Page - 389 - in Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg - Netzwerker der Kunstwelt

Across the Leitha 389 Oesterreich ist nicht eine Ostmark der Slaven sondern der Deutschen ; nicht Attila oder Rurik, nicht Stephan der Heilige oder Ottokar von Böhmen haben diese Ostmark gegründet  – son- dern die deutschen Karolinger ; das Licht des Christenthums ist von Deutschland aus nach unserem Lande getragen worden ; das Licht der Wissenschaft, der Kunst und der Industrie leuchtet durch die Kraft des Stammes, dem wir angehören, der Sprache, die wir sprechen  – der deutschen.78 The stridency of this assertion may be explained as reflecting the topic of the lecture and its presumed audience. It certainly stands at odds with the positive tone of his pro- nouncements elsewhere on the creative outputs of the non-German groups in the Em- pire. His dismissive comments about St.  Stephen seem to contradict his emphasis on the depth of the Hungarian cultural heritage outlined in his report from the 1850s. Indeed, Eitelberger’s assertion about the fundamentally German character of Austria bears comparison with a famous provocation in Prague by the art historian Alfred Wolt- mann six years later, whose claim that the cultural heritage of Prague was entirely due to the efforts of German artists and architects had caused riots and demonstrations in the streets of the city.79 Woltmann’s assertion has often been treated as an example of growing German nationalism in the final quarter of the nineteenth century, but al- though it was meant as a provocation  – the national paternity of artworks had become a contentious issue in the Bohemian capital  – comparison with Eitelberger suggests his sentiments were commensurate with the wider liberal understanding of the place and value of German culture in Austria as a whole. Upholding a belief in German culture was pursued as an “ideology of public integration in central and eastern Europe, one that would eventually wipe away the backward and particularistic attitudes held by unedu- cated peasants and Slavs, joining them all in a great German liberal union”.80 Eitelberger was no exception to this more general belief. 78 “Austria is not an Eastern March of the Slavs, but of the Germans ; neither Attila nor Rurik neither St. Stephen nor Ottokar of Bohemia founded this Eastern March  – but Carolingian Germans. The light of Christianity was brought to our land from Germany. The light of science, art and industry il- luminates thanks to the power of the tribe to which we belong, to the language we speak  – German.” Ibid, p.  335. 79 A. Woltmann, Die deutsche Kunst in Prag. Leipzig 1877. On the episode see J. Vybíral, What Is “Czech” in Art in Bohemia ? Alfred Woltmann and the Defensive Mechanisms of Czech Artistic Historiography, in : Kunstchronik, 59, 2006, H.  1, pp.  1–7 ; M. Rampley, The Vienna School of Art History : Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2013, pp.  62 f. 80 P. Judson, Rethinking the Liberal Legacy, in : Rethinking Vienna 1900 (ed. S. Beller), New York and Oxford 2001, pp. 57–79, esp. pp.  66 f. See, too, J. Kwan, Liberalism and the Habsburg Mon- archy 1861–1895, New York 2013 and D. Brodbeck, Defining Deutschtum : Political Ideology, German Identity and Music-Critical Discourse in Liberal Vienna, Oxford 2014.