The First World War and German National Identity: The Dual Alliance at War 1107031672, 9781107031678

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on place names and terminology
Abbreviations
Introduction
1 The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914
2 The Dual Alliance and the outbreak of war
3 The idea of Austria-Hungary
4 The Habsburg Monarchy in German history
5 Mitteleuropa and the war aims debate
6 The Hungarian alliance partner
7 The Polish problem
8 The nationality question in Austria
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The First World War and German National Identity

The First World War and German National Identity is an original and carefully researched study of the coalition between Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War. Focusing on the attitudes taken by governmental circles, politically active groups, intellectuals, and the broader public towards the German-speaking population in the Habsburg Monarchy, Jan Vermeiren explores how the war challenged established notions of German national identity and history. In this context, he also sheds new light on key issues in the military and the diplomatic relationship between Berlin and Vienna, re-examining the German war aims debate and presenting many new insights into German-Hungarian and German-Slav relations in the period. The book is a major contribution to German and Central European history and will be of great interest to scholars of the First World War and the complex relationship between war and society. Jan Vermeiren is Lecturer in Modern German History at the University of East Anglia.

Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare General Editor Jay Winter, Yale University Advisory Editors David Blight, Yale University Richard Bosworth, University of Western Australia Peter Fritzsche, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Carol Gluck, Columbia University Benedict Kiernan, Yale University Antoine Prost, Université de Paris-Sorbonne Robert Wohl, University of California, Los Angeles In recent years the field of modern history has been enriched by the exploration of two parallel histories. These are the social and cultural history of armed conflict, and the impact of military events on social and cultural history. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare presents the fruits of this growing area of research, reflecting both the colonization of military history by cultural historians and the reciprocal interest of military historians in social and cultural history, to the benefit of both. The series offers the latest scholarship in European and non-European events from the 1850s to the present day. A full list of titles in the series can be found at: www.cambridge.org/modernwarfare

The First World War and German National Identity The Dual Alliance at War Jan Vermeiren University of East Anglia

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107031678 © Jan Vermeiren 2016 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2016 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Vermeiren, Jan, author. The First World War and German national identity : the dual alliance at war / Jan Vermeiren. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Series: Studies in the social and cultural history of modern warfare | Includes bibliographical references and index. LCCN 2016017585 | ISBN 9781107031678 (alk. paper) LCSH: World War, 1914–1918 – Germany. | World War, 1914–1918 – Austria. | World War, 1914–1918 – Influence. | Group identity – Political aspects – Germany. | Group identity – Political aspects – Austria. | Germany – Foreign relations – Austria. | Austria – Foreign relations – Germany. LCC D515 .V45 2016 | DDC 940.3/43–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017585 ISBN 978-1-107-03167-8 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgments Note on place names and terminology List of abbreviations Introduction

page vi xi xii 1

1

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

16

2

The Dual Alliance and the outbreak of war

49

3

The idea of Austria-Hungary

73

4

The Habsburg Monarchy in German history

120

5

Mitteleuropa and the war aims debate

145

6

The Hungarian alliance partner

183

7

The Polish problem

223

8

The nationality question in Austria

270

Conclusion

329

Bibliography Index

356 424

v

Acknowledgments

As a German who was born and raised in the city of Dresden and has spent a large part of his adult life in Britain, I have long been impressed by the human desire and ability to overcome enmities, to forgive and to reconcile. The destruction and suffering caused by war, often accompanied by blind hatred and excessive nationalism, are usually, and quite understandably, at the centre of scholarly research into the relationship between war and society. While military conflicts undoubtedly promote xenophobia and feelings of vengeance, I believe they can also foster intercultural awareness and interaction. Concepts of the enemy are essential for the formation and maintenance of group identities at war, yet what has been largely neglected are notions of solidarity and community, not least with regard to military allies and international partners. Indeed, many modern wars have not been conflicts between isolated states but clashes of coalitions, although such partnerships can influence public opinion and perceptions during peacetime as well. My interest in these issues goes back to my childhood in the German Democratic Republic and was probably sparked by the visit of Soviet soldiers to my kindergarten class and the common rhetoric of friendship among Warsaw Pact member countries. I later grew up on a former Napoleonic battlefield, on my way to school daily passing by a small but remarkable memorial in honour of a French general fighting with the Sixth Coalition, with three oak trees representing Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Somewhat ironically perhaps, this book is about another war and another alliance, but as I learned during the course of my research, many key figures of the story – the two ambassadors in Vienna Heinrich von Tschirschky and Botho von Wedel, the publicist and would-be diplomat Viktor Naumann, and the renegade Karl Max von Lichnowsky – had been educated at the Vitzthumsche Gymnasium from which I happened to graduate more than a century later. vi

