Austria - Hungary Before World War I


 

Vienna Ringstrasse -Parliament Building


 



OVERVIEW

 

Austria-Hungary was a multinational, multiethnic empire. It had 11 recognized languages. It promoted, or at least tolerated, internal free trade, economic development and internal mobility in the period 1870-1914. Hungary was a major exporter of agricultural products to the rest of Europe. The railroad network was expanding, helping to tie the Empire together. New industries in metal-working and electrical appliances were established, especially in Bohemia (Czechoslovakia). Major cities had industrial districts. Banks and financial companies raised large amounts of capital to finance development and expansion.

 

Its economy was modernizing but the government bureaucracy, especially in foreign affairs and in the military, were controlled by conservative elements – nobility, royalty and the court, and landed aristocracy. The political structure of dual sovereignty, both between Hungary and Austria, and between central government in Vienna and provinces, was cumbersome and ultimately proved unworkable. The national parliament in Vienna was reduced to a propaganda forum for rival nationalist groups. Every nationality group spoke in its own language. There were no translators. Power still resided mostly in the aging Emperor, the heads of foreign affairs, finance and the military, all dominated by the upper levels of landed aristocracy or their supporters.

 

Outside of Vienna, the combination of economic growth, some reform, and a large bureaucracy gave the Empire some stability. Nationalist leaders of the northern provinces thought political alternatives were worse – independent countries would be absorbed by Russia or Germany. Landowners and farmers were given some protection and prosperity because Austria-Hungary was also a customs union – free trade inside, protective tariffs outside.

 

FOREIGN POLICY

 

Austria had ambitions to head a southern German confederation. The states in southern Germany had more in common with Austria than Prussia in the north. But Bismarck in Prussia wanted to unite all the states in the German Confederation under Prussian hegemony (dominance). But without Austria. So Prussia went to war with Austria in 1866 and defeated them, eliminating Austrian ambitions in Germany. Austria needed a counterweight to Prussian influence. The only country available was Hungary.

 

The merger of Austria and its provinces with Hungary in 1867 was considered an emergency, and possible temporary, situation. The agreement was revisited every 10 years and could be renegotiated. As the decades went by, the Austrian government in Vienna became increasingly unhappy with Hungary’s treatment of Slavic minorities and Rumanians within its borders and its obstructionist attitude towards Austria. This was a source of increasing tension and conflict within the Empire.

 

Austria-Hungary focused its attention on the Balkans. It saw Serbia as a disruptive influence. Russia also focused on the Balkans. Tension between Russia and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans went back to the 1870s. Russia supported the newly independent countries in the Balkans, especially Serbia. Serbia was an aggressive and disruptive force with its own agenda to dominate the Balkans. Tension increased as Serbia expanded in the years just before the outbreak of WWI.

 

Austria felt isolated. It needed allies. Despite its military defeat by Germany, the only possibility was the new Germany. Germany and Austria-Hungary concluded a mutual defense treaty in 1879. Later, they would be opposed by the alliance of Russia and France. 

 

LOST CHANCE AT REFORM BEFORE WWI

 

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the heir to Emperor Franz Joseph. He was both an insider by birth and an outsider by personality and ideas. He knew the Austro-Hungarian Empire could not survive in its present form. There was too much tension between Austria and Hungary. In addition, the various ethnic groups would increase their demands for more power and autonomy. The threats from the Balkans were getting worse. While waiting to become Emperor, he established a “shadow cabinet” that worked for him. They discussed possible reforms – break up the Empire by forcing Hungary out; change the internal structure to resemble a federation like the United States; give ethnic groups more say in managing local functions like education (an acceleration of a slow trend); a real national parliament; a southern Slavic federation without Hungary.

 

Franz Ferdinand also believed that Austria had to come to some sort of accommodation with the countries in the Balkans, especially Serbia. Most of the other Austrian leaders, especially the head of the Austrian army, believed that the best course of action was war with Serbia.

 

It is intriguing to speculate what would have happened if Emperor Franz Joseph had died in 1912 or earlier and Franz Ferdinand became Emperor. In 1912, Franz Joseph was 82 years old, semi-retirement and had reigned for 64 years (since 1848). He died in 1916.

