders, - this is from the consistent Austrian view of history, instinctively alive in the populär Austrian under structure a Thirty Years War of modern civilization against barbarism. In this point the Austrian populär instincts agree now with the reflections of many nations. The Austrians disagree perhaps with some among them which are not Catholic, when they probably add that in their historic conviction this is to the very details the same war which already their ancestors fought - at Sadowa in the Seven Weeks War, at Kolin, Hochkirch and Kunersdorf in the Seven Years' War and still earlier at Biela Hora, Magdeburg and Lützen in the former Thirty Years’ War which, as we can see it now more clearly than ever before, were all the same wars of Mediterranean civilization against barbarism. These are the populär instincts of a Catholic people, an old race, which looks at history in terms of centuries. If the Austrian leaders during half a Century and more have deserted these instincts and thereby precipitated catastrophe after catastrophe, from 1866 to 1944, we have to try now the opposite way, to revitalize these Austrian instincts, to preach and manifest them openly, and to reshuffle on this basis the Austrian leadership which in the age ahead will have to 2 conform with Austrian nationalism or will certainly not be tolerated by the Austrian people. We Austrians as a people do not flinch before truth and reality. We know that after golden centuries behind, and in particular after a Century of peace and progress unheard of in the history of mankind we just are approaching the midst of an iron Century, of which only the weak-minded may expect that its second half will be like honey licking. Those who will joyfully accept the fate or will deliberately decide themselves to be Austrians during this second half of the iron Century already know better now that whatever sacrifices have been asked from them will be asked again, if not in war, then in peace, if not in blood, then in sweat, if not in tears for hecatombs of martyrs sacrificed then in the toughest work ahead to be imagined, In the begetting, feeding and educating the surplus of life which a vigorous people will need. Only those, who have absorbed the catastrophes of history, but have not been absorbed by them, will really survive, their personal mettle tested for still greater trials to come. In this perspective, sub specie aeternitatis, also the political problems of Austria tomorrow will have to be seen. Whatever color the Right and the Left will have in Austria tomorrow, they will have to be Austrian. More than ever before Austria will need and will tolerate only national parties. To be Austrian and to be national for parties means to be ready to submit to transcendent interests, or in other words to be a "party" and no "totality". Whatever the colors of the Austrian parties may be, a constructive compromise will again be inevitable, either between Catholicism and Socialism, if there is the same political constellation in Austria as before, or between whatever kinds of political philosophy may have ascendancy over the Austrian people. A constructive compromise does not mean the surrender of one's own ideas. In being able to arrive at the idea of a constructive compromise, one has to go sometimes through the consequences of both ideas has to understand them respectively, and has to find in oneself somewhat of the inner unity of the opposites, even if the people on the Left and on the Right, enamored with their own predilections, are unable to see it at all, I do not say that compromises of this kind are possible between fire and water, but I do neither think the problem of Catholicism and Socialism for instance, or the problem of monarchy or republic in this stage of history ones of the fire or water brand .There will be not much sense, I am sure, in the artificial resuscitation of this latter problem in the Austrian people after this war. The time will have passed, when the monarchy may mean anything politically to Austria, and the other time still far away, in which again a mere arabesque will be of any interest at all. The sound political sense of the Austrian people may soon understand these facts, if there is no interference from outside. More than any other problem however, the form of govemment among the smaller nations could become the object of power politics among the bigger nations, if no constructive compromise prevails within and without. If the Interpretation of democracy by the United Nations is restrictive in excluding any kind of Fascism or authoritarian regime, but simultaneously is extensive enough to include whatever kind of monarch the latter may automatically turn into the playground for everything 3 prohibited. As long as the world Organization itself is necessarily a parallelism of three or more different types of democracy, republic, monarchy and various regimes sui generis, the Situation in single States ander many fold influences cannot be anything better than a similar parallelism of political forces within the nation. Only in form of a constructive compromise may the constitutional schemes in both dimensions, national and international, really escape the danger that somewhere any poisonous core coagulates again. Thus, the Austrian psychology as well as the world Situation will tend in the same direction .Whatever forces will exist in Austria after the first democratic election, they will have to arrive at a constructive compromise. The "true statesman" of this Austrian Situation will be either the Socialist who thinks Catholic or the Catholic who thinks as a Socialist, whatever the majority party may be. This gospel of the compromise may sound stränge to many ears. Humanly speaking, the compromise advocated is the expression of self-imposed limitation. Having consumed the main energies of our life in amalgamating two different views into one intellectual structure, we, the generation of the two world wars, are unable to offer anything better than a constructive compromise. We are the generation between two ages. Our offspring will stand on a more solid ground. In the light of history, however, we may not be afraid to have offered only something which is merely the mingling of two contradictions, out of our own position between the fronts and between the ages, but rather the vision of a future in which there will be neither the political metaphysics of the Right or the Left, but the substance and the image of the national individuality alone.

The Austrians have fought and died in the first battles of the Second World War, before the world ever knew there was a war on again. There were two ranks of fighters, but one purpose, Austria, the main victim of the first world war, was perhaps the only European country with intellectual energies in both camps able to agree and fully aware, how there was but a truce between two catastrophes. Cassandra lurked in many disguises even among those Austrians, who, while they saw the world inevitably stumble into another abyss, proudly helped to build a model home on its fringes. When eventually the beast emerged from the abyss, into which the world was to be dragged, the Austrians knowing about its secret found some faint echo in the world, some isolated writers or statesmen joining their cries in the wilderness, but the masses of the other peoples led by the routiniers of politics did not notice that their own doom was approaching fast. The opinion, how to stem the tide of fate, was divided in Austria as elsewhere .There were two big parties with very different sets of prophets, whose routine differed from that in other countries only by being blessed by poorer and scarcer conditions of life than anywhere eise existed in Europe. Of course, there were, as anywhere eise too, the idealists or realists between or above the parties, as one want to call and to place them, who thought that neither the one nor the other party could teil the 4 world now much, but that Austria as such might be able to do that, if and when her idea would emerge again like the Spirit over the waters. Many an Austrian has sacrificed his life for Europe and civilization in this cataclysm, before Europe as a whole even had the slightest perception of a new Migration of Nations to engulf its civilization. Of the two Austrian parties which tragically clashed in 1933/34 and of their victims and heroes, it was often said that "they both died for Austria". The truth, worthy to be promulgated by history and formulated by those outside of the opposing camps, is that they both died for Europe. The workers of Vienna, Steyr and Leoben, who defended the democratic Constitution, and their leaders like Koloman Wallisch and Rudolf Weisl executed by the authoritarian regime, have fought for labor, but died for Europe. When hardly half a year later Engelbert Dollfuss feil a victim to Nazi terrorism, as well as a victim to his own tragic guilt again he fought for Catholicism, but died for Europe. The representatives of both groups died on different sentries for an analogous goal, to open they eyes of Europe, The Socialist fighters for the democratic Constitution died to teach Europe the inevitability of a stand to be made against Fascism in all its shades, even if unconscious of itself and its own consequences, while the Catholic statesman who in tragic confusion violated the Constitution, in order, as he rationalized his darker motives, to defend Austria better against Germany, died to teach by his death, how the independence of Austria has really become the comer-stone of European peace. They both fought and died without being fully understood down to this day by the rest of the world. Yet their heirs in understanding fully each other still have the very key to be better understood together by the outside world. After the short battle of the outposts in the outskirts and in the heart of Vienna had died down again the world congratulated itself to have regained its balance. Very soon, the wishful-thinking observers thought it not even touched. In reality, the war went on under the surface, the war between the two Austrian parties, the one now on the authoritarian coach-box, the other under the wheels, as well as their separated two wars against the foreign intruders and their inner vassalage. For five years these three wars lasted in Austria with nearly all the paraphemalia of war not even always behind the curtains, yet without much attention paid by the outside world. Not the slightest presentiment that two of these three wars might be their own case, fought for and lost, disturbed the other European nations. The medicine men of the bird ostrich clan still continued their course, when another eruption followed, and Austria, abandoned by all the great powers, collapsed. How many European statesmen did then clearly see that Germany had acquired the Archimedean point in the heart of Europe to lift the continent out of its hinges? Like a ship, whose captain hopes to save its poop at the cost of its prow, hose on the pilot-bridge of Western Europe closed the sheet which was Austria, and wrote her off from their memory and account. The world closed its eyes and plugged its ears not to hear the cries of the hecatomb falling now again in Austria for Europe, the men of the authoritarian regime and of the Socialist Opposition alike, Catholics and Jews together, 5 after a long internecine struggle face to face in common now with the revenger of their mutual and suicidal errors. A host of Catholic leaders, Jewish intellectuals of the labor movement and representatives of Legitimism were imprisoned or killed, and many of them in despair killed themselves. It was like the uprooting of the entire intelligentsia of the Austrian people. There were times, when the most prominent Catholics, Socialists and Legitimists alike were among the victims: Kurt Schuschnigg and his entire cabinet, Richard Schmitz, the Catholic mayor of Vienna, Robert Danneberg, the soul and spirit of "Red Vienna", leaders of Legitimism like Friedrich Wiesner, the son of the Jewish scholar, whom once H. St. Chamberlain had dedicated his Standard work on racialism, in which National Socialism originales, and of which Hitler still is jealous, and last but not least the sons of the archduke Francis Ferdinand, Max and Emst Hohenberg, the blood heirs of the Habsburgs. In Nazi theory, they were to pay now for another of Hitler's disappointments, indicated by the day-dream he once revealed how a German Student, his own ego-ideal, not a Serbian pig was destined to kill the heir to the Habsburg throne. Those and many thousand other representative figures of all anti-Nazi denominations were the victims of Schuschnigg's breakdown and Hitler's brutish hatred and psychopathy. Not all of them died. Many were finally released. Yet too many died and have been mutilated for their life. One among these victims I mourn most. When I had been in exile for the first weeks with my family still in Austria, and I contemplated in the deep disturbance of my heart the gigantic problems, moral and material, which would emerge out of the iron necessity to defeat Germany and liberale Austria again, I relied in my spirit, pitched to sterile age, foremost on his spiritual advice, his goodness, his candor, his gentleness. This friend of mine, to whom I would have liked to turn for comfort, was Hans K. Zessner-Spitzenberg (d August 1, 1938), anima candida, an exemplary father, a faithful friend, professor of law at the first agricultural College, a leader of Legitimism in the Patriotic Front, where Schuschnigg used his petty portfolio to counterbalance that of Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian Quisling. Storm in the water-bottle on Schuschnigg’s desk! Misuse of a noble soul by the Legitimists inside and outside of the govemment Zessner paid dearly enough for his twofold loyalty. The Catholic Seyss-Inquart would not dare or would not want to do anything for the Catholic Zessner. Only a few days, after my friend had been brought to the concentration camp in Germany, he died in “exile", as his courageous widow said in the obituary. Zessner was a great worshipper of the late emperor Charles, but he himself died in still greater an agony. He was an aristocrat not only by race, but by every inch of his soul, one of those ripe fruits of an old tree which suffer under the sun, but know to stand it. Sometimes he would say to me "Don't you think, we are too old to do anything eise than to withdraw honorably?" His most secret pain was that he, in all his deep-seated loyalty, could not help gradually including into this judgment his own political ideal, Legitimism, as wel 1. Paradoxically, if only all his fellow gentlemen would have been consumed by an equal zeal, they might have saved their country from destruction and their ideals from oblivion. 6 Another wave of victims feil, when in consequence of the Anschluss the persecution of the Jews got new Impulses all over Greater Germany. Thousands were killed and killed themselves, many survived, only to be sacrificed later to Wotan, when the mass deportation in sealed wagons to Poland began. One of these latter victims was Robert Danneberg (d. December 12, 1942). When I had left Austria and spoke about the conditions there to somebody, I was used to say: “If there are people to survive the uttermost brutality, they will be Schmitz and Danneberg”. They both really had a strong neck not to be broken easily. In the case of Schmitz, a tough nature and a deep religiosity it amalgamated into a stubbom character, which in his great days incited the passionate enmity of many, yet in his sorrows also their admiration. Schmitz survived the concentration camp, although with both legs amputated, after he was deliberately exposed to frost. In the case of Danneberg exactly the same tough nature had found its pendant in another kind of world-immanent religiosity, the Judaism in his blood amalgamated with the Socialism in his spirit to a kind of Messianism, the fundamental characteristic of which was the belief in the infallibility and invincibility of the Proletariat. While Danneberg after 57 months of concentration camp was brutally killed, because he was a Jew, Schmitz as a Catholic was released after all, as soon as he was crippled. Thus, the mock-providence of Nazism shows, how to punish the ones and let vegetate the others. Yet can anybody escape the temptation to ask, how Austria might look today, if these two men, the Symbols of "red" and "black" Vienna, would have found together at the right time? No doubt, they both have to share in common the responsibility at least as the exponents of their parties which were unable to arrive at a constructive compromise. Danneberg was the living embodiment of optimism throughout all the years I have known him. I could never understand his unexhaustive conviction that all will tum out well, when I visited him in the city hall before the catastrophe of 1934, as he still held one of the chairs I was to sit in a few months later, or when I saw him again in prison afterwards, whence he wrote me letters glowing of intensive interest and retained activity concerning all municipal matters, even if now in the hands of his opponents, or when we met for the last time a few days before the end which he would not see approaching and consequently would not escape. In vain I tried to impress upon him the urgency to leave the country at once. He could not believe that Western Europe would consent to the Anschluss, and he feit obliged to stay with the Underground Organization, until it was too late. When he tried to enter Czechoslovakia, the frontier organs had the Order from their govemment in Prague to refuse the entrance of any Austrian refugees, and thus the entire train had to go back to Vienna, where the Gestapo already waited for its passengers. Many other victims have fallen, right and left. I remember Joseph August Lux, passionate Austrian patriot and courageous Catholic author, who lived at Anif near Salzburg, right under the nose of the Bavarian mountains, where he could not escape revenge. Another victim was Eugen M. Kogon, a young Catholic intellectual, bom in 7 Russia, educated in Bavaria, but an Austrian by his choice. Together with two friends he tried to escape across the March River into Czechoslovakia in the night, when Schuschnigg capitulated. One swam the river. The other was too exhausted. Therefore the third decided to stay as well. Thus he was caught the next day and never released alive. There were many other cases of Socialist Jewish intellectuals, who died in the German concentration camps. Oswald Richter was the lawyer of the labor party. He was already in exile under the authoritarian regime, but voluntarily retumed unable to find his place in life even in Prague, where he had once come from. Another Socialist leader, who had been in exile in Brünn but also came back, driven by home sickness, was Otto Kanita. A few days before the end he asked me for my opinion, whether to leave or not. He had lost the confidence of his former party-comrades, because Schuschnigg, knowing and esteeming him from parliamentary times, had expressed his interest in him, without doing, however, much for his real rehabilitation. In this moral isolation between the two parties Kanitz remembered that he, the Jewish intellectual, had once grown up as a Catholic. He could have easily left Austria without trembling for the future. He was an ideal elocutionist and a perfect ex tempore poet of political satires in both German and English. But he could not help staying in spite of my urgent advice and thus was trapped in fact by the love for his country. All these victims feil in the first years. In the meantime, the Underground activities had started, and very soon were answered by a wave of executions by the German axe. One of the first to sacrifice his life was a simple proletarian Chauffeur by occupation, Hans Schneider, who was executed with his wife Hedwig with the axe at Vienna on December 12, 1942. He was a collaborator of mine during the last years in Austria. I travelled with him through the Austrian lands the very days before the end. When I left Austria, I proposed to him to come with me. “I cannot leave my girl behind, and besides we have to begin working against the Nazis tomorrow" he said. So he did and his girl with him. Surely, if he would have left Austria, what would he have gained? A road of misery would have brought him, if he would have been extremely lucky, from the French concentration camp into the Spanish. Hardly would he ever have reached the British or American shores. He was not an intellectual, but a proletarian, who instinctively, with the same sound instincts as the Austrian peasants, knew, what kind of adventure he should never try. The decision to stay was the more courageous, the more he could run the risk by his physiognomy to be either being one indeed somehow regarded as a Jew by the Nazis, either being one indeed somehow by some grandparents without knowing it exactly, or eise one of these Austrian types which sometimes look like Jewish. Whatever he was, he was an Austrian proletarian, conscious of his function to a high degree, who wanted to fight and fighting went down. There was lots of this kind. Under the Social Democrats, to whom they belonged as a matter of course, not to the Communists, they took the liberty to criticize the "bonzes", who had elevated themselves in the party machine at the cost of the proletarians. Under the authoritarian regime, in the frame of which they were ready to 8 work for liberty without any prejudice, they rather boldly uttered their grievances instead of going Underground. When disappointed by the results of their readiness to cooperate, they did not hesitate even to try what legitimism could do for the right of labor. Strangely enough for many observers, who did not understand the pride of these people to be the backbone of an independent labor movement, they were never Communists. Under the Nazis they refused any compromise at all. Of those elite, I shall always think as of the politically most highly educated rank and file any European labor movement could boast. Not only Austrians at home, however, have been paying the price. Nobody does endure any exile with so little ability of accommodation than the Austrian, who is the master of accommodation at home .When I had been in exile in Switzerland for a few months and was just to Start for Paris I contemplated a letter I would write to Otto Bauer (d. July 4, 1938), to meet him there again after the most fateful four years in our lives. We had been in close contact before the events of 1934, after which he against the authoritarian regime had left the country to continue the war against the authoritarian regime in exile, while I took the chance to contribute my share to the building up of the Austrian front against Nazism at home. In spite of these basically different mutual decisions, there was still a tie of strong sympathy which connected us. We had even exchanged our views via common friends at some risk respectively, when he was at Brünn writing the Underground paper of the Revolutionary Socialists, while I held an offlce of the authoritarian regime. I never concealed even in this function and after his failure that I regarded Bauer the most constructive brain which the democratic republic possessed. At Zürich I met another Otto Bauer, the leader of the Religious Socialists in Austria for whose delicate position nobody eise had any deeper understanding than his namesake .When I opened the door to the house of a common Swiss friend, where I was to greet Bauer and his family in exile, he told me that just the news had come from Paris that Otto Bauer had died. At no time in my life I was struck so deeply that I would never on this earth listen to the wisdom of a man, in whom vision and experience had so perfectly blended. The extinction of this light was to me, as if the best hope Austria would ever have in exile had passed. Many exiles have died since. Among the outstanding figures of the authoritarian regime who left Austria was Guido Zernatto, the only minister of Schuschnigg's cabinet to prefer exile to the old-age pension, for which all the others had longed, which they all had to consume for a while in the concentration camps, but eventually received promptly in liberty again, except only those regarded as Jews by the Nazis and therefore killed. Zernatto was the responsible organizer of the Patriotic Front. Son of that Austrian country, Carinthia, where people with Italian or Furlan names have Slovene blood and a German ideology, he was an Austrian poet, before he became minister, with instincts of blood and soil far away from any political theories. Schuschnigg promptly placed him on the most political post which existed in the authoritarian regime, because he thought him an un-political mind. Ideologically, Zernatto could have easily preceded the way the other ministers of Schuschnigg did eventually, yet character logically he 9 was of another mettle. Although Schuschnigg did not make him his successor in exile, as he could have done, the very fact that Zernatto left Austria shows that not everything in the authoritarian regime was bound historically to culminate in the Anschluss. After a short exile, in which unfortunately he did not live up politically to the expectations set in his uniqueness as the only representative of the last Austrian regime abroad, the premature death of Zernatto at New York cut this last offshoot of the experiment Dollfuss-Schuschnigg abroad. In comparing Bauer and Zernatto politically, there is not much alternative left to the Austrians, from whom they ought to learn in the future. Bauer will live in the Austrian memory as one of the great constructive spirits in the "generation between the two wars", whose intellectual accomplishments are still not exhausted. Bauer, however, with all his sentimentality he cultivated not only for the workers, but also, if not more, for the peasants, his secret love, was not so much an Austrian, but rather a cosmopolitan. This was his greatness and his limit. This was the main reason, why men like Zernatto and all the Austrian "Semi- Fascists” who in fact were no Fascists, but un-political Austrian patriots, suddenly feit forced to jump into the breach and ovemight aspired to the monopoly of political leadership. Ambiguous, unclear, illogical, irrational, super-astute in their self-esteem, but underprivileged in reality at least for politics, they left the folds of their former occupations, where politics very often meant but business readiness and mingled into real politics, of which they did not have any idea at all. They did not know either the ideas or the rules of the game or anything eise required to save or even to-handle properly the state. Yet they well knew the unum necessarium which the Socialists, on the other hand, did never know: that a state is determinedl by its idea, that to fight even with blinded eyes for the very name of Austria would be a merit before history and that if the enthusiasts of Austria might perish because of their lack of technical knowledge, the experts of democracy and socialism in their blindness for metaphysical values, would have contributed their heavy share to this sad end. In all their tragic errors from Dollfuss to Schuschnigg there is something of the genuine idealism of Don Quixote, transfiguring their deeds, alive in the heroism, with which the men of the authoritarian regime have fought five years alone In the world for Austria - against the overwhelming onslaught of the giant neighbor, against the apathy of the world around and against the ideological shortcomings of their constructive would-be partners within the country, who did not want to know that in war a country can be defended only with patriotism and nationalism, not with the most perfect party solidarity discipline and program. Many of the Austrians, who have sacrificed their lives for Europe and civilization, seemed to me once indispensable for any reconstruction of my country when I am at a loss, revolving in my intellect the difficult problems of moral reconstruction, I cannot say any longer, as I was used to say to myself: Zessner will know the right way. When I think, from whom I might leam, most politically, I cannot be joyful any longer to know that Otto Bauer too is in exile, and that, how much we would disagree in essential matters, I would never learn more from anybody eise .For a 10 long time, after I settled in this country, when I needed Support in all those economic and political questions, in which two congenial souls always see clearer than one alone, I was grateful to have the best adviser in Hans Simon (d. October 9, 1943) whom I considered one of the few outstanding brains left under the ruins of Austria. Expert in the field of modern fmance, he never denied the very fact that his mother's sister had been the third wife of Johann Strauss, Jr., whose Viennese charm found great congeniality in my friend's family. Many vital discussions which we once have begun on the banks of the Grundl See in Styria we have continued on the shores of Cape Cod, Mass. He was the man nearest to my heart among all who went with me into exile from Austria to America. He too will never advise me on earth. Nevertheless, I feel him and all the others present .These are the souls and the spirits, Catholics and Jews, intellectuals and proletarians, Romantic souls and political spirits who are near to my mind, when I speak and think of Austria. They are my “underground” and an efficient one at that. I rest upon them in confidence that they may even advise me still more accurate now than they ever could before. They are a cross- section of the sacrifices which Austria has contributed to the cause of Europe and civilization during the last decade. There will be no reconstruction without them. Their parties will certainly try again to drag asunder. But perhaps it will suffice, if there are a few independent minds in which the Austrian deeds will remain a great spiritual unit. Lucky the men, who fall for their convictions, if compared with the meaninglessness of the hecatombs sacrificed on all fronts, where the German army has dragged the Austrian soldiers into fire .We cannot even guess, to what the number of these men amounts. I think of the sons of my late friend, whom the Nazis killed, the sons of my collaborators among labor, and in particular of a young friend, who had studied theology, before he was called to the colors, and who commented on the Situation at home for the sake of his "uncle" in America literally to the last mail. The individual examples, however, frightening as they may be, are absorbed into a common destiny, equalizing former Nazis and anti-Nazis alike, a destiny as cruel and bitter as anything eise happening today in Europe. The former Nazis among the Austrian soldiers may have deserved their fate, but even they, mostly of age classes not responsible for anything themselves, are over-punished, wherever they have rediscovered their Austrian substance under their shirts in disappointment and disgust, yet are treated as Germans by Germans and anti-Germans alike. There is no venture in saying that the former Nazi minority in Austria has long returned to the convictions of the Austrian majority which has been anti-Nazi, before there were anti-Nazis anywhere eise. Yet both majority and minority are not sure, how the world has gone, since there is no Austria any longer. They are boys without fathers to teach them politically. These fathers, in many cases literally killed by the Nazis and in others morally deeply wounded, at any rate politically unable to express themselves, have left to their sons a kind of legacy. Generally speaking, they have left, as it is very natural for a basically still healthy people, the worldly courage in the average case to perform loyally and unflinchingly their duty, There is nothing which could be more 11 desirable for the Austrian people as a whole and their future that this is the tenor of their youth. In some outstanding examples the Austrian fathers have also left the spiritual courage to their sons to offer themselves as martyrs for their perennial convictions. There were such among the Austrian boys, who have refused to serve the beast and have been shot therefore. We may later leam of these cases more specifically after the mist of the battled has cleared. The overwhelming majority of the young Austrians have, however, not chosen this path of martyrdom. I dare say that this is only sane for a people which will not commit national suicide. Nobody has the right to throw a stone upon them therefore. To regard them as Nazis, because they did not obliterate themselves, would be Phariseeism, indeed. They are the youth surrendered to Hitler by Europe which refused to accept the sacrifices the Austrians had already made for civilization. Thus, Hitler Germany became their legal authority to which all those who did not want to embrace martyrdom voluntarily, had to stay in moral loyalty. This they have done in peace and war The Austrian soldiers in the German army have fought everywhere in this war as faithfully and courageously as their fathers did under the imperial flag. Nobody can accuse them for that. On hundred occasions, of which many observers have reported, they have proved their humanity in dealing with civil populations and prisoners and have distinguished themselves thereby from the rest of the German army. This was not merit, but nature. Already in the last war I have seen during united offensives of Austrian and German troops our Bosniaks behave as gentlemen, human and civilized, in comparison with the Boches, who reveled in monstrosities. The Austrians in this war have fought bravely, but have never shown the fanaticism necessary for holding the last ditch, because they lacked both the national conviction to fight for a good cause and the iron discipline to fight well for a bad one. Without seeking surrender some have surrendered. Others have not been convinced as yet that their great dilemma would really be solved by surrender. They may hate the Nazis, but they do not fully trust the anti-Nazis, against whom they are trained to fight. We would surely hear more of them, no doubt, if the name of Austria would really amount to a consistent program in the mouth of the United Nations, of which the Austrian boys in the allied prison camps and their politically adequate and treatment would be the Symbols. This is not the case, and every month being not the case may seriously damage the political task in the years ahead. This indispensable task, which should and could Start already now, would very well have to provide for the fighting generation of the Austrians, who have shared the fate of the German army, a meaning of their sacrifices and sufferings superior to any prevailing Interpretation by the idea of solidarity and comradeship with the German army. If this better Interpretation cannot be achieved in the long run in a new Austria there will be a third time the chance that Alpine elite troops participate in an enterprise destructive for civilization. Like their fathers, who have been buried in Poland, in Russia, in Serbia, in Rumania, and in Italy, seldom, however, side by side with their German comrades, the sons have died all over Europe but now always together with the 12 Germans. Can the dead of the same war ever be separated in the memory of the survivors? The bulk of the Austrian soldiers in World War I has overcome this memory and would still have been more thoroughly separated from the German spell, both psychologically and politically, if the respective policy of the Victors would have been positive enough. Why not think the same possible again under better presuppositions? The fate of both fathers and sons seems largely identical. Both have fought on the wrong side. Both have figured in the plans and armies of the barbarians instead of civilization although their common ancestors have never faltered in knowing well their place in history. There is a great difference, however between the two generations. The fathers still knew that they fought for an empire which, as much as it had been in Germany's towing-rope for the last thirty years, if prevailing still might preserve some auxiliary power to curb again the tide of Germanism. Although they knew to be forces in the hands of the German power game they nevertheless were still able to stand on their own account at least on the periphery of the game. Their deeds in defending Lwow and Czernowitz in the East against the armies of the Czar, or even Trieste and Trent in the South in the name of a millennium of supra-national symbiosis against the mere greed of sacro egoismo were not meaningless for the future and can perhaps be better understood thirty years afterwards. The Austrian armies in World War I have not only fought that German power might be preserved, but also that afterwards, if no peace without victors and vanquished would be possible, at least the Succession States would be possible in an interlude of history in the midst of three imperialisms, the German, the Italian and the Russian The sons have nothing like this hope before their eyes. Hence, they ought to have placed before them what peace and reconstruction would bring to them. They are told today by their German superiors that they fight for European civilization. They don't believe that stuff. But they don't believe the opposite theory either. They are bewildered not knowing, where to tum. Only on account of the future reconstruction of the European continent in peaceful and civilized Cooperation among the United Nations, extinguishing the glimmering flares of barbarism and the resort to more power politics, everywhere, will they understand in looking back that their sufferings and sacrifices have really contributed to this effect, even if they once fulfilled their duty on the wrong side. For this is the secrecy of ethical behavior that in the long run it does not serve primarily the authority misusing loyalty to whom it is addressed, but only those themselves, who are doing their duty. May history never disappoint them. May the liberated Europe after this war be spared to reach a stage, in which any single nation, as small as it may be, retrospectively will be seduced to think that after all the Huns stood for civilization. May the future generation of the Austrian people be able to engrave on the tombs and the monuments of their Thirty Years' War martyrs the sentence: MORITURI PRO A USTRIA MORIUNT PRO HUMANITA TE. 13 The dead have to he buried, but the people have to go on living. There is only one etemal force of civilized society, by the efforts of which the catastrophes of history may he overcome again, and thereby alone the sacrifices of the martyrs may get their füllest meaning in history. This force is neither church nor state, which in this respect are only auxiliary institutions, but the family, the large family, not the dwarf family to be destined to die out, the growing family in a growing people. The family is a cosmos of its own, religious and social, spiritual and temporal, by which the deepest wounds of the national body can be healed. Family means the most individualized individual and the most collectivized collectivity, means the human person under authority and in Charge of authority, one being at the Service of the other, both at the Service of God and the country. To look at national problems from the angle of the family, really means the long-range view as compared with the merely political aspect. Nothing is more important in exile, where one set of the ideas conceming the new Austria is prepared, as well as at home again, when new life out of the old resources alone will be up to the gigantic task ahead, than really to get the view of the family in national affairs: to see the national life as the Cooperation between man and woman, both primarily in their natural spheres, to understand fully, how every single item of national activities is either to the advantage or to the disadvantage of the family and thus of the national future, and to act consistently in every detail so that the values of the family flourish in the national community and everything eise be subordinated to this goal identical with national being or non-being. The political exile has any meaning at all historically where national ideas are preserved and contributed for the future which the people at home under foreign yoke cannot be equally sure of keeping alive and unpolluted. If an exile is short, it may not even be necessary at all. If an exile is long, it will not be endured by men with their names written in the running rivers of the time, but only by people with deep roots in their national soil, as once the Polish aristocrats and intellectuals surely possessed.. This book is written by an individual author, but conceived out of the substance of both his family which means those around him in this time and those before him during many times. This society of the spirits throughout the ages alone is worth-while to be called one's fatherland. This alone was the basis that we could emigrate from Austria when she became a part of Greater Germany, and this alone still is the basis that and this alone still is the basis that I can contemplate to retum again to Austria, after she is liberated, whether it will last a few additional months, or 123 years, as in the case of Poland. Out of the substance of the family, whose battle-cry is Austria, whose principle primum philosophari deinde vivere and whose coat of arms the lilies of the field, the national reconstruction will be alone possible after these gigantic moral and material destructions. On a spiritual, rather than economic basis simply evident to everybody, the Austrian children of the coming generation will have to be begotten in and educated to liberty and a deadly serious life which, as they will surely discover, in fact is the only joyful life at all worth-while to be lived. This may be a different Austrian gospel as the 14 world has-been accustomed to hear from the Austrians, but it will doubtlessly be the only one to guarantee survival for an Austria to exist during the second half of the iron Century. Only lives to be sure of asceticism, sacrifices and first-class achievements will be countable in the future as Austrian lives not to be merely a liability to the national community. As I myself have fared extremely well throughout my life with exactly this recipe in spite of all the cynicism which I have encountered on my path, I trust that there will be missions enough ahead in my family to be counted as Austrian. This book is as good the product of an Austrian family in exile, as it is the product of the author’s intellect and pen. When I say in exile, being on the native soil of good old Tenafly, looking out from my window at the Palisades, as I once looked at the Vienna Forest, I am nearly ashamed to say in exile, where I am at home. Wherever we shall once be together again, on the outskirts of Vienna, in the Lower Austrian mountains around Maria Zell, in the Upper Austrian plains and hills, in the Tyrol, north or south of the Brenner, in Salzburg, in Styria, in Carinthia,- we shall never forget to have been at home at Tenafly one hour and a half from the Empire State Building of New York. There would be much which would speak of staying at Tenafly for the rest of our lives, - if Austria would not call us to work. Speaking as the father who transfers the torch of life to his offspring in the full consciousness that they will continue the road where I leave it, there is something in myself which I feel will never enable me to give the füllest life, I am still capable of, to any other country than Austria, for which I have worked with my entire soul, as long as I can remember, which is nearly half a Century, and the fathers and mothers in my soul have worked half a millennium and more than we can remember .We shall do it again. Some splinter will grow again in the old mold. No chance on earth can substitute this prospect. To our best common ability we worked for our country in this book. We did it in making possible and in carrying out together chapter for chapter. They had not only to be conceived and written, which is my foremost job, not only indefatigably corrected and supervised linguistically, to which my eldest boy and my eldest girl contributed their shares, but to which simultaneously the economic basis available had to be adapted by the exact Cooperation of all involved, in which everybody held a function. Without my family I would never have written this book. Both spiritually and technically it is a family affair, to which all ten of us have contributed .To the other nine the author wishes to express his fatherly thanks for all they have offered him.

August 1, 1944, Tenafly, New Jersey Emst Karl Winter 15

The Shadow of Yesterday#

(§1) Nothing is easier than to see the history of a people only under the aspect of economic forces which determine the national fate, and particularly the history of a small people only under the aspect of international conditions which tum into an object what longs to be a subject of politics. Nothing easier than to write Austrian history also under these two aspects! Modem political joumalism is sometimes nothing eise than analysis of these outside factors. Yet nobody, who recognizes the existence of national individualities in history, will deny that there are inside factors as well. Aside from the economic forces and the international conditions, to which even the most powerful nations are subjected, there is the factor of national metaphysics, of which even the last powerful nation on earth is its own forger. To be capable of knowing its own road through history, past and future, is the indelible privilege of every nation, independently from outside factors. In the new age which will require national self-analysis, it is indispensable that nations leam to look into the mirror of their history as if neither economic nor international determinism, but only their own free decision had shaped its course. Only where the character of a nation is really clarified, can the influence of the environment upon the character be defined at all. Thus it is not meaningless to concentrate, without completely neglecting the outside factors, primarily on the inside factors of national history, and to analyze its process in the light which the logical primacy of ideas over economics permits. This will be our course, indeed. There are still many people, commoners and statesmen alike, who think of nations as merely linguistic units. This, in fact, more than any other, is the social disease which has destroyed the basic stmcture of the European family of nations. Both Fascism and National Socialism are but the last consequences of the "principle of nationality", linguistically interpreted as it has been for a Century. "From humanity through nationality to bestiality", Grillparzer, the Austrian poet, once said both epigrammatically and prophetically. A nation is not a linguistic unit, but is man, nature and history in a unique amalgamation. There is no other European nation which, to be thoroughly understood in its national character, will need, as much as Austria, the final emancipation of mankind from the fetters of linguistic nationalism which is but the caricature of the historic national consciousness. The Austrian is a type of man, who indeed speaks German, and while he is convinced to speak it much better, more humanly and less disfigured than the Germans themselves, is yet no German. He is just as little a German, as the American is an Englishman in spite of the common language sometimes uniting, sometimes separating them. The Austrians are not merely a German tribe once separated from the motherly womb of Germany by some mistake of history and who in our time slipped back into the shell again to which they always have belonged. They are a nation of their own. Their national consciousness has been shaped differently from and antagonistically to that of Germany. Thus, the Austrian nation is an undisputable reality of history. The Austrians 17 are politically non-Germans in spite of the fact that they seem to be, at least to superficial observers, quasi-Germans linguistically. They are, however, not necessarily anti-German. Their national ideal might be circumscribed best as the political use of the German language outside of Germany for the sake of a European symbiosis between Germans and non-Germans. Only where Germany herseif, in too noisy and rattling a pronunciation of her interests, feels wrongly endangered and irrationally enraged by the mere existence of another German speaking political community, this Austrian ideal, pro-German in its very nature, tums out to be an anti-German factor. Austria basically represents a cosmopolitan and civilized use of the German language and a similar Interpretation of German ideas to the non-German peoples of the world, as well as an assimilation of non-German ideas into the linguistic frame of German thought. Germany may make use of this Austrian opportunity or not. If not, Austria, consciously bearing in her veins the blood stream of many races, with her world always open to those of other nations, will continue her own life. Nothing is less true than the belief that Austria is merely a German province - spiritually or economically. In the course of centuries, the Austrians have built an edifice carefully fitted into the landscape around, which they believe to be their contribution to European civilization, gladly inviting the peoples of the world to gaze and marvel at it. In clinging to their native soil, they are capable of living their füllest lives within their own boundaries in self-sufficiency, at least without the breasts of Germany spending but witch-milk. There is no other kind of salvation possible for Austria than within her own sacred precincts, the soul of the people and the earth of the country, where delights of the eyes teil of millennia of meditation and cultivation. In their innermost soul, the Austrians are neither pro-German nor anti- German, but simply non-German, indifferent to the fact that there are Germans on earth at all, at least other Germans than Austrians. The uniqueness of the Austrian national individuality embraces in fact a twofold Austrian mission, wherever the Austrians leave their precincts and mingle with other nations. In speaking many German dialects, Bavarian, Alemannic, Frankish, Saxon, aside from the classical German which is Austrian, the Austrians are able to speak more intimately and more accurately than anybody eise on earth with the Germans. They are able to understand them in all their rational and irrational impulses and utterances, whether the German language is revealing or covering them, to translate their words most adequately into the languages of the world as well as to communicate to their minds straightforwardly the views of the other nations. Austria is the only real bridge which connects the curving comet of the German destiny with the planetary System of the world. By fitting into a territory, however, which is an essential part of a geographical System outside of the German orbit, Austria always transcended her own linguistic barriers belonging intrinsically to a family of non-German peoples, who, even if they also were never necessarily anti-German, under the impact of Germanism repeatedly had to become the very core of anti-German sentiments and actions. The Austrian people has been by nature the German speaking partner of a non-German community of nations 18 which, although frequently allied with Germany in history, nevertheless was always her only effective ruler and tamer. This is the twofold destiny of Austria which, whenever not completely grasped either by the Austrians themselves or their two kinds of neighbors, is bound to tum into tragedy for them all. The twofold Austrian mission in history has sometimes resulted in ambiguities about the Austrian name which are not always flattering to the Austrian character. Not only the world looking upon Austria was at times puzzled, but also the Austrians themselves frequently did not know what they really were. In speaking of Austria today we have to think of the Eastem Alpine countries which existed down to 1938 as an independent state in form of a federation consisting of nine federal lands: Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, Tyrol, Vorarlberg, Carinthia, Styria and Burgenland. Austria in these dimensions equals either Maine or the other five New England States together. Roughly speaking, Lower Austria is nearly like Massachusetts, Upper Austria nearly like Connecticut, Styria about two thirds of New Hampshire, Salzburg not quite one third of New Hampshire, the Tyrol like half of Vermont, Vorarlberg like less than one eighth of Vermont (or less than Rhode Island), Carinthia nearly like the other three eighths of Vermont, the Burgenland somewhat larger than Rhode Island, while the Capital of Vienna (in its smaller size before the Anschluss) equals one and a half District of Columbia. In terms of population figures, Austria's 6.7 million inhabitants (1933) were then either nearly equal to New York's five boroughs, or to New England minus Connecticut. Yet if this doubtlessly has been Austria during a period of twenty years between the two wars, it seems to have been much more problematic who in fact was an Austrian at that time. There were always many more Austrians outside of Austria than simply those holding within the Greater Austrian orbit within the greater Austrian orbit than simply those holding Austrian papers of citizenship. There were single people considering themselves Austrians and there were Austrian minorities abroad which, even where they were forced to forget about, could not be forced to unmake their history. To acknowledge these facts has nothing to do with any Imitation of the pan-German tendency which keeps the German speaking offspring of German immigrants everywhere in the world under German political influence. The Austrians abroad are a much more complex phenomenon and their existence not so simply deducible from any scheme of imperialism. There have been always several categories of Austrians abroad. Down to 1918 Austria was an empire including a dozen of nations. These nations, some of them connected with Austria only since the 18th Century, but more of them forming the Austrian empire for four hundred years, and a nucleus of them shaping the Austrian people even for a longer time, were the following the German speaking Austrians proper (subdivided into the Alpine, Sudeten and Carpathian branches), the Eastem Jews, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Poles, the Ruthenians (or Western Ukrainians), the Slovenes, the Croats, the Serbs, the Magyars, the Rumanians, the Italians, the Furlans and the Ladins (the two last ones being descendants of the pre-Italian Romansh of the Eastem Alps). 19 Among all these nations there are still people who feel as Austrians and still many more who behave as such. I have known persons among everyone of these nations, who have continued to regard themselves as Austrians even after the end of Old Austria. According to temperament, interest and conviction a few of these Old Austrians were always in strict Opposition to their respective States. Yet most of them did not even think of wavering in their respective loyalties. For the most time, this Austrian consciousness, extant among the non-German nations of Old Austria was less a matter of politics, than the consequence of a psychological habit and an atmosphere of life. There are more Austrians of this latter category than generally understood, if we only think in terms of Austrian civilization, and quite a few representative figures, statesmen, artists and scholars even of the emancipated non-Austrian nations of the postwar era belonged to it. I do not hesitate to number the two Masaryk, father and son, among them, who have stood politically for de-Austrianization of the Czechoslovak people, but culturally are living Symbols themselves of what once has been called the Austrian-Slavonic school of thought. If all this is true of many non-Germans, it is still truer of the German speaking Austrians abroad who are living dispersed among the non-German nations of the European Southeast. The entire stock of non- German pseudo-Austrians, as many might be induced to call them, may face extinction in a very near future (although I am not even sure of that). Yet the German speaking minorities among the non-German nations of Old Austria, as long as they survive obliteration by artificial means, will always have merely the alternative of being either Austrians or Germans. Under the impact of the principle of nationality, materialized by their non-German neighbors, they were de-Austrianized and thereby in fact Germanized, until their Germanism became a menace to their host peoples. If they ought not to regard themselves as Germans and thus remain a menace to the non-Germans around them, they ought to be recognized as the Austrians they are, not so much politically but culturally, which means recognized as a telling token of an age, in which they were a highly civilized bond of unity among the fragments of an artistic mosaic. Hence the Czechoslovaks, who were foremost in de-Austrianizing themselves as well as their minorities, might well be forced in the future either to try the complete uprooting and transplanting of the so-called Sudeten Germans, or, if this will be too double-edged a solution, to aid in their re-Austrianization. There is no escape from this alternative. If the most compact group among these German speaking minorities is often erroneously referred to as Sudeten Germans, now their non-German host people must be mainly interested that they are recognized as Sudeten Austrians, and that they are dealt with as linguistic and cultural minorities of the Austrian, not the German, political nation. Down to 1918 Austria was geographically the "empire on the Danube" that combined the Eastern Alpine countries of Austria proper, the Sudeten countries of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, the Carpathian countries of Hungary, including Slovakia, Carpatho-Ruthenia and Transylvania, the sub-Carpathian countries of Galicia-Lodomeria and Bukovina, and the Karst countries between the Adriatic Litoral and the Balkan 20 Peninsula, including Carniola, Gorizia-Gradiska, Trieste, Istria, Croatia-Slavonia- Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, - integrating them all into a great European power with more than 50 million inhabitants. Austria down to 1938, however, was the Eastern Alpine country roughly between the Inn and the Leitha rivers, tributaries of the Danube, a country Stretching from the Bodensee on the Swiss frontier to the Neusiedlersee on the Hungarian frontier, and flowed through and drained south of the main ridge of the Alps by the Drau and Mur Rivers. The Austria of 1918/38 was somehow identical with the nucleus of Austria before the union with Bohemia and Hungary in 1526. Yet postwar Austria was cut off from various territories which once belonged historically to the same organism for many centuries. Some of these territories were ripped off from Austria, because the non-German inhabitants who were the majority desired to join their national States. This was their plain right under the rules in power, yet was not always even wise from their own national point of view., Among these voluntarily seceding territories were Carniola, Gorizia-Gradiska, Trieste and Istria which left Austria on their own account, just as some of them, for instance Trieste, had once joined Austria spontaneously as a free community more than live hundred years earlier. Other territories were not consulted about their wishes, but were separated from Austria because of the national interests of her victorious neighbors. While a plebiscite in favor of Austria saved the larger part of South Carinthia, other parts were transferred to both Italy and Yugoslavia without any plebiscite. Perhaps a plebiscite would also have modified the state's frontier in the case of South Styria also annexed by Yugoslavia. An injustice, unheard of in history, occurred In the case of South Tyrol, where a quarter of a million German speaking Tyroleans, together with the Ladin enclaves gravitating more to the north than to the south, were ruthlessly sacrificed to the interests of a petty imperialism in the very age of national self-determination. Yet the greatest tragedy not only for Austria, but for the things to come was the Separation of more than three million Sudeten Austrians in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia from their Austrian core. They were the Symbol for the German speaking Austrian minorities at large every where in Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary and Yugoslavia which all simply had to submit to the new conditions. As they were imposed upon several million German speaking Austrians Spread throughout the Southeastem European ränge without presenting to both the Austrian mother country and the Austrian minorities any compensation within a new frame of unity, the net result could not be doubtful. In the first place the minorities became susceptible to the influence of German irredentism and the very bridge of the German expansion into South Eastern Europe. In spite of this perspicuous role which may have disturbed many minds among them, they always represented in fact the most hopeless outpost of German imperialism, under the merely military aspect of which they were ruthlessly expended. Once Old Austria had provided for them a home in the midst of the other nations, to whose intellectual growth they have greatly contributed. Now the new Germany has made a military camp out of it which eventually will question all their colonizing achievements. Yet if they are lost forever, 21 Austria and not Germany will be the true moumer. Without these Austrians abroad from the Sudeten to the Carpathian Mountains, Austria herseif will be only half of herseif, and her ability to speak the language of cosmopolitan Germanism may vanish even to the degree of being silenced forever. Although Austria, her soul and her earth, would not die with this mission she would exist for too many only to be the unfortunate heir of ever burning problems helpless to intercede directly unable to convince her co-victims by the preaching of realism, and by her very existence a sting in the memory of all that once life was different and thus it must become different again. This simply would repeat on the largest possible scale the frustrations of yesterday.

(§2) The identity of Austria in the experience of the living generation was confused by the very fact that three forms of govemment existed already before the Anschluss in the memory of one generation, who had lived in the constitutional monarchy (down to 1918), in the democratic republic (down to 1933) and under the so-called authoritarian regime (down to 1938). In the opinion of many Austrians, still differing in the historic evaluation of these three periods of their national existence, all three forms of govemment held advantages and disadvantages. There was no common opinion among the Austrians, and there is certainly none today, which would overwhelmingly agree that two of these forms of govemment were blunt errors, while only one was the really adequate solution of the Austrian problem. Historically, they all three have carried the stones to the pedestal of Nazism, and as Nazism falls, some thing completely different from anything auxiliary to Nazism should be gladly established by the surviving followers of all "three Austrias" of the past. Through centuries Austria was an empire, even a world empire, under the aegide of the Habsburg dynasty, and the Symbol of the past, the double eagle on the Standard black and yellow, still has a sentimental value among the Austrians. This empire, however, was strangely enough never an Austrian empire proper, but was continuous only as a Habsburg Empire, in which the Austrians had their stakes, but with which they were never completely identical. First, there was the millennium of the Holy Roman Empire, of which the Habsburgs, with interludes, were the elected emperors during five centuries, and of which Austria and Bohemia, but not the other Habsburg dominions, Hungary, Croatia-Slovenia-Dalmatia, Galicia-Lodomeria and Lombardy-Venetia were members. The world empire of the Habsburgs in the 16th Century with Burgundy and Spain already transcended by far the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire, and with its Spanish and Austrian branch, covering both Europe from the Danube to the Tajo, and the New World including Peru and Mexico, was in fact the empire in which the sun never set. The symbolism of the double-eagle, originating in the Roman Empire, found here its widest scope .When the Danubian half of this empire crystallized to be the Habsburg monarchy in its final shape (1526), it was basically the coexistence of three political 22 Systems converging on the Danube: Austria proper, Bohemia and Hungary, With this nucleus three other political Systems gradually agglomerated Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, Galicia-Lodomeria and Lombardy-Venetia. This Habsburg empire "the Monarchy of the House of Austria", eventually abandoning the form of the Holy Roman Empire(1806), after having taken over its Symbols into the own dynastical Imperial dignity (1804) became formally, when forced to yield its position in both Germany and Italy and to modify its structure, the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy (1867). This was the form of the empire and the monarchy, called Austrian and being Habsburg's, down to its end. Only in the first half of the 19th Century it came near to some kind of Austrian empire, although even then it continued simply to be "the Monarchy of the House of Austria", while in the second half it ceased to be even this dynastical unity in favor of a very complex parallelogram of forces. It is nevertheless quite natural that the Austrians think of their imperial tradition in terms of a contribution made to world civilization, even if this tradition, primarily Habsburg’s and only secondarily Austria's, has now gone for good. Those few among them, who commence their political thinking with the year when the empire collapsed, will never, except in times of catastrophes, have really any ascendancy over the soul of the Austrian people. This attitude has nothing to do with any scheming for restoration, dynastical or imperial, or even with any attempt of white-washing the sins of the past, but simply manifests the conservatism of a people which either will stick to the task of integrating the transcendental values of its traditions into a modern patriotism and nationalism, or will be swept away by the whirlwinds of history. It was doubtlessly a profound shock, when the Austrians, who regarded themselves as the builders of the empire, suddenly discovered that they were the citizens of the smallest, poorest and weakest among the six succession States of the Balkanized Old Austrian territory. The Austrian Republic, bom in this hour of shame and self- reproach, did not enjoy a lucky star. For easily understandable pathological reasons, the Greater Austrian ideology of a happier past having now arrived at the end of its historic road, switched into the Greater German ideology which in the Austrian psychopathy of these years of turmoil seemed to have the miraculous power of bringing back the Austrian people to an imaginary golden age .This was said to be the age when Austria was already a part of Germany, and there existed no Austrian Monarchy obliged to care constitutionally for equal non-German nations. Of course, this Interpretation of the past was rather fictitious. Such a Germany which would have embraced Austria never existed, while both the Holy Roman Empire and the German Federation were under exactly the same Austrian leadership which now was deserted. It was a feverish dream, from which the healthier majority of the Austrian people soon awoke again, but not without certain vestiges of having dreamt so heavily. For two decades postwar Austria was both the heir of the name, the guilt and the responsibility of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy and simultaneously that succession state most terribly hit by the monarchy's dissolution. The gigantic problems of adaptation which this tinier form of Austria had to accomplish made her amiable to those who have stood through all these difficulties with her during the best years of their lives. There is no need to be ashamed of the results of this historic test. The 23 Austrians, known as a grudging people, did not lack the mettle to master the destiny with which they had been burdened. In their most realistic social strata they gradually discovered that, as great as the empire of their dynasty had been in its best times, their own truer historic function was now not within any empire, either Greater Austrian or Greater German, but within their own Eastern Alpine state, native and local. Thus the Austrians, a very old people, but still not fully awakened as long as ruled by their dynasty, had to begin as if they were the youngest member of the European family of nations. Old as they are they did so by going back to their very origins. In Symbols of Standards, the Austrians did not continue to stick to black and yellow, the imperial flag, nor did they ever really accept black and red and yellow, the flag of the Greater Germans in Austria and the Weimar Republic in Germany, but they chose red and white and red, the ancient flag of Austria before she entered the imperial union with Bohemia and Hungary. This symbolism again embraces both tasks and chances: to be a bridge of Europe into Germany and to be a partner in a federation outside Germany. Thus Austria really got the chance to Start all over again, after the deeds of her first millennia had been unmade by history. Yet while the Austrian people grew more and more into the new task, the Austrian political life, determined by Greater Austrian reminiscences, Greater German dreams, Marxism, Scholasticism and what eise, did not. The postwar factions in Austria, more than anywhere eise, differed in the very interpretation of the state itself which they had shaped together and should have continuously reshaped so. Some times, there were nearly two peoples within the one state, and they spoke very different languages. Paradoxically, those who adhered most passionately to the democratic republic did not especially appreciate the existence of an independent Austria, nor her roots in history. On the other hand, those who stood for Austrian independence and recognized the values of her tradition did not so highly appreciate the democratic republic. The final outcome of this paradox in the geographical position of the country Stretching between the two internationally recognized realms of Mussolini and Hitler was the political experiment staged by Dollfuss and continued by Schuschnigg, the so-called authoritarian regime, which, however great its historic guilt may have been, cannot be deprived of a great historic merit, a merit unknown to the former democratic republic: the merit of having rediscovered the forgotten name of Austria in interior politics, of having courageously reformulated the idea of Austrian independence in foreign politics, and last but not least, of having even risked and waged war against overwhelming odds to keep the Standards of the country flying in their ancient glory. No Austrian will forget that his country in 1933/38 war the first to feel the brunt of German aggression and, as the lost avant-garde of Europe to fight a war which all the other future United Nations still hoped to avoid. Tragically enough, the authoritarian regime which revitalized the symbolism of Austria served her with means which eventually and inevitably obliterated her just rediscovered name, while its Socialist adversaries, who never cared very much for the glory which was Austria's, and never were greatly in love with Austria's independence, really sacrificed 24 their own lives for the constitutional identity of the Austrian state, without which there could never be in fact any lasting idea of Austria at all. This is the background of the Austrian problem, sketched out schematically, to make its political characteristics clear enough. There are many people who have never thought of Austria otherwise than perhaps in terms of music, medical Science or skiing. In fact, these three items are so good a Propaganda for Austria that the Austrians, inclined to be a silent people, "who think their part and let the others talk" (Grillparzer), could well remain silent and let this Propaganda work for them. It is not only for the sake of the Austrians, however, that the outstanding experimental field in politics which modern Austria had been deserves to be presented to the outside world. As Austria herseif once had the privilege to Start all over again, so had those Austrians who preferred to leave their country after it was surrendered to the enemy. Many among them have been puzzled since how things are bound to happen again in the world at large, which long ago have happened in the small world which was Austria's. Too many people in many other countries have made the same experiments, as if they were never tried in vain before in Austria. Nobody can teil, whether the sequence of these experiments is really over. But even if the authoritarian varieties of totalitarianism should really he everywhere liquidated together with their very root, there still remains, perhaps as the main problem of the postwar era, the indispensable synthesis between the Right and the Left, conservatism and liberalism, capitalism and socialism, peasantry and labor, or whatever special aspect this fundamental problem will have. To be sure, this problem was not solved in the Austrian Republic. On the contrary, its failure to solve it has made possible the authoritarian regime. Yet the Austrian Situation between the two wars has contributed more elementary material for its solution as any other state was able to produce. Exactly the same can be said of the age-old symbiosis of Austria with her non-German neighbors. This problem too has not been solved by man in history. The historic form of Austria collapsed and produced that type of leftist failure which bore the rightist degeneration in its womb, because the problem of interracial symbiosis has not been solved then, as it could have been solved. Yet the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian symbiosis, effective for four centuries, has so far been the only model of a lasting international Organization, in which the principle of imperialism at least was counterbalanced by the principle of federalism. From the experiences of this exemplary experiment, unique in history, the indispensable task of creating a new family of nations may well profit. Thus, the three- fold historic experience which is Austria's ought to be accepted by the homo politicus all over the world, party leaders and statesmen alike. How many people, who listen to Austrian music, are aware that the Austrians of their own age have had to face extraordinarily grave political problems, over which any other people would probably also have stumbled? These are the "three Austrias" which still cast their shadows into the future and which any "Fourth Austria” will have to take fully into account. Whatever one or the other Austrian faction itself may teil the world, - these are the three kinds of Austria to he 25 assimilated into one Interpretation of national history, if at last there ought to be an Austrian nation, proud of liberty and independence, and not two races on Austrian soil waging a war of extermination against each other to the tenth generation. This "Fourth Austria", I am sure, will have to emphasize the virtues of all the three other experiments of history without flinching from the consequences, quite independently from the decision, to whatever type she herseif will it feel to be closest related. Equally courageous, however, must the "Fourth Austria" be in effacing, and if need be even atoning, the guilt of all three predecessors, including that one of which she might feel to be the genuine successor. There can never be a mere retum to the past of anyone of the three manifestations of the Austrian state, as much as the "Legitimists" in both camps, monarchists and republicans, may clamor for it. There will a new creation be necessary to suit the entire Austrian people consistently and continuously, and to provide the legitimate authority which will survive all doubt and criticism. Basically, this creation must be the proud continuation of the idea of Austria as alive in all three metamorphoses, and consequently the radical Suppression of their common errors, which lay primarily in Greater Austrian and Greater German irrationalism and day dreaming, until at the end the caricature of both, the Nazi imperialism engulfmg all the Old Austrian nations, emerged from the waters of history like the etemal beast. Only within this fundamental attitude of historic neutrality, by which alone both the causality and the continuity of history is objectively presented, will it be possible to take fully into account the value of constitutional legality as wel 1. For as much as all three kinds of Austria may have had their historic causes, equally entitled to boast of their historic merits, and condemned to atone their historic errors, constitutionally there is a decisive difference among them. Taking into account the main trends and abstracting from all details, the constitutional monarchy has ended and the democratic republic has been bom and built legally, thanks a good deal to the yielding monarchy itself. On the other hand, the democratic republic was overthrown and the authoritarian regime introduced illegally. In this factor lies the moral difference between the two kinds of "Legitimism", monarchical and republican. The monarchy has not been able to preserve and the republic not been able to create that kind of legitimacy which is undisputed by the overwhelming majority of the people in times of crises. Both monarchy and republic did not collapse by the sheer weight of might thrown against them, but by a change of loyalty in basic stratifications of the populace. Nevertheless while the monarchy at least formally, paved the way for the republic, minor illegalities unaccounted for, the republic could be eliminated only by a combination of trickery, violence, shamelessness and perverse conscience which not only can never be forgotten by those who were the victims, but also historically sealed the fate of Austria. Her corpse for a while continued to fHl its place. Some of her statesmen, even those guilty in their perversity, continued to speak gloriously of her name, but her very soul which is the Constitution of a people had disappeared and could not be called back by artificial respirations. While the historic continuity of Austria as a member in the society of nations certainly ended on March 11, 1938, the day Schuschnigg capitulated before Hitler, her legal continuity as a people of her own right was interrupted already on March 15, 1933, when the democratic republic 26 was overthrown by the first decisive act - the govemment preventing the parliament to convene by the force of police - by which Dollfuss established the authoritarian regime. These are the shadows of yesterday, the inevitable consequences of a history full of problems, chances, failures and achievements. They can never be simply shaken off, nor ought they to be effaced from memory. There exists no body politic on earth without earthly shadows, nor will there ever be one. The task is not to annul the shadows, or to make them disappear by juggleries, or to force them into ideal pattems, but to see them through as shadows. They ought never to interfere with life. Paradoxically enough for many, this will only be done by those who feel the omnipresence of the fathers, and indeed not as a shadowy memory behind, but as living substance in blood and brain and mettle. Although we never can emancipate from the fathers in ourselves, we ought to be skeptical enough, where ghostly apparitions are Crossing our path, not to take the history behind too tragic, but to take the substance of history in the very existence of the living generation serious enough, could be an Austrian recipe for the work ahead. Either the fathers are dead, or they are living in us. To understand the fathers better than they understood themselves is but another formula of an identic wisdom, once coined for an analogous Situation in the history of philosophy. For sons are born to surpass their fathers. Yet they will do so only in awe of their fathers' deeds deeply engraved in their very souls. 27 Chapter One The Monarchy (§3) Bella gerant alii, tu, felix Austria, nube. "May others wage wars, thou happy Austria, marry". This is the famous distich which symbolizes the final stage in the unique genesis of the Austrian empire, whose full historic evaluation, the evaluation of both its existence and its non-existence for Europe at large, still remains a task of political analysis to be accomplished. An empire, not conquered by wars, invasions and adventures, but "married together", agglutinated bit by bit during Europe's "dark ages" by the work of peace, was it not something miraculous? The instincts of prosperous peasants in aggrandizing their estates translated into world politics, were they not an extraordinary Instrument of breaking down national isolation and cementing organically divergent interests into identic sovereignty? No more ingenious method has in fact been developed as yet which would mould with equal success national discrepancies into a lasting supra¬national co-existence. This "matrimonial policy" was the glory applied for centuries to the agglomeration of countries and peoples called the Monarchy of the House of Austria, as it has likewise been the Stigma stained on them during the modern decades. There obviously was some immanent urgency in such an organic growth which filled nearly a millennium of European history. Hence, the idea, once uttered by Voltaire that God would have to be invented, if he should not exist, was frequently adapted to so stränge and strong a mosaic alike which, out-withering history, by necessity ought to be created if it did not exist. Gladstone and Bismarck are sometimes quoted as having said so. In reality, it was the Czech historian, Frantisek Palacky, who once coined this phrase, when in a symbolic letter he refused the invitation of the German national parliament in 1848 to take his seat among the representatives of Germany at Frankfurt-on-Main. There have been but a few Austrians of the German tongue throughout history, who understood the Austrian idea as perfectly as this Austrian-Czech Palacky did. Incredible, as it may sound to modern ears, the marriages of the dynasties in the past were in fact not always without a deeper historical meaning. They often must be considered the very Symbols of populär ethnic relations, representing an obvious assimilation of the dynasties by the peoples and their national interests rather than the contrary. Within the millennial movements of Northern conquerors and adventurers from the dawn of history southwards the road to the cradles of civilization and to the empires of their dreams, marriages held a tremendous function. By marrying eventually the daughters of the South, the sons of the North learned to change their most innate habits curbing the Stimulus of their very souls, which had forced them into the path of adventure and conquest. These marriages became the first organic ties between the barbarian world from which the invaders had emanated, and the civilization which they had invaded, bearing perspicuous evidence to the fact that the barbarians’ destructive rage had failed. Against these marriages, the die-hards of racial purity among the conquerors preached their sermons of racialism, until in the course of history even they had to capitulate. In every grand civilization it was the same way. The Greeks, the Romans, the Teutons, sketching out the foundations of European civilization, 28 only repeated the story, until Christianity intervened and made a sacramental union what had been before only the work of Eros. When the race of European dynasties established the feudal order of the Middle Ages and eventually became the Christian symbol of racial amalgamation with the peoples they ruled, the most significant abandonment of their former ways of life, their definite resignation from war and conquest with which their ancestors had been imbued, was perspicuously symbolized by their turn to the most consistent deed of peace, to the planning of marriages. In combining this trend, to which they converted, with their still prevailing pagan ideology of racial superiority, they arrived at a scheme, in which "matrimonial policy" took the place of war and conquest. In so doing the dynasties basically adapted themselves to the ways of life to which their people had adhered since times immemorial and through the benefits of which they had survived many a conqueror. The Christian dynasties of the Middle Ages, although still clinging to the fringes of racialism by idolizing the doctrine of "equal birth", nevertheless accepted largely the technique of their subjects. The peoples not the dynasties were the real inventors of the idea of "matrimonial policy". The people had survived on their own civilized soil, on which their rulers for quite some time were but the guests, by marrying and begetting children according to the innate urging and planning of civilization through infinite generations. The dynasties leamed to imitate them, but, mixing into the ancient technique the ingredient of racialism, never reached an equal level of perseverance. Dynastical matrimonial scheming covers centuries in the best case) its populär model, however, the patient work of matrimony which carves out the face of civilization covers millennia. “The foreign invaders are coming and going. We obey, but we are growing” (Schiller’s Bride of Messina). When the Habsburgs relied on this technique of both populär and dynastical survival in a more systematic way than many other dynasties, and thereby their deeds became proverbial, it was the paradoxical expression of the fact that their countries and peoples had been Hellenized, Romanized, Christianized, Europeanized and civilized to the highest degree centuries before their own arrival. In many European countries other dynasties, lacking in the same cultural background and substratum, exhibited more shamelessly their titles of conquest and trusted more boastfully in their Nordic genealogies. The Habsburgs knew of their Nordic descent too, as an utterance by Charles V proves, but, like many Mediterranean aristocratic families, had been "de-Nordicized" in racial structure and ideology, even before they came to Austria. In this perspective must the racial theory be seen, which says that all the dynasties of the Middle Ages were proud to descend from the Goths, the Vandals, the Franks and other tribes of the Migration of Nations. Even where this pride reflects more than just a genealogical mythology, in the course of the Christian centuries the dynasties everywhere have largely amalgamated with the race of their environment. The Habsburgs have done so earlier than many other dynasties. This was their advantage in shaping an empire. In accepting the ways and means of their peoples in "marrying together" this empire, they did not force upon their subjects any dynastical law foreign to them, the law of war and conquest, but acted as their peoples' tribunes in carrying out what nature and history alike asked 29 them to accomplish. In evaluating the history of the Austrian empire positively, we recognize the populär trends in the feudal disguises, and we do not want to uproot the wheat which will feed us tomorrow together with the weed which will wither away in its natural course.

(§4) The history of Austria is much older than most contemporaries outside of Austria imagine. There is something quite unique in it from the very Start. Yet if we want to understand its development, its immanent law and logic, we must silence to the uttermost degree the echo of our own age in our ears and try to understand a piece of embroidery woven by history out of its own contexture. As inevitable as the prism, through which we look at history is one of our Century, and as impossible as it is therefore for human beings to see any Century of the past really in the celestial light of the star, where just now its messages arrive, as indispensable a task is it nevertheless to reconstruct as much as we can the autochthonism of history. Already the name of Ostarrichi, mentioned first nearly a millennium ago (996), shows, how the marca orientalis or Ostmark, founded by Charlemagne (791) and restored by Otto II (976) was not content with its merely subsidiary role on the Eastem frontier of the Western empire, but wanted to be the nucleus of an empire herseif. The name, referring to the Easter empire, not the Eastem empire, obviously reflects some early Romanticism, in which perhaps the Christian idea of Easter resurrection coincided with the name of the pagan deity Ostara, two mystic references still made possible linguistically by the very existence of the Eastern mark. To be more than merely an Eastern mark, more even than an Eastem empire, but to be an empire of her own in the midst of West and East, in whose very being there is some core of mysticism, this has been the destiny of Austria through her millennial history determined by her very name. Historically, the nucleus of Austria to come, the country on the Danube from the Enns river eastwards down to Vienna, was held by the dynasty of Babenberg (called after the castle which is now the city Bamberg in Franconia) as a fee of the Holy Roman Empire. The exceptional Situation of the country on the middle of the Danube already bore its fruit during those early centuries. The center of Austria, her naval, as the ancients would have called it, lay, and still lies, exactly on that point of the entire Danube System, where the chains of the Alps coming to its final end in the Vienna Forest descends to the Danube river in two final summits, the Kahlenberg and the Leopoldsberg (as they are called now). From the loftiness of these summits a similar descending of the Carpathian Mountains to the Danube, the Thebener Kogel near Bratislava in Slovakia, can be seen clearly even on average days, and, if the air is bright, one can also get a glimpse of the last spurs of the Sudeten Mountains, the Pollauer Berge near Nikolsburg in Moravia. The Viennese, whether they have come from those neighborly regions or from the Alpine countries, are accustomed to look out to the East and the North to see the blue silhouettes of these lands fading away in the twilight and approaching again at dawn as the immovable side scenes of the Austrian stage, perennial like the finger of God. "When you have seen the land from the Kahlenberg, you will understand what I am." (Grillparzer). 30 Thus, the most characteristic ruler of the dynasty of Babenberg, St. Leopold (d. 1136), whom the grateful Austrians still worship as their patron saint, and who lived in the castle on the height of the Leopoldsberg of today (then called the Kahlenberg), already conceived the most essential items of a constructive policy in this land of the middle which were to remain a basic heritage to his successors. Margrave Leopold was a prince of the Christian Occident Standing above the deadly struggle between the emperor and the pope, the two great powers of his age, among whom he was to become the arbiter. This may have been due to his extraordinary personality, but was certainly also the consequence of the fact that Austria, although belonging to the Holy Roman Empire, was closely connected with the world beyond, and although a part of the Occident, was a kind of bridge into the Orient as well. Leopold might correctly be called the inventor of tu, felix Austria, nube. He was the first Austrian ruler to have the keen vision of a marriage policy which would combine in the first place the three dynasties of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, whose lands he daily held before his eyes: Babenberg, Pfemysl and Arpad. One of his daughters even went to Poland, thereby including the dynasty of Piast into the same combination. Although these marriages with non-German dynasties did not really forsake the idea of racial exclusion, as all these dynasties were basically of the same racial stock, they definitely represented a new feature, indicating the exceptional Position of the Austrian mark. This position of Austria under Babenberg resulted in the imperial grant of the so- calledprivilegium minus (1156), by which emperor Frederick I Barbarossa recognized that the destiny of the country was not an average partly within the empire, but, at least partly, lay outside its boundaries. While this privilege was the fundamental law of dynasty and country, there were soon also promulgated - in strictest historic parallelism to the English Magna Carta - the first constitutional laws in favor of the feudal aristocracy. The Austrian Magna Carta, called Österreichisches Landrecht (1237), was formulated on occasion of the stay of Emperor Frederick II at Vienna, after the last Babenberger, another Frederick II, had been killed in the war against Hungary. The contents of this Landrecht, of course, were the practice of the last Century. Shortly before Andreas II granted the Golden Bull to the Hungarian aristocracy (1222). The oldest document of this kind, however, preceding the English Magna Carta, is the so-called Georgenberger Handfeste (1186), which Ottakar of Styria, the last of his family, granted to his ministerials, in order to clarify their legal position in case of the expected union between Austria and Styria. Similar constitutional laws for both Carinthia and the Tyrol, although written down only in the 14th Century, go at least back to the reign of Meinhard II (d. 1295), both containing the first clear references to the populär rights of the peasant peoples as well. All these medieval constitutional laws of the various Austrian lands may boast of their continuity with modern constitutionalism like the English Magna Carta. Out of them later developed the Estates, in several countries including the representation of the cities and in the Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Hither Austria even the representation of the peasants since times immemorial with the ideas of modernizing the Estates eventually the most positive and autochthonous component of Austrian constitutionalism at large emerged in the modern centuries. 31 When after the simultaneous extinction of both Babenberger and Hohenstaufen, and the so-called Interregnum in both Austria and Germany, Rudolph of Habsburg (d. 1291) was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He acquired Austria for his sons (1278) but first, he defeated Pfemysl Ottakar II of Bohemia in the battle on the Marchfeld, the plains between the Vienna Forest and the Carpathian mountains, and thus frustrated the scheme of a Bohemian empire across the continent from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea. Yet he retumed at once to the means of peacefully engulfing the rival and consciously continued the marriage policy of St. Leopold. His own scheme grew ripe in his great grandchildren, when after the two generations of his son, Albert I (d. 1308), and his grandson, Albert II (d. 1358), three of his great grandsons on the thrones of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary concluded hereditary agreements among each other, through which eventually one of the three dynastic stems was to become the common heir of all. These were the splendid reigns of Rudolph IV (d. 1365) in Austria, and his two cousins, Charles IV in Bohemia and Louis I in Hungary. At the beginning of the 14th Century, the dynasty of Luxembourg had acquired the Bohemian crown (called the crown of St. Wenceslaus) and the dynasty of Anjou the Hungarian crown (called the crown of St. Stephen), after the former dynasties of Premysl and Arpad had died out in the two countries at about the same time, Charles I, Bohemian king and Holy Roman emperor, was the son of the last female member of the dynasty of Psemysl, and his own name originally also Wenceslaus, as later that of his son and successor in both dignities .The Luxembourg dynasty brought French influence to Bohemia, the Anjou dynasty Italian influence to Hungary, two permanent features of cultural background and relationship in those two countries down to our time. The Crossing point of both tendencies was Austria in their very midst. Rudolph IV, who himself had a French mother, was the first Habsburg to indulge in a constructive Italian policy. In this age an atmosphere developed, of which we might speak as of the first historic phase of an autochthonous Austrian civilization, characteristically Austrian in its specific traits. We may most correctly label it the Gothic age of Austrian civilization according to its foremost architectural symbolism. Gothic architecture and Scholastic philosophy found their specific expressions in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and Poland (the latter connected dynastically with Hungary) in a männer different from other parts of Europe, and they both penetrated into those transalpine countries earlier than into any other outside of Italy and France. Many additional elements of the four realms indicate the same affmity and perspicuously foreshadow modern ideas. The technique of territorial sovereignty as an instrument to check the anarchy of feudalism in particular was bom at that time. Politically, the ideas of both Austrian independence from the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian union destined to Substitute it were emphasized now in their first clear articulation. They were so interwoven that it is difficult to say which held the priority. In both directions the Habsburgs considered themselves the Champions. They could easily do so, since the dignity of the Holy Roman Empire had passed to the Luxembourgs. Yet they did so in fact without really resigning their own Claims to this dignity in the long run. 32 Passionately devoted to the mystical splendor of his house, Rudolph IV, hardly twenty years of age, identified himself with the so-called Privilegium maius, in which Caesar and Nero are invoked to be King's witnesses for Habsburg's interests, submitting it to Charles IV for imperial confirmation. The stränge document, partly in Machiavellizing forgery, partly in poetical fancy, wanted to guarantee special Privileges to the Austrian duke, for whom the title Archduke was invented. Aside from these dynastical postulates, it stressed Austrian independence from Germany nearly to the point of sovereignty. Petrarca, whom the emperor asked for advice, knew too well, however, that the Roman Caesars could not have bestowed anything upon the dukes of Austria. Thus, the bold stroke of a pre-Machiavellian genius, either unscrupulous in person or the mirror of an unscrupulous age, failed, at least for the time being, until the idea at stäke, worthy in itself, was to find the proper means for its ends. At the time of its issue, the pretensions of the Privlegium maius were directed against Charles IV, who happened to be not only the author of the Golden Bull granted in favor of the German Electors yet detrimental to the interests of the Habsburgs, but also the then still childless father-in-law of Rudolph IV. The rivalry between Habsburg and Luxembourg was not one between Austria and Bohemia, however, but concerned the imperial dignity. In the long run, the idea of Austrian independence, fought out with the weapons of the Privilegium maius, on the background of the complementary idea of the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian union written into hereditary contracts and alliances, meant nothing eise but the gradual amalgamation among the three partners of another empire to come. Political jealousy might exist between the Austrian archduke and the Luxembourg emperor for some intermezzo of history, but could not last to disrupt the identity of interests among the three rulers of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. Although the Habsburgs were soon to become again quasi-hereditary emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, whose symbolism remained rooted in the Rhineland, where they were elected and crowned down to the end of the empire, the three countries, Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, in their growing interdependence gradually emancipated from all the implications of this foremost German tradition. Austria proper certainly belonged more strongly to the set-up of the Holy Roman Empire than Bohemia, where there existed only a feudal tie between the Bohemian duke or king and the emperor, or Hungary, where even such a loose tie never persisted. But also in Austria proper the historic trend was in favor of gradual emancipation from the German substance of the Holy Roman Empire which had been a German empire during the Middle Ages and eventually tended to become it again. The union of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary greatly stressed their parallel interests of emancipation. And although the symbolism of the Holy Roman Empire for centuries was the noblest omament of their common sovereign, its reality, consisting of the German princes and territories, was always something to which they feit equally coordinated, but never subordinated. The System of feudalism, administered by the Nordic aristocracy, was the main bulwark of German interests during the middle Ages in the Eastern Alpine countries as well. Yet feudalism did not really mean a System of coordinated power, but a field of real anarchy. It was a bündle of dissident and divergent energies, whose common interest was 33 incamated in their identical instinct of domination over the non-German natives. Opposing this anarchy of feudalism, by which the Eastem Alpine countries were originally subdivided into some dozens of feudal dominions, the idea of territorial sovereignty emerged. The political expression of this idea was the tendency on the part of the dynasty residing on the Danube, Babenberg or Habsburg, to integrate the Eastem Alpine countries into one territorial unit. In fact, after rounding off Lower and Upper Austria (east and west of the Enns river), they gradually acquired Styria (1192), Carinthia and Camiola (1336), the Tyrol (1363), the core or Vorarlberg (1375), Trieste (1382) and finally Gorizia-Gradiska (1500). Aside from these Alpine Austrian countries, the Habsburgs held their pre-Austrian dominions in Switzerland (Aargau and Thurgau) and Alsatia (Sundgau), later called Hither Austria, which were their feudal property, before they acquired Austria and to which they then added Burgau (1301) and Freiburg im Breisgau (1368). As the Habsburgs were able to take hold of Austria, because they were already a kind of territorial rulers in Swabia, they were likewise able to shape the Eastern Alpine unit only, because their ties with Bohemia and Hungary were tightening as well. The geographically excentric territory on the Danube around Vienna could become the center of gravity for the Eastern Alpine countries only because it was already the field of threefold influences and latently already the center of gravity for a higher unit. This is like a historic law in all the phases of Austrian crystallization that the reality of the smaller unit always became possible by the vision of and the preparation for a larger one. When the process of Eastem Alpine integration arrived at its conclusion during the end of the Middle Ages, it was of greatest importance that the pre-Renaissance state had now for the first time fully established the idea of territorial sovereignty, and that the sovereign state was created above and against feudalism, even above and against the feudalizing interests and tendencies within the Roman church. In the case of Austria, this new idea of sovereignty was coupled politically with the other idea of territorial independence of and interdependence among three parallel organisms, and it was anchored socially in the increasing might of the cities which thereby became the organized islands of liberty, opposed to feudalism and favorable to all social stratifications subject to feudalism. This was the process of de-feudalization, through which the foundations of modern urban and rural liberty were laid. It was the high mark of dynastical interests turning against their own matemal roots in feudalism. For only a short interlude, Albert V (d. 1439) (as Roman emperor called The Second) united Austria, Bohemia and Hungary for the first time. This achievement was lost again by his son, Ladislaus Posthumus, in favor of an entirely different combination, when Poland, Bohemia and Hungary, under the Polish-Lithuanian dynasty of Jagiello, seemed to amalgamate into a still larger scheme, but with the exclusion of Austria. The predominance of the dynasty of Jagiello, if similarly integrated into a "house" like the Habsburgs and not only just being a "family" of various branches might have radically changed the course of European history. The Habsburgs themselves first tumed westwards, in order to expand eastwards later. Under Frederick V (d. 1493) as Roman emperor called The Third, the Janus-face of an apathetic dreamer and an ecstatic seer, the Austrian idea, holding only a fringe of its 34 former grandeur, seemed approaching the brink of disaster. This was reason enough, however, that the mystical formula AEIOU, interpreted cxihtv Austria Est Imperare Orbi Universa, or later less imperialistically as Austria Eritln Orbe Ultima, was coined by this most mysterious of the Habsburgs (1437), whose own life was a series of failures, but who nevertheless held the key to a world empire. Frederick V was the son of a Polish princess, related with all the Eastem European dynastic families, and he was the grandson of an Italian princess (Visconti) of whom the same can be said conceming the Italian dynasties. He himself married a Portuguese princess, who was foremost of English blood. Although all these aristocratic women originally were of the same racial stock, they still represent very typically the conflux of all the pulsating saps of Europe, East and West, into Habsburg's growing tree. The marriage policy of the House of Austria culminated, when the son of this Portuguese princess, Maximilian I (d. 1519), perhaps the most splendid of all the Habsburgs, married the heiress of Burgundy, their son, Philip, married the heiress of Aragon and Castile, and their son, Charles V (d. 1556), emerged as the ruler of a universal monarchy in two hemispheres, in which the sun never set. It was Charles' brother and sister, who married at St. Stephen's cathedral in Vienna under their grandfather's auspices the heiress and the heir of that branch of the dynasty of Jageiello which ruled the Bohemian-Hungarian empire, and it was this marriage for which the distic, Tu,felix Austria,nube, was once written (1515). The Austrian Czech painter Vaclav Brozik, in the technique of the colorful historical painting in the second half of the 19th Century, has best illustrated with his brush, of what his fellow-countryman, Palacky, has written with his epigrammatic pen. It is one of the most astonishing phenomena of world history in those centuries of the past, in which the Nordic dynasties played so large a role, that a family, for generations founded only on a few eyes, not merely gambled for or stumbled into world power, but acquired it by the most legitimate means which could then be found for such a purpose, more legitimate in fact than those found successful since. No doubt, the few Habsburgs who achieved this goal in the steep ascent to so unique a peak within three generations overestimated greatly both their biological and their metaphysical strength. They aimed at a universal monarchy for which neither the age was ripe nor were the means really appropriate. The legitimacy of a dynasty was not a sufficiently spiritualized means for achieving a world Organization in parallelism to Christendom even at a time, when theoretically the Holy Roman Empire still represented an ecumenical dignity. Like ecstatics, the Habsburgs followed the course of their marriage policy without calculating soberly the rational chances which this new skipping from weddings to adventures and this most sublime atavism of the most extravagant schemes of world conquest might really have. The historic result of this ecstasy was the life and death struggle between the two leading Catholic dynasties of Austria and France, of which the latter, embraced deadly from three sides, fighting as it was for its very existence, was to introduce the alliance with Protestantism and Islam, the Swedes and the Turks, into the means of Machiavellism, draped by the purple of Catholic Cardinals. How might the world have developed if Habsburg had really concentrated upon Austria, Bohemia and Hungary 35 instead of diffusing into Burgundy, Spain, Peru and Mexico? Yet this is the paradoxical face of Habsburg's history on this tuming point again: by hatching world-wide plans which brought them into Burgundy and Spain, and necessarily stimulated France to a resistance at all costs, the Habsburgs really cemented the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian union according to the same law which had once created Austria proper. They would probably not have been able to integrate the empire on the Danube without aiming at a universal empire. Yet at the same time, in becoming entangled in and dazzled by world- wide enterprises, they necessarily lost their equilibrium and became incapable of corresponding fully to the problems of either orbit of destiny, Western or Eastern Europe. This might well be styled the implacable irony or tragedy of history, if it would not be more just to call it simply the inescapable consequence of history made by rulers or castes instead of organic peoples, and thus of a history always aiming at large-scale empires instead of being intrinsically associated with the local States. Every empire of history has contributed to civilization, but obviously has still more hindered it, as everyone has logically ended in disaster. The Austrian empire, as much as it has contributed to European civilization, is no exception from this rule. Not the intellectual scheming by individuals or groups, but the devotion to the consistent work of peace which lies in marrying and begetting children and all the efforts around, this is the only power which creates States destined to stay. All scheming is ephemeral, all large-scale agglomerations which are not grown out from local conditions will always again collapse, and even those based upon local substance not be as crisis-proof as smaller entities. This is the skeleton of the theory which Montesquieu once formulated not quite consistently with his philosophy of history, and later Karl Ludwig Haller took over in accordance with his Swiss tradition and environment. While the universal monarchy of Charles V. was dead before even bom, the empire on the Danube, with sufficient local substance behind lived for four hundred years.