Acknowledgments

vii

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to express my gratitude to the many people who have shaped my thinking and helped me to complete this book. The initial idea for it originated many years ago in one of Heinrich August Winkler’s legendary seminars at the Humboldt University of Berlin. I am grateful for his comments and for encouraging me to develop this topic further. I am equally indebted to Wolfgang Hardtwig for his guidance and generous support over the years - without him, I would probably never have received funding from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and the DAAD. Most influential, however, has been my former doctoral supervisor Mark Hewitson, and I thank him for his sage advice, trust, and understanding. His good humour and enthusiasm have made it an enormous pleasure and great privilege to work with him. I can only hope that I will be as helpful to my own research students now. Mary Fulbrook, Stefan Berger, and John Breuilly also provided me with much inspiration and invaluable suggestions. More recently, Thomas Otte has been a truly brilliant source of information and insights, not least about those quondam vitzthumiani mentioned above. I would also like to thank Mark Cornwall and Laurence Cole for taking an interest in my work and for offering me constructive feedback. I am further obliged to Stephanie Bird, Judith Beniston, Martin Moll, Johannes Leicht, Heather Jones, Matthew Stibbe, Karina Urbach, Andrea Meissner, Hajime Konno, Dirk Rose, Rüdiger vom Bruch, and Ug˘ ur Ümit Üngör. For allowing me to present my ideas and for their warm hospitality, I am grateful to the many organisers of conferences and research seminars, in particular from the International Society for First World War Studies, the German History Society, the German Historical Institute London, and the Institute of Historical Research. Over the years, I have received funding from various organisations and I should like to use this opportunity to acknowledge this support. I was extremely fortunate to be awarded a Marie Curie Doctoral Fellowship at University College London. Several smaller grants from the Modern Humanities Research Association, the Department of History at the University of Essex, and the School of History at the University of East Anglia made it possible to carry out further archival research and to participate in academic events. Thanks are also owed to the staffs of the Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, the Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, the Bayrisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, and the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna. The librarians at the following institutions have been very helpful and cooperative: the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the British Library, the German Historical Institute London, the Institute of Historical

viii

Acknowledgments

Research, the Sächsische Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, the Stadt- und Landesbibliothek Vienna, and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België. I also made extensive use of the libraries at the Humboldt University, the University of Vienna, University College London, and the University of East Anglia. This work has been long in the making. The first book is always a particular challenge and, as many early-career academics will confirm, high teaching loads and an increasing amount of administrative duties leave only little time for research and scholarly work after the PhD. The ground covered and the material presented here are immense, and the difficulties only seemed to increase the closer I came to completing the manuscript. I would have liked to visit the Militärarchiv in Freiburg and the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna to shed more light on military relations between Germany and Austria-Hungary, but hope that the sources consulted are sufficient for the purpose of what is essentially an intellectual and cultural history of the Dual Alliance at war. A few comparative reflections, for example with regard to the Entente Powers or the alliances of the Second World War (particularly the special relationship between Britain and the United States) would have required more time (and research) than was available, and are perhaps best left to other and more competent hands. Despite various delays, Cambridge University Press have been extremely supportive. The patience and understanding shown by Michael Watson, Amanda George, and Ian McIver, as well as by Aishwariya Ravi from Integra, were invaluable and very much appreciated. I would also like to thank the various peer-reviewers for their useful suggestions and encouragement, and the copy-editors for their meticulous efforts. Various publishers have kindly allowed me to reuse material first published elsewhere. Portions of the first chapter appeared with Wiley in ‘Germany, Austria, and the Idea of the German Nation, 1871-1914’, History Compass, 9/3 (2011), 200-14. An earlier and shorter version of the second chapter was first published in ‘The “Rebirth of Greater Germany”: The Austro-German Alliance and the Outbreak of War’, in H. Jones et al. (eds.), Untold War: New Perspectives in First World War Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 209-30. I also acknowledge two further publications with parts reproduced here: ‘Imperium Europaeum: Rudolf Pannwitz and the German Idea of Europe’, in M. Hewitson and M. D’Auria (eds.), Europe in Crisis: Intellectuals and the European Idea, 1917-1957 (New York: Berghahn, 2012), pp. 135-54, and ‘NationState and Empire in German Political Thought: Europe and the Myth of the Reich’, in V. Dini and M. D’Auria (eds.), The Space of Crisis: Images

