Regionalism and Its Diverse Framings in German-Speaking Europe Across the Long Twentieth Century

Abstract

regions, meanwhile, became intertwined in Cold War conflict, partly informing later debates over the 'intrinsic' political meaning of regionalism.Conceptions of the relationship between region and nation proved equally flexible and diverse. In theory, the relationship of region to nation could range from separatism on one end and to nationalist affirmation on the other and anywhere in between. 2 Limited examples of both separatism and unitary nationalism could be found in Germany and Austria, though notions of regionalism as dovetailing with nation-building proved dominant. This understanding, however, differed internally from the nationalist-affirming regionalism that dominated in the first half of the twentieth century to the post-war notion of regional Heimat as de-centring, restraining, and therein serving a new German national idea. Meanwhile, in Austria, different groups at varying times framed regionalism as strengthening loyalty to the Habsburg Empire, dovetailing with pan-German visions, or cementing Austrian distinctiveness, the latter of which dominated after 1945.The history of regionalism in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other German-speaking areas were certainly not without their unique national inflections. National uniqueness could be found, among other places, in the role of German regionalism in imagining a post-war German federalism or in distancing the post-1945 Austrian national idea from a German one. At the same time many of the underlying forces of the movement across the twentieth century had a broader European provenance with parallels in other national contexts. Modernity, Popular Regionalism, and the NationIn the mid nineteenth century, the founder of German Folklore Studies, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl proclaimed that the uniqueness of German culture could be found in its regional cultural diversity that could only be discovered by wandering through its diverse landscapes. 3 By the end of the century, regionalism had emerged as a popular movement. The movement was certainly a modern phenomenon, though much diversity in regional cultural practices and dialects stemmed from century-long histories of territorial fragmentation. Looking as far back as the early medieval period, the settlement patterns of Germanic tribes or ' Stämme' were reflected in important modern German dialect borders (Figure 1), while, throughout the early modern period, the Holy Roman