(§5) The triune empire of Austria-Bohemia-Hungary was finally materialized in 1526, when, after the Hungarian defeat at Mohacs by the Turks and the death of Louis II, both Bohemia and Hungary recognized Ferdinand I (d.1564), the brother of Charles V, as their hereditary king. This was the result prepared by an organic development of centuries, although doubtlessly accelerated by Habsburg's growth into a world empire. It was not a meteor, not an artificial creation by merely dynastical interests, but the organic product of at least half a millennium, representing the interests of nature, for which the previous eight dynasties that were employed for this result, two from each country, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, acted only as the obedient agencies. The House of Austria eventually accomplished the aim of history because of its Western European speculations and achievements, but basically as the Champion of Eastern European populär forces. In fact, the Habsburgs, in pressing the idea were truly invested with a tribune of their peoples whom they handled constructively against the forces of feudalism and separatism. As long as they obeyed the innate law of this tribune they could be sure of their peoples' obedience as well. 36 The Austrian empire of three crowns was a stränge organism in the light of the modern theories of state. It was more than a mere personal union represented by the common ruler, yet it was neither a real union nor even anything eise to be found in the books, confederacy or federation. It simply was “the Monarchy of the House of Austria”. That this loose stage of agglomeration could never be completely surpassed was due to so many energies wasted in world-wide adventures. There were basically three realms and crowns; the royal crown of St. Stephen which the pope had once sent to the ruler of Hungary (1001), bestowing upon him the title of Apostolic King, then the royal crown of St. Wenceslaus which was originally granted by some German emperor to some Bohemian duke, until Charles IV invested it with a similar political mysticism, as existed already around the Hungarian diadem and finally a third crown symbolizing primarily the third realm which was Austria proper. Of what kind this third crown really was could never be established in both theory and practice with equal certainty. Originally, it was the imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire, to which the chief of the House of Austria had a quasi-hereditary claim, rooted most adequately in his "hereditary lands" which were those of Austria proper. But as the imperial dignity, never formally hereditary, faded away and was gradually substituted by an Austrian-Bohemian- Hungarian empire, the idea emerged, in parallelism to the royal crowns of both Hungary and Bohemia, to accept the archducal diadem of St. Leopold canonized in the meantime, as the Symbol of the imperial dignity of the House of Austria in its "hereditary lands". These were the three branches of the one tree, considered as coordinated realms, which in those centuries of political mysticism were symbolized most accurately by equal diadems. Above these three branches, however, there was the higher level of an empire, “the Monarchy of the House of Austria”. Its Symbol was the imperial crown, connected essentially with the Holy Roman Empire, yet soon to be represented by a dynastical diadem which was made for Rudolph II (1602). To complicate matters, the hereditary head of the House of Austria, symbolized by this dynastical imperial crown, continued to be the quasi hereditary emperor of the Holy Roman Empire still symbolized by the imperial crown of Charlemagne, from the German rump of which, still more complex, the Austrian empire struggled to extricate itself. It was no doubt easily conceivable to a faithful mind that something mystical dominated this imperial structure, and no wonder that the theologians and artists of the Barocco compared it with the Holy Trinity. This parallelism is actually carried out in the Viennese trinity column (1682). On the one hand, the historic tendency of the Holy Roman Empire in its traditional shape was inevitably to disintegrate, except for its symbolism preserved by Habsburg. On the other hand, Habsburg’s new empire, still headed by the Holy Roman emperor of old, developed common interests and agencies to be a more real background of the ancient Symbols. This shift from one empire to another, organically accomplished during the course of centuries, has its historic model in what the Middle Ages called the shift of the empire from the Romans to the Germans. Only now the shift from the Germans to the Austrians was carried out through another medium, not that of the pope crowning the emperor, but that of the coincidence between dynastical and populär forces. While the dynastical 37 forces threw out the net of the marriage policy, the populär forces aimed at the agglomeration of the smaller peoples around the Danube, whose interest in an empire of their own, able to be an anti-empire if need be, was, and still is, tantamount to their chance for survival. While the dynastical forces have had their time, the populär forces have not even begun to display all their possibilities. There always existed a great chance for the Austrian- Bohemian- Hungarian empire to be either connected organically with various adjoining Systems or even to be enlarged into them, and thereby to be one of the main powers cementing the peace of Europe. It was the main deficiency of the empire on the Danube throughout the centuries not to have corresponded fully with all these chances. The imperialism of Habsburg was concentrated upon Western European schemes or was fixed by the stakes in both Germany and Italy, instead of being totally devoted to the very empire which was the basis of the dynasty's grandeur. In all the manifold schemes of Habsburg the Austrian- Bohemian-Hungarian Empire was the nucleus of stability and success. Alpine Austria was connected for centuries with Switzerland and Alsatia, where the Habsburgs had come from, and she greatly influenced the whole of Southwestem Germany, where the dynasty still held a bridge into the West, even after its ambitions as the territorial ruler there had been frustrated. Camiola, Carinthia, Styria, the countries of the Alpine Slovenes, always connected Austria with the Yugoslav Southeast, particularly with Croatia, whose people have been the main substance of the Greater Austrian Position through centuries. Trieste which once joined Austria voluntarily, Istria, Gorizia- Gradiska, together with the Trentino (the Italian part of South Tyrol), formed the bridge into Northern Italy, which since primordial times has been Austria's most natural cultural basis and where at the height of Austrian reciprocal political influence upon the Apennine peninsula the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia represented the European mandate to which Austrian imperialism had aspired. Austria, amalgamated into one empire with her Northern and Eastern partners, Bohemia and Hungary, for many centuries showed the most intimate territorial Connections with Southwestem Germany, the Balkan Peninsula and Northern Italy, which all were of an essential function for Central European stability. While some of these Connections were based primarily upon dynastical, not Austrian interests, and while their Central European function certainly can be substituted by somebody eise (although obviously not with so simple a substitute as once imagined), some of the Western, Southern and Southeastem connections have been throughout history, and will be again, essential to the very existence of Austria. Her historic definition as a symbiosis of Germanic, Romanic and Slavonic Speakers in the Eastern Alpine countries with an exit to the Adriatic Sea may be upset under the rule of the "principle of nationality", yet either this principle will have to be suspended here and there, or some substitute devised, wherever it really rules. The most elaborated System, rooted in political mysticism, had been developed by Hungary during the Middle Ages. To the imperial nucleus of the St .Stephen's crown belonged for times longer or shorter the triune kingdom of Croatia- Slavonia-Dalmatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Walachia, Moldavia, Galicia-Lodomeria as so-called partes adnexae, a political philosophy which curiously enough influenced the fate of the Austrian empire 38 literally to its last hours. Whatever part of a neighboring country had once been incorporated into the body politic of the holy crown, had been hallowed thereby, so that theoretically no Separation was possible any longer. The political ideas of a Tataric nobility, alive in the amalgam of the westward-bound Magyar adventurers and mercenaries, coincided here with the religious ideas of the Christian orbit symbolized by the papal crown, and this coincidence has been the primary cause for the stränge survival of the Magyar tongue on the Hungarian plains. As long as the religious ideology of St. Stephen himself, who thought an empire with only one language weak in mind and body, still existed, the föderative idea of the holy crown was not without a constructive element which the European Southeast very much required, while later, when merely the permittivity of Magyar hegemony was left, the same ideology became the very dynamite which in its last consequences Balkanized even Central Europe. Hungary was to a large extent the political model for Bohemia which formed a triune nucleus under the St. Wenceslaus crown together with Moravia and Silesia. This latter country in its historic totality, before its larger part had been annexed by Prussia, was the bridge from Bohemia to Poland which functioned well for many centuries, belonging partly to the one, partly to the other Northern Slavonic empire, infiltrated by both and uniting both. Bohemia in her most expansive age even united to her empire the Wends (or Sorbs) of the two Lusatia Stretching into the heart of Brandenburg. Two times in the history of the Bohemian crown, under Pfemysl Ottakar II and under Charles IV, the idea of an empire "from the sea to the sea", attempting to combine the Adriatic and the Baltic coasts, vaguely appeared on the horizon of Bohemian politics. As the political mysticism of the Bohemian crown was modeled by Charles IV after the tradition of the Hungarian crown, so this imperial conception originated in the Polish history. In contrast to this idea of a Bohemian imperialism the most essential problem of Bohemian history since ever St. Wenceslaus established a Christian dukedom always was the symbiosis between Germanism and Slavonism as political conceptions, and between Germanic and Slavonic Speakers within the empire, the nucleus of which, Bohemia, was always a fortification, yet a bilingual one. Of all the political combinations transcending the core of the Austrian-Bohemian- Hungarian coexistence, the Hungarian-Croatian union was the most lasting one. The older Croatian kings, who ruled their country in the early Middle Ages still in close contact with the Byzantine Empire, were later succeeded by the Hungarian kings, who for eight hundred years were simultaneously the kings of the triune kingdom Croatia- Slavonia-Dalmatia. The first Hungarian ruler to accomplish this union was St. Ladislas (1091). The aristocracies which dominated both countries during the Middle Ages were jointly interested in Western protection. When the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian union materialized, Croatia always aspired for a connection closer to Austria than to Hungary for similar reasons. The natural tendency certainly was that Croatia- Slavonia-Dalmatia as the Western core of the Yugoslav idea would develop into an independent fourth partner of the triune empire, an idea which in its last phase in the 19th Century was erroneously called Trialism the true third partner Bohemia was then absorbed by Austria. 39 While the Hungarian-Croatian union was always a backbone of the imperial structure, the historically complementary Bohemian-Polish union, often attempted, was never accomplished. The marriage policy of Habsburg, despite many attempts in this direction, of which all Polish dynasties, Piast, Jagiello, Wasa, were partners, never succeeded in bringing Poland into the common frame. One might be seduced to consider this the most vital defect of the entire Danubian agglomeration. Thus the empire on the Danube was lacking the full protection of its Northeastern flank. There were more Austrian princesses who married into Poland than into any other country throughout many centuries. But Poland was a country which could not be assimilated by the means of marriage policy because of her thoroughly feudalized structure. The Polish dynasties never undisputedly held the right of bequeathing the Polish crown to anybody eise without interference by the Polish Res Publica consisting of the Polish nobility. The liberty of this nobility -to dispose of its own subjects and to resist the state was the most perspicuous factor of the republican set-up which made the Polish empire, similar to the Hungarian empire, capable of federating with partners to be absorbed into it, but quite contrary to the best times of its model, incapable of federating with equal partners. Not that the leading aristocratic families of Poland were completely without interest in and understanding for the postulate of Polish-Austrian Cooperation. When Vienna was besieged by the Turks, king Jan Sobieski, one of those Polish noblemen elected king by the diet, headed the army of liberation (1683). But there were basic divergences between the interior structure of the two empires, the Austrian-Bohemian- Hungarian whose head was not only the Holy Roman emperor, but also the chief of the best organized dynastical house in the whole of Europe, and the Polish-Lithuanian- Ruthenian empire, "from the sea to the sea", the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, whose king always had to reckon with the republican tendencies of his nobility and whose dynasty too easily split into branches of divergent interests. Although the historic growth of the Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian symbiosis, brought about by the Jagiellonian dynasty before its own extinction in the Union of Lublin (1569)), is closely related to the Austrian- Bohemian-Hungarian union, the structures of both empires were very different. These divergences were too great to make the application of the method which created the one empire suitable to the other as well. While on the Eastem Alpine soil there was an old civilization to teach the Habsburgs, on Polish soil there prevailed the same feudalism as in Northern Germany, only in Polish language. Moreover, the Polish nobility successfully distracted the dynasty from its primary task, to establish the rocher de bronzes of sovereignty, in which respect the Hohenzollern in Prussia were luckier. A great deal of political energy would have been necessary to organize the Polish plains politically, in order to change these conditions. The Polish dynasty would have needed the support of a spiritual hinterland which the Prussian dynasty possessed in the Holy Roman Empire. While the Prussian state was able to force feudalism to the recognition of territorial sovereignty, the Polish state was not Here lie the reasons for the end of Poland, as far as her own contributions to this effect are concemed, so classically elaborated by the Cracow school of Polish history. Perhaps this was the point, where the Western enterprises of Habsburg necessarily 40 resulted in Eastem deficiencies. If the Holy Roman emperors, both Luxembourg)A and Habsburgs, instead of fostering the growth of Brandenburg-Prussia, would really have cooperated with Poland, and in particular the Austrian-Polish Cooperation on the basis of an identical spiritual substance have prevailed, the history of Europe might have developed quite differently.

(§6) For an interval of history the problems of the Reformation seemed to disturb the organic evolution of the Habsburg Empire. Yet on the other hand, Providence seemed to have completed the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian union under Habsburg, in order to have the bulwark against the Reformation. The historic coincidence between the deeds of Luther and the growth of the Catholic power on the Danube was certainly too striking not to convince the faithful that the Habsburg empire would have a grand function in extirpating the heresy. First, the emperors Maximilian II (d.1576), Rudolph II (d.1612) and Matthias (d. 1619), seemingly lost their equilibrium in front of Protestantism, politically embodied in the renascence of feudalism, a fact which would have changed the face of Austria completely, if it would not have counterbalanced soon by the emergence of that secundogeniture of the dynasty which ruled over Inner Austria (Styria, Carinthia, Carniola). A terziogeniture of the Habsburgs ruled the Tyrol in an equal männer (down to 1665) when the main brauch of the dynasty in Vienna, Bohemia and Hungary (as far as the latter was free from the Turks) died out, Ferdinand II (d. 1637), the Champion of the e Counter-Reformation, better called the Catholic Restoration, took over the entire empire, which in fact was again reorganized and regenerated from its Alpine nucleus. On the double basis of the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian union and a new Holy Roman Empire with a quasi—hereditary head, the second, most autochthonous phase of Austrian civilization developed with its specific architecture and music as the main means of expression; the Austrian Barocco . If there is critical talk about Ferdinand II. and the so-called Counter-Reformation, carried out with indispensable energy and superfluous ruthlessness alike, and if his successors Ferdinand III (d.1657), Leopold I (d.1703), and Joseph I (d, 1711), are criticized as the "Spaniards" among the Habsburgs, whose political and economic System, absolutism and mercantilism, is accused of having extirpated any individualism the values of the Barocco as the last great harmonious civilization on European soil ought not to be forgotten by the critics. The civilization of the Barocco, the last in Europe happy enough to delight in architecture of its own and the first to exult joyfully in music of its own, was possible only on the basis of such spiritual unity as the Counter Reformation could exact. The analogy in our days might be a world victorious over hell and plague which would stamp out with youthful indifference for personal destinies all the vestiges of the defeated spirit, while any better world would only be found in the super-human effort and achievement of Converting the enemy into a future collaborator, instead of destroying him. There were, however, quite a few genuine conversions in the age of the Barocco as well. The political agency of its grandiose unity was an imperial authority in which, very far from mere arbitrariness on the part of the 41 ruling individual, nothing but the idea of the supreme power in the hierarchy of delegated powers was symbolized, which is in fact the very basis of govemment by law. The material background of this regime, on the other hand, was an economy organized by the state, by which both feudalism and capitalism were closely tied to the interest of the empire. In spite of many medieval residua and shortcomings which, however, existed everywhere in Europe among both Catholics and Protestants alike this was the heroic age of Austria, in which she met, defeated and checked both Swedes and Turks, the Champions of Protestantism and Islam. Both Gustavus Adolphus and Kara Mustafa, the Swedish king and the Turkish Vizier, the two symbolic representatives of barbarian invasions from the North and from the East, were crushed by the Austria which had just regenerated herseif by the Catholic Restoration. In the Thirty YearslWar Austria checked the North, and in nearly a Two Hundred Years' War she checked the East, represented by the Turkish power. In both instances, Austria was the shield of Europe. Her enemies, one in the name of Mohammed, the other, if not in the name, then at least in the spirit of Wotan, in their struggles against Catholicism and Christianity really aimed at the marrow of European civilization. There was no other power to check them, as France, the second Continental power, rather was allied with them against Austria. The Austrian-Bohemian- Hungarian union under the Holy Roman emperor was the power, political and military, which preserved the continuity of European civilization against both Swedes and Turks, and thereby really saved the Labarum, the sacred monogram, whose kingdom on earth the emperors, the statesmen, the artists, the peoples of the Barocco, conscious of their transcendent roles down to the last über, wanted to guarantee to the world. Lots of great leaders were produced by the Austrian Barocco, out of the traditional aristocracy, the ecclesiastical estate and the bulk of the native common people as well who contributed great administrators and great artists to the universal pool .The Barocco was by no means only an aristocratic culture. Its ränge was also not only restricted to Austria proper. The whole world was ready to send to Austria its foremost intellects and this infiltration again stimulated the development of genius at home. Both the particular Austrian contact with Burgundy, Spain and Italy, as well as the Austrian-Bohemian- Hungarian union itself contributed its full share to this Austrian awakening, Some of the most characteristic Austrians of the Barocco are in fact Bohemians and Hungarians, Spaniards and Italians. Among the aristocrats in imperial Service the greatest, at least under the modern aspect of an intellectualized profile was Albert Wallenstein (d. 1634), who in spite of his German name was of the oldest aristocratic stock among the Czechs. Leading first the fight against the Swedes, but then with all his subtlety succumbing to their spell, Wallenstein, aiming at the highest stakes, was killed at the emperor 1s Order. It was the idea of absolutism, Catholic and Protestant, not merely of Ferdinand II, that the sovereign may condemn the traitor to death in his private council and then let the sentence be carried out by some executioner who outwardly might have the resemblance of murderer. As great as Wallenstein's genius was, as unquestionable was his guilt in terms of the 42 imperial interest, to which he took his oath. In a System of constitutionalism he might have been tried and executed more legally. Yet the emperor’s rather vocational guilt in confusing cabinet’s justice with state’s reason is overshadowed by his deeply rooted personal error of judgment, when, suppressing imperial grace, wherever he had to deal with the religious revolution he wanted to annihilate its followers. The tragedy commenced when, after the victory on the White Mountain near Prague (1620) over the Protestant rebels of Bohemia, Czechs and Germans together, executions and expulsions paved the way for the new Bohemian Statute (1627) by which not only the feudal power was broken, but also the autonomy of the Bohemian kingdom was curtailed, Although it is later legend that Wallenstein was the Champion of Czech nationalism, he certainly is the symbol of Bohemian feudalism, and his destiny symbolic for the political changes in Bohemia by which the foundations of the old kingdom were shaken. The overthrow of national feudalism was indispensable, if an imperial authority ought to be established. Yet an overthrow which made national martyrs was, in the long run, the least realistic approach of the problem. It is quite true that in spite of the battle on the White Mountain and the end of Wallenstein the Bohemian Barocco. with its continuity of more national autonomy as generally believed, is an organic part of the Austrian civilization which developed in consequence of the Catholic Restoration, and that the baroque phase of Bohemian history cannot be eradicated from the Bohemian character, Czech and German, Later research of Czech historians themselves has ascertained the fact that only under Maria Theresia the Bohemian autonomy was really destroyed. Yet the Bohemian martyrs made by Ferdinand II even if they slept for three hundred years, have clearly been among the mystical forces which even the most rational political conception needs for the justification of its actions, and which have separated Austria and Bohemia politically, although the civilization of the Barocco unites them culturally. Although Austria, Bohemia and Hungary were legally equal partners of the empire on the Danube, and although particularly the two royal diadems of St. Wenceslaus and St. Stephen have always held equal ranks in the imperial set-up, the actual position of the two kingdoms was always different enough. The Bohemian king was among the German Electors, the Hungarian king stood outside of the Holy Roman Empire. Bohemia was conquered during the Thirty Years’ War by the Catholic Restoration; Hungary continued to be under Turkish rule except her Western parts for some additional generations. The Bohemian aristocracy was decapitated, the Hungarian aristocracy escaped decapitation because of the Turkish power, with which parts of the Magyars always cooperated. Under Leopold I a conspiracy of some magnates resulted in their execution (1671), a blunder similar to that of Ferdinand II, yet without a similar advantage of coordinating Hungarian politics. In spite of these much greater difficulties in Hungary, the consequence of her incorporation into the empire on the Danube was also here the Hungarian Barocco which is not the slightest degree less Austrian and Catholic than the Bohemian Barocco Its most representative figure is Pal Esterhazy (d. 1713), Palatine of the Hungarian empire, upon whom the dignity of hereditary prince was bestowed by Leopold I for his Services in persuading the Hungarian diet to recognize the (1687) hereditary rights of the 43 Habsburg dynasty. Yet Esterhazy was one of the greatest Hungarians who ever lived not only with respect to this sphere of imperial policy, by which the interest of the nation was served through the interest of the empire, but also as the grand Maecenas of both architecture and music who has left his marks upon numerous features of the Austrian Barocco and within quite some characteristic trends of Austrian civilization at large. Perhaps there was no Austrian as classically representative of the Austrian Barocco than this Hungarian nobleman. Many Austrian sanctuaries still bear his monogram and the most intimate Connections which still exist between Austria and Hungary in the religious sphere can be traced back to his initiatives. The former center of the Esterhazy duchy, Eisenstadt (Kismarton), now the Capital of the Austrian Burgenland, is the most classical symbol of these Austrian-Hungarian cultural Connections. When the Turks were defeated on the slopes of the Kahlenberg and under the walls of Vienna (1683), a battle historically in close a parallelism to the other on the White Mountain,(a young cavalier was among the imperial troops, whose destiny was to carry the imperial Standards through Hungary far into the Balkan Peninsula: Eugene of Savoy (d.1736), the greatest general and statesman of the Austrian Barocco who once again indicates the lines which this civilization followed, offspring of the House of Savoy, Italian by race, French by education, he, the servant of three emperors, was to complete the structure of the Austrian empire, by which its European function was established. Grand Maecenas of arts and Sciences as well, Eugene of Savoy is intimately connected with the glories of the Austrian Barocco. Yet he was an Austrian only in the sense of Habsburg imperialism, not of any Austrian nationalism, still unknown then. If it would not have quite different, un-political motives, it might be understandable to locate here the very cause, why this creator of the Greater Austrian Habsburg imperialism is the only Austrian hero who survived the Anschluss and found entrance into the Nazi German Walhalla. (A German cruiser and a German Balkan division bore his name). Yet not only the gossip and the bachelorhood, because of which the Nazis estimate Eugene of Savoy, make him a predecessor of Frederick II of Prussia, but also certain political theories concerning the war. It is interesting to find in those days the first traces of a characteristically Austrian mood of thought, uttered by an Austrian general, who resisted these ideas. Of Guido Starhemberg (d. 1737),who fought the French in Northern Italy we are told by Montesquieu that he answered to the proposal made by the Vienna military authorities to destroy the French army by destroying the dikes of the Po river: "God forbid that I destroy an entire people to serve the madness of our gentlemen (at Vienna)". It was under Eugene of Savoy that the Monarchy of the House of Austria arrived at its greatest expansion. Out of the Spanish heritage (1714) Belgium, Naples, Milan, Tuscany and Sardinia (exchanged in 1720 for Sicily) became Austrian possessions. The peace of Passarowitz (1718) with the Turks confirmed the recent conquest of Belgrad with Northern Serbia, the Banat and Walachia. The peace of The Hague (1720) brought the climax. From Silesia and Lusatia in the Northeast over Belgium in the Northwest, the Italian States from Milan to Naples in the Southwest and Serbia and Rumania in the Southeast, the Austrian empire described a tremendous circle, nearly identical with the very body of the European continent, a gigantic organism, into the extremities of which 44 the civilization of the Barocco from its Viennese center radiated optimism and vitality. This is the proof that the Austrian empire of this tremendous expansion was by no means an artificial creation. Aside from the identical civilization which connected Austria, Bohemia and Hungary, and made Vienna, Prague, Pressburg-Pozsony-Bratislava baroque cities in the heart of the empire, there were genuine extensions of the Barocco outside of this focus as well. Even in the 20th Century there are still traces enough that, for instance Milan or Brussels, have been Austrian cities for periods large enough to have definitely formed their souls. This Austrian imperialism of the 18th Century in its fundamental European function was of a much more organic Order than once the Spanish-Austrian monarchy. Also the set-backs in the peace of Belgrade (1736) and the latter exchange of Naples and Sicily for Parma and Piacenza (1738) did not basically alter Austria's imperial Position in Europe. Never in the age of the culminating Barocco, even with its struggles between Austria and France, was it ever a question of being or non-being for one of them, as it was formerly in the wars against Swedes and Turks, and later again against Frederick II and Napoleon.

(§7) The equipment which Austria received for the modern centuries likewise has its roots in the Barocco. Concerning the historic identity of the Austrian empire, the so- called Pragmatic Sanction (1713) was the constitutional attempt, made by Charles VI (d.1740), the last Habsburg, to provide the legal frame for the chaotic agglomeration of kingdoms and of countries, with all their aristocratic diets which the Monarchy of the House of Austria consisted. This constitutional law which wanted to emphasize the unity of all the territories under the imperial eagle of the dynasty was by no means the invention of the last Habsburg and his more rational Century. Already under Maximilian I the idea of a general diet of all Austrian countries had emerged (1518), and was later repeated under Ferdinand 1(1541) and Matthias (1614). On the latter occasion the general diet at Linz saw representatives not only from Austria proper, but from Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Lusatia, Hungary and Croatia. Although these general diets later declined again, every one of the countries concerned kept its own diet even under the impact of absolutism. In submitting to all of them the new constitutional law for solemn confirmation, Charles VI first advanced the idea of a real union among the countries of the House of Austria. Although the parallel idea of a general diet at Vienna (1714) failed and still more the scheme of the so-called Parerga Schierendorffiana (1719) to create a universal representation of the estate "common man", the fourth estate, these reformatory plans are the proof that the medieval constitutional traditions in Austria were able to aim at great things earlier than anywhere eise in Continental Europe. Only in the Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Hither Austria cities and peasants were represented on the diets, while in Austria and Styria the cities were represented by special procurators. The new proposal was to organize the lower classes generally into "estates", and have these represented on all the various diets by procurators, while through the general convocation of representatives from all diets the 45 countries of the House of Austria would become one body, as the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland had just become Great Britain. The dynastic promulgation of the Pragmatic Sanction, accepted by both the Austrian diets and the European powers, constituted the legal basis for the empire after the extinction of the dynasty in its male succession. On this legal platform the daughter of the last Habsburg Maria Theresia (d. 1780), a young woman in whom the genius of Austria was embodied, with a polyglot army under but average generals faced by a military demon, Frederick II, could light off successfully the first Prussian aggression in modern history (1740).The Austrians have never doubted that the Seven Years War against Prussia (and Great Britain) was nothing eise in their history than the continuation of the Thirty Years War against Sweden (and German Protestantism). Although Maria Theresia in this struggle fatefully lost Silesia, the jewel of her crown, as she well knew, she saved the empire. For the time being at least, Prussian aggression was checked. Yet Prussia had become the second Central European great power, supported by both Great Britain and Russia in their own imperialistic interests against Austria. These two eccentric powers on the European fringes with primarily extra-European interests did not anticipate at that time that by hatching the Prussia of Frederick II they artificially promoted the nucleus of the most aggressive Continental imperialism, with which compared even the most extravagant phases of Austrian imperialism were child's play. The growth of Prussia which was in progress to shape a Northern German empire on the racial basis of a Wendish-Cassubian-Masurian-Lithuanian symbiosis ruled by Teutonic overlords was wholly incompatible and incommensurable with the interest of the Austrian empire. In the long run there was no equilibrium possible between the Austrian empire Catholic even under the rules of Enlightenment and the Prussian empire, for which Catholicism or Protestantism were but functions of its own interest and power. The Austrian state was conservative even in its progressive enterprises, the Prussian state, however, soon the very model always of the most unscrupulous power politics always performed with the most up-to-date means. Austria was an organism even in its chaotic conditions, Prussia a cancer even in aiming at the organic goal of organizing Northern Germany between Rhine and Vistula. There were hardly ever in history two political organizations within the ränge of the same Continental territory which were equally antithetic, but nevertheless, existed side by side for nearly two centuries. It shows classically the utter confusion of the modern world in everything conceming political metaphysics, the same thing in politics what has been called "the disceming of the Spirit", that two centuries were needed to see through the disguises of "the spirit who denies", and that even then nothing is more appalling than the lack of an antidote. When Silesia, the Bohemian-Polish bridge, was left to Prussia in consequence of the Seven Years War (1763) it was but symbolic for the fact that now the Bohemian- Polish union was definitely spoiled and thereby the dead-wound inflicted upon the Austrian empire. Although Maria Theresia by female instinct knew about this causality, neither her son and heir, Joseph II, nor the minister of both, Wenzel Anton Kaunitz (d. 1794) had any glimpse of it. Kaunitz, the offspring of old Czech aristocratic stock, who for forty years was state's chancellor, was the man who cemented the Austrian-French 46 alliance against Prussia and Great Britain, after the latter power for the sake of its colonial empire found it imperative to switch from the age-old alliance with Austria to the adventure of a British-Prussian alliance against Austria and France. For Kaunitz certainly this new combination was very far from being the struggle of the two Catholic powers, Austria and France, on the continent and in the world, against the two Protestant powers, Prussia and Great Britain. Yet in fact it was the last bid for Catholic supremacy in Continental and in world affairs, and one might well imagine, how the modern world would look like, if France and Austria, not Great Britain and Prussia would have been victorious after seven years of war. The first logical consequence of the defeat of World Catholicism was the partition of Poland (1772), by which, through the complicity of both Austria and Russia with the Prussian scheme, the Eastem European balance of powers was destroyed. Joseph II and Kaunitz against Maria Theresia insisted in being partners of this crime, by which, even if God's mills grind very slowly, the three powers of partition have clearly sinned against themselves eating more in lust and gluttony than they could seriously assimilate. The fact that Austria preserved well her share of the Polish heritage, Galicia-Lodomeria, certainly was the luckiest aspect in this tragedy and a pledge for the final resurrection of the Polishes state. The apologists of Austrian politics may well argue that, if only Prussia and Russia would have been permitted to take the whole of Poland, Austria would not have served the Poles but gravely damaged herseif. Yet there are situations, in which the code of ethics is the only realistic yardstick of foreign policy. There is no doubt that also Austria, in morally backing Prussia and Russia, has made herseif monstrously guilty and even sinned more grotesquely against her innate law than the two other partners of the partition, whose identical anti-Polish tradition only culminated in its last performance. Maria Theresia, the last Austrian ruler with deep roots in the Austrian soil and completely repugnant to the 18th Century custom of both exchanging and dividing sovereignties and peoples, was the only one to know well in the very depth of her heroic soul that the stain of having consented to and participated in the partition of Poland, even if the guilt of the aristocratic Polish republic was tremendous, even if the loss of Silesia, forced upon Austria by the British-Prussian alliance, was the very cause of all further complications even if the Polish heritage was to be honestly preserved by Austria that in spite of all these implications, this stain would never be effaced from the shield of honor which once was Austria's. Prussia, Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia and Poland are the three problems which characterize Austria's entrance into the world of modern politics which opened two hundred years ago. Prussia was the aggressor, Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia the Achilles heel and Poland the Iure, by which Austria made herseif guilty. It was the baroque substance of the empire which let it survive for an aftermath in spite of this vulnerability, and even issue in its very death-struggle the most characteristic images of its genius.

(§8) Modern Austria was the creation of the new dynasty, Lorrain, which arrived at 47 Vienna from France in the person of Maria Theresia's husband, Francis I Stephen (d. 1765 to introduce there an entirely new method of govemment. The dynasty of Lorrain still represented legally the House of Austria, but, although they were called Habsburgs by courtesy, they wäre in fact Lorrains who brought into an alien country their own virtues and vices, as the Habsburgs themselves did five hundred years earlier. The sons of the couple, Joseph II (d.1790) and Leopold II (d.1792) were the two rulers of Enlightenment, who made the empire of the Pragmatic Sanction, which had survived Prussian aggression, the first modern state in Europe. Reorganizing the imperial administration, establishing a modern, unitary state above the Estates, emancipating economy, peasantry and Jewry, exorcizing the church, reforming everything, although sometimes with harsher means than useful and necessary, the two brothers, each with his different temperament, destroyed a lot which was healthy, but also saved a lot which was still healthier and would have been destroyed otherwise by a tempest. Josephinism, in fact, with the corrections made by the wiser younger brother, who had collected his main experiences during a quarter of a Century in the highly sophisticated school of Tuscan government, was the iron eure which would have saved Prance from the French Revolution, if applied there in due time, and which really saved Austria from Napoleon, when the consequences of the revolution surged into the heart of Europe. While Joseph was an enlightened despot who, in complete contrast to the autochthonous absolutism of the Barocco, would never believe that anything eise but .his own arbitrary will and plan could suit his people, Leopold under the influence of the Tuscan intellectual elite, shows the first interest in modern constitutionalism and the first disposition to transform the feudal Estates, without breaking them up, into modern representations. Joseph's idea was that of one empire under the name of the Austrian Monarchy which ought to have three residences, Vienna, Prague and Buda (where under him the Hungarian authorities had moved from Pressburg). Thus, even the emperor who wanted to make the Austrian empire a centralized modern state with German as official language recognized the triune structure of the monarchy he ruled. Deliberately he shunned the traditional coronations in Bohemia and Hungary, to which both his mother before and his brother after him submitted. In Hungary and Galicia the emperor introduced the German language. In the Hungarian diet and districts’ assemblies Latin was thereby substituted. The fundamental idea was not so much that of "Germanization", an ideology thoroughly foreign to the age, but to secure imperial effectiveness. This was a Roman empire which ought to have an imperial language. The traditional constitutions of the Estates were not direetly abolished, but decisively weakened by Joseph. The Symbols of the political individualities, of which the Austrian empire consisted, like the Hungarian crown, or even the Austrian and Styrian ducal diadems, were carried to Vienna to be kept in the imperial treasury, where the Bohemian crown was already brought under Maria Theresia. They were now exhibits of a museum, and not any political instruments or agencies any longer. From Belgium and Lombardy to Hungary and Bohemia this revolutionary policy met resistance and Joseph himself in his literally last decrees had to retract most of his reforms concerning the traditional structure of his kingdoms and countries. The very day, when the emperor died 48 in his castle at Vienna, the crown of St. Stephen was brought back to Hungary, enthusiastically greeted by the people. His successor Leopold did the rest. He never agreed with the radicalism of the brother. Everywhere the Estates were restored to their former splendor, yet not without characteristic reforms. The financial matters were definitely reserved to the central government and thereby the various countries deprived of the last vestiges of feudal sovereignty. In some instances the central government used its power to force the Estates to grant the cities a broader representation, as they had before. In its entire trend, the short administration of Leopold was in favor of a modern constitutionalism. Such was already his guiding idea in reforming Tuscany .The idea to use the Estates as the basis for the constitutional reform in the direction of modern representation was certainly not Leopold's, yet he was its foremost Champion. The Polish Constitution of 1790 was the adequate expression of these tendencies of the post-Josephinian era and it was only logical that Leopold was considered to be one of its political advocates. Obviously, this entire work of reform would have required a long lasting reign, undisturbed by exterior events. Unfortunately Leopold's exceptionally short imperial administration did not allow to wield into a really consistent scheme the fundamental idea of synthesis between the past and the future, nor even to materialize it fully in a single instance. In spite of this failure the idea of amalgamation between the existing feudal constitutions in the various countries of the Austrian Monarchy and the modern trends of universal representation was the most progressive scheme ever launched by an authority of conservativism, and a proof, even is a failure, that there was good reason, why the French Revolution could not invade the basic bastions of Central Europe. Although the administration of the two Lorrains was by far the most progressive one in pre-revolutionary Europe, capable of warding off the revolution by more than merely military means, the legend teils that Frederick II, King of Prussia ought to be regarded as the model ruler of Enlightenment. Such was already the fashion of his time, molded intellectually by the Encyclopaedists, whose atheism did not hinder them to be enthusiastic about a king. Very transparent political reasons made the Western European pacifists, contemporaries of the Prussian aggressor, the trumpeting mouthpiece of his glory as civilized legislator. Prussia allied first with France against Great Britain and then with Great Britain against France, knew extremely well, how to make use of insular psychology, decrepit pacifism and the anti-Austrian affection. Frederick's "Machiavel" is the classical witness for this Prussian policy on the "double floor", in which the anti- Machiavellian esotery addresses the naive Westemers, while the Machiavellian esotery is written for the initiated. This is the key to "Prussian liberalism". Prussia's demon throughout history was war and conquest .For her both enlightenment and tolerance meant in the first place a new opportunity for the creation of a military machine. Frederick emancipated his people, as far as this machine required emancipation, while Joseph in fact was the first modern ruler to propose the "Romantic idea" of disarmament, as the Prussians sneeringly called it in order to have more thorough means for continuing his favorite scheme of emancipation. This is the earliest use of the term “Romantic" reflects in politics, and it 49 reflects utter contempt of the "realists" for any regard of humanity. Frederick's criticism that Joseph was accustomed to take the second Step before the first reveals the gulf between the two characters: the politician to the degree of cynical Machiavellism and the reformer to the degree of political self-renunciation. It is worthwhile mentioning that the same "realism", in the name of which Frederick objected against Joseph's "radicalism" in carrying out his plan of emancipation, is shared by Rousseau, as he exhorted the Polish authorities to be cautious in abolishing bondage, as well as by Mirabeau, whose encomium of Frederick praise particularly his steadfastness not to have succumbed to the same arguments of humanity than Joseph. The Prussian king emancipated parts of peasantry to get better recruits for his army, and where he eliminated feudalism, he did so to introduce militarism, of which the same old aristocrats were the new representatives. The Austrian emperor, however, was obsessed by radicalism in favor of emancipation which accepted an absolute right of humanity to be emancipated notwithstanding any outward factor, not even the cohesion of the feudal society. Strangely enough, the French intellectuals seconded Frederick, not Joseph. One might suspect that they did so not quite independently from their atheism, for which Frederick was their brother, while Joseph still lived on another star. Yet the Austrian empire by this human radicalism of its emperor, the immediate object of which were the peasants and the Jews of Galicia, may have atoned before the tribunal of history for the crime it committed in consenting to the murder of Poland. Under Joseph II, who for a while contemplated acquiring Bavaria instead of Silesia, the Innviertel (with Braunau, Ried and Schärding) was incorporated into Austria in 1779) was formerly a Bavarian possession and which on this account still is different from the rest of Upper Austria. Under Francis II, the ecclesiastical principality of Salzburg, which had always been under Austrian influence, was secularized (1803) and after an intermezzo also incorporated (1805 and 1810), first with and later without Berchtesgaden which, although always a part of Salzburg, now became Bavarian.

(§9) There was a very logical reaction afterwards against Josephinism, when Francis II (d. 1835) son of Leopold and nephew of Joseph, the bom Florentine, who was the last Roman emperor and the first Austrian emperor bearing this title, ruled the Austrian Monarchy. Accepting Klemens Metternich (d. 1859) as his main adviser for more than a quarter of a Century, he withstood successfully the impact of Napoleon in war and peace. For the history of modern Austria the two antagonistic schools of Joseph and Francis are like those of the Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians in the American political philosophy (notwithstanding the fact that Jefferson was rather suspicious of Joseph and would have vehemently resented to be linked with an emperor whom he considered the very stumbling-block of peace). Despite the antagonism between Joseph and Francis, there was much more continuity in their regimes than is generally believed. Joseph’s basic reforms - tolerance, emancipation of peasantry and Jewry, state's control of the church - were continued under Francis unabatedly. Yet, while structurally Josephinism continued to a large extent, 50 psychologically the reaction against it was the very atmosphere of Austria's third civilization which now emerged. We may call it the age of Romanticism, if we clearly distinguish the Austrian type of the Romantic philosophy of life, for which, astonishingly enough to many minds, no ruler, statesman, scholar or artist, but a simple priest with world-wide missionary interest St. Clement Maria Hofbauer, C. Se. R. (d. 1820) was the very Symbol, as the spiritual center for statesmen, scholars and artists. Yes, we may speak of Romanticism, if we distinguish the Austrian type from the Prussian type, often regarded as the most typical one, in which the irrationalism of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, descending from the peak of Kant's classicism, concluded in the realm of thought what Frederick II had anticipated in the realm of politics. No wonder, that the practical Machiavellism of the Prussian king found its Sublimation in the theoretical Machiavellism of at least two of these German philosophers, Fichte and Hegel, while the political theory of Austrian Romanticism, by which the realities of politics were more imbued than anywhere eise in Europe, has been the climax of anti-Machiavellism. This age of Austrian Romanticism, which started in many instances already in the midst of Austrian Enlightenment, was also the age of Austrian music, the age of musical classicism, through which Austria will survive down to the Day of Judgment. To defeat and check the imperialism of both the French Revolution and Napoleon was the fourth great historic test required by the Austrian empire after Swedes, Turks and Prussians. Far from seeing in Napoleon only the tyrant of Europe, as the English and the Germans did, but well aware of the great constructive the energy involved, the Austrian policy, represented by Francis II and Metternich, had to perform a double task, to defeat the Napoleonic tyranny and to save the European idea which had never before been represented equally. A few years after the Code Napoleon, in which the civilizing achievements of the Napoleonic administration are embodied, the Austrian Allgemeine Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch (1811), edited by the jurisprudent Franz Zeitler, proved that the Austrian empire was quick in leaming from Western Europe, wherever modernization and tradition could be easily coordinated. In Austria already Josephinism had brought about quite organically many reforms which in France first were dipped into blood and disfigured, and $hen had to be saved from self-destruction by military dictatorship. Hence, the Austrian answer to the Napoleonic championship of the idea of European civilization was simply to stand world-open for its own identity. This answer was possible, however, only because the Austrian armies together with those of the other European allies had smashed Napoleon with the might of arms. Archduke Charles (d. 1847), who first defeated Napoleon at Aspern near Vienna (May 21 and 22, 1809), has always been regarded by the Austrian people to have been the man who made the first decisive breach into the myth of invincibility which accompanied the Napoleonic armies on their course of victories. Charles, the brother of the emperor, knew well what was at stäke. "The liberty of Europe has fled under our Standards", he addressed his army before the campaign of 1809, the year of destiny. Defeated by superior arms, he really prepared the ground for the victories to come. Simultaneously with the Austrian army the Tyrolean peasants under the leadership of Andreas Hofer, the innkeeper from the Passeiertal in South Tyrol, fought the war 51 against both French and Bavarians in the Tyrolean Alps. They were victorious three times on the Berg Isel near Innsbruck in April, May and August 1809 in the name of God and his saints, whom they invoked, as once their ancestors did in the centuries of |the Barocco. Although they later were crushed on the same historic spot in November 1809 and their chief leader, Hofer, executed (February 20, 1810 at Mantua), they really gave the signal for the whole of Europe to break the chains of the Napoleonic mammoth empire. Napoleon himself knew pretty well that these peasants of the Tyrol were his main enemies. In outlining the measures of reprisal to Marshal Lefebvre, after the Tyrol was eventually subdued, he wrote: "My intention is that you will ask for 150 hostages, and that you pillage and burn down at least six big villages and the houses of the ring leaders and that you proclaim the country would be submerged in blood and iron, if not all guns are delivered. Not a trace of the villages must remain, so that the spots are monuments for the revenge taken against the mountaineers. You have full power in your hands. Be terrible." Thus, Napoleon already knew the business of dictatorship well enough. If the reality at last, was less frightful, it was primarily because of Hofer's sacrifice which cooled down the emperor's rage. The innkeeper from the Pasaeiertal really died for his people, the Tyrolians, who on their part sacrificed themselves for all the other peoples of the continent. Hofer's death was the turning point in Napoleon's fortune. The revolt of the Tyrolians became the model for all the enslaved peoples and the stinging memory for the European cabinets. Although it needed four years, until the Austrian-Prussian-Russian armies under the command of the Austrian General Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg (d. 1820) decisively defeated Napoleon at Leipzig (after the wreckage of his armies in the Russian campaign), the Tyrolean peasants have had the glory of having given the first signal for this entire enterprise of liberation. The Tyrol consequently was the first Austrian country, where already in 1816 the old Constitution of the four Estates, including cities and peasants, was reconstituted. For the next Century the Tyrolians certainly were the darlings of Austrian patriotism, who for their loyalty and bravery held the first place in the esteem of the entire empire. To serve in a Tyrolian regiment of the Austrian army (as I had the honor to do), was a distinction, to which many Austrian boys from all comers of the empire aspired. In defending both the empire and their country, the Tyrolians, young and old, during World War I acquired immortal laureis, to be thanked for by the postwar world Order through the partition of the Tyrol north and south of the Brenner Pass which ended the history of a country united for more than five hundred years and cut the very life-line of a proud and courageous people - in favor of Fascism in the South and National Socialism in the North.

(§10) The three decades after the overthrow of Napoleon, the so-called Vormärz ,which ended with the March revolution of 1848, was politically, without doubt, not a very pleasant era in Austria’s interior affairs. One school of thought, to which Metternich belonged and which held the most powerful positions, thought of the revolution as the last consequence of Josephinism which would either have to be undone or at least 52 checked for good, while another school without power and everywhere in Opposition clamored for the continuation and fulfilment of Enlightenment, as introduced by Joseph II The symbol of the latter school was the Austrian poet Franz Grillparzer (d, 1872),the third German classic very close to the two Dioscuri of Weimar, who, a black and yellow Josephinian patriot, but dramatized grudging and misanthropic about the tum of Josephinism not only dramatized into Austria’s heroic history the problems of his own solitary soul, but also carved the bitterest epigrams against its epigone out of his bilious psychology. At any rate, Grillparzer is no serious source of Austrian history, the Vormärz or Metternich, rather his existence in the proof midst and under the conditions of the "Metternich System the very proof that he in his most passionate accusations was wrong. Another poet, Heinrich Heine, also wielded his wit with epigrammatic acuteness against the forces of reaction. Yet the latter, a Northern German of Western European Orientation and even in his sarcasm a sage of an old race, knew very well how much the Austria of Metternich, conservative and anti-liberal, was ethically superior to the Contemporary Prussia, pseudo-liberal and reactionary. In his "Französische Zustande" (1832) he explained the reason why some radicals, despising, the "Prussian Jacobins", held secret sympathies for Austrian conservatism. "In fact, we may war with Austria daringly unto death", he writes, “sword in hand, but we feel in our innermost heart that we are not justified in reviling her in abusive terms. Austria was ever an open and honest enemy who never denied nor suspended for a moment its fight against liberalism. Metternich never ogled with loving eyes the goddess of liberty, he never played the demagogue with a troubled anxious heart, he never sung Amdf s songs while drinking white beer, he never practiced national gymnastics on the Hasenheide, he never played the pietist, nor did he ever weep with the prisoners of the fortresses while he kept then chained. You always knew exactly what to expect of him. You knew that you had to beware of him and you did so. He was always a sure man, who neither deceived us by gracious looks nor irritated did us by private malice. You know that he was inspired neither by love nor by petty hatred, but that he acted grandly in the spirit of a System to which Austria had adhered for the last three centuries. It is the same System for which Austria fought against the Reformation, the same for which she battled with the Revolution. For this System not only the men were fighting, but also the daughters of the House of Austria” This is what Heine said about the main antagonist of the idea of revolution, yet someone who still spoke the same language. Between conservatism and liberalism, there should and could be honest enmity, he might be interpreted as saying, but between them both on the one hand, and the irrationalism, then called "Prussian Jacobinism" on the other hand, we might conclude on the basis of still more comprehensive experiences, there is the absolute gulf of two contradictory logical Systems. Although Grillparzer has contributed a lot of immortal wisdom to the fuller knowledge of this gulf, wherever he emphasized the antagonism between Austria and Prussia, his too close a view on Metternich and too local an intimacy with the Austrian Vomärz has blinded him in recognizing its secular values, of which his poetry and Metternich’s policy in fact were twin products. 53 It is true; the Vormärz did not solve the problems of the empire. The legal shift from the empty dignity of the Holy Roman Empire to the reality of the Austrian empire, overdue for a long time but materialized now under the Napoleonic pressure, did not free Austria from both the German and the Italian affairs, in order that she might concentrate exclusively on her own problems around the Danube basin. On the contrary, the Austrian hegemony in both Germany and Italy remained the very comer-stone of Metternich’s foreign policy. Nor did the necessary synthesis between Joseph and Francis really succeed in the interior reconstruction after Napoleon's downfall. This was largely due, however to the fact that there was no Metternich in interior affairs, as there was one in foreign affairs, the state's chancellor being rather prevented by other members of the governing body from too intimate an interference with interior problems, at least under the reign of Ferdinand (d. 1875) the decrepit firstbom son of Francis, who was unfortunately an imbecile. It was the tragic mistake of Metternich that he, for the sake of biological legitimacy, made him "successor of the entail", as he named it, and an empreur du carton, behind whom the committee of the real rulers, the state's chancellor included, governed for the fictitious ruler. In this period the so-called "gerontocracy" developed, that senile System for which nobody was really responsible, but for which Metternich, although without real power in interior affairs, was the all-hated Symbol. Or in other words, the typically Austrian neglects at home were again due to the overburdening with responsibilities outside the empire which the Habsburgs and their servants have sought and have found throughout their entire history. In fact, there was a Metternich in foreign policy, who in the Service of European peace necessarily absorbed the best energies available within the country for his world-wide scheme and thus exhausted Austria’s endurance in the gigantic task of European leadership. While the apologist will Interpret this behavior as a sacrifice for the outside world, the critic will object that no individual state serves the family of nation without solving its own problems. The failure of Metternich in the interior policy of Austria, in which he had to share responsibility with many anti-Mettemichs in the highest Offices, has for a long time overshadowed the full recognition of his great historic figure in the foreign policy of the Austrian empire as well as in the fundamental reorganization of Europe after the Napoleonic cataclysm. He was one of the basic defeaters of Napoleon, as well as one of the great constructors of the post-Napoleonic Europe. Both are deeds which might permit to excuse the blunders he committed elsewhere. He defeated Napoleon, because he was not blind for the greatness and the function of the man, and he was able to reconstruct Europe, because he reserved at once the traditional place for the defeated nation, France, in the concert of European powers which could not be regenerated without being complete. In considering the difficulties which had to be surmounted, the Congress of Vienna (1814/15) was the basis of an astonishing period of peace for a Century, not accounting for a series of minor conflicts, although they certainly were of far-reaching consequences. None of the hasty critics of Metternich will wrest from his memory the glory of having been the main energy in weiding the European continent into an era of peace unheard of before, and after the greatest catastrophe yet experienced. Only after 54 this other catastrophe of our own experience will have been surpassed by another Century of peace may we be sure in naming his greater successors. The Congress of Vienna, the Holy Alliance among the three conservative powers of Eastern Europe, the Quadrupie Alliance which included Great Britain and looked out for the Quintuple Alliance with France rehabilitated, the System of European congresses from Aachen to Verona - these were the Steps which established the European Areopagus, the first modern System of European Cooperation, based primarily upon the equilibrium among the five European great powers, the so-called Pentarchy, making Vienna the arbiter of Europe and Metternich the charioteer of the European quadriga. The stability of this international System was based upon a hierarchy of inter-state relations, the Austrian empire, taken for granted, with its hegemony over both Germany and Italy as the very axis of Central Europe, a twofold European mandate entrusted to Austria, - the Cooperation of the two central powers, Austria and Prussia, with Great Britain and, if need be quasi as two valves, the Cooperation of the four anti-revolutionary powers against France, or the three Eastern monarchies against the two Western democracies. The latter was thought but as an expediency in case of emergency. It was an ingenious System of political balance according to the patterns of the ancien regime. The whole scheme overlooked many very vital problems. Its tenor was against changes in general, even if inevitable, and thus it forsook both the chance and the capability of regenerating Europe on a large scale. Yet it gave proof not only of the spell which the past could still master to master the age, but also of the skill of the traditional architects, whose structure, old-fashioned, weather- beaten, but water-proof, could stand the pressure of modern progress for quite some time. Fortunately enough, we are no beyond the age, when Metternich was the bugaboo, by whom political infants were frightened. Thus we are able to distinguish coolly between the achievements and the shortcomings of a great homo politicus, who still is close enough to teach us something. Metternich's formula, upon which his entire System rested, was the principle of legitimacy. This principle was not simply identical with dynastical legitimism, as Metternich's attitude towards Napoleon and the Bourbons well indicates. It did not mean primarily the galvanization of any form of govemment, but the solidarity of all European powers in preserving the legal order everywhere, if need be by their coordinated interventions. Thus the accent lay on the legitimacy of the international procedure, and not on the historic substance of legitimacy. The fact that the principle of legitimacy contributed in most instances to the protection of the existing monarchies and ruling dynasties was simply due to the prevalent form of government in that epoch and did not forsake the very idea of legitimacy, as long as the European Areopagus was still able to arrive in conformity at modifying decisions .Thus, this System intended the organic change, but did not make changes completely impossible. The examples of Belgium and Greece in 1830 show in fact that the Pentarchy was really able to perform what Metternich himself called the "Christening" of the natural principle of nationality and populär sovereignty through the supra-natural principle of legitimacy. The idea was certainly elastic enough to survive the form of government in which it first emerged, if only the Areopagus itself would have survived, or in other words all members of the 55 European family of nations would have estimated their community of ideas and actions higher than their predilections for this or that form of govemment. It was the final abandonment of that formula, identical with the common approval of organized international procedure, which brought about the era of war and conquest. In the principle of legitimacy the first rudiment of an international Order and Cooperation in the 19th Century was ruthlessly and frivolously sacrificed again. Although this new era was initiated in the first place by the primitivity of national aspirations which made both Prussia and Piedmont strive for their goals of national egotism .without any regard for the interests of the European Commonwealth, it was mainly the historic guilt of the Western mandatories of the Pentarchy that the principle of legitimacy could eventually be substituted by the principle of nationality. To the liberals of yesterday the criticism of the principle of nationality was a sacrilege and did not convey any meaning at all. For the superficial observer it meant but the aggrandizement of the liberal regimes in both Italy and Germany at the cost of the conservative power of Austria. Yet another interpretation is gradually shaping up now and the world has leamed in agony that in the long run the principle of nationality really meant to upset the structure of Europe. The idea of international solidarity and judicial procedure, rudimentary but capable of further development, yielded to the anarchy of national aspirations and the sacro egoismo, proclaimed solemnly as the only remedy of the international evils .As true as it is that Prussia provided the means of arms for this new gospel and that Piedmont supported the Prussian armies, the Western powers gladly consented to this tum in a grotesque deception what would suit them best. It is here that the 19th Century capitalism, commercialism and colonial imperialism come into the picture. The unchaining of the principle of nationality on the European continent was the paravent, behind which the Western powers could acquire or strengthen their modern colonial empires undisturbed by any outside interference. In order to divide the world among them, they surrendered the European continent to the principle of nationality, but thereby to both Prussia-Germany and Piedmont-Italy or what was in nuce the Triple Alliance of our fathers' generation and the Axis of our own time. There was no choice, either the principle of legitimacy with Austria, or the principle of nationality with Prussia ruling Central Europe, including Piedmont and the remains of Austria. As long as the European North and South will be determined by the principle of nationality instead of those of legitimacy, rationality and continuity, there will always be some kind of broadsword or dagger thrust through the heart of Europe, notwithstanding the most up-to- date police in West and East cooperating. The antagonism between world-wide and Continental interests, between the British Empire and the Austrian Empire, means the end of the Pentarchy and the creation of two European blocs, although the bitter consequences of these blunders were not realized for three generations. Only the complete reintegration of these two sets of interests, world-wide and Continental, in their actual shape into the principle of legitimacy revived will really overcome the two blocs and reconstitute a European family of nations again. In fact, the mere idea of the Pentarchy was lasting enough to check any major conflagration for quite some time. It is true, minor conflicts occurred. They were the wars 56 of Pmssia against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870/71), in the first of which Austria again made herseif guilty (as in the partition of Poland), and the wars of Italy in the tow-rope of Prussian interests waged against Austria (1859 and 1866), in the first of which France anticipated the same mistake, rendering herseif guilty to weaken her power of moral resistance. These wars regarded in them selves were nevertheless only minor conflicts concerning their length and the peoples involved, although they were the very Instruments indeed for the principle of nationality and its materialization, and although they bore in their wombs the major conflagrations to come. Yet they certainly were not world wars, as Europe knew them before and knows them since. They were localized affairs, not the least because of the aftermath of the European System of Cooperation, on which Metternich had insisted and which still was alive in minds and instincts. Even Bismarck, who completed and surpassed the deeds of Napoleon III and Cavour, and who organized deliberately the three wars by which the German empire was created, could not deny to be Metternich’s disciple, not in waging those wars but in trying to keep the European peace afterwards. And so deeply was Mettemich's idea rooted in the European statesmen, that they at once recognized Bismarck's leadership, formulated on occasion of the Congress of Berlin (1878), as soon as it led back to peace and the foundations of the European family of nations. The European statesmen, Thiers and Disraeli among them, were not wrong to accept Bismarck into their concert and even trust him with the function which once Metternich performed, although the consequences of his policy of blood and iron still cried to heaven for revenge. Yet Bismarck, if he ever sincerely believed in the policy of peace which he inaugurated after his successes in wars, was wrong to assume that without active repentance, the German people could be trained for Machiavellism and war, and then organically brought back to European solidarity and the principle of legitimacy. In accepting the latter only as a means for attaining the goals of national policy, Bismarck's ethical stature is definitely below that of Metternich, even compared the German chancellor's decades of peace with the Austrian chancellor's decade of wars. While Metternich may have indulged occasionally in the practices of Machiavellian diplomacy, yet followed ideas far above any scheme of Machiavellism, Bismarck, thoroughly imbued with Machiavellian substance, was the most classical embodiment of both German and modern Machiavellism, even where he was sincere in details. So deeply was the idea of a lasting peace, with war only as an exception, rooted already in our fathers' souls that most of their sons could not believe in 1914, or even in 1939, that the era of Metternich, or as some of them preferred to say, the era of modern progress, had gone for good. Materialists, as most of the usufructuaries of Mettemich's peace in the 19th and 20th Century have been, they did not allow themselves to ascribe any achievements in history to the endeavors of man, but only to evolution, progress, society or other blind forces, of which man would be only a meaningless function and its meanest index indeed. The doctrine of historic materialism will not hesitate to lavish upon the capitalism of the 19th Century the glory which in fact is due to the organizing qualities of the homo politicus in European history after the greatest catastrophe which he 57 then had experienced. Yet even conceding for the sake of argument the primacy of economics over politics, there can be no doubt that also the automatism of capitalism needed the political atmosphere, in which it could prosper, and that then the Congress of Vienna at least was the creator of this atmosphere which doubtlessly has been the political condition for the prosperous evolution of economy. Yet the catastrophes which we have experienced did not particularly favor the idea of economic determinism, whether it is viewed from the angle of capitalism or communism .Many people have been shaken in their former convictions by World War I, still more by World War II. Many have leamed to understand the idea of international solidarity and the principle of legitimacy. one of the greatest spirits which the exile from Fascism has definitely molded. Guglielmo Farrero, dug out from the grave of wisdom what had been forgotten once by none more than by the intellectuals of his own nation, that not only emperors and kings must be interested in the principle of legitimacy, but republics and democracies as well, and that there can be no democratic order anywhere without the principle of legitimacy.

(§11) When the European Areopagus was liquidated in the mutual interest of the principle of nationality on the continent and of colonial imperialism in inter-continental dimensions, the Austrian empire, a basically European affair without extra-European complement, found itself thrown back upon its merely selfsame existence and thus suddenly face to face with insoluble internal problems. In good and evil, this was the consequence of the European function which Austria held during nearly a millennium. While once in the eyes of the nations which lived in Old Austria the history of the 19th Century could be simply interpreted as the sequence of catastrophes caused by the fateful failures of Austrian policy, the experiences of the last decades have demonstrated rather brutally to many Europeans, how for the two last centuries it was less the incapacity of Austria, but the exuberance of Prussia which, backed primarily by the extra-continental arbiter Great Britain, destroyed the Central European structure and thus upset down the European balance. The Austrian empire in its interior structure had always been the function of European conditions which moreover were under the predominant control of Austrian foreign policy. In its very existence the Austrian empire was essentially interwoven into the European contexture. Two factors have established the basic European qualification of this political coexistence in the heart of Central Europe. First, this coexistence was a European agency, a basic element of the European System Cooperation, one of the great regional sub- divisions of the European Commonwealth, if not its very pivot. Hence the Austrian empire for half a Century held a position of seniority in the European Areopagus, after it had held before for nearly four centuries the key position in the previous European System erected on the basis of the balance of European powers. These four centuries, far from being in similar need for a formula time of peace as our time, are those of the most splendid last phase of European civilization, based upon an identical code of values and expressed in deeds of arts and Sciences which still are the maternal roots of our own technical age. Everyone of the other European regional entities who had at one time contested for the position of European 58 imperialism, and had wished to decide the European destiny in its own favor, the Imperium Romanum, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden, Turkey, Great Britain, Russia, each of them in its own way, has in fact contributed its share to the formation of this coexistence in Central Europe and to its specific civilization, either by attacking it first and then recognizing its central position, or by arranging Cooperation and thus fertilizing its mould. The Prussian aspirations alone have proved to be definitely incompatible with the existence of the Austrian System. The very reason for this fact was that Austria stretched both geographically and historically across Prussia's natural life line and living space. While Austria's historic idea was that of supra-national symbiosis on the basis of the principle of legitimacy, Prussia's historic idea was the unification of all German Speakers on the basis of the principle of nationality and a European imperialism founded upon the compact settlement of all the German Speakers in the heart of Europe. After the Rhine in the West and the Vistula in the East were reached by Prussia, the Western buffer States being reduced to impotence and the Eastem buffer state, Poland, having disappeared, the smaller peoples in the Austrian empire, wherever it would show rents and cracks, had to become the main objectives of Prussia's further aggressive interests. Austria's elimination from both Germany and Italy served this goal, as did afterwards the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise and the Triple Alliance. With every means, positive and negative, the dike which Austria represented against the German tide had to be undermined, until it collapsed. For this had always been the other fundamental function of the Austrian coexistence, to be the most lasting racial symbiosis that ever existed among a dozen and more smaller nations, of which most would never have survived in Isolation. They were in fact protected by this common frame against aggression through centuries, as fragmentary and insufficient as this protection might now seem to have been, evaluated abstractly by modern man not equally in need of similar protective measures. All the historic aggressions against the heart of Central Europe, attempted by Swedes and Turks and French, failed and only emphasized its pivotal function. In this sequence of aggressions during the centuries of modern history, only to mention the three big nations which are the main neighbors of the Danubian smaller peoples,- Russia was always rather an imaginary foe, dangerous not so much in herseif but in the imaginations which her mere existence created outside of her boundaries, - Italy was a real foe only in foreign Service and not in her substance, - while Prussia was continually the most dangerous and most effective aggressor during all phases of modern Austrian history, - but even this only as long as Western Europe, France and Great Britain, passively or actively, allowed her to be aggressive and seconded her thereby. Only the fate of the Old Austrian nations, each without exception, after their protective house, the House of Austria (in a far more universal meaning than merely the title of a dynasty) had been destroyed, has really demonstrated what kind of protection and subsistence Old Austria was. She was it even after and in spite of the demolitions her structure had gone through and of the weakness which was the result. Only a world which will have succeeded at least for one generation in solving the problems of Central Europe better than Old Austria did during the last four hundred years, will gain the privilege of throwing the first stone upon the past. Yet such a world might well refrain from doing so. 59 According to Frantisek Palacky (d. 1876), the leading Czech spirit of his time, the necessity of creating the Austrian Monarchy, if it did not already exist, was feit in unison at last during the crisis of 1848 by all the peoples concerned, oven by those whose intelligentsia participated in the turmoil of the revolution. This year of the European revolution in France, Germany, Italy and Hungary was actually the year of the greatest chance for conservatism in Austria. The empire could still strictly rely on its peasant peoples, including Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Rumanians, Ruthenians, Poles, Slovaks and Czechs. The intellectual Czechs, like Palacky, formulating the ideas of the Austrian Slavonic School, stood in the foreground of Austrian argumentations. Within the movement of pan-Slavism there was an articulated Austrian Slavonic school of thought which was not only afraid of the Russian colossus, but was also conscious of its own Western and democratic character. The revolution occurred primarily in the midst of the ruling peoples of the Austrian agglomeration; among the Viennese, led by those inter-Austrian intellectuals, many Jews among them, who were substantially the usufructuaries of the empire, - among the Milanese and the Venetians, who, in spite of the Austrian imperialism in their countries, really held the cultural and political supremacy in the Adriatic Litoral and in all matters of Austria's Adriatic, Mediterranean and oversea concern, - and last but not least among the Magyars, for whom, magnates and peasants, a stränge lot of Magyarized people raised their voice. The leadership of the Magyars had glided from the conservative authority of Istvan Szechenyi (d. 1860),"the greatest Magyar", who after the revolution died in a lunatic asylum by suicide, into the restless hands of the Magyarized Slovak, Lajos Kossuth (d. 1894) who in many instances was the seducer of the people, whose nationality he confessed without being of its race. While Szechenyi was greatly influenced by Western European ideas (Bentham), which he grafted upon his conservative structure, Kossuth, originally Szechenyi's follower was thrown into the opposite camp foremost by the influence of German ideas (List). While Szechenyi was the magnate, in whom Magyar blood was truly alive, Kossuth was the typical representative of what later was called the Magyar gentry that minor Magyar aristocracy which recruited itself largely from the non-Magyar peoples around. Kossuth's non-Magyar origin is symbolic for the Hungarian revolution, whose Magyar Tyrtaeus, Sandor Petöfi (d.1849), formerly Petrovics, was a Magyarized Serbo- Croat, and of whose leading generals Arthur Görgei was a Saxon, Josef Bem of Polish- Czech descent, and Georg Klapka from a family of the Military Frontier, either of Rumanian or also Serbo-Croatian, but certainly not of Magyar descent. The Magyars, primarily in their more recently Magyarized strata, under the imperial rule of the Austrian Vormärz feit their predominance endangered which they traditionally held over Croats, Serbs, Rumanians, Ruthenians, Slovaks and the German speaking islands, Saxons and Swabians, in the Hungarian kingdom. The Magyar gentry, politically active particularly in the districts' assemblies of the country, had followed from times immemorial the method of pressing Vienna for concessions which they would never pass on their own non-Magyar subjects. Since concessions to the ruling group in Hungary always happened to be transformed very soon into additional difficulties for these subjects, who used to look to Vienna for deliverance from their grievances, to the central govemment had become 60 accustomed to resist concessions to the Hungarian rulers in the interest of the masses of the Hungarian subjects, who could only be emancipated by reforms enacted by the central authority. These were the real conditions of Hungary, when parts of the Magyars started the revolution and the non-Magyar peasant peoples, Croats, Serbs, Rumanians, Ruthenians, Slovaks, unanimously joined the anti-revolutionary front. This certainly was a tremendous chance of Austrian conservatism. Without the active assistance of these Hungarian nationalities, belonging to the Hungarian kingdom, but being no Magyars, the combined Austrian and Russian forces would hardly have liquidated the entire adventure as quickly as it was done. After Görgei had capitulated to the Russians at Vilägos, the Austrian general, Julius Haynau, illegitimate son of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, already known as the "hyena of Brescia", now hanged thirteen Honved generals at Arad (1849) repeating in modern times the Bohemian error of Ferdinand II and the Hungarian error of Leopold I, and creating out of a bunch of non-Magyar adventurers of revolution the martyrs of the next generation of Hungarian politics. This re-interpretation of 1848, submitted here, does not maintain that no real grievances existed of which those ruling peoples who made the revolution had to complain. Since only privileged groups amongst them were their representatives, it was quite obvious that their most prosperous strata, at that time the progressive intellectuals within the urban population, were likely to feel those grievances first. While Josephinism had unchained various social energies, the Vormärz had tried to curb them again. Certainly, there was a great need for modernizing Austria in many respects. Yet the revolutionists of 1848, both town folk and bourgeoisie, represented only one view of how to accomplish this end, and obviously the minority view at that, while the conservatism of the peasant peoples, representing the opposite view, aimed at quite another type of modernization. Thus different evaluations of the most adequate means for progress stood against each other, and by no means simply reaction against progress. From a modern point of view which has developed during the Century since we might well concede to the peasant peoples who stood for imperial unity the more realistic evaluation of things to come, in which social reforms of a definite character would always depend on political reintegration. The Austrian revolution of 1848, representing a minority view, was defeated, because the majority of the peasant peoples, although they were not less interested in modern liberties than the urban population, loyally stood by crown and army, the Symbols of imperial unity. The Austrian general, Joseph Radetzky (d.1858), whom the Italians only a short while ago exaggeratingly remembered as the embodiment of Northern barbarism, really symbolized these forces of the Austrian empire, and thus it was legitimately he, to whom Johann Straus, Sr. offered in his "Radezky March" the most populär music of the imperial counter-revolution, and Franz Grillparzer, awakening from criticism to constructive grandeur, addressed his most Austrian poem confessing that only in her army, both leadership and rank and file, there still is Austria. This was the sentiment of the Austrian peasant peoples as well. They had been protected by the empire against local feudalism, and they expected the empire to continue that way. It was quite logical to assume it, even if they were refuted by history. The empire, they hoped, would, in the Century to come, need the loyalty of its masses more urgently than 61 the wealth of its aristocracy, old or new. If history disappointed them, they were not among the main guilty. The enduring problem which confronted the Austrian empire throughout the 19th Century was to find the synthesis between the historic rights, advocated in 1848 by Kossuth at least for Hungary and in fact achieved by her in 1867, and the national rights, advocated in 1848 by Palacky and eventually materialized by Czechoslovakia in 1918. Both men did not stick to their original conceptions, but their nations did thoroughly enough to their own detriment. If it was the tragedy of Austria to have failed in the synthesis between historic and national rights, so it was the tragedy of both Magyars and Czechs the two main nations that constituted the Greater Austrian problem in 1526, to have missed their own reciprocity with respect to the two ideologies during the last Century, each in its errors the shadow of the other's errors. The Magyars in their prime stood primarily for their own natural right to Magyarize the Hungarian nationalities, and this was called by them the historic rights of the St. Stephen's crown. The Czechs, on the other hand, ambiguously combined the historic rights of the St. Wenceslaus' crown (by including the Sudeten Germans into their state) with the national rights of the Czechoslovak nation (by doing the same with the Slovaks and thereby destroying the historic rights of the St. Stephen's crown),and thus shaped a hybrid state which perhaps would have been possible within the Austrian empire and at any rate can exist without it only if backed by some kind of Western or Eastem European power. Kossuth, when in exile after the failure of the revolution, under Garibaldi's influence drafted an outline for a Danubian confederation, comprising Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Serbia and Rumania, and providing for a constitutional monarchy on the English pattern, an alternative federal Capital, and French as the official language (1862). He could have arrived at a much more organic conception of the national rights already in 1848, if he would then have amalgamated his conception of historic rights with Palacky's opposite Position, who, in the first Austrian Parliament, sponsored the idea of seven independent national States within the framework of the Austrian Monarchy: the Austro-German, Czecho-Slovak, Polish-Ruthenian, Yugoslav, Rumanian, Italian and Magyar community. Visa versa, Palacky would have profited much from Kossuth. Strangely enough, although they were both of the same race and denomination, Protestant Slovaks, they developed into completely antagonistic political orbits. While Kossuth, after eliminated from active politics, developed from the historic rights to the national rights, Palacky, equally out of politics, went the opposite road, and later revised his program of a Czechoslovak national state within the Austrian Monarchy in favor of the historic right of the St. Wenceslaus' crown (1865). In 1848 the project of a Danubian confederation based upon national rights, if Kossuth had accepted it together with Palacky, would have reorganized the Austrian empire. Yet also the strict parallelism of the Hungarian and Bohemian historic rights would have done the same. The mere exchange of positions between Kossuth and Palacky could not prevent the fateful Austrian-Hungarian Dualism any longer, by which east of the Leitha river the historic rights were recognized in its full atavism, while west of the Leitha river the attempt of a modern state with full equality of all nationalities under the mere symbolism of historic rights was made, but necessarily went astray. 62 While the realization of the historic rights of the Hungarian kingdom was possible only, because the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy continued to exist, the combination of historic and national rights, upon which Czechoslovakia was based, presupposed the still more powerful existence of a still more powerful European Organization which would disarm both Germany and Hungary. As once both schemes would have been possible within the modemized Austrian empire, if only each scheme would have been consistent also in dealing with the partner, so will even in the future, as long as not fundamental ethnic changes have been brought about by artificial means, the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian problem be solved only by autochthonous means on the basis of triune equality.