Acknowledgments

ix

and Ideas of Europe in the Age of Crisis, 1914-1945 (Brussels: PIE Peter Lang, 2013), pp. 135-60. Studying the past can be a fascinating but also demanding and consuming undertaking, and it is thanks to my family and friends that I have not completely forgotten to live in the present. Matthew Douglas has accompanied my academic endeavours since the first semester at the Humboldt University with a lot of wit and enthusiasm. He read the very first drafts and has been an outstanding friend for nearly twenty years now. I am also indebted to Eva, Farha, and Tara for their support and understanding. Maja kindly and competently read most of the manuscript after completion and helped to eliminate many Teutonic Schachtelsätze. The School of History at the University of East Anglia has been my professional home for several years now, and I count myself lucky to work in such a pleasant and stimulating environment. A big collective thank you will have to suffice here as there are simply too many names to list. But a few people do stand out. Ever since we started our doctorates at UCL, Matthew D’Auria has been a brilliant and most inspiring friend and colleague. His advice, humour, and cordiality have been invaluable to me. Richard Deswarte, another fellow Europeanist, is one of the most hard-working and helpful persons I know. He listened to many of my anecdotes and ideas with admirable patience and sympathy, and (together with his lovely wife Adri) has looked after me like a big brother. Matthias Neumann has been one of my closest friends since I joined UEA. The manuscript may well have taken even longer without his regular checks and aid, and I do hope to be able to share a few more end-of-week pints with him now, if only to lament the state of East German football and the match results of the Canaries. While this book would be very different without all the help I have received over the years, it goes without saying that all remaining mistakes are entirely my own. My greatest thanks, however, go to my family which has lived with this project for many years. My parents and my brother Peer have always been very understanding of my passion for the humanities and things long past. I would not have been able to complete this book without their love, support, and encouragement (and logistical assistance, I should add) over all those years. I am also grateful to Peer and Mirka for their warm hospitality and for showing me around Slovakia, thus reminding me of the important non-German and non-Magyar aspects of Habsburg and post-Habsburg history. My dear grandmother Inge in PotsdamBabelsberg was looking forward to the publication of the book but sadly passed away during the final stages of the production process. Shortly before her death, she forwarded some family documents of which I had

x

Acknowledgments

not been aware. Apparently, my great-grandfather Max joined the Prussian Gardekorps as a 17-year-old recruit in summer 1918 and later transferred to Belgium to train as a machine gun sharpshooter, but it seems that he was fortunate enough not to see any military action before the end of the war. I dedicate this book to my family, especially those who suffered from war and its consequences. Jan Vermeiren Berlin, February 2016

Note on place names and terminology

Any study of the rich and complex history of the Habsburg Empire faces the problem of nomenclature. The term ‘Austria’ here denotes the western or Cisleithanian half of the Dual Monarchy, even though the non-Hungarian lands were officially known as ‘the kingdoms and countries represented in the Reichsrat’ (until October 1915). While I have tried to be as clear and specific as possible, contemporaries often employed imprecise terminology. The ‘Austrian miracle’, for example, which conveyed the notion of a Habsburg Burgfrieden, frequently included Hungary and the Magyars. On the other hand, many authors only referred to the German-speaking population when discussing ‘Austria’ and ‘the Austrians’. For practical reasons but without sharing the concept of a ‘German Austria’, I have also occasionally used ‘Austrian’ and ‘Austro-German’ interchangeably. I hope the context clarifies what is meant in all these cases. As for the names of places, especially those in former German-speaking areas, I have retained the German forms and provided the current names in parentheses.

xi

Abbreviations

AB ADV AfM AfS AHY AOK APuZ APZ AR AT ATA AZ BArch BBC BBZ BHSA BLA BM BNN BSt BT BVP BW CDI CEH DA DAZ DDP DE DiA DK xii

Alldeutsche Blätter Alldeutscher Verband Arbeitsauschuß für Mitteleuropa Archiv für Sozialgeschichte Austrian History Yearbook Armeeoberkommando (Austria-Hungary) Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte Augsburger Postzeitung Akademische Rundschau Alldeutsches Tagblatt (Deutsche Presse) Allgemeiner Tiroler Anzeiger Arbeiter-Zeitung Bundesarchiv, Berlin Berliner Börsen-Courier Berliner Börsen-Zeitung Bayrisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Munich Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger Berliner Morgenpost Berliner Neueste Nachrichten Bayerische Staatszeitung Berliner Tageblatt Bayerische Volkspartei Bühne und Welt Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller Central European History Deutsche Arbeit Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung Deutsche Demokratische Partei Deutschlands Erneuerung Das Deutschtum im Ausland Deutscher Kurier

