Due to severe shortages of volunteer labor for repairing the damage immediately after World War II, the provisional Austrian federal government decided in September 1945 to make work compulsory, primarily for former National Socialists. As a result, these individuals were forced to perform a wide variety of reconstruction work over a period of two years. These workers subsequently sued the Republic of Austria for compensation payments and received a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court in 1951. The work of these conscripted former National Socialists was increasingly forgotten as the years went on, and, therefore, toward the end of the twentieth century, a form of “Trümmerfrauen” myth emerged in Austria. According to this myth, the immediate repair of war damage was mainly carried out by volunteer women. This article examines for the first time the people that worked in the removal of rubble in 1945 and 1946, how they described their work afterward, and how this compulsory labor gave rise to a positive reconstruction myth of voluntary women’s work.

This article examines sermons for the crusade against the Hussite king of Bohemia, George of Poděbrady, preached by Thomas Harder, an Augustinian canon and parish priest in Klosterneuburg, in the summer of 1467. These texts give us a direct insight into how preachers in fifteenth-century parishes might have dealt with the general commission to publicize the crusade, as they incorporate the crusade agenda into the pastoral content. Like his twelfth and thirteenth-century predecessors, Thomas Harder knew how to exploit the penitential and edifying potential of the crusade, combined with concerns for individual religious improvement and moral reform. Through an analysis of intertextual links, this study shows that he also systematically gathered, processed and disseminated topical information relevant to the fight against Bohemian heresy. Although he followed in the footsteps of high medieval crusade preachers in the themes he addressed, he also drew on more contemporary and local sources to inform his discourse and provide explanation of the immediate political circumstances.