(§12) Historically, the confidence of the peasant peoples in the Austrian Monarchy was tragically disappointed after 1848 because of shortcomings which lay not so much in the structure of the empire but in the conduct of the dynasty. The circumstances of both revolution and reaction in Austria have their deepest roots in the fact that the dynasty, which had functioned as a symbol of populär tendencies for centuries and still was regarded as the Champion of populär interests by the masses, had considerably lost its adaptability to the Problems of the 19th Century. Some historians are inclined to believe that this was due to the influx of the new family, the Lorrains, who introduced a new psychology and technique into the complexity of Austrian problems. Yet already Joseph II and Leopold II were Lorrains of the first generations, and they really have modernized Austria. Another theory is that the frequent marriages between Lorrain and Bourbon have changed the substance of the dynasty, and this Observation is already nearer to the truth. The Austrian problem in the 19th Century was, of course, the problem of the dynasty. Yet it was not the new dynasty as such, but the slackness and tiredness of their old race in general which made all the European dynasties of the age, and among them the Austrian dynasty as well, so incapable of coping with the infinitely more complex problems of the modern centuries. It is a great puzzle of biology, why families in general and dynasties in particular become languid. Certainly not as a rule, but as a frequent phenomenon, they may rest upon a few eyes only and represent the most extraordinary function of civilization, or be prolific and then resort to the average. In the 18th Century the two Western dynasties, Bourbon and Lorrain, started a marriage policy exactly according to the ancient pattem which, if they and their age had not changed, might have brought about not only the unity of Italy, but also that of the three Romanic realms, France and Spain, included, and might even have resulted in connecting Western and Central Europe through the ties of one dynasty similar to the events of the Renaissance. Both time and man had changed, however, and now the marriage policy of the two leading dynasties not only failed to create any political amalgamations, but really seemed to happen in a space void of political significance. There is hardly anything equally characteristic of the changes in the European orbit which occurred already long before the French Revolution, than this natural shrinkage of the dynastic function everywhere these changes occurred long before the populär currents became powerful enough to influence events. Hence the primary reason must be found within the dynasties themselves. In their history throughout the ages it was simply the 63 anticipation of strength and substance by a few extraordinary generations, which should have lasted throughout the entire aeon .The direct consequence of this consumption, was the transubstantiation of dynasties back into families again. While in former centuries Personalities far above the average were frequently the last members of their dynasties, yet without any signs of degeneration, and if they continued their race, did so again only in one specimen,- in modern times much more prolific families obviously shrunk back into the average, which furnished no one of their greater number with full capability to deal successfully with the complexities of the modern world. In arriving at the level of normal families, the dynasties of the 19th Century, as much as they humanized themselves in this process, becoming now families among families, reduced the magic around them inevitably to routine which was eventually useful enough in some instances to preserve the shadow of the past, but not to regenerate the substance of the monarchic office both creatively and permanently. Moreover, in those former centuries the Christian universalism was strong enough to mold the entire life of man and to cheek thereby the inbom trends of Machiavellism in the ruling race and its hereditary business (although rulers like Rudolph IV, Charles V, or Ferdinand II, offer appalling examples of it).The less universal regime of Christian ideas in later times, the re-paganization of life to the utmost degree, made the much more average rulers of the modern centuries much more inclined to succumb to the temptations inherent in the atavism of their racial descent and much more susceptible to their unfortunate heritage, anticipating Machiavellism, than most of their above-average Christian ancestors. Thus modern progress logically brought with it not only the retro gradation of the dynasties into normal and average families which in fact is their salvation, but also the greatest temptation for those representatives among them, who do not want to submit to salvation, to entangle themselves in ambiguity, double Crossing and deceitfulness. In such a Situation of history, even if it then only appeared on the horizon, the principle of legitimacy, understood primarily to he one of dynastic biology, logically had to contribute to ruin and decay. This was the paradoxical Situation which Metternich brought about .While the principle of legitimacy for the European family of nations meant the idea of supranational solidarity, without which no Europe is possible and in fact the defection from it the beginning of the end, in the interior affairs of the state it tumed out to be the fetish of flesh and blood, around whom, even if an imbecile, the acolytes strewed their incense. This was the "Metternich System” with Ferdinand as emperor and king. To be sure, this was much more of a constitutional scheme than most of the Contemporary critics could really understand, not so different from the last consequences of the constitutional monarchy everywhere in our own time, at least technically speaking. The aim was the Sublimation of the monarchic office even to the extent that the most unfit personality could be its representative Metternich in fact anticipated thereby the development of the 19th Century, in which the constitutional monarchy accomplished exactly the same depersonalization of the monarchic office. Yet in an absolute monarchy, in which both the inner cabinet and the bureaucracy represented the state, the attempt was a real degradation of the monarchic office which made the eruption of the revolution only logical. Again a primarily constitutional interest, now 64 represented by the generals, was put into effect to make good the error of the civilians. After bringing the imbecile emperor to abdication, they elevated his grandson, Francis Joseph, a youth of 18, who could not have a mature view of his own as the Situation urgently required. This only aggravated the evil in the long run, although the youthful emperor probably was the most gifted among the members of the dynasty, connected through his mother, Sophie (as later again through his wife, Elisabeth) with the most gifted, but also most eccentric German dynasty, Wittelsbach of Bavaria. The causality of these two dynastic reigns, in which not an average or below-average but some above-average ruler would have been required to master the problems which emerged, was a tremendous one for the final collapse of the empire. The dynasty literally dragged the empire into the abyss. While Ferdinand was too impotent for being more than a symbol, and a sad one at that, Francis Joseph was too potent, yet too unstable a busybody to be capable of repairing the damage inflicted upon the ancient structure which would have needed a steady hand. Thus the dynasty which once created the empire according to the latent populär forces was unable to regulate them again in the most critical stage of their final social and political emancipation, where they would have needed more than ever before a sovereign master to shape their destiny - the dynasty on its own account even destroyed the empire it had created. The death-agony of the Austrian empire from 1848 to 1918,the reign of Francis Joseph, except for the last two years of this period, can be justly ascribed first to the human insufficiencies of a youth forced into a task which by far surmounted his personal capacity, - then to the astonishing instability of a man, too quick to experiment and too slow to learn, - and fmally to the natural limitations of an immovable, yet venerable symbol, too experienced to try experiments any longer, too tired to leave the platform of the most inadequate last experiment and yet too deeply rooted in history not to know that this was the sun-set of an idea. The tasks of these seventy years would have required much more than even one single above-average ruler. This is not a judging the first placement conceming the historic personality of Francis Joseph, who was a gentleman, a soldier and a hero in his ways. This judgment rather concerns the discrepancy between the dynastic traditions on the one hand, in which an average man was still worshipped with the halo borrowed from his ancestors, and the 19th Century on the other hand, in which the most complex problems having become normal ones were now longing for the team of above-average men to handle them. This new age sealed the fate of the traditional monarchy, wherever its representatives did not accept in good humor the fate to be reduced to mere figure-heads of the constitutional process. Francis Joseph needed some time to find his place in the constitutional monarchy towards which his age was driving, and when he had found it the structure of the empire, of which he used to say that it could not be ruled constitutionally, was already destroyed. First, in his early manhood he experimented. He did not follow a consistent line. It was perhaps the idea of some synthesis between Joseph and Francis, indicated by his name, which animated the young emperor. Yet as he was unable to arrive at a constructive compromise between these two phases of the Austrian past, lacking the intellectual power to do so, he wavered between the two extremes. He had grown up as Francis, and only the idea of one of the young conservative statesmen in the ascendant (Helfert) added the name of Joseph. 65 Under the guidance of Felix Schwarzenberg (d. 1852) and Franz Stadion (d. 1853) a Constitution was introduced by a coup d' etat, in which the parliament of the revolution was liquidated, but principally all the progressive ideas of the new age were taken over and issued again in the form of imperial decrees (1849). Of course, most of these ideas were by no means an invention of the revolution, but either the heritage of Josephinism or even drafted during the Vormärz regime by Metternich's best bureaucrats. The new govemment thus enacted decisive reforms which were the common fruits of the pre-revolutionary regime, the revolution and the post-revolutionary regime taken together, and are a proof of the legal continuity which connected all these phases of the modern Austrian state. While the parliament of 1848, the creation of the revolution, even if legalized by the imperial authority, was practically incapable of being the legislative branch of govemment, as long as the structure of the empire was in Suspension, dynasty and army together could create the empire anew and simultaneously save the achievements of the revolution. The new imperial legislation concerned the entire empire, including Hungary, and it provided forjury trials, municipal autonomy, democratization of the political administration, judicial reform culminating in a supreme court, and the technical realization of peasant emancipation (in accordance with the decree carried out five months earlier by Stadion in Galicia, then governor there).These reforms, enacted by an anti-revolutionary govemment which had dissolved the parliament, became the basis of progressive legislation in Austria for the next seventy years. Thus the modern state in Austria was well initiated by the revolution, but translated into full reality by the post-revolutionary regime mainly on the basis of its pre- revolutionary experiences. The revolution only played the function of acceleration in this continuity. If Francis Joseph had followed this course consistently, including the reintroduction of parliamentarism which was envisaged, he might have become the most progressive mler of Europe, who should never have feared any competition with Napoleon III, Cavour or Bismarck. Yet this promising course was followed only for a short interlude. It was in fact not Francis Joseph's, but Stadion's idea in the line of tradition, of which Leopold II was the most classical embodiment. The young emperor held other Ideas. By the so-called Sylvester Patent of 1851 the Constitution was suspended and imperial absolutism proclaimed. It was Francis Joseph's second coup d' etat more personal and more fateful than the first one. The young emperor, hardly twenty, was ready to rule as an autocrat under the advice and responsibility of former liberals, who had tumed conservatives, some of them Germans, who flattered his pride to be a German prince, the heir of the Holy Roman emperors. Among these new advisers were in the first place Alexander Bach (d. 1893) and Karl Ludwig Bmck (d. 1860), the emperor's right and left hand which in fact did not always know each other. None of Francis Joseph's predecessors and ancestors even during the Barocco had had an equal abundance of autocratic power unrestricted and unchecked by other institutions. This regime of imperial absolutism abandoned the achievements of the revolution, first recognized by imperial decrees, and resumed some darker parts of the mere technique, called the "Metternich System", although without the genius of the state's chancellor and primarily in all those departments, for which Metternich himself had never shown any preference at all. Politically, the regime was the most consistent absolutism of the 19th 66 Century, and absolutism sui generis without parallels in the Austrian past. Economically, on the contrary, the "Bach System" was extremely liberal. Bismarck resented it as combining the interests of clericalism and capitalism under the leadership of a "Jewish gang", as he said, but later he himself eagerly imitated Francis Joseph in both the economic and the political field. In fact, there was no more docile disciple of the Austrian reaction than Bismarck. His later Cooperation with the German National Liberals under primarily Jewish leadership, upon which the new German empire was based, had been anticipated for two decades by Francis Joseph, who thereby wanted to demonstrate to the Western powers the intentions of economic progressivism in Austria. The most private affair in this System of absolutism was foreign policy, for which the emperor himself was solely responsible until the complete defeat of his amateurism at Solferino (1859) and Sadowa (1866). There was only one feature in this post-revolutionary regime under Francis Joseph's personal responsibility, which really represented the substance of Austrian tradition in its most congenial männer .This was the attempt of Cooperation between state and church made by the concordat (1855), which, in spite of many ideas today antiquated, still reflected the deadly serious intention of the 19th Century empire with its roots in the Barocco to shape a Catholic Commonwealth, For many liberals of the time, who applauded the introduction of modern capitalism with all its consequences, the concordat was the climax of the reactionary school of thought, against which they passionately protested. Yet the same statesmen, who concluded the concordat, also created the modern Austrian educational System which never could be seriously accused of retrograde tendencies. The constructive intellectual enterprise which Leo Thun (d. 1888), the Bohemian aristocrat of strictly Slavonic convictions followed for more than a decade as minister of cult and education, supported by Josef Alexander Helfert (d. 1910) his under-secretary of the same philosophy, alone represented the continuity of Austrian civilization in an era of political experiments. The details of both the concordat and the educational reform may have been subject to changes, after absolutism would change into constitutionalism, but the Spirit alive in them was really the embodiment of Austria. After the defeat at Solferino, the October Diploma (1860), influenced by the first Austrian Polish statesman, Agenor Goiuchowski, Sr. promulgated a föderative Constitution, while a few months later the February Patent (1861), formulated by the national liberal Anton Schmerling, in the guise of mere Interpretation of the previous law, turned to centralization. In these experiments Francis Joseph gambled away piecemeal the great sympathies of his peasant peoples and slid into extemal conflagrations which he, faced by the superiority of Machiavellians like Napoleon III, Cavour and Bismarck, could not escape undefeated. The emperor, who was in every detail his own dilettantic foreign minister, allowed his counter plotters to drive him into exactly that unfavorable comer where they wanted him, and still to blame him successfully before the world as the enfant terrible of most wanton aggression. The most gifted Austrian statesman of that epoch, the only one who could have grown into the stature of Bismarck's antipode, Richard Belcredi (d. 1902), Bohemian aristocrat of Italian descent, took over an already hopeless heritage. After one and a half year, during which the catastrophe of Sadowa occurred, he had to yield again to the political 67 dilettante. Friedrich Beust (d. 1886), a Saxon minister of Prussian descent, to whom, even if he was far from counterbalancing Bismarck in international dimensions, the emperor at least conceded for a while a quasi-Bismarckian function in the authoritarian shaping of Austrian interior policy. The Prussian victory at Sadowa, by which the Austrian conservatism of Belcredi was defeated and the dilettantism of Beust got the authority to remodel the empire, was the decisive event which, repeating and emphasizing the results of the Silesian wars, determined an epoch. In the conservative Austrian view the Seven Weeks' War was but the continuation of the Seven Years' War, both ending unfortunately for Austrian Catholicism and thereby undermining the very existence of a European order, of which the Catholic Austria was an essential part. Yet the world, already unaccustomed to read the hieroglyphs of metaphysics in the events of politics, only saw that Sadowa closed the two decades of experiments by the arbitrary and irresponsible regime of an immature ruler who, Francis or Joseph, was remarkably behind his age without being what his ancestors were. Francis Joseph was now in the best years of his manhood. Hence he was the emperor who was personally defeated by Cavour, Napoleon III and Bismarck. Consequently his contemporaries easily believed that it was nothing but the personal regime of a ruler who could not grasp the signs of his time which was defeated at Sadowa. Strangely enough for us who look back, only few Europeans knew it better at that time. Foremost among them were Thiers, seer of his nation, and Disraeli, most instinctive Britisher of all .They knew that Sadowa was the hiatus between two ages. Yet their voices were drowned in the happy chorus of their fellow countrymen, who saw but the end of a ridiculous farce and net the dawn of an age of blood and iron which eventually was to engulf them as well, This was the final result of the age-old identity between empire and dynasty that Europe, faced with the disintegration of the one, soon concluded to see the agony of the other. The dynasty, incapable of solving the problems of the empire, was still strong enough thereby to impose its own view upon Europe. More Habsburgic than the Habsburgs in their prime might have been, the outside world eventually executed the will of the dying dynasty which, in Francis Joseph's posthumous figure, did not want an empire, if not a dynastic one.

(§13) For the Austrian empire the most catastrophic consequence of Sadowa was that Francis Joseph, in resigning at last his personal regime and accepting constitutional government, was ready to commit his third coup d'etat, the most fateful of all, and to chose this saddest result of all his experimenting as the platform of his constitutionalism most correct from now on. He agreed to a reshuffle of the Austrian empire which altered its very basis and was to become the starting-point for its self-dissolution. This was neither Joseph’s or Francis’ genius nor race. Joseph, after the catastrophes of the Silesian wars, although they affected the pith of the empire, enacted a reformatory radicalism which lengthened its very existence for another Century. Francis, on the other hand, when Napoleon dictated peace at Vienna, clung stubbomly to the fringes of the empire, with which he eventually reconquered and rebuilt the rest. Francis Joseph did otherwise. He lost the nerves of his extravagant absolutism in the midst of the greatest mess he himself had created, determined with his last resolution to care from now on for the chaos constitutionally. 68 In this mood he tried the reorganization of the Austrian empire, by which its triune foundations were destroyed and its organic trialism tumed into dualism. Now the Austrian- Hungarian Monarchy was bom as that crippled form of the old organism which alone was still possible alongside a victorious and powerful Prussia-Germany. This metamorphosis was accomplished by the so-called Austrian-Hungarian Compromise (1867), which was in fact a pact of the emperor, represented by Beust, with the Magyar oligarchy, overshadowed by the mysticism of the St. Stephen's crown, a pact to which the rest of Austria could only agree as a fait d'accompli. While the Magyar gentry was led by highly qualified statesmen, among them Ferencz Peak (d. 1878), who substituted realism for Kossuth's irrationalism, and who within the limited outlook of half a Century were extremely successful, the other kingdoms and countries, the Austria without Hungary, were without great leaders and without adequate parliamentary representations. In fact, a small clique of so-called liberals, frequently the same men who first were revolutionists, and later usufructuaries of imperial absolutism, executed the will of the monarch in the name of Austria, or rather executed Austria in the name of the monarch. Most fateful incident of all, Bohemia, the third partner of the empire, together with the historic rights of the St. Wenceslaus' crown, equal to the crown of St. Stephen, and with the national rights of the Czechs covered by this symbolism, equal to those of the Magyars, were treacherously sacrificed by the bearer of the imperial crown himself. Under the pressure of Sadowa the personally defeated emperor consented to a Magyar hegemony in Hungary and thereby to a Magyar course in the interior affairs of the entire empire, the logical consequence of which eventually was the German course in foreign affairs and the German hegemony in Central Europe. Somehow Francis Joseph was convinced that Bismarck was the better man, because he was more successful in aiming at the same goal and in using the same means which led him, the emperor, astray. The metaphysical antagonism between Austria and Prussia, of which Maria Theresia still was aware (while already Joseph II laughed at its possibility), shrunk in Francis Joseph's feudal fantasy into a kind of personal duel between the Austrian emperor and the Prussian statesman, the result of which he was the first to recognize without grudging. This moral collapse of the emperor, not of the empire which could far less speak out its opinion than in former centuries with their still existing traditional representations, brought Austria- Hungary under the leadership of her first foreign minister, Gyula Andrassv, Sr. (d. 1890) Deak's collaborator, into the Hungarian-German fold of the Austrian-Hungarian-German Dual Alliance(1879), which later developed into the Triple Alliance (1883) including Italy. Thereby the small cast of esoterics, responsible for Austrian-Hungarian foreign policy, consented that Austria-Hungary became a partner of the already existing Prussian-Italian axis, the same which had in fact cut the sinew of the empire. No personal intimacy between Francis Joseph and Bismarck or any other personalities could seriously fester the illusion of two or three equal partners, and seriously dispel the appalling reality of German superiority in every decisive instance. The pivot of Central Europe, and thereby of Europe, had shifted now from Vienna to Berlin. It was Mettemich's substance in Bismarck, who did not want to press Germany's superiority, which delayed the general acknowledgment of this act throughout Europe. Bismarck knew perfeetly well that the new Germany, allied with a new Italy modeled after Germany, with a Hungary under her gentry oligarchy, with an Austrian- 69 Hungarian Monarchy ander some kind of Magyar-German hegemony, even if some concessions to other nations on similar lines would be inevitable, would the more definitely secure German hegemony in Europe, the less German statesmanship would ask for it. Yet only extreme naivete, of which certainly Francis Joseph was a specimen, after the dies were cast, could think the Central European block under Berlin's leadership in any way comparable to the tradition of federative agglomeration under Vienna’s leadership, for which the genuine Habsburgs had once been the Symbols. With the decision of 1867 the national problem of the Austrian empire had become insoluble. The Magyar oligarchy of the "trans-Leithan" half of the Monarchy, consisting of gentry and bourgeoisie, the two groups ready to rule the state according to the Prussian pattern, was constitutionally entitled, backed by the solemn coronation oath of the emperor king, to continue the medieval treatment of their non-Magyar subjects, and their Magyar subjects as well, and they did so unremittingly down to the very end. They were in fact the most powerful metastasis of the Bismarckian cancer within the Austrian structure, and they stuck stubbornly to what they considered to be their only means of survival. Singular specimens of Austrian Magyars, who in the name of dynasty and empire desperately tried a new policy, aiming at Hungary's modernization, like the Catholic aristocratic families of the Zichy and Szechenyi, who founded the oppositional Catholic People's Party and supported the struggle of the national ties, or the homo regius, General Fezagejerväry (d. 1914) who together with his minister of the interior, Joseph Kristoffy, the intimate of Francis Ferdinand, struggled for universal suffrage and supported the trade unions (1905/6), were always hopelessly outnumbered within the existing parliamentary geometry maintained by the most brutal falsification of electoral results which existed in prewar Europe,. While the Hungarian nationalities, the Magyar masses and the Catholic magnates represented the powerless Opposition, both gentry and Capital, Calvinism and Judaism, tightly held the reins of govemment throughout the entire fifty years of Dualism. After Deak and Andrässy, the creators of the Dual Monarchy, Kalman Tisza (d. 1902) was the most consistent of the Magyar Calvinistic dictators, under whom the Magyarization of the Hungarian nationalities reached its climax, and the Magyar nation was swelled by denationalized elements from the country's non-Magyar majority, among whom Eastem European Jews with originally German names played a perspicuous role as the most passionate Magyar Chauvinists. The regime Ferjerväry was only a short reaction against this general trend. One of the frequent prime minister of the gentry was also Sandor Wekerle (d. 1921), the Magyarized Swabian, in whose person liberalism coincided particularly with anti-clericalism. Quite logically Hungarian politics terminated in the Titanic personality of Istvän Tisza (d. 1918), a Cromwellian nature, as he was rightly called, who, after he once more had emphasized the Magyar hegemony against any odds and had refused concessions to the nationalities in the last hour of the empire, was the first to admit that the gamble was lost. By candidly acknowledging defeat, and thereby abandoning the real union of the empire (which alone had made the Magyar exuberance possible, however), he hoped to save at least the Magyar empire. The Harakiri to save face after two generations of evil blunder was in vain. Hardly anywhere eise in history has a caste, not ungifted for politics, yet completely blinded for the political right of other groups, acted with such suicidal frenzy 70 during the course of generations, dragging down with them the international Organization, the Austrian Monarchy, which was in fact their only genuine protection as well. Twice as tragic in this perspective seems to be the extraordinary personality of Albert Apponyi (d. 1933).who belonging essentially to the magnates, sided with the gentry throughout his entire political career, until in the last consequences of his own efforts the fragments of his country lay at his feet. After having splendidly represented Hungary in every literary language of the Western world on the peace table at Trianon, Apponyi was one of the postwar leaders of Hungarian Legitimism with the strongest political contacts with Austrian fellow-partisans then possible. Yet Political Catholicism in either form, the Catholic People's Party or Legitimism, remained an oppositional force also in postwar Hungary. Still less chance for success, except in the hour of defeat and despair in which the Hungarian October revolution occurred in 1918, ever existed in Hungary for the leftist parties, the least for the confused ideology of Michael Karolyi, even if his intellectual adviser Oscar Jäszi, tried to instill into it all the experiences which both Kossuth and Palacky could have combined in their life- time. One wonders, how all these so well asserted political energies of the Magyar orbit might have cemented the Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian coexistence, if they would not have followed blindly their sacro egoismo. In ties of friendship which I have never feit so deeply in any other country outside of Austria, I have experienced the struggle against destiny waged by my Catholic and Socialist friends in Hungary, who in their Opposition against the ruling caste were essentially aware that under whatever star, their intellectual interests coincide with those of the broad masses and the interests of Hungary with those of Austria. Göbrgy Szechenyi (d. 1938), who died in pains over the fate of Austria, and his young collaborators around "Korunk Szava" have testified the truth to me that in spite of all the errors of the past, the Magyar nation will live, if a new leadership will emerge from the cataclysm.

(§14) Although the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy was the creation of the Magyar political will and therefore left its main| marks upon the Magyar nation, the Austrian Slavs, both actively and passively, did not escape participation in the scheme which consequently molded their political character as well .In Galicia and Lodomeria the Polisholigarchy was the next to acquire by some kind of Austrian-Polish Compromise (1868) an exceptional Status within the empire, which, at the cost of the Ruthenians, separated their crown-land somehow from the rest of Austria. There was nevertheless a very deep difference between the Magyar and the Polish rule, due to the unique position of the Polish heritage within the Austrian empire and to the conservative realism of the most constructive Polish leaders. Two years after Cracow was incorporated into Austria (1846), the first Polish governor was installed in Galicia. Twenty years later the separate position of Galicia within the Austrian- Hungarian Monarchy was well established. From then writes Reman Dyboski,"with Polish administration, schools and courts of law, Galicia became indeed almost an independent Polish state within Austria". In remarkable contrast with the persecutions of the Poles in both Russia and Prussia, Galicia became "the Piedmont of the Polish national movement", the only country where Poles could think, speak and act Polish, and where Polish Austrian 71 prime ministers, foreign ministers and finance ministers greatly influenced the international course of the empire. When the new Poland emerged after World War I, Galicia with seventy years of Polish administration behind and the only Polish bureaucracy, became the focal point of the Polish state machinery. As the Polish Legions under Pilsudski had started as a fighting unit of the Austrian army, so did in fact the labor movement and the peasant movement of the Polish Republic began in Galicia. Yet more than these populär movements, of which the army was but a part, was preserved by the Austrian Poland and transferred to the Polish state. The most intensive nucleus of Polish political thought and tradition found its cultivation on the two universities at Cracow and Lwow, as well as in the Polish Academy, founded at Cracow, in 1872 under the protectorate of Francis Joseph. All this was the result of the activities of the Polish activists in politics and letters, who represented the Austrian Polish school of thought, without which the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy could not have survived half a Century. Politically, Agenor Goluchowski, Sr. (d. 1873) who for a quarter of a Century with intervals was the govemor of Galicia, founded this school, of which later Alfred Potocki, Casimir Grocholski, Julian Dunajewski, Woijciech Dzieduszycki, Casimir Badeni, Michal Bohrzyhski, Witold Korytowski, Leon Bilinski, Agenor Goluchowski,Jr. were representatives, whose memory cannot he effaced from the concluding chapter of Austrian history. Both the survival of the Polish political tradition as well as of a good deal of Austrian conservatism rested equally on their shoulders. Badeni’s Language Ordinances for Bohemia and Moravia, in which the establishment of a bilingual administration of these provinces was attempted by an Austrian Polish prime minister (1897) were in fact the last constructive scheme issued in the Austrian half of the empire for solving the German-Czech problem. Only half a Century afterwards the critical observer, who himself has not experienced the days of the cabinet Badeni in Austria, but nevertheless saw the reflections in the memory of the older generation, cannot understand any longer, why so objective and impartial a scheme which would have served the empire could meet such hysterical hatred on the part of the German Austrians. In fact, the scheme was frustrated by German nationalism, to which the Social Democrats at once and the Christian Socialists at last succumbed. This political strength of the Poles in the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy was based upon their intellectual strength. In the field of historiography and political theory, Josef Szujski (d. 1885),professor on the University of Cracow, was the founder of the Cracow school of Polish history, who had the courage to accuse the liberum censpiro of Polish politics as the revived liberum veto of the feudal republic(1867) and to proclaim the ideal of realism as the most genuine Polish policy as against the Romantic tradition of secret organizations and the Machiavellian ideology which the Polish poets of the past leamed from German Romanticism. The Cracow school of Polish history (Stanislaw Smolka, Michal Bobrzyhski, Anatol Lewicki) which was the fruit of these patriotic efforts was both Polish and Austrian, and the successful combination of these two most important Central European political functions was a constructive achievement, the final consequences of which have not been attained yet. In the remnants of the Western half of the empire (which had in fact no other official name but "the kingdoms and countries represented in the imperial diet") a German oligarchy 72 was originally intended. The Separation of a Polish state was the first limitation of this conception which, however, its application to the remaining Western half minus Galieia should make much easier. Yet the older factors of German hegemony in the Austrian empire in general, the aristocracy and the bureaucracy, gradually had to share their traditional influence with an upstart group of German bourgeois, partly Germanized non-Germans, many Eastem Jews among them, who, introducing modern capitalism into Austria, acted as the very Champions of German national liberalism, and treated the non-German nationalities, wherever they could or at least in their day-dreams, according to Bismarck's recipe. Eduard Herbst (d. 1892), Karl Biskra (d. 1879) and Leopold Haaner (d. 1891) all three of Czech descent and in their youth also of Czech national consciousness, were the most characteristic leaders of these German Austrian national liberals, who carried out the mandate of either Bismarck or the Magyars in Austria and who really discredited the name of liberalism in the political history of modern Austria. Later Julius Glaser (d. 1885) and Joseph Unger (d,1913).both of Jewish descent, gained the main influence in the liberal party which, particularly by the Jewish influence, as stränge as this may sound today, developed its fateful Greater German ideology. 1t was Giskra's idea, moreover, that "the social question begins at Bodenbach" (the Austrian-German frontier Station) and that "only vagabonds, day¬laborers and lakeis desire universal suffrage" (1868) The conservative intermezzo of the cabinet Karl Hohenwarth (d. 1899) and Albert Schäffle (d. 1903) the one an Austrian aristocrat and the other a Southern German professor of political economy, in 1871 was the first Austrian government in favor of a modern franchise and modern social legislation. Both ideas, opposed in Austria most passionately by the liberals, became the shibboleths of the conservatives, who at the end materialized them, partly supported in these efforts by organized labor which politically was the result of the same conservative action. Bismarck was the ideal of both the liberal Magyars in Hungary and the liberal Germans in Austria, who besides liked to copy the Magyars as well. In both instances, however, the leading forces of Magyarization and Germanization which labeled themselves liberal did never represent the masses of their respective peoples but a ruling minority, a kind of 19th Century aristocracy, consisting to a considerable extent of denationalized elements from other nations. While the Magyar gentry in spite of this fact was something genuine Magyar, the Austrian people was not genuinely represented, before universal suffrage was introduced. Under the wings of the dying yesterday, the German speaking Austrians did not find their full national consciousness, before their masses, urban and rural, could speak for themselves, and even in the last consequence of the age-old existence of procurators, before destiny forced them to found their own state. In Opposition to the dual structure of the empire, the Slavonic nations arrived earlier at the level of national consciousness. This was their great advantage, after the Monarchy collapsed. It can hardly be denied, however, that in spite of the hopeless Situation of the empire after 1867 and the attempted hegemony of some selected nations some of the less favored Austrian nationalities climbed up a pretty high peak of national education and power, as compared with other polyglot States like Turkey, Russia, Prussia or - Hungary. The Constitution of the Austrian half of the empire (December 21, 1867) at least guaranteed 73 the equality of all languages and nations before the law which even as an abstract principle not everywhere materialized was a great modern achievement. The suppression of the Czechs in particular proved futile. After the policy of abstinence entertained by the Old Czechs was gradually substituted by the policy of realism, for which the Young Czechs stood (1874), they soon regained their Bohemian di et, administration, courts, schools, including their University (1882),and the recognition of their language in every field. They were not really suppressed in prewar Austria in the sense of enforced de-nationalization as carried out in Prussia or Russia against the Poles. On the contrary, they were ahle to use all the means of the Constitution to their advancement. But as these successes always had to he reached in vehement struggles against the ruling groups of the state and could never gain the same level of autonomy and independence which the Magyars held in Hungary or the Poles in Galicia, the Czechs logically became the Champions of anti-Austrian activities. Even then, the overwhelming majority of the Czechs were realists, who wanted to use but constitutional means, and not to resort to revolution, and this was so down to the very end. It was a long process which made the Czechs from one of the most Austrian nations of the empire its destroyers .Every outstanding Czech leader from Frantisek Palacky, the sage of the nation in 1848, to Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, its very Symbol in the final war of independence, to which World War I amounted for the Czechs, clung for a life-time to the Austrian solution of the Czech problem, until the Austrian rulers themselves eventually forced the Czech nation to arrive at the idea of radical de-Austrianization of both their memories and sentiments. Perhaps this was as short-sighted as the egotism of the Magyar oligarchy, if viewed in the long run, yet it was the most plausible reaction of a modern nation against political decapitation. Palaeky, who in 1848 wanted Austria created, if she would not exist, in 1865 coined the slogan that the Czechs who were before Austria will also exist after her. Karel Kramar (d. 1937) who down to the return of Masaryk from exile, was the recognized leader of his people, in evaluating both utterances of Palacky once expressed his fervent hope (1906) that the Czechs would never have to experience a Situation, in which the second word might come true. Also Kramar went the road from Austria to Chechoslovakia. For many decades the national patience of the Czechs was greater than their revolutionary impulses, a fact which was the fruit of a long education, the most responsible, yet not always voluntary authors of which were the Austrian governments themselves. Czeeh officials were among the most loyal servants of the Austrian state during the entire 19th Century. Without their Service none of the various Austrian constitutional experiments would have seen feasilile.lt needed time, until this substance was fully wasted. Four times Francis Joseph solemnly promised to be crowned as king of Bohemia, in order to restore the symbol of Bohemian sovereignty within the Austrian Monarchy (1861, 1866, 1870, 1871). The Fundamental Articles of 1871,elaborated by Frantisek Ladislav Rieger (d. 1903), Palacky’s son in law and leader of the Old Czechs under the constitutional responsibility of the short-lived Hohenwarth-Schaffle cabinet, aimed at an Austrian- Bohemian Compromise parallel to the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise, a compact between the crown and the Bohemian people which would have modified the structure of the dual monarchy into an Austrian-Bohemian-Hungarian empire again (with Galicia and Croatia as 74 some kind ofpartes adnexae). As Sadowa had made inevitable the compromise with the Magyars, Sedow in fact frustrated the compromise with the Czechs. The most fundamental interior problems of the Austrian Monarchy had already become functions of the volume of German power in Central Europe. In consequence of their lack of success, Rieger's Old Czechs eventually lost the national ground to the Young Czechs (1889), who first ridiculed the idea of the St. Wenceslaus’ crown, but after their victory converted to it completely. Yet Rieger still was the recognized sage of his nation. "We need the dynasty and the dynasty needs us and we shall always find each other mutually", he exhorted his people in an address in the Bohemian diet (1894), and he added in his Political Testaments" Armed with self- knowledge, let the Czech people never plunge into foolish adventures which irrespective of success or failure, are dangerous to the nation". If we substitute the idea of the Danubian coexistence and symbiosis for the word "dynasty", as it was in fact the substance of the political credo which the Bohemian conservatives professed, and consequently see an "adventure" in the attempt to get rid of this historic and geographic responsibility, the exhortation is still very appropriate. There is no venture in the conjecture that an Austrian Monarchy strong enough to re- establish the Bohemian state parallel to the Hungarian state would never have been overthrown, even if all its other problems had really remained unsolved. Even the tendency to substitute the real union of the Pragmatic Sanction by mere a personal union, so strongly alive in Hungary in spite of the Compromise, would in all probability have been less acute in a union of three partners, in which the sovereignty of the empire would have been rooted in the sovereignty of three kingdoms, An otherwise lesser known Austrian minister of culture and education once said in parliament, on occasion of the Separation of the University of Prague into two universities, German and Czech (1682),that both Germans and Czechs must recognize "that Bohemian honor also is Austrian honor". The main reason for the obstinacy of both crown and govemment, except the Hohenwarth-Schaffle cabinet, in the question of Bohemian sovereignty was the interest and the anxiety of the Sudeten Germans, primarily representing the ideology of nationalism, liberalism and capitalism in those decades, and exercising great Influence upon the central authorities of the empire even after the end of the liberal govemments in Austria. They were afraid of becoming the victims of a similar policy of de-nationalization carried out by the Czechs in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, as the Magyars already practiced in Hungary. They considered Bohemia their own domain. There were no leaders among both Germans and Czechs who would have fully understood the idea of an Eastem Switzerland within the natural fortress of the Sudeten Mountains, in which the idea of the St. Wenceslaus' crown would have been capable of covering the complete equality of both nations within the larger frame of the Danubian Empire. The Sudeten Germans, as we might grant them, could be afraid, because the Magyar example which they themselves had imitated would probably also have infected the Czechs. In fact, the Sudeten Germans had become numerically a smaller minority in the Bohemian countries than they could have been historically and they were without doubt culturally, in particular since Silesia, once belonging to the Bohemian crown, had been separated from Austria and annexed by Prussia. In Silesia the German element outweighed 75 already then both the Czechs and the Poles. The rape of Silesia by Frederick II not only made the partition of Poland possible, out in its causality made also the solution of the Bohemian problem impossible, at least within the traditional frame of the Austrian Monarchy, its means and its technique, and thus made the dissolution of the triune empire inevitable particularly after it had degenerated into a dual state. Within the Austrian Monarchy Bohemian sovereignty could be recognized equally as Hungarian sovereignty, but as in the case of Hungary, the Austrian interest required the compromise between the Hungarian Magyars and the Hungarian nationalities, similarly would in the case of Bohemia have a compromise been necessary between the Czech majority and the German minority which, however, was and still is a qualified minority large enough to ask for full recognition. As the Sudeten Germans are also a historic minority in the Sudeten countries which, although it once immigrated, must be considered autochthonous according to all practical Standards, their artificial uprooting, as contemplated today, even if it is possible, still is no solution of the Bohemian problem. There still remains, as the only vision worth- while to be focused upon, the idea of an Eastem Switzerland, inhabited by Czechs and Germans, who then would rather be Austrians again, within the larger frame of a Danubian Commonwealth, Despite the inevitability of a Czechoslovak state, after a Bohemian kingdom could not be materialized during the 19th Century, the final result was not too lucky for the Czechs either. The stränge school of thought, represented by Masaryk, who believed that after the dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy the independent succession States under Czechoslovak honorary presidency would be a stronger dike in checking the German tide, quasi the ideal barrier to stop the German Drang to the Southeast, has been tragically mistaken and its conclusion grimly led ad absurdum. The wamings, of which each great Czech thinker has produced some samples, and strangely enough the Czech Social Democrats in the Austrian Parliament (under Bohumir Smeral) were the last representatives, could not prevent the greatest rise and fall in modern history which any small nation has experienced. One is entitled to ask, how the entire history ef Central Europe might have developed, if the Czech Catholics (under the leadership of Jan Sramek) would have had the same constructive attitude which characterized the Czech Socialists, or in other words, if the radical Christian Socialism of Frantisek Kordac (d.1930) the later archbishop of Prague, would really have determined Czech Political Catholicism. After the dies were east, the Catholic Czech renascence began outside of the political camp. I have had close contacts with these Catholic forces in both Bohemia and Moravia, and I am pretty sure that they will come to the fore again, even if some to the superficial observer seem to have been compromised by "collaboration" under the Hacha regime, We shall learn only afterwards, what it meant for the Czech people to stand through the most cruel imperialism of their entire history, compared with which the regime of Ferdinand II after the battle on the White Mountain not only was an idy 11, but a definite feature of civilization. In the light of these experiences the entire national history may look different now to many critics from yesterday's appraisal, when stability and security were naively taken for granted. Thus one dares to hope that in the end the re-evaluation of the Catholic past in Bohemian history, of Jan Nepomuk and Jan Sarkander besides Hus and Komencky, in particular the re- 76 Interpretation of the Barocco by scholars and poets like Josef Pekar and Jaroslav Darren, may well open another age of symbiosis among age-old partners.

(§15) The Czechs offer but the most characteristic example of the national problem in Old Austria, which consisted primarily in the coincidence and discrepancy between modern constitutional rights and the basically oblique structure of the traditional national existence. Various other national groups too reached the highest level of national development on the basis of their participation in a constitutional state, and a much higher level than their co- nationals outside of Old Austria, yet without really being satisfied. In the tiny Eastern country of Bukovina, the most recent Austrian crown-land, both Rumanians and Ruthenians enjoyed a very high Standard of national development which in their longings they seem to be bound to remember for quite some unknown future. Bukovina, acquired by Austria from Turkey under Joseph II (1775), really developed into an Austrian model country in the East, after it had become a crown-land of its own (1849). Here the Rumanians, the historic representatives of this Northern comer of Moldavia, lived together with a large Ruthenian minority which, in spite of a Century old Romanization, tended to become the majority, with German, Magyar, Polish, Slovak and Russian speaking colonies and with Armenians, Jews and Gypsies spread among all of them. The Russians there were Lippowani, who immigrated under Joseph II. The racial mosaic of the Bukovina is classically demonstrated by some of her leading intellectuals. When the country awakened politically, a Moldavian boyar of Greek descent, Eudoxiu Hurmuzachi (d. 1874) educated at Vienna, was the leader. A deputation from the country in 1849 went to the West in order to present to Francis Joseph and the first Austrian Parliament the wishes of the East. Its leader was Eugenia Hacman (d. 1873). the Rumanian bishop of Czemowitz-Cemaufi, who descended from Ruthenian peasants; he was later the country's first govemor (1861. The most Eastern Austrian University at Czernowitz (1875) was Bukovina's intellectual center. The greatest Rumanian poet, Michail Eminescu, a bom Moldavian of Turco-Tatar origin, once studied there before he went to Vienna and Berlin. Although there were lots of chances for the improvement of inter racial relations in the Bukovina as well, particularity between the advancing Ruthenians and the Rumanians defending their historic position, five generations under the Austrian protection have left their deep marks in this Eastern country which will not he forgotten too soon. When the Austrian army Pflanzer-Baltin (under which I have had the honor to serve) defended it against the Russians in World War I, there were no Russian sympathizers whatsoever behind the Austrian lines. The diet of the Bukovina in October 1918 was the only parliamentary body of the entire Monarchy, where the representatives of an Old Austrian nation, the Rumanians under Constantinu Isopescul-Grecul, respectfully and gratefully said farewell to their former country. To hold the Bukovina in World War I and to hand it finally over to Rumania in spite of all rotations of fortune, when there was no Austrian empire any longer, was an outstanding military and political achievement, even if it settled the problem only for one short generation. The Bukovina, whose population in Old Austria represented a tiny fraction of hardly 2%, was nevertheless estimated and treated like an eyeball, and 77 although many mistakes were committed, the "colony" prospered well. If the same will once be possible at least to say of the next 50 years, the world will then be sure to have found the genuine successor of the Austrian Monarchy. Of all the Old Austrian nations which began their modern development under the Austrian constitutional System there was probably none so intrinsically and inseparably connected with the fate of Austria than that of the Ruthenians (or westem Ukrainians). They have since ceased to be a political nation, after they had been one at least theoretically and in more instances than generally considered in practice as well, for seventy years in Old Austria. While the Poles of Galioia, as Austrian as many of them really were, looked forward to Poland, and the Rumanians of the Bukovina, at least in all their cultural ties, naturally gravitated towards Rumania, the Ruthenians possessed their center of gravity in Austria herseif, as no serious hope could be fostered among both realists and idealists that they could find their center, cultural or political, in the Russian Ukraine. To be sure, the Ruthenians, once called in Old Austria the "Tyrolians of the East" for their proverbial loyalty to the empire, never belonged to the privileged nations. In Eastem Galicia, now called either Eastem Poland or Westem Ukraine, where the bulk of the Ruthenians live, they were always under strong Polish pressure. Nevertheless,their level of national consciousness, Organization and education was always infinitely higher than anything their Ukrainian co-nationals under Russian rule could produce. Having been for centuries within the contexture of the Hungarian, the Polish and the Austrian empire but never in history under Russian domination like the Ukraine around Kiev, this Greek Catholic people, always united with Rome, has always had an entirely Western destiny. Only in breaking up their entire stmcture, psychological and social, the East might assimilate them. The center of the Ruthenian intellectual activities in Austria was always a twofold one, the Greek Catholic metropolitan See and the University, both at Lwow-Lviv, the latter founded by Joseph II (1784) as a Ruthenian institution which, even if polonized later, always preserved some outstanding Ruthenian chairs. Later the Taras Shevchenko Society (1873) was added as a kind of Ruthenian academy, yet on a private basis. Politically, the Ruthenian problem was discovered by Stadion, who during his govemorship in Galicia made possible the Organization of a Ruthenian National Council and the meeting of the Congress of Ruthenian Scholars (1848). As a consequence, he was frequently accused by both Poles and Russians of having "invented" the Ruthenians. One of Stadion's main collaborators was the later metropolitan Jachimowicz. Simultaneously the leader of the Carpatho-Ruthenians, Adolph Dobrianskv, after the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, was appointed governor-general of Carpatho-Ruthenia, still within the Hungarian kingdom, yet provided for with some kind of autonomy by Francis Joseph under Stadion's influence. Palacky at that time was still ready to sacrifice the Ruthenians to the Poles, although he fully understood the gigantic chance of the Austrian Monarchy in tackling and solving the Ruthenian problem. Although the imperial policy later accepted rather the advice to sacrifice the Ruthenians to the Poles than to forge a double-edged sword, Polish and Ruthenian, against the Northeast, even these ephemeral and fragmentary Austrian opportunities eventually brought about a national consciousness of the Ruthenians which, even if still unsatisfied 78 after two world wars, will never completely abate. The tragedy of the Austrian position was that the Poles, although themselves between the Russian and the Prussian hammers, could not resist the temptation to cooperate similarly with the Russians against the Ruthenians, as the Prussians did with the Russians against the Polish national interest. Austria could hope to assimilate Galicia-Lodomeria only gradually to the degree of complete Polish-Ruthenian equality. In spite of these quasi-organic shortcomings, however, the Ruthenians, intellectuals and peasants, will not easily be seduced to forget the Austrian rule. Michael Hrushevsky (d. 1934) the later president of the Ukrainska Centralna Rada (Ukrainian Central Council) at Kiev (1917/18), who for forty years represented the Ukrainian Interpretation of national history as professor at Lwow and Prague, was right in naming Galicia "an intellectual Piedmont sui generis of the Ukrainian movement", exactly the same which she was for the Poles. In parallelism to Pilsudski's Polish Legions, there were also Ukrainian Legions (Sichovi Striltsi) incorporated into the Austrian army, and less seriously, for a time an Austrian archduke, who wore the Ukrainian peasant shirt, aspired to the Ukrainian hetmanship which later the Germans bestowed upon Pavlo Skoropadskyi. Of more serious consequences was the establishment of a Western Ukrainian government in October 1918 (under the Austrian parliamentary leader Eugene Petrushevich) which tried to unite Eastern Galicia, Northwestern Bukovina and Carpatho- Ruthenia, but under the pressure of the Allied powers terribly failed. Both government and university moved first to Vienna, later to Prague (1923), and in some sections already then to Berlin. The continuity of the Ruthenian national life in Poland was then again foremost represented by the Uniate Church, who’s metropolitan, Andrew Szeptyckyi has been the shepherd of his people during two world wars. For none of the European nations have the results of both wars been as tragic as for the Greek Catholic Ruthenians. In connection with the Polish-Ruthenian conflict in Eastern Galicia two members of the British House of Commons once emphasized (1931) "that the Western Ukrainians enjoyed much greater cultural and political freedom during the 150 years of the Austrian rule than has been their lot under Polish rule". Under Austria they had 3000 schools, under Poland only 700. There are all indications that their Situation will become still worse after this war, at least for both the intellectuals and the peasants, those who want to think and till their land in freedom. For someone who has once belonged spiritually to the Austrian sphere of civilization it will never be a mere trifle of a problem, not worth-while the display of any principiis obsta, whether the Greek Catholic Ruthenians will remain a Western people or not. The tragic consequences of misrule and de-nationalization, however, are as appalling in the case of Poland, as they were before in the case of Austria, minor differences between them unaccounted. Both countries were in fact unable to correspond with the great historic chance which lay in the fact that a nation of Eastern European origin, the Greek Catholic Ruthenians, belonged to the Western orbit. These Ruthenians are a small people, yet their function in the hands of the West was tremendous, as it might well be again in the hands of the East. They embodied both the protection of the West against aggression from the East and the chance of opening the East to the ideas of the West, as they may now become just the opposite. Yet their Western history, and in particular the 150 years of Austrian experience behind them, will not make them too easy a prey of assimilation. They are the 79 first Catholic nation with a tradition and conscious of their own to be met by Soviet Russia which speak a language understood by the Russians, and big enough to be not merely the passive object of a System simply applied to them. Thus the future may well have surprises in störe, even if the Russian Settlement is definite.

(§16) Stretching from the Southeastern chains of the Alps down to the Adriatic literal and into the Balkan Peninsula, the three Yugoslav tribes Slovenes, Croats and Serbs were once the very backbone of the Austrian empire both militarily and politically, If the Czechs were Greater Austrian in virtue of their share in constituting the empire in 1526, the Poles at least as long as Austria would protect the Polish heritage against both Prussians and Russians and preserve it for the Polish future, the Ruthenians because only Austria represented the imperial power to check both Poles and Russians, the Yugoslavs were it more whole- heartedly than all the other Slavs in consequence of the fact that the Danubian empire naturally tended towards enlargement into the Balkan Peninsula and thus alone in all historic probability would liberate and unite them. Within the countries of the St. Stephen’s crown only the Croats in their ancient "triune kingdom" Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia (in which they included at least theoretically the latter country which formally belonged to Austria since 1797 respectively 1814) enjoyed a semi-autonomy guaranteed to them by the Hungarian-Croatian Compromise(1868, while the Serbs in the so-called Vojvodina (Banat and Bacska) belonged to Hungary proper. In Austria proper, as represented by the imperial diet, there were Slovenes in Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, Grorizia-Gradiska, Trieste and Istria, where they lost ground to the German Speakers, but gained ground from the Italians and Furlans, - Croats in Istria and Dalmatia, and even Serbs in the latter crown-land. Without distinguishing Croats and Serbs too clearly (as they are in fact distinguished mainly by Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy), the Austrian official language spoke simply of the Serbo-Croats, who, paradoxically enough, only after the end of Austria really split into two antagonistic nations. Aside from the Yugoslavs in both Hungary and Austria, however, there was a third category, and it was the Status of those Yugoslavs who did not oolong to the two official halves of the empire, which puzzled the Austrian statesmen most. The Croats and Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina (occupied by Austria-Hungary with a European mandate by the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and definitely annexed in 1908) had many economic advantages and a model administration built up by the army, but gained the right of political representation only at the end (1910), These two Austrian-Hungarian "imperial pro vinces", called simply "the territory of occupation", even after they were finally annexed by the empire, originally were conquered under Andrässy as foreign minister against the expressed will of both the Magyar and the German liberals ,primarily because Bismarck wanted to' offer to Francis Joseph some kind of compensations for his lost German and Italian position, and as an indication of the idea, very sound indeed, that the Austrian empire would now have to gravitate towards the Balkan Peninsula. Although the simplest solution of the problem of the annexed provinces would certainly have been, to incorporate them , together with Dalmatia, into the Croatian kingdom and by so doing to loosen still more considerably 80 the ties between Croatia and Hungary, even if the St. Stephen's crown would have continued to symbolize both, the Magyar oligarchy resisted reason with all the passion at its command down to the end in favor of the archaic Legitimism of the partes adnexae according to which Bosnia-Herzegovina could only belong to Hungary proper. As a consequence, the incorporation of the two provinces was not accomplished at all, and Austria-Hungary classically proved thereby that, even if the old imperial army was still capable of conquering them, the structure of the empire was too obsolete to permit any organic growth. In all phases of history, whenever the Magyars complicated the Austrian problem, Croatia, which was the political nucleus of the Yugoslav idea within the Austrian empire, backed Vienna. As early as 1713, when the Pragmatic Sanction was deliberated in the Croatian diet, the Croats declared their willingness to recognize the hereditary daughter of the last Habsburg and her offspring as their rulers, if they would rule Austria and reside at Vienna, but the Hungarian king only, "as long as he is an Austrian, but no Scythian tyrant". This national consciousness was strengthened, when the three Yugoslav tribes in 1848 constituted themselves as the "Illyrian nation" under the literary influence of Ljudovit Gai (d. 1872), the political leadership of Josip Jellacic (d. 1859), Ban (governor) of Croatia, and the religious leadership of three outstanding bishops, one of each tribe, to represent the idea of Yugoslav unity: the Slovene Ante Martin Slomsek (d. 1862), the Croat Josip Juraj Strossmajer (d. 1905) and the Serbian Patriarch Rajacic. While Jellacic and Rajacic) besides the Slovak Stur, were foremost active in liquidating the Hungarian revolution of 1848, was Strossmajer the third great Austrian Slavonic federalists of the 1860's, besides Gohichowski and Rieger. Strossmajer, "bishop of Bosnia, Slavonia and Sirmium" at Djakovo, was net only the founder of the South Slavonic Academy (1867) and the University of Zagreb-Agran (1874), but also foremost active in the propagation of the ecclesiastical union between West and East, of which the Yugoslav idea in his opinion was the political function. Although Croats and Serbs accelerated the end of the Hungarian revolution, the reaction struck them too. After only brief favors awarded to them, the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise either liquidated their autonomy or restricted it farther than any time in history before. Once it has been said rightly (by the Magyar Ferencz Pulszki) that "Croatia received as reward what Hungary received as punishment". In spite of this failure on the part of Austria, the Croatian political theorists and leaders were always determined by the same political realism which characterized Poles and Czechs in Old Austria, and which in fact prolonged the existence of the Monarchy for half a Century. While the Poles were led, however, by their aristocracy, before workers and peasants emerged politically, and among the Czechs both aristocracy and bourgeoisie, Old Czechs and Young Czechs, contested for leadership, yet held the equilibrium for quite some time, it was foremost clergy and peasantry which shaped the political theory and practice in Croatia. Canon Franjo Racki (d. 1894) was the soul of the Yugoslav Academy for its first decades. While the Croatian nobility served in the army, the peasants, represented by clergymen or lawyers, both of their stock, engaged in politics. Many hierarchs of peasant descent did the same, among them the venerable figure of Josip Stadler (d. 1918), archbishop of Sarajevo, who was the last great 81 public figure of the Croatian people, who envisaged the Croatian solution of the Yugoslav problem. The idea of a Yugoslav state within the empire either based on Croatia-Slavonia- Dalmatia and her historic rights, or even merely according to lines of national rights, never completely subsided down to the end of the Monarchy. The so-called Trialism a wrong nomenclature for one of the most fundamental chances which the Austrian empire ever had, was a distinct possibility in case of Francis Ferdinand's ascent to the throne. This would have meant in the first place the union of the Austrian crown-land Dalmatia with Croatia and Slavonia, either within or without the St. Stephen realm, and in the second place the union of this re-established Croatian kingdom with Bosnia-Herzegovina into a kind of Greater Croatia which then would have risen to equal rank with Austria and Hungary, even if formally still under the St .Stephen's crown. Such a materialization of the historic rights of Croatia would obviously hare been the most solid basis for an equal materialization of the national rights of the Yugoslav nation, incorporating both Slovenes and Serbs, within or without the Austrian empire. Yet this scheme should not have teen proposed under the erroneous terminology of Trialism, as in fact the materialization of the historic rights of Croatia would have automatically resulted in a similar demand into by and privilege for Bohemia, and thus, taking into account the Separation of Galicia, the five natural sub- divisions of the Austrian empire would have been materialized, the Austrian Pentarchy, of which already Belcredi spoke as the only true alternative to the Austrian-Hungarian Dualism. Such a conception alone would really have had the attraction for outside nations which had to he roused, if both the Organization of the Balkan Peninsula and the fulfilment of the Yugoslav national dream by a modemized Austrian empire should in fact come through. For quite some time, there were many Serbs outside of the Monarchy, adherents of both national dynasties, Karageorgevic and Obrenovic, who visualized in eamest the participation of Serbia in such a federative scheme which certainly would net have implied either one populär sovereignty or one dynasty. The original political school for Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in the Austrian empire was represented either by army or church or both. They functioned in the Southeastem parts of the Monarchy as a framework of self-government in strict continuity of old Roman ideas alive in the medieval Byzantine Empire. For centuries the foremost means of national autonomy existed in the so-called Military Frontier (Militärgrense) of both Serbo-Croats and Rumanians. This was a militarily organized frontier district, similarly going back to Byzantine roots as the parallel Ukrainian organizations, with the privilege bestowed upon the soldier-peasants to elect their own Vojvoda. A parallel privilege to elect their own Patriarch was held by the Greek Orthodox Church, clergy and laity, which was organized by the Serbs at Karlowitz-Karlovci-Karlocza in the Frus ka Gora. In 1690, 40.000 Serbian families, led by their patriarch, had left the Turkish territory south in the Danube and had settled in Banat and Bäcska, now called the Vojvedina. Various imperial Charters assured their religious and political autonomy, their rights to hold national congresses and to elect both their patriarch and Vojvoda, the spiritual and temporal head of their national community. The full acceptance of this Serbian autonomy by the Austrian empire was the strongest posthumous influence which the Byzantine civilization through its Turkish 82 medium exercised on the Austrian Barocco. Simultaneously, and not entirely uninfluenced by this model, the united bishoprics of the Ruthenians, Rumanians and Serbs in Hungary and Croatia were reorganized in the 17th and 18th Century, and these churches again were islands of national autonomy. In 1790, the Serbian congress was again assembled, called the "Illyrian diet", convoked by the wisdom of Leopold II after Joseph II had interrupted for the first time the exercise of national autonomy. It was primarily because of this autonomy that in 1848 the Serbian congress voted for Austria, the Serbs under their vojvoda, general Stjepan Supljikae, fought the Hungarian revolutiom, the Serbian general Stjepan Petrovic Knicanin (d. 1855) with Serbian troops from south of the Danube joined his co-nationals in this fight, gaining thereby the Maria Theresia Order; the Vladika Petar II of Montenegro offered also auxiliary troops on this account and the entire world of Yugoslavia looked upon Vienna. Francis Joseph, after his accession to the throne, received a Serbian delegation, for which, under Stadion's influence, an imperial decree (December 15, 1848) was issued, recognizing the old Privileges of the Vojvodina under voyvoda and patriarch. In 1867 the Vojvodina was incorporated into Hungary, where the Serbs, less favored than the Croats by the existing political conditions, for a time were the leaders of the Hungarian nationalities. The Serbian leader in the Hungarian Parliament, Svetozar Miletic, was eventually imprisoned and ended in the lunatic asylum. It needed indeed many decades of failures in national and foreign policy, until the Austrian political Capital among the Serbs was completely consumed. In Croatia the political Organization of the peasants has been the real backbone of the country. Ante Starcevic (d. 1896).the founder of the pravasen movement Standing for the historic rights of the Croatian state after both the Hungarian and the Bohemian model, was the first of the intellectual peasant leaders. Stjepan Radic (d. 1928) held his place in the days of the collapse of the Austrian Monarchy. His programmatic Speeches in the Narodno Vijece (National Council) at Zagreb during the November revolution 1918 when the majority of former Austrian-Hungarian Yugoslav parliamentarians asked for the immediate creation of SHS (the state of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs), probably were the most courageous deeds of any of the new populär statesmen during those days of turmoil in the Austrian-Hungarian succession States. Radic defended the sovereign rights of the Croatian Sapor emphasized the moral value of a millennial history without regard of politics and led the Croatian peasants from their proverbial loyalty towards the Habsburg monarchy into a conscious republicanism directed against the Claims of the Serbian dynasty. "A man", he said, "who forgets everything that he has experienced and does not remember his former deeds is considered a fool. The Croatian people will not be fools, it will not forget its past". Radic was never before a spokesman for the Habsburgs, but in his peasant instinct he was able to distinguish between dynasty and empire, between the ephemeral political forms of tradition and its everlasting glorious substance. Ten years later Radic was murdered in the open session of the Yugoslav Skuupstina at Belgrad together with two other Croatian representatives in an appalling crime well organized by both govemment and majority party alike, scrupulously planned and cynically foretold. This crime etemalized the rift between the two nations, Croats and Serbs. From now the Croatian tactics split. While the radicals under Ante Pavelic went into exile to return with foreign help and to establish an 83 independent Croatia under the control of the Axis, Vladko Macek, the new intellectual leader of the Croatian peasants, continued the struggle at home, adamantine in his Croatian point of view, yet not principally hostile to an understanding with Yugoslavia, if the Serbs would recognize the Croatian ideals. His conviction was well expressed during his political trial (1930), in which he courageously formulated the views of the Precani (the Yugoslavs of the former Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy) culminating in the historic confession "we have never been enslaved under Austria". It was most spectacular in this development of ideas to see the protagonists of Yugoslav unity, Ante Trumbic (d. 1938) and Svetozar Pribicevic (d. 1936), who belonged exactly to those accused by Radic in 1918 of having lost their historic Orientation, retum to the Croatian national ideals and even to go into exile for their preservation again. This picture would not be complete, however, if it would not try to characterize the most loyal Austrian Yugoslavs as well, those who served in the army to correspond with their national vocation. When World War I started in 1914 at Sarajevo with the shots by which a Serbian high school Student killed the heir to the Austrian throne, the Austrian governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina was General Oskar Potiorek (d. 1933), a born Carinthian Slovene of humble descent, a living Symbol of the educational work of the Austrian army among the Old Austrian nations. Potiorek was a general of the non-commissioned officer type, and not the most successful leader in military and political matters. Yet in all his shortcomings the administrative qualities which he displayed were neither unfit for the military tradition he embodied, nor void of the racial relationship he originated in. To still a higher degree can the same be said of his aristocratic successor? The last Austrian- Hungarian governor of the two annexed provinces was General Stjepan Sarkotio (d. 1930), whom everybody who had the honor to enjoy his friendship during his postwar Viennese years will remember as the classical Austrian Croatian, perhaps the last specimen. Consistent representative of the Croatian idea, Sarkotic was by no means entirely estranged from the Yugoslav ideology .He was sure that the Yugoslav generals of the Austrian army, if their Service would have been accepted by the new Yugoslav state, would have been able to keep the Italians out from Yugoslav soil. Sarkotic was the very embodiment of the virtues and qualities which the Austrian army education knew to instill into noble races, and his administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina during World War I, hot as the soil of the country was to become, rightly harvested esteem and gratitude from Catholics, Orthodoxs and Mussulman alike, whom all he knew to deal with in a rare blend of military vigor, political wisdom and religious humanism. As compared with this nobleman, his friend Svetozar Boroevic (d.I920) was a much more primitive type, an offshoot of the Military Frontier, probably of original Serbian descent. Yet the very strength of the Austrian Yugoslav tradition has been symbolized by nobody more vigorously than by the victor of twelve legendary Isonzo battles against Italian superiority in men and arms down to the bitter end. When once mankind will have settled down again to contemplation and peace, as only another kind of Danubian power will guarantee in Central Europe in the long run, these battles will belong to the saga of many nations. Among these nations which fought on the Isonzo, the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs were its most natural defenders. Yet there were down to the last days Italians and Furlans, who joined in the Fight against Italy, Ruthenians 84 from the uttermost east of the empire, and even Czech regiments, who still hung on, after all their political leaders had already abandoned Austria. This was Boroevic’s genius as general of an army, in which all his ancestors through centuries were used to serve and to command a polyglot structure. All three generals, Potiorek, Sarkotic and Boroevic are Symbols of the marrows of a race which through centuries was the military cement to make possible the adventures and the achievements of one of the most unique and most venerable political organisms in history, the Austrian empire. Whatever confusion and error the abrupt cutting of this glorious tradition in 1918 may have created in many hearts, Slovene, Croatian and Serbian alike, there is, as Radic once affirmed in the hour of trial, no need to be ashamed of a millennium. Only fools among nations are easily seduced to forget their history. Only men who have no fathers to locate and have never imagined their struggles and passions and ideals will be ready to forget that nations have roots like plants and will die if they are cut. The smallest among the three Yugoslav tribes are the Slovenes whose cultural center is Camiola, with their Settlements extending to Styria and Carinthia, although they formerly held there much larger parts than they can claim now. The intimate symbiosis Between German and Slovene Speakers in the Eastern Alpine countries throughout more than a thousand years is classically indicated by many Slovene family names among Austrian leaders (Schuschnigg, for instance),as well as many German family names among the most representative Slovene leaders. Janez Bleiweis (d. 1881), together with bishop Slomsek, was the father of the national idea among the Slovenes in 1848,who also first formulated the program for a kingdom Slovenia within the Austrian Monarchy. Among the Slovenes the Catholic party was always the strongest, led in a strictly Austrian Slovene course by Ivan Sustersio, govemor of Camiola, down to the very end. Most of the Slovene Catholic leaders were priests. One of the greatest figures of Slovene political life was Janez Krek (d.1917) a leader comparable to Kordac among the Czechs, who, however, unfortunately for his people, yet perhaps fortunately enough for himself died before the final decision. Krek, who was a Slovene representative in the Austrian Parliament, had intimate contact with the Catholics at Vienna and highly admired Christian Socialism in Austria. He once said to his friends of the Catholic Austrian youth movement (1907) that he was convinced history would speak of the "Vienna period" with respect to the political and social ideas which he was conscious enough to pick up in Austria and to transplant to his own people .Like Kordac among the Czechs, also Krek was an avowed Christian Socialist. His Greater Austrian conception makes it rather improbable that he would ever have gone the road which after his death his younger collaborator, Ante Korosec (d. 1933) went. Who, also a Catholic priest, was to become a leading figure in Yugoslav politics, where his Slovene group represented the beam of tie balance and frequently cooperated with the Serbs against the Croats, backed by Ante Jeglio, archbishop of Laibach-Ljubljana, and other members of the Yugoslav hierarchy (except Stadler). Seduced by the idea that the Yugoslav state would contribute a big share to the ecclesiastical union between West and East, Koroseo became the president of the Narodno Vijece at Zagreb in October 1918, by which against the Croatian protest the Yugoslav union was established. Strangely enough Pavelic and Pribicevic were then vice-presidents of this council which, as in all similar instances, made revolution by merely parliamentary means under dictatorial pressure of the presidency. 85 Koroseo in this procedure was more paravent than Initiator. Later his power became more real on parliamentary ground and outside. While real Cooperation between Croats and Slovenes would have changed the course of the Yugoslav state completely, the Cooperation of Slovenes and Serbs against the Croats was one of the chief reasons for the complete disintegration of its unity and power. Throughout more than a thousand years the Slovenes have constantly lost national ground in the Eastem Alps to the German speaking Austrians. Their peasants have been Germanized, both voluntarily and involuntarily, yet they have thereby contributed their large share to the very characteristics of Austrian civilization. Without the racial influence exercised by the Alpine Slovenes, the Austrian character would be quite different. According to the structure of Austrian civilization the Germanization of the Alpine Slovenes by Austria was a process clearly to be distinguished from the Germanization of the Slavonic tribes in Northern Germany. The result of Germanization in the North was Prussia, by which the Slavonic population between Rhine and Vistula has been transformed into aggressive Germans. The acceptance of the German language and simultaneous contribution to Austrian civilization by the Slovenes however, in the Eastem Alps however is comparable to the acceptance of Latin by the Mediterranean nations, particularly passionately by the Alpine tribes, under the Imperium Romanum, whereby even smaller groups (like the Romonsh, the Ladins and the Furlans) have preserved their national individuality. The Slovene problem still exists in Austria. Carinthia south of the Drau river (the country where Schuschnigg's ancestors came from), has been an object of bitter contest after the last war and since then has stepped back into the news again. After the last war, only the resort to arms by the Carinthian themselves brought a plebiscite about. While some parts of the Austrian Alpine countries (parts of Carinthia and South Styria) which had remained Slovene in their peasant majority were transferred to Yugoslavia after World War I without plebiscite, disregarding the view of the German speaking cities and the interests of the peasants around, Southern Carinthia voted in this plebiscite to remain Austrian (1920).There is reason to believe that the same may happen again. Southern Carinthia is vital to Austria. There are no Austrians who would wish to exchange the Southern Carinthian Slovene minority against German Speakers from Yugoslavia,nor would the Carinthian Slovenes like to leave their country. A Slovene minority within the frame of the Austrian state, recognized and dealt with as such, can do more good to Austrian-Yugoslav Cooperation than the exchange of populations. Moreover, the Slovenes in Austria, insisting on their national interests, will be a greater national asset of Yugoslavia than either the acceptance of these people into her own boundaries or even the acquisition of some other part of Carinthia. The vice versa same, of course, is true conceming the German Speakers in Yugoslavia herseif.

(§17) In the Adriatic Litoral the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in prewar times gained constantly ground against the Italians, but were nevertheless highly influenced by their culture. The Italian language had been cultivated by Old Austria far beyond the real national strength of the Italian minority left after the kingdom Lombardy-Venetia was lost again for Austria (1859 and 1866). When these remaining Austrian Italians joined Italy after World 86 War I, they had no need to be afraid, lest they would play a role mach more articulated than their numbers would allow. When the Austrian Italians left the empire, they had seven times as many high schools per capita as Italy and no analphabets at all. As a matter of fact, the union of the more compact Italian Settlements in the Adriatic Litoral with Italy meant the end of Italian cultural influence upon the larger rest, where Old Austria had always been the faithful heir of Venice, As paradoxically as it may sound to Italian ears biased by the sirens of nationalism, the end of Old Austria in reality Meant the collapse of a millennial Italian cultural position, in which the wisdom of both Rome and Byzantium had most characteristically survived, Throughout Venezia Giulia (Grorizia Grdiska, Trieste, Istria, Flume, Zara),on the other hand, the Yugoslav population became the victim of the dissection, by which this millennial cultural organism has been cut into pieces. Never could so tragic and symbolic a figure as Nicolo Tommaseo (d.1874-) a bom Dalmatian by the name of Onessevich, who went to Italy as a passionate "irredentist", but in spite of this fact was the most classical representative of the Venetian, and consequently Austrian, symbiosis between Romanism and Slavism throughout his Century, really have visualized the end of the road which he initiated. In some instances, in Gorizia-Gradiska, the Trentino and Alto Adige (South Tyrol), the national triumph of the Italians, in reality the triumph of a bombastic Italian imperialism, aside from the uprooting of a quarter of a million native German speaking Tiroleans, meant the probably absorption of the Furlans and Ladins. Although they were not fully recognized as nations of their own in Old Austria, where they officially are already Italians nevertheless are always in less danger of abandoning themselves if connected with the North than with the Eastem South, Like the Alpine Slovenes, the Alpine Romansch, of which Furlans and Ladins are the remnants, have been essential for the building up of the Austrian character, and their influence cannot he effaced from the face of Austrian civilization. If South Tyrol is permitted again to join her mother country, the Austria to come will probably have a Ladin (and Italian) minority besides the Slovenes, and will then be obliged to meet out to them exactly the same kind of national autonomy .Strangely enough under the ruling of the principle of nationality, the Furlans have always been one of the most intensively Austrian nation which ever belonged to the Austrian Monarchy. A personality like Monsignor Faidutti, the last Austrian governor of Gorizia-Gradiska and the leader of the Catholic Austrian Italians in the last war,will always be remembered by those who have known him as a symbol for the political influence, to which the old Romansch race between German and Italian Speakers in Old Austria in spite of its smallness could aspire. The full national recognition of both Ladins and Furlans would have come in Old Austria IMft in due time, like that of the Romonsh in the Grisons, who could gain their place as the legally recognized fourth Swiss nation only in 1938. As I have served in a Tyrolean regiment (together with Dollfuss) in World War I, I have been quite familiär with the problem of the German-Ladin-Italian symbiosis south of the Brenner Pass. I dare to say that the quarter of a Century Italian rule in South Tyrol must not necessarily bejudged as something negative only, if the country returns to Austria after World War II more conscious of the problem of synthesis between Germanism and Romanism and of its function therein. While the bulk of the Southern Tyroleans will still be 87 German speaking Austrians (in spite of all German-Italian experiments of uprooting and transfer). The Romanic strain in their thought and life will be he more perspicuous than before, and this fact will be valuable to both Austria and Italy and to their genuine Cooperation. Equally as in the case of Yugoslavia, an Italy, resigning the dreams of imperialism will in her cultural interests he better served by a South Tyrol incorporated into Austria, even if this would mean Ladin and Italian enclaves under Austrian sovereignty. The world to come will be better off, if the principle of nationality is seen through as phantasmagoria, and it is demonstrated to all eyes which want to see the reality, that in every instance in which justice and reason prevails there must be exceptions from its application. The Italian "irredentism" of the Old Austrian South Tyrol in the past has had a much too little appraised negative function of far reaching European dimensions. I have once been a witness, how Cesare Battisti, the Italian Social Democratic representative of the Trentino in the Austrian Parliament, who joined the Italian army, together with Fabio Filzi was captured, recognized by a loyal Italian speaking South Tyrolean from the Val di Hon (who happened to be a comrade of mine in the reserve officer school and who served as officer against the Italians),and escorted through the mile-long lines of angry Italian peasants, who reviled the traitors, a particularly bitter experience of the two idealists on their last road to death (1916).I do not hesitate saying that I have never doubted that this outburst of anger by the masses of the Austrian Italian people was the voice of their deepest populär instincts. I can still hear their representatives on occasion of the last Southern Tyrolean political manifestations before the end of the war, for instance the so-called German People's Day at Brixen-Bressanone in October 1918, which they attended in anxiety for Austria, confess their loyalty to dynasty and empire, while madly enough the German nationalists who ruled the scene proclaimed as a principle of the future the expulsion of all Italians who would not want to become Germans. While the Catholic conservatives were too weak to make their voice audible, the demagogues of German nationalism harvested cheap laureis which only a few weeks later were fading out rapidly under the impact of the Italian occupation. We, still soldiers under military discipline, who had secretly to take civilian clothes in order to participate in these political meetings, gnashed our teeth unable to influence the trend of events, while the politicians, arrogant or weak, gambled away an empire. Sad to the death left the last Austrian Italians of the Tyrol the scene, where the mental confusion of an irresponsible minority amounted to the Symbol of national suicide by an entire generation. It is little known that Mussolini’s personal character, as well as Italian Fascism have roots in South Tyrol. Mussolini in his early years was a disciple of Battisti (1908), who is the very father of the Italian "national socialism”. Battisti was both Social Democrat and Italian "irredentist", and this coincidence was an inextinguishable impression upon Mussolini's mind. In great exaltation, he once compared the gallows of Battisti with the cross of Golgotha in a discourse, in which illogically enough he simultaneously assured that Christianity, socialism and intemationalism had failed (1916). After the war Fascism innervated itself by nothing on earth more into intoxications than by the empty Italian imperialism, of which the subjection of South Tyrol had been the foremost Symbol. The liberal pre-Fascist govemments have greatly paved the way for Fascism, particularly in this 88 question, and the attitude of Giolitti, Sforza or Croee towards the South Tyroleans was different from Fascism only by the less outspokenly brutal, but therefore more dangerously subtle method. In his later official discourses II Duce met out with all his bombast what he thought the Pax Romana against what he considered the German barbarians south of the Alps. He frankly proclaimed that he wanted to make out of the Perathoner (a frequent family name in South Tyrol) again the Pierantoni (1921). While the Old Tyrol gloried of having both the monument of Dante at Trent and of Walter von der Vogelweide at Bozen-Bolzano, Mussolini was not ashamed to use his power not only to compare the two equally great medieval spirits with the Pincio and the Himalaya (1926),but also to build up on this problematic basis his brutally systematic policy of de-nationalization, to which also the German church succumbed, as he could Claim. For this purpose the mad nationalism of 1918, alive in the German People's Days, was his best supporter. When the persecution of the South Tyrolians forced even the cautious Austrian chancellor, Seipel,to raise his voice in a well styled protest, Mussolini in all his haughtiness coined the word of" Austria e quello ehe e " (1928). He really succeeded in bringing about the complete capitulation not only of the Catholic democratic statesmen in Austria and Germany to the fait d'accompli, but also of his own imitators, among whom Hitler with the lightest heart, but also Dollfuss, who once fought the Italians in the South Tyrol, officer in a Tyrolean regiment, and Schuschnigg, a born Tyrolean and the son of an Austrian general, who commanded Tyrolean regiments, made it a principle of their foreign policy to accept the tragedy and shame of South Tyrol without grudging. This was the height of Italian imperialism, from which the fall more suddenly came than ever expected. The sacrifice of South Tyrol did not serve its purpose. The insincere pretension of the strategical frontier on the ridge of the Alps, said to be indispensable for Italian security, broke down over night, when peaceful Austrian officials of the Brenner Pass were substituted by German troops, and at the very hour South Tyrol latently belonged to Greater Germany, however far its actual occupation would still be ahead. When Mussolini made his ill-famed speech of March 16, 1938 in the Camera, he must have known that the game which once began in South Tyrol is up, and that the end of the last remnants of Austria and the happy meeting of Germany and not only Italy on & common frontier in fact sounded the death-bell*to his own creation, but to the Italy of yesterday.