 

The horrible irony is that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the Austrian assassinated by Serbian nationalists at Sarajevo in 1914. It was the excuse that Austrian leaders needed to declare war on Serbia, which led to WWI.

 

VIENNA

 

Economic growth and development generated economic, demographic, cultural and political stresses in Austria, especially Vienna. Vienna experienced rapid population growth as Slavs, Jews and other non-German-speaking groups from the provinces and neighboring countries moved to Vienna. Vienna’s population increased from 551,000 in 1850 to 2,083,000 in 1910. Budapest also experienced rapid population growth; Hungarian nationalism became increasingly shrill and oppressive as the percent of non-Hungarians increased in Hungary.

 

The liberal, democratic ideals and institutions, layered on top of Vienna’s traditional society, were the basis of the complex of buildings of the Ringstrasse. By the late 1800s, these ideals were being attacked from the political right and left. Culturally, the new psychology of Sigmund Freud and a new generation of artists and thinkers attacked the underlying assumptions of rationality. (See the bibliography, especially the books by Schorske and Kandel).

 

Austria-Hungary’s political and social elite saw the changes in the Empire as mostly negative, including a threat to their dominant position in society and government. They kept the new economic elite out of government and out of the higher reaches of Viennese society. The newly wealthy channeled their energy into supporting culture, especially music (an obsession of Vienna). Their sons became doctors, lawyers, scientists, professors and intellectuals. Probably the most famous were Gustave Mahler and Sigmund Freud.

 

There is an irony surrounding the expansion of male suffrage in Austria-Hungary in 1882. It led to the rise of the Christian Social Party, a right-wing populist party that was a political counterweight to the socialist Social Democrats. The party leader, Karl Lueger, appealed to a voting base of mostly German-speaking lower middle-class artisans and shopkeepers who were losing their economic security and status to a rising liberal capitalist class. He allied his party to conservative, reactionary and religious elements. The party appealed to clerical Catholicism, German nationalism, and traditional values, Mr. Lueger became very popular and was elected mayor of Vienna (1897-1910). As mayor, he initiated and managed new public works projects in Vienna that benefitted his constituency. Eventually, he was reluctantly accepted by the court and the aristocracy. 

 

Mr. Lueger and the Christian Social Party used anti-Semitism as an effective political weapon. Karl Lueger did not create the populist anti-Semitism of Vienna but shrewdly exploited it for political gain. (for an excellent depiction of Vienna in this period, see the Netflix detective series Vienna Blood).

 

The party advocated racist policies against non-German speaking minorities. It supported a bill to restrict immigration of Russian and Romanian Jews into Austria-Hungary. After World War I, the Christian Social Party would morph into a Fascist party that dominated Austrian politics until the Anschluss (union) with fascist Germany in 1938.

 

The old order and the newer liberal capitalist order were also attacked by the rise of an industrial working class politically organized by a strong socialist party, the Social Democratic Party. 

 

One person living in Vienna who watched and learned from the success of the political rhetoric of the Christian Social Party and the mass organizing techniques of Social Democrats was Adolph Hitler.

 

There is a brilliant study of Vienna in the decades before the war, 

Fin-De-Siecle Vienna by Carl Schorske. It describes the increasing strains in Vienna; it also reminds us that trends in politics, economics, culture and art can be interrelated and feed back on each other in times of heightened social stress.

 

IMPACT OF WORLD WAR ONE

 

Austria-Hungary was destroyed by the internal stresses made worse by World War I. After the war, Austria and Hungary split apart into separate nation-states. Most of the nationalities in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire also became separate nation-states. They were unstable amidst the chaos and violence that followed World War I, new democracies that often quickly became authoritarian. Governments and ultra-nationalist organizations resorted to violent adjustments including killing and forcing out minorities. Instability and chaos made Central European countries vulnerable to Communist appeal, authoritarian governments and then an expansionist Nazi Germany. (see Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished:  Why the First World War Failed to End)

 

POSSIBLE MODERN ANALOGY?

 

Austria-Hungary may serve as an imperfect but suggestive historical analogy to the European Union. 