List of abbreviations

DN DNN DNV DÖ DÖUWV DOV DP DR DrA DrN DS DTZ DüZ DVB DVLP DVZ DZ ECE EEQ EHR EJST ESWZ FB FK FrZ FVP FWWS FZ GD GH GPEK GT GWU GZ HE HHStA HJ HJb HK HN

xiii

Deutsche Nachrichten Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten Deutscher Nationalverband Deutsch-Österreich Deutsch-Österreichisch-Ungarischer Wirtschaftsverband Deutscher Ostmarkenverein Deutsche Politik Deutsche Rundschau Dresdner Anzeiger Dresdner Nachrichten Diplomacy & Statecraft Deutsche Tageszeitung Düsseldorfer Zeitung Deutsches Volksblatt Deutsche Vaterlandspartei Deutsche Volkszeitung Deutsche Zeitung East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre-Est East European Quarterly English Historical Review European Journal of Social Theory Europäische Staats- und Wirtschaftszeitung Der Fränkische Bauer Fränkischer Kurier Freisinnige Zeitung Fortschrittliche Volkspartei First World War Studies Frankfurter Zeitung Das Größere Deutschland German History Lepsius, et al. (eds.), Die Große Politik der Europäischen Kabinette 1871–1914 Grazer Tagblatt Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht Goslarsche Zeitung Hamburger Echo Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna Historical Journal Historisches Jahrbuch Hannoverscher Kurier Hamburger Nachrichten

xiv

List of abbreviations

HPB HSR HZ IHR IJCS IM IN JCH JE JGO JMEH JMH JMiH KHZ KM KMS KNN k.u.k. KVZ KZ LE LNN MAA MEWV MGM MIÖG MLR MNN MÖSTA MP MZ NAZ ND NFP NLP NP NPZ NR NS NSDAP

Historisch-politische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland Hungarian Studies Review Historische Zeitschrift International History Review International Journal of Comparative Sociology Internationale Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik Innsbrucker Nachrichten Journal of Contemporary History Das junge Europa Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas Journal of Modern European History Journal of Modern History Journal of Military History Königsberger Hartungsche Zeitung Konservative Monatsschrift Korrespondenz des Mitteleuropäischen Staatenbundes Kieler Neueste Nachrichten kaiserlich und königlich Kölnische Volkszeitung Kölnische Zeitung Das literarische Echo Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten München-Augsburger Abendzeitung Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung The Modern Language Review Münchner Neueste Nachrichten Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs Münchener Post Magdeburgische Zeitung Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung Das neue Deutschland Neue Freie Presse Nationalliberale Partei Nationalities Papers Neue Preußische Zeitung (Kreuzzeitung) Neue Rundschau Nord und Süd Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei

List of abbreviations

NWJ NWT NZ NZZ OdR OHL ÖR ÖV ÖVZ OW PAAA PB PEGS PfP PJ PK PL PPHIR PrT PT RWV RWZ SchT SG SJ SLHA SM SNT SodA SoM SPD StZ SZ TR UA UF USPD VDA VfS VK

xv

Neues Wiener Journal Neues Wiener Tagblatt Die Neue Zeit Neue Zürcher Zeitung Ostdeutsche Rundschau Oberste Heeresleitung Österreichische Rundschau Der Österreichische Volkswirt Oesterreichische Volks-Zeitung Ostdeutsche Wissenschaft Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin Polnische Blätter Publications of the English Goethe Society Pfälzische Post Preußische Jahrbücher Pfälzischer Kurier Pester Lloyd Prague Papers on the History of International Relations Prager Tagblatt Posener Tageblatt Reichsdeutsche Waffenbrüderliche Vereinigung Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung Schwäbisches Tagblatt Scherer and Grunewald (eds.), L’Allemagne et les problèmes de la paix Schmollers Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden Süddeutsche Monatshefte Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt Südostdeutsches Archiv Sozialistische Monatshefte Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands Stimmen der Zeit (Stimmen aus Maria Laach) Süddeutsche Zeitung Tägliche Rundschau Unabhängiger Ausschuß für einen Deutschen Frieden Michaelis, et al. (eds.), Ursachen und Folgen Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland Verein für Socialpolitik Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte

xvi

VZ WaM WB WdZ WiH WR WüZ WZ ZfO ZfP ZKG

List of abbreviations

Vossische Zeitung Welt am Montag Die Weißen Blätter Wirtschaftszeitung der Zentralmächte War in History Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau Württemberger Zeitung Weser-Zeitung Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forsschung Zeitschrift für Politik Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte

Introduction

When war broke out in August 1914, many German intellectuals and politicians anticipated positive effects on state and society, a regeneration of the nation. ‘The Germany emerging from the war will be different from the one which went into it’, the sociologist Georg Simmel stated a few months after the beginning of hostilities, assuming that the struggle would lead to ‘a separation between what is still viable and procreative and what clings to the past and has no future: humans and institutions, ideologies and moral standards’.1 Thomas Mann, widely renowned for his fine novels and stories, similarly spoke of a ‘great, fundamentally decent, and in fact stirring people’s war’ and asked: ‘This peaceful world which has now collapsed with staggering thunder – had we not all been tired of it? Had it not become rotten with all its comfort?’2 Both authors belonged to a host of war-inspired enthusiasts who embraced the conflict as a purifying and integrating force bringing an end to the maladies of the period, to party strife and class struggle, to cultural decadence and materialism.3 Like Kaiser Wilhelm II, they envisaged a civil truce and national solidarity as a consequence of the war: ‘Now I know no parties or confessions; today we are all German brothers.’4 In an early wartime 1 2

3

4

G. Simmel, ‘Deutschlands innere Wandlung’ (1914), in G. Simmel, Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Reden und Aufsätze, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1917), pp. 7–29 (pp. 9, 18). T. Mann to H. Mann, 18 September 1914, in R. Winston and C. Winston (eds.), Letters of Thomas Mann, 1889–1955 (Berkeley, CA, 1990), p. 67; T. Mann to S. Fischer, 22 August 1914, quoted in H. Helbling, ‘Vorwort’, in T. Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 4th ed. (Frankfurt/M., 2009), pp. 7–25 (p. 8). K. Schwabe, Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral. Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die politischen Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkrieges (Göttingen, 1969); K. Böhme (ed.), Aufrufe und Reden deutscher Professoren im Ersten Weltkrieg, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 2014); W.J. Mommsen (ed.), Kultur und Krieg. Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, 1996); K. Flasch, Die geistige Mobilmachung. Die deutschen Intellektuellen und der Erste Weltkrieg. Ein Versuch (Berlin, 2000); J. Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge, 2000); P. Hoeres, Krieg der Philosophen. Die deutsche und britische Philosophie im Ersten Weltkrieg (Paderborn, 2004). Speech of 1 August 1914, quoted from J.C.G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941 (Cambridge, 2014), p. 1109. On this particular aspect of German war ideology and related demands for political reforms, see M. Llanque, Demokratisches

1

2

The First World War and German National Identity

essay, the philosopher Leopold Ziegler wrote that the Germans had become ‘one self-conscious collectivity and union of experience, in which the individual only exists and is real insofar as he participates in this awakening’. In his opinion, the Germans had found ‘a new form of life’: ‘We are no longer a crowded herd of servants, subdued and enslaved for whatever purpose by the almightiness of gold; we are no artificial association of separate creatures but one single and active human being with millions of organs.’5 Together with the outbursts of xenophobia amongst broad sections of German popular opinion, increased antiSemitism, and the circulation of large-scale annexation and resettlement plans, these and many similar examples have been read as evidence for the radicalization of German national thought and practice after 1914. Peter Fritzsche has pointed to another important aspect: ‘Over the course of four wartime winters, Germans would mobilize their energies, vitalize public life, and rearrange their political conceptions around the nation rather than the state or the monarchy. More than anything else in the twentieth century, the First World War transformed German nationalism by giving it an emotional depth and tying it to social reform and political entitlement.’6 The latter part of this statement is somewhat debatable given the experiences of National Socialism, Holocaust, total defeat, and the post-1945 division of the country, but it is true that the First World War challenged substantially the social, economic, and political status quo of the Kaiserreich. The emperor and his regime increasingly lost authority and prestige to Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, successful military leaders whose position and influence were not based on constitutional rights but on popular support.7 Widely seen as selflessly representing the will and interests of the nation, the rise of these charismatic figures reveals the extent to which ‘the German people’ had become the source of political legitimacy. However, it is