(§18) The worst Situation within the sphere of responsibility which the Austrian empire constituted certainly existed in Hungary, where particularly the Transylvanian Rumanians, the Carpatho-Ruthenians and the Slovaks were practically without modern rights conceming parliamentary representation and national education. Between them and their Austrian co- nationals was the gulf of centuries. They did not participate in a modern constitutional state and were in fact but the anonymous matter valuable only as the maternal soil for future Magyar generations. The German speaking islands in Hungary, the Swabians in Banat and Baosa, the Saxons in Transylvania, and the Hienzen in Western Hungary, the later Burgenland transferred to Austria after World War I, were better off than the other 89 Hungarian nationalities only because, economically well saturated, they did not care much for national interests. The nation most advanced among the Hungarian nationalities were the Slovaks, who belonging geographically to Hungary, but ethnographically connected with the Czechs have always been one of the most basic nations of the Austrian Monarchy. The Slovaks were the first Danubian nation to be organized politically on a Christian basis. In the Moravian empire of the 8th and 9th Century which connected parts of later Bohemia, Hungary and Austria long before these political organisms came existence. The Slovak people in its proliferation is the very substance behind the most vigorous strata of the Czech people, the broadest contingent of the age-old Slavonic Immigration to Vienna and Austria, and a very significant part of the Magyar masses in Budapest and the Northern parts of Hungary. It is not by chance that two of the most characteristic political spirits of the Austrian past, Palacky and Kossuth, were Slovaks. Both belonged to the Protestant minority among the Slovak people which either became the very Champion of the Czechoslovak idea or was easily absorbed into the Magyar gentry. Ludevit Stur (d. 18S6) the Slovak leader in 1848, was the son of a Protestant teacher. Two other Slovak intellectuals of the same time who made Slovak a literary language, Joseph Miloslav Hurban (d. 1888) and Michael Miloslav Hodza (d.1870), were the sons of Lutheran pastors. The Slovaks in general and the Slovak Protestants in particular were the very Initiators of the Czech national renascence. Jan Kollar (d.1852) and Pavel Josef Safarik (d. 1861) the two first Slavonic scholars, who studied the Slavonic antiquities comprehensively, were Slovak Protestants. Of the same descent was Palacky, while Masaryk, bom from a Catholic Moravian family, only later tumed Protestant, yet was sure of his Slovak origin Milan Stefanik, the Czechoslovak aviator of World War I, was the son of a Slovak Lutheran pastor. Milan Hodza (d.1944), the last Czechoslovak prime minister who died in America, was another descendant of the same tradition (as the grandnephew of the other Hodza mentioned above). In his personality something of the required synthesis between Palacky and Kossuth really existed. He was once leader of the Hungarian nationalities in the Hungarian Parliament was in close contact with Francis Ferdinand and probably was the last active advocate of the Czechoslovak-Austrian- Hungarian collaboration before the catastrophe. From Stur to Hodza the Slovak intellectuals in Hungary had to fight on two fronts, against the Magyar overlords, whose spokesman, Salman Tisza, once said “there is no Slovak nation" (1875) and the "Magyarone" intelligentsia which went Kossuth’s way of self-Magyarization. The Catholic Slovak clergy contributed to the latter category, yet not always completely forgetting its origin. Several Hungarian hierarchs, even archbishops of Gran-Esztergom, who hold the primate of the Hungarian church, like Alexander Rudnay (d.1831) or Johannes Scitovszky (d.1866), were of Slovak peasant descent, certainly a clear indication, how open-minded the Hungarian church has been, at least under the Austrian rule. Yet the tendencies of Magyarization in the Slovak Catholic clergy made it vital to the Slovak cause that other Catholic priests would stand up and fight for the Slovak interests as well. Whenever the political struggle for a modern parliamentary representation was touched by heroism, it was so in prewar Slovakia, where priests and peasants were united against the most primitive kind of oppression, by which the Hungarian govemments carried through the national 90 elections. R.W. Seton-Watson in one of his earlier essays(1912) has vividly described such a Slovak election day, the peasants eager to vote for their candidate, Father Okanyik, the dean of Skalitz, yet hindered to do so with every means available to the governmental candidate, until the latter was elected. The first and only Slovak priest, who entered the Hungarian Parliament was Ferdinand Juriga, who founded the Slovak People's Party (1905).The most populär clerical leader of the Catholic Slovak peasants, however, was Andrei Hlinka (d. 1938), who first led his people into the Czecho-Slovak political unity, but soon, when the expectation and the promise of autonomy did not materialize, so much resented his own doing, that his pupils, Joseph Tiso, the later head of the independent Slovak state, became the very protagonists of Separation from the Czechs. As close as Czechs and Slovaks are linguistically, their different political history for more than thousand years has in fact shaped a different national consciousness in them which will probably never become really identical. A Czechoslovak state, as tried between the two world wars, would have been undoubtedly possible within the frame of the Austrian Monarchy, if the ideas of both Palacky and Kossuth, coinciding in the emphasis on the national rights, would have been taken up by a monarch, as Francis Ferdinand promised to become. After the end of the moral force which the Austrian Monarchy represented, so artificial a body as the Czechoslovak state will always need some outside power to force its parts together. Only in a federalized form, with Slovak autonomy, it may really survive, and the Slovak Opposition against it subsides, but even then in all probability only within a higher frame, which only a Danubian System can provide. The strongest of the Hungarian nationalities, with a national state of their own in the back, were the Rumanians, primarily in Transylvania, upon whom, therefore, the whole force of Magyar oppression feil most ruthlessly. Transylvania, the very home country of the Rumanians had an interesting medieval Constitution with three so-called universitates nationum, in which the Magyars, the Szeklers (or Transylvanian Magyars) and the Saxons, but not the Rumanians, who were the peasants, found their national representation. Exactly this Constitution was the reason that the Rumanian peasants were used to look to the emperor at Vienna for redress. When Joseph II visited Transylvania he wrote to his mother the significant words that "palliatives and patchwork are here in vain". Under him occurred the peasant revolt of 1784,led by Nicola Horia for which, as the Magyar aristocracy charged, the emperor was probably not entirely irresponsible. Horia travelled four times to Vienna, where the emperor in fact received his complaints, and in his words he revolutionized the peasants "by permission and Order of the emperor". Joseph may have said something which was the consequence of the imperial omnipotence he feit vested in him, yet could at the end not really verify. The revolt was short. Horia, betrayed by his fellows, was cruelly executed. But the stränge consequence of the revolt was that the emperor decided to establish national schools and a seminar for the Orthodox clergy in Transylvania. Through 150 years the Rumanian peasants did not cease to look to the emperor at Vienna. The intellectual center of the Rumanians in the Austrian Monarchy was the united bishopric of Blaj (Blasendorf) where those historic studies were first promoted by which the Rumanians became conscious again of their Romanic origin. The bishops of Blaj were for a longtime the traditional leaders of their people, and they tried to get the Rumanians 91 recognized as the fourth political estate and nation of TransyIvania. Some bishops waged a courageous struggle for this national demand before the imperial court, and this tradition was still alive in 1848 when the Rumanian peasants under Avram Janen (d. 1872) assembled at Blaj, constituted themselves a free nation and vowed fealty to the emperor. The occupation of Wallachia and Moldavia by the Austrian army in 1854 during the Crimean War strengthened the hopes for a Greater Rumania connected with the Austrian Monarchy, and at any rate represented the height of Austrian ascendancy over the Rumanians. In spite of the fact that Austria surrendered the Rumanians to Hungary in 1867,the Austrophiles dominated for half a Century longer. The famous Memorandum of the Rumanian leaders (1892) containing all their grievances was still addressed to the emperor; it resulted in the most brutal persecution of all the persons involved. When one of the Rumanian representatives, the Greek Catholic priest Vasile Lucaciu (d. 1923) organized a deputation of three hundred intellectuals and peasants to go to Vienna, and the emperor refused to receive them. Karl Lueger, then in his rapid rise to power and acting for both emperor and mayor, jumped into the breach and patronized the Rumanian visitors in a truly Viennese fashion. Of Lueger one could say that he discovered the Rumanians for Austrian politics, and was never reluctant to emphasize the common interests of Austrians and Rumanians against the Magyar oligarchy. There was in fact among the Rumanians an anti-Hungarian and pro- Austrian attitude down to the end. Even Octavian Goga (d.1938), the most consistent Transylvanian "irredentist", who first went to Rumania, where he eventually became the first anti-Semitic and Fascist prime minister, could not help expressing sentiments in his early poetry which still circled around the emperor at Vienna. When I took part in the Rumanian offensive of the Central Powers in 1916,1 found in a Rumanian peasant hüt an almanac with a poem by Goga, called Povestea Adealului (Transylvanian Legend), written in 1914 and built around the legend of the emperor's two eyes, laughing the one, weeping the other. In his tendency play "Domnul Notar" (1914) which went on the stage at Bucharest just before the war began, Goga masterfully sketched the evil character of the Rumanian "Magyarone" who deserted his people to share clumsily in the power and the attire of the Magyar lords. Another Transylvanian Rumanian, Aurel C. Popovici (d. 1917), propagated under Francis Ferdinand's visible approval the idea of the "United States of Greater Austria" (1906), obviously in Palacky's footsteps, as the most progressive scheme of Austrian reconstruction which in the author's opinion would have enabled a föderative expansion of the Austrian imperial System into the Balkan Peninsula. Down to Francis Ferdinand's death and the beginning of the war, Popovici lived at Vienna, where he edited a weekly, ” Gross Österreich” in which I had the honor as a high school pupil to gain my first literary spurs). After the outbreak of the war, Popovici went to Switzerland, where he died;| he would certainly not have hesitated to join the Greater Rumanian block of his fellow countrymen, after his Greater Austrian hopes had failed. The Transylvanian Rumanians, wel 1 organized and trained politically, were soon to play a most perspicuous role in Greater Rumania. Besides Goga, both Alexander Vajda-Voevod and Juliu Maniu were prime ministers. The first of them belonged once also to Francis Ferdinand's intimates. Maniu, the leader of the Transylvanian peasants, who had once been the advocate of activism in the Hungarian 92 Parliament, still represents by far the most healthy political off shoot, of which the Rumania of todayks capable. Even Goga's ideas, idealistic and literary, connected with Pareto, Maurras and Gentile, may be condemned primarily on account that they tried to become political Instruments instead of resigning to be the view of life as seen by a cultivated, intellectual elite extricated from the masses of the people. Even in this experiment outside the populär forces Transylvania contributed her share to postwar Rumanian politics, losing much, gaining little, spending all her substance left. The great obstacle of any reconstruction as well as expansion of the Austrian empire was the Magyar oligarchy which even posthumously, when its age-old mistakes will have been fmally consumed by the fire of history which falls from heaven, in its shadows will continue to be the very stumbling-block for any new Danubian coexistence. Once the ideology of the St. Stephen's crown, the partes adnexae the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise with its implicit Magyar hegemony in Hungary, made the modemization of the Austrian Monarchy impossible. According to this ideology not only Galicia- Lodomeria, Bukovina, Dalmatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina belonged “legally” to Hungary, but even Serbia, Wallachia and Moldavia, if they would join the empire. This was the sterile doctrine of a mystic Legitimism, to which, in the opinion of the Magyar rulers the king consented by taking the coronation oath. An empire with such a nucleus of political irrationalism was not only unable to expand, but also unable to survive. Francis Joseph and Charles, in contrast to what Francis Ferdinand wanted to do, bound themselves by their Hungarian coronation oath to consent to the destruction of the empire perpetrated by the Magyar oligarchy. The Monarchy as such, in vivid contrast to its hasty action in unchaining World War I, never nourished the slightest dream of expansion after the occupation of Bosnia-Hercegovina, but was fully saturated and interested only in preserving its own integrity. This would have been a very suitable attitude in a well organized European Commonwealth of Nations, to which to contribute in its own way was therefore the most vital interest of the Monarchy. In a European world still in flux, however, to which Austria-Hungary largely contributed by backing Germany, the feeling of Saturation not only contradicted the law of history, under which the Monarchy had once started, but also was an anomaly in the midst of the European great powers of the 20th Century which all sought and eventually attained expansion, even if only in the colonial sphere. This was the fundamental contradiction of the Austrian Situation: Austria-Hungary either wanted to preserve herself, then she had to cultivate the European idea and to foster the international organizations of peace, or she wanted to share in the foreign policy of a basically aggressive state, Germany, then she could not resign expansion herself. In the latter case the Monarchy could tolerate the Magyar oligarchy as a German agency within her own frame, while in the first case the liquidation of this oligarchy was the main problem to be solved. A modernized Austrian empire, however, might well have expanded in its own way, both peacefully and organically, plus exemplo quam verbo, more by the own reorganization of the imperial structure than by any schemes of diplomacy and war. The Balkan Peninsula, still unorganized, lay before its door, and there were many other European states which could have profited much from its federalism. It was the climax of self-resignation that the responsible Austrian leaders even dropped this idea. This was the very reason, why the Austrian Monarchy eventually disintegrated, after all its nations had 93 become aware of its uselessness. Although history has proved that it was not quite as useless as it then seemed, there is no way back into the Paradise lost - except starting from scratch, tilling the soil, begetting ideas and building in a painful work ab ovo the Commonwealth again without the paraphernalia which have destroyed it.

(§19) Although the historic function of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy can be fully understood only, if its national problem in all its implications is analyzed, as we have already done, it would be but an one-sided picture to see merely the centrifugal tendencies and the weakness of the central authority without focusing upon the social problem of the prewar state as well, as we now have to do. This is the sphere, in which both Old Austria and Francis Joseph fare much better in the judgment of history, and the analysis of which is also essential for the full understanding of the postwar state .Without engaging here in the details of the problem, its very survey will well Supplement the political history, in which we are interested in the first place, The relative welfare of the Austrian nationalities within the Austrian Constitution, on the basis of which they could at least fight legally for their national interests and in fact constantly improve their position, had its deeper reasons in a stränge ambiguity of Francis Joseph's regime which accompanied all the emperor's experiments. His foreign policy was dilettantish and finally proved catastrophic. His national policy as a consequence eventually reached a stage which by calling the Magyar oligarchy into power, was but high treason against the Austrian idea. All this was the grotesque suicide of a great historic power with the deepest roots in the soil of Europe. In his social policy, however, Francis Joseph displayed throughout his reign many of the best qualities of his ancestors and was actually not forced by events but was forcing them. This is Francis Joseph's better legacy, in which after all something of the constructive synthesis between Joseph and Francis was indeed achieved. Subconsciously the emperor, who in his old ace did not believe in the empire any longer beyond sticking stubbornly to what he considered his duty, prepared in fact its liquidations by these means and provided the most basic implements of the succession States to come. Immediately after the revolution of 1848, under the Creative influence of Stadion and in the spirit of elementary ancient Austrian traditions, a municipal law was enacted, by which a far reaching municipal autonomy was constitutionally guaranteed to all the peoples of the empire concerning urban and rural communities alike, not only the highly advanced cities of Roman tradition on the Mediterranean shores, but all the peasant peoples up to the Bukovina as well Romanic traditions, Slavonic reminences of the Byzantine empire and the autonomy of German cities and peasant communities of the Middle Ages, all of them particularly cultivated and preserved on Alpine and Danubian soil, coincided historically to patronize this post-revolutionary law. Originally, this law covered also Hungary, but was eliminated there after the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise. In Austria proper, however, it was this law which trained and educated politically three generations of Ruthenians, Rumanians, Poles, Czechs, Slovenes, Croats and Serbs for self-government, to be silent about the German and Italian Speakers with their more articulated tradition of autonomy, 94 enabled them to select a great many political leaders out of their very midst, and finally, when the empire collapsed, to set easily up their own people's governments. Also the Hungarian nationalities were indirectly under the influence of this municipal practice, usual in the Austrian half of the empire, and although conditions varied there more specifically, the general trend and the chief result were identical. Without exaggerating things one might well maintain that the so perspicuous peasant movements of all the Old Austrian nations tare their very roots in this school of political autonomy, and equally so what had been national, not international in the labor movements of the various nations. Although the transplantation of Marxism from both Germany and Western Europe played its obvious role in the latter respect, there have always been very characteristic differences between the labor movements in the Danubian area and in the German sphere of influence. One of them is the much greater affinity between labor movement and peasant movement in all these Danubian nations in perspicuous contrast to the anti-agrarian affection of German Marxism. The foundations of both the political Cooperation of these two factors and their common rise to governmental responsibility which in fact happened frequently in the political history of the postwar succession States were thereby laid out. A few names of Old Austrian parliamentarians, who decided the fate of their postwar national States will illustrate this thesis. The Czech Agrarian Party of Antonin Svehla (d.1955), the Polish Peasant Party of Wingenty Witos, the Slovene Catholic People's Party of Korosec, but also the Croatian Peasant Party of Radic, the Rumanian Peasant Party of Maniu, the Slovak People's Party of Hlinka and even the Hungarian Peasant Party of Istvän Szabo-Nagyatad, they all represented a very characteristic heritage of Old Austrian municipalism, transformed in many instances into governmental agencies of the succession States. Not everywhere can the same be said of the labor movements, but the Czech Social Democratic Party under Vlastimil Tusar (d. 1924),the Polish Social Democratic Party under Ignacy Daszyhski (d.1936) and even the Hungarian Social Democratic Party under Emo Garami d. 1935) exercised political influence which clearly reflects the common tradition. When the Austrian half of the empire after the Austrian-Hungarian Compromise gave itself a Constitution by parliamentary means, the Austrian German National Liberals began ruling the state for a decisive decade (1867/79). They were of a brand akin to the National Liberals of Prussia, Germany, originally with principles opposed to Bismarck's, but eventually bowing before his successes and the very columns of his final regime. They were the creme of liberalism at that time, aristocrats, professors, lawyers and industrialists .There were overwhelmingly Germanized Slavs and Jews among their leaders, although in Austria, different from Germany, there were always enough aristocratic figure-heads to make the lot representative enough. The foremost cabinets of this German Austrian National Liberalism were those of Beust (1866/6), who carried through the Compromise Carlos Auersperg (1867/68), and Adolf Auersperg ( 1871/78).In this atmosphere the Greater German ideology found its condensation again in direct descent from the black and red and yellow dreams of 1848 and the German Burschenschaft before. An objective historic analysis will not shrink back from conceding that this National Liberalism in both Austria and Germany, overwhelmingly under intellectual Jewish leadership, was the very nucleus of pan- 95 Germanism, long before the Prussian conservatives even dreamt of it, and thus has in fact initiated an ideology which at the end in its last consequences tumed so tragically against the Jews in general. In closest relationship with this ideology of an arrogant and brutal German nationalism, these liberal govemments in Austria, anti-clerical, pro-capitalistic and blinded by the German successes to the degree of self-renunciation, resented passionately both social policy and the broadening of the franchise, because both were bound to terminate their power. Although this National Liberalism in Austria would not have been possible without Francis Joseph's solemn surrender to its principles, the emperor did not feel too well under its impact. He tried short conservative interludes with Taaffe (1896/70), Potocki (1870/71), Hohenwart (1871), yet could not succeed, before the liberal regime came to its natural end through misgovernment and corruption. Now Francis Joseph's most personal regime, as far as the social problems were concerned, under Eduard Taaffe (d,1895) ,came into being, the most lasting of all Austrian governments (1879/93), differing from the absolutism of the emperor youth by the existence of a parliament which gradually modernized itself under governmental pressure, but a regime still strongly representing the imperial authority which now got hands free to advance decisively the most progressive ideas in both social legislation and parliamentary reform. The cabinet was backed by the Poles (with Julian Dunajewski as minister of finance), the Czechs (with Alois Prazak as minister of justice) and the Catholic conservatives (under Hohenwart and Liechtenstein). Taaffe, of Catholic Irish descent, formulated -not so much cynically but somehow in British reminiscence - as the only governmental wisdom possible in Austria that of "muddling through" (Fortwurstein). The utterance indicates well the discrepancy between the commissions the government received from the emperor and the parliamentary results it presented to him. Yet the cabinet Taaffe was not only relatively the most constructive one of the entire constitutional era of Austria, but also abstractly and objectively speaking a great historic accomplishment which brought about a unique social legislation of far reaching importance, by which Austria in parallelism to both Switzerland and Germany, became one of the leading Continental States in modern fields such as the Organization of industry, the control of capitalism and the protection of labor. At last, Francis Joseph as an old man had come into his own. During his entire reign all his govemments have experimented in the twofold direction of social legislation and enfranchisement, and we are told that of his many advisers in two generations those were always the most highly appreciated who dared to take a few new Steps in these directions. But only under Taaffe was the time ripe for the more systematic application of these ideas. The government, although it well knew what it wanted, could reach its goals, however, only by "muddling through" the difficulties of the national Austrian parliamentary life, in which the unsolved national problems of the empire were reflected. This was the panacea of the disillusioned emperor, that the social question, in which modern man is primarily interested, would eliminate in the long run the puzzles and jungles of the national question, the prospect of the one alleviate the bürden of the other, and thus the Austrian Monarchy by solving the former atone for not having solved the latter. The older the emperor became the more tenaciously did he cling to this idea, in which there was some truth, yet not enough to save the empire in a tempest. It was in many instances the 96 crown itself, cooperating with the trends from below against the vested interests, which pushed the reform of the franchise and proposed social legislation to reluctant parliaments which were aware that following these authoritative lines always meant their own reshuffle. It can be truly said that without this steady policy of the emperor the modernization of the Austrian political scene and social structure, so important for the aftermath, would not have materialized. When Taaffe feil over the reform of the franchise, overthrown by the unnatural coalition between the German national liberals (Emst Plener), the conservatives (Hohenwart) and the Poles, whose identical interest, however, was against the broadening of the parliamentary foundations, none of the many Austrian cabinets of the last of twenty years of the empire was equally successful. When eventually universal franchise was introduced in Austria under the cabinet Wladimir Beck (1907),exactly in the same year as in the Scandinavian model country, Sweden, it was doubtlessly the personal merit of the emperor himself, who not only had worked for decades on this idea, but in its last stage of materialization has exerted his personal influence which alone could force the peers of the upper chamber. It is worth-while to compare Francis Joseph and Bismarck in this respect as wel 1. Bismarck had first introduced universal franchise in a hurry, in order to beat Austria by Prussia's greater liberalism, as he himself confesses but after this aim was reached had strongly resented and attempted to eliminate again this "un-German" method of determining the state's representation by voting. As Bismarck's reluctance preserved the class-electorate in the biggest German state, Prussia, down to the end of the monarchy, and as Francis Joseph's urging in the opposite direction could never convince or force the Magyar oligarchy to follow the Austrian example and to accept universal franchise, both Prussia and Hungary represented the two dass regimes in Central Europe which were simultaneously the two centers of immovable power. The democratic tendencies, on the contrary, were reflected by| the imperial diets in both Austria and Germany. But while the German imperial diet was only artificially agglutinated to an entirely different imperial structure, which in fact was capable of checking its development into a fully democratic and constitutional agency of the German people for half a Century, the Austrian imperial diet after universal franchise was the first really democratic representation of a large Central European territory which stretched from the Bodensee in the West to Czernowitz in the East, and from Cracow in the North to the Booche di Cattaro in the South. The influence of such a body could be resisted by Hungary for a while, but not for ever. If it had persisted, it is no venture to say that it would even have accelerated the democratization of Germany. Perhaps none of the other common agencies of the Danubian nations was as frivolously destroyed as the Austrian Parliament, long before the parliamentarians of the various Old Austrian nations left the building on the Vienna Ringstrasse for good. Frequently, the Austrian Parliament had been criticized, and even ridiculed, for the sometimes literal struggles which occurred in its hall, and all those who held any reorganization of the Austrian Monarchy impossible rejoiced in the behavior of this "most respectable assembly" which undermined its own existence. Yet the same Austrian Parliament was not only a grand assembly indeed, but a real school of higher politics of which, already only a quarter of a Century after its end, it seems unintelligible why it was 97 not preserved at all costs, even only as a forum of contact and debate, in which a loose agglomeration of nations and States with identical interests could meet, clarify their intentions and arrive at common proclamations to their respective governments. With the abandonment of the Austrian Parliament an inter-parliamentary nucleus perhaps a world parliament in nuce, has been liquidated.

(§20) Universal franchise in Austria resulted in the formation of two very natural mass parties which grew up first on Austrian soil proper, but soon gained international contact and ascendancy. No doubt, if the Austrian empire would have continued to exist, they might have developed into two big international camps with similar influence upon imperial politics, as later their off springs had in the succession States. These two parties were the Christian Socialist Party and the Social Democratic Party, both people's parties on a broad basis, yet the one basically Catholic, the other Socialist, the latter from the very beginning the dass party of labor with an annex of small bourgeoisie, the former originally starting as the party of the small bourgeoisie at Vienna, but later developing an affiliated labor party of its own (based upon the Christian Trade Unions) and by amalgamation with the former conservatives expanding into the leading agrarian party as well. The birth-day of the Social Democratic Party in Austria falls under the regime Taaff, when the genius of Viktor Adler (d. 1918) on occasion of the party congress at Hainfeld, Lower Austria (December 80, 1888 to January 1, 1889) arrived at the amalgamation of both wings of the labor movements, radicals and moderates, under the blessing of the government which was wise enough to want a partner and to contribute actively to its creation. Adler himself came from the extreme wing of the national liberals and this origin has always influenced the ideology of the labor party intellectuals in Austria. The new Social Democratic Party embraced only for a short time the non-Germans as well. Later they separated into national labor parties of their own. The Social Democratic party congress at Brünn-Brno (1899) advocated the reorganization of the Austrian state along the lines of autonomous national communities, which had previously been the idea of Palacky and later was most effectively propagated by Popovici. Two young Social Democratic theorists, who later were to become the leaders of the party, Karl Renner (1902) and Otto Bauer (1906), contributed their parts to this idea, by which the labor party became the foremost agency conceming the ideas of Austria's reorganization and modernization. Although it was supposed that the leading theorists of the party were republicans, their ideas of the reform of the empire could be shared by monarchists as well, Yet the Social Democrats emphasized -together with Palacky and Popovici - exclusively the national rights, underestimating or overlooking deliberately the historic rights which could not cease to play their role, as long as the monarchy existed. The Christian Socialist Party primarily originated in the continuity of the Catholic conservative tradition in Austria, as represented by the Romantic school of political thought, of which no other thinker and writer was a more characteristic representative during about fifteen years, coinciding with the regime Taaffe, than Karl Vogelsang (d. 1890), a Northern 98 German convert to Catholicism, who for this reason left his home country, Mecklenburg, and settled at Vienna (1875). Vogelsang was the dynamic motor behind all the activities, the final culmination of which was a broad populär movement which wrote the idea of anti- capitalistic social reform on its banners. While the Social Democratic Party on the basis of the Marxian doctrine, the ideology of dass struggle and dass solidarity, was grand in organizing the masses of the industrial Proletariat which grew more and more powerful by its mere existence, even if they showed their strength occasionally in large demonstrations, - Christian Socialism, as Vogelsang called his doctrine, combining traditional and progressive elements, was a populär movement long before it crystallized in a party. The sequence was Christian Socialist doctrine, movement, party. While this Christian Socialism of the 1880’s and 1890’s in Austria showed something of the enthusiasm of religion, young and spirited, the evolution of what has later been called Austro-Marxism was nearly opposite, and if it was religion, it was much more a kind of church, wel 1 organized and authoritarian. Here the sequence was Social Democratic party, movement, doctrine, as Marxism, though latent in the labor party from the beginning, became a matter of deeper theoretical concern only at the end. After Vogelsang had created scientific review, Monatsschrift für Christliche Sozialreform" (1875), and Ludwig Psenner (d. 1917), a born South Tyrolian, had founded the central Organization, "Christlich-Sozialer Verein" (1886), Karl Lueger (d. 1910) organized the Christian Socialist Party. Lueger had first been elected by the liberal party into the city council (1875), but had left the liberals and founded the "Democratic Party" (1883) which he, together with Albert Gessmann (d. 1920), being sneered as the "two men party", again represented in the city council. He was a leader of character and integrity, a democrat in Opposition against party, dictatorship, yet a man without a party himself. When he eventually joined Psenner's association (1887), the two indispensable elements of political action, the qualified leader and the new masses, had made contact and the Christian Socialist Party was born. In 1890 the Christian Socialists entered the Lower Austrian diet, in 1891 the imperial diet and the city council, and in 1895 the latter was so completely in their hands that Lueger was elected mayor of Vienna. Yet only in 1897 did the emperor confirm the verdict of the people, after Lueger had been elected mayor for the fifth time. In 1897 the Christian Socialists entered the imperial diet with already 32 seats, while the first election according to universal suffrage in 1907 made them the strongest party of the Austrian Parliament. This was indeed Lueger’s party, for after his death the epigones could not preserve their position in 1911, and their defeat then had greatly influenced the events of 1918, when the parliamentarians of 1911 in fact constituted and organized the new state. The most decisive date in this elementary rise of the Christian Socialist Party in Old Austria was the amalgamation with the Catholic conservatives of the other crown-lands outside of Vienna and Lower Austria. Hohenwart had once been the leader of the conservatives. They were particularly strong in Upper Austria and the Tyrol. In the former country was Alfred Ebenhoch (d.1912) the govemor, and he concluded the decisive pact with the Christian Socialists (1907). In the latter country entered only a part of the conservatives the new amalgamation, while other continued the Tyrolean Conservative Party, whose great leader, Theodor Kathrein (d. 1916), a born South Tyrolian, son of a 99 grammar school teacher, but of an old peasant family, has made a classical Austrian career (as Schuschnigg, related with him in his book rightly calls it. Kathrein was first vice¬president of the imperial diet (1893), later president (1897), and was the governor of the Tyrol, when the country celebrated the jubilee of 1809. He died a hereditary baron of the empire. The main Organizers of the Christian Socialist Party in its new function as an imperial party were Gessmann and Ebenhoch, who also entered the cabinet Beck which carried out the reform of the franchise. Lueger, as mayor of Vienna, held the exceptional position of a statesman in the empire by merely being the head of the Viennese municipal administration. He was the only public figure who could compete both personally and politically with the authority of the emperor, to whom he in full sincerity professed loyalty, but whom he in fact by far surpassed in constructive statesmanship. Under his leadership the Christian Socialist, party became the recognized mouthpiece of the Old Austrian peasant peoples, Croats, Rumanians, Ruthenians, and Slovaks, whom Lueger again attracted and taught for the last time to look to the emperor at Vienna. A democratic Catholic priest, Joseph Scheicher (d.1924) who has been a leader of the younger clergy bringing his co-pastors into the fold of the party, was also the author of the first literary formulation of the Greater Austrian idea (1900).All these leaders of the Christian Socialists were like Popovici in contact with Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, to whom, rightly or wrongly, at any rate hopefully for the empire's future, the plan of imperial reconstruction by authoritarian means was attributed. If he had not been murdered at Serajevo in 1914,he might well have succeeded at least in bringing Hungary into the line of universal suffrage and even in merging, immediately or gradually, the whole of the empire again into a more homogeneous shape on the basis of equal social rights for all its nation On this basis, a perhaps polyglot Christian Socialist Party would then have become the governmental party, with an equally polyglot Social Democratic Party as his majesty's loyal Opposition. The full understanding of Austrian interior policy, prewar and postwar, however, needs also reference to a third group, into which the remnants of the older liberals transformed themselves: the so-called German Nationals (Deutschnationalen), also called German radicals (Deutschradikalen) and even pan-Germans (Alldeutschen) before the war, while after the war they called themselves Greater Germans (Grossdeutsche). The transformation from Austrian liberals into German nationals is well indicated in the person of Georg Schönerer (d. 1921), the man who introduced the German racial anti-Semitism to Austria and not only thereby had a lasting influence upon Hitler. He started in parliament as a national liberal (1873) without any particularly anti-Semitic tendencies (his wife and children being of rabbinical descent. and his father having become well-to- do as Rothschild’s railway subcontractor). Schönerer's original collaborators were all Jewish intellectuals, who wrote for him the so-called Linzer Programm (1880).in which for the first time the Anschluss of the German Austrian provinces to Germany was demanded. The men who elaborated this program of pan-Germanism for Schönerer were Heinrich Friedjung, a leading national liberal author, the historian of 1866, Viktor Adler, the later Social Democratic leader, and Engelbert Pemerstorfer, another later Social Democrat (of Sudeten German descent). Also Lueger cooperated for a while with Schönerer under the flag of the 100 "United Christians". The definite severance of leftists and rightists from Schönerer came after 1888.When he was sentenced to jail and loss of his nobility predicate (because of violence and assault committed against the editors of a Viennese liberal daily) he deranged completed, lost any stature and tumed to the most vicious anti-Austrian and anti-Catholic Propaganda, in which he anticipated Nazism like no one eise. While the German nationals in Austria were always the third (minority) party, the radical wing of the Schönerians, the fathers of the Hitlerites, represented a tiny fraction of this minority. Both Schönerer and Hitler are definitely un-Austrian phenomena.

(§21) Not so much as a confession, but as critical key to the reader which may help to clarify many ideas outlined so far and; also indicates their natural limitations; I like to conclude this chapter with some remarks conceming more personal experiences. In World War the final account was written to finish the tragic chapter of Austrian history, of which, both politically and psychologically, Francis Joseph, Elizabeth and Rudolph, the empire's first family, were the dynastic Symbols. For most Austrians of my generation the first meeting with the Austrian idea in their childhood was with these three persons, whose life-story, truth and gossip, was therefore bound to be the first great shock for any patriotic soul. In fact, the "family novel" of the dynasty was bound to the heaviest bürden for the empire. The tradition of conservatism, badly adulterated in the age of liberals faded out in sensations and scandals, around which the Viennese wit could hardly help commenting. For half a Century, the masses of the Austrian people were spell-bound by this family, which on the highest level gave the meanest example. There was much pity, but sometimes more the valef s pettiness in this relationship between dynasty and people. Although my own earliest memories are associated with the same kind of patriotism I nevertheless find in searching more accurately something which obviously became a determinant of my life. I remember being a child long before school and I see myself awestruck before the black and yellow colors. This may have been the influence of my parents. Yet I see myself walking' through the Moravian villages around Brünn with their colored houses and feeling a sympathy for the Czechs which, I am pretty sure no one in my faml ly feit. Strange as it may sound, and obviously quite unmotivated in the national liberal atmosphere, in which I lived, I remember myself very clearly helped by little details on which the memory likes to rest how I associated my Austrian patriotism with this sympathy for the Slavonic people, for whom all around me entertained only contempt. I have not lost since the urging in myself to side with the oppressed against the oppressor, with the persecuted against the persecutor. (Although the Slavonic workers and peasants of my childhood were probably only "oppressed" and "persecuted" by my environment rather than by the existing conditions which then frequently began to tum against the German Speakers). When I later made my first political decision as a high school pupil,(of which a lot were deeply involved in politics in Old Austria), I was passionately opposed to then prevailing trends of German nationalism in all these schools, but sided with the Christian Socialist Party, because its program was Greater Austrian. Although the national liberal 101 environment of my youth did not favor any religious interests and thus I had leamed in very early years not to care fbr religion, I solemnly began to confess Catholicism again in school and among comrades in consequence of my political credo which, as I well understood already then, would not be able to bear merely the form of Catholicism, and not its full reality. As I was convinced very early indeed that this world needs Austria, I was resolved to do my share in anchoring her in a transcendent world, to which I had before no particular access. If older people laugh about the odd ideas of younger ones, they may be sure that not only thousand roads are leading towards Rome, but also that these are in fäct the etemal problems which will retum in every generation. So I dare to say that only those who took these problems deadly serious will be able to Start from scratch again. In the radical quarters of the Catholic Austrian Youth Movement which I joined in the high school, there was not much spontaneous enthusiasm about the dynasty. The ideal of this youth was not the dynasty, but a commoner, Karl Lueger. He was to be sure, black and yellow down to his fiber, and so were we, of course, not only in hereditary loyalty and discipline, but rather suspecting the dynasty of not being so too much itself. It was a determinant factor of our life that the mayor of Vienna was nearer to our hearts than the emperor of Austria. The commoner we loved was not only an imperial figure, who could stand up to any European potentate, but also an imperialist to our heart who held the same sympathies for the Croatians, Rumanians and Ruthenians we held, while the emperor was either only the king of Hungary, or in the better case his own non- commissioned officer, a soldier, correct and dutiful, but only to defend, and not to conquer. I was a lad when I first learned that the sorrows of death would not even spare my hero when I battled with God for the life of this man, when I saw with my own eyes that he was really dead, filing by with the hundreds of thousands of moumers, where he lay in state in the city hall, and when I observed with great astonishment and bittemess, how his political heirs gambled away their very power in the coming election which in fäct was to decide the destiny of the next generation. I still see myself an observer in the midst of the intoxicated crowd which in the election after Lueger's death celebrated the victory of the radical German nationalist in our district. They sang the " Wacht am Rhein", their party hymn and one soon was sure to have an argument with them. I refused to take the hat. I remember contemplating already then in a totally different mood as after a lost football match all the consequences the landslide might have for the empire. Sometimes I really wonder now whether a mere child can feel so intensively the shadow of things to come hanging over the soul, and I think today that it was possible because, in loving the land of our fathers beyond measure and in seeing helplessly how it crumbled and withered away, we instinctively anticipated its collapse with all it meant to our world and to the world at large. I was by no means an infant prodigy, nor the only one to feel so mature. The majority of the Students in high school and universities certainly skipped the entire problem by turning to the fashion of German nationalism in spite of their Czech, Croatian or Italian names or ancestors, but the better minority would not fol low this course of enforced forgetting and they would combine their better knowledge and instinct with 102 similar minorities among young workers and peasants and offer their common Service to the country, to the church and to the party if they would like them. This was the beginning of the Austrian youth movement (1907) out of the resources of idealism, radicalism and conservatism which the country was stil 1 able to muster. Long before the German youth movement stood up in token protest against the authority in state and school, grown out of hundreds of local organizations into the so-cal led Wandervogel (1913), primarily interested in its own form of life, its own communities and problems, in wandering and nature, in order to swing back eventually into the universal stream of German nationalism - this Catholic Austrian youth movement organized itself in consequence of the Christian Socialist idea for the sake of authority in state and church for their preservation and for their reform, in a grand gesture of voluntary idealistic Service to nation and mankind. Only in this perspective it can really be imagined what, after so many shocks through the first family of the empire, the new branch of the dynasty represented by the heir to the throne, Francis Ferdinand, his courageous matrimony with a woman of unequal birth, his radical plans for the empire’s reconstruction even if they were more assumption then proved reallty, as well as his own heir, Charles in his unpretentious simplicity meant to this Catholic Austrian youth which was still ready to adhere to the dynasty if the dynasty was ready to represent devotedly the idea of the empire and its modernization. Incapable of meeting the problems of the empire, the dynasty at the end found its very existence entangled in the hazardous foreign policy of its hereditary enemy, to whom, after the defeat at Sadowa it had in fact surrendered. After the Ferdinands had stood through the Thirty Years War, a woman, Maria Theresia, had stayed off the consequences of the Seven Years War, Franz Joseph capitulated after the Seven Week War only to loose at the end of his life the catastrophe which has outlasted the mark of the thirty years having once destroyed the substance of Central Europe. While at the beginning of World War I there were hardly any Austrians who saw the new war of 1914 in the perspective of these three predecessors, it might be at the end of World War II that just this perspective will become the contribution to be made by Austrian Catholicism to the spiritual reconstruction of Europe. Having become uncertain of themselves by the thirty years alliance with Germany, all Austrian patriots in 1908, in 1912, in 1914 irrationally thought that war would restore the balance sheet of history and save the empire from Scylla and Charybdis. The theory was not the monopoly of the hasty youth only, but shared by the emperor, the government, the general staff and all Austrian nations without a single exception, wherever public opinion would crystallize. They all were sure at that time that fighting would be the very means of saving the empire which, at the beginning of the war, none of them dared to abandon. This irrationalism embracing the war was but the logical outcome of more than sixty years of failures in the national foreign policy, into the consequences of which three generations, including the youth of 1914, were entangled. Symbolic victims, innocent of the guilt accumulated by their predecessor, the two heirs of the dynasty, Ferdinand and Charles, tried to stem the tide of fate by throwing in their own 103 bodies. Symbolically, they feil, the first and the last victim of World War I. Gul 1t, both human and political, once obliterated the pagan rulers, even if they stood för empires. Christian atonement mitigates a historic fall. Only continued atonement however, not the mere retum to petty politics could really sharpen the eyes and deepen the courage necessary to grasp, in preparing politics exfide, those opportunities, under the powerful impact of which even the guilt of history melts away. Concluding the circle of the past, the dynasty in its last two representative figures did not leave the scene of history without grandeur but atoning by leaving and not reviving by atoning, they left. There was no event of my entire life, neither the death of my fäther nor the final loss of my country, which has been engraved into my soul as profoundly as the death of Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie Hohenberg, at Serajevo on June 28, 1914. Schuschnigg in his book teils the same. This was the door from an age of light, joy and easy going life into one of darkness, sadness and deadly seriousness, and we knew it instinctively. I learned the terrible news, strolling in the aftemoon sun amidst cheerfül Viennese, who were all suddenly struck by the shadow of horror. My reaction was to flee the sun and prostrate myself beföre the mystery in the adjoining church, where only a few years ago I had resolved upon a Catholic life. Then I went Straight to my future wife, I, a boy of 19, and she, a girl of 15, to teil her that now a world war would come and Austria would be lost. Only few months later I joined up, a half year earlier than my age dass, with an elite regiment of South Tyrolean mountain infantry, ready to sacrifice my studies, my future, my life for my country. In those days, I had friends among the Catholic Austrian youth movement all over the empire Students workers and peasants, Czechs, Slovenes, Rumanians and Ruthenians yet primarily included among the German speaking Austrians of the Alpine, Sudeten and Carpathian countries, and there was not one among them, who would not have been ready to give everything for Austria. The death of Francis Ferdinand in 1914, and already before the death of Lueger in 1910, in reality deprived Austria of those two unique men, who certainly have been main assets for constructive reform of the empire and who in all probability would have been capable of molding the sacrifices and the enthusiasm of the Austrian youth of all nations into a token of regeneration and renovation expressing the vitality of the empire. They never got the chance of materializing their ideas of reform in the dimensions of the empire, because the old man on the Austrian throne did not even dream of leaving the military post, to which destiny seemed to have ordered him, and there was no constitutional law to prevent too young or too old an emperor from taking the principle of legitimacy too biologically, as it would be the inescapable sine qua non of a modern democracy which should not be exposed essentially to decay. Some historians say that crown prince Rudolph committed suicide (1889) in despair over the course of the empire which he would have liked to be much more guided in conformity with Western Europe, not with Germany. A reasonable Beginning of page 168 constitutional law, limiting the tenure of a senile monarch and providing a chance for his heir (as out of question as it ever has been under the auspices of the historic monarchies), might have turned the fate of Old Austria already then. This is not to say that there is any real indication that the ascent to the throne by Rudolph would have been in any way truly a lucky event for the 104 Austrian Monarchy. Francis Joseph may have been really right in preventing his son from attending to public business, for which he probably lacked the moral quality completely. When Francis Ferdinand later showed great concern in planning for his own reign, a Utopian law limiting monarchical sovereignty might have provided another chance, and this time perhaps the moral Qualifications were well met by the heir to the throne. In both instances, a kind of constitutional court should have existed. To ask for such an instance above the sovereignty of both monarch and dynasty would be also today the very minimum which any people would have to demand and upon whom the authorities of yesterday are forced by outside interference. This again is no moral judgment of an old man Francis Joseph, who was convinced to be doing his duty. He was the gravedigger of the empire inherited in consequence of his inability to cope with the national problem when he was a youth without experience, but still designed by the law of the dynasty which was supreme. Having missed the great chance of 1848, he could never make up for his historic fäilure. After having tried everything he finally rested on the most declivitous plan, clinging to its fringes with senile stubbornness. Francis Joseph is the most splendid Symbol of the truth that the hour of the European monarchy has passed already in the 19th Century, because there was no real chance to limit its sovereignty and to exclude too young and too old a man, and to subordinate the entire problem of succession to a constitutional procedure and instances above the monarchy. Francis Joseph personally somehow was wise enough to anticipate the end of the monarchy. In fäct he did what the Greeks always hoped their best tyrants would do: he resigned his Office not personally for himself, but symbolically för the dynasty. To leave his post would have been against his sense of duty. He would have regarded himself a deserter from an Obligation. Yet in fact be prepared the aftermath, more than anybody eise among those who really longed :for the end, not only by blunders in the field of the maltreated national question, but still more by constructive legislative enactments to solve the social question. We may well call this process "the democratization of the empire" even if it never reached its goal completely. Without this work of democratization carried out by Francis Joseph’s instinctive anticipation of the aftermath, the succession States would have collapsed still earlier than they did. This legacy of the emperor, in which he prepared the road for anyone who would once happily inherit his own problems, is worth-while mentioning in order to do full justice to an epoch and a personality. Francis Joseph might thereby as well have prepared the means of preserving the Austrian symbiosis of nations ,if he, would not have stuck with equal tenacity to the opposite instinct in foreign policy, a fact which always farced him back into the towing- rope of Bismarck Germany. As a consequence of this wrong instinct, deeply rooted in his dynastical ideology, he also never got rid of that poor technique in foreign policy which was only the translation of dynastical haughtiness into the basic language of diplomacy. This poor technique had made Austria the bete noire of Europe already in 1859 and 1866, and stil 1 in 1914 was mainly responsible for the fact that Austria and not Germany became in the school books of history the main guilty in unchaining World War I. 105 The idea to make up fbr the fäilure of decades by a war, a little on which however risked the world conflagration was the last political conception of which the Austrian - Hungarian Monarchy was capable. Thus was destroying by the tempest it had let lose according to the law of eternal justice “eye for eye and tooth for tooth”. The Old Austrian nations would nevertheless have spared themselves and the world a great deal of sufferings, if they had been wise enough not to insist on justice to be done but would have preferred to build the postwar world upon mercy, charity, love and civilized intelligence. If they had restricted their revenge, subordinated the idea of the Old Testament to that of the New Testament, and, either reförmed the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy in the time left, or, in case it would really have been destroyed by an avalanche or an earth-quake, started at once to reconstruct its authority and power in whatever form, monarchic or republican, they would not have exposed themselves to a similar revenge of the same justice the invoked, after they failed as well. If they blamed once the Monarchy to have been the anachronistic jail of its peoples, they simply reverted the Situation those having been the anvil now the hämmer, and thus prepared the ground in twenty years more than the Austrian Monarchy did in föur centuries, för the most systematic form of tyranny ever seen in history which, even if it had lasted only for a few years, may have consumed the national substance for generations. The fantastic idea, accepted by the victorious yet exhausted world in its delirium, that the six sovereign succession States would easier check a Germany, in which after her wings are clipped, the saps were inevitably rising, in fact has plunged the world into a second abyss. Page Missing I happen to know several of the statesmen and scholars, who have been Champions of the clamor 4ustria messe delendam. There were outstanding historic figures inside and outside Austria. I do not deny that each of them acted out of intellectual convictions and ethical decisions. They all had reasons enough to be against Austria. Yet I think I never saw in my life a sadder spectacle than some of these men, struggling under the impact of their own failures against fäte, going down with all they were Standing fo. With the most symbolic figures among them all, Otto Bauer, I shall deal later more explicitly. I well remember in 1933, when in the midst of the hottest constitutional struggle at home, I left for Switzerland, France and Belgium, and Bauer provided me with introductions to his party friends in those countries, his abrupt “No” and his wrinkles over the eyes, when I said to him: After the loss of power to your antipode, do you not think it was a mistake after all to destroy the Monarchy? I then meant the Monarchy and the monarchy. Only a year later, in 1934,1 was the first semi-official visitor of the new Austrian regime to Prague, where Eduard Benes still was foreign minister. In a dialogue in the Palais Czernin, to which I shall come back on its appropriate place, the host, still firmly rooted in the world of yesterday, explained to the visitor who had already crossed the threshold into a new world with completely different problems, why he thought that nothing had happened to make it necessary for him to revise his concepts. I had met Benes then for the first time and when I walked down the Hradcin afterwards still spellbound by so 106 incredible an optimism, I said to a friend who accompanied me: If the general staff of Czechoslovakia will not be more pessimistic than her foreign minister, I am afraid we shall hear in our lifetime that bombs have fallen on the Hradcin. They did not even fall, yet, because they didn’t, they were bound to fall elsewhere in throngs. In both Paris and London I became acquainted with the scholarly experts behind the political forces in Central Europe, who in prewar times were the only Westemers to know the complexities of the Austrian problem, who doubtlessly have gained great merits in dealing with questions their fellow countrymen were supposed not to know and also in insisting before Western European public opinion that the Austrian empire is ripe fbr reform, yet who nevertheless gravely erred in my opinion, when they eventually joined the chorus of the Austria messe delendam. In the more primitive view of the traditional Austrian patriotism they were as well “traitors” as the inner Austrian revolutionists, and although hanging on to this diluvial view had long become obsolete, the Austrian authoritarian regime had aristocratic press attaches here and there in Western capitals, who still shared it. Thus I had to find out fbr myself. A shorter contact with Robert William Seton-Watson, whose grateful reader I have been since high school days, and more frequent contacts with Henry Wickham Steed belong to my most pleasant memories. Their interest in Austria from 1933 to 1938 was a most serious concern, as they were the very Englishmen to know what the fall of Austria would mean fior the whole of Central Europe. I would not dare to say that I have understood them well enough to be the right Interpreter of their thoughts and its development through thirty years, yet it seemed to me that they were also were examples of the same kind of reasoning and arguing which I have found most classically represented in those years in Frenchmen, Page missing To stand for his old convictions, the liberty of the smaller nations, and nevertheless to compromise with a stronger conservative outlook he had once held not necessary or possible. But now found inevitable. No doubt, it was psychologically very natural that the Old Austrian nations did what they really did, and not what history demands from them, and that the Western intellectuals strengthened their negative not their positive convictions and trends. After centuries under dynastic rule, the nations could not really act as free bom and emancipated and their foreign advisors were not so much their educators than explorers. Nevertheless, it was more than unwise, how they acted both. It was the inevitable logic of history that the Monarchy which failed under Franz Joseph should be eliminated without grace. Yet as long as history has not decided, it is the function of man on earth to impress the logic of the spirit on the logic of nature. Even in the instance of dynastical leadership, the peoples might have eamed more grace themselves from history, if they had rather formalized and functionalized the Nordic heritage of monarchy and dynasty (as the British and Scandinavians did), had emphasized the populär trends within the traditional 107 set-up and had eliminated the trends of Machiavellism in it, instead of overthrowing it completely, even beföre they had a Substitute in hand. They did not have mercy, and they dearly paid for being just instead of merciful not only with the monarchy and dynasty, but with their fathers, who had lived and died for their then indisputable identity with the empire, and thus with the heritage of their fathers in their own blood and mind. Whoever wants to overcome the heritage of dynastical thinking in modern society, must well know the constructive substitute för a millennial function. Whoever does not know, acts thoughtlessly enough by skipping the monarchical tradition without a substitute at hand. Yet acting as he may, no repentance will ever be able simply to restore the continuity lost which alone has been the historic function of the monarchic form of government. Page missing And naturally en vedette, the Western European great powers, France and Great Britain, had to ask themselves how much of the bill presented to them by history and how much of the bürden they now have to bear alone has been due to a grim mistake about their own interest, a mistake as grotesque as hardly any ever conceived anywhere eise in history. While France from Richelieu over Napoleon I to Napoleon III has contested with Austria as a Continental power, yet has not really Struck her marrow, Great Britain from Pitt the elder over Gladstone to Neville Chamberlain has assisted, in good fäith to serve her own interests the most decisive deeds of Fredrick II, Bismarck and Hitler, through which the gradual destruction of Austria has been accomplished. Without the assistance of Great Britain there would not have happened the three most fateful steps of Austrian decline Prussia-German rise to power. This is the historic reason why now the bürden pressing on the shoulders of the British people is so heavy. Looking out into the füture of Central Europe, for which Western and Eastern Europe will have to lay out the frame, it is not enough to curb the negative force without reconstituting the positive force as well, and it is not enough to reconstitute the positive fbrce in general but it remains the indispensable task ahead to create a substitute for the Austrian empire, the federation of smaller nations around the Danube basin, not as a Monarchy again, not even as a monarchy of monarchies, but as a republican union of republics, which will combine many small nations into a Strong regional power well capable of raising its voice in the concert of the world and laying its power and influence onto the scales of history again. Only this better Central Europe will really both counterbalance and reeducate for humanity its worse brother. 108 Chapter Two The Republic (§22) When, after having expounded the glory of history which was Greater Austria, we tackle the twenty years of Little Austria, poor and weak, isn't it really, after conversing eye to eye with the etemal transparency of our fathers in our own life, like coming back to talk merely of oneself, so tiny a link between two oceans? In spite of this indisputable contrast, however, there is no power on earth which would be g| strong enough, to wrest this other glory, worthy and noble as wel 1, from the Austrians who were the acting figures of their country during the period between the two world wars, the glory of having played with grandeur a part, unique and sublime, a world part in a little country. This has been, in fact, the moral idea of the "Second Austria" which will well distinguish her forever from predecessor and successors. Having been myself among both the private and the public characters of this Austrian generation between the two World Wars, a pawn for the most time, something of a rook only for a while, and never king or queen I may have some advantages in telling what this generation was really like. Did those of this generation, darkened sometimes in their very hearts by the shadows of parricidal deeds as well as by the vision of other catastrophes to come, ever falter under the strain of knowledge that theirs would only be a fragmentary history? Did even those who joined the main actors in the drama in voluntary solidarity with their people, and not in Identification with and recognition of its most suicidal deeds, ever stumble regretting their decision? We founded families and offered children to a world in which we knew that life would never be that which it continued to be to others. We dreamt as keenly and worked as unflinchingly, as any generation ever did before, clinging to the fringe of hope that this would contribute to save the world from the consequences of the fate enforced upon us .We studied and discussed Plato and Kant and Augustine, as loftily as it was ever done. We analyzed and criticized Aristotle and Hegel and Thomas Aquinas, as if it were the safest of all societies. We interpreted Marx anew and rediscovered the Romantic theory of the state. We intensified the knowledge of and the belief in our own history and learned to see the saints behind the statesmen. We thus found new avenues into the spiritual focus of civilization. Not all of us did all these things, or did them equally devotedly. Yet I wonder, whether there has been in postwar Europe elsewhere a country, victorious or defeated, where there was life, spiritual and intellectual, pitched to so high a level, and so high a percentage of youth involved in it. Today, not only a few will know that it was the füllest life which any generation ever lived, and that it was therefore fuller in postwar Austria than anywhere eise, because it was guaranteed by our little country, free and independent, emerging in defeat from the broken ramparts of a great past and steering courageously into an obscure future, the hope for which nobody sure of himself must ever forsake. True as it is, that the abundance of spirituality in the little country was not its creation, but a heritage, it easily could become its asset. The overwhelming majority of these intellectual energies was either ready to serve their country from the very beginning or 109 could easily be brought into line by excelling statesmanship, if one would emerge. Here the great responsibility of the political parties which had become identical with the state sets in. Only the continuous predominance of merely political problems, and prevalently such of a minor order indeed, in a state which, as a matter of fact, had to struggle continuously for its moral balance, eventually wasted this intellectual Capital willing to serve. The political parties did not understand to captivate the intellect, and fact explains why to an ever growing extent a good deal of the intellectuals as well as the bulk of those who considered themselves as such alienated from both the political life and the state. There are too many talents in this country, was the classical sentence of a bourgeois politician, who stood helplessly before the problem which was Austria, where in fact intellectual life sparkled more abundantly than generally useful for the conservatism of political parties. Thus the great chance of rebuilding the country squarely in the midst of a new world, the spiritual pivot of which she still continued to be and for which she had the main experts in every field, was missed in the end, and general frustration, of which there was only one usufructuary, was the final outcome. When the political parties in Charge of the postwar country eventually lost streams of the Austrian intelligentsia to irrational rat-catchers, they had to accuse themselves of exactly the same sin, for which they once held the former dynasty guilty, namely to have not a sufficient number of above-average architects of politics within their own ranks. As little as a more self-conscious minority of the Austrian intelligentsia was offset by this failure of the political parties, and as little as they therefore wanted to exchange their generation or their country, as much did the majority gradually leam to clamor for a bigger world to fulfill their dreams. This was the intelligentsia, not the people. The republic could satisfy them less than the monarchy, and the political parties of the republic had taken over a harderjob in this respect than ever the dynasty had before. Out of divided guilt, the political parties as much guilty as the bulk of the intelligentsia itself, these Austrian lawyers, physicians, chemists, engineers, teachers, state's officials, who dreamt of Greater Germany, did never leam what most politicians eventually learned, that this Little Austria was a great chance of history and a grander place to live and to work in than the greatest Germany. The transubstantiation of the Austrian name and idea which was the consequence of defeat in war, the shrinkage of imperial abundance and prodigality into local scarcity, and the diminution in quantity but intensification of quality, all this was like the retum of a man to himself, a man who was used to pour out his soul into thousand interests and problems, but now at last set out to come home again into his truer being and his deeper meaning. In the spiritual light of history this was like the return of the prodigal son to his father. Yet it cannot surprise that under the appalling impact of a gigantic wreckage which the empire of four centuries left behind no Austrian could really see the blessings of defeat. Instinctively, some thought it better to be defeated than under the German yoke, but only from a much greater distance and under the aspect of what Germany has become can the defeat of Austria in World War I really be judged a greater luck than the most majestic victory could ever have been. Not only because Austria fought actually on the wrong side, but even if she had been justified in asking 110 satisfaction for the murder of the heir to the throne and thus would have fought her own "just war", she might well have served civilization more by being defeated than by being victorious. The blessings of history for defeated peoples in general were multiplied thousand fold in this specific instance. This is no lofty exaggeration for the sake of national morale. There are few nations, whoever grasped the blessings of defeat, and there were logically also ever only a few people aware that the blessings of Austria had been thousand fold. Yet moral deficiencies in grasping the truth do not change historic facts. If Austria would have won the war, being as she had become the vassal of Germany, she would but have intensified German hegemony over Europe with a logically diminishing and gradually vanishing chance to do anything for her higher interest. Probably in a later stage, the vassalage of Austria would have become a serious problem of Germany, and the Austrians of all tongues, then still in the same boat, might commonly have found the right front where to stand. Whether this right front, however, after Germany's victory in world War I would ever have had another chance to recover and whether particularly even a greater Austrian vassal state, notwithstanding the convictions of its populace, could have contributed much to this result, is another question. Only Austria's defeat, therefore, could bring her Straight back to her historic mission always anti-German in case of German aggression - and gradually prepare her for a fuller life to come out of her own spiritual resources. As much as the Austrians may have resented this fact and struggled against the scheme of re-education applied upon them history enforced it and the sounder instincts of the Austrian people accepted the enforcement, by which the mistakes of two generations, represented by one man, Francis Joseph, were corrected. Thus, this judgment refers to both monarchy and empire as well, which in the hands of the last two representatives of the dynasty, too long a reign and too short a reign together, have driven down the road to the self-inflicted end. If Austria would have been victorious at least to the degree to preserve on this account even only a fringe of the past, some type of the constitutional monarchy a la Great Britain and some continuity of the Danubian Empire, she might have suffered less, and might have kept a state of mind more innocent and virginal. As any more lasting achievements in both respects, monarchy and empire would have been feasible only as the fruit of Cooperation among all the national interests concemed, this kind of limited victory or defeat might even have spared the world a new catastrophe. It could have laid out the ground for that attitude of mercy instead of justice, of which we talked before. Yet if Austria in doing so would never have been able eventually to free herseif from the negative bürden of tradition, of which the merely biological Interpretation of the principle of legitimacy was a part, she would in fact never have become self- responsible and self-reliable, never have acquired the maturity of national sovereignty and never have experienced what it really means to lose it .We would never have learned have eaten from the tree of knowledge, and thus never have leamed how to distinguish by ourselves between good and evil. As this tree has been planted by human hands, and the rules were made by those who laid first hands on it, the commandment not to eat the prohibited fruit thereby only meant that man in favor of another man's 111 arrogated higher Status abstains from doing so, even after the other, responsible before God and history, had eaten first and then opened the door to the people to go and eat next. We would never have fallen, but also never have gained, o felix culpa the strength and wisdom to contribute the full share which is ours to our own salvation. We might have been extinguished without ever having been aflame. No nation which has experienced two decades of a republic and, afterwards the hell on earth can psychologically go back to the monarchy. Trifies which had been a matter of reverence before, Symbols, uniforms, titles and etiquettes, have become, even among those formerly adhering to them, a matter of mild ridicule at best and as past in their imaginations as anything past can be. We shall never be back in that paradise of our childhood, where we did not know yet what the sufferings, the passions, the agonies of peoples might amount to when civilization really cracks. But we shall, if we still have any mettle left, be prouder, wiser and happier on this earthly place after these catastrophes than we have ever been before, We shall look back at the Monarchy as something we have not to be sorry for, if we think of our fathers, but which to have, surpassed the fathers on their stars of destiny must not be sorry for their sons.

(§ 23) The case of the Austrian Republic which was solemnly created by the German speaking rump of the Old Austrian parliament the day after the armistice on the Western front (November 12, 1918) provides one of the most illustrative examples for the sociological mechanism of legitimacy and revolution in modern history. The ideology of political revolution, according to the English, American and French pattern, as different from social revolution (which means the promotion of social progress with every means short of changing the legitimate authority), never had any particular meaning to Central Europe at all. For two entirely different, even antagonistic reasons which clearly indicate the inner tension of the Central European scene throughout the eons of history. "Revolution" did not mean anything to the Lutheran North, because its authoritarian ideology suffocated any impulses of liberty in a country which was never reached by the Roman Limes, or to the Catholic South, whose people, on the contrary, exactly the Roman continuity of their social cosmos, were too free to be ever really touched by the temptation to risk the reality of liberty in favor of its ideology. Thus there was never any "German revolution" in 1848 comparable to the Western pattern nor any "Austrian revolution" then or since worthwhile to omit the quotation marks, although for convenience's sake we continue to speak of them. All attempts to create post festum a mythology of revolution among the Austrians could never succeed, as they knew too well that there never was any need for a revolution in Order to be free in Austria. How much this was different among some of the non-German nationalities of the Monarchy, is not the place to go through in detail here. This only ought to be said that even here it was not the lack of "liberty" which caused some phenomena similar to a revolution, but the lack of "freedom", not the lack of modern individual rights which have incited the classical revolutions of history, but the lack of 112 national sovereignty which was denied to them. Among the Czechs, whose national sovereignty had been eliminated by Austria in favor of Hungary and who certainly at the end were the most revolutionized of all the Old Austrian nationalities, a revolutionary nucleus existed in exile. Yet this nucleus was in fact an Allied government with a revolutionary ideology, whose revolutionary deeds reached down to the end neither the regiments substance of the Czech people at home nor of the Czech regiments in the Austrian army, and what later has been called the "Czech revolution” was in fact the classical case of legal continuity covered by a revolutionary terminology. There might be less reason to speak of the "Hungarian revolution" as something "phony", as in this most tragic case really a surge of national passion led to revolutionary actions, suicidal in themselves, although even here certain features of legality and continuity are not absent. In Austria proper an intellectual elfte within the German Austria labor movement, mainly of Jewish descent, ideologically determined by the black and red and yellow ideology of 1848 and by German Marxism, but practically more decisively influenced by the Czech Propaganda and attitude than usually avowed, afterwards tried hard to make interpretations of events identical in Austria with those in Germany, where after the armistice something of a revolution would have taken place, if the conservative powers would not have preferred to avoid the clash. How much it really was, is of no particular interest here, where it is sufficient to emphasize that at least for the German Marxists in Austria there was a German revolution which they were eager to transplant. Structurally, the Czech, the Hungarian, the Austrian and the German revolution of 1918 altogether need some euphemism to be called so. Any posthumous mythology cannot change history such as it actually happened. There can be no doubt as to the way of events, in which at least the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy and the creation of the succession States came about. To see through all these occurrences with incorruptible eyes and not to be the victim of any mythologizing Interpretation, might be of some avail to a generation which, victorious or vanquished, has to pass through the conditions of 1918 again. To know precisely how it really happened may cut short many illusions and avoid many sufferings. This less awe-struck Interpretation of the revolution of 1918,1 repeat, is no attempt to deny that revolutionary activities existed in war time Austria and contributed their share to the collapse of the Monarchy. Only if we de-mythologize¥ these contributions, however, shall we be less deceived about the realities of history. There were first of all the Czech intellectuals abroad, Masaryk and Benes, who had arrived at the conviction that any hope for the solution of the Czech problem within the Monarchy and the restitution of national sovereignty to the Czech rather people by the crown had become Utopian Romanticism and therefore waged war against Austria-Hungary from outside than attempted revolution from inside. They did not find any support at home which could really be called even the preparation of revolution. Existing tendencies of revolutionary activities inside the Czech people, ratherA artificially puffed up by anti¬Czech elements in army and bureaucracy, had been skillfully paralyzed by the amnesty which emperor Charles granted in 1917, and of which Kramar, sentenced to death, drew 113 the main profit. There also was the left wing of the German Austrian Social Democratic Party ander the leadership of Jewish intellectuals like Friedrich Adler and Otto Bauer who worked for the revolution inside the country, yet generally speaking also without real resonance and success. Exactly this apathy of the own party comrades was the reason of an appalling crime, which wanted to inflame the masses. Adler, the son of the old party leader, killed, to his father's deepest despair, the Austrian Prime Minister, Karl Stürkgh not as a personal, but as a symbolic enemy, in what some called a heroic deed, while others, also the majority of labor, named it a cowardly assassination (1916). This was the action of a desperado, to be sure, not of a constructive statesman to come, or of the heir of a truly great leader which the old Adler had really been, Hence it was no beacon starting a revolution, nor even the signal for any sequence of similarly herostratic deeds which would have resulted in a revolution. Without a hopeless military Situation which was the final outcome of a military vabanque and in its last analysis the heritage of half a Century of a catastrophic, if not treacherous foreign policy, the Austrian empire, even its dual form supposed, could easily have coped with still more extravagant actions without having to fear a real revolution. In other words, even the very problematic structure of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy could well stand these revolutionary activities. If this truth had been fully assimilated by the world, perhaps the entire attitude of the Western powers toward postwar Germany would have been more realistic. No doubt, the masses of all the Austrian nations were long fed up with a war in which the pursuance of German interests was so pre dominant. Their intellectual avant guard, the Czech intellectuals abroad directly indirectly and the Jewish intellectuals of the German Austrian labor movement directly, tried their best to revolutionize the masses. They had some success, not the last because the one group, recognized by the Allies as a government in nuce had access to the Austrian-Hungarian prisoners of war, out of whom a new army for the war against Austria-Hungary could be formed while the other group was largely able to use the instances of various government by law, the parliament, various governmental agencies and even the desks in the ministry of war for its purposes. There was no autocratic regime of the army capable of eliminating definitely the constitutional frame, even if under its cover the revolution might progress. There were occasional excesses of military authorities, but there was much more Cooperation and arrangement between the latter and the representatives of populär interests than generally understood. Yet in spite of these well entrenched revolutionary activities, whose headquarters very often were close to the military ones, the apathy of the over whelming majority of the people everywhere, their antipathy against revolution, their inbom loyalty to the existing regime and last but not least the existence of a yet unbroken army discipline would never have permitted any revolution, capable of overthrowing the Monarchy, before the military defeat of the Central Powers in the fields of both East and West was an accomplished fact. It is quite obvious here, how the mythology of revolution and the mythology of German invincibility Supplement each other, and how problematic and dangerous it is for armies and Commanders in the field to wait for or even to work for revolution among the Opponent. 114 The military defeat of the Central Powers did not Start, however, with the weakest partners, Bulgaria and Turkey, as it is generally assumed, although they actually concluded the first armistices, but it began, quite contrary to the subsequent Version of German mythology, with the breakdown in military morale of the strongest member among the Central Powers, Germany, whose armies in the West under Hindenburg and Ludendorff were already in July 1918 decisively defeated by Foch on the Mame and knew it well from its supreme commander down to the rank and file. Without this military defeat of the German armies and its acceptance by their military leaders, although the fact was publicly acknowledged by Ludendorff only three previous months later, there would have been no revolution either in Germany, or still less in Austria including Bohemia, whose army, strangely enough, was much more revolution- proof and much less infected by the Propaganda of the hinterland. The masses of the people and of the army did not and could not participate in revolutionary activities, nor could they be reached by them. Both Czech and Viennese regiments kept on fighting even in the last days of the war. The real collapse was not incited by the ???? revolution, but by military defeat and still more by the acknowledgment of this military defeat, in its first phase always a problematic fact, by the German high command. When Ludendorff himself for the first time gave up the game (August 8), a crown council at Spa (August 15) arrived at the idea of a new peace feeler, but did not fully communicate to Germany*s allies, how matters really stood. It still required new blows by a concentrated offensive of the Allied Powers, until Ludendorff was ready to communicate his own moral breakdown to the allied sovereigns (September 29). He covered himself behind the collapse of Bulgaria, but this was but a bashful paraphrase of his own bewilderment. The news from Germany, as much as they struck the unprepared, met wishes fostered in Austria, since Charles, the grandnephew of Francis Joseph and nephew of Francis Ferdinand, had taken over the reign (November 21, 1916). Charles has never lost sight of the fact that Ludendorffs collapse decided the outcome of the war and was simultaneously the very chance for Austria to severe herseif from Germany. When I met him in 1919 at Disentis, Grisons, and the deposed monarch opened himself up to the unknown but loyal youth, he was of nothing surer and nothing stuck more in his mind. In his innermost convictions, he was the man who could have tumed away the Monarchy, if it was to survive, from the German course, as soon as the outside world would grasp the opportunity to help the Monarchy in this respect, not to destroy it, when it just began grappling to separate itself from its partner. The new emperor, through his brother-in-law, Sixtus Bourbon-Parma, had first arrived at most hopeful peace talks with the other side which ever existed during World War I to initiate a peace "without victors and vanquished". In spite of many concessions, Charles, however, could not achieve anything because of the final obstinacy of Italy which wanted to destroy Austria-Hungary, for good. Blinded by the prospect of imperialism undreamt of before, Italy tragically deceiving herseif forgot that, as the desired anarchy of the Northern sphere would certainly not prevail for good, the weaker Austrian partner in the Alpine valleys and on the Adriatic shores would 115 always be preferable for her to the stronger German partner. Perhaps Italian influence would not have been decisive in the long run, and additional talks might have been more successful, if the foreign minister of Austria-Hungary Ottokar Czernin, purposely or clumsily, had not provoked Clemenceau to reveal the facts and thereby to close the door to further negotiations. The imperial minister, who had been much more pro-German than Charles was, thus forced his exposed emperor into an intensified "German course" within and without the empire, whether this was his true intention or not. The consent to this course against his will by Charles was the revelation of the elementary weakness in his psychology and character which perhaps did not exceed that of that of the average statesman of his age, but at any rate should have been less for his above-average task ahead. Charles longed to liberale himself ever since from the course to which his foreign minister had committed him anew. When therefore Ludendorff offered him the opportunity, he was more glad than sad to get out of a conflict and an alliance, which he had resented from the very day he had ascended to the throne. The consequences of defeat would accelerate the end of this alliance, he was sure, but might nevertheless result in the creation of a new Austria, if both the Victors and the peoples of the Monarchy would be wise enough to save at least a formal union among the new national States to come. For this task, the emperor held himself ready and supposed he would have found the help outside and inside the Monarchy, would certainly have been not the least fit to play the new role of the constitutional Symbol of a modernized and democratized empire. By asking Wilson for an armistice (October 3) the Central Powers before the world forum admitted their military defeat. This was their last common action. Henceforth their roads separated rapidly. Charles, freed from German guardianship, acted now at last, as he,- provided his personage would have been above the average in political skill and shrewdness - ought to have acted courageously already two years before. The public opinion of the Monarchy, considering him the heir of Francis Ferdinand's plans of rebuilding the empire, might have followed him who stuck enthusiastically at that time. Charles, however, who stuck to the ideas of, and Personalities selected by his uncle in many instances, was by no means of the political stature Francis Ferdinand was supposed to be, although he never had the chance to show it. Charles carried out a mere caricature of what Francis Ferdinand might have tried to do, and moreover he did that only two years after the date which the uncle had set for it, namely the ascendance to the throne. At the very end of the imperial road of the Monarchy, Charles through his Austrian prime minister, Max Hussarek, offered national self-determination, at least to the Austrian half of the empire, by an imperial manifeste which instigated ex auctoritate the formation of national councils (October 17). Although the union of the empire was still formally emphasized thereby, this was in fact the recognition of national sovereignties by the emperor, wherever these national councils would get into shape. By this Step, although nine months post festum Wilson's idea was partly materialized, and simultaneously the national aspirations of the Italians recognized (Point 9) and the Poles discharged from the Monarchy (Point 13). 116 The basic deficiency of the entire action, however, was that Hungary was left out of the scheme of federalization. The Magyars under Istvän Tisza and Sandor Wekerle, the real leader of the gentry and its Swabian rubber-stamp, still resisted, in the most grotesque Isolation from reality which had been their political atmosphere and heritage since time immemorial, every concession which, on the other hand, the emperor himself, who feit bound by the coronation oath, did not dare to wrest from them. Two years previously, before the coronation in Hungary which Tisza had all interest to arrange already for the month after Charles' ascent to the throne, the emperor might have been able to provide self-govemment for the entire empire, fulfilling the testament of Francis Ferdinand and anticipating Wilson. He would not have risked any complication, if he would have chosen a Situation of the war, in which Germany might have been wisely reluctant to come to any real defense of the Austrian-Hungarian dualism. In practice this would have meant the switch to Austrian Slavonic course, and the emperor of Austria ought to have decided first to be crowned king of "Bohemia before consenting to be only crowned king of Hungary under entirely new conditions. I know only of an Outsider in politics (Richard Kralik), whoever seriously proposed this idea to the young couple on the Austrian throne. Certainly, this retum to the foundations of the empire would have been considered revolution by many Magyars and Germans alike, and would have required a great statesman, solitary and bold, for its accomplishment. To wait for advisers in such a matter was equal to dropping it. In abstracto, the monarch still had the power at that time to reconstitute the empire by his own actions, only through insisting to play with the symbolic assets of his crown in the right sequence. Yet Charles was not the man to pilot the empire in so bad a tangle. He was a noble soul, ready to suffer and to sacrifice himself, yet in the 20th Century still less what Francis Joseph ought to have been in the 19th Century. His later spiritual friend, the Romansch Benedictine Father Mauras Camot of Disentis once told me that he jokingly said of himself that his ambitions in his youth were to become the head of the Austrian postal administration, not even a general, much less an emperor. When Wilson formulated his 14 Points, of which the modemization of Austria- Hungary was one (Point 10), it had become too late for Charles to save the empire, after he had tied himself voluntarily to the Hungarian view, for which any surrender of historic rights was out of question. Moreover, the Western powers had in the meantime recognized the Czechoslovak govemment in exile as an ally. After Masaryk had proclaimed Czechoslovak independence at Washington (October 18), Wilson's ans wer to Austria-Hungary (October 19), abandoning the idea of the modemization of the Monarchy and recognizing the sovereignty of both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, in fact meant the definite liquidation of any hope for the federalization if the empire in legal continuity. Only two days after the last attempt in this latter direction had been made by the Austrian govemment in issuing Charles' manifesto, the lights of centuries went out, extinguished by the very fact that the spokesman of the Western world did not recognize any longer the until then still existing legitimacy. While the action of Charles tried to save the Monarchy, yet was too late politically, and still worse too fragmentary (though there is nothing ever too late historically, as fragmentary as it may be), the 117 action of Wilson, on the basis of Masaryk's advice, in fact provided the finishing stroke to the Monarchy and to all it stood for both historically and politically. Having been too late for the representative of legal continuity to make up for the shortcomings of a Century, it would, nevertheless, never have been too late for both the Victors and the peoples of the Monarchy themselves to arrive at the modemization of the entire imperial structure, and if not more of the Monarchy, then at least of the economic and political coexistence behind it. There might still have been a vague idea on the part of the Victors that also sovereign nations in the Danube basin without a common Symbol could voluntarily reunite and even, as Masaryk naively believed, shaped a much stronger dike against the German tide than the historic organism of the Austrian Monarchy under the leadership of a discredited German dynasty. There are indications that Colonel Eduard M. House thought so and later even regretted that there was no Provision in the peace treaties to provide for the succession States some kind of frame, political or even only economical, which would have forced them together. If these peace treaties prohibited the Anschluss of Austria to Germany, they could have imposed upon the succession States complementary restrictions of their sovereignty as well. Wilson's attitude towards Austria-Hungary was by no means antithetical from the very Start. It was logical, however, that the influence of Masaryk would gradually lead in another direction. Nevertheless, all the Western powers acted at the end, as if they had been rather convinced of the proverbial Austrian miracle and were sure that after all the Habsburg Monarchy could not be completely destroyed, even not by their own errors. They all counted vaguely on some kind, of recrystallization in the Danube basin. But if such vague ideas were still existent among the Victors, they did not guide them consistently. Instead of preserving as much of the common agencies of the Monarchy as possible, even if eventually for a federation of republics, the victors encouraged, or at least did not discourage, disintegration to the point, where no reintegration was possible any longer for the entire next generation.

