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The Austrian Historians' Commission

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2009

Tim Kirk
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Extract

It is a truth universally acknowledged that nowhere is the past a greater burden on the present than in the historian's own area of interest. In Austria, in 2008, the past seemed to be more than usually present. From the outset, it was declared a year of multiple anniversaries; and the years 1848, 1918, 1968, and above all 1938 were recalled in conferences and books and in public discussion in the media. And yet some aspects of the past were curiously absent: Austrian democracy, we learned from an events listings handout distributed at Vienna airport, was established in 1918—only to be extinguished by the Nazis in 1938. In this context, Oliver Rathkolb's finding (presented at a conference on democracy held at the Vienna Museum in March), that forty percent of Austrians do not even know who Engelbert Dollfuss was, is hardly surprising. This is not to say that there is no engagement with the thornier questions of Austria's past—in the University's Institut für Zeitgeschichte, there is talk of little else—but that there is now, as delegates at the same conference agreed, something of a gulf between the general public's understanding of the past and that of academic historians and some sections of the press.

Type
Review Articles
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 40 , April 2009 , pp. 288 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2009

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References

1 See Botz, Gerhard, “Der ambivalente ‘Anschluß’ 1938/1939. Von der Begeisterung zur Ernüchterung,” Zeitgeschichte 6, no. 3 (1978): 91–109Google Scholar.

2 Knight, Robert, “Restitution and Legitimacy in Post-War Austria 1945–1953,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 36 (1991): 413–41, especially 417–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Knight, Robert, ed. ‘Ich bin dafür. Die Sache in die Länge zu ziehen’: die Wortprotokolle der Österreichischen Bundesregierung von 1945 bis 1952 über die Entschädingung der Juden (Frankfurt, 1988)Google Scholar.

3 Jabloner, Clemens, Bailer-Galanda, Briggite, Blimlinger, Eva, Graf, Georg, Knight, Robert, Mikoletzky, Lorenz, Perz, Bertrand, Sandgruber, Roman, Stuhlpfarrer, Karl, and Teichova, Alice, Schlussbericht der Historikerkommission der Republik Österreich. Vermögensentzug während der NS-Zeit sowie Rückstellungen und Entschädigungen seit 1945 in Österreich. Zusammenfassungen und Einschätzungen (Vienna and Munich, 2003)Google Scholar.

4 On the relationship between the methodologies of history and law in the context of the Commission's work, see Clemens Jabloner, “Am Beispiel der Historikerkommission: Zeitgeschichtliche Forschung in juristischer Perspektive,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 16, no. 1 (2005): 111–36.

5 The Dorotheum engaged historians to reassess its role in the Nazi period after the Commission judged its first report as unsatisfactory.

6 Melinz, Gerhard and Jödl, Gerald, “Jüdisches” Liegenschaftseigentum in Wien zwischen Arisierungsstrategien und Rückstellungsverfahren, (Vienna, 2004)Google Scholar. The authors refer, among others, to the work of Gerhard Botz, whose pioneering study of Vienna under the Nazis included a lengthy discussion of “Aryanization.” See Botz, Gerhard, Nationalsozialismus in Wien. Machtübernahme, Herrschaftssischerung, Radikaliseirung 1938/39 (Vienna, 2008)Google Scholar, this latest “distillation” superseding that referred to by the authors.

7 Graf, Georg, Bailer-Galanda, Brigitte, Blimlinger, Eva, and Kowarc, Susanne, “Arisierung” und Rückstellung von Wohnungen in Wien (Vienna, 2004)Google Scholar.

8 Schlussbericht, 118–23.

9 Grafe et al., “Arisierung” 113–18; the quotation is from p. 118.

10 Melichar, Peter, Neuordnung im Bankwesen. Die NS-Maßnahmen und die Problematik der Restitution (Vienna and Munich, 2004)Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., pp. 22–25.

12 Ibid., pp. 66–143. Melichar's account is extensive and detailed. Some of the salient points are discussed more briskly in the summary volume, Schlussbericht, 101–05.

13 Melichar, Neuordnung, 26.

14 Mejstrik, Alexander, Garstenauer, Therese, Melichar, Peter, Prenninger, Alexander, Putz, Christa, and Wadauer, Sigrid, Berufsschädigungen in der nationalsozialistischen Neuordnung der Arbeit. Vom österreichischen Berufsleben 1934 zum völkischen Schaffen 1938–1940 (Vienna and Munich, 2004)Google Scholar.

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17 Freund, Florian, Perz, Bertrand, and Spoerer, Mark, Zwangsarbeiter und Zwangsarbeiterinnen auf dem Gebiet der Republik Österreich 1939–1945 (Vienna, 2004)Google Scholar.

18 See also Spoerer's published work in English using the same methodology: Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker, “Forced Laborers in Nazi Germany,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33, no. 2 (2002): 169–204; Mark Spoerer and Jochen Fleischhacker, “The Compensation of Nazi Germany's Forced Labourers: Demographic Findings and Political Implications,” Population Studies 56, no. 1 (2002): 5–21.

19 See Schaumayer, Maria, “Austria's Contribution to Reconciliation,” in Rathkolb, Oliver, ed., Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy. Coming to Terms with Forced Labor, Expropriation, Compensation and Restitution (Innsbruck, 2003), 24–29Google Scholar.

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21 See Knight, “Restitution and Legitimacy,” 425–27.

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24 Berger, Karin, Dimmel, Nikolaus, Forster, David, Spring, Claudia, and Berger, Heinrich, Vollzugspraxis des “Opferfürsorgegesetzes”. Analyse der praktischen Vollziehung des einschlägigen Sozialrechts. (Vienna and Munich, 2004)Google Scholar.

25 See Ernst Sucharipa, “Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy. Restitution: Why Now? The Austrian Experience,” in Rathkolb, ed., Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy; Bischof, Günter, “Victims? Perpetrators? ‘Punching Bags’ of European Historical Memory. The Austrians and their World War II Legacies,” German Studies Review 27, no. 1 (2004): 17–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Schlussbericht, 453.