5 6 7

Denken im Krieg. Die deutsche Debatte im Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 2000); S. Bruendel, Volksgemeinschaft oder Volksstaat? Die ‘Ideen von 1914’ und die Neuordnung Deutschlands im Ersten Weltkrieg (Berlin, 2003); W. Pyta and C. Kretschmann (eds.), Burgfrieden und Union Sacrée. Literarische Deutungen und politische Ordnungsvorstellungen in Deutschland und Frankreich 1914–1933 (Munich, 2011). With a focus on the activities and debates at the universities of Berlin, Gießen, and Strasbourg, see now T. Maurer, ‘. . . und wir gehören auch dazu’. Universität und ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 2015). L. Ziegler, ‘Der metaphysische Krieg’ (1914), in L. Ziegler, Der deutsche Mensch (Berlin, 1915), pp. 9–19 (p. 13). P. Fritzsche, Germans into Nazis, pb. ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1999), p. 28. See M. Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916–1918 (New York, 1976); R.B. Asprey, The German High Command at War: Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the First World War (London, 1991); W. Pyta, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohenzollern und Hitler (Munich, 2007); A. v. d. Goltz, Hindenburg: Power, Myth, and the Rise of the Nazis (Oxford, 2009); M. Nebelin, Ludendorff. Diktator im Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, 2010).

Introduction

3

unclear whether the often passionate process of national introspection and the notion of a more inclusive Volksgemeinschaft – which became soon overshadowed by a polarized debate on war aims and political reforms – also applied to the ethnic Germans living beyond the borders of the nation-state, or whether it retained an exclusively domestic dimension. For post-war commentators from the national right, the answer was evident. In their view, the First World War had been ‘the third and greatest of all the German wars of unification’.8 Max Hildebert Boehm, for instance, an important völkisch representative of the Conservative Revolution, claimed that ‘the difference between ethnic Germandom and Reich Germandom’ had been overcome ‘in the war community of hardship’.9 The right-wing historian Wilhelm Schüßler similarly held that ‘the wartime experience had put an end to the narrow statist conception’ of the German nation: ‘In reality, the World War was a German war. This is how a gesamtdeutsch national consciousness came about.’10 Such interpretations were advanced with obvious political intent, not least to bolster German revisionist claims in the interwar period, but the general argument has proved persistent. In his classic study of the Mitteleuropa idea, Henry Cord Meyer pointed to the protracted experience of the ‘economic blockade and ideological isolation’, the novel and exhilarating realization of ‘the vast military-geographic panorama opening to the East and SouthEast’, and ‘the fact of discovering kinsmen in remote parts of the midEuropean area, personally experienced by at least a million men’ to explain the sense of togetherness between Weimar Germans and Germandom abroad. In his opinion, these events had made ‘a permanent impression on the thinking and attitudes of Germans at a time of acutely aggravated national sensitivity’.11 Referring in particular to the popularity of radical-nationalist dreams of conquest and imperial domination, several historians have maintained that ‘with the onset of war, PanGermanism was transformed from the fervent creed of a small minority to a widespread belief’.12 More recently, Annemarie Sammartino has 8

9 10

11 12

W. Grieshammer, ‘Review of: Hans Erich Feine, Das Werden des Deutschen Staates seit dem Ausgang des Heiligen Römischen Reiches 1800–1933. Eine verfassungsgeschichtliche Darstellung (Stuttgart, 1936)’, HZ, 160 (1939), 141–5 (p. 145). M.H. Boehm, Grenzdeutsch – Großdeutsch (Dresden, 1925), p. 1. W. Schüßler, ‘Mitteleuropa als Schicksal und Wirklichkeit’ (1937), in W. Schüßler, Deutsche Einheit und gesamtdeutsche Geschichtsbetrachtung. Aufsätze und Reden (Stuttgart, 1937), pp. 149–89 (p. 151). H.C. Meyer, Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1815–1945 (The Hague, 1955), p. 291. A.P. Thompson, Left Liberals, the State, and Popular Politics in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford, 2000), p. 374. With a similar tendency, see, for example, W.D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (Oxford, 1986); M. Peters, Völkisches Gedankengut und deutsche Kriegszieldiskussion während des Ersten Weltkrieges