(§24) The disintegration of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, political and military, proceeded at a rapidly accelerating pace after Charles' manifesto and Wilson's death- sentence. The representatives of the various nations retumed from Vienna to their native cities to create the new national States. They were legitimized to do so within the frame of the imperial manifesto, but they all knew that they would never retum to Vienna to sit down in the house on the Ringstrasse and they all were glad about it. They did not, however, undertake the last steps of Separation at once. The Czech National Council (Narodni vybor) at Prague and the Yugoslav National Council (Narodno vijece) at Zagreb existed already, now to become in consequence of Wilson's answer the acting agencies of States to be created in an environment, in which still the authority of the Austrian army was paramount. The Poles and the Italians did not belong to the empire any longer, but also in their territory there was still the old authority. The Rumanians of the Bukovina constituted their national council at Czernowitz (October 18), the Ruthenians of Eastern Galicia at Lwow (October 19), under the same conditions, soon 118 to be ready to go their own roads, yet still hesitating for a while to draw the last consequences. When the final tum arrived, the latter even said farewell to the empire (October 22) The Ruthenians were not far from doing the same and might have done so, if they could have foreseen, under what conditions they would eventually return to Vienna - into exile. Most Old Austrian nations departed from the past without looking back. None of them, however, greeted the severance of age-old relations as hysterically as the one who was to suffer most and to recognize its guilt least, the Magyars, whom Charles, as equivalent for the Austrian manifesto, had offered (October 15) a personal union. Also the parliamentarians of the German parties in the Austrian Parliament, Christian Socialists, Social Democrats and German Nationals (the later Greater Germans) assembled, symbolically in the building of the Lower Austrian Estates (where once the March revolution of 1848 started),and founded the German Austrian National Council (October 21). For the first time, and more articulated than the others had dared so far, they spoke of their sovereign state which wants to regulate its relations with the other nations by mutual agreements. They constituted themselves as the Provisional National Assembly of German Austria, as they called the new state, and quite contradictory to this resolute contribution to the dissolution of the empire, claimed for the new state the entire German speaking territory of the Austrian half of the Monarchy, including the Sudeten Germans of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. Although these German speaking regions did not form any territorial unity and thus could hope to be one state only within the frame of the Monarchy or its substitute, constituted by föderative agreements among the Old Austrian nations, the German Austrian parliamentarians did everything in their power to counteract both chances. This was the birthday of the new Austria much more than the final date of November 12, when the Austrian Republic was formally established. Austria thus was in fact the first and not the last sovereign state carved out of the Monarchy’s legacy, although the Austrians would have had all interest to be the last one. If there was any revolution at all in those days which went beyond the imperial manifesto, it was this parliamentary revolution which unanimously proclaimed German Austria. Nevertheless, Viktor Adler still spoke of the union of free peoples, to which German Austria would like to belong if her neighbors would equally wish so, and he referred to the possible union with Germany only as an inevitable expedient in case the neighboring nations would not like to agree on any new federation. Even of Charles did Adler half jokingly say in those days to one of the emperor’s entourage: "You can be sure, whether as king of Austria or as emperor of Southeastern Europe, nothing will happen to that gentleman". The older generation still did not believe in its own profession of republicanism. Although the younger generation was much more aware of what it really wanted, yet also Otto Bauer, a few days later on occasion of the Social Democratic party congress (November 1), took the same stand of priority for the Danube federation as compared with the Anschluss, only a shade more skeptical as to whether the other nations would really agree to restore what they just were going to destroy. 119 During this political self-dissolution of an empire, the imperial army without a country already, but still consisting of all the nations, whose parliamentary representatives had left for their homes, fought the last battle which visionary skeptics had foretold years ago, doomed beforehand but going down with flying colors in many a heroic action. This has been the soldier tradition of the "I and R" (imperial and royal) Austrian army, an organism of four centuries, fighting in thousand battles for European civilization, which makes one proud to have been part of it, even if it stood on the wrong side for a lost cause in final failure. Tragic as the end has been, it still was distinguished by miracles of loyalty and discipline performed by regiments from every one of the empire's nations which once made the Service in this polyglot army so unique and exciting alike. This end was the armistice with Italy and what entered into the books of history in the Italian version as the victory of Vittorio Veneto (October 24 - November 3) nearly four months after the backbone of the German armies' offensive power had been broken on the Marne. During this battle, Gyula Andrasay, Jr. (d. 1929) the last foreign minister of the Monarchy, son of the man who once as its first concluded the alliance with Bismarck Germany, conveyed to J Wilson the last attempt of the empire to be dealt with as an existing quality. Recognizing both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia as sovereign States, the dispatch formally accomplished the Separation from Germany by asking for a separate peace (October 28). The gesture did not save even the wreckage of the empire. Yet it was only now that the Czechoslovak and Yugoslav States were really created (October 29) principally on the same basis on which the German Austrian state existed already for a week. The Czechs were making revolution, as their historian Pekar sneered, after it had been "officially permitted". It was now that the authority of the Austrian army ceased to exist. But this was simply the logical consequence of the fact that in all Austrian countries only minorities were revolutionary active and that the imperial authority itself facilitated an organic evolution. Thus it was completely superfluous to wage adventures against the decaying, but even then still formidable power of the empire in self-liquidation. This is why I have called the "Czech revolution" of 1918 a classical example of legal continuity connecting two regimes although this reality is covered sometimes by the ideology or even mythology of revolution. A much more genuine revolution, if we do not want to call it merely another phase in the most systematic harakiri performed by an entire race, occurred in those days at Budapest, where latvän Tisza was killed, Michael Karolyi took the oath to the king as his last prime minister for 4-8 hours, was released from the oath and proclaimed the republic, and Oscar Jäszi in stränge last negotiations with the TransyIvanian Rumanians tried to save a kind of Hungarian federation half a Century too late. The Hungarian governments of the past under the fateful leadership of the gentry had contributed their deadly share to the petrification of the empire which made any modernization impossible. Now the MagyarA masses of the Capital, among them in their overwhelming majority the Magyarized non-Magyars whose acquisition through, the last Century was the political pride of the gentry, threw over board the traditional regime in a revolutionary intoxication which bore, with still greater excesses ahead, the most 120 violent reaction in its womb. According to the entire structure of Hungarian society, the Hungarian People's Republic (November 16), whose president was Karolyi, could only be an intermezzo of a few months to be followed soon by the Hungarian Soviet Republic (under the leadership of Bela Kun) which again after a few months and unspeakable sadism was followed by the inevitable reaction of the conservative strata of society, for which eventually the former vice-admiral Nicholas Horthy became the symbol (1920). Under Horthy the power of the gentry was restored as absolutely as it ever was by curtailing again the franchise (1925/26). Thus the "Hungarian Revolution", incarnated by the names of Karolyi and Kun, was in the long run but the intensification of the gentry’s rule which, after it destroyed the Monarchy got hands free now to destroy its own country. While there were no revolutions except in the posthumous mythology at Vienna and Prague, the same intention to preserve legality alive in the authorities of the vanishing state was not strong enough to care similarly for Hungary, and thus a revolution occurred at Budapest (as equally at Munich). While the Czechs knew to he allies of the Victors, and the Austrians still hoped for the miracle of national self- determination, the Magyars were at once aware that their millennial existence had collapsed. Thus two factors contributed everywhere to the existence and the non- existence of revolution. The large contingent of Magyarized non-Magyars in the blood- stream of the Magyar nation also contribute inevitably to the outbreak and the terror of the Hungarian revolution, in which the hatred against the former leaders into the abyss, the disappointment of having lost a ruling position once bought for character, and internal racial antipathy coincided pitching the national chaos to unheard heights. More than any other country would Hungary have profited from continuity and legality. Also politically speaking should the gentry have not been dispensed from sharing fully in the postwar responsibility for the chaos which was its creation. The twofold revolution allowed the gentry to retum as the savior. There can be not the slightest doubt that the postwar reconstruction in both Austria and Czechoslovakia were possible, because there was no revolution in Vienna and Prague, while on the contrary the revolutions in Budapest and Munich have decisively to do with the later emergence of the hysterical, irrational nationalism there to involve eventually the whole of Central Europe. In this entire tragedy, the liquidation of four hundred years of glorious history within a couple of excited days, the question arises automatically, how many of these events were inevitable catastrophes like avalanches or earth-quakes are, and which of them could have prevented by a different attitude of man, and to whom it feil to display this attitude. All the new national States in their first solemn declarations established their independence and sovereignty .They cut the ties among each other with a joyful heart like boys resenting tutelage. None of them wanted to preserve anything of the community which they just grimly liquidated. Their former common authority was in contempt helpless to do anything eise than resign. The new authority of the world at large which was in the making was far from being aware that the mere disappearance of a common authority in some part of Europe would in the end not facilitate, but aggravate its own problems. Yet, all these circumstances did not necessarily mean the 121 complete rupture of the common frame of yesterday, as long as Vienna would steer statesmanlike some more constructive course and thereby perhaps demonstrate to both Partners and Victors that military collapse must not implicitly mean political liquidation. As the empire was created from its Archimedian point on the Danube at Vienna, thus any sovereign govemment which rules Austria from Vienna may at any time do similar things, if not create an empire which is not up-to-date any longer, then at least create the political conditions, under which in the long run the neighbors will always be glad to come to Vienna to administer commonly the common interests.

(§25) For the Austrian government in 1918/19 it would perhaps not have needed more than the spontaneous recognition of those historic facts which later the peace treaty of St. Germaine forced upon the new state. The mere consciousness of being Old Austria's legal heir, if entertained from the very Start by the new state and not only later forced upon the Austrian Republic by the outside world, might then have been a constructive force of utmost importance. Neither the dignity which ought to be in the defeated, nor the fact that the national pride was wounded by the desertion of the partners should have been denied, if only the resentments on these two accounts could be overcome. Such statesman like action by parliamentarians, however, was still less to be expected than that the emperors of old should have acted as above average rulers. After all, they were both the functions of the same atmosphere. Thus the parliamentarians went ahead quite as unhesitatingly as the young Francis Joseph in one respect, while in the other they were as helpless, yet not as humble, as Charles in his plight. In its historic causality, the creation of the German Austrian state on October 21 and of the German Austrian Republic on November 12 were the most decisive deeds of Separation, more decisive than the creation of all other succession States, because they eliminated defmitely the hold of the central Symbol, the crown or its legitimate föderative successor, on the Austrian soil proper and thereby excluded the rebuilding of a bridge which might have connected the old empire with a new federation, monarchic or republican, to be shaped in the future. While all succession States were afraid that any new union among each other would tend to become monarchic and thus they rather spoiled the idea than risking the retum of the dynasty, the task of the Austrian state, monarchy or republic, would have been to prove that the reconstitution of this union means the unum necessarium, independently from the form of government, and to enlist for this purpose, even if the aim would have been the republican federation of republic, the Cooperation of the former monarch which in all probability would have granted without flinching. History has proved that the republican succession States out of their own dynamics and interests were not able to arrive at the necessary creation of a Danube federation which should have continued the positive tradition of the Monarchy. This failure with its catastrophic results makes the historic speculation permissible, whether perhaps even the mere figurehead of an emperor at Vienna, as Charles was resigned to be, excluded from every real political power, might not have preserved in his person a better chance as a nucleus of reconstruction, if the victors would have been wiser than the peoples. If they would 122 have been, however, they might as well have imposed upon the totality of the succession States the same limitation of national sovereignty which they in fact imposed upon Austria by prohibiting her from joining Germany, and might have thereby obliged them altogether to join into an economic and finally political scheme of their own. As any presuppositions of this kind did not exist in reality, neither among the Victors nor among the former partners, the Austrian state held both the chance and the responsibility to be the symbol and the agency of reconstruction, and for this purpose Austria needed, also if she would abandon the constitutional monarchy as of little realistic value for it, the Cooperation of the former monarch. The main hindrance for this triumph of reason over passion on the entire front was the sudden fever of German nationalism which had seized the three Austrian parties, not only the Greater Germans, but also Christian Socialists and Social Democrats in spite of their programmatic basis in an international or supra-national doctrine, When the three German Austrian parties, among which the smallest of avowed German nationalists was the driving factor, were left alone in the Vienna parliament they created first the German Austrian state and then the German Austrian Republic, but bestowing upon the latter a birthday present which was the most fateful decision ever made by representatives of a people. Their theory was that since their former colleagues of the other nationalities had already created their own national States, they, left alone in Vienna, had to do more than just the same. Yet this was merely parliamentary logic. If they would have used historic logic, they might have realized already then that the Austrian Republic or however called ambiguously, under no conditions whatsoever would escape the fate of being regarded the legal heir of the Austrian Monarchy, and would better have acted accordingly already now. Yet this negative attitude was only subordinated to a national metaphysics which to formulate by far exceeded the legitimation of the parliamentarians elected in 1911. This metaphysics was to become the main hindrance of any new union among the succession States and the most fateful bürden, by which the architects of the new state complicated its development. It was the same parliamentary body with the same parliamentary logic, yet exceeding its parliamentary legitimation, which simultaneously with the proclamation of the German Austrian Republic decreed the union of Austria with Germany. Thus the same parliamentarians who just founded a new state at once dissolved it again in favor of another state. All these were parliamentary acts, and the Austrian revolution was nothing eise but a parliamentary affair, mistaking defeat, anarchy and the travails of history for the revolutionary spontaneity of the Austrian people. In spite of this parliamentary creation of the republic, neither the Christian Socialists nor the Social Democrats originally thought of a complete end of the Danubian coexistence. Despite their own participation in its destruction they could not imagine the sheer possibility of discontinuity, but they thought it due to them to wait for the ether nations to make the overtures instead of quietly preparing the hour themselves, when Vienna again would be called upon to assist by its very being the reconstruction of the age-old Commonwealth. At least the older generation of the Austrian parliamentarians visualized nothing eise but a 123 regenerated community of the Danubian nations as their primary goal, and the union with Germany only as inevitable if the Austrians would definitely be left outside in the cold by their former partners. When they saw the liberated non-German nations tuming in the first rage their backs to their mother, they wanted to show the same obstinacy. Thus they solemnly joined Germany on the paper of their first Constitution. None of those parliamentarians who created the Austrian Republic and made her a part of the German Republic thought seriously of the necessity that the new state would have to stand and struggle alone through an interlude of history. They voted for the Anschluss, as they were used to vote in parliament for something which would later be an object of negotiations with the government. They did not consider in their lofty dreams, how bad a mortgage they would lay upon the shoulders of the Austrian people and how this would he one of the main causes for the isolation of the new state, Just this, however, was to become the destiny of the Austrians, led by parliamentary revolutionists, who, completely unaware of the real parallelogram of forces in the outside world, wanted to join Germany, even at the cost of being permanently deserted by their former partners, were prevented from joining Germany by the existing realities of power and remained, to be sure deserted by those whose desertion as they said, they did not care. Although this desertion was the very cause of Austria's plight and complicated existence during the interlude, its own cause was its eager anticipation and provocation by the Viennese parliamentarians, who trumpeted into the world that they would help the defeated Germany win the next war, but did not mean it, and who wanted in fact to return to the solid foundations of something like the Danubian coexistence, but would not teil it. They were brave and stubbom in many instances, but they were faced with a problem far exceeding their capacity, whereas it cannot surprise that they were never bold and visionary in the only respect, in which the future of their people could be sought. More than they could knew themselves they were in fact the legitimate heirs of the insufficiency of the dynasty during the last generations, and paradoxically enough they were it the more the less they knew about. Those leftists among the Austrian parliamentarians, who were eager to sail without the compass of tradition, not only without the traditional monarchy but without even the idea of Austria as wel 1, into the open ocean, they were the last to leam the art of goveming and the first to lose again the reins of government. The procedure of the three parties in creating the Austrian Republic was essentially facilitated by Charles himself, who advised by his last Austrian cabinet, Heinrich Lammasch (d. 1920), which included Ignaz Seipel, and was appointed for the business of liquidation only (October 27), issued a second manifesto (November 1 l),in which he, accepting the Scholastic distinction between the substance of his legitimate authority and its accidental use, provided by Seipel, relinquished, without formally abdicating, his participation in government and recognized beforehand the decision of the Austrian people conceming the form of state, monarchy or republic. This was a generous gesture on the part of the emperor which proves that he was ready to assist also the republican reconstruction, although the formula in which this gesture was presented by the emperor’s advisers included a dangerous ambiguity. The empress Zita, 124 with a deeper instinct for the consequences of this Step, was said to have been against anything that might later be interpreted as abdication, while the main adviser of the emperor in this respect, Seipel, just wanted to formulate the manifesto in a way which legally avoided abdication but politically made the desired impression upon the clamoring sections of the people, as if the emperor had already abdicated. Simultaneously, the emperor left his residence Schönbrunn with his family for a provincial castle a few miles outside Vienna. Surely, Charles acted as a troubled father in the interest of security for wife and children, who in those days of uproar might have encountered the fate of the Romanovs, as long as there was no formal abdication forthcoming and the emperor refused the invitation to live as Citizen among citizens enjoying thereby the protection of the republican law. But as psychologically understandable as this behavior was, the emperor actually resigned by this ambiguous action his authority even more than by an upright abdication which after all would have been his, while now his deposition was legally he people's business acknowledged as transferred to them by the emperor himself. Refusing to abdicate, he could have fallen for his rights or could have left the country at once, Abdicating formally, as out of the question as it might ever have been from the dynastical point of view, he could preserve his collaboration for the new union of the Danubian nations which might have had another chance, if the anxiety about Habsburg could have been eliminated. Accommodating himself, however, to the decision of the people and legalizing beforehand any alternative for or against the monarchy, the emperor surrendered the last ounce of sovereign decision which he had and submitted to both the fate of the dynasty and the empire, yet without the sovereign gesture of either voluntarily resigning an obsolete authority and preserving thereby many of its actual implements, or Standing for its full meaning in virtue of his own rights and waiting for another future. More than by anything eise it was proved by this exit that the age of the monarchy had passed and that the last monarch, who had to rely on dubious help for the formulation of his point of view, not even had preserved the instinct to choose the right adviser. Charles later, when he left Austria with his family for Switzerland, immediately before the House Habsburg-Lorrain was formally dethroned and expelled by the national assembly (April 3, 1919), protested in a third manifesto at Feldkirch, Vorarlberg (March 23), before the train took him into exile, by interpreting his former willingness to abdicate as merely submitting his case to a plebiscite. But this Interpretation of the second manifesto in fact is inadmissible. If the unanimous decision of the parliamentary representatives to create an Austrian Republic was not plebiscite enough, the elections into the constituent national assembly (February 16, 1919) undoubtedly were. In this election the people attested that the continuation of reconstruction by the two big parties valued higher than the shadow of yesterday, and this amounted indirectly to a plebiscite about the form of government, Any other plebiscitary Institution did not exist in Austrian public law at that time and any suitable mechanism for this purpose would have had to be created necessarily by the same republican government, against which the plebiscite was intended to restore the monarchy. It was but logical that the leaders of the republican coalition government, 125 Social Democrats and Christian Socialists, in unison did not think such an effort worth- while. The government in fact had other troubles, although it would have been surely wiser on its part to liquidate the past formally, not only by a constitutional law, but by plebiscitary means, Yet in reality the republican authorities, consisting of both Social Democrats and Christian Socialists, preferred to continue the existence of the republic with still a rest of the same ambiguity, by which the authority of the emperor contributed to its coming into being. In this respect, the Christian Socialists who have always been monarchists (and still on October 22 in the provisional national assembly through their Speaker, Josef Schraffl, governor of the Tyrol, had professed their loyalty and conviction), certainly were more inconsequent than the Social Democrats who never had left any doubt before that their last ideal would be the republic. The attitude of the Christian Socialists was well symbolized by the attitude of Seipel, who, after he had assisted essentially in drafting Charles' second manifesto, eliminated the entire problem from discussion within the party with the formula that nobody ought to be "more imperial than the emperor". If this tactics would have resulted in the legal and moral elimination of the last residuum of the past by constitutional and plebiscitary means, it might have been all right. Yet although it was designed to eliminate the monarchy, it was to preserve the resentment about, and thus this de-monarchized monarchism was bound to retum under most deplorable conditions entirely deprived of its former positive ingredients in the midst of the Consolidated republic. There never was any monarchist party or even any outspokenly monarchist personality among the parliamentarians and statesmen of the Austrian Republic afterwards. If not so, it might have been more favorable for the definite assimilation of the crypto-Monarchism which eventually had hardly anything to do with the monarchy of the past, at least not with any of its virtues, but was merely the receptacle of all resentments against the republic and |its primarily social legislation. There was a single member of the Christian Socialist Party, the later federal president of the Austrian Republic, Wilhelm Miklas, who voted in parliament against the expulsion of those Habsburg-Lorrains who would not resign their titles and dignities. Another later deputy of the national assembly, the former foreign minister, Ottokar Czernin, occasionally indicated by his stand in this question that he was elected by the Viennese Jews, but if he ever was a "monarchist", he certainly thought not of the dynasty Habsburg-Lorrain. At any rate, the method by which the monarchy was eliminated in Austria by both Social Democratic radicals and Christian Socialist tacticians was too artificial and inadequate in its dealing with a substantial power of history, in order to achieve it full and real elimination. More contributing to this effect was the exit of the monarchy itself. Summarizing, we may well say that Charles, whose deeper sympathies were from the beginning with the populär forces among his peoples, of course not at the cost of his own monarchical interests, and also with their predominant anti-war and anti-German sentiments, unfortunately without any greater activities on his part, nevertheless continued and completed the better ways of his granduncle Francis Joseph by preparing the aftermath. He legitimatized both the dissolution of the empire into national States through the manifesto of October 17, and the creation of the decisive Austrian Republic 126 through the manifesto of November 11. His third manifesto which typically enough never circulated in Austria, but became known only later literarily, never has reversed nor could it reverse the history the emperor had made himself, or even change the clear consciousness of the overwhelming majority of the Austrian people in all parties that the genesis of the Republic, if perhaps not fully legitimate in an ideal sense, was as legal as anything could be in such a turmoil of events, as existed after the lost war. It was the Austrian Republic itself which should have made things Straight, in order to prevent even minor defects to grow into bigger problems. When, after two abortive attempts to regain the crown in Hungary (March and October 1921), Charles died a tragic death at Funchal, Madeira (April 1, 1921), he was remembered among the peoples he had ruled for two years only in small circles, for whom he had the halo of a saint sacrificing his very life for the future union of the nations which had forgotten him. The monarchy had died with him, but its shadow still was to play a fateful role.

(§26) In spite of all the shortcomings and shocks, when being born, never to be extinguished from the memory by any mythology, the fact remains that the Austrian Republic of so provisional an intention and so brief a lifetime has been an extraordinary creature in the realm of politics. Not so much the "Austrian revolution" but certainly the Austrian reconstruction which started under the aegide of the "red and black" coalition government (1919/20), the Cooperation of the "reds", the Social Democrats, and the "blacks", the Christian Socialists, was something, for which the political maturity of the Austrian people certainly deserves credit. Although this Cooperation was the most natural expedient, it was nevertheless the most extraordinary feature in a world, in which nothing similar had been required before. No wonder that the experiment eventually failed, but not before it had founded the state, under the cover of which both government and Opposition were alone possible at all. One of the basic presuppositions for this achievement, the building up of the new state by the coalition government, was that the whole apparatus of the former bureaucracy and police, went over to the republic completely intact, the legacy of the monarchy in general and of the last emperor's understanding for the inevitable tum of history and Cooperation with the new authorities in particular. As he could both smooth or hinder the transformation, he chose the first alternative. The Police force of Vienna under Johann Schober (d. 1952), later federal chancellor of the republic on various occasions, had probably more to do with the historic success of the "Austrian revolution" than any other factor. Schober was confirmed in the transfer of his loyalty from the monarchy to the republic by the emperor himself, and this switch was tantamount to a peaceful conversion from the one to the other and to the later successful defense of the republic against any kind of attempted overthrow. Schober was of the older black and yellow school of the German Austrian national liberals, who even under the republic and in most responsible offices of the new state did not cease to care for the opinion of the former emperor and his widow, although his loyalty for the dynasty never 127 trespassed upon his hardly less correct attitude which he, bureaucrat in the first place, showed for the republic. The other presupposition for the historic success of the Austrian revolution was that the leaders of the Social Democratic Party, who had organized the revolution the days before, sometimes from their very desks in the war office, now tumed conservative in their own great interest defending the state they had created against any further drift of revolutionary activities. Those anarchists among the retuming soldiers who called themselves communists and who tried to repeat or anticipate in Vienna the events of Munich and Budapest, were defeated by the firm Cooperation of the Social Democrats, party, trade unions and army, with the Viennese police. The Social Democratic leaders of those days certainly have the historic merit to have prevented that Vienna would forge the link between Kurt Eisner and Bela Kun, and thus a bid for power by the radical wing of labor would result equally in bloody reaction there. In every detail the old state bequeathed its legacy to the new one. This strength of the old state within the new one and this leadership by new forces, to which the old ones adapted themselves, prevented Vienna from going through another experiment which left so cruel scars in West and East. This was primarily the merit of the Social Democratic leadership, but secondarily also of those representatives of the old regime, the emperor and the president of the Viennese police included, who without resentment served the idea of the state independently from the form of govemment. The legacy the old state was also visible in the existence of the two leading Parties, and in everything they did, in their ideologies as well as in their techniques in building up the new state, as much as they differed from each other. They were already two political machines created under universal suffrage in the monarchy, and they still continue according to the law of political gravity the methods by which they had grown large. They both resented continuity but could not help being determined by it as by an atmosphere which penetrates a body through every of his pores. They strangely continued to think and act, as if they would still live in a monarchy, not in a republic. They might have emancipated themselves more thoroughly from the past in their sub- consciousness, if they would have humbly recognized the idea of continuity. As long as their coalition prevailed, they bad found a common object transcending their own law of gravity. Wherever the coalition failed, and as soon as it collapsed completely, they at once retumed to their habit of thinking and acting as if they were to live still in a monarchy, in which the existence of the state is taken for granted and an authority above the parties and the parliament would check at the right time necessary for the Commonwealth at large any too negative consequences of parliamentary dickering and buccaneering. It was the very tragedy of the Austrian Republic that its two main parties largely identical with the state continued to behave, as if the monarchy still existed ready to counterbalance their own negative achievements. In the coalition, the Social Democrats were the progressive element which forced the partner ahead. For a time they stood fully up to the responsibility of goveming a people which was only forty percent Social Democrat. They did so, thereby hoping for a quicker gain of the fifty-one percent than could really happen, as their own Marxism 128 might have well taught them. They were disappointed and curiously embittered that the people did not give them the absolute majority which they wanted. In an un-democratic and un-Marxian behavior alike, they decided to punish the majority of the people for this failure, and to leave voluntarily the coalition govemment (October 23, 1920). On this fateful day, the Social Democrats returned to the methods of parliamentary Opposition, and sometimes even to filibustering, if need be, called "obstruction" in the Old Austrian parliament, where they had learned its technique perfectly. They only forgot that the parliamentary methods of an Opposition party in the monarchy and of a governmentA party in the republic, even if the latter goes into Opposition again, must be essentially different. Thus, they became unaccustomed to govern again, alienated themselves quasi voluntarily from the state they had created, and had in the end to ascribe it to their own faults, when, after they had stubbornly refused Cooperation for quite some time, their adversaries eventually learned and did the same, after the conditions of power had changed completely. With all these means the Social Democrats never could get the necessary fifty-one percent down to the last election, while their adversaries, the bourgeois parties together, always held this margin. The Christian Socialists had been originally the conservative partners of the "red and black" coalition, who first tried to put on the brakes to the course of the state's carriage, but finally, when left alone in its command, quickly learned, how to behave as the Substitute of the former monarchic authority. As they had previously underestimated their possible influence in the creation of the state, whose second partner was in fact of equal importance, they now overestimated their real power defying soon the necessity of any second partner for themselves to the state's greatest detriment. The new bourgeois coalition which the Christian Socialists concluded with the Greater Germans (1922) and the so-called Landbund, a German national liberal agrarian faction (1927) enabled if need be even the second largest party to govern the state and with the help of two minor groups to keep the largest party in Opposition. One cannot help recognizing that this was technically a statesmanlike achievement. Even if this was only possible within a coalition with the Greater Germans, for which certain sacrifices had to be made, there is no doubt that the latter asked for less than the Social Democrats would have asked. When the Christian Socialists and Greater Germans in 1927 concluded the pact which made them together in the election under way the bourgeois or anti-Marxian "amalgamated front", and they secured 49% of all votes (as compared with 42% cast for the Social Democrats), the Christian Socialist leader, Ignaz Seipel, thereby nearly created the Greater German Party ex nihilo and thus acquired a loyal partner, for whom nevertheless no particular responsibility had to be accepted. Thereby the egg of Columbus was found for the next decade, how to preserve a Christian Socialist government, which must not be afraid either of the Social Democratic Opposition or of the Greater German partner. Formally, in the narrow view of this decade the solution was a masterpiece which, only a few years after the "Austrian revolution", made labor again nearly as powerless as it was before. Among all the experiences of self-alienation and self-exclusion from power which has been the destiny of the European labor movement under the influence of the Marxian doctrine of the state's scatological 129 withering away, the stränge leap of Austro-Marxism from uncontested power to helplessness offers the most grotesque example of inadequacy and insufficiency which is the more appalling the less the leaders caught in the net of their own dialectics were really like pigmies as they were often pictured by their opponents. In fact, only the anti- Marxists, who followed them, needed still less time to rise and fall again. The Social Democrats had a good many splendid leaders who at once took Charge in their special fields, after they had ascended to power. Nor did they lack the genius who by a theoretical mastership unsurpassed among his party comrades as well as by a still growing amount of practical wisdom, could claim the leadership of the masses. Otto Bauer (d. 1938) gained the leadership of the Social Democratic Party after Viktor Adler's death. After a short interlude as foreign minister, exposing himself stubbornly in favor of the Anschluss, he was in Charge of the scheme of socialization, agreed upon by the coalition govemment, until he became for more than a decade the mere party leader of the Opposition. His leadership was frequently considered as misfortune to the party, because Bauer was an intellectual, a theorist, an ideologist, if not an idealist. He was not the man produced by the party machine, but like Adler the born leader beyond the machine, whose ascent was equally that of the wealthy Jewish intellectual who joined the labor movement in protest against the dass, in which he himself originated. Thus Bauer had become one with labor by theory and sympathy, and this was reason enough for the Boeotians to say that he was but a demagogue of labor. His was certainly not too lucky a policy and too happy an existence from the voluntarily day he left the coalition to the other day when he had to leave the country. Seipel in his epigrammatic wit, even before all the consequences were visible, called him once sneeringly, the man with the two left hands. No doubt, the Marxian doctrine and ideology which guided Bauer from decision to decision was actually driving the labor movement from catastrophe to catastrophe. They had erroneously believed that Marxism won for them the battle of the "Austrian revolution", where only defeat and desperation did ,and they relied upon the proven mechanism to produce the same miracle again. On the other hand, nobody can be blind about the very fact that only this kind of Marxism embodied by Bauer and his friends held the Austrian labor movement together and prevented the Splitting up into two rival factions, Socialists and Communists. Moreover, Austro-Marxism alone provided for Austrian labor those fifteen years of life, in which they, both politically and economically, were able to determine largely their own fate as a factor to be reckoned with even in Opposition. Only the Marxian theory was the source of both a tremendous amount of labor education and an unceasing stream of constructive proposals for the concrete salvation of the Austrian state at any tum of its road, proposals always refused beforehand by the opponents, but still a pile of wisdom for the future. One could say that the Austro- Marxism also thought only in terms of one or two decades, but saying so one would not say anything worse than what must be said also of the Austrian anti-Marxism - with the only difference that a dass party very naturally thinks in primitive terms, while a government ought never degrade itself to the degree of thinking in terms of the dass struggle, siding with the one or with the other. Thus both Marxism and anti-Marxism 130 were pretty much on the same level, political and historical. There was guilt and virtue in both. Yet there was a grain of greater tragedy in the one fighting for the emancipation of labor than in the other Standing for the interests of Capital. A still more orthodox Marxism might have objected to all the endeavors of Austro-Marxism that the power of the labor dass is due to its economic strength and not to the political rationalization of this fact, wherefore the Marxian intellectuals ought better to be advised to be silent in favor of the functionaries and agitators of the Marxian party apparatus. But any Interpretation of history, for which the Creative intellect Stands above matter, will not hesitate to side with that school of Marxism, for which the dialectics of the Marxian idea and net the hermeneutics of the Marxian letter are paramount, although their tragic position in the midst of metaphysical Marxism and anti-Marxism is quite obvious. The theorists and leaders of the Austro-Marxian school participated fully in this tragedy. They could boast to have convinced the labor dass of an entire people without exceptions of practical importance that their course and Interpretation of Marxism had been the only realistic one, at least for half a generation and under the historic conditions in which they worked. This was a great achievement for the time being, and Bauer the greatest among the planners and acting figures of Austro-Marxism. It would only have been wholesome for the entire people, if its ascendancy would have lasted more than just half a generation. Yet who has ever learned to read in the books of history knew perfectly from the first ray of this ascendency that the feet of those who would carry the corpse were Standing already before the door. The postwar triumph of the Social Democrats in Austria depended essentially upon their prewar substance. After it was consumed by those who did not know the sources of their very strength, the frame collapsed. Within the Social Democratic Party Bauer was supplemented by the more conservative approach of Karl Renner, who, after he was a main advocate of the modernization and federalization of the Monarchy, became the state's chancellor or prime minister of the coalition govemment, whose historic function was to receive the dictations and carry out the provisions of the peace treaty of St. Germaine (September 10, 1919). He would have been the bom leader of the party, if instead of Bauer some radical would have organized and led a Communist Opposition. Bauer kept the left wing, Renner the right wing within the party, both deserving merit for having preserved the frame which Viktor Adler once created. In their best times both Bauer and Renner were a team which guaranteed the unity of the party and the labor movement. While Bauer, in spite of the deep sympathy he had for peasant life and problems, was never able to break down the suspicion beyond the fence, Renner in fact was the only Socialist intellectual, who was ever really successful in establishing intimate contacts with the peasant leaders. His idea of democratization in all levels of the administrative set-up and of the cooperative movement in both industrial and rural districts were nearer to the interests of the peasants than Bauer's scheme of socialization, although it also, better called perhaps democratization of industry, might have attracted the interest of the peasants, if advanced to them in a language of their own world, speaking of democracy, cooperatives and Cooperation, instead of using the Marxian terminology. 131 There were many experts in the Social Democratic party, who have gained fame under the coalition and later, some of them world fame in a just appreciation of their achievements which in fact, not always fully recognized in Austria herseif beyond the boundaries of Vienna, were worthy of international reputation. Among these Social Democratic leaders there were descendants of the entire former Monarchy, who had come to Vienna in consequence of the industrial development or had been sent there by their constituencies. Sudeten German workers and Jewish intellectuals, however, dominated the group and this fact has been largely responsible for the particular coloring of Austro-Marxism which in this respect fitted less in the environment of the new Alpine state than the complementary group of the Christian Socialist Party. Among these Social Democratic experts were Ferdinand Hanusch, who organized social legislation, Wilhelm Ellenbogen, in Charge of socialization, Julius Deutsch, organizer of the new army, Otto Glökel, the wizard of the new education, Julius Tandler, genius of social medicine and welfare, Hugo Breitner, the banking technician in the Service of the labor movement, and last but not least Robert Danneberg, the leading municipal administrator under two Social Democratic mayors of Vienna, Jakob Reumann and Josef Seitz. (The latter was the first president of the national assembly and in the first years of the republic, when the office of a state's president did not exist, its substitute). The labor movement of fifty years had produced an abundance of intellects eager to serve the Proletariat as loyally and faithfully as ever any public servants served the state, yet also enthusiastically and even passionately if need be. Most of these men first held portfolios in the coalition govemment. With their resignation in all matters of national policy, however, they concentrated on the municipal administration of Vienna, where they, holding a qualified majority in the most important federal land, were in fact building up the model state which they could not materialize in the republic they had created but finally deserted. From the old proven trade union leaders coming from all the Old Austrian countries, but particularly from the Sudeten countries, to the most cultivated Jewish intellectuals, still more representing the conflux of the past, the Social Democratic leaders were in fact a most characteristic legacy of the Monarchy to the republic. In spite of this universal background, they were in the republic only the mouthpiece of the smaller half of the people, although this was the more thoroughly organized, more highly trained and more sophisticated half, the labor movement. This was obviously an alliance between intellectual forces first molded in the prewar world and the labor problems at stäke in the postwar world, both anywhere as different as in Austria. One could call it an alliance between labor and intellectualism, both not always of the same historic roots, yet it was in fact an alliance between the two outcasts of the conservative society which, although emancipated once by Josephinism, were still living apart, both spiritually and materially, from the rest of society, the alliance between Proletariat and Jewry. Joseph II emancipated the peasants, but did not care for the consequence, the industrial Proletariat, and he emancipated the Jews, but could not achieve their assimilation. Thus the two oddities and anomalies of the conservative society met and cooperated. If this was the case everywhere eise, in Austria, in virtue of the tradition of Josephinian emancipation, this Cooperation was more Creative and more 132 intensive, providing for labor a bom leadership from the depth of an identical destiny and for Jewish intellectualism a great historic function. Without the full understanding of this fact neither Marxism, in general, nor Austro-Marxism in particular, will be correctly analyzed and evaluated. Also in this respect of complementarity between the intellectual leadership and the labor rank and file, the labor movement of postwar Austria cannot deny or conceal its intimate relationship with prewar conditions, if not its very descent from an obsolete structure which logically with each postwar decade had to be more overcome. The leadership of the Christian Socialist Party was of an entirely different type. Instead of trade unionists, many of non-Austrian descent, there were peasants of all the Austrian countries, and instead of Jewish intellectuals of Eastem European descent there were Catholic priests of the same origin than the peasants. Only a small fraction of Catholic laymen intellectuals was of non-Austrian (i.e. Greater Austrian) descent. Of the first category the peasant leader, Jodok Fink (d. 1929) representative of the tiniest Austrian country, Vorarlberg, the oldest continuous democracy in the heart of Central Europe east of Switzerland, was the Speaker, whose character and wisdom gained him the admiration of both parties as no other Contemporary parliamentarian enjoyed. Fink was the vice-chancellor in the coalition govemment, and as such the most intimate collaborator of Renner. He was the man, who was convinced, as no other Christian Socialist leader ever was, that only the "red and black" coalition with all it stood for, even socialization, could live up to the task of the hour, the Organization of the new state for the whole people, not only for one of its halves. The legislation introducing elementary features of industrial democracy, erroneously called socialization by its suicidal authors, went ahead under Fink's counter-signature. There were many other peasant leaders in the other countries resembling Fink in their smaller frames but none gaining his stature in history. Of the second category Ignaz Seipel (d. 1932) was the outstanding model, who became the leader of his party for the most fateful period of the new state's initial life. While all the other clerical leaders in Upper Austria, Styria, Carinthia, or in The Tyrol did not grow above the local level, where they were pretty powerful indeed, Seipel ,a born Viennese, who was professor of moral theology, was quasi detached into politics from above, influential factors in court and hierarchy of prewar Austria, without any need of working up himself from below. If Renner and Fink were complementary in building up the state under the coalition government, Seipel and Bauer “leaders” in destroying this Cooperation and in sinning against the new state's very spirit which asked for Cooperation. Within the labor movement Renner and Bauer held their balance down to the end. Within political Catholicism, however, the final disappearance of the type of Fink and the absolute predominance of the opposite type of Seipel in the leadership of the party was the speaking Symbol for a fateful inner process which eventually meant the end of the state as such. Although Seipel originally was behind the coalition as well as Fink and even as a theologian tried to justify it the Interpretation applied by both to the coalition was quite different and still more were the consequences which drew the one different from the hopes which had fostered the other. Later in 133 1930,Seipel dedicated his book about the reform of the Austrian Constitution to the memory of Fink, although no doubt the road which he, Seipel, then went ahead and advised others to go ahead as well was diametrically opposed to what Fink ever thought and dreamed. Of course, there were many Catholic laymen as well in the Christian Socialist Party, who either governed the federal lands or participated in Seipel's governments or even substituted him for a while. It is quite true that the clerical leaders who dominated the scene in the monarchy were gradually substituted by Catholic laymen in the Republic. Among the latter there were some of the provincial govemors (with the title Landhauptmann) like Franz Rehrl in Salzburg, Otto Ender in Vorarlberg. Anton Rintelen in Styria and Karl Buresch in Lower Austria (of whom most had been either Chancellors or at least ministers for some time). Others were Seipel's colleagues in his cabinets and ministers in other cabinets of the party like Heinrich Mataja for foreign policy, Viktor Kienböck for finance, Josef Reach for social welfare, Rudolf Ramek for justice and interior policy, Richard Schmitz for education and interior policy, Karl Vaugoin for the army, as well as leaders of specific social groups like Rudolf Buchinger leader of the peasants cooperative movement, or Leopold Kunschak, the leader of the Christian Workmen’s Association, who also led the Christian Socialist minority in the city council of Vienna. Some of these men were well able to stick to a policy of their own, as long as they remained in their special Fields, local or vocational. Whoever intruded into federal policy, however, had to submit to the superiority of Seipel, who more than ever Bauer, dominated his party. His collaborators were experts in his team, yet not of any own right or stature. Sometimes they called themselves partly ironically, partly proudly the "Seipeloten". Although Catholicism was the general frame for the Christian Socialist leaders, Christian Socialism in the meaning of both Vogelsang and Lueger had ceased to be an ideology and doctrine for them, from which they could have drawn similar enthusiasm, initiative and Creative ability, as their opponents obviously drew from Marxism. Seipel, however, as strong as his personality was, could devaluate the elder Christian Socialist ideas and thereby tum the party of Christian social reform into the dead alley of anti-Marxism and bourgeois dass politics, but he could not really inspire his following to work for these merely practical and tactical aims as a new great idea of life and death for the party. Thus, Seipel's team was never as daring and efficient, never as Creative and successful than Bauer's and Danneberg's. It was a duller party which was led by the professor of theology, yet there was something in Seipel’s leadership which pushed the party ahead and beyond itself. This was the political frame, into which the younger Catholic generation grew spontaneously, the men who later were to abolish the Constitution even abolish the party, but still then to preserve and continue Seipel's course and tradition. In nuce, the “red and black coalition” was one between workers and peasants, the two basic social strata of the new state which had to build a common house merely for the sake of survival. While their parliamentarians on the Right and on the Left thought of a state "on short notice", the people, more interested in the existing today than in yesterday and tomorrow, took the task deadly serious indeed. In spite of all posthumous 134 mythologizing of the "Austrian revolution", the new state was not revolution-bom, but dictated by iron necessity in a life and death crisis of the Austrian people, where the revolution-minded minority without the most active Cooperation of the anti- revolutionary majority would have created but a caricature of a state. The Austrian masses, urban and rural, decided in this crisis that they want to be one people in spite of all their discrepancies and disparities, and this fact was better represented by the actions of their parliamentarians than by their declamations. Trade unionists and peasants, Catholic priests and Jewish intellectuals were able to drop for a momenf s breath whatever separated them and to adapt themselves unanimously to the urgency of the hour. There was no Opposition in this respect. So great was this urgency that even the departing authority of the old state legalized beforehand at whatever the energies of both big parties, together the truest voice of the people determinable in the crisis would arrive. This was really the blessing of defeat, because, as essential as the forces of the people were indeed for this accomplishment, they might have disintegrated without the shadow of the Victors over their heads. Only in defeat they could crystallize after all the errors of the past in a new Austria. There is hardly any other example in history where all factors involved, struck by a crisis of being or non-being, really stuck together for the accomplishment of one purpose, the authority of yesterday as well as the two wings of today, to shape in common the destiny of tomorrow. This state was in fact a great experiment of history, tried in the hour of trial by the entire people, the living, the dead and the unbom alike.

(§27) This is the historic frame, in which the Constitution of the Austrian Republic (October 1, 1920), the final product of the coalition, although enacted only after its breaking up, has to be understood. Thereby a "federal state", consisting of eight "federal lands", Vienna, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, Salzburg, The Tyrol, Vorarlberg, Carinthia and Styria was constituted (later nine together with Burgenland which was transferred from Hungary to Austria in 1921). This Austrian Constitution, technically the creation of Hans Kelsen in close Cooperation with Renner, but having also assimilated many ideas for which Seipel who was the spokesman (and reporter in parliament), had been based upon two very decisive constitutional ideas: the jurisdictionalization of politics by the Supreme Court (Verfassungsgerichtshof), in case of conflicts in the Interpretation of competence between the various organs of national sovereignty in a federal state, and the complementary constitutionalization of politics by the institutional Cooperation between a narrow majority and a qualified minority in all matters of relevancy. These two items and not the mere parliamentarization of sovereignty in a democratic set-up without real presidential or even governmental authority was the decisive factor, because the latter idea could be supplemented in principle, and has been at least partially by the amendment of the Constitution (1930), without touching its fundamental structure. Seipel originally approved this structure, obviously unaware that the one Provision, the protection of the qualified minority, would assure the permanent influence of labor upon 135 the bourgeois govemment, while the other provision, the Supreme Court, would guarantee a similarly checking influence of jurisprudence upon politics. Thus, he was the main protagonist of the Constitution on the right wing of the parliament. When he later discovered his mistake, his clamor for the "true democracy" (1928/29) particularly meant the abolition of these two provisions. Instead of any plebiscitary mechanism which had never existed in Austria, the Cooperation between majority and minority, government and Opposition, which was an old expedient of the Austrian Parliament, now could develop into the two party System under the supervision of the Supreme Court as a kind of supplementary political authority, guaranteeing that the interest of the people as such would not be majorized by a tiny and perhaps transitory margin. Plebiscitary institutions (formally provided for by the Constitution, but never to develop in practice) could be added at any moment, but more conducive to the same end and more corresponding with the Austrian parliamentary tradition was the constitutional provision that all laws conceming the Constitution required a two-third majority and thereby the two big parties under any imaginable constellation were obliged to cooperate. The interest of the people as a whole certainly was that a compact and qualified minority of forty percent which was the qualified majority of the Capital and also represented the progressive industrial areas as well should not depend in vital interests on the arbitrary majority of a socially less compact Stratum, whose vain aspiration were to govem the Capital from the countryside. Thus the narrow governmental majority, based upon the coalition between Christian Socialists and Greater Germans, needed for all decisions in fundamental questions the consent of the qualified Social Democratic minority. By this instrumentality the two party System was quasi constitutionalized and a Cooperation between the two wings of the people guaranteed in all problems conceming their common national welfare, In these respects the "red and black" coalition so to speak survived its formal dissolution, and the bourgeois govemment had to consult and to respect the labor Opposition. It was very natural that Seipel, after he had become aware of this mechanism, resented it, as surely. on this basis no strictly independent govemment after his liking, no anti-Marxian dass government, was possible. While the Social Democratic Opposition insisted on the provisions of the Constitution, yet later tried to draw the public attention to the plebiscitary institutions as well, Seipel's paramount idea was the development of the presidential function after the German example, and particularly the election of the president by the people, not by the parliament, as the Constitution provided. Already in 1922 Miklas, the later president, submitted a bill to parliament, in which the election of the president by the people was demanded "in imitation of the example of the two great Germanic empires" (sc. Germany and the United States), as the motion bombastically said. The Social Democrats, who originally were satisfied to have the president of the national assembly for all the representative purposes for which a president of the republic could seem desirable, were strictly against the plebiscitary election of the president as a Symptom of Caesarism, as they called it. In consenting to the amendment of the Constitution in 1930 they made some concessions in these respects, in order to preserve other positions. 136 Thereby the president of the Austrian Republic really acquired the stature of the German president according to the Weimar Constitution, yet only to make in the end exactly the same use of his power as his model, namely to succumb to the more consistent embodiment of the authoritarian ideology. Seipel's Propaganda for the Investment of the Austrian president with the German prerogatives was not entirely free from personal ambitions, as he at the end of his career dreamed to be the federal president of a government which would carry out the plans which he was able to draft, yet in consequence of his clerical character could not carry out himself. True as it is that the partial success of the Propaganda for the reform of the Constitution, of which Seipel was the main spokesman, only precipitated the end of Austrian democracy, the problem remains, whether a Constitution providing a presidential authority from the very Start would not have had another effect. There is no doubt that the courageous introduction of plebiscitary means in 1918 according to the Swiss model, concerning referendum and initiative, would have had a very wholesome influence upon the entire political development of Austria. It would not only have definitely solved the problem of the form of government, but also constantly brought to the fore the real will of the people in many other questions and thus permitted control of the political parties. Thereby the constitutional mechanism of Cooperation between majority and minority, later the all hated Symbol of the shortcomings of the republic, could have stepped into the background. Also the Propaganda for the German rights of the Austrian president might have never emerged, or on the other hand, if the Constitution would have created a president-chancellor according to the American model this fact would have served to emphasize constitutionalism not to destroy it. The fear of the Opposition that some kind of "emperor substitute" would emerge in a powerful president was legitimate only as long as this office and function would be enacted against their protest, but not if the Constitution, prepared by the coalition, would have already done so. Thus it is true that the same purpose which the Austrian Constitution reached by the technique of parliamentary Cooperation might have also been reached by other technical means, a quasi-monarchic presidential authority based on plebiscitary ground and a System of plebiscites set into motion on account of qualified minorities. The introduction of both implements might have led the two Austrian parties farther away from the Old Austrian tradition, however, as they really could afford. Neither the American nor the Swiss model really suited for a state which was the parliamentary creation of two main parties. Their Cooperation was the paramount factor in bringing the new state into existence and this Cooperation should have been preserved for the sake of the new state's continuous regeneration. This factor did not exclude the further incorporation of elements from the American or the Swiss Constitution, yet did not primarily rely on them. In case of an ideological atmosphere, in which a complementary national interest would have been equally paramount to both parties, as it should have been in consequence of the new state's very structure, the whole technique might have worked splendidly and would in fact have been nothing but an expediency to emphasize national concordance in all common matters. 137 Unfortunately this atmosphere did not exist, at least not in the long tun. The opposite atmosphere, however, soon transubstantiated the mere constitutional technique into its very opposite, a political means used by both govemment and Opposition in their struggles against each other. Now the Opposition which did not want to share the unpopulär responsibility of the government, could nevertheless indirectly participate in its most basic decision, and be rewarded for that, while the narrow majority which bore the brunt of public criticism and the historic responsibility of the government before the eyes of the world, inside and outside the country, could in fact not exercise its full authority, as it would have pleased its leaders. Thus the govemment soon clamored against the dictatorship of the Opposition also in those respects, where the labor party did nothing eise but defend the interests of its constituencies with constitutional means. The confusion could not be greater. Just as the pre-republican idea of Opposition was alive in the Social Democratic Party, an Opposition using unscrupulously the knife but nevertheless not aware of aiming at the marrow of the state, so in the Christian Socialist Party the pre-republican idea of govemment came to life again and indeed not always the idea of constitutional govemment at that, but of authority instead of compromise, and not the idea of a constitutional authority but of the quasi natural authority of government, including an emergency right to act beyond the Constitution. It was particularly this idea of some kind of "judge above the Constitution" which strangely enough the German jurispmdents (like Walter Simons) once believed to have transplanted from the American Constitution into the Weimar Republic and which now Seipel in a much less incorrect judgment could hope to bring from Germany to Austria. He in particular became the tenacious advocate of the theory, pre-constitutional monarchism disguised as "true democracy", that government by nature is the absolute authority of the fifty-one percent over the forty-nine percent J(and that simply no state is possible at all without such magical authority. On the background of something which started as a mere technique, the ideological antagonism between the two parties grew incurable. They had become two nations instead of one, if not two races, and there was eventually no bridge from the one bank of the river to the other. It was grotesquely enough still the unsolved problem of the monarchy which destroyed the republic, the attempt of the Right to have some kind of "emperor substitute" compliant to its own interest and the fear of the Left to have too much authority invested in its adversaries, - a perspicuous proof that man does not escape his fate by merely exchanging the paraphernalia of life. Both parties still lived in the ideological atmosphere of yesterday, the governmental party under clerical leadership surrounding its authority with a magical glimmer still harrowed from the monarchy, and the Opposition party not recognizing any authority at all except its own among the masses. Thus the end could only be utter confusion.

(§28) In particular, the social policy of the postwar state shows classically the dialectical scheme, in which tradition, unrecognized and thus untamed, eventually overshadowed reality. In every single item the progressive social policy of the new state 138 shows the traditional lines of the old state, and in many instances, we are told, the old bills which the prewar Austrian govemments could not force upon the Austrian, parliament, redrafted by the same experts on the staff of the same ministry, became the new laws. The Social Democratic Party, not content with this phenomenon of continuity, however, being more an agency for organizing masses in their own immediate interests than of that constructive statesmanship which takes into account the balance of interests, did not want to give any credit to the monarchy for something the republic, “their republic”, had accomplished, and what they in fact considered its finest achievement. Thus, they passionately overemphasized the revolutionary character of a social legislation which was every inch conservative. By this mendacity and demagogy the positive good of legal and moral continuity, not recognized but still very much alive, turned in the long run against those who had denied it. There were so many obvious values of continuity and tradition, religious and national, that many people, even such who profited from the social legislation initiated by the coalition government, turned in their sentiments against their own interests so ill represented to them. The Social Democrats talked so convincingly of the revolutionary character of the social legislation which the republic had enacted, “their” social legislation, that at the end their opponents believed them and asked for curbing any further revolution, removing the "revolutionary rubbish" and re-establishing the pre-revolutionary conditions. Nowhere did the mythology of a political revolution which never happened so distinctly interfere with the process of social revolution which had begun under a stable government, required in every new Step the stabilization, not the revolutionizing of government, and could be completed and maintained by a new governmental System only under again and still better stabilized conditions. The Christian Socialist Party which was a progressive factor of social reform in the monarchy, and might have continued to be one under similar conditions, but could also have less easily abandoned this tradition in a republic conscious of continuity turned under the pressure of the Social Democratic revolutionary ideology actually into an anti-progressive force which soon tried to stem the evil tide of revolutionary legislation wherever it could, and eventually with every means available. Only if the monarchy would have continued, the Social Democrats could also have continued without further consequences of self-punishment, to act as his Majesty’ s Opposition \ which would whip the bourgeois government of the monarchy into progressive social legislation enacted eventually under the sanction of legitimate authority. In the monarchy they could have continued to claim that every achievement in this respect was due exclusively to this method of whipping and yet to be sure that the social laws enacted by parliament would be respected in the end even by their economic adversaries. But after they had abandoned the paravent of the monarchy, they should have been twice as careful to speak of revolution and their own power behind the scene, or to exaggerate their own influence upon social laws which after all the people, non¬Socialist in its majority, would have to accept as conform to its interest and certainly would more like to accept as its own achievement than something forced upon it. No doubt, without a political revolution, or rather without mythologizing the cracks in legal 139 continuity in consequence of military defeat into a glorious revolution, the much more vital process of social revolution could have gone much more organically. Yet even after a mere trifle of a political revolution, or at least discontinuity in essential political symbols grown so deeply into the entire people, the Champions of social revolution should not have indulged in a revolutionary phraseology but rather have leamed to fester the most conservative Interpretation of its own, Against this law of history the Social Democrats sinned gravely, and thus the basic reaction against their social legislation, conservative but with a revolutionary make-up, had to come inevitably from the conservative strata of society, whose economic interests were against these laws and who therefore were eager to believe their enemies that these were in fact revolutionary achievements. This was the fateful error of Marxism to believe that economic interests would alone organize the anti-Marxian front, while all the opposite economic interests would automatically gravitate to the labor party. As to the Marxists themselves it did not suffice to have their social legislation for good, but they needed the revolutionary ideology to omament it, so their economic enemies would never have had the strength, moral and political, to rally the various shades of anti-Marxism around their banner merely for economic reasons, if they would not have been able to use an anti- revolutionary ideology, in which ethical and even religious considerations were at stäke. Here we find that the political problem of the Austrian Republic in its final implications was a metaphysical problem. The two mass parties, emerging from universal suffrage in the prewar state and later the founders of the postwar state, were basically agencies of international, or if one likes it better, supra-national ideologies . When prior to World War I the idea of Christian Socialism counterbalanced that kind of rudimentary Marxism which determined the labor parties of all of Europe, after the war the theoretically refined and self-conscious Austro-Marxism of a leading intellectual e'lite was less luckily kept in check by the Scholasticism of the Christian Socialist leadership which determined the course of the party, but could not really penetrate the political conscience of its following. While the evolution from a less to a more cultivated Marxism was well consistent, the switch from the program of Christian Socialist reform to that of the Scholastic defense of the existing social conditions was a fundamental alternation, yet only an intensification of the metaphysical position. As long as the monarchy existed, these ideologies on the Right and on the Left were under a conservative supervision. They had been amalgamated then with the two existing traditions of the Austrian empire, the symbolized in Joseph and Francis, which we have compared with the Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonian philosophy in America. The Social Democrats in prewar Austria were less Marxists than another progressive kind of Josephinians with all their leaders originally coming from national liberalism and only superficially acquainted with Marx. Similarly, the Christian Socialists in prewar Austria were less determined by the application of the Scholastic tradition to the social problems, at that time only in the beginning (with the papal encyclical Rerum novariui, published in 1891 after Vogelsang's death), than by the Romantic tradition of the Austrian conservative school of political thought had centuries of Austrian history behind it. 140 These two traditions, now strongly hybridized, however, by Marxian and Scholastic ingredients, continued their existence in the postwar state, in which, on the one hand, they became more conscious of their metaphysical antagonism, yet, on the other hand, unanimously knew, how the very existence of the state would depend on their Cooperation, Unfortunately, in the long run the first thing prevailed. What had previously been only an injection into two imperial views became the predominant factor which continued, however, to employ the mere technique of tradition without submitting to its spirit. This fact that the two big parties with a social stratum behind and a political tradition attached which regarded themselves both could be complementary, nevertheless regarded themselves primarily identical with two metaphysical views, Catholicism and Socialism, turned out to be the very basis for the first appearance of totalitarianism in party politics. In the prewar state both parties were incomparably less ideological. The Social Democratic Party worshipped Marx as its prophet, but there were hardly any Marxian theorists. The Christian Socialist Party was Catholic, but so were many other agencies and instances, the court, the aristocracy, the hierarchy, without being necessarily Christian Socialist. In some prewar countries in Austria the remnants of the conservative parties still were recognizable within or without the Christian Socialist Party. Christian Socialism was a reformatory trend of Catholicism, but the two were not identical. In both instances conditions changed in the post war state remarkably. The party began to substitute the state, the sentiments of many people centered more around the party than the state and the same amalgamation which first had come into existence between the labor movement, the Social Democratic party and Marxism on the Left, also gradually developed between the Christian Socialist Party and the Catholic Church in Austria, or between Political Catholicism and Religious Catholicism, on the Right. Incapable of tolerance, each of the two parties tried to mobilize the conscience and to monopolize the national life. The political struggle, intensified into a metaphysical antagonism between two parties which considered themselves for all practical purposes as good as religions, was the real tragedy of postwar Austria. Only a fraction of the people was not able to ward off the consequences of this twofold totalitarianism by withdrawing from party politics, and again only a fraction of them albeit to shirk state's politics as well. Basically, both parties acted equally, although, as a matter of fact, Catholicism behind the Christian Socialist Party still functions as a religious cosmos with roots far beyond any political interests, while Marxism behind the Social Democratic Party at any rate is but a school of thought which has no value whatsoever without the labor movement and much the party. Hence the Marxian ideology and Organization are always less separable, even if the labor movement is split into more than one party, than the religious and political factor in Catholicism which may be confounded under certain local conditions, but are in fact incommensurable qualities. Yet, exactly in this essential difference of metaphysics on the Right and on the Left the great historic guilt of Austrian Catholicism has to be found. There was a greater heritage to be dissipated and a greater hope for the entire people made a partisan issue and a party plank. 141 Both the Catholic priests of the Christian Socialist Party, incamated in Seipel, and the Jewish intellectuals of the Social Democratic Party, of whom Bauer was the embodiment (although both men far exceeded the average of their group),could not see their common interest, symbolized by their common state, fitted for their common survival, but became accustomed to emphasize their divergences to the point of acute and permanent warfare. While the Christian Socialists terrorized spiritually the Catholics, wanting a strict equation between the Christian Socialist Party and the Catholic Church in Austria, the Social Democrats terrorized hardly less, though in general less spiritually the proletarians, whose masses adhered to them anyhow, but whose resisting minorities they wanted to conquer as well. In both instances there was a spiritually militant Catholic minority which became the symbol pf resistance against party totalitarianism on the Left and on the Right, the one confounding the labor movement with terror, the other confounding the party with religion, both mistaking democracy for dictatorship. To resist in an organized way the monopolistic tendencies within the labor movement in general the Christian trade unions had been created already in the 1890’s, while to break the opposite monopolies particularly strong on the country side, the Religious Socialists were organized in the late 1920's. Both movements were not merely Austrian phenomena, although perhaps their Austrian history is more characteristic than any other. Although politically speaking the Christian trade unions belonged to the Christian Socialist Party and the Religious Socialists to the Social Democratic Party, the leading figures in both movements which in fact had the same goal, spiritually speaking, originated in the same rank and file of the prewar Catholic Austrian youth movement. Both minority tendencies, however, could never gain in Austria any deeper influence. The Christian trade unions, although they submitted to their party from Lueger to Seipel in greater discipline than desirable, acquired any Status in it only at the end, in the authoritarian regime, which they should have opposed, but in which they were the only labor functionaries. The Religious Socialists (under the leadership of a young Catholic metal worker of the same name as the party leader himself, Otto Bauer, and also well favored by the other Otto Bauer's great understanding for the entire problem) could have helped gain their party the fifty- one percent in the last democratic election (1932),if the party apparatus would have been as wise as its intellectual leadership, or if Bauer had had the same dictatorial power in his party as Seipel had. If in this last electoral contest the Religious Socialists would have been organized as an affdiated party on the Left (as the Christian Socialist Labor Party theoretically was on the Right) with candidates of their own wherever places could be conquered and with a program of their own in all cultural questions (as I then proposed to Otto Bauer, their party leader), their success might well have changed history. Bauer, who understood the problem, could not do anything, as in every electoral districts there were vested interests which had to be taken into account and everywhere there was already a would-be candidate, who by his loyal party work had advanced to a Position, where no central party authority could substitute him by somebody eise. In other words, the Social Democratic Party was a big apparatus, whose central leadership 142 could not force the local issues beyond a certain point. Thus, this apparatus, as it once had grown, also had to die according to the law of time. Both parties in their prime were in fact models of totalitarianism. the ruthlessness of which in many instances did not have to wait for the appearance of National Socialism. Even if it was rather the determinism of the party apparatus and not the central authority if the party which determined the organizational life, it was nevertheless genuine totalitarianism. The practice of monopolizing life from the cradle to the grave and of isolating the adherents of an idea from all non-adherents is primarily a religious one, shared by all religions in their primordial stage for the sake of incubating the faithful. Christianity eventually has sublimed this attitude into the parallelism of spiritual distance and temporal Cooperation, or spiritual apostolate and temporal non-conformity, both according to the Status of the Christian idea. In a Catholic state, as prewar Austria still continued to be ostensibly, the entire problem did not come to the fore for Catholicism, while in the non-Catholic state, in which the Catholics of postwar Austria suddenly found themselves, they soon discovered, how little their own traditional attitude guaranteed them influence and power in competition with the well-organized primitive church of Socialism which in fact the Social Democratic Party already has been at this junction. Thus the Catholics began to imitate the Socialists. Perhaps if they would not have so quickly abandoned their prewar political convictions, they would have found other means of strengthening their Position. They did not, and thus they soon longed to have a political church as primitive and as well organized as their adversaries. Thereby they in fact subscribed to the dissolution of the country into the property of two primitive religions. None of them was really Christianity introduced into politics and consequently politics ex fide, although the Socialists liked themselves to compare with early Christianity and although Political Catholicism under clerical leadership feit to be but the pendant of Religious Catholicism. One of the two parties in fact was the earthly shadow of the Christian "pity for the people;l compared with which the other often times was but the prayer of the Pharisee, proudly sure of himself that he is not like his neighbor sinner. The other of the two surely was the shadow of the royal mantle of Christianity, without at least the seam of which there is no hope for ever satisfying the hunger and the cold, and compared with which those cries for pity which defy the mantle sometimes seem only those of lunatics. Perhaps it would have needed a blazing flame of Religious Catholicism to be together, omnia omnibus, the spiritual backbone of Political Catholicism as well as the spiritual understanding for Marxism and the labor movement and thus the stirring conscience alive in both minorities on the Left and on the Right, waging their courageous struggles against party totalitarianism. There was no blazing flame. Thus none of the two primitive religions unredeemed themselves could bring redemption and salvation to Austria. Yet one of them possessed, at least behind its primitivism, behind its shortcomings and blunders, the substance which could have saved not only one, but both halves of the nation, and saved not only Austria but the world, and which will have the same chance again. To have this substance, but to fail, multiplies the historic responsibility, while to lack the substance, but to try courageously 143 may well be enough to entice the forgiveness of history. Yet only to have the substance and to succeed will save the world.

(§29) The first stage of disintegration in the Austrian Republic set in, when the Social Democrats, on the basis of a worse electoral vote than expected, withdrew from the coalition government. The Social Democrats in their purely statistically arguing optimism, of which Danneberg was the unsurpassed master, were sure they would easily out arithmatize their enemies, gain the absolute majority themselves in a very short time and then dominate the others in strict accordance with the rules of the democratic game which they then would not have hesitated to Interpret wherever possible in Seipel's männer too, Consequently, they left their seats in the federal government and concentrated on Vienna alone, where they were not in need to care much for the Christian Socialist minority either. They were pretty sure that the Christian Socialist Party in federal politics would soon need them urgently, would be unable to hold the reins of government alone and would rather beg them to retum into the folds of government. They did not believe, therefore, their abstinence to be a long lasting one. They grimly deceived themselves. The Christian Socialist Party under Seipel's leadership proved well to be a match to their former partners in this real war of nerves around interior politics .Under the new leadership the Christian Socialists concluded their coalition with the Greater Germans on the basis of anti-Marxism and bourgeois interests, gradually took complete control of the state's apparatus, both the army and the police, and reorganized them to be ready Instruments in their own hands. Step by Step they pushed the Social Democrats, originally the masters of the republic, into the defensive. Wherever they could, at first without infringement upon the Constitution, but also very soon with many attempts to violate it, they tried to rule, not merely to govem. Their model was the monarchy, not the republic, yet their ideal was neither the constitutional monarchy nor the abolition of the republic. Their true goal which a technically masterful leadership really achieved was to tum around the pointers of history and to shift the center of gravity within the republic, to bring about the opposite of what existed before, and to use for this purpose the anti-Socialist, un-republican, dimly monarchical sentiments of the majority of the people. In short, they aimed at the absolute Christian Socialist domination in the republic instead of the Social Democratic one of the past, preferably on the basis of the Constitution, if the Opponent would submit to the Stretching of its letters, yet if need be also without. While the Social Democrats occasionally liked to threaten the others with their Marxian doctrine which would use the democratic Constitution only as a means for the ideals of the Socialist society, but in fact adhered to it to its very letters which were so greatly in their favor, the Christian Socialist had leamed from Seipel that there were "natural rights" transcending the Constitution which sometimes must be defended even against the Constitution. The final result of both so shrewd a chess-game on the Bight and those booby-traps laid out by the leftists for themselves was in fact that the center of gravity completely shifted and that the Social Democrats who once sneeringly refused to stay in the coalition, sure to 144 be begged back into it later, eventually leamed to beg to be accepted and included, yet only to be sneeringly refused now themselves. There was no spectacle of party power politics in postwar Europe as breath-taking and hair-raising than this one in Austria in which the masters of the "Austrian revolution" became the victims of their own dialectics. The anti-Marxian leader to carry out the program of the bourgeoisie renascence, tantamount to the eclipse of the Proletariat, was Ignaz Seipel. He had be in prewar Austria as a professor of moral theology in a provincial seminary and had been catapulted by +he decaying monarchy into the last imperial cabinet of Lammasch. His academic teacher in theology, Franz Martin Schindler (d. 1922),who belonged to the theorists of the early Christian Socialist movement, had brought him into contact with the social problems. During the war he belonged to that group of men, with Lammasch as a Symbol, who on the conservative side were ready to try a progressive policy, an ideology to which the new emperor gladly consented. One can clearly see these intellectual leftists of the conservative camp in a postwar constitutional monarchy. If it could have been preserved, carrying out the program of modemization, political, social and economic, joined, backed or supervised by the more consistent leftists of the other camp. In the first phase of the republic, Seipel had been the main advocate of what he thought to be the most organic continuity between the prewar and postwar order. He advocated the self-elimination of the monarchy without great shocks by its own decisions and on this basis the elimination of the entire problem monarchy or republic from the discussion among or even from the interests of the Austrian Catholics, whereby he really thought to have eliminated the problem itself. He was modern, un-Romantic, un-historic in the very depth of his soul, without political ideals which were bound to the dust of this earth. To me as a young man, who not even in the midst of Austrian reconstruction could forget that a world had collapsed and that perhaps all reconstruction might not he enough to substitute it, it was an unforgettable scene how Seipel, with an exalted look in his eyes, strangely contrasting to his monumental coolness, once tried to impress upon me his real conviction, "how splendidly far we have progressed". He compared the immorality of emperors and kings in former centuries with the idealism of state's and party leaders in modern times, and was ecstatic about the "enormous progress". Yet while he spoke so, the stench of corruption in his own party, provincial leaders corrupting the banking institutions of their realms of power, shocked the nostrils of his contemporaries, short only of his own and he would really have been at a loss to name a single imperial cabinet of the past, even except the last liberal cabinet, in which the faintest resemblance of the same corruption would have been permitted to exist which grew exuberantly under his own blind leadership. Seipel first sponsored the Cooperation with the Social Democrats, in order to be in the government and not outside, and was consequently a Champion of the "red and black" coalition, for which he provided the theological background. At that time, he was a leftist, who not only accelerated the pace of democratization by endorsing woman suffrage as the first conservative leader already under the monarchy, but was even in 145 favor of socialization, at least as the public opinion of the republic seemed in its favor aa well. I remember a lecture on academic soil by Seipel, never published in writing, in which he favored the socialization of various trades, for instance, as he quite seriously propose, those of the paviors and of the pharmacists. This was perhaps but a ballon d'essai among Catholic intellectuals, in order to find out how they reacted to the coalition governmenf s plans of socialization. (I only remember, how a pharmacist Student who happened to be a friend of mine left the lecture at the crucial junction and closed the door noisily behind him). How far Seipel himself really went with his leftist sympathies, as compared with his cool calculation of the coalition as the only Instrument of co-partnership available, is difficult to say. As a Scholastic theorist, Seipel cultivated in himself an accommodating mind, as far as the problems of this earth, contingent only to the sphere of the theological dogma were concerned, and thus followed closely the trends of the time in order to gain as much as possible for Catholicism in its religious substance. After the war, leftism triumphed everywhere and thus Seipel became a quasi-leftist too, or at least pretended to be one, tried to find out, how much a Catholic theologian could really be one and how much ( M 1 Catholic laymen would follow him in this respect. Gradually, however, he turned from the Left to the Right in party and state's politics swinging with the pendulum of public opinion back from the leftist exaggerations, but not into equipoise, rather into the rightist counterpoise. Seipel used the counterplot of the Right with the same fundamental indifference (Ignatian indifference, I would say) he had participated before in the plot of the Left, or at least again he pretended and believed to be equally indifferent. Perhaps he was not this time indifferent in the same männer. He knew, sub-consciously at least, how weak he had been in a fateful hour of the state, when the past was buried and the Afuture was born, and, unable to forgive himself, by a deeply rooted psychological mechanism which he shared with many other Catholics who had acted similarly, he overcompensated later his previous defect by being twice as dashing now against those to whom he once had succumbed, now after the balance of history had turned against them. He and his equals believed to be able to undo thereby what they had done, and to be now as stubborn and as courageous, as they feit they ought to have been once. The first impact of Seipebs turn was feit in the faculties of the Austrian universities, where always the few Catholics had joined hands with the overwhelming majority of German national liberals against the minority of Socialists who had been advanced into major positions by the events of 1918. Here Seipel's "amalgamated front" of the bourgeoisie parties against those intellectuals who had joined the labor party was well anticipated from the very day the universities had started again in postwar Austria. Seipel still leamed from the professors. When I discussed the problems of the Austrian universities for several times with him during his third term as federal chancellor (1926/29),! found him completely naive in front of them, vainly boasting how gloriously far we have advanced also in this respect and how splendidly well some of the younger German nationalists, the later Nazis, would take care of the Catholic interests on the universities. At that time I asked myself in bewilderment whether the leader of Austrian Catholicism was really as naive as he displayed to be or what else-he 146 could want to demonstrate to me. He either deliberately closed his eyes like the bird ostrich or perhaps by his pretended naivete wanted to emphasize to me that I certainly would not be on his list. Aside from this personal experience, it was revealing to me, how easily, nearly on metaphysical grounds, Seipel was now ready to cooperate with German Nationalism, and how comfortably he, the Catholic clergyman, feit to be represented on academic soil by German nationalists, whom he obviously preferred to Catholic laymen with a political concept different from his own. Seipel’s self-justification was that he was driven to the Right by the Left, and that he had to seize the reins of govemment more briskly to the same extent as the Social Democratic Party shunned governmental responsibility. Yet this problem was much less simple than Seipel wanted it to be. To share responsibility in his terminology would have meant for the Opposition, not only to enter the government and to agree to those compromises which would result from the proportional division of power, but rather to participate in the liquidation of specific social laws and constitutional provisions, without which Seipel, as he declared, could not govern, and by doing so deliver themselves cooperatively to the knives of their ready slaughterers. There can be no doubt about Seipel's intention in this respect. This does not mean that the Opposition should not have tried to be a responsible partner, and if need be let the counter partner demonstrate his own irresponsibility. They did not so, however, and by really shunning governmental responsibility under all conditions enabled their irresponsible enemies to boast of a more considerate behavior, with the interest of the people more thoroughly in mind, until the moment arrived, when the gravity of power definitely shifted, and now the Social Democrats began longing for the coalition which Seipel would now be strong enough to refuse out rightly. Between 1920 and 1927 the Social Democrats could have probably reached an agreement with Seipel under various schemes, if they would not have relied upon the idee fixe to be stronger outside the govemment and even outside the parliament if need be, and therefore not obliged to make concessions. In those years, concessions to Seipel's idee fixe, to become himself the Austrian president invested with German powers, made have saved the rest.

(§30) Seipel allied himself, after having come to governmental power for the first time (1922), with the interest of capitalism, national and international. He had become completely aware during the first years after the war that the leadership of Socialism in democracy would not shape the postwar world definitely, but only the alliance between democracy and capitalism. In looking over the boundaries of the defeated peoples in Central Europe, he could not see the smallest trifle of the approaching doom of capitalism. He had no faith in any self-curing recipes which might save Austria from her organic troubles by pulling together all her populär forces. Paradoxically enough, the Social Democrats, who did not believe in Austria's ability to survive without union with Germany, provided a great amount of most consistent proposals as how to eure her through self-initiative from her ills, while Seipel, who was the main advocate of Austria's independence which he did not hesitate to demonstrate to the world with most 147 drastic means, did not think that she could help herseif. With the idea of political independence as a weapon, Seipel secured the economic means, by which political independence could be tried, yet only in submitting its economic substance to foreign interests. Still more paradoxically, the essence of the Social Democratic proposals for self-help found later another expression in the ideas of the corporative reconstruction of society ander Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, which the Social Democrats, not knowing their own child, passionately resisted, while Seipel in his last sermons and travels, trusting the papal advices more than his own experiences, was dedicated to its very propagation. As a matter of fact, Austria could not help herseif, after accepting the rules of international capitalism in her own house, but she could help herseif under reformatory schemes, organizing capitalism and reorganizing society, whether these schemes were drafted by Marxists according to their political realism as guided "by the Marxian hypothesis, or By Catholics according to theirs as guided by Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno, as long as only both would relate their theories realistically to the existing national conditions. As unbridgeable as these two doctrines are, if set against each other in abstracto as well may political leaders or groups, determined by these doctrines as their loadstones, nevertheless converge manifold in concreto, if it is the work to be done which counts essentially in their intentions and endeavors .It is then like computing the next eclipse of the sun with both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican method. Although the realism dedicated to the problems of society is hopeless without doctrine, it is the convergence of realistic approaches, not the discrepancies of ideological schemes which serves the real problems of a people divided into metaphysical camps of politics. At that time, Seipel did not want to be realistic beyond two very simple rules at hand: Austrian independence and international financial help. In a mood, diametrically opposed to the acceptance of an iota out of the idea of national self-help, he made his famous diplomatic journeys to the capitals of the neighboring States in North and South, offering the friendship, the alliance and even the incorporation Austria to the highest bidder, and her will to unite with somebody, or at least advertising this offer to the whole world, in order that it may awake and help, Diplomatically, this was masterpiece. It brought in fact the quick support of the League of Nations, which took over to arrange and guarantee Austria’s financial reconstruction ("Sanierung"} as against the promise of the Austrian govemment to drop any efforts for union with Germany down to 1942. Seipel's idea was to mobilize the international interest in Austria’s independence against his inner adversaries, the Social Democrats, who still were the main advocates of the Anschluss. As far as the final laws of the financial reconstruction required a qualified, two-third majority in the Austrian parliament, the Opposition could not help in the end voting for the govemment. The Social Democrats, who had waged a passionate campaign against Seipel's statesmanship outside of the parliament, attested thereby the govemment inside the parliament that they would not like risking a failure of its policy. This may have been great statesmanship on the part of the Opposition, but could also be interpreted a great demagogy. At any rate, Seipel by his deeds of the financial reconstruction gained a 148 moral reputation throughout Europe and in his own country far beyond his own party, and an authority which only the re-founder of the Austrian state could Claim. He certainly has been thereby the savior of Austria in the eyes of history, as it happened, which counts the facts and not the chances The Social Democrats might well have had the chance to save Austria with their methods of self-help too, but the Christian Socialists in fact did with the opposite methods. Historie chances, however, if psychologically deeply rooted enough, often are latent facts of history, to be fully materialized in their consequences later. Seipel,who had saved Austria with his own method and refused stubbomly the method of his interior adversaries, from now on and in the light of later events often seems to act, as if he feit to have acquired thereby not only the right to rule Austria for all her future, but also the right to destroy again what he had saved. In carrying out the financial reconstruction of Austria and thereby promulgating for the first time the national will to independence at least for the time being, Seipel was the first postwar Austrian statesman to overcome the Anschluss pathology. After the republic was created, both parties had kept formally to the Anschluss as their shibboleth in foreign policy, although only the Social Democrats made it a formal paragraph of their party program (the Christian Socialist only by their proverbial lack of programmatic attitude being saved from this disgrace). Although the Austrian people was punished for the folly of the Austrian parliamentarians by the peace treaty, and stigmatized as the heir of the Austrian empire, the Austrian parties stubbornly continued to want punishment, yet not as the heirs of a quantite negligeable, but as parts of the rocher de bronze which still existed in the German empire. These were the parliamentarians and parties who had brought an unspeakable mess over the heads of their people by their inopportune solidarity with Germany which, even if really originating in sentiments of war comradeship, and not merely in unrealistic and irrational sentimentalities, can be considered only as the national expression of historic bewilderment and confusion. To cooperate with postwar Germany in all social matters of common interest was even easier without the Anschluss folly. In the rank and file of both parties, thanks to the sound instincts of the Austrian people, the whole idea was outspokenly unpopulär and very much resented. While in the Social Democratic Party the successors of the former national liberals of 1848 and 1867, most Jewish intellectuals, were the main protagonists of the Anschluss idea, so it was in the Christian Socialist Party, aside from its older Sudeten German strata, the Catholic academic youth which under the influence of their pan-German professors and their pan-German academic organizations, clamored for Greater Germany. They did not believe Seipel to be serious against the Anschluss. In spite of this academic Anschluss nucleus, the Christian Socialists, because of their conservative tendencies and their greater lack of party discipline, simply forgot about the Anschluss after a while, contrary to the Social Democrats who officially fostered the idea of becoming a part of the glorious German Proletariat until to the latter's inglorious capitulation to Hitler. They did not like the "German brothers" either, where they mingled too boastfully among them, but they were Marxists enough to rationalize or irrationalize their sympathies and 149 antipathies. Many Marxist leaders were of Sudeten German descent and for them the colors black and red and yellow of the "German revolution" of 1848 usually was the only mysticism they recognized beyond Marxism. In Bauer's mind the Anschluss was at least the rudiment of a national ideology, as anti-Austrian as this nationalism was indeed. For Seipel, however, there existed hardly anything eise in the Anschluss ideology than some means of getting as much as possible out of it for the then just actual phase of his policy. If Europe wanted an independent Austria, Seipel argued, the Anschluss ideology might be useful sometimes to emphasize that Austria after all is not always just what it seems to be and must certainly not merely be the subject of international politics. Thus he was able after nearly fifteen years of politics around the Anschluss to leave the one group for instance the national liberals (of the Österreichische Volkswirt) convinced that he was the demon who stalled the Anschluss, while the other group, for instance Sudeten German fellow priests, took any oath that Seipel as no other Central European statesman in fact promoted it. Historically, Seipel frustrated the Anschluss, yet I would not dare to say that he ever that he ever in his mind did forsake it. In saving Austria, created by the consent of Europe, he came to the first disposition of an Austrian ideology, though rudimentary and fragmentary, but still satisfactory for the purpose of saving the existing state hic et nunc, not only in the eyes of the society of nations, but also in the minds of its own citizens. To put out completely the sparks of the Anschluss ideology and to illuminate solely the name of Austria on the peaks of the mountains and in the hearts of the people, Seipel would be as reluctant politically, as he was incapable of doing it psychologically. His ascetic brain held no political ideals whatsoever, or if he had he did not permit them to form his mind or to determine his policy. Yet while the intellectual leaders of the Social Democratic Party in their innermost hearts, as much as they loved their republic, still hated the very name of Austria, in Seipel's historic deed, as self-limited as it was, the idea flared up for the first time in the postwar era that this little Austria, poor and weak, still meant something valuable to both the world and her own people, something worth-while to be defended and preserved, something precious enough to work and fight for. And the Social Democrats, as loudly as they protested against every single item of the financial reconstruction carried out by Seipel, implicitly accepted his view and Interpretation themselves, when they not only proposed the most consistent recipes for saving Austria by her own power, but also, after failing in this purpose, showed national solidarity enough to lend the govemment they opposed the necessary qualified majority in parliament, This was truly Seipel's masterwork to have not only arrayed the world in support of Austria, but also to have convinced the Opposition that beyond all the differences in every detail there are still identities in view to be represented by a national leadership, to which even political adversaries may adhere. The coalition between the two big parties under the leadership of Seipel and Bauer might have re-emerged in this historic Situation if the two partners could have agreed to separate their spheres of influence soberly along clear-cut lines, the Christian Socialists primarily in Charge of foreign policy (and cultural policy as well), and the Social Democrats in Charge of social policy (with economic policy besides). By such an 150 agreement they would not have greatly altered the existing realities both psychologically and politically. Seipel was strong enough to symbolize Austria before the world (and to represent the basically Catholic atmosphere of the country), but he could never dare to hope in eamest to symbolize her before his own people, both socially and economically, by eliminating the indirect co-partnership in every respective question exercised by the Opposition. The savior of Austria before the world, he could not lay hands on the demolition of Austrian social legislation and consequently had to take into account the influence which this legislation would inevitably exercise upon Austrian economics. If he would have clearly seen through this causality and recognized these natural limitations of his power, he would have spared Austria much. His and her misfortune was that he thought his mission, in the name of international capitalism outside of Austria, would include to force upon the Opposition another kind of social and economic policy which the Left could never seriously justify before its constituencies. Seipel was powerful, wherever the name of Austria reappeared on the political horizon,\ but the Opposition was still more powerful at home, and the masses of the Austrian people, to whatever ideology they adhered, were extremely glad to have the one party in Charge of Austrian honor and tradition, including foreign policy and the interests of religion, but to have besides the other party too for all the interests of social welfare, including an economic policy, as deemed reasonable by the underprivileged. This idea of coalition was deeply written in the innermost thoughts and hopes of the Austrian masses, to which the two parties should have listened. Unfortunately, they could not read, over the reports of their party workers, in the hearts of the people, who not always revealed to the party workers, how they really feit, the Social Democratic voters not eager to confess them that after all they like religious education in public schools, or the Christian Socialist voters courageous enough to teil them that exactly those social laws which the Christian Socialist government proposed to liquidate were the very basis of their economic existence. Thus, the two parties could in fact not agree on so sober a line of distinction and Cooperation, although the masses of the people could and did. The reason was that the two parties did not simply represent two complementary lines and interests of foreign and domestic policy but ideologies which excluded each other like fire and water. Although the Social Democratic masses were satisfied with those older laws which secured the influence of religion in public life, the leadership was not and its boldest dream was to demolish them. And vice versa, although the Christian Socialist masses were glad to enjoy the social legislation, for which the Opposition stood, the leadership contemplated nothing with an equal ardor than to ruin them. The two parties which were never fair with their own voters could never hope to be fair with each other.

