Seite - 481 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Central Powers and Central Europe 481 In autumn 1914, the first articles appeared by Richard Charmatz, who wrote in the journal Die Hilfe, edited by Friedrich Naumann, on ‘Österreich und Deutschland’ (Austria and Germany).1135 In November 1914, the Innsbruck classical historian Ru- dolf von Scala wrote a contribution on a customs union between the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, in which he attempted to outline the major advantages, but also stated that the economic adjustment would be accompanied by severe burdens for Aus- trian industry and agriculture. This was to be accepted, however, when considering the objective, ‘just as we have taken on the sacrifices of the war in order to receive a thou- sand-fold reward in return’.1136 Richard von Kralik went a step further and sketched an association of states stretching far into the east and to the Orient. His Central Europe, the core of which should be formed by Germany and Austria-Hungary, reached as far as Syria and Egypt. ‘If the German idea spread far beyond its current imperial borders, then it is not evil imperialism as in England and Russia’, he said, ‘but only the remem- brance of the Germany of the Middle Ages, the true, proper Germany’. The German Empire stretches itself ‘because it still feels the old power in its limbs from the time of the old Emperor […], from the time when Belgium, Toul and Verdun, when the Baltic Sea provinces were German’. In spring 1915, a meeting of the German-Austro-Hungarian Economic Union took place in Berlin, which Michael Hainisch, later the first Federal President of the Re- public of Austria, and Gustav Marchet, among others, took part ; in the summer the discussions were continued and in autumn 1915 it was felt that the realisation of these plans was considerably closer. In October 1915, Naumann’s book was released and Heinrich Friedjung telegraphed him : ‘Reading your book carefully twice fills me with the certainty that you have presented the nation with the ripest fruit of the World War, an indispensable guide to the aim being pursued.’1137 Friedrich Naumann’s book Mitteleuropa resulted in a huge wave of enthusiasm and an overflowing of ideas. All Germans, those of the German Empire, those of Austria-Hungary, those of Transyl- vania and those of the Banat found themselves united as a ‘nation of brothers’. But the acclaim and those engaging in it made it clear that it was above all the Germans of the Habsburg Monarchy who saw their war aims and their national dreams formulated in the book. The German lawyer, sociologist and economist Max Weber called it ‘mood capital’.1138 Yet the agreement was in no way universal. Advocates of economic liberal- ism and free trade went so far in their criticism of Naumann’s book as to discard in their entirety the ideas presented therein. In the event of a return to free trade, ‘we do not need a Central Europe with all its dependencies of all those unwashed peoples of Aus- tria and further east and the intrigues of the Vienna Hofburg [Palace] and the Austrian Schranz, as Central Europe brings with it for us’, wrote the German economist Lujo von Brentano to Naumann.1139 But the entrepreneurs of Austria-Hungary, the indus- trial sector and many politicians demonstrated a noticeable reserve. Only in a preferen-