4

The First World War and German National Identity

demonstrated the wartime interest in the situation of the Baltic and Volga Germans of tsarist Russia which ‘encouraged fantasies of territorial expansion’ and challenged ‘the imagined unity of nation, state, and territory’ in Germany.13 Focusing on the relationship between Imperial Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy, this book explores such conceptions and investigates how far German wartime nationalism really constituted a break with pre-war statism and national thought. In the view of many contemporaries, the Dual Alliance between Berlin and Vienna was not a conventional coalition. In most cases, states enter into such diplomatic agreements on the basis of shared aims and interests regarding foreign affairs and questions of national security. There can also be common economic concerns and sometimes, too, certain values and ideologies which underlie joint actions and strategies. All this holds true for the partnership between the German Reich and Austria-Hungary, but, compared to the Triple Entente, it stood out because of the historical and ethno-cultural ties between both countries. Informed by recent theories of nations and nationalism, this work studies the character and evolution of this special relationship under the conditions of war and analyses the impact of comradeship-in-arms on German national identity. It examines the attitudes of senior decision-makers, politically active groups, and intellectuals towards their ‘fellow’ Germans in the Habsburg Monarchy to establish the essence and intensity of the spirit of solidarity between the allied powers, often described in terms of Nibelungentreue, and asks to what extent it led to a re-evaluation of the kleindeutsch paradigm and more openness to different conceptions of the German nation. It is quite remarkable that this subject matter has so far gone almost completely unnoticed. To be sure, several authors have already dealt with the complicated and often tense situation between the two allies during the war, most notably Gary W. Shanafelt. However, like most works on the Entente experience or the coalitions of the Second World War, these accounts concentrate on alliance politics and diplomacy, on economic issues or matters of military cooperation rather than patterns of perception and public debates. Exploring the various disagreements and conflicts about joint warfare and strategic planning, the occupation of Poland

13

(Nordhausen, 2007); V.G. Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East, 1800 to the Present (Oxford, 2009); S. Baranowski, Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (Cambridge, 2011). With a focus on German anthropological science: A.D. Evans, Anthropology at War: World War I and the Science of Race in Germany (Chicago, IL, 2010). A.H. Sammartino, The Impossible Border: Germany and the East, 1914–1922 (Ithaca, NY, 2010), pp. 11, 3.

Introduction

5

and Romania, or the Mitteleuropa project, they show how the Dual Monarchy gradually fell into the position of a junior partner.14 The centenary of the outbreak of the First World War has led to the publication of several new books on the Central Powers. The revised edition of Holger Herwig’s classic volume provides an excellent political and military history of Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy during the war.15 It is complemented by Alexander Watson’s social history of the two belligerent countries, which offers a wealth of new information and fascinating insights.16 In both cases, however, there is relatively little on the cultural history of the war. Apart from military and, to a lesser extent, diplomatic aspects, Imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary are discussed separately from each other; questions of national identity and the impact of the wartime experience on the relationship between Reich Germans and Austro-Germans are not considered. It is one of the aims of this study to fill this gap. Reflecting the shift from a political and military to a social and cultural history of the First World War, several recent studies have examined German war nationalism.17 But while enemy images, for example, have been well investigated, other important features of German war ideology, such as the renaissance of the Reich myth, have been overlooked.18 14

15 16 17

18

See the classic studies by G.E. Silberstein, The Troubled Alliance: German-Austrian Relations 1914–1917 (Lexington, KY, 1970); I. Gonda, Verfall der Kaiserreiche in Mitteleuropa. Der Zweibund in den letzten Kriegsjahren (1916–1918), trans. by P. and T. Alpári (Budapest, 1977); G.W. Shanafelt, The Secret Enemy: Austria-Hungary and the German Alliance, 1914–1918 (New York, 1985); W.J. Mommsen, ‘Das Deutsche Reich und Österreich-Ungarn im Ersten Weltkrieg. Die Herabdrückung ÖsterreichUngarns zum Vasallen der deutschen Politik’, in H. Rumpler and J.P. Niederkorn (eds.), Der ‘Zweibund’ 1879. Das deutsch-österreichisch-ungarische Bündnis und die europäische Diplomatie (Vienna, 1996), pp. 383–407. Also see D. Stevenson, ‘The Politics of the Two Alliances’, in J. Winter et al. (eds.), The Great War and the Twentieth Century: Reflections on World War I (New Haven, CT, 2000), pp. 69–96. Lothar Höbelt’s recent and perceptive study of Austria-Hungary at war refrains from depicting the Habsburg Monarchy as a mere vassal of the German Reich and does better justice to the complexity of the alliance relationship between Berlin and Vienna: L. Höbelt, ‘Stehen oder Fallen?’ Österreichische Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, 2015). H.H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1918, 2nd ed. (London, 2014). A. Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914–1918 (London, 2014). We are now witnessing a trend towards the global and transnational history of the war. For recent historiographical overviews, see J. Winter and A. Prost, The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge, 2005); H. Jones, ‘As the Centenary Approaches: The Regeneration of First World War Historiography’, HJ, 56/3 (2013), 857–78; A. Kramer, ‘Recent Historiography of the First World War’, JMEH, 12/1–2 (2014), 5–27, 155–74. See, in addition to footnote 3, A. Reimann, Der große Krieg der Sprachen. Untersuchungen zur historischen Semantik in Deutschland und England zur Zeit des Ersten Weltkriegs (Essen, 2000); S.O. Müller, Die Nation als Waffe und Vorstellung. Nationalismus in Deutschland und