(§31) Both the Marxist ideology of dass struggle for the sake of the Proletariat as well as the anti-Marxist ideology of a quasi-religiously inverted and perverted dass struggle for the sake of the bourgeoisie, were in the long run incompatible with so labile a national consciousness as postwar Austria was able to display after the breakdown of 151 her Greater Austrian position and the frustration of the Greater German substitute. Certainly the dass struggle from below was the very means by which the Social Democratic Party organized labor against the dass struggle from above, pre-existing in its causality and always resuscitated again, and thereby achieved all its advantages for labor. No doubt, without counter-pressure on the part of labor the age-old pressure on the part of Capital could not have been lifted even for a moment. Within the prewar monarchy, as long as there was no danger of capsizing for the ship of state, these tendencies of social progress, expressed in an equilibrium of two dass struggles, were rather wholesome, not only as a counter-plot to the exaggerations in the field of national aspirations but really as a contribution to the social emancipation of the masses which in the long run are the best investment of national economy. A healthy political structure will not tum upside down even under the pressure of a vigorous dass struggle. Historically, no doubt the prewar state was healthier in this respect than the postwar state. The prewar state could seriously contemplate to cultivate all means which would lead to the social emancipation of the masses, in order to cut the excesses of nationalism. But even in postwar Austria the bourgeoisie could easily have caught up with the Proletariat in all matters of social progress, without having to fear disadvantages, if the state as such would have been as much its prevailing interest, as it had once been the interest of the ruling classes in the prewar monarchy. Even in the Austrian Republic, which the workers considered their republic, there existed no real basis for any suspicion that the technique of social progress, called dass struggle, in spite of its militant phraseology should truly aim and would logically result in the dictatorship of the Proletariat. In the industrial sphere itself the aims of the dass struggle ideology were the Organization of labor, trade unionism, collective bargaining, the constitutional factory, the democratization of industry - all legitimate postulates. To many the aims seemed different in the realm of theory, and here Bauer was frequently accused by his bourgeois opponents of "Bolshevism". Yet Bauer knew very well that historically a balance of the classes had been reached, speaking in Marxian terminology, and that even the state, representing this balance, at least for the time being, holds a function thoroughly different from any withering away according to the Marxian doctrine. While the theorists of Marxism were primarily interested to reconcile this reality with the Marxian doctrine (and in this respect were worthy of every support) the practitioners of anti-Marxism only thought in terms of very actual interests. On occasion of the Social Democratic Party Congress at Linz (1926), Bauer expressly formulated a democratic creed of the Proletariat, at least as long as the bourgeoisie would also fight but democratically, and he spoke of anti-democratic means only as far as also the bourgeoisie would use them and desert the democratic mies. In these arguments, in which theoretical and practical consideration and requirements curiously mingled, opponents of ill faith could easily find what they sought. In a state "on short notice" the founding party could well be suspected to mean also only a democracy "on short notice” Yet, it was utterly wrong on the other side of the social fence to read into this declaration any real longing for the dictatorship of the Proletariat which in fact the 152 Social Democratic Party had helped to defeat during the first years of the republic and which in all probability would have been as little under Social Democratic leadership in Austria as the parallel experiments in both Bavaria and Hungary. Bauer was wise enough to know that there was not the slightest chance in the Situation of the world at large which would Support any absolute domination of the Proletariat over the bourgeoisie in quite some time to come. He did not want to declare war against the bourgeoisie, but to clarify specific theoretical issues of the labor movement, to provide some handy rules for it and perhaps thereby to frighten a little bit the Philistines around, who just had begun to play with the fire-crackers of militarized politics in the first larger militant organizations of the counterrevolution. Bauer wanted to terrify them, but in fact he initiated their more rapid growth. The two halves of the Austrian people spoke already two different languages. When Bauer referred to a transitory period in terms of the Marxian philosophy of history, the other side understood that only some limited profession of democracy was intended. When he hoped to warn and to menace, the others feit provoked and incited. Not only the anti-Marxists, however, misunderstood Bauer, also his Marxian audience was rather inclined to expect so short a period of waiting that they occasionally liked to anticipate in factories and local communities if not the dictatorship which after all would automatically follow later on, so the terror which the others, however, already took for the eschatological sign. In 1926-1927 the readiness of organized labor to go on the streets and to commit acts of terror against minorities was on its highest level and contrasted strangely to the historic weakness of the labor dass confessed publicly by its leaders. On the other hand of the stream over which there was no bridge any longer, a similar crystallization, theoretical and practical, happened. Seipel, once himself not inimical to socialization, now was eager to contribute to the doctrine of anti-Marxism, to emphasize the need of commercialization, to proclaim the primacy of economy before politics and to advocate the removal of the "revolutionary rubbish" in social legislation. Both wings of the universities, Jewish liberals and Nazi anti liberals assisted him passionately in this respect. If the Social Democrats preached the gospel of dass struggle, the bourgeois theorists, among them Othmar Spann, the leading German nationalist on the University of Vienna, quickly leamed to talk of the exploitation of the employers by the employees, the directors, engineers and white color workers by manual labor, and promptly turned the dialectics of Marxism, the expropriation of the expropriators and the automatism of economy, around against their Initiators. When the Social Democrats praised their social legislation, in reality the organic continuation of prewar social policy, as revolutionary achievements, the epigone of the Vienna school of economics, among them Ludwig Mises as the most consistent Champion of social anarchism, declared labor protection, social Insurance, collective bargaining and public housings as mere bürdens of economic recovery, without the complete elimination of which Austrian economy would never prosper. Seipel, himself without any solid knowledge in the field of economics and thoroughly unaware of the predicaments of modern life in the industrial society, was deeply influenced by these theories which after all were the shibboleths of both wings of academic scholarship. 153 Greatest ascendancy over Seipel and his academic squires held for years one of the most interesting figures of postwar Austria, Gottfried Kunwald, who a cripple without legs from his birth, nevertheless was one of the most highly appreciated advisers in politics and economics to many Austrian statesmen and scholars of the postwar period. Kunwald, a Jewish intellectual and expert in the banking business, whose wide interests, however, extended to every field of life, certainly was a genius with whom Seipel must have well conversed. When I came to Kunwald in later years, particularly to leam from him about Seipel, I could hardly extricate myself from the influence of this splendid Spirit. He himself was by no means as primitive as one could assume merely from the main theses of his pupils. One of his ideas worth-while not to be forgotten was, after the municipal policy of the Social Democratic administration at Vienna as well as Seipel's financial reconstruction of the federal state had succeeded, that Austrians ought to be proud of both. Yet he certainly shared in the beginning Seipel's idea that municipal housing, based upon the renters' protection law, would completely ruin the Austrian real estate credit and thus damage Austrian economic reconstruction. He confirmed Seipel's nearly suicidal idea to go into the elections with the slogan "against the renters’ protection law" which would not result in a political catastrophe only because of the rigidity of the party boundaries in Austria and consequently of the votes of ten thousands for Seipel, who clearly resented this special item of his Propaganda. Kunwald perhaps was a better looser than Seipel was in these interior struggles with the Social Democratic Party. When the final consequences of his own errors approached the end, nobody having leamed in Austria his better wisdom, Kunwald, who had been very active in his last years in monarchism, could not help not being a good looser either. He took poison to avoid the alternative between exile and death from other hands. Seipel's ideal sometimes was what he called the "American method" (before 1932), in which, as he prophesied, social policy would be completely superfluous through the continuous improvement of the industrial process and technique with automatic chances for everybody. He was optimistic, naive and completely unrealistic, as far as his belief in the automatism of the industrial society was concemed. The more the center of political gravity shifted in Austria and the weaker labor became politically, the more reactionary was Seipel's argumentation. He liked the irony, the overemphasis and the antithesis. Hence it is not always easy to find out his own intimate convictions, if he had any at all in this field of moral contingencies. He probably thought that on the basis of his dogmatic and theological convictions both views are permissible, the more leftist once held himself and the more rightist he choose later. Gradually he had identified himself more one-sidedly than perhaps originally contemplated with the anti- Marxian view alone. Within a healthy atmosphere of a deeply rooted political structure, this anti-Marxism might have been quite harmless representing a mere weapon of the bourgeoisie to get the biggest possible share out of the collective bargaining, by which the national income was divided. Under an unshakable national authority neither the declamations of the Marxists nor those of the anti-Marxists would have meant anything serious. But again under the labile existence of the Austrian state above the gulf of two 154 dass interests without a historic authority and Constitution recognized by both parts as legitimate above discussions, conditions became extremely precarious. They were not improved, when the chief of the govemment himself joined so outspokenly one of the two camps and indulged frequently enough in doctrinal lectures which the other side had to regard as cynicism. As this leader was the head of the Christian people's party and a Catholic prelate at that, the acuteness of the antagonism and tension could not be surpassed anymore and inevitably had to drive towards the breaking point. Yet the climax of tension and tragedy was reached only, when the two parties decided to represent not merely political, social and metaphysical contrasts, but above all two military fronts. Under the coalition government, when the whole people was united against the armistice commissions of the Allied Powers, both political groups had concealed weapons in mutual agreement and in common violation of the armistice conditions. These were tragically, but also logically enough the very weapons, around which, evil begetting on evil, both Heimwehr and Schutzbund later crystallized their rank and file. The Heimwehr in the provinces was from the beginning in intimate contact with the counter-revolutionary organizations of other countries, Bavaria, Hungary and fmally Italy, while the Schutzbund, originally the basin of the most radical elements of the labor movement, mostly war veterans, gradually developed into the Social Democratic Party army. Two little wars (in Carinthia and in the Burgenland) where the right of Austria could not find international recognition otherwise than by the display of arms, contributed to the same effect. Everywhere in Austria there were still weapons, and the most statesmanlike deed of all would have perhaps been to recognize this fact, and to nationalize both party armies, in order to attain their common disarmament and reach eventually the level of Swiss conditions, where every able bodied Citizen has his gun but wields it as an organ of the state. Like the readiness to enter a new coalition, however, so the readiness to disarm the party armies shifted gradually from the Right to the Left without ever becoming a reality. None of the two armies dared to disarm itself, as long as the other would not do the same. No coalition at hand, no statesman dared to nationalize them both. Eventually, the mere mechanism of those weapons hidden from the world and from each other had to bring about the catastrophe. While the historic error of the Social Democratic Party was to maintain a military formation which they were neither seriously willing nor even able to use in earnest as an army to reach after the supreme power in the republic, but the mere existence of which provided them with an empty feeling of might they did not have any longer in reality, the still more fateful error of the Christian Socialist Party under Seipel’s leadership and responsibility was that they, who originally had no party army of their own, allied themselves with elements ready and willing to do just what their adversaries, the Social Democrats, could never dare to do, to overthrow the legal order by the weight of arms. The Heimwehr originally was the same agglomeration of bands under local leadership, disparate in their intentions and desperate in their means, which existed everywhere in Central Europe, foremost in Bavaria and Hungary, after war and revolution. Former officers, local aristocrats and leaders from the countryside 155 intelligentsia collected the youth, who had not seen action in war, and molded them into military groups ("Bünde"} which were kept together not so much by any political convictions, except the vague enthusiasm of nationalism, but by ties of sympathy and instinct, delight in adventure and revenge, and general dissatisfaction with this kind, or even any kind, of restabilization. Soon Northern Germany became the ideal playground of these bands, supported there by the still powerful factors of Prussian tradition. The later leader of the Austrian Heimwehr, whom Seipel discovered Emst Rüdiger Starhemberg, a wealthy Upper Austrian land owning aristocrat with a large clientele, completely originated in this psychology. He even served for a while in one of the Northern German military bands (Bund Oberland) which fought guerilla wars in the Baltic countries and in Upper Silesia. As member of an old aristocratic family, however, Starhemberg, as well anticipated by Seipel, had many means to overcome eventually in person what structurally was in fact the common heritage of National Socialism in Germany and of the Heimwehr in Austria. Starhemberg's mother was the leader of the Christian Socialist women in the Austrian parliament and a close collaborator of Seipel, who well surmised that so highly cultivated a woman would not have for ever to suffer a barbarian son. Thus Seipel allied himself with Starhemberg, of whom he was convinced that, if once in power, he would quiet down and be as faithful and ruthless a servant of the anti-Marxian republic, as once his ancestors were of the monarchy. But Seipel’s alliance with the Heimwehr, by which he seemed but to imitate in his way the already existing partnership between the Social Democratic Party and the Schutzbund, had much more far reaching consequences. The Heimwehr never had the discipline of the Schutzbund and never was in the hands of the Right what the other was in the hands of the Left, namely the Instrument of power to be used under the strictest political supervision. While Bauer always knew, how far he could really go ahead with the Schutzbund, Seipel gradually lost the perspective of the conservative statesman under this new influence and acquired a new stränge Specter, in which first his enemies, but soon also his friends and pupils saw a kind of Austro-Fascism stick out its head. The Heimwehr pushed the Christian Socialist Party forwards on its road in no comparison whatsoever with what the Schutzbund did to the Social Democratic Party. Even psychologically Seipel very soon depended in the self-limitations of his policy much more upon the successes of the Heimwehr than his own better knowledge and planning. Soon he used the Heimwehr not as the counterpoise in power politics any longer, the role in which he had enlisted it, but as the very means to crush the enemy. Through the Heimwehr the government Seipel gained the much envied ability, so far reserved to the Reds, "to go on the streets" and to place the sword onto the scales. To have taken up this sword, the outer-parliamentary power used against the parliament, was the curse and the scourge which should never leave Political Catholicism in Austria down to the end. The tuming point in the whole System of balance and in the shifting of the center of gravity within the parallelogram of political energies which were Austria's occurred, when a local conflict between the two military organizations with a subsequent sentence by a provincial jury in disfavor of the Social Democratic point of view resulted in an official party demonstration, tuming out in a big riot at Vienna, with arson against the 156 Palace of Justice (July 10,1927). The Seipel govemment was able to defeat the mob in the streets and bürden the Social Democratic Party with the historic responsibility before the public. The Social Democratic leaders surely did not want this contest of powers, but their too light-hearted readiness "to go on the streets" had been caught in the entanglement which itself created. A year later the Heimwehr carried out successfully the first large sized parade in an industrial area, Wiener Neustadt, taboo before but opened now to anti-labor by the protection of the government (October 7, 1928).The power to command the streets and intimidate both populace and legislature had shifted away from the Social Democratic Party to Seipel, who soon proved himself a master of strategy in a field, in which, only a short while before nobody would have supposed the pointed pacifist to be of any use at all. If he would have employed his preponderance to dictate peace, to disarm both military formations and to establish definitely the rule of law beyond their sphere of influence, he would have become a really great statesman, who might have saved Austria a second time, yet now more lastingly. Unfortunately for his memory, but still more for his people, Seipel in this historic hour succumbed to the temptations of a party leader, did not use his power and authority to establish the sovereignty of the Constitution above the two eccentric focuses of arbitrary might, but copied faithfully on the Right what he had resentfully seen the enemy once in his May days accomplish on the left.

(§32) The political history of the Austrian Republic is largely identical with the life story of two men, Seipel and Bauer, with both their antagonism and their reciprocity. They really were inimical twins. They were, even in their bitterest enmity, the ideal foes, linked to each other inevitably and inseparably. In this complementarity of two leading temperaments and characters there was the last glimmer of the coalition working subconsciously in the very minds of its two greatest destroyers and violators of its spirit. Whatever eise the followers of historic materialism and determinism may teil the world, it has been more than once in the hands of these two men, not of them in their individual particularity but in their social complementary and reciprocity, that they might have saved Austria - and more together. There were hours in Austrian history for both of them to know precisely that only Cooperation with the other fellow would do it, but these hours unfortunately never coincided. When Seipel feit so, Bauer sneered at him, and when Bauer feit so, Seipel's pupils had come into their own. As great figures in the history of their peoples as they were, they both were obsessed by ideological powers which well indicate their limits. Both have been masters in their ways within one half of the Austrian people, but noise of them ever has broken through these limitations. Just this was the tragedy of their country and the world, Seipel's road from the Left to the Right during three terms as federal chancellor brought him to the climax of power, as then existed in the republic, but not to those heights beyond, at which he aimed in all his final efforts. From 1928 on, when Seipel feit the surge of the Heimwehr behind, he had worked most systematically for what he called “reform of the Constitution” centering around the idea of German powers for the 157 Austrian federal president, for whose office he now began to prepare himself quite transparently. Yet here he found the first resistance among those leaders of the Christian Socialist Party, who had followed him only with mingled sentiments into the Heimwehr adventure. They feit that the goal of out-balancing Marxism was reached and they hesitated to go farther. Thus Seipel, grasping already the very threshold of supreme power, feit himself hurled back to its very brink, when eventually the democratic forces of his own party rebelled against his course and for the first time disavowed his leadership. They were bewildered and puzzled over the play with the fire, and instinctively resented the road their leader was guiding them. Seipel’s method had become more and more convulsive and artificial. First he had invented the Heimwehr ander Starhemberg's leadership as the anti-Marxian political agency, upon which he relied now more than upon the Christian Socialist Party, although the Heimwehr anti- Marxism sometimes clearly resembled the Nazi pathology. Then in his extremist mood, Seipel did not hesitate to propagate publicly, at least for German Catholicism, even the coalition with Nazism, in order quite democratically "to give a chance to the Opposition". Although he preferred to do so in an interview given in Denmark, the waves went high in both Christian Socialist Party and German Catholic Center about this insinuation by somebody who seemed to have completely lost his senses. There were few who dared' to defend the master then on this proclivous path. In this respect Franz Papen was Seipel’s great admirer and faithful pupil, who after the master's death merely employed the political conception he had once heard him recommend. Seipel was abstract brain enough to believe that Hitler might be educated back into conservatism by similar means as Starhemberg, although already the Heimwehr as such largely resisted this attempt and proved it futile. There was a point in Seipel’s political conservatism, where he accepted willingly the most irrational means, if only the idee fixe of economic conservatism could be served thereby. In Austria, for the time being at least, Seipel excluded himself and his ideas from any real influence by this extreme turn of his dialectics. When he began fully to understand the consequences, after his last bid for power, his candidacy for the federal presidency, had failed, he carried out what one might call, on the basis of Information provided by his physician, an intellectual suicide; he simply stopped the heroic fight he had waged for his own health during a decade by battling constantly the two antagonistic enemies within his frail body, tuberculosis and diabetes. Only in fighting them with his iron will, he could be chancellor for three terms. He might have continued to fight them courageously, if his political plans would have succeeded. They did not and so he did not care any longer. Tandler once tried to explain Seipel’s spasms in politics as the work of the two demons in his organism, who reached his mind via his body. However it might have been, Seipel now no longer saw any reason at all in continuing to vegetate without any mission before his eyes. As his diaries prove, the missions of his life have always been for him primarily religious ones, closely interwoven with the indelible character of his priesthood, and consequently pastoral and sacerdotal missions rather than political ones in any meaning merely considering the temporal welfare of state and people. He was sure to have served the church before all 158 other purposes by his three terms as federal chancellor and to have protected Catholicism by both tactics of his life, the accommodation to Marxism in the hour of its triumphs and the concentration of all anti-Marxian forces afterwards. He had brought deliberately Austrian politics to the point, where, if he himself could not be federal president, only a layman without scruples, not a prelate - not even "the prelate without clemency", as his enemies called him sneeringly -could do the next Step and in fact violate the Constitution by a coup d'etat. He did not resent such an enterprise which he thought an inevitable one to disentangle the state from Marxism and to escape from the maze of the republic. He would have longed to be the federal president of such a government to risk this Step, and would have had sufficient confidence that in such a case the violation of the Constitution would have been restricted to a minimum or even avoided at all, at least for the broader public. When this proved a dream without chance of realization, Seipel feit to have done enough. In his last public lecturers and appearances he had made himself the protagonist of the new papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931) whose corporative ideology seemed to him and his successors in this field closer to Fascism as it really is, and, and which he therefore thought a useful means to the same end, for which he was always striving. He did not see that the papal corporatism advocates exactly the same Cooperation between Capital and labor in society, which he had made so thoroughly impossible in the state. Then,he went to the Holy Land in his last joumey, came back and died, leaving his name and his heritage to those who would dare to make the jump. There is something extraordinary and grand in the life and death of this Machiavellian in the cassock. In his last talks with friends he accused himself of having been "childishly ambitious". Yet this was not more than the accusation of a saintly soul which even in the midst of state's affairs did never lose sight of its ascetic vocation. Seipel's diaries, published by a spiritual friend, reveal how the priest and the politician constantly struggled in his soul. Yet this was not the struggle of the religious philosopher, the Platonist, who wants to penetrate with his sublime ideas the depth of politics, but the struggle of a priestly soul, devoted by its very nature to a life of specific duties, yet constantly distracted by the quite different duties of the party leader and prime minister. Once I heard Seipel deliver a sermon before an academic audience concerning Matthew 22, 1-14,the gospel of the 19th Sunday after Pentecost, in which the children of this earth shun the royal wedding, because they have to go after their farms or their trades. This was soon after the war and we, the younger generation, would have gladly permitted him to paint the royal wedding in all its splendor as the unum necessarium, perhaps to make later agriculture and industry valuable and remarkable again. Yet Seipel's very significant thesis was "to divide one's time rightly between the two duties" and then do none too passionately. He strove an entire life for this synthesis, but achieved quite logically only that the politician, to whom he had to surrender the bigger amount of his seif and his time, tyrannized, as he feit eventually, both the priest and the man. He understood his mission as a religious task, but the autonomy of politics, to which he subscribed despite his cassock or perhaps, Psychologieally well understandable, just because of it made his accomplishments in every field but the 159 caricature of politics ex fide and in fact throughout his career religion the handmaid and the victim of his political enterprises. Aside from these quasi structural deficiencies of any statesman-priest, he was not free from Machiavellism, or as we have to grant him fully the benefit of looking at him as a rigorously ethical personage, he did not have the intellectual stature to distinguish always clearly enough between means and means to an end, evil or ideal. His share in Charles' second manifesto and attitude afterwards, his use of the Anschluss ideology as a means for making possible the financial reconstruction of an independent Austria, and last but not least his struggle for what he called "reform of the Constitution", but knew well that it could be reached only by a violation of the Constitution, all these may be masterpieces of very limited political arts yet it is surely imbued by a deeply Machiavellian technique most dangerous for public morals. Seipel did not flinch, however, even in his last days, from the consequences of the road of duty which he firmly believed that of the statesman-priest. He would have denied any Machiavellism, but would not have hesitated to affirm the old Aristotelian theory that the statesman must dispose of and be familiär with means very different from those of a private Citizen. He might have said that these means are to be verified exclusively by the conscience of the statesman and whoever instance he would allow to share in its rule. It has been the very feature of his profile that Seipel emphasized the statesman and his conscience, where the modern political theory and ethics (which has developed from Plato to Kant) emphasize the letters of the Constitution and both the statesman and his conscience only within these letters. As these letters of the Austrian Constitution did not provide a great sphere of action for both president and chancellor, Seipel appealed to the "natural law" to get what he wanted and he acted at least, as if he had been pretty sure that this "natural law" also permitted him to violate the Constitution if need be. He did not renounce this error even in his last days. Once before one of his last visitors, he sat up in his death bed, denouncing his former pacifism, and by three horizontal movements of his right hand, as he had been used to do in his lecturers as Professor of theology, shortcutting any deposition of the audience and with an icy voice which shook the listener, he offered as his political wisdom's last conclusion these five tragic words: "One must shoot, shoot, shoot!" The utterance may have been made in fever or may but indicate the final process of the two demons in his body and mind. Yet somehow it is straightforward as to reveal the very image of this tragic life. Behind his monumentality there was the man who wanted to force man to his convictions incapable of being tolerant with other convictions. The Machiavellian in the cassock repented to have employed too little of this recipe. There were others to come in his trail to finish what he had only begun. Seipel is the most tragic figure of postwar Austrian Catholicism. Extricated from its traditional course under the monarchy and thrown into a tomado of problems which peasants deeply rooted in the soil like Fink could master instinctively, but never Scholastic brains like Seipel, who too easily overemphasized the point, Austrian Catholicism has failed during the generation between the two world wars, and has done so primarily because of so outstanding and so pemicious a leadership as Seipel's, in which particularly the two leaders of the authoritarian regime, Dollfuss and 160 Schuschnigg, saw their ideal. This is not to say that other social factors in postwar Austria have not failed, but only that the failure of those in power for nearly the entire period from 1918 to 1938 weighs most. For only a minority among the younger generation of intellectual Austrian Catholics after the war, Seipel was the incamation of a fatal error. This error, by which Seipel was catapulted from his professoral chair into the state's chancellery, was that the moral theology of the Scholastic school in itself really is the most suitable preparation for the work of statesmanship. Seipel himself was pretty sure of that. Yet in reality he failed, because he was chosen for an entirely different Service to the people, as he eventually performed, and he never, even if dispensed from reading his breviary, could get rid of his character in delebilis which made him priest, not politician. Seipel was the most outstanding figure among the priest-politicians, who existed among all the Old Austrian nations. Most of them were extraordinary local Organizers of the peasant peoples, yet their statesmanship was really excelling only, where the policy of their Commonwealth was well Consolidated (as in Czechoslovakia), while it was always near to the brinks of catastrophes, there they had to forge it themselves (as in Yugoslavia and Slovakia).They all together are representatives of a Catholic school of thought, which has been surpassed by the identical development of the canonical law, the modern concordats and the Catholic peoples. Seipel, who was the most unique personality of this school, an aristocrat among populär leaders, was still hardly touched by this more recent development himself, but the consequences of his historic failure have rapidly accelerated it. The Catholic Church has withdrawn her priests everywhere from politics, because she feit frequently more compromised by them than helped in her pastoral task. Seipel's leadership was so expensive for Austrian Catholicism that it resulted in the loss, apostasy or alienation, of numbers of souls equaling entire cities. This was the hardest test which his convictions to have been called into politics had ever to face. After these he had seen through himself and feit confirmed in convictions, he hardened in his struggle against a foe, who did not spare to wound his innermost sanctuary. No doubt, the dignitary of the church in Charge of Political Catholicism, carrying out a program of social reaction and of political adventures, was the heaviest bürden of religious Catholicism in postwar Austria. These are the sad experiences which my make Catholic peoples more reluctant tomorrow to entrüst the spiritual and the political leadership to the same personnel, or even to use for political leadership those who have been already selected for spiritual leadership. The two great errors of the Austrian Catholics in 1918/19 and in 1933/54, their too passive adaptation to the revolution and to the Socialist minority leadership as well as their too violent a reaction against its own weakness, are both due to Seipel's influence. He approached the problems of the state with pastoral accommodation deeply rooted in his priestly soul, where constructive statesmanship would have been required. In accommodating himself to the might of the Left as long as it was all-powerful, as well as to the might of the Right, after it emerged again, and in watching always attentively the eclipsing sun and the waxing moon, Seipel won his battles for limited objectives. Yet masterfully as he handled the technicalities of his philosophy, there were 161 bitter Sediments in its wake. When the odd consequences of his road became visible and the only alternative remained, either to do penance for the intended crime or to steer full-blast ahead into the coup d'etat, Seipel's arts were able to protract for a while the decision. He resorted to what he thought to be but means sanctified by the aims, yet his adversaries not unjustly called Machiavellism. Then he died. But the seeds which he had spread had already taken roots. Whatever it was, his intellectual inability really to appraise the causality of the means with respect to their logical ends, or his moral perversion, by which he, although he feit himself unfit to make the final Step, prepared the road for his successor to blow the legal order of the state to bits, he was in fact the demon of Austria, infecting the coming generation which was of minor stature than he himself with both an ideology and a practice in politics, in which Catholicism and Machiavellism were promiscuously fading into each other. Without Seipel the shocking phenomenon of avowed Catholic leaders preparing the road of the fiend and even serving its monstrosities, the psychological phenomenon of Papen, Dollfuss, Schuschnigg, Seyss-Inquart, Guido Schmidt or Wilhelm Wolf would lack the only clue, by which to interpret it both humanly and historically. He has been the source, while they were his sequel. Also if the personalities and deeds of his more personal pupils in this sad list, Dollfus8 and Schuschnigg, still stand out ethically over the others, who either have been slaves of personal ambitions or victims of national pathology, Seipel cannot Strip off the historic responsibility for their perversities. He was the sage, while they are his caricatures.

(§33) Lef s say it straightforwardly, there was a deeper instinct in the Jewish Marxian intellectual Otto Bauer than in the Catholic Scholastic clergyman, conceming the horrors of the emerging age, in which the method Seipel would join hands frivolously with the power of darkness in obliterating Austria, while the method Bauer would helplessly try to stem the tide of fate. The "materialist” Bauer thought in terms of generations ahead, while Seipel acted, as if his life and tenure would be the nunc stans of his people. It would be a sad sign of intellectual decadence, if Catholic universalism would not be Strong enough to state these facts and see them through down to the heart of truth. Bauer certainly was the most ingenious statesman of the postwar period. Despite his Anschluss ideology which after all did not reach below the skin of his broader and more real interests, he was able to devote himself to the most concrete work on Austria which ever was performed intellectually during the two decades of the Austrian Republic. In spite of the tactical desertion of the coalition, Bauer was statesman enough to continue in many instances of history acting as if the coalition were still intact. For this purpose he insisted on the functioning of the parliament and its proportional committees, in which his intellectual leadership was great enough to force even his most outspoken adversaries, Seipel always again among them, under his spell. Thus Seipel wanted to have a majority without Bauer. When he once sneeringly said 162 after the "reform of the Constitution" appeared on the agenda, that "conventicles", criticized by the Opposition, seem to be "negotiations in which Mr. Bauer does not participate", one could more justly define a "true democracy", legal order and governmental authority according to Seipel a political System, in which Bauer would nothing have to say. Although Seipel was the last of both to make the gesture of proposing unity and Cooperation in a new coalition regime (1930), I dare to say that Bauer was in fact the man psychologically closer to this goal after nearly a decade of augmenting frustration in mere Opposition, when the negative consequences of this fact appeared from year to year in more appalling reality. As compared with this recognition of own mistakes committed in the past, Seipel's last invitation to the Opposition to join his propped government (which then did not materialize), cannot be seen otherwise than in the light of his entire end sport and therefore not taken seriously. Yet even to this estranged Seipel of the last years Bauer was tied by a mysterious sympathy, as if he would have feit that the vanishing figure of his antipode also means the sand running low in his own glass of life, as in fact history later decided. When Seipel died Bauer was suddenly at a terrible loss, searching around for another partner. He hoped for a while that Dollfuss might be the man to take up the thread and who had also started as a leftist and still liked to be considered the man of the coalition. This, however, was a vain hope already dictated by desperation. Dollfuss very soon turned even more sharply to the Right than Seipel ever did, and there was no intellectual atmosphere between Bauer and Dollfuss, as existed indeed between Seipel and Bauer. There are no more characteristic documents for Bauer's inner personality than the two editorials, with which he once let down his sword before the dead antagonist's and partner's open grave, and the other ("We Bolshevists"), when he departed from his hope to find in Dollfuss the substitute, who with undisciplined fury in open parliament had sneered at him as "Bolshevist". No other intellect who feit more keenly both the great sympathy of European labor for Russia and the deeply founded knowledge that its road must be different than Bauer's, who knew well that this kind of Western Marxism had spared in 1918 the Western peoples much. He was sure to have protected the "bourgeoisie from Bolshevism. Later Bauer hoped for Schuschnigg as a partner, who for a long time seemed an intellectual to his observers, able to shoulder the heritage of Seipel, but in the end turned out to be but the shadow of a Scholastic professor. This final disappointment of Bauer was the greatest, because it involved the sorrowful knowledge that Seipel would never be substituted again. After years of merciless struggle which reached after Seipel's substance, those who felled him recognized that he was the wisest of all their enemies and of a greatness unattainable by anybody in sight and thus irrecoverable to friend and foe alike. I have known Bauer in those years when he longed in vain to have a Seipel to be his antagonist and partner, more intimately perhaps in many instances than his most intimate party comrades. He opened himself to the party stranger, who first did not want anything eise from him than to produce some reminiscences of Seipel, but in the crucial months ahead soon seemed to become the last shadow of a bridge to the other bank of the river. ft was already quite unusual in postwar Austria that a Catholic scholar who 163 was interested in the figure of the late Seipel for reasons far beyond any party politics, would approach the Socialist leaders to teil him their reminiscences. It was inevitable that the common interest in the riddle Seipel and the inner motives of his policy had to result in a political contact which without this medium could hardly ever have been made. As this contact coincided with the life and death crisis of the democratic republic in 1933-1934 and was humanly based upon mutual sympathy, political and personal, it was quite natural that its outcome was a friendship between two brothers, the older with many experiences, the younger eager to learn, the younger messenger from another world, the older not deaf to its messages, if they would only mean salvation from destruction. In those crucial months, I have found in numerous intimate dialogues the confirmation of what I anticipated from outside, and have leamed to see in Bauer the great statesman, greater than his adversaries and enemies who ruled the state. Among all the architects of politics I met he seemed to me, in spite of his final failure, the greatest in both theory and practice and their amalgamation, and I never denied to have been tied to him as to none of his antagonists, in my own camp, with the bond of both political and personal sympathy. When Seipel failed, because his pacifism was not genuine, and his successors failed, because they learned from Seipel's final cynical anti-pacifism or wavered between peace and war. Bauer failed because of his deeply rooted Austrian pacifism, for which there were but two honest chances, either never to try the militarization of politics, or after having done so, against the better conviction and under the pressure of circumstances, to accept the consequences in persona. Bauer seemed to, paradoxically enough, to play again, plainly abstracting from party politics and the antagonism of ideologies, but viewed in the merely human and ethical sphere, the tragic role of Charles, the last emperor. Ironically enough, the labor movement was to fall in Austria not very different as from how the monarchy feil, and the mantle did fall indeed not very long after the king. Thus the personal Symbols of both the constitutional monarchy and its most obvious usufructuary, imitator and shadow, the Social Democratic Party, had to have after all quite some affinity. Both were to stand and to fall honorably for a worthy cause which, if understood by their adversaries, might have helped to spare the country much. The spring days of both had gone, although their autumn could bring the country, still many fruits. Both went into their very end largely through their own consent which they repented and resented later, when it was too late. Both Charles and Bauer lost because of their own typically Austrian weakness, s sublime as its motives were, of first giving in and later repenting in vain. Later Schuschnigg repeated the tragedy of both and even Benes participated in it. The motive of pacifism in all these instances which does not shoot and does not like to shed blood is beyond criticism. If it is repented later, however, it is nothing eise than Seipel's own repentance on his death bed. There are historic situations, in which the political leader who functions as the authority of a social organism, the state in the first place, but also the party which Stands for the Constitution against the coup d'etat, must Order shooting on his responsibility (within the frame of his specific legitimacy) and without repentance. Seipel did so, yet he repented to have done too little so, and thus in so far, in 164 spite of all his objective harshness, participates himself in the subjective weakness of the others. This is the difference between Seipel and Bauer. The nature of the one was anti-pacifistic (yet ander the cloak of cultivated pacifism),responded quickly to the opportunity of crushing the interior enemy, who had misused his power and exposed himself to vengeance, and still repented at the end to have not shot enough. The nature of the other was pacifistic (yet only under martial disguise and with an artificial war paint) responded very slowly to the inevitability of making a stand in civil war and made the stand to late in vain. In critically analyzing both Seipel and Bauer, I have always found that it was worth-while to have sympathies as well as to be taught something by failure. There he was, the leader of the once voluntary Opposition, now a man with a ghostly vision of sad things to come, who clearly observed the country he had never particularly loved, but for whose people, workers and peasants, he had done more than all the others together, going to pieces, because its self-styled statesmen in their blindness wanted it this way. He saw the heritage of Seipel bear its füllest fruit. He could not escape asking himself a thousand times, how much his own tactical decisions had paved the road leading so smoothly now to the abyss. Tandler used to say postwar cynically that postwar Austria might have found a normal road through history, if the two antagonists, Seipel and Bauer, would not have been ascetics, but instead men sharing in the Eros of their people. There were enough, however, in both camps, glad to correspond to this advice, but who just for this reason were excluded by the better instincts of the masses from the chief leadership of their parties. Only as ascetics, idealists and Utopians could the two men really arrive at their uncontested leading positions, while those others, experts of the savoir-vivre, had to be content with the second places. Not this personal asceticism, but the lack of tolerance for a different style and brand of asceticism was the main reason that this idealism was not enough. They were both intolerant. Seipel or Bauer in the midst of their closest collaborators were both haughty, arrogant and without friends, Seipel, prior to his political career once in the mensa academica of his theological faculty was able to tease one of his colleagues, later a high ecclesiastical dignitary, with so icy a humor that his victim throwing everything to the ground precipitated to the door, Bauer's arrogance was proverbial among his party comrades. This intolerance of both was the expression of the fact that they knew their stature, were obsessed by their own ideas and thus were quick in underestimating the men around them. In this deeper meaning there was in fact lack of Eros in both, in spite of the love for the church in the one, and the love for the Proletariat in the other. A Catholic pastor who embodies the virtue of spiritual tolerance in his entire life does not need any specific knowledge in the applied field of political tolerance, with which he has no immediate contact, nor does the Socialist agitator and organizer who is imbued with dass solidarity necessarily need to know, what national solidarity in fact means in all details. But when they both became statesmen, they have to leam. Perhaps the pastor and the agitator would have learned. The professor and the intellectual unfortunately never did in the required fullness. In spite of this striking analogy, the very fact remains that the one should have done so, simply on the basis of 165 his metaphysics, while the other could have done so only by Converting to those metaphysics not so well represented. Although also Bauer was unable to force the magic circle which included both and excluded them from each other, he had the greater grace to stand before the open grave of his spiritual twin, to go afterwards through all the disappointments of searching in vain for a Substitute of a personality he fully estimated only after its death, and eventually to experience down to the bitter end of agony in exile all the consequences of his own errors. I would have liked to meet him in exile again and it was like a curtain of history going down before my eyes, when he died at Paris in 1938 a few days before I myself arrived there. From the distance of history which we have reached by now, we may call the "Second Austria" really a great experiment of history. Although born in the most dreadful Situation of the Austrian people nearly against her will, she has not lived and struggled in vain. Although none of her great leaders was fully up to her function in postwar history, they have left wonderful examples of philosophies which, extreme or moderate in their antagonism, will have to be bridged in the future. Her brief life was a drama, in which great and vivid personalities were the actors on the stage of history, statesmen of the Left and of the Right, who were just hindered to find the goal of fruitful Cooperation by their common heritage and by their identical temperament. The tragic paralysis of self-knowledge, into which both factors degenerated, was nothing eise than the final outcome of the removal and the disappearance of their common denominator, before its Substitute was at hand. They were in all their qualities, both positive and negative, the eons of Old Austria, and, although they founded the republic unanimously, not even the most enthusiastic republicans among them had really overcome their monarchical past and heritage. Scholasticism, Marxism and the Anschluss ideology were simply the escapes they sought from themselves instead of seeing through their substance and molding it now along the new needs. They would have been much more on their own ground, the generation between the two world wars, as already Bauer called it, or then perhaps really the generation after the world war, if they would have fully recognized the rights of the fathers in and over themselves, and would not have just tried to repress but essentially surpassed what was the bürden of their heritage. While history forced them back to Austria, they altogether did not understand the real meaning of this turn. They thought the form of life, in which they had to live, only provisional, yet acted headstrong as if it could never go astray and be destroyed. Their antagonistic lives and deeds in fact were much more provisional than they could ever imagine and would have ever admitted. Yet in their reciprocity they have left something together which will remain. No wonder if this brief interlude of fifteen years which was the climax and fulfillment of the prewar generation, now so remote in history, might have been lost in 166 the memory of a people, whom another decade in the meantime has overloaded with catastrophes, buming wounds and stinging memories. I would not be surprised, if only few in Austria would really be able to remember the Austrian Republic. Only another generation after World War II will be able to dig out slowly but then surely the reminiscences and achievements of the "Second Austria". If time passes by, the guilt of both, Seipel and Bauer, may slowly melt away and their virtues persist. For they have contributed their common share, both wings of Austrian politics, in molding the definite shape of Austria, and their merits will grow, especially if the postwar generation will be able to see them together, the one wing only in the light of the other and both in their transcendental national function and transparency. Then the tragedy of the two races and two languages within the one people will never be repeated. When both wings leam to forget about the totalitarianism of the other by dropping that of its own, and, without abandoning metaphysics, nevertheless learn tolerance for the counter partner, then the errors of the "Second Austria" will not be in vain, and she may well prove to be the most adequate pattem for any Austrian reconstruction to come. Never to be forgotten and deeply engraved in the healthier memory of the Austrian people will always be, how the Austrian Republic has been founded in the greatest crisis of Austrian history by the common efforts of two antagonistic parties and metaphysics, how for a holy momenf s breath both workers and peasants cooperated to provide a model Constitution for the new state and how this brief Cooperation, immanent to the very structure of the state, was strong enough even in its aftermath to delay decay and collapse for more than a decade. If the "Fourth Austria " of the future will forsake definitely the historic mistakes the "Second Austria" has committed, she must drop for good the Greater German ideology in any disguise and Sublimation, must overcome the Greater Austrian residua, not so much by mere negation of the past, but by its organic absorption into an entirely different task and mission, and leam constmctive political tolerance to be a virtue even among metaphysical adversaries. In this perspective there will be no tmer model for all the functions in the future we may foresee today for the Austrian people's political Organization than the Democratic Republic, cleansed from its historic limitations, strengthened by the knowledge of its roots, its mistakes, its consequences in history, and thereby saved for the realization of its better image to come. 167 Chapter Three The Authoritarian State (§34) The adventure, by which Austrian Catholicism slid into the authoritarian regime Dollfuss-Schuschnigg (1933/38), was the logical outcome of Seipel’s leadership, psychology and doctrine in politics which impregnated the younger generation for more than a decade. Hardly anywhere eise have the dialectics of politics proved as inescapable and have dialectics ever been as much identical with tactics. Both Dollfuss and Schuschnigg were Seipel's faithful disciples, each in his own way, but both equally hypnotized by the master's iron will, intellectual capacity and Scholastic authority. Here at last was the rock of theology to build upon it a modern state and here at last were the laymen, of whom the theologian had dreamed as his fulfillers. Strangely enough, Seipel vanished from the scene of history without ever anticipating that, among the Catholic leaders visiting him for the last time in his resort, these two young men were really to fulfill what he was anxious to have finished but unable to finish himself. After Seipel's resignation, the subsequent cabinets, of which he boasted to be the father, tried to solve in different ways the problem left to them by their author. The cabinet Emst Streeruwitz (1929) under the leadership of an Old Austrian industrialist of non-German descent, who was attracted by Seipel's capitalistic course to join the Christian Socialist Party, was an open failure. The cabinet Johann Schober (1929/30), however, which wanted to be a govemment of experts led by the president of the Viennese police, arrived at a reform of the Constitution by merely parliamentary means. While Seipel never could Strip off the skin of the party man, Schober represented already something of that non-partisan authority, at which Seipel aimed. Hence the chancellor who stuck strictly to constitutional means and the Opposition which feit protected by the government, Schober against Seipel's intrigues arrived at an understanding conceming the scope of reform clamored for by the outer-parliamentary forces of the Heimwehr. The result was an amendment to the Constitution (December 7, 1929) which did not fulfill the hopes of the Right and consequently only stimulated the outer-parliamentary forces anew, while it shook the position which the Opposition had taken so far. As Schuschnigg, the reporter of the amendment in parliament, said the "parliamentary republic" was substituted thereby by the "presidential republic", which might not have been the worst if introduced once by the coalition in the initial stage of the republic, but now imposed upon the Opposition by outer-parliamentary pressure would surely have the most negative consequences .Now the ideal was reached to provide for the Austrian federal president a German power. Hardly less fateful was the other fact that the second chamber (Bundesrat), consisting of the representatives of the federal lands, was formally re-named (Länder- und Ständerat),in fact without any material change, yet by accommodating the letters of the Constitution to the idea' of corporatism ("Ständeidee"), Seipel's and the Heimwehr's shibboleth, in reality declared the crisis of the Constitution constitutionally in permanence. It did not help that the Opposition was able to emphasize anew the constitutional functions of the most decisive parliamentary committees (Hauptausschuss and ständiger Unterausschuss), which in its view were to Substitute the govemment if need be, as these committees, sabotaged by the governmental parties on this account, 168 were in fact unable to meet the great parliamentary crisis which soon would appear on the horizon of the state. This entire "reform of the Constitution", although it corresponded with Seipel's foremost wishes and elevated the office of the federal president to the heights of the Weimar republic, did not suit the clamors of its main authors. This was the worst which could be said of this compromise as this bore further complications in its womb. The parliamentary position of the Social Democratic Party was strong enough to secure a constitutional procedure and to allow enactment of only these changes, to which they would consent themselves. Yet the very concessions made by them in voting for these changes reflected the shift of power outside the parliament, to which both Seipel and the Heimwehr had contributed*And this was chance enough to go ahead on the same road and ask at once new concessions and a now reform. Schober, the president of the police more apt to compromises than the prelate, who being pushed by Austro-Fascism and pushed it himself, was not the man to try the same again. When he went out, the cabinet Karl Vaugoin( 1930), the minister of war in Seipel's cabinets during the last decade, with Starhemberg taking over the ministry of the interior and the police, approached closest Seipel's ideal, representing the alliance between the army, the police and the Heimwehr .The mouse born by the travailing mountains, however, was not too big either. Instead of steering into the adventure, as Seipel would have wanted them to do, the combination made only possible the last democratic elections in Austria, by which the Social Democrats gained another mileage fraction on the winding road to democratic power, this time with 43% of all votes, and a couple of Heimwehr deputies substituted the still wanting Nazis. Thus the blind alley of Austrian politics as directed by Seipel's genius was still the same .When this became obvious, the cabinet Otto Ender (1930/31) wanted to obtain a blanco authority by the parliament, including the Opposition, again the authority of the German imperial Chancellors, to govem by decree. Ender was a proven democrat from Vorarlberg, but even he was confused by Seipel's insinuations to ask the Opposition for the voluntary abandonment of democracy instead of Cooperation. An authorization of the government by the parliament would have been all right in the approaching difficulties, if this would have been again a coalition government between the two largest parties, among which the Opposition now had become the larger. When the Social Democrats refused the special authorization of the cabinet Ender and the latter therefore resigned, Seipel was designated for the last time to form a cabinet (1931). He made the empty gesture of inviting the Opposition to join a new coalition government, yet this was no serious abandonment of his plans, but only the attempt to frustrate in anticipation any more solid prospect of the same idea which never Seipel, but only somebody eise could write on his banner. Seipel, well aware that now either the coup d' etat or the coalition was inevitable, but that he in person could accomplish none, wanted simply to demonstrate ad oculos that any coalition with the Social Democratic Party was still impossible, and the Opposition gladly cooperated with him in providing just the testimony which he sought. The Social Democrats, nevertheless, hoped that somebody eise would try the same. The cabinet Karl Bureach (1931/32) was still on the knife's edge in dropping the alliance with the Heimwehr in order to retum to the older coalition. Under 169 this govemment parts of the Heimwehr, the so-called Styrian Heimatschutz (under Walter Pfrimer), made a coup d'etat (September 13, 1931) which at least in Styria succeeded for half a day. I myself, was by chance in Maria Zell in Styria, saw the operetta Start in the morning hours and quickly succumb at noon. The government did not hesitate to liquidate something which was closer to Hitler than to Starhemberg. It was in Seipel's last year, and it seemed, as if his favorite idea would terminate in ridicule. Under the Ender cabinet two other things had occurred which made again the Social Democrats a necessary partner of the govemment. In 1931 collapsed the largest Austrian banking concem, Österreichische Credit-Anstalt (Rothschild), in consequence of many previous bankruptcies in the banking business connected mainly with political scandals under the bourgeoisie government. The state was called into the breach, in order to prevent the Industries of the banking concern to collapse as well. The Situation was ready for a great scheme of industrial control and planning by the public authority. Against this chance the govemment did what it could to pay with public money the deficits of private enterprise, or at least to guarantee these payments, and to retum at once to private ownership the industries which for the mere sake of survival had to continue in fact under public supervision. Although the ideas of the Opposition, diametrically opposed to this scheme of re-privatization by means of public funds, were constantly rejected, the govemment needed even for its own project the constitutional support of the Opposition which, similarly as in the case of Seipel's financial reconstruction, did not flinch even to assist a governmental scheme which was alien to its own wishes. Under the cabinet Ender it became also publicly known that Schober as chancellor and foreign minister had let himself captivate by the plan of an Austrian-German customs union which this time was so clearly a German imperialistic idea that not only the sentence of the international tribunal in The Hague soon stopped the scheme as contrary to Austria's international obligations, but also in Austria herseif for the first time both big parties agreed in thoroughly rejecting what had been in fact merely the idea and plan of the Greater German minority, to which Schober belonged. Both events emphasized the natural affinity of Christian Socialists and Social Democrats anew, and if among Seipel's successors there would have been one able to promote the idea of coalition as passionately and indefatigably as Seipel himself did the opposite, there would have no Situation more suitable for success than now. Also the cabinet Engelbert Dollfuss (May 1932) still stood in its beginning under the sign of the possible desirable and even inevitable coalition. The govemment, allied with the Heimwehr, had to rely, upon so small a parliamentary margin that no political course whatsoever could be built upon this basis. When the Protocols of Lausanne, containing the new financial help by the League of Nations, had to be voted for in parliament, the Heimwehr split and the Greater Germans joined the Social Democratic Opposition. On the day of Seipel's death a Greater German motion of non-confidence for Doifuss was defeated with 81:81 (with Seipel's parliamentary successor voting for the government instead of counting him as absentee, if he would have been still alive). The Lausanne Agreement itself was passed by parliament with 81:80, while after the vote of the second chamber, the final vote of parliament was 82:80 (with the late Schober's parliamentary successor now voting for the government as well). On this small margin 170 did the govemment Dollfuss and the international scheme of financial reconstruction undertaken by it really rest (August 1932). Only the death of Seipel and Schober saved it. Dollfuss and Schuschnigg were used to speak of Providence as having interfered with parliamentary arithmetic, yet probably Danneberg, who sneered at this governmental deus ex machina, was more right, if judged according to the final use which they made of this divine mandate. There were still many situations in which it would have been most reasonable to steer hack into the older coalition, now obviously to become "black and red*' and not reverse. This time, however, the force of history which was alive in Dollfuss and which he called "Providence" decided differently about Austria by events in Germany which, under the existing psychological conditions, accelerated rapidly the realization of the dreams of Seipel. Dollfuss, faced with the alternative of Austria either becoming the "Piedmont of German democracy" (Renner), backed by an Austrian union sacree or establishing an authoritarian regime himself, after the German and Italian patterns without the slightest hesitation and also without much consultation straightforwardly chose the second course. Both the psychological predominance of Seipel's heritage as well as the temptation for the new representative of Political Catholicism in Austria to exercise a dictatorship of his own were too overwhelmingly persistent in his mind, in order to make any other course feasible to him. Thus also in Austria the decision of "one man only" decided over the fate of millions, although very soon there were many, hundred, thousands, even millions in the end who followed the road into the abyss. As great as the guilt of single Initiators may always be, none would succeed without the populär assistance.

(§35) The little man, whom the Viennese wit later sneeringly called Millimeternich (the millimetre Metternich), Engelbert Dollfuss, followed closely in his own way the rhythm or mechanism of Seipel'e inner evolution. I am the last to deny that his was a great soul in a small body, as II Duce in his best time once attested, before the open grave of his friend, admirer and imitator. Then Mussolini could still be regarded a secular figure, as not only little Dollfuss did, and the morbid desire of the one to have acolytes around his monument could still be mistaken by the other as simple self-appreciation of the own greatness. Not only Dollfuss, but many other Catholic leaders of the Austrian authoritarian regime went awe-struck into the Palazzo Venezia across the proverbially wide room, in the last comer of which the lion lay on his desk waiting for his pet, the mouse. I had been befriended with Dollfuss for twenty years. We served together in the same South Tyrolean regiment of the Old Austrian army and shared the brotherhood of the same cartel of academic corporations. He was, though pigmy like in his stature, a sturdy peasant by descent. The offspring of a tragic love, he had first studied theology, but then had decided to dedicate his life to his peasant people in another way. It was a deep and sound instinct which drove him on. Eventually, he turned out to become one of the organizational leaders of postwar peasantry, required in the new cooperative and vocational set-up. Although he had to Start from the bottom of the agricultural Organization, he was completely sure of himself and of his primarily political ambitions. 171 He went through all phases of work in the Peasant Union (Bauernbund) and the Agricultural Chamber (Landwirtschaftkammer) until he became minister of agriculture in the cabinet Buresch (with Schuschnigg as minister of justice there). The dying Seipel had still approved of these appointments without any idea that they would mean anything for his own legacy. Politically Dollfuss had been like Seipel a Catholic leftist, but much more so by real sympathy and bitter experience driven ahead on this road which was not the usual one in Catholic peasant homes, seminaries or students' corporations. I remember that he was the first avowed republican among the officers of our regiment already at a very early moment and insisted to be respected with his conviction. After the war he sided with the democratic and even Socialist wing of the Christian Socialist Party, joining enthusiastically those younger clergymen and university students who gathered around Seipel. He stuck much longer to these ideas than Seipel, and for quite some time was well known as the advocate of the "black and red" coalition, before the Heimwehr course materialized. Dollfuss even was one among very few really to oppose Seipel publicly, when the latter criticized the agricultural Organization, of which he in fact knew nothing. For a few months, Seipel could still observe Dollfuss as chancellor, but the dying master did not anticipate to have found here his most loyal pupil outside of the agricultural Problems. Even after Seipel's death, Dollfuss was still considered by many to be the very man, who would restore again the Cooperation between Catholics and Socialists, peasants and workers, though now certainly with an inverted comma and under a different superiority. In the case of Dollfuss it was not a slow evolution which led him from the Left to the Right, as in Seipel's case, but a kind of political Damascus, if we may call it so, aware that it made a Paul, ready for Cooperation, back into a Saul, ready for persecution. Dollfuss was not a Scholastic theologian who would accommodate himself gradually to changing conditions in the realm of politics, but was sometimes a rather irrational type of man, for whom the mere fact of power signified something indeed, although he would always rationalize the personal Stimulus interpreting as a Service for the Catholic cause what was a good deal also dictated by his personal ambitions. Thus Dollfuss, when approaching power still regarded by both parties as the man of the new coalition, suddenly turned around and with that irrationality and obstinacy which he always displayed wherever his basic instincts were concemed, he decided on the opposite way following it from now on with the stupor of a sleep-walker. The world Situation, in which Dollfuss' tum occurred, was that of the early months of 1933, after Hitler had come to power in Germany, and thus Austria suddenly discovered herseif as being sandwiched between two totalitarian regimes .The temptation in this space between, void of democratic air from the outside world and play-ground of both German and Italian instincts and coins, to establish another variety of totalitarianism, a Catholic totalitarian regime, the Champions of which were longing for quite some time to free themselves from any co-partnership with the Social Democratic Opposition, was too overwhelming for this little man. The two gigantic shadows falling upon him seemed to indicate that this was the outside world to come everywhere now into being. Once he had heard that an old mission of Austria was to he the bridge between the two ends of the ancient axis connecting the North and the South of Europe. This was the philosophy of history, by which the Greater German Catholic intellectuals in Austria 172 liked to interpret the Triple Alliance as the logical continuation of the Holy Roman Empire. A short time previous, Dollfuss had hardly any higher interests in Austria than that he may provide the tariffs and prices for agriculture. These surely were the life and death interests of peasantry, worthy to he pressed with the utmost vigor, yet the agrarian school of postwar Austria, knowing that the Christian Socialist governments depended primarily on the peasant block, was used to press its points with complete neglect of any other views, and Dollfuss was a docile disciple of this school. There was no conception of foreign policy in his mind, only some instinct which was dimly aware that already Francis Joseph had once belonged to the same European combination which moreover also was Mettemich's main problem. In the daily drive for strengthening the economic and organizational position of agriculture and peasantry in postwar Austria, there was not much time left for the searching after Austria's soul, her errors in the past and how she might atone for them in the future. Berlin and Rome, this was the outside world since time immemorial, while Paris and London rather smacked of Babylon. Like all the postwar statesmen, who once had created the republic, so also the creator of the "Third Austria" was convinced that the mere change in the form of government, as once from the monarchy to the republic, so now from the republic to the authoritarian state, would easily solve all other questions, eliminate all the burdensome Problems rooted in the soil of yesterday and make a new world possible for tomorrow. In this respect Dollfuss clearly belonged to the generation of 1918, with the difference only that he inverted the trend. To shake off the past as pleasantly as innkeepers and cattle dealers in the lowlands had seil their farms, had become a school of politics also within the agrarian sector of parliament. Dollfuss never was to leam that the statesmen of his generation might have overcome the problems of the past, and mastered their own difficulties, instead of just turning their backs on them, if they had concentrated with all their new ideas upon their old conditions and environments, and would have mastered them, instead of simply exchanging authorities, constitutions and legitimacies, yet to remain still faithfully entangled in obsolete techniques and habits. Dollfuss, having once favored the changes of 1918 much more than the average Catholic leaders, fostered a double Interpretation of those other changes which he himself was to carry out in 1933. While in the more stable half of his own ego he considered his own coup d'etat to be but another form of exactly the same historic necessity, in the other more variable half of the same mind he liked to opine reaction the inevitable reparation for revolution. Thus he went on in his own direction and still could ally himself with the reactionary forces which once he had despised. Yet he was wrong in both interpretations of himself, because both the wrong done and the progress achieved by revolution can only be absorbed by history, the one atoned for, the other one preserved, if this has been the final revolution and there will be none to come again. Any new breach and violation of legitimacy, continued revolution or reaction, will Step the progress anew and revive the wrong ab ovo. In fact, neither the conservatives, who deplored the revolution of 1918 but worked for the goal of legitimacy within the existing state, nor the reformers, who wanted to improve the republican Constitution, but not at the cost of government by law, did get anything out of Dollfuss' delusion and adventure. The reactionaries followed him, yet dragged him down their own proclivous path, and those who are used to accommodate 173 themselves to any fait d'accompli, followed him as well, both to prepare in the authoritarian regime the more consistent form of totalitarianism to come later. Like Seipel, representative for an entire school of thought, Dollfuss seemed to have developed during the fifteen years between 1918 and 1933 from the Left to the Right. Yet, perhaps more correctly styled, he adhered in both instances to the same psychology of realism, opportunism or accommodation,; however we may call it, and only developed from having been outside the govemment to having become its chief. Seipel's evaluation of politics, to which Dollfuss faithfully adhered, was never troubled by the problem of Plato and what the "true state" or the idea of the state might be, how it might be lived, embodied or realized, if even only in asymptotes. He was exclusively interested in the entirely different problem of the empiricist, who is the govemment in undisputed power and how to get out of it something for certain interests, Catholicism, capitalism or peasantry. This was a scheme not very far from what Marxism sometimes seemed to be to superficial observers. There was a good deal of vulgarized Marxism in this "Seipelism", only brought under a different headline .This kind of politics for interests is all right, if somewhere is somebody to preserve a higher platform which covers more than interests, even more than merely the interest of all interests, but the interests of the national idea, without which no nation can go on living. Only those who feel the awe of ideas behind their struggle for interests, can he great statesmen. Marxism certainly has always been aware to be an Instrument of history, yet projecting its philosophy of history into the struggle for survival. While Seipel in person was sure to be an Instrument of World Catholicism, he was not able and not even willing to inflame the party which he led with a similar idea and his policy neither represented a great apostolic idea of World Catholicism, of which he would have been the offensive strategist, nor even a great patriotic and national idea which would have placed Austria, or any other country, at the top. It is Dollfuss' historic deed to have emancipated himself from Seipel's indifference in this respect and to have found beyond those politics for interests through which he grew up, the very Symbol of all his endeavors in the name and the idea of his country, Austria. This was again the return of the truest nature and the deepest instincts of Austrian peasantry into state's politics. While in Seipel's philosophy power politics and the struggle for interests were the result of final theoretical abstractions, from which there was no escape possible any longer, the same kind of politics in peasantry is the very basis of its economic existence, over which one day higher ideas must arch, if the material basis ought not to break down again. In Dollfuss both the disciple of Seipel and the peasant were alive, the one struggling with the other and eventually the native instinct triumphant over the alien abstraction. Although Dollfuss himself, choosing the Austrian idea as his panoply, eventually triumphed over Seipel, the structure of his life's career is more the appendage of his master than his own. In the last conversation I ever had with Dollfuss in the night before his death we found out to our own astonishment during the stränge dialogues we held looking back upon twenty years, that he, Dollfuss, had developed from the Left to the Right within the Catholic camp, while I went the opposite way from the Right to the Left, and that somewhere in the middle we met. The one school of thought "went with the age" accommodating itself to the prevailing trends of the time in order to participate in its 174 advantages. The other school went the opposite direction, from reluctance and Opposition to gradual acceptance of the republic Constitution, and consequently again from the defense of the republican achievements with new reluctance and Opposition into the authoritarian state. The two schools, often erroneously interpreted as merely the dualism of theory and practice in politics, or simply as two different psychologies and temperaments, in fact are two basic political attitudes and conceptions, both necessary, even complementary, but of Creative value only, if the trend of empiricism, pragmatism, opportunism, realism remains under the supervision of ideas. Dollfuss has understood politics during his entire life, as Seipel did, in the light of empirical problems and forces only, not of ideas. Yet there was a flare in his life forbidding him to conclude it with the mere appeal to still more thorough power polities. In the decisive turn to the authoritarian state, the heights of power politics in his life, he also tumed decisively to the idea of Austria, grasping instinctively that this idea might well be the only one to excuse, or at least to make plausible, before both the world and history, why the road of power politics was chosen. On the eve of his death, the approach of which he did not envisage, he was wise enough to know that this was his greatest deed and thus to concede that in the long run the other school of thought, to which he did not belong, but which he had made so great a concession, night be wiser than his own. Accustomed to judge the life of a man by the attitude he takes, when death approaches, I am inclined to find here the fundamental difference between the master who never made any exceptions from his rules and never conceded to have been wrong intellectually, except only in the moral applications of his scheme, and the pupil who without this master might never have been seduced to be his finisher, but when he was, had Creative life enough in himself to unroll his own banner on the peak which he had reached only on his forerunner's path. The great historic chance of Dollfuss was to pour an entirely new wine into Austrian life: the ideas of Austrian independence, Catholic leadership and corporative reconstruction of society. These ideas were unknown before, even to Seipel, who interpreted their shadow in his own way and they had become actual quasi ovemight. There was the chance to pour this new wine into the old leather bags of the democratic Constitution and to try the new ideas courageously within the existing parliamentary System of the democratic republic, where perhaps some arrangement would have been necessary, but whatever had remained of the three ideas would have been firmly rooted into the soil of the country. Perhaps the old molds of the existing Constitution would soon have taken new shapes under the impact of the new ideas, but they might have held the new contents as well as they once held the older ones, and probably much better than any new molds which could he built only with great risks involved and would probably be used only with an utter lack of experience. Thus the alternative was either to materialize parts of the new ideas in compromise with the otherwise existing powers of politics, but then to achieve their firm and lasting materialization, or to materialize them in toto without compromise on entirely new political lines, but then with the consequence of lability and uncertainty. There can he no doubt for the historic observer that better than any new form of government was the democratic republic for whatever kind of reforms deemed necessary as any new regime could he established always only by liquidating first the government by law, preserved intact even in the catastrophe of 1918, when the 175 ship of state, though leaking badly, left the harbor of history for a quite uncertain voyage. The conditions for using the Constitution of the democratic republic in the interest of a reformatory conception were extremely favorable, when Dollfuss between Hitler and Mussolini set out to display the qualities of governmental leadership. The Situation of August 1932, when the Opposition was lusty enough nearly to beat the govemment, was gone, and the dark shadow of the events in Germany since January 1933 was cast upon Austrian interior politics. The Social Democrat were waiting more anxiously than ever before for the hour of a new coalition to preserve them from the inglorious fate of German democracy, and were ready for the first time fully to accept the Catholic leadership. They would gladly have consented to every reasonable concession, in order to preserve themselves from the fate of their German brother party which feil so ignominiously. They could have in fact concluded every compromise except one in which they would have principally forsaken the legal possibility to regain everything again under new conditions. They were completely ripe now to drop the Anschluss officially and concentrate on Austrian independence, if this would have been the primary idea of the govemment. They would have thoroughly conformed to a Catholic leadership in the democratic republic, as small as its parliamentary margin might have been, if only the Catholics would have been ready at least to preserve those most basic mies of the democratic game which the theoretical return of Social Democratic leadership made constitutionally possible. The Social Democrats would even have consented to the idea of corporative reconstruction of society in the sense of the two papal encyclicals Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno, if Austrian Catholicism would not have insisted on their political Interpretation (as fostered in Austria by both Seipel and Spann). In fact, the Catholics would have gained their greatest triumph in seeing the Socialist leaders appeal from the distorted idea of Catholic social reform, as practiced by Fascism, to the truer meaning of the papal program, as outlined by the hierarchy itself. The phenomenon of the old Social Democrat, Benno Karpeies, once in prewar times the most initiative party entrepreneur, who had converted to Catholicism (under the personal guidance of the stigmatized Therese Neumann of Konnersreuth) and now in his last years concentrated upon the true Interpretation of Quadragesimo anno and its propagation, was rather typical of a spiritual undercurrent among Socialist intellectuals and labor alike which could have well kindled to fuller flames. Those Socialists would have loved to be allied with the Catholics, commoners and hierarchs, if only these Catholics would have been wise enough to stress the analogy of their own ideals with those of Socialism, or at least show their parallelism in opposing the ideology of their common enemy. Swelling insolently, however, in their prevalent conviction, the final outcome of the education by Seipel, that now their time had come, the Austrian Catholics, high and low, rather wanted to formulate matters as anti-Marxian as possible, even if they could easily and without own concession use a more conciliatory language. There was a basic conception of a tactical nature behind this attitude of Austrian Catholicism. While the one school of thought, representing a politically powerless minority, asked for Cooperation between Catholicism and Socialism, and for a united front from the Right to the Left to save Austria from Nazism, the other school, consisting 176 if all those powerfully entrenched under Dollfuss’ leadership and therefore soon automatically the overwhelming majority, held the opinion that the very Cooperation with Socialism would inevitably drive the masses of the non-Socialists into the folds of Nazism. Thereby the leaders of the Right would eventually be faced with the necessity to surrender their own democratic power to the leaders and the masses of the left which, however, the argument continued, weakened by the same impact might easily find itself soon in the same minority position as in Germany. In other words, the justification of non-cooperation with Socialism and finally the authoritarian experiment was that otherwise the democratic coming to power by Nazism could not be hindered. As a prophecy this may have been true or false (I deem it false), as an ideology it was of catastrophic consequences, because the very mechanism of this ideology was bound to weaken the democratic basis of the govemment still more and to make the un-democratic adventure eventually inevitable. Aside from the inherent reluctance to deal with the Social Democratic intellectuals on parliamentary grounds where they seemed always to he superior (another heritage of Seipel), this fragment of a tactical consideration in the make-believe of an ideology was the main motor behind the self-deception and self- decapitation of the Christian Socialist Party, without the suicidal consent of which Dollfuss could not have gone ahead. They did not trust their masses to remain uninfected by Nazism, nor did they trust their own intellectuals to be a match to Socialism, or at least for the sake of argument, they were ready to blame themselves and eager to overemphasize the point for getting the result they wanted. They wanted no Cooperation with the Social Democratic Party, in order to avoid sharing their power in the state's apparatus with them. As a matter of fact, the masses of the voters stuck to their parties from 1919 to 1930 nearly unmoved by events, and Nazism even after 1933 would not have altered much, if a coalition govemment would have really brought about the Cooperation between two big parties against their common foe without regard of leadership. No doubt, moreover, that Catholicism in Austria possessed an intelligentsia with experts in every field as respectable and efficient as Socialism. The only difficulty, however, insurmountable indeed, was that Seipel's teaching had penetrated so deeply into the very substance of Austrian Catholicism that any sudden conversion was out of question. By this teaching the foe stood on the Left, while on the Right there was the potential ally. In fact, Catholicism based only upon its own masses and intellectuals ,and without coalition with other bourgeoisie parties would have lost the state's heim, Seipel's main on legacy, and would have been forced to consent to cooperating with the stronger Social Democratic party which would have made impossible a Catholic govemment and even a Catholic chancellor, yet certainly not Catholic leadership and the realization of those political ideas, most dear to Austrian Catholicism: the national independence and the reconstruction of society. To banish the dangers to lose govemment and leadership, Austrian Catholicism under Dollfuss did the opposite of what might perhaps have helped at least to counterbalance them. Dollfuss did not grasp the historic chance which Catholicism might have had in dealing with the most solid block of the country, the labor movement, ready to be a partner of Catholicism against Nazism, even if the smaller middle dass followers of the Christian Socialist Party would desert its colors and only peasantry stick to them. 177 Although Catholicism might have been destined to become the minority party behind labor and the second partner of the coalition, at least in the next elections to come, its attitude in the meantime and its further indispensability for labor in the common struggle against Nazism would have made this future minority nearly as strong as the labor minority had once been in the earlier days of the republic The Catholics would never have had to be afraid of unjust majorization, even as a minority, as long as the existence of Nazism would have required the new coalition in the interest of the Social Democratic Party still more than in the interest of Catholicism. Yet, the mere eventuality of any coalition with labor, of sharing power with its intellectuals and of becoming perhaps the second party under labor's leadership, was so horrifying to the leaders of Austrian Catholicism, political and spiritual, that they blind-folded lost all perspectives for the other horror that was sure to come if their gamble with democracy and Constitution would fail. Thus, all the Catholics, hierarchy, clergy, intelligentsia, aristocracy, industry, smaller middle class, peasantry and trade unions, with a rarely achieved solidarity, eagerly followed Dollfuss into the self-chosen abyss. I myself, having been right in the midst of these struggles, know of very few Catholic personalities who raised their voice in protest. These few Catholic minds which tried to stay un-intoxicated by the suicidal hilarity of their fellows, were called either fools, who would not see the chance of killing the beast which had threatened so long the souls and the money-bags, or even traitors, if they were suspected to have any dealings with those outcasts and to feed their obstinacy of not giving in. Hardly anywhere eise in modern history did an intellectually representative stratum of an entire nation without so little scruples, cut the very branch, on which they were resting. After taught by the highest moral authority, the professor-statesman, all through an entire decade that the foe is on the Left and that only they will dislodge him there was no voice of moderation or of reason now in this hour of history.

