Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848-1914

Abstract

Ritter points out that "the terms and metaphors which control present-day discourse about nineteenth-century [Austrian] liberalism are, to a great extent, taken over directly from the figurative language of pathology invented in some cases ... by insecure or disillusioned turn-of-the-century liberals themselves." Journalist historians who wrote from this point of view include Heinrich Friedjung, Heinrich Poliak, Ferdinand von Krones, and Richard Charmatz. Charmatz's Deutsch-Osterreichische PoUtik: Studien iiber den Liberalismus und iiber die Auswdrtige Politik Osterreichs (Leipzig, 1907) is one of the best of the early surveys. In the 1950s, Georg Franz published an exhaustive work on liberalism in the 1860s, Liberalismus. Die deutschliberale Bewegung in der habsburgischen Monarchie (Munich, 1955). Although sympa thetic in tone, the book combines the tragic self-diagnosis of turn-of-the-century liberal authors with a more nationalist and occasionally anti-Semitic viewpoint. Karl Eder's Der Liberalismus in

Varieties of nationalism in the political discourses of Habsburg Austria

“…In his study of liberalism in Salzburg, Haas (1981, p. 113) observed a shift from civilisational Austrian liberalism to ethnic German nationalism. This transformation in political discourse among many liberals, from universalist Austrian patriotism to a particularistic German nationalism reflects what Judson (1996, p. 193) terms ‘inventing a German community’. This shift in the meaning of nation was not predetermined due to notions of ethnicity or race but a result of politico‐ideological battles.…”

“…Although the ideological and organisational capacity of the Austrian liberal movement became clearly visible only through the emergence of political clubs after 1867 (Judson, 1996, p. 143), the background of their leaders sheds light on the 1830s and 1840s. Eduard Herbst, the Austrian liberal leader of the 1860s, recounts his experiences as a patriotic civil servant in the early 1840s (Herbst quoted in Kwan, 2013, p. 9):

Our study lay in the files, where the handwritten notes of Joseph II and Maria Theresia were scattered like rich deposits of gold dust.

…”

“…100–105). It took until 1881 for Austrian overall production to reach again the level of 1873 (Judson, 1996, p. 167). With internal migration to cities, perceptions of growing economic and linguistic competition increased.…”

“…The continuity of the Josephinist tradition is illustrated by German‐speaking liberal associations in the 1870s. Judson (1996, p. 143) for instance describes the educational goals of such an association as to ‘exposing the Volk to a liberal, scientific, progressive, and anticlerical critique of traditional society’. ‘The people’ essentially means inhabitants that need to be transformed into citizens.…”

“…This shift in the meaning of nation was not predetermined due to notions of ethnicity or race but a result of politico‐ideological battles. It was a ‘many‐sided struggle for the right to speak for the German Volk ’ as well as for the ‘terms on which the nation would be constituted’ (Judson, 1996, p. 223). Beside the revised ‘liberal nation’ that drew on notions of civilisational achievements of German bourgeois culture there developed alternative views, articulating ‘nation’ within social democratic, religious or racist discourses.…”