 

In the end, Austria-Hungary could not resolve the conflict between the antiquated, dysfunctional multinational political structure it inherited from the Habsburg monarchy and the rising nationalisms of the many ethnic groups in the empire. The movement of population, especially religious and ethnic minorities, from the rural areas to cities generated social strains somewhat analogous to the impact today of labor mobility and immigration in Europe.

The Austro-Hungarian empire was a monarchy containing many ethnic nationalities. The European Union is based on nation-states that freely join and can peacefully leave. World War I, World War II and their immediate aftermaths were a historical watershed that separated the two political worlds. But the expansion of markets, both industrial and financial, from national to regional to global creates new tensions between and within the sovereign nation-states. 

 

These tensions are mitigated by regional organizations such as the European Union. But the European Union is blamed by nationalist leaders for the dislocations and stresses caused by technological and organizational change. If the EU collapses, it will be due to political, economic, social and cultural factors that were similar to those that ripped Austria-Hungary apart.

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Bibliography:  Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian Empire

 

John Stoye, The Siege of Vienna:  The Last Great Trial Between Cross and Crescent

 

Detailed account of Ottoman Turk siege of Vienna in 1683.  Ottoman defeat led to the eventual loss of much of the Balkans and reorientation of Habsburg foreign policy from west to east.  Roots of later conflicts in the Balkans.  Shows how extremely complicated European politics were.

 

Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years:  Europe, 1900-1914. 2008.

 

Despite the book's structure of picking one theme in each year, surprisingly insightful look at the years before WWI.  Attempts at parallels to current (or continuing) society.  Emphasizes psychological stress and social disruption caused by economic change, and their political and cultural consequences.  Like Schorske’s book, does not delve too deeply into causes.

 

Carl Schorske, Fin-De-Siecle Vienna:  Politics and Culture. 1980.

 

Brilliant book on how the liberal, capitalist, upper middle classes lost political and especially cultural dominance in Vienna. The cultural, political and intellectual façade of Vienna was made visible by the Ringstrasse buildings. There was an artistic and psychoanalytic attack on the rationalist and ordered culture of Vienna. In the background was the gradual disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nice tie-in with Morton’s book.

 

Eric Kandel, The Age of Insight:  The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present

 

Brilliant book by a Nobel Prize winner in biology.  Worthy successor to Schorske. Attempts to link innovations in thinking in medicine, psychology and art, with the theme of looking below the surface. Origins of one psychology of the mind and influence on later art criticism. Interesting that Freud didn’t seem to be interested in modern art in Vienna or had more contact with contemporary artists. Author also argues painters seemed to be more interested in the psychology of women than Freud, whose explanations were superficial and stereotyped.

 

Frederic Morton, Thunder at Twilight:  Vienna 1913/1914

 

A number of extraordinary stories filled with irony. How Vienna miscalculated. Vignettes of famous people in Vienna during this period.

Geoffrey Wawro, A Mad Catastrophe:  The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire.  2014.

 

Excellent history of the combination of unreality, arrogance and stupidity of the military and political leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that led to World War I.  Mostly a military history of the performance of the Austro-Hungarian army during the first year of the war. Incredible incompetence and confusion leading to defeats and horrific casualties.


Simon Winder, Danubia:  A Personal History of Habsburg Europe.

 

Quirky, funny history/travel/personal thoughts on Habsburg Empire.  Last part emphasizes the history of the Balkans in 18th and 19th Century – the retreat of the Ottoman Empire and the breakup of Austria-Hungary, which led to the release of virulent nationalisms and “ethnic cleansing.”  Continued during WWII and after the war, into 1990s. 


There are some wonderful Austrian novels that illustrate the brittle façade and slow disintegration of Austria-Hungary in the decades preceding WWI. Probably the starting point is Joseph Roth’s The Radetzky March. The Radetzky March commemorated an earlier Austrian military victory. The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra still plays this song as the climax to its New Year’s Eve concert.

 

For the psychological disintegration of the upper classes, see the novel by Robert Musil, A Man Without Qualities.

 

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For related posts, which could be read in order or separately, see







For a list of all posts, with links, on this blog, see List of Posts by Topic

 

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