(§36) Dollfuss chose the seemingly easier part, to establish a dictatorship after the Italian pattern in its accidentals, but after the German pattem in the substance, at which it inevitably aimed, a Catholic Semi-Fascism which was a cross between Fascism and Nazis and once might well serve as a bridge between them. Also if this Austro-Fascism first seemed to be exclusively inclined to side with the one totalitarianism against the other, it might tomorrow be ready to do the opposite as well. In its very causality and mechanism the regime Dollfuss established in a German speaking country between Germany and Italy had to develop automatically from the only artificial Italian course to the much more natural German course, for which every step of the authoritarian regime was a logical preparation. In its chief tenner the Dollfuss regime was anti-Marxian, as Seipel had taught, saw its primary historic chance in the defeat of Marxism and clamored to have been "stabbed in the back" by a potential ally and co-partner, when it was attacked by Nazism during its preparations for this end. As in other cases, Nazi Germany herseif created this enemy. It was exclusively the boastful arrogance of Nazis itself which for the sake of application in Austria had forgotten, how it had acquired power in Germany, through which Dollfuss was driven into the attitude and position of anti¬Nazism, to which originally he did not aspire .If Hitler at that time would have resigned 178 himself to have a puppet state instead of a new German Gau, Dollfuss, who himself had eagerly cooperated with the German Nationals in Austria already during the first postwar years on academic ground, would never have hesitated to head a govemment consisting of the trustees of Germany. If his government and the position of Catholicism would have been respected by Germany, Dollfuss would have acted in every other respect as Hitler's deputy. Essential for the development towards the authoritarian regime in Austria was Dollfuss' full understanding with Seipel's other heir, the Heimwehr under Starhemberg, and through him with Mussolini, who had financially supported the Austrian Fascist organizations from the very Start and now in fact functioned as the patron saint of the Austrian authoritarian regime. With disarming frankness Starhemberg reveals in his memoirs, how he asked Mussolini for financial Support and II Duce at once responded with any demanded sum. Also Mussolini did not understand that an independent Austria as the foreland of Italy in the Eastern Alps would be the more his own shield the less she would rest on experiments. The man who once had scolded the idea of Fascism as an article of export and who in consequence of this wisdom should in fact have the rather supported the idea of a "black and red" coalition in Austria than the silliness of Austro- Fascism did in fact exactly the opposite of what he should have done. The temptation to have satellites was greater than the will to serve the true interest of Italy. On the other hand, Austria could be glad to have at least Mussolini and his then utter repugnance to the German competitive variety of Fascism behind her, as the Western powers, the most natural guarantors of Austrian independence, were far off and were not eager to risk any troubles with Hitler on this account, if they did not even where their own immediate interests were at stäke. In their foreign policy the contours of the later Pact of Munich, yet applied to Austria, were already clearly visible. Without Mussolini Austria would in all probability not have been able to delay Hitler 1s decisive attack for five years, and not only the authoritarian regime but an independent Austria herseif out of question. These were the days, when Hitler was a madman, a criminal, a pederast in Mussolini's eyes, and Austria was the very bulwark of Mediterranean civilization against the Nordic barbarians. Mussolini not only backed up the new province of Noricum (the Roman name for the eastern countries) politically but also wrote about the Austrian Barocco, well aware for a time that only the full consciousness of Austria's cultural position in the heart of Europe will really help solve her political Problems. He spoke rightly of both the Mediterranean civilization and the cosmopolitan Germanism alive in Austrian history and the bridge connecting Germany with Europe, Little Austria really fulfilled a historic function in this Cooperation with Italy herseif, for it caused for a couple of years Mussolini's most positive stand against German aggression and for Central European reconstruction. In foreign policy, all three, Dollfuss, Starhemberg and Mussolini, correctly understood the authoritarian Austria to be a dike against the German tide. They only overlooked the fact that a democratic Austria would have done so much better. Although only a short time ago, Dollfuss had been a more passionate advocate of the Anschluss than any of his peasant colleagues or any other representative Catholic leaders, and Starhemberg for a while even was an organized Hitlerite, who only by Hitler's megalomania was pushed back into the Austrian creed of 179 his forefathers, they both did certainly not want now to be simply absorbed into the Hitlerized Germany, so intoxicated by the leadership and the cult of a savage and maniac, and insofar their wishes coincided well with those of Mussolini. They all had their sympathies for National Socialism as the most consistent method of anti-Marxism, but they did not foster among themselves any illusions about Hitler and what their own fate would be under his heel. Yet not only their interior policy, but also their foreign policy was diametrically opposed to their very aim of independence from Germany. Mussolini, the consistent heir of Italian liberalism, for which the destruction of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy was the main war aim, once sneered at the "fifth great power on the Danube", referring to the Little Entente, whose Cooperation between Prague, Belgrade and Bucharest somehow substituted certain functions of the Danubian empire. A really constructive policy of Italy (as Carlo Sforza represented it for a short time) should rather have aimed at the rebuilding of the Danubian block, not the permanent Balkanization of the Danube basin. Mussolini did the opposite. By the tripartite agreements and protocols between Italy, Austria and Hungary he tried in fact the enlargement of Italian imperialism beyond its "natural frontiers" and the amalgamation of two transalpine satellite States into an Italian sphere of influence, not to integrate thereby the Danube basin, but rather to partition it definitely by the establishment of two blocks there which in the long run could only facilitate German penetration and expansion. Logically enough, the real usufructuary of the dissolution of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy and the frustration of the Danube federation was not the weaker end of the axis, Italy, but its stronger end Germany. Italian foreign policy went this suicidal way on the basis of a shallow imperialism, possible only in consequence of the hole in the Danube basin, in consequence of which its responsible representatives grotesquely overestimated their own strength. It was in final analysis nothing eise than the inconsistencies of the peace after World War I which in fact brought three calamities for Italy: the destruction of the Austrian empire, the fulfillment of all her national dreams by which a millennial racial symbiosis protecting the Italian cultural interest was liquidated (in the case of the Adriatic Littoral) and last but not least the fulfillment of her imperialistic desires beyond these national dreams and for the sake of enslavement of other people for her own "Strategie frontiers (in the case of South Tyrol). All those sins cumulatively came home to Italy in the consequences of German supremacy instead of the previous Austrian agglomeration in the Danube basin. Thus the ideology of the Italian policy may have been anti-German in certain moments, its reality was the most fundamental assistance which German policy in its expansions and aggressions ever received. This tragic discrepancy was never more clearly impressed upon my mind than during a lecture trip through Italy in the fall of 1934 after Dollfuss' death, when a gigantic wave of pro-Austrian sympathies swept the country as never before in modern history, and this sympathy very correctly referred not merely to the Austria as she was but to the Austrian idea and the Austrian name, as I hardly have experienced anywhere eise abroad. The officials and the people were equally eager to express this sympathy and the Austrian visitor, who had fought against Italy and who had never found before anything like among Italians, could not help feeling all the old enthusiasm for this people and civilization most akin to Austria's. This was the 180 atmosphere, in which in a democratic Italy with a strong public opinion the change of Italian foreign policy from an empty imperialism to the consistent cultivation of Italy's truest interest, the reintegration of her Danubian partner, would have been easily possible, while Italian Fascism could it merely continue the ambiguity with which it started, namely to look with friendliness at its pet, but to feed the beast which would swallow it. Thus, Mussolini in person could not prove firm in his pro-Austria and anti-German convictions, and his psychological dislike for Hitler was easily sacrificed, together with Austria, when greater assets were at stäke, dreams of inter-continental imperialism and chances of co-partnership in ruling the world. Dollfuss was very similar to Mussolini in many instances, and probably he would have been a much less firm partner in this respect at the end than Starhemberg proved to be, and not quite so different from Schuschnigg who after all in these matters was Dollfuss' faithful heir. Structurally and psychologically both Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, copying Mussolini, absolutely counteracted their own intentions of keeping Austria independent by following an interior policy which anticipated the Anschluss ideologically, and by not following a foreign policy which really would have built a common fortress against Germany. The authoritarian regime destroyed the very bastion which Austria could claim to have, the strongest fortifications of her independence, democracy, government by law and the labor movement, and simultaneously it simply participated in the Italian schemes of foreign policy which in the long run only served Germany. By succumbing to the heresy that the functioning of a democratic Constitution in Austria would weaken her power of resistance, the regime Dollfuss-Schuschnigg had already surrendered the very motive, why there ought to be an independent Austria at all. By participating in the Italian Danubian policy the authoritarian state in Austria simply prepared the future attacks against its own substance. The immanent logic of the authoritarian policy, interior and foreign, has prepared the Anschluss more than anything eise - notwithstanding the heroism of an entire people who for five years stood who en vedette for Europe. The overwhelming majority of the people wanted Austrian independence preserved and like the majority of the European statesmen a sometimes very compact majority succumbed to the obvious error that this could best be done by an authoritarian regime. Yet the democratic republic in Austria might well have proved to be too small a country to stand up successfully against Germany in case of a vicious attack, as eventually the authoritarian Austria did as well, but a democratic Austria led by a government of her own choice would have represented a much more solid wall which to tackle might have proved disastrous to Hitler. An Austrian democracy would have fought against aggression and this fact alone perhaps would have still farther delayed it and eventually made the world aware of the entire problem. The fate of Czechoslovakia provides no counter-evidence to this thesis, as then Austria had already fallen and there only a Czech- Austrian German coalition would have outweighed the Austrian "black and red" coalition in effectiveness .The authoritarian regime seemed to guarantee a much strenger Austria to many observers, national and international, in particular as she then was the appendix of Italy boasting to defend with military might not only the Brenner Pass but the Austrian Alps as well. But when the decisive hour really struck, there was after all only one man, the heir of Dollfuss, the 181 chancellor and leader Schuschnigg, who either could withstand the onslaught or capitulate. There were, however, no longer any people, proud of and firm in their own liberty, to raise their voice in defiance .When the self-damage which Austria had inflicted upon herseif by her authoritarian policy became obvious, Mussolini quickly deserted her, not by changing but by intensifying his course. Over the corpse of Austria he concluded the solemn alliance with Germany, at which his demon had truly aimed even in the roundabout way of Austrian sympathies, and to which besides no one has contributed a heavier share, in spite of all its literal profession of the Austrian name, than the regime Dollfuss-Schuschnigg in its undignified and unreliable dependency on Fascist Italy.

(§37) The tum from the democratic republic to the authoritarian regime in Austria did not come about by an uprightputsch or coup d'etat from one day to the other, but by a much more complicated mechanism, the application of which alone made the entire scheme successful. Thus, the discussion can still so on, who in fact made the coup d'etat and who was challenged by it. This analysis Starts from the assumption that the author of the coup d'etet was the govemment Dollfuss and not the Social Democratic Opposition, although the latter was maneuvered, or maneuvered itself, into a position, in which its counter-actions looked like the real coup d'etat. It was Dollfuss' Machiavellian skill to go ahead in such a männer that at the end the majority of the Austrians as well as the foreign observers really did not know who was who. Dollfuss' coup d'etat was a gradual one, was piecemeal, or zizerlweis, as the Austrians say, was accomplished bit for bit, in homoeopathic doses, which were so sugar-coated that they did not taste too bitter, and the effect of which was feit always only some time afterwards. Of course, such a piecemeal coup d'etat was made possible only through a certain kind of Cooperation on the part of its victim, whose behavior could be interpreted, as if it liked this procedure of disarmament, in order not to be forced to make use of its power. So at least was the attitude of the Opposition interpreted by the govemment. At any rate, the clever technique of a gradual destruction of the democratic Constitution made it truly hard, if not impossible for the Opposition to discover the proper time for armed resistance. First they waited resolutely for this moment to appear, assuring each other solemnly that it were still ahead, and then they recognized all of a sudden in their exhaustion of waiting that this moment had already passed. This peculiarity of Dollfuss' coup d'etat, shrewdly veiled, makes it plausible why a broad Stratum of the Austrian people, not to mention the world abroad except very few experts in the field, should not even have grasped that the Constitution had been violated at all. The process of disintegration, however, began with an act, the character of which could have been clear to everybody able to distinguish between legality and illegality in its broadest aspects and armed with the ethical strength to bear the consequences of his understanding. The crisis of the Austrian state began, when the Austrian parliament, during a session in which questions of the railway personnel and their democratic rights of coalition and self-govemment were discussed in an already hot atmosphere, suddenly found itself without a chairman, after its Social Democratic president, Renner, and the two vice-presidents, one of the Christian Socialist Party (Ramek), the other of the Greater 182 German Party (Straffner), the first in a flash of anger and the two others in a subsequent muddle, resigned (March 5, 1933). This was really what the Austrians call a Pallawatsch, an unforeseen confusion, for which there is no remedy in the books. None of the three presidents of the national assembly thought in earnest of sabotaging the parliament. The event was simply the expression of the fact that the government in this last parliamentary voting had remained in the minority (80:81), yet neither the government nor the governmental coalition was willing to draw the consequences, while the leaders of the Opposition in their old habit of "letting the others govem" again voluntarily resigned its Position of parliamentary authority which alone could have been the rallying point for solving the crisis. In normal times, nevertheless, a simple Conference of the parties' chairmen would have been sufficient to restore the balance at once, and the technicians of the parliamentary Standing Orders and procedures would have hastened to Supplement the Statutes which did not provide legal remedies for such a case. Only the amendment of the Constitution, moreover, had formulated the rights and duties of the two main parliamentary commissions which could have easily jumped into the breach, if the majority parties which could not claim any majority any longer would have consented to use this mechanism. Although a meeting of the so-called Hauptausschuss (the parliamentary ways and means committee) convened, the Christian Socialist Party (under the leadership of Buresch) sabotaged its being used for setting the parliament afloat again (March 7). In a time of a latent crisis both the government Dollfuss and the Christian Socialist Party recognized at once their historic chance. The responsibility of the latter before history is even greater than that of the former, as Dollfuss could have done nothing without this once-sided parliamentary support. By a fateful manifesto of the same day, in which the parliamentary Commission had failed, the government declared that the parliament had eliminated itself, but that the constitutional crisis thereby frivolously created by the parliamentarians would not concern the state as such, and will not become any crisis of the state, as both the federal government and the federal president will continue to function constitutionally. Thus, the government, supported by the Christian Socialist Party, by simply refusing to lend any hand to the parliament in distress to bring it into legal being again, could pretend to be the only constitutional agency left able to act and thereby could assign to itself implicitly quasi-constitutional permanency. In the long run this only constitutional government had to survive even the president, for whom the amendment of the Constitution had created the position of Hindenburg, but who could not act without government and parliament. As the parliament did not exist any longer to dismiss the government and the federal president without parliament could not designate another government, the government in office had become identical with the state itself and all other agencies of the state, including the federal president, had tumed out to be absolutely dependent on it. This was certainly no formal coup d'etat by the government, nor even a formal violation of the Constitution, but it was surely Sabotage by the government to fulfill the spirit of the Constitution in an instance, where the letter of the Constitution did not provide any answer. The intellectual father behind this negative coup d'etat was the theory of government by "natural law" which was Seipel's favorite counterpoise against government by the written law of the Constitution. 183 This was the grotesque Situation, in which Dollfuss, the only one fully to grasp its implications at once, was able to persuade his own party to Sabotage any action of salvation which the parliament would try to undertake through its own power. To prevent any action of seif help by the parliament which would have been unprecedented but not unconstitutional, as styled by the government, the police interfered with the meeting of the rump (Social Democrats and Greater Germans without the Christian Socialists) which, however, did not intend anything eise than a more formal conclusion of the open session, and in fact carried out this intention (March 15). There was at least the miracle to gain the platform for a coup d'etat without manifest violation of the Constitution and to proceed quasi-constitutionally in developing the authoritarian regime out of the remnants of the democratic republic. Nobody had made any coup d'e"tat, nobody violated his oath, only equally no one among the responsible factors, government, president and governmental party acted according to the spirit of the Constitution. This was the week, in which the authoritarian regime was bom in Austria quasi as a gift of Providence, while the democratic republic in its foremost organ, the parliament, had come to an end by "self-elimination", as the official vocabulary said, in reality sabotaged by the smaller half (the 80 votes of the last roll-call) and gambled away in foolishness by the larger half (the 81 votes). If any Symbol was necessary, this was in fact the symbolic day. The people were fully aware of the fateful hour, when the rump of the parliament tried to convene but was prevented partly by the police. Organized labor in its pride and resolution was ready to strike against the moral violators of the Constitution, even if they had omitted to act symbolically enough to impress the entire people. Maybe Dollfuss would have risked a civil war on that day, to the provocation of which the government really seemed to have contributed nothing actively and thus could afford to let it come to the final test. Maybe he or his party behind him would have been terrified by the Outlook into chaos, if matters would have tumed out too seriously, and consequently some compromise could have been reached. Probably Dollfuss in his irrationality would have feit strong and legitimated enough to risk the struggle, but in its course his fellow perpetrators in government and party might have been less sure of their chance. Yet even if labor would have mustered merely the same reduced strength as eleven months later, when the postponed eruption really occurred (which is extremely improbable),the government would certainly have shown less power to deal with the resistance movement, and the chance that some compromise could have been reached was incomparably greater. The decisive factor, however, was the unwillingness on the part of the Social Democratic leaders themselves to risk the contest. Whether they did not want civil war for ethical reasons or for reasons of their own security and power, whether they did consider themselves not enough prepared or the symbolism of the occasion not impressive enough, or whether they feit their own guilt too heavy in having floated to this point, they did not act at this historically possible hour and they lost thereby the chance to act at all, except to make a gesture of action for the sake of their historic exit which could not influence events any longer. When there was no test of strength at all forthcoming on the part of labor, because the leaders of labor shrunk back from the consequences, the government Dollfuss 184 continued to rule by decree on the theory of a political emergency brought about by the self-elimination of the parliament. The formal basis, discovered and cared for by the governmental jurisprudents since quite some time, was an imperial decree of the war time legislation {kriegswirtschaftliches Ermächtigungs-gesetz) by which the imperial government and their republican successors so far had enacted only executive measurers of secondary importance along the lines of constitutional law. For executive Orders subservient to existing laws this war time authorization had survived the monarchy. After some initial attempts by Seipel to use that same decree for primary purposes as far back as 1922, but at that time quickly stopped in this enterprise by the Supreme Court, the anti- Marxian theory of law had long ago pointed at this possibility of eliminating parliamentary legislation by governmental decrees even without the self-elimination of the parliament. (The outstanding protagonist of this idea, a leading Jewish jurisprudent of great formal qualities, died later in a Nazi concentration camp). Dollfuss was very quick in accepting this instrumentality. The longer his exceptional regime could last without being tested by forces ready to defend the violated Constitution, the deeper had its roots logically to grow into the Austrian soil and the more difficult would it then become to eradicate them again. Here the miscalculations of the Social Democratic leaders, their astonishing misconception of the psychological reality in which they breathed, set in and becomes the key to the understanding of their historic guilt. They were pacifists, after all, much more than their adversaries ever were, and they did not want a civil war which might prove to be a suicidal enterprise without flinders of hope for success. They had once organized their military might as a primarily political weapon to apply pressure on the legislation and not really as a military means in the strict sense which could ever be staked against the government. They did in fact not understand very much of the military arts to which they had threatened to resort in case the bourgeoisie should leave the democratic platform first. This was a simple menace, not a real eventuality. They had lost sometimes the perspective for what they really could and what not. Yet in their very substance they still were Old Austrian parliamentarians, who regarded their adversaries as something rather complementary to their own existence, and they were used after all to fight political struggles, as totalitarian as they were as a party, within an atmosphere of compromise. They erroneously thought to reach this compromise much easier, if they would place into the scale something more convincing than mere words. Moreover, they were rational brains at that and therefore convinced that their counterparts would sooner or later recognize the sheer stupidity, irrationality, hopelessness and even self-destructiveness of their adventurous enterprise by themselves and then to come around. They were pretty sure, as already once in a similar Situation, when they had left the coalition, that the Christian Socialists did not mean it in eamest, but would after a while, when having gained ground enough for a stronger leadership within the democratic republic (which the Opposition was still ready to concede to them), propose by themselves some type of compromise. They simply believed thereby in what Dollfuss himself during the first days and the more rational members of his government like Schuschnigg still a little bit longer promised them. Yet the more the Opposition was ready to suffer sacrifices, to accommodate itself to demands and to "appease" the government, the less, very naturally 185 so, could the latter really be satisfied and the greater became the demands for constitutional reforms which Dollfuss and his friends both practically and theoretically promoted. I myself was often really perplexed when I feit engulfed by the optimism and rationalism of men like Bauer or Danneberg, to whom I was quite unable to convey my own conviction that the now leadership of Austrian Catholicism was no longer a parliamentary one, had nothing to do any longer with the tradition of the Christian Socialist Party, even less so than Seipel’s, and that in face of their strong, although pretty unrealistic will to power even democracy or constitutionalism were Hecuba to them. I knew from personal experience that exactly the same irrationalism prevailed in Dollfuss as obviously, as then many observers already knew, in both Hitler and Mussolini, and that this little leader would go ahead in his course of suicidal madness, not though, but because it necessarily would result in self-destruction. He was exactly the type of man, who sets his soul on some extraordinary goal, but has not the intellectual power to scrutinize thoroughly enough all the implications of his doing, substituting for the critical analysis, to which he is unfit, the somnambulistic belief in his own star or mission. They cannot be so irrational as to destroy the very basis, upon which their own power is resting, Danneberg would argue and demonstrate to me with the same arithmetical argumentation, with which he foresaw the inevitable triumph of labor in the sequence of democratic elections, how eventually all would come out all right. He was right in prophesying that this adventure would be the end of Catholic power in Austria, but wrong in his belief that so transparent a causality of Dollfuss' deed, very simply to foresee for everybody outside of the magic circle, would stop in any way the adventurers. I doubt whether they could have been stopped even by the most distinct knowledge infused into their intellect, how their experiment would end, as this experiment had nothing to do with their intellectA but only with their will to power. The ways of irrationalism are chosen by irrational minds, because, not although, they are irrational, cataclysmic and self- destructive. Irrationalism, however, always means but an abbreviation for a complexity of pathological factors, by which the normal function of the intellect is inhibited. When Seipel’s policy could be interpreted from the angle of his two illnesses, the same could be done in Dollfuss’ case which clearly was one of serious Basedow. This pathological factor diminishes considerably the responsibility of the actor on the stage of history, but deepens the guilt of those, friends and foes, who should have suffocated the first sparks of abnormity, when they appeared. The demons in the mind of man must be exorcized, principiis obsta, not coddled until they have grown big enough to swallow us.

(§38) In the meantime, Dollfuss went ahead both consistently and joyfully in his gradual coup d ’etat demolishing piecemeal during a period of eleven months the whole inventory of the democratic Constitution, first the parliament, then the Supreme Court (which he simply dismissed), and finally the Bill of Rights, which means as its main equivalent in Austrian laws the right of free coalition and collective bargaining. Step by Step the labor dass in all these respects was pushed back and tied to the ground by governmental decrees. With great discipline the labor elite waited for the signal by the 186 party which, however, could not find the symbolic occasion for the final jump. There were dozens of attempts for compromise during those eleven months, but none of them broke Dollfuss’ back, as it would have been required. This could be done, however, with any prospect of success solely by the one man who held the second key position of the entire Situation, always capable of being switched into the first one by its holder, the federal president, Wilhelm Miklas. As a single person, he still bears the far greater historic responsibility for the further development than Dollfuss himself. The chancellor was no parliamentarian, was never trained as legislator, never held an executive function before 1932, and was simply the secretary of a pressure group, unscrupulous, ambitious, and dilettantish. The president, an old, experienced parliamentarian, was the opposite in everything, completely able to know what the final outcome of the adventure would be. After the chancellor's consistency in violating the Constitution, he would have had the chance to do the same during eleven months for the much better purpose of re- constitutionalizing the state. His task would only have been to Step equally out of the traditional limits of his office and for the first time to fulfill the functions bestowed upon him by the constitutional amendment of 1930. At that time, Seipel's idea prevailed, by which the office of the federal president ought to become the center of action and nobody could foresee that it once would be in fact the chancellor to accomplish the constitutional changes. Since then the office of the federal president was no representative any longer, and as the chancellor drew conclusions from the state of emergency which by far surpassed whatever any previous chancellor had done, so the president could do, if he was the man to do it. He even could dismiss the chancellor, whom parliament alone had invested with his authority, but who blocked the parliament to wrest the same from him again. But while the Constitution was already destroyed by the chancellor, the president clung stubbornly to its fringes and fragments which prohibited him to act without the Cooperation of both government and parliament. This at least was his formal excuse in case he was approached publicly or privately (which I myself also tried in every form). Miklas’ tragedy was that he like everybody eise including the Social Democratic leaders did not grasp from the very Start what Dollfuss really intended and thus, in the interest of checking the power of the Opposition, sided publicly with the view of the government already during the first days of the ex lex Situation in March 1933 when the parliament wanted to convene again. Later, when he saw more clearly, he could not disavow himself. He had been caught in the net which was prepared for him and which he first so eagerly accepted. Again it was no coup d’etat or outright violation of the oath taken upon the Constitution. Miklas had been re-elected unanimously in parliament instead of Seipel, and the Social Democrats then cast their votes for him, because he was so well known as a Catholic that his religious oath, they were convinced, would certainly be the strongest protection of the Constitution against any ideal of a Catholic coup d’ etat or dictatorship. Seitz once described to me in details, now the Social Democratic Party agreed on his proposal to join in Miklas’ reelection just because of this security which they feit was found in the religious oath of an avowed Catholic. "Imbecile, as I was", Seitz added. Yet Miklas’ tragic position was that he saw the Constitution go to pieces by his correct behavior, while only acting beyond the oath could have saved it. Thus his position was more difficult than Dollfuss’ who simply should have acted according to the spirit of the 187 Constitution where its letters failed, while he, Miklas, after Dollfuss failed to act accordingly, would have been compelled to do something quite unprecedented to save the normalcy. This would have required somebody more apt to his task voluntary than some kind of Francis Joseph redivivus. Yet voluntary resignation from so unworthy a misuse of formalism for the facilitation of the governmental coup d’ etat would always have been possible and perhaps a beacon for both the nation and the world. At any rate, the Social Democrats had hoped in vain to have in this federal president a kind of guarantor for the Constitution, a kind of quasi-emperor in the republic. After all, they had resisted the idea of Caesarism, as they called it, too long, in order now to draw profit from it. If this would have been a president, whose authority would have been identical with the republic from its first days, not merely forced upon the Opposition step by Step, he probably would never have sided with the govemment in the crisis of the parliament, and thus might have become very naturally the center of recrystallization for all constitutional tendencies. It was now too late that the Opposition hoped for the presidential authority and dignity. Now they urged or assailed him, but the president covered the chance 1 lor, who for his part treated the state'3 head as quanitite negligeable, at least as the latter would not try to act "unconstitutionally". In such a case, Dollfuss would not have hesitated to use the police also against the president. There was a deep reason for this behavior of both, the assurance of the chancellor and the timidity of the president, the one acting according to his Intuition, the other, however, against his better conscience. While Dollfuss went ahead backed by his more enterprising conscience, Miklas wavered between Scylla and Charybdis, between passivity which would assist the demolition of the Constitution and activity which would violate the oath upon the letters of the Constitution. These two consciences were obviously not identical in their structures, yet contributed to an identical effect. They both were convinced that Catholicism, represented by the hierarchy of their own country and by the papal nuncio to the Austrian Republic, would take no interest in the retum of a democratic Constitution in which the Social Democrats would again get the power over the souls which they were gradually going to lose. I have no means for verifying, whether the rumor was true that the president was told so exactly by the papal nuncio Enrico Sibilia himself, an interference which certainly was not necessary, because it was obvious enough that both Miklas and Dollfuss themselves were absolutely convinced to act in the interest of Catholicism, the one with a heavy heart and not absolutely sure, whether his oath would cover this re-interpretation of the Constitution, the other with that touch of frivolity, by which his entire enterprise was characterized, at least in the eyes of the intellectual observer, to whom the instincts and impulses of a nature like Dollfuss must remain foreign. Only this anchorage of the two consciences in what they believed to be the interest of Catholicism explains the fact that they both were subordinating very problematic means, and contradictory at that, to their common goal which to attain they were in complete agreement. One of the first deeds of the authoritarian regime, quasi its spiritual backbone, was the concordat (June 6, 1933) which the Austrian government concluded with Rome and which would not have been possible in the parliamentary era, at least not with equal concessions of the state to the church. When the concordat was prepared, Dollfuss 188 together with Papen, publicly received their Easter communion from the hands of Pius XI. There can be no doubt that the Vatican, in consequence of its policy everywhere at that time, preferred the Catholic authoritarian regime to the democratic republic in Austria. The signing of the concordat at a time, when the Austrian government was vehemently disputed in its legitimacy at home, was doubtlessly a great moral backing for the regime Dollfuss, even if the final ratification was reserved for the Austrian representation of the future. Neither Mussolini nor the pope were aware at that time, how far reaching the changes in Austria must become in their causality and how inevitably the whole of Europe, including Italy, would suffer thereby. Yet it may still be doubted very much, whether the papal diplomacy really uttered any wish concerning the Constitution of the Austrian state and touching the oath of its two main functionaries, or whether the latter were only too eager to have it understood that way. In both instances the full historic responsibility rests with the Austrian statesmen, not the Roman diplomacy. Only those on the spot could really know, what was at stäke. On occasion of my own visit to the Vatican and an audience with the Holy Father Pius XI in November 1934,1 observed clearly enough, how limited in fact the really political Information about Austria was which existed in Rome, but how great an anxiety, on the other hand, troubled the pope that the entire Austrian experiment would collapse. The attitude of all the Vatican Personalities I met was rather that they could not help agreeing to the changes in Austria which after all were in favor of Catholicism, but that their own feeling was not too good on this account. To be sure, the Vatican diplomacy possessed a clear vision, under what constitutional conditions the pastoral task of the Catholic Church would prosper best. Yet already the conclusion, whether such prosperity would last long enough to make the change of the constitutional legitimacy worth-while, could be fairly made only on the spot by a merely political evaluation of the Situation. Thus it seems to be much more probable that the Vatican was influenced in his attitude by the political and spiritual leaders of Austrian Catholicism than vice versa. If the Austrian statesmen had really corresponded with wishes from the Vatican, or even if they have only translated legitimate pastoral ideas too quickly into conclusions instead of scrutinizing them politically, they would have but proved to have forgotten their own Austrian tradition. With all due reverence for church and pope in spritualibus, this tradition has always embraced a clear know ledge, religiously established, that in temporalibus, and particularly in politics, the Catholic laymen alone, not the clergymen are responsible for the final decisions, and that clerical advices concerning the Constitution of a state, as essentially as it may be for individual statesmen to listen to them, can never substitute the laical self-determination in this respect. I have no clue that the Austrian Catholic statesmen of the younger generation, Dollfuss or Schuschnigg, really forsook this tradition. What they did to their and to the country's detriment was that they tried to use the religious authorities of Rome and the national hierarchy as a cover for their own merely political and economic aims, and this was the sin, into which to be entangled all these authorities did not energetically enough refuse.

189 (§39) The final outcome of eleven months of Suspension was the catastrophe of February 12, 1934, still debated in its real meaning. It certainly was no coup d^etat by the government, although it was the final and logical consequence of Dollfuss' piecemeal coup d’etat protracted during eleven months. Yet it was no coup d'etat by labor either, although outwardly it looked like a Socialist putsch to many observers, inside and outside the Austrian boundaries. The catastrophe occurred, when parts of organized labor (not its broader masses any longer) finally exploded in Vienna, Linz, Steyr and Leoben after eleven months of provocations and stood up in a last symbolic resistance against the government, perjured in their eyes in spite of its self-righteousness. There was nothing but honor to be gained by this futile gesture. By its heroism in defending the idea of the democratic Constitution against the reality of the authoritarian regime, labor lost the rest of its actual power, but preserved something in its very soul for the future. This was the kind of futility which history demanded from Schuschnigg or Benes four to five years later. No other European civil group before and afterwards has fought under equally hopeless conditions with arms for its constitutional liberty against anti-democratic forces which, however, still held an international function and therefore were backed even by their international opponents. The whole of Europe held its breath, but none of the factors spiritually involved did anything, although the international consequences and implications of this event were unmistakably written in the skies. It was in consequence of an international Order, in which Intervention for the sake of interior constitutions was inadmissible, that the pivot of Vienna and Austria changed hands for the first time, and thereby this international Order itself, watching the event without interfering, lost one of its foundation stones. It was the dawn of Munich which greeted the alternation instead of weeping over it. The authoritarian regime easily triumphed after three days of isolated fighting over an outbreak which was staged eleven months too late. Instead of recognizing the shadow of his own guilt in this catastrophe, Dollfuss added a new one by the superfluous executions of some labor leaders, to which he alone had empowered himself by introducing through governmental decree Capital punishment, unknown before in the Austrian Republic. One of those executed really was a political leader, Koloman Wallisch of Leoben, who had organized the resistance movement in Upper Styria, while all the others, among them Rudolf Weisl, a member of the Viennese municipal fire-brigade, acted under Orders and at least should have had the benefit of doubt, whether they fought for or against the constitutional authority in so puzzling an interior Situation. Also the sad example was set that one of those fighters for the Constitution who was badly wounded was executed in all his wretchedness. Thus, a noble cause broke down in blood, actually shed by the government "to preserve law and order", for the shedding of which, however, the lust for uncontrolled power on the part of this government bore the main responsibility. It showed to me the genuine combination of utter naivete and peasant cunning which was alive in Dollfuss, when he in our first meeting after the catastrophe raged against Emil Fey, his own vice chancellor and leader of the Viennese Heimwehr, who "overstrained himself', as he said, yet in all his actual provocations could easily think to be but the faithful instrument of the chancellor. This Statement does not diminish the disastrous, but involuntary complicity of those, who had organized labor militarily, 190 had fostered in its rank and file a wrong feeling of military superiority which in fact never existed, and yet by their own weakness had missed the only possible hour for a stand, symbolic and successful. The historian, who has experienced those events himself, can only say that, as they died on both sides for an ideal, so they prepared on both sides for the catastrophe. If dared at the proper time, the heroism of Febmary 12, 1934 tried already on March 15.1933 might well have changed the course of history .For in March 1933 Hitler's design on Austria was still in so immature a stage that he could not risk much, while in February 1934 his first great attack against Austria had been already launched and defied. During the constitutional struggle between govemment and labor, the Austrian Nazis, a tiny but criminal minority, supported by German Organization and money, had undertaken their first assault with means of terrorism, had "stabbed the government in the back", as Dollfuss complained, while the common foe, Marxism, was to be liquidated, and thereby had forced the government to tum against Nazism more thoroughly than it originally contemplated. The blunder of Hitler, who wanted to take Austria by assault, provided the authoritarian regime in Austria with an excuse and a function transcending by far the mere lust for power by a minority which was its first occasion. This was the main reason, why labor itself did not stand up as united in February 1934 as it probably would have done in March 1933. For in the meantime, the government Dollfuss had known to use its newly acquired historic function. In actual warfare with the partisans of Hitler Germany, party troops organized in Germany to make Austria ripe for capitulation, the Austrian authoritarian regime had beaten back the first attempt of the avant guard for a German invasion. Intoxicated by their coming to power in Germany, but forgetting that only compromise paved the road even there, the Nazis had anticipated but a walk-over in Austria. While nobody can maintain that a coalition regime in Austria would not have been equally up to the task of defeating this illusion, the authoritarian regime in historic reality did. As a consequence, many people with profound democratic convictions, but irritated highly by the events in Germany, thought in eamest now that for the successful defense of Austria against Germany in this clash of limited perspective an anti-democratic course was indispensable. When Dollfuss was victorious over labor in February 1934, it was technically so because labor was eleven months too late, but politically because in the meantime the idea of Austrian independence had emerged, had been accepted as national panacea by all factions concerned, the govemment, the people, the parties, the Social Democratic Party included, and had been interpreted, sometimes even by a majority of the people, as requiring dictatorial measures. Also the Social Democrats in a coalition govemment would have empowered the authority of the state with an extraordinary mandate and the masses of the people knowing this did not always clearly distinguish between the government to be desired on the basis of parliamentary Cooperation and the existing government on the basis of decrees, if both had to be dictatorial anyhow. This was an interlude and a war at that, in which the govemment had to be strong to defend the country, so let the government use its powers, constitutional or not. This was the common opinion even among labor's rank and file. While the govemment armed to meet the "brown terror", the Social Democratic Party solemnly eliminated the Anschluss paragraph 191 from the party program. The Social Democrats in several federal lands even eagerly cooperated with the governmental groups in still functioning provincial legislatures to disarm the Nazis constitutionally which without their support would have been impossible. Thus, the government could really pretend to represent the will of the entire people, when Germany, trying for the first time to conquer Austria with dynamite and poison gas, had to be thrown back with adequate means, of which only an authoritarian regime seemed to be capable. It was in fact the idea of Austrian independence, rather late although now completely understood by the Social Democratic leadership, which in consequence of this too late understanding frustrated their struggle for the Constitution as well as their final resistance which now looked like a rebellion and far from preventing the constitutional consolidation of the authoritarian regime, became the historic occasion for its final legalization. Also on this question, the Social Democrats could have hoped to outlast the government in its anti-German turn only if the struggle for Austrian independence would really have been their ancient concern. If the coalition regime could have saved Austria from the German grip hypothetically as well, the authoritarian regime did it historically. The Social Democratic Party had missed the chance to be included into this struggle for Austria at the right time, not only because they tactically missed the proper time to display their real power and to force their will upon the government, but also because metaphysically they had not cared for Austrian independence previously and the people at large was used since the days of Seipel’s financial reconstruction to look to the Christian Socialists for the satisfaction of their Austrian national sentiments, and to the Social Democrats only for bread and butter. In February 1934 the heroes of Austrian labor were, beaten, but also the party program and the party ideology of Anschluss, fostered for more than a decade was defeated. Both the ideology of Marxism which made labor miscalculate everywhere in Europe the idea and the apparatus of the state, as well as the totalitarianism of the labor movement, by which particularly in Austria a state within the state had been entertained, both so perspicuous deficiencies of the international Proletariat had found its specifically Austrian Symbol in the idea of the Anschluss, the union with the big German economy, the big German Proletariat, the big German empire. This was the idea, or rather pathology, which was defeated by the guns and canons of the government in spite of all the heroism and the entire constitutionalism which labor could muster against a state’s leadership void of both. When the Social Democratic Party was lacking the basic qualities of Austrian nationalism which an Austrian labor party needed beyond discussion, and therefore was eventually crushed, its historic responsibility for the final liquidation of Austria together with the dilettante of the authoritarian regime, lacking exactly in the heroism and constitutionalism displayed by the resistance of the labor movement, but also largely lacking in experience and training, cannot be mistaken. The surge which brought the authoritarian regime to the crest was not only, as the Marxian critique of "Fascism" naively believes, determined by the economic interests of the bourgeoisie, big and small, but to a very large extent, unimaginable to Marxism, by national and religious motives. The systematic and perfidious struggle which was waged against everything Catholic and Austrian for years in the labor press and organizations by mainly Jewish intellectuals, 192 whose ideology was alien to the Austrian people, has very much to do with the final defeat of labor, as it was this experience, stinging and intolerable, which set aside on the part of the Catholic masses any question of constitutional legitimacy and which even on the part of the Socialist masses in a specific historic Situation, the aggression by Germany, made large-scale consent to the Catholic course possible and inevitable. This was a fact that the Socialist masses themselves did not like the anti-Catholic and anti- Austrian affection shown by the intellectuals of the labor party with few exceptions, and thus in the critical hour of being or non-being for the Austrian nation, cleverly used by the govemment Dollfuss for its more far-reaching purposes, were rather inclined to stand passively by, when the labor elite waged its last struggle. Without this well-reasoned passivity of the Socialist masses which in the hour of decision were more Austrian than Socialist the authoritarian regime could never have won. The events of February 1934 created an entirely new Situation, political and legal. Now the often cited self-elimination of the parliament had led to the real self-elimination of the Opposition as a political factor to be based upon the remnants of the democratic Constitution and upon the then still existing chance of its restoration. The govemment Dollfuss which had violated for eleven months any item of the democratic Constitution in its way had become the legal govemment, uncontested in its power by any organized legitimate Opposition and undisputable in its claim of legality and continuity. As a govemment has to be wherever there is a people, the exclusively existing govemment is legal in both respects, the right to ask for obedience and the duty to provide a constitutional Order. Victorious over a rebellion staged by a social group which had already morally accepted the basic tum of history eleven months before, the govemment Dollfuss was now legitimized to handle an emergency Situation according to its own fundamental ideas, Austrian independence, Catholic leadership and the corporative reconstruction of society. The Opposition appealing to arms had been beaten by arms and thus arms created the new legitimacy. At last the emergency had really occurred, which pretended to exist already for nearly a year and in which only the govemment could claim in reality to be a constitutional factor, it could not escape to pave the way of the Nazis in every detail as long as Now both morally and legally the political ideas of the govemment alone did matter, not any constitutional forms and methods, and these ideas certainly were better than the only ones which might otherwise have a chance in Austria, as far as power would decide over legitimacy. After Socialism was bloodily defeated by Catholicism, the only serious eventuality remained Catholicism or National Socialism, and any continued struggle against the govemment on the part of labor was indirectly succor for the Nazis. Marxism suddenly found itself in the same structural position as Italian Fascism, it might continue to oppose Nazism psychologically with all vehemence it could not escape to pave the way of the Nazis in every detail, as long as the passionate struggle against the authoritarian regime was its supreme postulate. For those people, who did not want to go into exile like some of the Social Democratic leaders did, because of the defeat of their cause and in order to keep their flag flying abroad, there was consequently no other duty than to obey history, and for some of the former Social Democrats, who understood the Situation well enough and were able to overcome their resentments, even to participate in 193 the new constitutional scheme, in order to defend the existing state against its only possible successor and to preserve ander its protection as mach as possible of the labor movement. For those obeying history, it was indispatable that between the democratic repablic and the anthoritarian state, or better Aastro-Marxism and Political Catholicism in Aastria, even in the climax of civil war, there was bat a relative antagonism and still many identities of interests were left in spite of the catastrophe, while between the civilized world of Aastria, red or black, and the barbarism of Germany, as calminating in Nazism, there was no bridge, no compromise, no nnderstanding possible withoat self- renanciation. It was the tragedy of Aastrian Catholicism that this trath was fally anderstood only in its fanctioning in favor of its own position after the catastrophe, while it will remain the glory of parts of Aastro-Marxism, labor and intellectaals, to have anderstood it in spite of all the very nataral resentments in a sitaation after defeat, in which everything seemed to favor an opposite attitade. The school of realism in both Catholicism and Socialism which aimed at Cooperation among eqaals against the common foe again, after the catastrophe eqaally as before, was the real asset of political wisdom which Aastria possessed. In this mood I myself accepted a chance, spontaneonsly offered to me by Dollfass, in order to contribate my share in saving whatever there conld lie saved from the shipwreck behind and the tempest ahead. I had attacked Dollfass daring 1933 as practically the only Catholic intellectaal in the coantry in my own review, Wiener Politische Blatter, which conseqnently was in constant warfare with censorship and police of the anthoritarian regime. In the most critical hoar I had addressed two open letters to the federal president in the Social Democratic Arbeiter Zeitung, in which the inevitable catastrophe was predicted in case the head of the state wonld not force to abandon its coarse. As far as I was able to do it, I had worked for a new coalition between the two parties by trying to bring people of the yoanger generation together. Dollfass, very mach annoyed aboat my so antimely contact with the Social Democratic leaders, had refased to see me daring this entire period. He was not so sare of himself to risk the discassion with an old comrade, who in former years nsed to debate with him throagh halves of days and nights, and whose argaments perhaps coald open another avenae of thoaght which he simply did not want to have opened. Schaschnigg for a while liked to spin some thin threads, of which I never learned, how mach they were his own. Miklas and Schaschnigg together coald still have aprooted Dollfass, and I tried to encoarage both to do jast that to save the state, if the chancellor himself woald refase any compromise. Schaschnigg at that time still thoaght of some kind of retam to the existing constitntion and any idea of corporative reconstraction seemed to him something qaite remote and impolitic to cover a period of fifty years, bot not to prodace another and better constitntion tomorrow. My idea was to bring together a groap of yoanger leaders from both sides of the fence and, while Baner was ready to Step into the backgronnd and to give these yoanger men all aathority, at least for the sake of the experiment Schaschnigg did not hesitate to dwell apon the personal details of the project, to express preferences and to feign an interest which he obvioasly did not have or did not dare to see throagh. Whether he ever told Dollfass aboat or for a while liked to play with the idea of a policy of his own, he finally wrote me that he wonld not intend to continue anything 194 which could he interpreted as affront against the chancellor, and then he also did not let him see again. I also had been abroad during the constitutional struggle to sound, inform and influence both rightists and leftists, wherever I could reach them and hope to spread a truer light about the Austrian Situation from Italy to Belgium. I found prejudice and clichees on the Right and weakness on the Left and nowhere the slightest inkling that the catastrophe which would come inescapably could really mean the shifting of a stone, a corner-stone in my opinion, in the artificial vault construed by postwar Europe instead of its previous century-old balance of powers upon which the stability of the whole was built. After the catastrophe Dollfuss himself seemed to be terrified about the consequences of his own policy. A common friend, a Catholic priest who was connected with Dollfuss since the early days of Seipel, and whom I myself highly estimated for his pastoral zeal in the midst of so many contradictory political interests, arranged the first meeting. I was struck how worn-out the chancellor was and how far advanced his deafness, since we saw each last. This was not the man to begin, but to conclude. I soon feit that I still was capable of persuading him as in older days and that he had lost nothing of his former affection for the regimental comrade, whose action in the previous year he could not understand, but whose point of view he respected, after all. Certain common experiences in war time, when we had waged, each after his fashion, our war against the caste of army officers in their presumption and intolerance, and I had paid heavier for my utter disregard of their power, had been engraved so deeply into his memory that he now again, remembering the past, assured me of his confidence in my intentions on account of what I had dared once in the army.(At that time, the question was to break the fanaticism of the officer caste which stuck to the antiquated in civil life illegal "honorary code" of dueling, and to prepare by an unmistakable profession of non-dueling the official abolition of this atavism which in fact followed under the reign of Charles). Without this common experience in the same regiment in World War I, Dollfuss would never have understood or pardoned my attitude against what he considered the liberation of Austrian Catholicism from the fetters of an anti-Christian impact. With his reminiscences of previous actions on my part which also originally were not quite usual and could easily be considered outrageous even by a benevolent mind, he thought it possible that also my attack on his authoritarian tum might have some deeper meaning, as he was ready to grant me first, This little man, who had no respect whatsoever before the letters of the Constitution, had a deep respect before personal decisions, of which he knew that they came from a Catholic conscience. Suddenly in a flash, when the wreckage had come fully to his consciousness which the events of February 1934 had caused in Austria, Dollfuss understood from his own point of view, why my conscience had impelled me to go another road the year before than his, and he was both naive and grand enough to see the finger of Providence in these details. He always found that Providence was with him and as after the catastrophe he needed every plank for a bridge to be built again to the other bank, he was sure that Providence had made me stand against him and now has sent me back to him again. Thus, Dollfuss was not only clever enough to grasp the asset which in the sympathies of a Catholic intellectual with labor might lie for the authoritarian regime, but 195 also wise enough to appreciate the existence of someone in a position above the parties and to back with his own authority a single person, who could contribute something in bridging the gulf. When he offered me the greatest possible radius of action, besides the function as the third vice-mayor of Vienna which was to give me but the official Standing, and this was to include the positive possibility of writing and speaking throughout all federal lands without having to fear interference, I decided to continue my the former line of working for the Cooperation of the two basic groups in existence also under the altered conditions, well aware that in spite of a catastrophe none of the previous presuppositions had really changed. There were still two basic groups of the populace, facing a common foe and still in common danger to be engulfed by his powerful machinations, and there was still a state which in the long run would never live without the understanding of these two groups. Surely, it was an experiment to try the same thing after the catastrophe again only upon another platform which had been tried before in vain. There was no formal pact, but only an agreement among two old friends, yet with different temperaments and characters, which could be the basis of this experiment. It was an individual which tried to stem the tide of time and which alone embodied that synthesis thesis between the two parties which the entire nation would have to learn, if its salvation should be made sure. There was no guarantee that Dollfuss took the entire problem serious enough, would stick to his decisions and never repent to have made this experiment. The odds and bets were thoroughly against it.

(§41) Dollfuss, when I first met him again, accused the Heimwehr wing under Fey to be responsible for the catastrophe. This was not merely a naive captatic benevolentiae. He had cooperated with the Heimwehr very well down to the moment, when Fey in fact carried out what the chancellor had planned or at least had not clearly enough disapproved of. Dollfuss had prepared politically the deeds, for which, because of their final technical accomplishments, now in his eyes Fey was the perpetrator. He did not only teil me so, however, but from the very day after this accomplishment he began to favor deliberately the other Heimwehr wing under Starhemberg. By his deepest instincts Dollfuss knew that after the defeat of Marxism nobody eise than the Heimwehr could become dangerous to his regime, and following Seipel in this respect he preferred the Old Austrian aristocrat Starhemberg with his provincial following to the Old Austrian officer, Fey, knight of the Maria Theresia Order, who had collected around his person the Viennese sub-proletariat. From the viewpoint of labor, there was not much difference between the two wings and leaders. For Dollfuss, however, the Heimwehr was to be one of the basic columns of the new state, at least for the time being, yet under reliable leadership which would continue to serve and would not try to reach after the state’s power. His first candi date in the respect was Fey, as long as the dog was needed for the hunt of the Marxists, but on the very day of Fey's greatest triumph, the explosion of labor skillfully provoked by him, he was exchanged against Starhemberg, who was the bridge to Mussolini. Although this change of the pack-horse was (Machiavellian) policy, it was not faithfulness, as Fey believed to have a right to demand, at least now in the defensive. Here lies the reason, why Fey only half a year later, when Dollfuss was killed, 196 did not, and really could not, sacrifice his life and consequently feil into the suspicion that he had willingly contributed to Dollfuss’ death. In the new state all political parties were dissolved or went voluntarily into eclipse. In spite of that, there were at once new and powerful political agglomerations which clearly substituted the abolished parties. Dollfuss knew that for some time, a short one as he hoped, there would exist political groups which he ought to keep in balance. Thus he dissolved the Social Democratic Party, but deliberately preserved other elements of the labor movement against the advice of the Heimw ehr which was well aware that these were the counterweights against its own power. In the first place the labor cooperatives remained intact under a new governmental leadership, for which an agrarian intellectual of Dollfuss' own school and generation was selected. Dollfuss, who prided himself to be of the cooperative movement (his dissertation once for his doctorate rerum politicarum at Berlin dealt with this problem), knew well that it would be in the interest of agriculture and peasantry themselves to have consumer cooperatives of the industrial population to bargain with. Also the basic idea of the trade unions t coalition, liberty and collective bargaining was either preserved or soon restored where limitations had been previously imposed upon the "free" trade unions (of the Social Democratic Party). The variety of political trade unions affiliated with political parties ended as in any other totalitarian regime, and they were amalgamated into a unitarian governmental Organization (Einheitsgewerkschaft) under the foremost leadership of the former Christian Socialist trade union functionaries (with some representatives of the "yellow" Heimwehr Company unions besides). The Christian Socialist labor movement represented only a fraction of labor, but their members, with the new governmental trade union front behind them, whose leaders they became, advanced to be the political backbone of the left wing of the authoritarian regime, the very counterpoise against the Heimwehr. There were no Social Democratic or "free" trade unions any longer, but the masses of the former Socialist trade unionists got the chance to reorganize themselves within the new frame through the same method and principally with the same tendencies, to which they had adhered before. The former functionaries of the "free" trade unions, however, were largely idle and because of the new leaders of the governmental trade unions could hardly get any chance in greater numbers to be reinstated. Very frequently the industrialists themselves were the chief complainers about this fact which on the whole meant the Substitution of experienced negotiators by apprentices and in many instances resulted in a perspicuous decline of bargaining skill undesirable to the industry as such. The idea of Cooperation between Capital and labor, the shibboleth of Catholic corporatism, was thus better served by the experienced "free" trade union leaders than by their Christian Socialist and governmental successors, who were the very Champions of corporative reconstruction. It was one of the main intellectual problems of the new governmental trade unions, whether they should be considered as provisional agencies to be liquidated, after the corporative reconstruction would be completed, or as permanent "cross Organization" which would run across all the corporations consisting of both employers and employees together. In spite of this discord in details, however, throughout this grouping is general there were many dispositions left for leftist tendencies and they would logically grow in importance to the same amount the Heimwehr would become too powerful or Nazism too menacing. There 197 was a definite Left in the authoritarian regime thanks to Dollfuss' personal decisions in the days immediately after the catastrophe. Last but not least, there were still militant organizations, aside from the Heimwehr, the pronouncedly Catholic Ostmärkischen Sturmschaare, founded by Schuschnigg, and the Freiheitsbund of the Christian Socialist labor movement. Within this field of forces, Dollfuss granted full scope to my own activities and he did not object, when they very soon turned out to be of a politically more serious nature than he might originally have expected them to become. Whether or not Dollfuss expected a dynamic force which would gradually extend its scope, or only a loyal servant who would ask for permission before any new Step, he certainly showed no surprise, when the third vice-mayor of Vienna (and truly fifth wheel of the municipal carriage), contemplated as a functionary with a big baroque office chain around his neck, soon had spread his activities throughout every field, in which formerly the Social Democratic Party was anchored and their former followers without leaders were tugging now to all four directions of the wind. Of course, Dollfuss wanted something politically out from this investment which he risked with any appointment, but so did I. For Dollfuss the so- called Aktion Winter, as these activities were soon called, was primarily an Instrument of psychological reconstruction, reconciliation and restoration of balance, a kind of political sedative to be sure, destined to bring labor into the new governmental set-up and thus broadening the populär basis of the regime. He had not renounced his ideas and he did not contemplate to restore what he had destroyed, but he thought it wise to smooth down the passions, in order to build on more solid foundations. A new mentality ought to be created among the Socialists to make them ready to join the governmental cooperatives and trade unions, and for this purpose it seemed tolerable that somebody would form an ideological bridge between yesterday and tomorrow, talk a little bit In Marxian terminology and make the Marxists understand the necessities of the hour. ff Dollfuss would have been an intellectual, with whom a clear-cut pact on intellectual lines would have been required, the whole experiment might have been impossible for me, as in all probability our aims would never have fit together. He was no intellectual and I doubt, whether he ever read any of my elaborate essays before or after the catastrophe. Yet he was shrewd enough to know that others would read them and be influenced by them in their thought, and thus he tolerated what he hardly understood himself. On the other hand, I myself did not intend to cheat Dollfuss, as I always was completely frank with him in both my oral and my literal pronunciations. Yet I worked under the assumption that eventually the internal and the extemal Situation of Austria would develop to the point, where the authoritarian regime itself might be grateful to have this work done (and although its leaders were never really grateful, they in fact maneuvered themselves into a Situation, where eventually only the courageous use of the Capital which among other things my labor saved for them would have saved them and the country). For me these activities were the great chance, by which I could offer labor the intellectual rallying point for their own indispensable autonomous activities, around which as a psychological nucleus they might close in together in their extreme distress for regaining self-assurance and overcoming the futility of dreaming revenge. Convinced that Austria would stand the onslaught of Germany only with a labor movement restored, I 198 tried to get out as much as possible from the govemment's readiness to let me go ahead as well as to revitalize the self-help energies of labor itself. This was not propagated secretly but publicly. If it surprised Dollfuss, he did not show it to me. His confidence in my person and his prudence which forbade mere experiments were equally great. Already in his life time, the Aktion Winter, only a few months old had attracted wide interest even beyond the Austrian boundaries. Dollfuss had started this trial but he could not simply liquidate it. "Let run it out", was the motto of many not too friendly composed persons in the authoritarian regime with reference to these activities which in fact could stir up sentiments, but in the long run, as it was proved, never accumulate organizational Capital, but were bound to deposit this Capital, the fruit of an unceasing and unflinching labor, into the frame of other organizations, the trade unions in the first place, which the Christian Socialist trade unions held strictly in their grip*Whether Dollfuss would have joined those who wanted the liquidation of the Aktion Winter or not, history did not allow to bring this into the open. The last word I ever said to Dollfuss was "the Aktion goes on", and his answer was, his voice still in my ears "Yes, Ernstl. The Aktion goes on within the corporative reconstruction". We still stood both, where we stood in the beginning, before when we met after the catastrophe before he was called away. As I was able to speak as frankly to labor as the former Social Democratic leaders ever did, labor was bewildered and puzzled, and they suspected naturally some governmental trick behind the whole development which in fact was only the display of inextinguishable political energies defying spiritually the very existence of the authoritarian state, but taking its legal functioning fully into account. I appealed to the Marxian education of labor, to their ability to act coolly according to their clearly perceived interests, not feverishly under impulses forced upon them by their very adversaries. I dare saying that nowhere under the domination of totalitarian or authoritarian regimes in Europe any govemment of this kind tolerated an equally frank language in both orations and publications. Historically judging, independent from personal guilt or virtue, the mere fact that this political action was possible under the Austrian authoritarian regime was one of its greatest assets and one of the spiritual powers behind it, in virtue of which it survived far longer than it otherwise deserved. I have outlined this once to the two leaders of British labor, George Lanshbury and William Citrine, whom the former Austrian ambassador to Great Britain, George Frankenstein had invited in 1935 to meet me in his embassy, and who so far exclusively informed by their party comrades in the labor international, were obviously not without interest to listen to the other side of the story as well. Wherever abroad I contacted politically minded people on the Right or on the Left from 1934 to 1936, the main years of my political labor action, I always have heard with gratefulness that this was Austria in her best qualities which they admired in the fair play which existed between the government, my activities and labor, included even those in exile and in the Underground . Summarizing the experiences of this experiment, I would not dare to say that it succeeded not even for a while, although it did not fail all together either. It really accumulated sufficient new political Capital that a govemment, as wise in using it as Dollfuss was wise in enabling its building up, might have firmly relied on it in the crucial hour of decision. 199

(§42) One major and persisting difficulty for all activities within the authoritarian regime was to convince democratic people that, after their autonomous institutions had been destroyed by an anti-constitutional government, they should Start, merely on the basis of the fait accompli, rebuilding them again within the authoritarian framework under an essential curtailment of autonomy. Yet to accept the new regime with its idea of corporative reconstruction was the very basis of any useful work within the existing state, and just this was to be done, if Austrian independence ought to be preserved as the nucleus of national liberty which once might make possible again another Austrian democracy. The only objection against this recommendation could seriously be made by a political metaphysics the motto of which was that "things must be worse, in order to become better" which in fact, and very naturally so, was wide-spread, although only few of its Champions were fully aware that under the existing conditions this recipe could only mean "rather Nazis than Catholicism" or "first Nazism, then democracy". No doubt, it ought to have been paramount for labor, as it was obviously tantamount to its basic interests, to go quickly into the new governmental trade unions, to abstain from contemplating desertion of their old consumers' cooperatives, now under governmental control, to strive actively for a new kind of labor movement within the corporative frame and ideology, and not to be seduced into passivity and apathy, or still worse antipathy and Subversion, as recommended unanimously by both the Nazis and labor's own exiles. Only by so doing could labor preserve the uttermost of its autonomy and could become strong again, fully adapted to the altered conditions of dass war and perhaps capable of developing into another left wing of Austrian politics within the new crystallizations of corporatism. Only by an immanent criticism which thereby could become possible labor could really contribute to the effect that this Austrian corporatism was that of Quadragesimo anno, as it wanted to be, and not that of Italian Fascism, as it otherwise without labor's counterpoise had inevitably to become. Whoever outlined this goal to labor, was not a spokesman of the authoritarian regime, also if he was its functionary, he was in reality a mouthpiece of political ideas which were before, and had all chance to be after, the authoritarian regime, ideas which by being preserved, collected, uttered, accepted and repeated were likely to be balled together into a power of their own which would have its own perseverance quite independent from the political fate of the voice having cried them out first. Neither Dollfuss nor his System could resist continuous pressure brought about by the politically most educated stratum of the Austrian people which labor was, as soon as only labor itself would fully grasp its own interests and chances. Only this method of incorporating labor into the fold of the authoritarian regime and thus bringing about a new labor movement within the corporative set-up could enable Austria to remain independent, as this method alone could combine the forces of national resistance from the Right to the Left against the common foe, and only an independent Austria could dream to become again a democracy in the life-time of those who had known and served the democratic republic. Of course, the labor movement, also within the authoritarian regime, could greatly accelerate the pace of events. For saving Austrian independence and for preparing another Austrian democracy, this labor movement which 200 ought to be re-established held the key position. Hence the "coalition" between Catholicism and labor, ruling the one, defeated the other, still was the life and death problem of the Austrian state. This was the interest not only of Catholicism which now ruled for a while, but had acted so grotesquely against its very basis that its future was not too bright, - it was also the interest of labor which, if it would act similarly, "eye for eye and tooth for tooth", might well be understandable psychologically as well, but in following the spirit of revenge against Catholicism would certainly do renewed fantastic damage to itself. I have always understood my political mission in those years in Austria to be an appeal to modern men, Christians, Jews and gentiles alike, to grasp for themselves, how the Sermon on the Mount, far from being against nature, truly is political wisdom. I have nothing learned as deeply in those years as that hatred, revenge, resentments, retaliation with equal weapons, in short the antithesis to the Sermon on the Mount, are most childish play which must destroy, a state. To act as the Catholics did in 1933 in revenge for 1918 was as unwise, both religiously and politically, as it was for the Socialists to repeat in their day-dreams after February 1934, what the Catholics had done before in reality. Yet only a few Catholic intellectuals ever understood the historic Situation either before or after the catastrophe, so exclusively were they under the spell of the theologian - statesman, who should have expounded to them the Sermon on the Mount, but in fact embodied only a new chapter of Machiavellianism. In contrast to this self-righteousness on the part of Austrian Catholicism, a growing percentage of labor's rank and file from 1934 to 1938 became fully aware, what really was at stäke and what constituted the only means for preventing the final cataclysm. Exactly the bulk of the more rational forces of the labor movement, the more highly trained and politically educated trustees and functionaries of the various labor organizations, political, economic and cultural, gradually understood that mere resentments could never be politically Creative and redeeming. If as many Catholics would have understood the same in 1933/34 before the catastrophe, as in fact Socialists understood it in 1934/38 after the catastrophe, this most tragic and most fateful catastrophe of modern Austrian history which bore the Anschluss in its womb would never have happened. One must concede that Catholicism under Seipel's aegis was less able to understand the political wisdom in the Sermon on the Mount than labor on the basis of Marxian education, deeply shaken by its party catastrophe and ready to listen to constructive voices of the other camp. If the process of labor's re-incorporation into the new state made a much slower progress than it could have been, it was the regime itself which down to the end did not find the adequate way of being politically benefited to the füllest extent by the growing readiness of labor to conquer the lost ground by Cooperation, not by abstinence. It was in spite the errors committed by the regime that in the end, after a process of five years, the entire Austrian labor dass was perfectly ready to do its part in defense of the country, if the government would have been ready too. The main antagonists against "reconciliation", as they called it exactly in Dollfuss' own terminology, were the members of the "illegal" Organization of labor, the "Underground movement", built up by the exiled leaders in their more primitive and abstract interest of preserving at all costs the flame of "Revolutionary Socialism", as now 201 the outlawed party called itself. There was not much chance of "revolution" and they would probably done better for their immediate task in Austria as well as for their own future after the Anschluss if they would have called themselves, if any change of name was advisable, "Austrian labor party" instead of playing with revolutionary hopes and promises which they could seriously keep only if working for the Nazis. If not their outspoken idea, then their foremost practice was that the Austrian workers must undergo Nazism as well and that the Nazis would be preferable to the bloody Catholic regime. This was the Marxian variant of the slogan "rather Anschluss than Habsburg" which, as it is said, one of the statesmen in Austria's neighborhood, most interested in Austrian independence, once has formulated. A more tactical grasp of the entire Situation was in fact displayed by the Communists, who, however, in spite of their growth since the catastrophe, still were the minority group within Austrian labor, considered the Outsiders by the old labor partisans. Both leftist parties were in fact without any practical influence .Abstracting from any posthumous "Underground mythology", there was not very much of any real "Underground movement" during the entire period of the authoritarian regime, despite the existence of a relatively lenient govemment which did not take too cruel a revenge on trespassers. The risk was, nevertheless, too great for the average worker. Including even the "illegal" activities of Nazism which occasionally flared up in waves of terrorism, perpetrated by tiny minorities, the govemment never actually had to fear this type of revolution, and all its successes which were exclusively such of Nazism were only due to the Cooperation among subversive elements within the governmental agencies themselves, the political police sometimes in the first place, As the revolution of 1918 was made by people, who had their desks in the war office and elsewhere in governmental agencies, so the only eventually successful "Underground movement", Nazism, had its very headquarters in Offices of the Viennese police, where the old method was used with new vigor. In the crisis of 1934 when Dollfuss was killed, as well as in the days of the Anschluss, single individuals of the political police, even within a basically intact apparatus, were able to serve their subversive interests tremendously. As I not only had access to official reports about all three kinds of "illegal" activities, Nazis, Communists and Revolutionary Socialists, but also continuous personal contacts with people within these groups, I can testify that even under so human a regime in these matters as the Austrian had normally been, the politically most educated and advanced forces of labor would shun the risk involved, being very well aware that the real achievements were nil in comparison with the sacrifices necessary. In fact, the so-called "Underground Organization" was nothing but a loose chain for distributing "illegal" literature which was printed abroad and smuggled into the country. There was no other advantage to be derived from the "Underground movement" than to get these pamphlets. Any closer organizational contact was possible solely between very small groups of old acquaintances, who without being members of the "Underground movement" were what they had always been, and knew accurately beforehand what the "illegal" papers would write. Even about "underground Conferences" abroad the police possessed better minutes than the participants. It was a very small amount of political Information which could be maintained throughout the country by Underground channels primarily, it was nothing but 202 the symbolism of the existence of such a group in exile around Bauer and Deutsch at Brünn in Czechoslovakia, which counted most politically. In this respect, the regime Dollfuss-Schuschnigg made its most fateful mistakes. Something like a new labor movement fmally emerged in fact from the coexistence of trade unions, consumersi cooperatives and labor cultural organizations, but unfortunately this agglomeration did not have any political denominator, frame and leadership. Economically and culturally, labor could not be left without their own organizations and leaders, the govemment admitted, but politically labor should conform, it demanded, to the authoritarian regime and accept its political Organization and leadership. The authoritarian substitute for the political parties of the past was the Patriotic Front (Vaterländistche Front),the poor Imitation of the stated parties in Italy and Germany, which was the most unpopulär feature of the entire authoritarian regime and but a laughing-stock for labor. Both the idea and the name were alien to the Austrians (vaterländisch being an adjective of "German" origin and never used before in Austria).It was the silliest idea which the regime Dollfuss-Schuschnigg ever had to ask the Austrians to submit to the Patriotic Front as the new, monopolistic organ for "shaping the political will" (politische Willensbildung again a word from an entirely un-Austrian, "German" vocabulary). To restore the political labor leaders of yesterday to a similar role within the authoritarian regime as lots of smaller trade union leaders were gradually acquiring was the most repugnant idea to those in power, who flattered themselves to have destroyed and have crushed the very seducers of the masses. Thus, various groups completely alien to the old labor movement shared now the official leadership over labor. The members and functionaries of the former Christian trade unions, a tiny, courageous, though unexperienced group within labor, but through decade-old struggles bitterly anti- Marxian, now provided the bulk of the governmental trade union leaders, while the well experienced functionaries and trustees of the "free" trade unions were over board and idle. Only slowly from the bottom old trade union leaders, once elected by their fellows, were now nominated by the government. Some kind of elections were later restored in the factories, but never reached the upper level of the trade unions considered to require political leadership. Also the municipalities, rural and urban, whose traditional autonomy was greatly curtailed, were likewise in the hands of nominated conservative administrators, around who equally nominated representative of the various vocational groups to be organized as corporations were collected. Thus, both trade unions and municipalities were "de-politicized" and the ideal of Fascism reached. The monopoly of politics should be concentrated in the Patriotic Front which, however, was the playground of those "non-political" people, who had not belonged to any party before and were without any political experience, but wanted to reform the "party state". Dollfuss had conceived the idea of the Patriotic Front as the inevitable foliage to the authoritarian regime, in particular to the parades of large masses, when the "leader" would address them from some balcony. This was the Italian pattern imitated by Germany Nazis which, however, overlooked the historic fact that in Austria the masses were political-minded, not very docile or easily to be ordered around and capable of a biting wit, faced with which any dilettantish dictatorship which could not draw the final 203 consequences of brutality because of its religious basis was bound to become a helpless giant on earthen feet. In spite of all endeavors under various firms and labels, the Patriotic Front never amounted to anything more in Austria during five years than to a mammoth Organization built upon a huge file of cards, to which practically everybody living and working in Austria had to belong. There was no direct legal Obligation, of course. For instance, the son of the Socialist theorist, Benedikt Kautsky, who was an official of the Vienna labor chamber down to the end of the authoritarian regime, or I myself during my whole tenure as vice-mayor never were members of the Patriotic Front. These, however, were exceptions. The masses of the working people did belong to the Patriotic Front, the peasants indirectly through their peasant Organization (Bauernbund), the workers through the factories where they were employed, although it was the aim of the governmental trade unions (Gewerkschaftsbund) to acquire the privilege of peasantry for labor as well. Yet this membership of the masses was but their proof of loyalty, and not the slightest inkling that they were guided or influenced politically by the Patriotic Front. Any realization of constructive leadership was utterly foreign to this organizational colossus. In the best case the masses in industry and agriculture were guided and influenced by Gewerkschaftsbund and Bauernbund, whose functionariesA were simultaneously functionaries of the Patriotic Front, but did never accept advices here. Thus, the Patriotic Front, before it ever fully expanded, showed already two distinct sub-divisions or wings, peasantry and labor. This was the idea of infusing life into the "State's party" by its "articulation and it was accurately this idea, with which I toured Italy in 1934,where people opened eyes and mouth about this new "Interpretation of Fascism" which came from Catholic Austria. The Patriotic Front was the crux of the govemment throughout the entire authoritarian regime. Schuschnigg, under whom eventually Guido Zematto, publisher and poet, became the official organizer of the Patriotic Front, added an idea, not wholly un-ingenious according to the circumstances, but surely grotesque if regarded face to face in any space outside of the authoritarian atmosphere. His glorious idea was to transform, and thereby quasi to denature, into bureaucratic departments centering around offtcials desks within the Patriotic Front all brands and styles of political impetus which still continued to exist, Socialism, Legitimism and Nazism, and thus to handle them properly in the interest of the authoritarian regime. For every one of these creeds which would have been organized as political parties under normal conditions the chancellor found some expert and reporter ("Referent") and thus was able to constitute an official Service and report around a desk ("Referat"). This was the most ideal reduction of political struggles to quasi inter-govemmental and departmental affairs, of which Schuschnigg was the genuine inventor. First my own activities, pushed more ahead than he would like, forced him to organize such a department within the Patriotic Front for labor in the "social work committees” (the so-called Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft), headed by a former Christian trade unionist who simultaneously was secretary of 204 labor. As this scheme was able at least to attract parts of labor and direct their political Aactivities under the supervision of the Patriotic Front, Schuschnigg’s ambitions grew. First he offered the Legitimists the same chance, whose representative in the Patriotic Front, Hans Karl Zessner-Spitzenberg, was the purest soul they possessed and who later paid with his life for the ridiculous chance to head the department "for the cultivation of tradition", as it was bombastically called (Referat für Traditionspflege). At the end, the Nazis got and used their chance really well under the chairmanship of Arthur Seyss-Inquart whom Schuschnigg selected for this quasi-governmental office out of a dozen competing candidates, because he believed to have found in him a fellow Catholic who was not too bright at that. No wonder that any selection of new labor leaders or the rehabilitation of old labor leaders was utterly out of question in so comfortable and likewise so farcical a scheme. Schuschnigg never tried to press me into it. Nevertheless, without all the other more fateful blunders of the authoritarian regime particularly in its foreign policy, the Austrians might have accustomed themselves to the Patriotic Front and its sections, if there would have been sufficient time for that. Miraculous as it seems, in spite of all these shortcomings on the part of the authoritarian in leadership which grimly misunderstood the signs in the skies, labor was ready to fight for Austria if the govemment itself would have fought after gradually it had accepted any proposition made. Here I was more intransigent than many of my original collaborators and obviously less accommodating than the labor masses which were conservative enough to accept the existing state, because it existed, and quite naturally lacked the scrutinizing ability to understand the far- reaching consequences of the foreign policy which the authoritarian govemment undertook and for the sake of which primarily it did not want to have any self-conscious political action outside the Patriotic Front capable of informing and educating public opinion in a different männer.

(§43) The great breach in the authoritarian regime occurred only three months after its formal completion by a new Constitution (May 1, 1934) when a new wave of Nazi terror reached the chancellery and killed Dollfuss (July 25, 1934). No mistake in history was ever more tragically revenged on its very author than the foundation of the authoritarian regime in Austria on its responsible creator and little leader. The authoritarian state, hardly erected, had to rely on the "myth of the leader" instead of its reality, and this fact alone sufficed to accelerate its end. By a stränge coincidence I myself had been with Dollfuss the night before his death for many hours in the very room where he was killed the next day. On the eve of his own death the first young Socialist member of the former Schutzbund, Josef Gerl had been executed on the basis of a new decree which threatened to punish the mere possession of dynamite with the death penalty. I had tried to save the boy, who had been arrested, after a dynamite attempt carrying along with him a package of dynamite, the origin and purpose of which he could not explain. I had come from the countryside in a hurry, when the sentence was expected, and first met Dollfuss on the on 205 the stairs to his apartment. He knew at once why I was coming, and, as he did in 1933 cleverly escaped the trouble maker. He arranged at once with me a meeting in his office for the same late afternoon, letting believe me that this would still give me a chance to intercede successfully, yet was surely resolved to himself to avoid the issue. He let me wait many hours in the chancellery as he did Gerl's relatives as well. When I saw him, it was already after the execution. When I did not spare reproaches, I soon was to put him into a stränge mood, as I did never know of him before. He did not have a very good conscience and I did not contribute to let him feel at ease. In the light of the coming day, I cannot help assuming that this debate must have been the occasion that some obvious presentiments of the approaching catastrophe dawned upon him. It was another Dollfuss suddenly, as I had known the last months, a man stirred up in the depth of his soul, with his heart on the surface, not so sure of himself any longer. Never during the months of my official function did the chancellor have so much time for me, urging me to stay on, when I made signs of withdrawing, remembering times past and telling me in a frankness which he had never shown before of his own designs. For the first time he fully recognized that we had developed in opposite directions, he from the Left to the Right, I rather from the Right to the Left, but he still was sure that there might be enough ground in between, where two directions of Catholic evolution might meet and be the two wings of the same purpose. Disgusting to me, he was rather glad that a Socialist was the first victim of the new anti-terror law, not a Nazi, knowing with his peasant instinct only too well, where the weaker enemy was to be found. He frankly admitted that it would have been a great "embarrassment" for the govemment, if a Nazi should have been the first to be executed "for an example". He spoke, however, with genuine reverence of some single Socialists, whom he had known before. He wanted me to teil them of the high esteem, in which he had always held them. There was no immediate cause for such a gesture which rather sounded as a farewell, with which he charged me to my own perplexity. While he spoke so to me, I asked myself in utter astonishment, why he would not sent for them and teil them himself, how he feels about their great of usefulness for the state? No doubt, in spite of these sympathies, there was still a deeper complex in his mind which made him afraid of labor as well and the easy victim of those who knew to exploit his fears. I should soon find out more in the same dialogue. As a peasant he understood the workers, foremost the agricultural workers and the lumber-jacks, but he mistrusted the leaders, No intellectual himself, he suspected the intellectuals in general and the intellectuals among labor leaders in particularly (if one was not just an old regimental comrade). As an agricultural functionary he recognized some able trade unionists, but he was terribly frightened by the intellectual leaders of the Proletariat, the theorists, the ideologists the Marxists, the Jews, whose mentality he could not grasp or interpret. They were but "Bolshevists" to him, and the least he could understand of my own ideology was that I sometimes spoke their language.(He must have been a truer friend of mine as I have ever been vice versa, bearing with great patience what he could not help considering my greatest faults). Within these due restrictions Dollfuss was ready to accept what he called "Socialism" as a means of Cooperation between labor and peasantry within the "new democracy", of which he liked to speak and which in his 206 vision was very near to a society based upon rural and industrial cooperatives and their Cooperation, but he was terrified by what he thought to be "Communism". While he just told me so again, the chief of the political police, Walter Steinhäusl, one of the main conspirators of the coming day and later the president of the Viennese police under Nazism, called the chancellor by telephone. 1 was not permitted to listen in, but was told later by the chancellor that the police had just discovered a Communist plot in Floridsdorf, Vienna's 2Ist district \ across the Danube River, which according to this authoritative Information was due to break tomorrow. In my presence the chancellor made some dispositions and I observed, how his mind was fixed more than ever before on the possibility of a Communist uprising which was an uttermost ridiculousness to everybody of only the slightest political Intelligence. I could not anticipate that Steinhäusl's call was but a feature of the scheme to be unrolled tomorrow, but I knew well that various leading officials of the police were used to hunt the Reds, in order to cover the activities of their Nazi partisans. In vain I tried to demonstrate this to the chancellor, showing him how the apparatus of the police was accustomed to "retrieve" (I used the term apportieren whieh is what dogs do) every suspected leftist, while the really dangerous Nazis are absorbed into oblivion. I am still convinced that Dollfuss would not have been killed the coming day, if he might have accepted only a fraction of what I then said to him. Yet this is the finger of destiny. History might have gone a different course, if Dollfuss would have listened to reason in 1933, if he would have supported the idea of moral reparation in 1934, by which alone full Cooperation between Catholicism and Socialism was possible, or if he, on the eve of his death, would have believed me more than his chief of the political police, who was an organized Nazi. He did not and this may be consoling to those who believe in determinism, while I deduce from the mere possibility that the nightly dialogue between two human souls and brothers might have altered history, that man, individual man, is the creator of history, not laws and movements of matter, as often as man may in fact succumb to them. (Wilhelm Berliner waited for me and I took him with me in my car to my home.) During our dialogue Dollfuss assured me that the Heim wehr might not be reliable in all its parts, but that this factor would not matter much, as the Austrian army is the rock, upon which the new state must and can be built. He spoke in great admiration of this army and showed the uttermost confidence in its reliability. I have often thought how he must have feit the coming day, when this confidence seemed to be thoroughly misplaced and down to his last moments the chancellor obviously could never clearly see through the Situation. When the Nazis in the uniforms of Austrian soldiers stormed the chancellery on the coming moming, Dollfuss might first have thought of Communists, as he was advised to think by his political police, but then he must have conceived from the uniforms to his most elementary shock that really the federal army, the rock of his state, had revolted. When already dying he leamed of the main instigator behind the scene, Anton Rintelen, the former governor of Styria, who belonged to the gamiture of Catholic statesmen in the democratic republic with whom Seipel was accustomed to work, but then had turned Nazi because of wounded pride and frustrated ambition. Dollfuss was aware of the complete lack of scruples on Rintelen's part and he had made him Austrian ambassador to the Quirinal, in order to get rid of the man, who himself wanted to be the 207 Austrian dictator and, when Dollfuss acquired this role, even was ready to become the Catholic chancellor of Nazi Austria. When Dollfuss died, surrounded by the rebels and assisted only by two police agents who were lacked up with him in the chancellery, it was not any new profession of his faith in Austria which he muttered, or any legacy to his prospective heir, Schuschnigg, to continue the struggle, but the wish that the very man, who instigated the putsch, Rintelen, "may make peace". He went out of this life, not with repentance to have fought the very enemies of his own enemies who killed him, but to have fought his enemies instead of making peace with them. While Dollfuss died in solitude without physician or priest on his couch, the terrorists held the chancellery. In these hours the rump of the govemment did not play a very heroic role. Some of the ministers had been caught in the chancellery by the rebels, where they permitted themselves to be used for negotiations on behalf of the free departure of the law-breakers and murderers to Germany. One of these puppets used was Fey who once had been Dollfuss' most intimate collaborator, before the defeat of Socialism was achieved, but since then had lost considerable ground as the Moor who had his Service done, and practically was on the way out. Fey once was a major in an elite regiment of the Old Austrian army, recruited at Vienna, holder of the highest Old Austrian military decoration, and the leader of the most brutal faction of the Heimwehr. His Service for the authoritarian regime was similar to that of Göring in Germany during the first decisive months of 1933. Fey certainly should not have been the man to be afraid of the rebels. On that ill-fated day he had surrendered in the chancellery without a shot with hands up, while his chief was killed in the next room. No wonder that the populär voice, dramatizing and mythologizing the conflict which existed between Dollfuss and Fey since months were unanimously sure that the vice-chancellor himself had killed the chancellor. The truth was, however, that Fey was simply unable to sacrifice himself for the man, who had already exchanged him for Starhemberg. Perhaps the daredevil of old was also softened by the sinecures of peace which he enjoyed. When the Anschluss dawned, Fey with wife, son, house-maid and dogs was killed, cruelly sacrificed to Wotan, by a Nazi platoon in bloody revenge for the fact that promise of free departure for the murderers of Dollfuss which he secured while captive and spokesman for the rebels was not kept by the government, but that instead the whole gang was executed. Hitler at that time publicly disavowed the crime. After the Anschluss one of the first official acts of the Nazi regime was to canonize the memory of that gang, to execute one after the other who had been engaged in the work of Justice against the murderers, and to make the man who killed Dollfuss, Qtto Planetta, an Austrian of obviously Italian descent, the Wilhelm Teil of Greater Germany. As surely as these murderers deserved death, could their deeds and persons have made ever a national saga if they would simply have been sentenced to life imprisonment and if they, liberated by the Anschluss would have been just one group among thousands to boast of ghastly deeds? The life of Dollfuss is less monumental than Seipel's, who even in his one-sided purpose of anti-Marxism was a statesman of respectable size to be a störe of wisdom for his successors. Dollfuss in his ups and downs, in his ambitions, shortcomings and failures, however, is nearer to the Austrian heart. He was human, warm and tender, and 208 even labor, crushed by his policy did never suspect him to be untrue, faithless or deceitful. He was a dynamic power in Austrian politics which consumed itself and of which very soon nothing has been left. Yet in spite of all his errors, the motor of his life did not in vain make tabula rasa with the exuberantly growing party politics of the "Second Austria". His iron broom can never be completely forgotten in Austria. As inevitable as the parties are in modern democracy, they always should know that the sword of Damocles hangs over their heads, if they develop into totalitarian organizations which do not mutually respect each other and the state. Dollfuss will remain the Symbol in Austrian politics that party life has its natural boundaries which, if transgressed upon, endanger the political life itself. Without Dollfuss the political force would have been lacking in Austrian modern history which proved that party politics represent only one side of political life, and that state's politics must have the priority, even in the interests of the parties.

