Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:55:30.520Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Karl Renner and the Politics of Accommodation: Moderation versus Revenge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Peter Loewenberg
Peter Loewenberg
Affiliation:
Department of History, 405 Hilgard Avenue, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024–1473.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Karl Renner's political life encompasses the history of Austria's empire and her two twentieth-century republics, making him the foremost leader of Austrian democratic politics. Renner was also the most innovative theoretician on the nationalities question which plagued the Habsburg monarchy and the twentieth-century world. He was chancellor of Austria's first republic, leader of the right-wing Social Democrats, and president of the post-World War II Second Republic. A study of his life and politics offers a perspective on the origins of the moderate, adaptive, political personality and on the tension between ideology and accommodation to the point where it is difficult to determine what core of principle remained.

Type
Articles: Robert A. Kann Memorial Lecture (1986)
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 22 , January 1991 , pp. 35 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Synopticus (pseudonym), Zur österreichischen Nationalitätenfrage (Vienna 1899)Google Scholar; Staat und Nation (Vienna, 1899)Google Scholar; Springer, Rudolf (pseudonym), Staat und Parliament (Vienna, 1901)Google Scholar; Der Kampf der österreichischen Nationen um den Staat (Vienna, 1902)Google Scholar; Die Krise des Dualismus und das Ende der deakistischen Episode (Vienna, 1904)Google Scholar; Grundlagen und Entwicklungsziele der österreichischen-ungarischen Monarchie (Vienna, 1906)Google Scholar. Renner's, scholarship on nationalities continued under his own name, including Der nationale Streit um die Ämter und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna, 1908)Google Scholar; Der deutsche Arbeiter und der Nationalismus (Vienna); Österreich's Erneuerung: Politisch-programmatische Aufsätze (Vienna, 1916), Vol. 1, pp. 27, 38–46Google Scholar. Politische Demokratie und nationale Autonomie (Vienna, 1917)Google Scholar; Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen in besonderer Anwendung auf Österreich, Part 1, “Nation und Staat” (Vienna, 1918)Google Scholar.

2 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Sozialdemokratie und Nationalstaat: Nationalitätenfragen in Deutschland, 1840–1914 (Göttingen, 1971)Google Scholar.

3 Abstracted from Renner, , Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen in besonderer Anwendung auf Österreich (Leipzig and Vienna, second edition, 1918), pp. 227–294Google Scholar. This is a revised edition of Der Kampf der österreichischen Nationen um den Staat (1902).

4 Renner, , Was ist die Nationale Autonomie? Was ist Soziale Verwaltung? Einführung in die nalionale Frage und Erläuterung der Grundsätze des nationalen Programms der Sozialdemokratie (Vienna, 1913), p. 35Google Scholar.

5 Renner, , Österreichs Erneuerung (Vienna, 1916), p. 39Google Scholar.

6 Renner, , Der nationale Streit (Vienna, 1908)Google Scholar.

7 Renner, , Selbstbestimmungsrecht, pp. 286–291Google Scholar.

8 Renner, Karl, An der Wende zweier Zeiten. Lebenserinnerungen (Vienna, 1946), pp. 14–15Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Lebenserinnerungen.

9 “I have found that people who know that they are preferred or favoured by their mother give evidence in their lives of a peculiar self-reliance and an unshakeable optimism which often seem like heroic attributes and bring actual success to their possessors.” Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, trans, and ed. Strachey, James, Freud, Anna, Strachey, Alix, and Tyson, Alan (London, 1953–1958), vol. 5, 398nGoogle Scholar. Hereafter cited as Standard Edition.

10 Renner, , Lebenserinnerungen, p. 51Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., pp. 40–41.

12 lbid, p. 52.

13 Hannak, Jacques, Karl Renner und seine Zeit (Vienna, 1965), pp. 217–218Google Scholar.

14 Renner, , Marxismus, Krieg und Internationale: Kritische Studien über offene Probleme des wissenschaftlichen und des praktischen Sozialismus in und nach dem Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1918), ivGoogle Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 184.

16 Ibid., pp. 185–187.

17 Kann, Robert A., Renner's Beitrag zur Lösung nationaler Konflikte im Lichte nationaler Probleme der Gegenwart (Vienna, 1973)Google Scholar.

18 Siegler, Heinrich, Die österreichisch-italienische Einigung über die Regelung des Südtirolkonflikts (Bonn, Vienna, Zürich, 1970)Google Scholar; Österreichs Souveranität, Neutralität, Prosperität (Vienna, Bonn, Zürich, 1967), Chap. 3 “Das Problem Süditrol,” pp. 40–70Google Scholar, trans. Austria: Problems and Achievements since 1945 (Bonn, Vienna, Zürich, 1969)Google Scholar; Toscano, Mario, Alto Adige-South Tryol: Italy's Frontier with the German World, ed. Carbone, George A. (Baltimore and London, 1975)Google Scholar; Waldheim, Kurt, Der österreichische Weg: Aus der Isolation zur Neutralität (Vienna, Munich, Zürich, 1971)Google Scholar, trans, as The Austrian Example (New York, 1973), see Chap. 9 “Südtirol”Google Scholar; Huter, Franz, Süditrol: Eine Frage des europäischen Gewissens (Munich, 1965)Google Scholar; Alcock, Antony Evelyn, The History of the South Tyrol Question (Geneva, 1970)Google Scholar.