(§44) Among the ministers who escaped the fate of being trapped in the chancellery by the rebels was Kurt Schuschnigg, minister of education at the time, formerly minister of Justice (since 1932). I do not doubt the story that also he wavered between negotiation with Rintelen and capitulation of the rebels. In the very hour when the chancellery was stormed two blocks away, Schuschnigg, before he learned about the event, told a visitor that he wanted to step more into the background, if he would not even resign office, to dedicate himself to other interests outside politics. These words were hardly out of his mouth, when history decided that he ought to Start on a path still more tragic than the other just in its agony. In this Situation, when the authoritarian regime was in fact without a leader, Miklas, who still was federal president also under the new Constitution, saved the state which he had not wanted actively but was too weak to prevent by more than scolding. Being at his summer resort in Carinthia and called to the telephone, he had the true presence of mind to forbid Schuschnigg any negotiations, but ordered strict resistance and clearance of the chancellery without any regard for the life of Dollfuss or anybody eise. This energy probably preserved the state as well as the authoritarian regime, behind which the president after so much exertion again disappeared in the trapdoor. Only the will of the govemment to save itself and to refuse any negotiations with the political forces behind the rebels could really bring about their capitulation, the quick collapse of the rebellion in the provinces, the withdrawal of Germany from any imputed complicity and the deployment of Italian motorized divisions on the Brenner Pass for the protection of Austrian independence. All this was brought about by the man in his Carinthian resort, who otherwise was but the figure-head of the Austrian state. Schuschnigg then was the most correct executor of the political mandate which he received from the state's authority, If this would have been the model four years later, history might well have repeated itself. This was the day, when Schuschnigg became Dollfuss' heir and successor. He was a reluctant heir at first, When in the night after the murder, some of the outlawed and exiled Socialist leaders, Oskar Pollak, the former chief editor of the Arbeiter Zeitung, 209 among them, came to my apartment to offer the Cooperation of the "Underground movement" to the new chancellor, if he would have the courage to turn the course of the ship of state, and when I conveyed these ideas to him at once while the first meeting of the new cabinet was in progress, he was as evasive as ever. "I am still not the chancellor", he said, "and I am not sure, whether I will become it". The year previously I had approached him to take matters in his own hands together with the president, if need be against Dollfuss, whose violation of the Constitution he seemed not willing to Interpret as radically as his chief. He had let negotiations and discussions drift a certain way, but abruptly discontinued them. These were his tactics ever since I have known him. Dollfuss was an impulsive man, irrational, often incalculable, but he was a man with deep instincts, to be sure instincts for power, but also instincts for the limits of power, and a friend, who for friendship's sake even tolerated ideas and actions extremely stränge and repugnant to his entire nature. Schuschnigg was a reluctant man, he seemed to be rational and intellectual, yet he proved in the end to be but the pupil of Scholastic Professors, who were supposed to educate good officials and servants of the state, but not independent and Creative minds. Dollfuss was a peasant with much insight into the soul of workers, but he mistrusted intellectuals, if they were not by mere chance his friends. Schuschnigg, the son of a general, at times displayed a pretty good understanding for Socialism, even for its intellectual leaders, but he never had any more intimate contacts with workers .The last word which I heard from him after Berchtesgaden was that, faced with the alternative Hitler or Stalin, he would as a matter of course chose the latter, and "that would mean Otto Bauer", he added. He told me that this was the dialogue which he had with Guido Schmitt, his foreign minister, when they travelled to Hitler's headquarters together. At that time, I did not anticipate that soon it would become generally known that Schmitt already for some time informed Berlin about everything which happened at Vienna, yet his Nazi affiliations were an open secret to everybody except Schuschnigg. As Schmitt was another pupil of the same Scholastic professors, Schuschnigg trusted him completely. Another of Schuschnigg's fellow students and most intimate collaborators, who for years carried his chiefs most secret negotiations, was Wilhelm Wolf, a Vorarlberger like Schmitt, who for a while had been able to collect even Socialist sympathies. Wolf was the main communicator to Berlin for years, but obviously still not thoroughly enough, for soon after the Anschluss he was killed by the Nazis. The names of Schmolf show, how trusting Schuschnigg was on the wrong place. Also Seyss-Inquart had Schuschnigg to thank for his climbing up. I do not deny that the motives of the chancellor in trusting these persons were basically very honorable ones for himself. He did not deceive, but was deceived. Yet he could be easily deceived on the basis of an ideology which half and half met the national pathology of those who finally betrayed him because of their German nationalism. If Schuschnigg really ever had any constructive ideas behind his glasses concerning the reintegration of Socialism into the Austrian state, or Austria's position in Europe between the Axis and the Democracies (two fundamentally interwoven Problems), he never acted consistently in either of these directions. He rather seemed to rely completely on the old recipe of "muddling through" .His main aim seemed to be "to gain time", until Europe would have found itself again. He was deeply convinced that 210 Austria can only be the object of foreign policy of other powers, never its own subject. Thus he labored in vain to lead Austria through Scylla and Charybdis. Closer himself in his psychology to the Axis, he could not escape to lose more and more contact with the Democracies, and personally close to Mussolini or not, he was constantly drawn closer to Hitler .This was an irresistible force. It was not the psychological fact that Schuschnigg was much less intimately connected with Mussolini than Dollfuss, but the mechanism of Italy's foreign policy which resulted automatically first in the alienation between Austria and the West, and then in the logical next Step of alienation between Austria and Italy with Germany as the usufructuary. Convinced of the essential connection of any labor policy in Austria with the international Situation, I soon extended my political action across the Austrian frontiers and made a foreign policy of ay own, for which I never sought permission, of which I talked frankly in my publications and which in fact was never even slightly interfered with by the chancellor. Of course, Prague and Budapest in strict symmetry were nearly as often the scenes of political lectures and discussions I held than the provincial capitals of Austria. In the fall 1934 I started for a campaign through the main cities of Switzerland, whose Status of neutrality, social structure and geographical position made her the most suitable country to come in first contact with a European audience, Then I started for Italy, where I frankly spoke of Austria, as I saw her, before larger and smaller audiences of Fascists, Socialists and Popolari without ever making any compromise and without the then usual eloges towards the System in power. This was the joumey, of which Otto Bauer wrote that he, sure so far of my bona fides, had now to convince himself that I was not honest any longer. To be sure, although I reached the ears of many influential Italians, I could not advance to Mussolini, to whom the Austrian Heimwehr blocked the way for me, and thus I have not changed history by the quixotical attempt to go Straight forward into the lion's cage. Probably I would not have been able to do it, even if Mussolini would have listened to my arguments, as some of his subjects and collaborators did. Yet simply to forsake the chance to do something about conditions which depend on man, would contradict my deepest conviction that the decision of man decides history. I would not have hesitated to make use of an invitation "to see the leader", made to me by one of Hitler's most intimate Austrian collaborators, if I would ever have considered Hitler and the German National Socialism equally on the fringe between the Yea and the Nay, as Mussolini and the Italian Fascism obviously still were in 1934. If the Austrian authoritarian regime as such, and not only an isolated individual, and if in particular the Austrian Heimwehr under Starhemberg would have represented the same ideas, perhaps Italy without the bridge into Germany could have been kept in the Stresa Front. When the dies were cast in the opposite direction and Mussolini's adventure of imperialism began, I admitted (in words the Austrian. censorship found necessary to suppress) that the hopes of keeping Italy in the European front had been baffled and that the sequence in prospect seemed to be "first Abyssinia, then Austria". Other joumeys to Paris and London had not made me happier, as they clearly revealed that Western Europe would be extremely glad, if AustriaA would save herseif from the embrace by Germany, but that the Western powers themselves would contribute not very much to this effect. I did not cease, however, to counsel Schuschnigg, wherever I could, down to the end, that he should 211 never let knock out of his hands the Western European card which in the end would be the trump. I was no expert in foreign affairs and Schuschnigg held the technicians of diplomacy in high esteem. Nevertheless, he always permitted me without any objection to go ahead in my one-man foreign policy, advised the Austrian representations abroad to help me and never tried to interfere with what he well understood was only to his own ad vantage. Schuschnigg was, to be sure, in the first place the faithful heir of Dollfuss. Although once in his earlier days after his retum from Italian captivity a partisan of the Anschluss, as member and as head of the authoritarian govemment was without any doubt a radical Champion of Austrian independence. He certainly understood this independence much less as an anti-German axiom and postulate, as it was generally understood in Austria in consequence of the only danger which came from Germany. His ideology was exactly that of the Greater German Catholic intellectuals throughout the entire period of the Triple Alliance and of World War I, to which his professors and his own experience belonged. Dollfuss was of the same background, but he had experienced a great shock in this respect which made him very uncertain, whether his former German national ideology was not obsolete now. Dollfuss was a peasant, who under the impact of German realities was able to abandon his former Anschluss ideology as resolutely as labor did. He may have come back to the idea of reconciliation later. Schuschnigg was much more imbued by the German ideology of the Austrian intelligentsia. Thus ,in obvious contrast to Dollfuss, he could not stop dreaming of "Germanism" (Deutschtum) as a cultural asset beyond political boundaries, and consequently of the "two German States", nearly in Francis Joseph's jargon, although the one of these two States had become a small state thoroughly dependent on the European order of peace, compared with which the other state was the giant able to challenge this order. The idea of the "two German States" was wrong already, when Austria was confronted with Bismarck Germany or the Weimar Republic (although it was shared then by Austrian Catholicism nearly unanimously), now it had become madness. Schuschnigg’s peculiar contribution was to apply this idea to Nazis Germany and thereby to develop an error into a crime (exactly at the time when the majority of the Austrian Catholics had begun to emancipate itself resolutely from this tradition). This idea of "Germanism" also was highly distrusted by Mussolini, who moreover never found the same personal contact with Schuschnigg he had with Dollfuss. It made him anxious about the future of an Austria which, instead of emphasizing her Mediterranean foundations and thus remaining a part of Europe, liked to have the same cultural substance as Germany and thus could not escape to fall into Germany's orbit. In seeing Austria drifting away from Italy, Mussolini may have found in Schuschnigg’s German complex the psychological excuse, why he surrendered Austria to Germany even before she surrendered herseif, If the Austrians wanted to be Germans, he later interpreted his desertion, then nobody on earth could force them to be Austrians against their will. In saying so Mussolini was a good Western European statesman besides. If Mussolini's tears were genuine, he could in fact accuse himself to have contributed his heavy share to the effect that the national pathology of the Austrian leader now decided about the fate and future of the Austrian people. 212 Schuschnigg thus provided the catchword for all who were sick of the Austrian problem and sure that only Germany could free them from their sickness. While Dollfuss really was a little leader in his temperament and Intuition, Schuschnigg in fact was none, but was the leader's faithful heir. This was a role which, insufficient as its function and its bearer were, only honors the man who accepted it against his will, incamating thereby the tragedy of Austrian Catholicism in its successes and its agonies. In more peaceful times Schuschnigg might have been an ideal minister of justice or education in a government of bureaucratic experts serving an indestructible constitutional monarchy. As the leader of an authoritarian regime chosen by destiny, he could only become its destiny himself, and, as the regime had become identical with the state, the destiny of the state at that. Schuschnigg, of course, very soon wanted to be a leader of his own, as the others around were, indeed, and although he may first not have asked for Dollfuss' heritage, pretty soon and pretty well eventually adapted himself to the role of the leader in the authoritarian regime, for which he was neither bom nor gifted. He feit to have been called by Providence like any of the monarchs of the past, and he was still more imbued by this belief after the auto accident, in which his wife was tragically killed sitting on his own place, while he was miraculously saved.(By chance, I drove myself ten minutes after the catastrophe the same road and was a witness of the circumstances).The tragic accident made a lasting upon Schuschnigg’s mind and he turned very naturally so more into himself than before. He might have feit to be a victim of his duties, as it was said once that Francis Joseph did in similar tragic situations. The offspring of a Slovene peasant family (Susnik), whose great grandfather already belonged to the dass of well-to-do Carinthian German Slovenes (called the Windisch provincially).whose grandfather had been nobilitated as a high official of the Austrian gendarmerie, whose father had been an Austrian general in the Tyrol and his mother had come from a family of Tyrolean intellectuals, he was as good a ruler of Austria as any of the Habsburgs, whom he succeeded. After only an Intermezzo, Austria seemed to be thrown back into the age, in which Francis Joseph should have been a super-man, but was only as average as his other less majestic contemporaries. This was the same with Schuschnigg. The tradition of those Old Austrian regimes which practiced absolutism unfortunately seemed to have revived again. Only that the most arbitrary of those regimes, the one in Francis Joseph's youth, was an idyll of constitutionalism as compared with this modern absolutism, in which one leader was supposed to decide about everything, foreign policy, labor policy, economic policy, the corporative reconstruction and what not, and thus in fact nothing was ever decided at all. Neither Metternich's wisdom in driving the coach of Europe, nor Taaffe's talent in social legislation, but only the young Francis Joseph's instability and Bach’s mixture of brutality and laissez faire remained the characteristic of the aftermath. While Schuschnigg tried to hold matters stationary in interior politics and make the party struggles transparent for bureaucratic brains by transferring them to the desks of the Patriotic Front, his own field of experimenting, exactly as in Francis Joseph’s case, was foreign policy, or more precisely the relationship between "the two German States", the vulture and the sparrow. Like most of the other Austrian provincial leaders Schuschnigg did not know very much about Western Europe, but believed that Germany and Italy were the world. Subconsciously, he continued like Dollfuss the ancient foreign 213 policy of Francis Joseph, the policy of being the bridge of this world's two sole hinges. For this purpose Schuschnigg was eager to play with Italy against Germany, as Dollfuss had done, yet soon in equal loyalty with Germany against Italy, or at least this was the inevitable Interpretation which his foreign policy had to find at Rome Schuschnigg more than Dollfuss was a docile disciple of Seipel, whose petty Machiavellism was what he understood to be statesmanship. If Seipel already was a little Machiavelli with more restrictions than impulses, Schuschnigg to be sure was but a Machiavellerl, as the Austrians would say, a Machiavelli of Tom Thumb's stature. He could in this respect as little catch up with Mussolini and Hitler as once Francis Joseph with Cavour and Bismarck. In petty Machiavellism Schuschnigg would easily out-do Seipel, who, though talking often irresponsibly, still acted more often responsible by instinct and education. Schuschnigg would never have talked like Seipel, but he always surprised even those who knew him by the kind of enterprises he dared to tackle. Seipel reserved the method of Machiavellism for rare coups of key importance (as once Frederick II, taught, although not always did). Schuschnigg, however, lived completely in Machiavellian atmosphere, in which he in the end could not distinguish any longer between true and false, naivete and trickery. Advised by his still more cunning friends, Schmitt and Wolf, he gradually thought himself able to out-Hitlerize Hitler, as he feit to have already ou-Seipelized Seipel, and, clever as he was, regarded it particularly suitable for this purpose to "bind Hitler by agreements". This was like an idea fixe in his narrow mind. Thus the German- Austrian agreement of July 11, 1936 came into being, a thunderclap for the Austrian people. Starhemberg in his memoirs teils completely trustworthy, how Schmitt interpreted it regarding it "as a Machiavellian example of Schuschnigg’s political genius". This is what Schmitt said to Starhemberg: "It is definitely stated that this agreement is a personal agreement between Hitler and Schuschnigg, Schuschnigg acting only as the head of the present cabinet. If Schuschnigg wishes to break it, he need only retire and no one eise is pledged to carry out the conditions. Schuschnigg can then be reappointed, and as head of a new govemment he is not bound by any agreement made by his predecessors". This was Schmitt’s idea and probably can be traced back to Papen, who after Dollfuss' death had become German ambassador to Vienna, where he first was nearly outlawed, but by his tenacity and the emphasis on good Catholic behavior finally reached the ears of Schuschnigg and in this "gentleman’s agreement" celebrated the greatest triumph of his diplomatic career. Obviously Papen and Schmitt could not have believed in this argumentation themselves, but for Schuschnigg it was the fishing-hook which caught him, and he surely was the man to believe in so silly a combination of own deceitfulness and the partner's correctness as a serious means for solving the "German problem". In the agreement of July 1936 "the two German States", the ravaging wolf to be chained by paragraphs and the imbecile sheep sure to be a sly rogue, concluded peace after more than three years of war. Schuschnigg promised the liquidation of anti-Nazism and Hitler that of the Austrian Nazi Party, Schuschnigg recognizing thereby Hitler as the chief of the Austrian Nazis, and Hitler gaining a new pretext for his designs on Austria and for muddling into Austrian affairs, if in his opinion Schuschnigg against this 214 contractual Stipulation would allow the anti-Nazi Propaganda to continue. None of the contracting parties ever kept the pact, of which, nevertheless, I was a victim, since my activities were now officially liquidated. Schuschnigg had consented by this "personal agreement" to enter into fealty and vassalage.

(§45) A stränge consequence of the pact between Hitler and Schuschnigg was that Socialism and Legitimism converged politically, or in other words that broad strata of labor looked out for the last chance of Austrian independence which might lie in the restoration of the monarchy. In contrast to an authoritarian regime which the immanent consequence of its own law had begun to seil out Austria to the Nazis, the Habsburgs seemed to be the last chance for liberty to many, even to many former anti-Habsburgers. I have searched the pulse of many of them inside and outside of Austria in those years and months, and I have found that nowhere the formula "rather Anschluss than Habsburg" was seriously entertained, even not among those who were its first creators. I myself have never been an anti-Habsburg (nor anti-Monarchist by principle), as most Austrian Socialists and the Czechs have always been. The Austrian Catholics are used to look with different eyes at Austrian history. Although I was an ardent Legitimist in my earlier years, as long as Charles lived, I always have seen in the succession States, their national sovereignty, and their political and social structure a great progress of history. Never blind for the values of tradition, I always saw the function of tradition in the modern world on an entirely different level as merely that of "restoration". There are in fact two essentially different tasks, the one political on the basis of the empirical sovereignty, as it legally exists, and the other spiritual, to which certainly the former dynasties, if they only see their functions in a new perspective, may contribute a lot. Since the new dangers which emerged historically for democracy by various totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in Europe, I found that there might be a new chance for conservatism in allying themselves with democracy, government by law and the existing legitimacies, and help protect them with its still great social influence and power. History has shown how great this hope has been, indeed, even in formerly entirely anti- conservative camps, and has simultaneously proved that none of the Central European conservative groups, Bavarian, Prussian or Austrian conservatism was really able to correspond with this historic chance. The leaders of conservatism sided with the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, not with democracy and socialism. If conservatism would mean only the old aristocracies, their identification with Fascism and liquidation thereafter might well be all right. Conservatism, however, means in Central Europe besides the political tradition alive in peasantry, the middle classes and Political Catholicism, and to bring them into a positive relationship to both democracy and socialism still is a task worth-while to be tried. The former aristocracies (and dynasties) may best contribute to "progressive conservatism" by preserving themselves, their families, culture and tradition, and serving without prejudice the res publica in whatever form it will appear. Although the age has passed, in which the tradition of these families 215 can present itself to peoples of the 20th Century as "legitimate right", there may still be emergencies for many European nations, in which their Services will be required. For Austria such an emergency seemed to exist in many eyes, after Dollfuss established the authoritarian regime, and still more so after Schuschnigg concluded his pact with Hitler. The idea of Legitimism and the restoration of the monarchy seemed to many to be the last chance for Austrian independence, after the authoritarian regime forsook it. I myself emphasized again the chance of conservatism and its primarily spiritual values which do not depend on "restoration". I propagated these ideas publicly and privately, I also talked frequently so to the pretender to the Austrian throne, the Duke of Bar, and his mother, and although their sympathies were clearly with Dollfuss and with Franco, their interests, at least those of more far-reaching scope, were certainly not with Schuschnigg and his last tum. There was again a great chance, such one which perhaps comes once in a life- time. It was a chance which was the more sure to succeed, the less it was confused with ideas of "restoration”, imperial or royal, and was seized, not pushed. It was Austria's last chance, yet there was "but a woman and a child. Once in 1934,1 had a dialogue with Eduard Benes, then still foreign minister, about these problems. He told me what he told other visitors before and later, that Czechoslovakia Stands and falls with her stand against Habsburg. He added something new, however. He told me that faced with the danger of Nazism there could be no objection against the monarchy in Austria on the part of Czechoslovakia, if the Austrians think the monarchy indispensable for their independence, and “if it would not be the Habsburg Monarchy". Rightly he added (frankly exposing the problematic character of the postwar settlement), that to a Habsburg Monarchy at Vienna both Slovakia and Croatia would inevitably be lost, and thus both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia could not exist besides. He may add today that not only Habsburg at Vienna, but also Hitler at Berlin does not allow to continue the succession States, as they were created, and he might leam to add tomorrow that any Balkanization of the Danube basin in the long run will a always result in Slovak and Croat separatism and that only the re-integration of the Danubian System, in which Slovaks and Croats will also have access to Vienna and Budapest, will make both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia possible. In 1934 Benes made an utterance of this kind to an Austrian state's functionary, known for his interest in the united front from conservatism to labor, not without deeper meaning. He certainly did not advise us to try an adventurous monarchy of the dynasty Starhemberg. The obvious meaning of this well calculated utterance to the first Austrian official broaching the question before him was certainly another one. It was unmistakably the formulation of the conditions, under which a monarchy in Austria, if an interior necessity in the fight against Nazism, would cease to be the Habsburg Monarchy of old, even if it would he the new monarchy of a Habsburg. Two inevitable requirements would have to be fulfilled, in order to prevent the monarchy from simply "Being the recurrence of the Habsburg Monarchy. First, it would have to be a monarchy under the Constitution and consequently under democracy, of which the authoritarian regime, at least in its official pronunciations, wanted to be the preparatory agency. Only a monarchy after the English pattern would fit into the succession States, Benes obviously wanted to imply, and this alone would then be no Habsburg monarchy any longer. Secondly, it would have 216 to be a monarchy definitely and completely severed from any kind of Greater Austrian legitimism or even the idea personal union among two or three succession States, or in other words the dynasty Habsburg-Lorrain which Claims to have dynastical rights upon territories ander the national sovereignty of the succession States would have to renounce these Claims of Legitimism and to become the "House of Austria" in the most precise meaning of the word, namely the dynasty and the monarchy of the Austrian people. If this is what the Austrians want and think to need for the preservation of their independence, Benes in fact wanted to teil me, it is all right with us, while we would Light against anything eise imposed upon us under the pretense of merely interior Austrian affairs. his only could seriously mean "no Habsburg Monarchy at all" or "rather Anschluss than Habsburg", because any other kind of monarchy than that described and particularly any kind of "restoration" of things passed inevitably had only to accelerate German hegemony anyhow. As Austria had to be de-Austrianized, in order to become another Austria, Masaryk was convinced, so Habsburg had first to be de-Habsburgized to fulfill any new function in this new Austria, Benes could be interpreted. Probably he reckoned with the stubbornness of Legitimism which never can de-Legitimize its ideology. We at any rate had to try it. As only the de-Habsburgized monarchy would really be an interior Austrian affair, but never the question of Legitimism and its Habsburg Monarchy, to which every succession state would have to say something, we could be glad to know precisely, how Czechoslovakia would feel about and where the chances of parallel Interpretation would lie. As natural as it is that a sovereign state will decide about its form of govemment without Consulting even its neighbors, as undisputable has been the view of Czechoslovakia that the Habsburg Monarchy in the sense of Legitimism is not merely an Austrian affair, but concems vitally all the other succession States as well. In vain, I have tried to impress this idea and Interpretation upon the Legitimists inside and outside of the Austrian government. In 1936 and 1937 there were many situations to correspond with this view, but no statesman to take it in his hands. I do not pretend to say that the amalgamation of the forces of the First and the Third Austria which I then had in mind and for which the remaining active energies of the Second Austria, at least after July 1936, would have stood as well had saved Austria under all conditions. If Schuschnigg would have headed this amalgamation, the result would certainly have been the same. If somebody eise could have been found to Substitute Schuschnigg, this fact alone might have sufficed, although in all probability such a change could be reached, even if Austria would still have had time, only by the impact of the First upon the Third Austria, and never by the latter’s own immanent energies. The main obstacle already then was that the idea of Legitimism could not be de- Legitimized and thereby made a political force again, though many of its partisans and leaders were ready for this Step. Schuschnigg was much too much of a Legitimist in politics himself, in order to find the solution, because like all Legitimism in history, the Austrian Legitimists wanted everything or nothing, and would not compromise pour la serviette, while Schuschnigg, the only man able to carry out the scheme of the de- Habsburgized monarchy without coup d'etat, was under the spell of Legitimism himself instead of being the architect to plan the monarchy and place the Habsburgs, where they 217 could still fulfill an historic function, but to direct them, not to be directed by them. The difference between my own historic view and that of Legitimism in those years was that I saw a last chance to avoid the final catastrophe and to save Austria gradually gambled away and finally missed, while the Legitimists thought that the chance to restore the monarchy would come again and still better itself in the life-time of a pretender who then was only a boy. I thought of the chance for Austria which could be the chance for conservatism, they thought of the chance for the monarchy which in their opinion alone would be the chance for Austria. I thought in those centuries which might be mobilized against Germany, if a new type of Habsburg, concentrated upon its merely Austrian mission, would be cemented into the existing Austrian state, not even necessarily as a monarch, but surely as a servant of a people and an idea, - while the Legitimists looked at those opportunities only from the aspect of the monarchy, the dynasty and a youth who certainly would grow and then have other opportunities besides. My scheme included the definite resignation of Legitimism, unambiguously and solemnly, as far as any territories outside of Austria were concemed, while the Legitimists proved again that Legitimism may be a metaphysical creed, but certainly is no politically constructive principle to organize a modern society. My best friend of those days, who later died a hero's death, Zessner-Spitzenberg, was the Legitimist, with whom I discussed these problems most, and he well understood their gist, yet was unable, of course to do anything about. The Austrian leader of the Legitimists, Friedrich Wiesner, the son of the Jewish university Professor, to whom once H. St. Chamberlain dedicated his "Foundations of the 19th Century", was a splendid spirit, equally was aware of many shortcomings, but was too much entangled himself into what he thought diplomacy, in order to be able to read clearly the signs of the time. As much as he has read them, he has suffered enough for his loyalty which like Zessner's was always ready for the sacrificium intellectus I never thought worth-while for any form of government. My own idea after Schuschnigg’s first and decisive capitulation was to contribute my share to organize some counterplot which would either force him into the right line or force him out. There was still the federal president unwilling to follow the chancellor into the "German course". The president of the Gewerkschaftsbund, the leader of the Bauernbund, the organizer of the consumers' cooperatives on the one side, the leader of Legitimism, the organizer of a still existing militant Organization of Legitimism and last but not least Starhemberg on the other side, held the key positions. In fact, there were hardily half a dozen persons, upon whom Schuschnigg had really to rely. There was not one among them not deeply disappointed and disturbed. At the same time, they all were utterly unable to act concertedly. They all would have preferred by far the Habsburg monarchy to the Schuschnigg dictatorship and in all probability could have brought about the change, if led to interconnected action. As in 1933,1 again tried to bring the forces capable of cutting the life-line of the authoritarian regime together. I knew that I played not with my head, but with my position within this regime, yet I had played with it in fact since the first day I entered it. The chances of achieving those changes in Austria which would at least secure that she would not capitulate to Germany were great. In a sudden, Legitimism had proved to be a still existing political factor outside the authoritarian regime, capable of becoming 218 the center of ideological gravity and crystallization. Besides Legitimism was an ideological factor with international resonance, and many former anti-Habsburgs in Paris and London would have been glad to have the Habsburgs in Vienna instead of Hitler's shadow. Also in Prague there were many people ready to be even more explicit than Benes in 1934. Not only a more moderate scheme of Aamalgamation, as I advocated, but the restoration of the Habsburgs without a great deal of conditions was on the knife's edge and just around the corner, It was in fact up alone to the courage of a dozen people. Historically speaking, Austrian conservatism in 1936/38 missed the chance of history equally as Bavarian or Prussian conservatism in 1932/33, and basically because exactly of the same reasons. In all these instances the responsible representatives of the monarchical and dynastical tradition, to whom even leftists looked still once more up for salvation, were too much entangled themselves Ideologically into authoritarianism or totalitarianism, in order to be of any real avail for the salvation of govemment by law and constitutionalism, and still less for the resolute overthrow of any established authoritarian regime and for the re-establishment of the pre-authoritarian Constitution, for which there was among them no inner affinity any longer. They waited naively for Schuschnigg to hand over his power to them, we waited for them to depose Schuschnigg. This was their chance which they missed, and our mistake, the lesson of which we have leamed. Thereby the curtain of history feil over the Habsburg monarchy which no political activity in exile will raise again. Not to be politically active at all, might have been again the wisest advice to the Habsburgs then, as they in bad politics still have to lose a great moral tradition. (§46) In Austria, Schuschnigg's pact of July 1936 was the beginning of utter confusion. Anti-Nazism was to be officially liquidated, but soon again unofficially encouraged. Although in consequence of the July agreement the various literary and organizational weapons I had forged for two years were knocked out of my hands, it would not have been out of question to prolong for a while my pseudo existence as a functionary of the regime, if I would have submitted to the events. When I did not and tried to organize resistance in the männer described above and finally wrote an aggressive pamphlet, in which I attacked Schuschnigg's policy, I was removed from my office, first by a leave of absence, then for good. It was not Schuschnigg, however, who insisted in my removal, but my formal chief, Richard Schmitz, the authoritarian mayor of Vienna, who never had been reconciled with the fact that Dollfuss asked for my Installation, with whom my own policy had never anything to do except that I was hindered everywhere, and who now took the occasion of my fight against Schuschnigg to eliminate me. He could not help doing so with utter meanness and with public slander, to which I was helplessly exposed under the authoritarian rules. I am happy to say that Schuschnigg, whom I had attacked politically, but not personally, as both a friend and a gentleman acted generously where he could to mitigate the consequences of this sudden fall for me, whose economic existence, a Publishing house built up mainly upon anti-Nazi activities had been likewise buried under the ruins of his policy. Convinced that all this was a symbolic end, and not only for Austria at that, I sailed for the first time in the beginning of 1937 to the shores of America to look out for a new existence after the wreckage which would come soon. 219 Having been able to dispose of a trouble maker, a permanent headache and an occasional conscience, without contributing much himself to this effect, Schuschnigg certainly was twice as sure to be on the right road. He was so sure of himself that his aspirations and ambitions grew still more fantastic. He had already eliminated the Heim wehr and all the other Austrian militant formations which, as much as could be said against them in the past, might well not too easily be missed in the future. In his foreign policy the chancellor gradually had alienated himself from Mussolini, not for the sake of more intimate relations with Western Europe, but in order to make a still more adventurous German policy. What Schuschnigg never could be prevailed upon to do with labor, namely by speaking with some of the former Socialist leaders to designate them to be the partners of the government, he did spontaneously with the Nazis. Among a dozen of rival groups which competed for the supreme leadership and which spite of legitimation and de-legitimation by Hitler could never hope to be really one body, Schuschnigg himself selected those with whom he would negotiate, authorizing them thereby and collecting by his own authority around them the Nazi party. Although he selected the main leader Seyss-Inquart, according to his own wishes, he also chose his own image and likeness, the same type of German National Catholic Machiavellian, only with the additional belief in the "great leader" outside of Austria, with whom Schuschnigg himself, in spite of his belief in his own star and mission, could never seriously compete. Step by Step the chancellor out the branches of the tree, in which he had to sit. If somebody would have planned the inner destruction of Austria's power of resistance, he would have been compelled to do deliberately what Schuschnigg did in his somnambulism, as if the passive medium in his soul, intoxicated by the spell of German nationalism, would just have acted under the command of the active medium, to whose power he had succumbed. Under hypnosis himself, Schuschnigg thought to be able to chain Hitler still more to effective pacts. Thus, he eventually went to Berchtesgaden (February 12, 1938), having waited eagerly for this opportunity quite some time. He feit, as he told me, but thereby only articulating Papen's and Schmidt's Hitlerian wisdom, that Hitler was now, after the army purge, weaker than ever before and would be glad to make concessions to an Austria faithful to her friendship with Germany. I would not be surprised, if this first German army purge, on account of which Papen and Schmitt could persuade Schuschnigg to come to Berchtesgaden, was carried out primarily with Austria's conquest in view. This was the cue and the trap long prepared and waited for. After more than five years Hitler had completely grasped what Papen told him all the time, that also Austria could not be conquered otherwise than Germany was in history, not in mythology, conquered by accommodation from the inside, by assault from the outside. Thus Schuschnigg made the fateful joumey, nonsensical in itself, but catastrophic through the person which undertook it. I had declined a few years before this adventure, and I knew how it would end in the very hour, when the world was told about. In Hitler’s own presence and environment Schuschnigg himself seems to have been awakened, shock-like and with one blow, and to have grasped for the first time in his life what was really at stäke and before him. His picture, taken immediately after his return to Austrian soil at the railroad Station in Salzburg, shows a man who had just 220 looked into the depth of hell. The vain-glory of Hitler must really be gigantic, if a man like Schuschnigg, was not likely to change his version of the "two German States" too easily, was blown out from his seat of security and for the first time in his career terrified to the uttermost. To this affect Hitler brutally contributing much by forbidding Schuschnigg to smoke during the day-long Conferences which in fact, on the Austrian chancellor*s part, meant nearly resigning the full capacity of thinking rationally and defending himself logically before the tribunal of his arch-enemy. The greatest Impression on Schuschnigg, the son of a general, was made by the subservience of the German generals, who, as he told me, were treated by Hitler as his absolute tools, like Pfeifendeckel ("pipe-lids"), as the officers orderlies were called traditionally in the Austrian army. Hitler himself once nothing eise but an orderly, was able to train the generals as his orderlies, and this simple fact first proved to Schuschnigg, who his adversary really was. He was a demon, obsessed by an impure Spirit, a madman, perhaps the Antichrist, as many Catholic Austrians thought, but also there was nothing to be done against him any longer to save Austria from his grip. Thus Schuschnigg awakened and at once was drawn into a deeper stupor and swoon than ever before. In consequence, Austria was sold out in Berchtesgaden by her leader, who had boastfully come to buy Germany. Both the Austrian people and the whole world understood this to be the real result. Schuschnigg, however, who never stuck by any line, but at once tried the opposite course like his historic model Francis Joseph, could not stick by the agreement which sold out Austria in reality. Too little of an intellectual to tarne the beast or exorcize the demon, he was too much of one simply to acquiesce in being tamed or engulfed himself by what he now became aware was a maniac who should not be irritated on the spot, but after all had to be checked under all conditions. The more he came to himself again, the less did Schuschnigg think of sticking to the agreement just concluded. Thus, Schuschnigg began to interpret the pact of Berchtesgaden differently from Hitler. This might have been all right and a deed of statesmanship at that to be recorded in history, if he would have had the courage to proclaim his contrary decision immediately after reaching Austrian soil. He could have said correctly that he had been lured into a trap and was not a partner of free discussions any longer, but a prisoner, or even likewise rightly that in order to assure the true meaning of the agreement reached Austria must mobilize all her political and military power. Under whatever interpretation he had done so and still more if he would have resigned in favor of somebody whom he would have honestly supported, he might have saved Austria. He did not, nor did the president this time jump into the breach. Schuschnigg himself needed more than a week to absorb fully what he had experienced. To say this does not mean any depreciation of his person, except that authoritarian leaders cannot afford to be so much without presence of mind. In this fateful week Austria was lost in reality, because everybody in Austria thought that the country had been sold out to Nazism and because the Nazi party now actually began to organize those broader strata of the people which they did not have before. Nobody knew, whether Austria still existed. I see before me one of the best men we had in the police force, who later paid with his life, gnashing his teeth, because he was responsible for Orders to the police which were given to him ambiguously and by which a state ought to be defended 221 which had already surrendered to the enemy. In this Situation, Schuschnigg suddenly announced in a great Speech in the federal diet that Austria would not capitulate (February 24). "Red and white and red until death?", was the slogan which he shouted out into the land, where it was wildly re-echoed by both the mountains and the hearts. Never was an organism, which had already ceased to function, as miraculously electrified into new life. A few days later the chancellor also announced in the midst of his Tiroleans at Innsbruck (March 9) that a plebiscite would decide about Austria next Sunday (March 13). This was either the desperation or madness of somebody who had lost his senses, or if the decision would be kept through, it was the redeeming deed of a great and courageous statesman. The Austrian masses enthusiastically accepted the second interpretation. After having sold out Austria in February, Schuschnigg tried to save it in March by throwing the glove right into Hitler's face. I had listened to the chancellor's Speech from Innsbruck together with an American friend, with whom I toured the provinces in Schuschnigg's interest after I had outlined a plan to him how to mobilize labor in this emergency. We were together at Steyr in the home of a former Socialist leader, when the bomb exploded over the air. My first reaction was to carry out the plan long devised and to leave the country the next day. So sure was I that this was the end. Of course, I could not do that in eamest and for the two of coming days on our journey through Upper Austria, Salzburg and Styria was always captivated by the enthusiasm of the Austrian people everywhere alive which silenced my objections. Everywhere the plebiscite was well prepared, the organizations of the Patriotic Front, the Gewerkschaftsbund, the Bauernbund were in high gear and there could be not the slightest doubt about the outcome of a plebiscite which was perfectly handled by the official governmental agencies. There were Nazi demonstrations (for instance in Salzburg on the evening of Maroh 10), but they were not dangerous, as long as the govemment would know how to act. Army and police were well in hand to be used in any emergency. People and state seemed ready for it, but was the authoritarian govemment ready as well? It was quite obvious that the decision still lay in the question, what kind of aftermath effect the discussion of Berchtesgaden would have a month after the occurrence in Schuschnigg's psychology. Hitler, who logically considered the announcement of the plebiscite in so short a time a violation of the pact of Berchtesgaden, had to act quickly now, if he did not want to lose Austria for good. He had to prove his hypnotic influence over Schuschnigg's mind, while the latter had to show, how much of this influence had been already broken. The only intention and decision which would have saved Austria in those days would have been the iron will to defend her by any means available M i which means the arms of army, militia, police, the remnants of the militant organizations and the leve en mässe of both labor and peasantry. Who is aware of the hysterical structure of Hitler's psychology will hold it very probable that the mere will to do so alone might have worked. Schuschnigg, however, did not want this and Hitler knew this since their meeting at Berchtesgaden, the main purpose of which was perhaps to ascertain this. A German invasion seemed to Schuschnigg like a catastrophe of nature, against which to struggle with weapons of war in hands so weak as Austria's would be sheer madness. Rather surrender Austria to somebody eise than shed "German blood", he thought in his 222 innermost heart and declared so in his last Speech. Thus he was destined to assist passively to the shedding of more Austrian blood than any Austrian ruler ever has had on his conscience before. After having been in Western Europe and in the United States for several months in 1937,1 had returned to Austria knowing well that all other chances had gone except the one which would only fade out with the authoritarian regime as such, namely to convince the leader himself that his course was wrong. This certainly was a fantastic undertaking, but it was as indispensable as all the previous actions were: the stand for the Constitution in 1933/34, the attempt to shape the common front from the Right to the Left against Nazis in 1934/36, and the efforts to boost Legitimism into the full understanding of its historic chances and responsibilities in 1936/37. These all were quite futile actions historically and one might have as well not have tackled them. The most futile action among all certainly was to convince Schuschnigg that his course since July 1936 was catastrophic. Yet I came back to Austria chiefly for this reason. The last two times, when I met Schuschnigg, it was immediately before and after Berchtesgaden. My main thesis now was that in the end game approaching active resistance was necessary for the sake of Austria's future. Schuschnigg did not care much about military matters. He was not the man to teil visitors: I have ordered the generals to do this or to do that. "I believe, the generals want to resist on the Enns river" (between Lower and Upper Austria), he said to me. I then thought this was a deliberate under-statement, yet it was obviously not. This remark referred also only to the possibility that the Nazi "legionaries" (mostly Austrian exiles), not the German army would invade Austria. He was sure of the Austrian army in the former case. In my opinion, an Austrian statesman who would boldly have faced any possibility, could have been sure of the Austrian army also in the latter case, but only if there was a real political plan behind the action of resistance, a plan plausible to the entire people, peasants and workers, who should have been called up not only to a plebiscite, but to the defense of their country at any costs. In such a case, even an invasion by the German army would not have made Austria a forlorn cause. Of course, Austria could make only a short gesture of military resistance, just for the sake of shedding "German blood". It would then have been up to Europe to act. Even after all the neglects of five years in arming a people both politically and spiritually for such an eventuality, much could be done during the last four weeks. No doubt, there were broad masses of the Austrian people to stand up for Austria at whatever risks. They all expected the govemment to resist aggression with all means. Nobody could contemplate the possibility that this authoritarian regime, founded exactly for that occasion, would withdraw unceremoniously. The most radical strata of labor were ready to support the authoritarian regime now, "when Graz was at stäke" (as the Austrians are used to say). They expected, however, for certain that the govemment would not call upon them without a great gesture of restitution. Yet the formulated demands of the responsible trade union leaders, who acted concertedly with the representatives of the "Underground movement", were both moderate and reasonable. They did not demand any impossible restitution of the democratic republic, but in substance only what has been our continuous demand: the autonomy of the labor movement within the authoritarian regime. 223 My own thesis which I tried to impress upon Schuschnigg was that there would not be any question of checking a German invasion on the Inn or the Enns or even to hold Vienna, but only to stir up the entire people and the world to resistance and defiance, to concentrate maybe somewhere with some elite regiments in the mountains and to hold out there with the red and white and red flag, perhaps on the peak of the Grossglockner, as I said hyperbolically, with the federal president and a radio transmitter, at least one fortnight. Then we would fall, if there would be no foreign Intervention, just like labor feil in 1934, but we would have fought, at least symbolically, as labor did, for our independence and thereby would have saved the future. At any rate, by fighting we would completely upset Hitler's conception, in which Austria can be the symbolic conquest only, if she throws herseif into the arms of her redeemer, but any blood shed must inevitably put into rout Hitler's battle plans. What I teil here are not posthumous speculations, in which later experiences of world history are inherent. I still have one of the written memoirs then submitted to Schuschnigg, and in them only ideas were repeated, of which I and my friends wrote prophetically back in 1936, when we saw another Sadowa approaching and hanging like a thunderstorm over Austria, fully aware of all its implications for the whole of Europe. First Sadowa then Sedan, first Versailles I, then Versailles II, was one of the formulas which we expounded literarily at that time. We have to do now, I said to Schuschnigg, what labor did in February 1934, with the only difference that our Situation is still far from being hopeless, or in other words we benefited by being still where labor stood in March 1933 and may well win, principiis obsta. Sometimes he seemed to grasp what I told him, and he said "yes, we can save the future". But his perception did never get beyond the skin and was quickly out-valued again by his innate habit of petty Machlavellism. He always thought he could manage to delay the last consequences by another trick and still out-diplomise Hitler. I personally was ever convinced that Hitler would never march in, against real military resistance and that he even would never have contemplated to march, if the meeting of Berchtesgaden would not have proved in his eyes Schuschnigg to be just the type of man he needed as his counter-actor. Basically, the mythology of the common blood, of which none of them has too much, was too deeply engraved in Schuschnigg's soul not to be smelled by Hitler at once. After all, Schuschnigg thought, the Germans would behave like us, and not so bad, as the German Jewish refugees like to teil. At the worst, I shall go to Innsbruck again, he said to me and others (among them a labor deputation), and Start anew as a lawyer there and I shall always eam enough to live. In this Illusion and weakness of mind, Schuschnigg capitulated. Tragically enough for his country and people, he did so, after he had still tried to rally a front of deadly serious resistance behind the government and had called upon the people for a kind of leve en mässe, if also only for a plebiscite. He could not claim that the people had deserted him, but would have to admit that he deserted the people. Still in the afternoon of the crucial day of capitulation, he had ordered the president of the Viennese police to shoot at Nazi demonstrators, not, however, in giving so fateful a command face to face to somebody, whose department was by no means Nazi-proof, but by phoning it to him nearly casually in the presence of others who told about afterwards. He did everything of far-reaching consequences in this casual way. 224 Quasi with his backing, but not really protected by his authority against the interference of others, I went in those last days of Austria to four of the eight federal lands in the West, seeing with my own eyes the preparations for the plebiscite. There was a real rising of the people and a great joy in all hearts. Suddenly, the Nazis were pushed back again into the defensive. They had not expected this revival of the Austrian spirit and they waited for new instructions from Germany. The plebiscite was excellently prepared and a model of solid Austrian Organization. Everyone who had ever loved his country was at his place. In the cities and in the Alpine valleys people were prepared for the solemn vote of March 13 which would have brought a gigantic majority for Austria independently from the possibilities of any authoritarian regime to influence public voting. Schuschnigg's appeal and the tension of the previous weeks had called the faithful and driven the cautious and reluctant still once more to the front. Two days later he himself surrendered them without fight and without waming to their bitterest enemies. Never has any self-styled leadership boasting to be the very salvation of a nation, broken down more ignominiously. This self-renunciation cannot be pardoned or explained by any Interpretation, except that the responsibility of authoritarianism at any rate is too much for a single individual. Schuschnigg has dearly paid, indeed, for his decision to be the faithful heir of Dollfuss instead of rebuilding and reshaping again the constitutional continuity lost. When all were ready not only to vote but also to fight, the chancellor abdicated with the most preposterous gesture any Austrian statesman has ever made. In his last speech over the radio (March 11), he said to be yielding to the overwhelming pressure by Germany and emphasized his resolution rather to resign than to shed "German blood". Not even this was worthy of the Austrian leader who had vowed so often blood and life for Austrian independence. Yet behind the curtains there was still an even less glorious transaction, in which Miklas and Schuschnigg together hoped to save the country by another move of diplomacy, petty Machiavellism again, the nomination of a Catholic Austrian Nazi to the federal chancellorship of "the second German state". Even under these Austrian Nazis, who formed the last Austrian cabinet (in the night from March 11 to March 12) there was still the shadow of Austria and the respect for Europe which tied their hands to act at once, as they would have loved. While they took their oath upon a state they would surrender within 24 hours, I hurled back across the snowy Alpine pass from Styria to Vienna. (§47) When Schuschnigg abdicated, Seyss-Inquart, in later days Hitler’s criminal alter ego in the Netherlands, succeeded under all legal precautions, including the formal approval of the federal president. Wolf, foreign minister of the new cabinet, assembled the personnel of the chancellery (March 12) to teil them that "the second German State", Austria, would continue to stick to his international obligations, in particularly to its agreements with Italy. The naive Austrian Nazis still thought of an independent Austria. Sly boots they were, they wanted to get both, to belong to a great empire and to continue their independence. The dream was short. Hitler did not trust them nor could he wait. He just hesitated for a breathing spell, in order to see the reaction of the Western powers. When they were not different from what he had reason to expect, he quickly decided to go ahead and to complete the Anschluss formally. 225 There was no imperialist or militarist on the banks of either the Seine or the Thames, who would have dreamt at that time of going to war for Austria, or would even have advised demonstrations to that effect, in order to avoid war later. All the Western Europeans agreed with Mussolini that it was an unpleasant experience, but that the Austrians themselves wanted it this way and that after all they belong naturally to Germany. There was not a single Western statesman, who would have seen, or if he saw it would have said, what many thousands of simple people In Austria herself knew too well - that not going to war now and not even demonstrating för peace now would mean inevitably another world war later. In Austria, where once the world policy of the European continent was made, the people in their agony and helplessness instinctively were aware that they were sold out by Europe to buy another annex of peace. If it would have been to gain time and to be prepared better for the inevitable conflict, it might have been a sacrifice worth-while. As it was the selling-out under the Illusion that this betrayal of a nation would avoid war, it could only prepare war to come under worse conditions with the initiative on Hitler's side. These are the roots of World War II.I did not have a single political discussion in those weeks with Austrian workers or peasants, who were not aware of what the sages of the outside world seemed simply to have forgotten. Austria was the arch-stone in the dorne of peace which separated the two world wars and her military position in German hands alone decided the basic advantages at the outbreak of World War II, its gigantic successes for Germany, its length, its protraction and its destructions. Hitler, not being in doubt about the degeneracy of the Western rulers, with whom he had conspired against the most basic Western interests, after waiting hours just to be sure, realized that the hour for making the dream of his life a reality had arrived. In an easy walk-over he acquired the pivot of European destiny. He saw the avenue into the future, the others, sure of their power at Paris and London, but knowing no European geography and history, thought to have satisfied and to have stopped him. Having been able to conquer Austria without a shot was only a new proof to Hitler that his theory of the degeneracy of Western civilization and democracy was right, and what the others thought to be his satisfaction, their own accommodation to his hotest wishes, was in fäct but the force to drive him soon to new adventurers. In this mood of being already master of the world Hitler retumed into the city of his utmost abjectness, the "great Babylon", whose dregs once determined his life, and he entered the castle of the Habsburgs, whose heir he in the day-dreams of his youth once wanted to kill with the shots, by which somebody eise, förestalling Hitler's ambitions, had sounded the beginning of the age of catastrophes. In the city, in which for more than five hundred years the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire symbolized the idea of the Occident and made in fact the Continental policy of Europe, the ruler of the barbarians established headquarters. While often the legions of the empire were led by barbarians, whose virtues made them Roman generals, this time the barbarians were led by a frustrated degenerated Roman. Now again after a short excursion to the Burgenland, where I föund the Hungarian ffontier already closed, I travelled slowly with local trains through the same Western Austrian federal lands and two others besides I had visited before the end, well able to observe the mood of the people. They complied with the inevitable, as it is typically 226 Austrian, and the optimists among them began to figure out what the advantages might be. Wherever I went in these first eight days of the Anschluss, the hysterical enthusiasm was restricted to a very small margin which needed to be cushioned by the influx of teen age German visitors. Besides, Austria was soon occupied by the German army, and although many among the German officers for a while thought that this adventure might be Hitler's first great miscalculation, the mere presence of the German armed forces and the quick taking of the oath to Hitler by the Austrian troops, led in formation to this procedure as to the shambles, Germanized Austria mere quickly than anything eise. It was a ridiculous view to see German officers in Innsbruck, for a while deceived where they really were, asking, in vain of course, for English newspapers, grasping then that they had advanced the boundaries of Germany, not crossed them. And it was one of the saddest sights of my life to look «t the garrison of Bregenz, how they took the oath to Hitler, Roman faces, indeed, unmovable, sold out by SPQR, the Senate and the People of Rome, to the barbarians. When I crossed into Switzerland on March 18, 1938, on the local train between Bregenz and St. Margarethen, I knew that it would not be an easy task to re-conquer the land thus abandoned. In the meantime, not only Schuschnigg, but Miklas too had capitulated, and also the church had followed the army. There was nothing left for the people, workers and peasants, but to do sadly the same. I will never forget the faces of people in the Viennese proletarian suburbs the last Sunday I stayed at home, or still more impressive the silent rallies of defiance in little towns and villages east of Vienna the day before, where, on the other hand, the Croatian peasants in their Sunday bests were the first waiting for the "liberators". All the Austrian national minorities, including the Viennese Czechs, the latter anxiously supported by the Czechoslovak govemment, emulated with the German Austrians to prove their loyalty to Greater Germany. Under the impact of Nazi Propaganda, after the complete hopelessness of the Situation had impressed itself upon the industrial and agrarian masses, the consternation eased and the enthusiasm, originally limited steadily grew up to Hitler's own plebiscite (April 10). The country I myself found the sturdiest the week immediately after the Anschluss, Vorarlberg, the smallest of all, also showed later the highest percentage of no-votes in the Nazi plebiscite. This may either indicate correct figures of the plebiscite, or "scientifically falsified" ones according to some method of dividing and shifting the decimal. But even if those figures of the plebiscite were completely correct, they would only reveal the despair of the Austrian people in a Situation, in which not one ray of hope was visible. They had been forsaken by the world and they knew it well. Every one of the few non-Jewish self-exiles, who had left Austria before the plebiscite, would inevitably have voted for Greater Germany, if he had not managed to escape before, as any different behavior in a practically open plebiscite would not have meant but a gesture of suicidal senselessness. An orgy of cruelties followed the Anschluss in Austria. With one blow two thirds of the entire Austrian intelligentsia Catholics and Jews alike, wherever they were of the slightest political touch, were caught in the net laid out by Schuschnigg's naivete. If the last regime would have planned systematically to catch them all for the purpose of offering them to the invader, it could not have acted more adequately. Thousands were killed and thousands condemned to languish in concentration camps. While the non- 227 Jewish Socialists found a certain benevolence and many attempts were made to Iure them into pronouncing publicly their enthusiasm (some with success), the Catholics, whether Legitimists, functionaries of the authoritarian regime and the Patriotic Front or former Christian Socialists, bore the brunt of persecution. The world did not speak about it very much. Symbolically, Schuschnigg's main collaborator, Schmidt, acquired a high function in the economic set-up of the Nazi System. Schuschnigg himself was imprisoned. This personal destiny of seven years captivity, although it was caused by his own faults, has been tragic as he certainly only by the same limited intellectual insight which was Dollfuss', and not with designs and deliberations a la Seipel, had become guilty. Still more tragic has been the destiny of Schmitz, who was dismissed from the concentration camp only after he was crippled for life. Schmitz was the most hated of all authoritarian functionaries, not only because he was haughty, severe and uncompromising (qualities he displayed primarily against the Reds), but also he was considered to be the man who would fight against the Nazis, if Schuschnigg would capitulate. He did not fight, but capitulated himself Labor, regarding him the usurper in the red city-hall, saw in his fall but the nemesis. People who saw him in the concentration camp, also Socialist enemies of his, were full of praise for his bearing and his character. Both Schuschnigg and Schmitz are deeply religious men and they have suffered their fate as Christians. Nobody can deny their extraordinary courage. This is the reconciling fact in their fall, by which they engulfed their country .They have sinned politically, they have in fact prepared the road of Nazism, they have been the unconscious allies of their tormentors, but they have atoned religiously. I am sure of that as of my own life. The persecutions of the Weimar parties in Germany after the symbolic Tire of the Reichstag were child's play as compared with the uprooting of the entire national intelligentsia which happened in Austria after the Anschluss. Nobody can teil as yet how much has been added since until the end. Whatever will remain physically of those political forces which once determined the Second or the Third Austria, it will be in toto only national wreckage. A small third of the Austrian intelligentsia who were renegades and the stream of officials, entrepreneurs and freebooters coming from Germany were the usufructuaries of the Anschluss which made Austria in fact the first colony of the Third Reich. I do not deny that there were a few people, politically shrewd and administratively able among the Austrian Nazis who tried to find the continuity of Austrian populär tendencies in an alliance between Nazism and Socialism against Catholicism. One of them, Hermann Neubacher, later Hitler's alter ego somewhere in the Balkan peninsula, became for a while mayor of Vienna, where, in dealing with the victims of February 1934 and reinstating them into their former positions, he only had to follow the innumerable advisory memos stored up in hundreds of files, which I had given, unfortunately in vain, to my own chief, Neubacher’s predecessor, Schmitz, who I am sorry to say so, did not correspond with one single item of a reconciliatory policy towards the Socialists I proposed to him. As a matter of fact, Neubacher did what Schmitz should have done, and for a while thereby earned the sympathies of the Socialist workers, as long as merely municipal problems were at stäke and for the short time he was mayor. The Aktion Neubacher was really the continuation of the Aktion Winter, using also to the full the psychological Situation I had created, only with the difference the that Neubacher, for a 228 while at least, had the power to do something and the authority of Hitler behind his actions. The Nazis really proved cleverer than the authoritarian leaders could ever persuade themselves to be. If the net result of this policy was still worse than that of the authoritarian regime, it was in connection with the fact that Neubacher, one of Hitler's most loyal servants, was needed elsewhere in the war, his policy discontinued and Vienna completed degraded to a German city without autonomy, as the other German cities have always been. Between Neubacher and myself there existed many personal ties, as in the better Austrian tradition have always existed across the party lines and could not even be completely exterminated by Nazism. He certainly was the most gifted among the Austrian Nazi leaders, extraordinarily intellectual even for a pre-Nazi Austrian German National, wherefore he served already well under the Social Democratic administration wherefore he served already well under the Social Democratic administration of Vienna as an expert in the municipal housing and resettlement Organization. He continued to serve a while under the authoritarian regime. Dollfuss, who highly appreciated Neubacher, used to say that one must make him either minister or keep him in a concentration camp. I have been distinctly in favor of the first alternative at a time, when this could have been done as a spontaneous decision of the Austrian government without outside interference. Neubacher would then have made a brilliant state's secretary for resettlement. He might also have continued to serve loyally under the municipal administration in the analogous position, if Schmitz would have known how to deal with him. As long as he held a responsible function within the set-up controlled by the authoritarian regime, there was a natural barrier to his political activities and a natural outlet for his organizational energies. Only after he was dismissed, he went with full blast into the conspiracy and ended soon in the concentration camp, where in fact in a very humanitarian atmosphere Nazis and Socialists made their first personal contacts, and the government cared for bringing them together in their first discussions and negotiations. The Austrian concentration camp, where these two groups inimical to the authoritarian regime met, was in fact the high school of their later Cooperation. After being dismissed from constructive work in the resettlement Organization, where he also could harmlessly indulge in his passionate desire to have populär contacts and to he populär, Neubacher held one political Idee fixe', the active Cooperation between the militant Socialists of the Schutzbund and the militant Nazis of the Schutzstaffel (S.S.) against the Catholics. He spoke very frankly to me about his desire. Once, he and Seyss- Inquart, who at that time was completely unknown, wanted to meet me and tried to seil me the idea of this Cooperation between the two militant organizations. I obviously was the most unsuitable person to be seriously approached for such a scheme and I could not help ridiculing it. I took it, as we used in Austria when talking with "born" German Nationals, as a sign that among them even people who are intellectuals in their special fields are bound to lose any perspective, as soon as they digress into politics, in which their very mentality is either to destroy or die. I remember, how Neubacher another time tried to persuade me, then still in office, to see Hitler. Like Dollfuss, he obviously did never read a line which I wrote. He was the most rational German nationalist I have ever known, yet he too got dreamy eyes, when he spoke of his own meetings with Hitler. "You 229 must see the man and you will believe me", he used to say. He simply could not take notice that I was of a different structure. When I started my voyage into exile, I made a last pilgrimage through the sanctuaries of the Austrian lands. While the landscape seemed to me polluted and I could not lift my eyes to the mountains in the radiating spring sun, the sanctuaries in Salzburg, in Innsbruck, in Feldkirch and in Bregenz were still as they ever were. Before Crossing into Switzerland, staying at Bregenz, I listened to Hitler's speech from Vienna, where he ragingly told his audience that on Schuschnigg's desk was found the memoir of an Austrian official, in which the criminal the idea of war against Germany was put forward. In these hours I wrote the last letter on Austrian soil to Neubacher. I urged him to use his influence to prevent revenge against his two predecessors in the mayor’s office, Schmitz and Seitz, and gave him good reasons of self-interest for doing so. In the one case, it might have been still more futile than to teach the authoritarian leaders themselves, while in the other case Neubacher may have a share in the fact that his Social Democratic predecessor remained unmolested by the Nazis (until to the last months). Seitz was once imprisoned for a while by the authoritarian regime and was then the eyeball of my own interests and the main object of my continuous demand for amnesty. Also in this respect Neubacher probably held the same line, as long as he himself had any influence. An entirely other case is that of Seyss-Inquart, the Austrian Quisling par exellence. To be sure, he was not simply the scheming traitor, but much more the creation of Schuschnigg. The psychology of the man, Sudeten German of Czech descent, obviously is much more complicated than just to be the Judas, who merely feigned Catholicism and friendship to deceive Schuschnigg. His elder brother had once been a Catholic monk, who had made himself a name as a spiritual poet, until he suddenly abandoned his Status and married. Later by his outstanding qualities as an educator of youthful criminals and by his intimate friendship with Seipel, was able to repair the breach and become legally laicized by the church. No doubt that there is some extraordinary element in the religious ideology of the two brothers, one might call it "Hussite" on account of their descent, by which they are able to cover very stränge behaviors by their religious conscience. The more historic of the two, Seyss-Inquart is a practicing Catholic like Papen. He was not simply dishonest in his political behavior; he was as honest towards Schuschnigg, as Dollfuss was honest towards the Social Democrats on account of exactly the same mechanism of irrational psychology. For more rational human beings the coincidence of Catholicism and Nazism in men like Seyss-Inquart will always look rather as pathology. Whether or not he has impressed Catholic Dutch by his religious practice in The Hague (as Papen once impressed Schuschnigg), he will undoubtedly be held responsible by any post-Hitlerian regime in the Netherlands for everything which has happened there. If there is ever any justification for society to cut from its body the evil-doer, it is in case where religious hysteria is able to cover any monstrosity against other nations as the discharge of duty towards the own nation. This may well be a border-case of schizophrenia, although unfortunately, no isolated one. These most outstanding Austrian Quislings and war criminals belong to the inner circle of Hitlerism. They were the most faithful among the faithful, ready to sacrifice themselves for their ideal, the mantle only having fallen with the king. Their idealism is 230 the perversion of gravely disturbed minds, still more so where it is mixed with religious ideas. These Catholic Nazis, who went daily publicly and demonstratively to Holy Communion in Vienna, in Berlin and in Rome, have had the main responsibility that naive people like Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, more simple-hearted and open-minded, feil victims to the political advices which seemed genuinely Catholic. A practicing Catholic like Papen seemed to be completely honest, when he advised Schuschnigg quasi in the Catholic interest. A practicing Catholic like Seyss-Inquart seemed to Schuschnigg the most trustworthy and the most harmless of all Austrian Nazis leaders. Through their idealism and Catholicism which was not even merely feigned, these men were able to deceive the Austrian leaders and to make the Austrian state ripe for the assault. Yet through the same mechanism they have been inseparably tied to their ego ideal, with whom they went down. Whether we call it tragic or logical, the fact Stands out that the Austrian minority which once prepared the road of Nazism and then offered themselves in faithful Service to Greater Germany, thereby has cut their own roots in native soil, whether they have been eliminated by the final catastrophe of their ideal or not. Like a cluster of bees around the queen they have been caught by history together. The outcome that we saw was the most gigantic self-purge ever encountered anywhere, by which the most dangerous elements of Germanism in Austria have eliminated themselves from the scene of history. This has been the “Twilight of the Gods” in its Austrian variant, a symbolic mass suicide of that part of the Austrian intelligentsia which has served the fiend. (Although with relatively few real suicides similarly as in Italy) After one third of Austrian intellectual life has been suffocated at once after the Anschluss and another third driven into exile, the third logically end that way. This has been the final result of a sequence of catastrophes. But this has also cleansed the earth, upon which Austrian populär life, still able to produce another intelligentsia, will build again a new structure.

(§48) In reviewing once more the entire causality of the authoritarian regime in Austria, its coming into being and its logical ending, of which Hitler, madman and criminal, but also revenger of all political sins committed any time and any place, had been the author, there can be not the slightest doubt about the great historic guilt of his co-actors on the stage set by the generation between the two world wars. Some of them neglected their duties as the keepers inside and outside the lunatic asylum, others acted as the relatives and friends conspiring with the lunatic against the alienist instead of vice versa. In this historic context, into which the whole of Europe is entangled, the Austrian authoritarian regime only represents a sector which to analyze more intimately was our task. There is no doubt about the historic guilt of Schuschnigg, not so much because his nerves failed, although no authoritarian leader can afford this, but because of his petty Machiavellism which, unchecked by any counterweight, proceeded to its logical conclusion. Behind the sad end of Austria the guilt of Dollfuss is indisputable, because he destroyed the frame of Austrian resistance, the labor movement, the govemment by law, the Constitution and the Austrian democratic republic and thus made people helpless and passive in the hands of 231 the authoritarian leader who after all, as the result proved, was no super-man, but a man like all the others. Both Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, however, were the pupils of Seipel, whose pathological anti-Marxism was the moral root of the authoritarian regime as well as of the colorblindness of the authoritarian leaders, as often as they had to acknowledge the foe and to choose between red and brown. In these three men, Seipel, Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, the tragic guilt of Austrian Catholicism which brought the nation to its disaster is incamated. It would he a faulty kind of Catholic solidarity to close the eyes and hide the truth, where only truth may liberate and help build another future. No doubt, the same three men also gradually have re-discovered Austria, after her idea had eclipsed. This is their undisputed historic virtue. They certainly have loved Austria and they were even sure to serve her best by the means employed, Their tragedy was that neither the Scholastic professor, nor the little secretary of agriculture, nor the provincial lawyer and pupil of Scholastic professors, that none of them, called by himself to play so leading a part in history, was really apt both intellectually and morally to the task which they nevertheless, after more or less hesitation ruthlessly seized for themselves. They all had truly overestimated their own intellectual and moral capacity. It was not so that there was nobody eise to do the job, for which they presented themselves. There were lots of men to find instead of Seipel's maniacal course the road back to the coalition, several to substitute Dollfuss and to lead the ship of state back into the waters of, Constitution, and even some to make it much better than Schuschnigg at every tum of his career. Sociologically, we shall well understand the whole development. Suddenly following an age in which still most statesmen were bom, not elected, the three Catholic Austrian leaders represented but the average and not the extraordinary abilities of their people. An abundance of political talents in Austria was long suffocated by the existence of an aristocracy born to rule, and was not liberated by the succeeding parties which made politics still more exclusive. The aristocracy of old had not displayed too great hereditary gifts in the 19th and 20th centuries, but they still held the advantage of highly bred instincts which, combined with the Service of talents in the lower brackets, muddled successfully through the high sea for a Century. The postwar parties eliminated the aristocracy without bringing about a better method of selection leaving it to ambition, outside intercession, dexterity often in pretty secondary matters or simply chance, who would climb up to leading positions. Seipel was imposed upon the party, Dollfuss climbed up outside its normalcy and Schuschnigg, who was selected by the party under the best conditions which existed, in the Tyrol, would have been a good provincial leader or resort minister, but was no statesman. An age, in which life is de-aristocratized after thousand years and more, may substitute the lack of instincts and tradition by the highest education and the sturdiest training, but never simply through party organizations and conventiclers, electoral laws and voting procedures, although certainly still less through the mere obliteration of all these agencies and institutions. Whoever sees in representative government, democracy and parliamentarianism the only form of state suitable to modern man, has likewise realistically to take into account that there is still a millennium to be suppressed and surpassed, yet still alive in intellect and body of state and people. 232 In Austria, a model democracy after 1918, the parties and the parliamentarians themselves have largely brought about their heads the whole muddle, although it is much easier to fix the responsibility of the individual state's leaders than the other of the anonymous party machine. The parties and the parliamentarians have first unanimously decreed the union with Germany and have thereby isolated Austria from the outside world. Then they have sabotaged the inevitable Cooperation of their big political bodies, not all of them always, but always enough of them to make the policy of both Seipel and Bauer possible. If in the closing phase of Austrian parliamentarianism the Christian Socialist parliamentarians proved their complete defection from the parliament and from representative government, they were those guilty symbolically, but they also only reflected an atmosphere of parliament, to the genesis of which the Social Democratic parliamentarians have contributed their equal share. Again this background the guilt of the leaders shrinks somehow, because they really interpreted existing mass tendencies which found their expression in parliamentary representation to so high a degree that the normal functioning of representative government became impossible. This is a fact, from which there is only one thing to be deduced correctly, namely that democracy does not mean political leaders ought cease to be political educators, or in other words that also democratic statesmen must dare to dissent from populär currents and to face unpopularity. In this respect again, Seipel had the greater guilt, who simply articulated existing trends, while Dollfuss, who only trotted on a path already morally explored, nevertheless was much more ready to stand on his own ground which, even if it was too much sometimes, never was completely void of statesmanship. Yet he too followed trends instead of counteracting them, and so did still more his own heir, Schuschnigg. Theirs altogether was the path of accommodating themselves to existing conditions and chances of power instead of molding them truly statesmanlike into political energies to be used within the frame of the existing legal Order. They were accommodating themselves to these outside factors to the degree of finally violating the legal order, instead of confirming absolutely to the Constitution as the only anchor and backbone of any wholesome political action, and only on this basis influencing and modifying by education and persuasion the existing psychological and sociological conditions. In this entire causality Seipel was the author of the series, while Schuschnigg caught in the net knotted by others, and too dependent himself to unknot it, was the final victim. His figure is still the most tragic of all. While the two others have been called away, before their seeds were ripe, Schuschnigg survived the catastrophe which he had caused somewhere under conditions which made it obviously impossible for him to absorb fully and intellectually the history, to which his finger was the trigger. The Christian virtue with which he, according to all believable reports, suffered his shows that he, together with the thousand others who were his victims, by atonement alone has provided the best he could for his people's future, in which, despite all his errors, he will stand among those Austrians who gave their best to the people. In contrast to a historiography which, analyzing remotest deeds centuries back without emotion, does not recognize the existence of guilt and virtue in history, we cannot escape judging events, in which we were co-actors, events still having their consequences among millions of sufferers, events determining eventually all the future of 233 which we through our offspring are a part, judging these events with an ethical and metaphysical yardstick. We cannot escape judging these events, if we are still politically involved in them. Yet, the true historians in their ways can either, only that, if they close their eyes to the facts behind the facts, their sympathies and antipathies, political and metaphysical, become cryptic, sub-conscious and befuddling to themselves. The historian of events at any rate, of which he was a part himself, cannot let his sympathies and antipathies drift, but has to have the courage to take a yardstick and not only to measure what he observes, but by measuring to learn to observe more and better. There will always be enough complementary or views supplementary to his own sector to make the handling of another yardstick by somebody eise plausible enough and to provide the critical reader with the most adequate means for applying his own better measurement and judgment. There are no more honest historians in history than those who gladly reveal their methods, their code of ethics and their shortcomings. This is the conviction I have formed myself gradually during all three forms of government which I have observed and experienced in Austria. As only the virtue of Austrian Catholicism could save each of the "three Austrias", so only its guilt could finally destroy its very name. The guilt of the leading Catholic statesmen is truly the guilt of Austrian Catholicism. There were always but a few people who really withstood the temptation of solidarity in the hour of moral error. The Catholic leaders formulated the sentiments of the Catholic masses and the masses loyally followed their leaders into the abyss. Has it anywhere been otherwise? In determining the one moral guilt all secondary causalities have to remain undetermined; the guilt of the other half of the Austrian people, Socialism and labor, which was the historic substratum for the guilt of Catholicism, he guilt of other European States, the succession States, Germany, Western Europe, or the guilt of World Catholicism which was the very atmosphere of Austrian Catholicism and the source to act as it did. All these problems are interesting, but do not interest here in the first place. If there is a social group in history which has erred and if there are people belonging to this group who want to prevent their fellows from erring again, there is nothing eise of any interest than just this single historic error, isolated and even hypostatized, and how it can be both atoned and overcome. Only in deliberately abstracting from all the other determinations will somebody who has erred find back to the road, where he hopes to meet all the others, who have also searched for their souls. Let's not say that this is not a highly political task. To its accomplishment the most objective individual can contribute just as much as it solidarizes itself with the one group analyzing its conscience and atoning for its sins. In all his objectivity as a historian this author wants to be understood in no other way. If understood so, he will not have to risk meeting the Pharisee inside or outside Austria, who will quote him as a witness against Austrian Catholicism in both the past and the future. Only if both halves of the Austrian people fully recognize their own guilt, each in its own fashion, will they be able to shape the "Fourth Austria" better than the three others before. Both halves have to recognize a great deal, labor on the one side, that they have overstressed their Socialism sometimes into an anti-Catholic and anti-Austrian metaphysics which logically cried for reaction, and Catholicism on the other side, that they in fighting for redress have culpably abandoned the Constitution, the very basis of 234 national sovereignty for both the entire nation. But also still worse, they both have to admit, Catholicism here, that they have identified the highest metaphysical ideals with most primitive social interests, and labor there, that they in striving for their primitive social interests have sometimes violated the highest metaphysical ideals of others, Only if both halves recognize and criticize their own past and not the past of the other half, will a new future be possible. Even if only one half would act in this better way, the whole might be saved, while if both act the worse way, the whole will certainly go astray. There is nothing more constructive in politics as well than a consistently ethical action, even if practiced only by a nucleus, and nothing more destructive than mere politics, and certainly the worst mere politics of all the political factors involved. If one party feels forced to Imitate the other in the crooked way, the structure of the state will certainly crumble. If one party at any rate goes the Straight way, the state may be saved. He that can understand it, let him understand it! If both halves of the Austrian people continue to be Pharisees of their party history and to accuse each other instead of searching in themselves, they will again be two peoples or two races and the tragedy of the "Second Austria" will inevitably repeat itself in the "Fourth Austria". Will it be different in other countries? The difference between Austria and the other European countries after this war seems only to be that Austria has once already experienced, what they all together will have to experience now: the reconstruction on entirely new foundations. In this Situation "cooperation" is inevitable, as it was in Austria in 1918. Yet Cooperation ought nowhere to be only disguised hegemony of the one half, the smaller half at that, as otherwise it will soon mean with certainty the real hegemony of the other half. To be sure, some amount of hero worship is permissible; some deeper Interpretation of it even desirable, for it is in its substance the cult, of the fathers, whom we love even in their mistakes. None of the two halves of the Austrian people can be expected and ought to expect of the other that anybody will forget his heroes. The Catholics will stick to Lueger, Seipel, Dollfuss and Schuschnigg, and labor will remember Viktor Adler, Otto Bauer and Robert Danneberg. Both halves will have their martyrs. But this cult of the past should never blind for realizing the limits of the past as well. Only where every half discovers and honors the heroes of the other half, Unding at last that both halves have worked and died for the whole, two races which could never submerge each other may eventually tum out to be one nation. Time may contribute considerably, helping to elaborate the historic profiles of personalities, to carve out what they have done for the common sake and to sink into oblivion what they have done merely as partisans. The common experience during the period, in which Catholics and Socialists together were both killed and uprooted by their common enemy, may help them a lot too, at least for a while, although the motive of common hatred, which was already too weak to prevent the catastrophe, will become weaker and weaker the more the problems of an entirely new period come to the fore. The international guarantee of a democratic Austria, in which interior experiments either by the Left, the dictatorship of the Proletariat, or by the Right, the authoritarian regime, will be definitely out of question, may also facilitate that the two halves fully recognize each other. Yet the main accomplishment will have to come from the new generation which will build a new Austria. Thousands of peasants will have to become the Champions in recognizing the 235 attitude of the workers and vice versa in all economic and social questions, and thousands of Socialists the very protagonists in appreciating the psychology of the Catholics and again vice versa, without mental reservation in complete tolerance, honestly and loyally. Even those who have personally the full understanding of both will have to side for the sake of making really fruitful their impartiality. A Catholic, who fully recognizes the historic guilt of Catholicism, will only contribute something to its self-analysis, if he Stands within its scope in full solidarity with the other Catholics in good and bad days to come, and, although innocent himself, will be ready to bear the same share of responsibility before and punishment by history than all the others, if this ought to be done for the common future. Only this solidarity will rebuild the people. There are stränge and as yet unknown energies alive in Christianity which the coming age will have fully to employ and to apply to its travails. There are people raging in dreams of revenge, "eye to eye and tooth to tooth", but they are children politically, as they destroy the very soil which bears them and poison the very air they breathe. There are other people who just suffer misery and expiate for their own crimes and errors, by which this misery had been caused, and they certainly do a lot of good to themselves and to the world at large, because they really make disappear again the evil which they once could not help creating by their own sins, If they were Christians, however, Christians of the pure blood and the unpolluted Spirit for which the Gospel asks, they would well know to do more. The Christian virtue of atonement, not only for oneself but for all the others as well without any exclusion, is the only truly political virtue, by which alone the new cosmos can be created, "the new earth under a new heaven". Only atonement by the ones will help to stir up the search for the better soul by the others. This is as true within a social group as in the relations of one social group to the other. Only in this view guilt itself loses its reality as well as its sting in history, and men and nations, subjected to the consequences of own guilt, may be re- vindicated for grand works to be done by mankind as its most essential parts, sometimes perhaps more urgently than the seemingly blameless and self-righteous, and may be re- dedicated spiritually for the reconstruction of the world in a new age to come. 236

Ernt Karl Winter: AUSTRIA #

Table of Contents#

Preface#

Introduction#

The Shadow of Yesterday#

Ernt Karl Winter: AUSTRIA
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Table of Contents
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