19 Stadler, Karl R., Austria (London, 1971), Chap. 3, pp. 82–105Google Scholar, is particularly good on these Austrian achievements in the peace settlement.

20 Stadler, , “Karl Renner. Der Mann und sein Werk,” in Renner. Eine Bibliographie (Vienna, Frankfurt, Zürich, 1970), p. 12Google Scholar.

21 Loewenberg, Peter, “Austro-Marxism and Revolution: Otto Bauer, Freud's ‘Dora’ Case, and the Crisis of the First Austrian Republic,” in Decoding the Past: The Psychohistorical Approach (New York, 1983), pp. 161–204Google Scholar.

22 Renner, , Wege der Verwirklichung (1929, 1947) (I have used the 1947 edition, Offenbach a.M.), p. 13Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., pp. 96–98.

24 Ibid., p. 118.

25 Wandruszka, Adam, “Österreichs politische Struktur,” in Benedikt, Heinrich, ed., Geschichte der Republik Österreich (Vienna, 1954), p. 454Google Scholar.

26 Renner, to Hermann, Müller, 07 9, 1938, Renner Nachlass, II, Verwaltungsarchiv, ViennaGoogle Scholar.

27 Renner, to Kautsky, Karl, 09 3, 1929, Kautsky Nachlass, XIX, 174, International Institute for Social History, AmsterdamGoogle Scholar.

28 Renner, to Kunschak, Leopold, 11 11, 1931, Renner Nachlass, II, File.K. Staatliches Verwaltungsarchiv, ViennaGoogle Scholar.

29 Renner, to Gruber, Josef, 11 27, 1930, Renner Nachlass, file G. Staatliches Verwaltungsarchiv, ViennaGoogle Scholar.

30 Wandruszka, in Benedikt, , Geschichte der Republik Österreich, p. 453Google Scholar.

31 See, for example, the instructions to the frontier post in Feldkirch to search Renner's luggage and person most carefully on his exit from and entry to Austria under the pretext of currency controls. Ministerium des Innern, BKA, Inneres, General Direktion für öffentliche Sicherheit 316:904–St.B. No. 51, January 23, 1935. Verwaltungsarchiv, Vienna.

Renner was spied on in the train from Paris to Austria in October 1935 and his conversation reported. He said that he looked forward to a coalition government with Social Democratic participation and the return to a half parliamentary regime. Report of October 4, 1935 by a security police spy. The cover letter says: “You will see from this how little one may rely on the promises of old party chiefs (alien Parteibonzen).” Bureau of the Vice Chancellor to State Secretary Baron Hammerstein, October 10, 1935, Ibid., No. 50.

32 Renner, , “Niederschrift,” 01 23, 1935Google Scholar, ibid.

33 Buttinger, Joseph, In the Twilight of Socialism: A History of the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria (New York, 1953), pp. 422–423Google Scholar.

34 The entire text is reprinted in Hannak, , Renner, pp. 650–652Google Scholar. In Hannak's, opinion Renner committed “a far reaching mistake” (p. 652)Google Scholar.

35 Luža, Radomír, Austro-German Relations in the Anschluss Era (Princeton, 1975), pp. 71–72Google Scholar.

36 Renner, , Die Gründung der Republik Deutschösterreich, der Anschluss und die Sudetendeutschen: Dokumente eines Kampfes ums Recht, typeset but not published, Vienna 1938Google Scholar, Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, No. 57656. This document is omitted from the otherwise complete Renner, Bibliographie (Vienna, 1970)Google Scholar and from his Nachlass in the Austrian Staatsarchiv.

37 Ibid., p. 6.

38 Ibid., p. 47.

39 Ibid., p. 85.

40 Ibid., p. 53.

41 Ibid., p. 71.

42 Ibid., p. 57.

43 Ibid., p. 73.

44 Ibid., pp. 77–78.

45 Ibid., pp. 20, 50–51.

46 Ibid., p. 7.

47 Seitz, Karl and Renner, Karl, Krieg und Absolutismus. Friede und Recht (Vienna, 1917), p. 29Google Scholar.

48 Allibone, Austin, ed., Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay (Philadelphia, 1882), p. 627Google Scholar.

49 Kohut, Heinz, The Restoration of the Self (New York, 1977), p. 81Google Scholar.

50 Renner to His Excellency Marshal Stalin, Moscow, April 15, 1945, in Hannak, , Renner, pp. 672–75Google Scholar. For background of their relationship, see Stalin's critique of Renner's ideas on nationalism in Marxism and the National Question (1913) (New York, 1942)Google Scholar. Renner is there cited by his early pseudonym Rudolph Springer.

51 A contemporary Austrian scholar considers this a typical Austrian problem and Renner as the prototype for Austria's ambivalent position toward National Socialism and the model for the person and symbol of President Kurt Waldheim. Pelinka, Anton, Karl Renner zur Einführung (Hamburg, 1989), pp. 107–110Google Scholar.