6

The First World War and German National Identity

Scholars interested in Austro-Hungarian developments have, on the other hand, established the significance of the link with Imperial Germany for the debate on war aims and the reorganization of the multinational empire. The alliance was highly popular with many AustroGermans, who expected a strengthening of their domestic position from the association with the powerful German nation-state.19 Certainly, one question that arises from these findings is whether the coalition played a similarly prominent role for Reich Germans. More generally, it appears that German-Austrian relations after 1866–71, especially when it comes to questions of national identity and sociocultural interaction, have been rather neglected.20 The few existing works concentrate primarily on diplomatic and economic affairs, focus largely on the Dual Monarchy, or disregard the period of the World War.21 The only English-language monograph on the topic was published almost forty years ago by Peter J. Katzenstein, a political scientist.22 Standard accounts of the history of German national identity, such as Stefan Berger’s authoritative survey, usually ignore the Austrian

19

20

21

22

Großbritannien im Ersten Weltkrieg (Göttingen, 2002); U. Sieg, Jüdische Intellektuelle im Ersten Weltkrieg. Kriegserfahrungen, weltanschauliche Debatten und kulturelle Neuentwürfe, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 2008); E. Piper, Nacht über Europa. Kulturgeschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs (Berlin, 2013); S. Bruendel, Zeitenwende 1914. Künstler, Dichter und Denker im Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, 2014). G. Ramhardter, Geschichtswissenschaft und Patriotismus. Österreichische Historiker im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Munich, 1973); B. Morgenbrod, Wiener Großbürgertum im Ersten Weltkrieg. Die Geschichte der ‘Österreichischen Politischen Gesellschaft’ 1916–1918 (Vienna, 1994); G. Streim, ‘“Wien und Berlin” in der Zeit der “Waffenbrüderschaft”. Positionen der österreichischen Kriegspublizistik 1914–1918’, in P. Sprengel and G. Streim, Berliner und Wiener Moderne. Vermittlungen und Abgrenzungen in Literatur, Theater, Publizistik (Vienna, 1998), pp. 244–97; P. Ehrenpreis, Kriegs- und Friedensziele im Diskurs. Regierung und deutschsprachige Öffentlichkeit Österreich-Ungarns während des Ersten Weltkriegs (Innsbruck, 2005). There is no space here to discuss the Erdmann controversy of the late 1980s. See, however, K.D. Erdmann, Die Spur Österreichs in der deutschen Geschichte. Drei Staaten, zwei Nationen, ein Volk? (Zürich, 1989), and G. Botz and G. Sprengnagel (eds.), Kontroversen um Österreichs Zeitgeschichte. Verdrängte Vergangenheit, Österreich-Identität, Waldheim und die Historiker (Frankfurt/M., 1994). R.A. Kann and F.E. Prinz (eds.), Deutschland und Österreich. Ein bilaterales Geschichtsbuch (Vienna, 1980); H. Lutz and H. Rumpler (eds.), Österreich und die deutsche Frage im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Probleme der politisch-staatlichen und soziokulturellen Differenzierung im deutschen Mitteleuropa (Munich, 1982); M. Gehler et al. (eds.), Ungleiche Partner? Österreich und Deutschland in ihrer gegenseitigen Wahrnehmung. Historische Analysen und Vergleiche aus dem 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1996); H. Leidinger et al., Streitbare Brüder: Österreich – Deutschland. Kurze Geschichte einer schwierigen Nachbarschaft (St. Pölten, 2010); U. Schlie, Das Duell. Der Kampf zwischen Habsburg und Preußen um Deutschland (Berlin, 2013). P.J. Katzenstein, Disjoined Partners: Austria and Germany since 1815 (Berkeley, CA, 1976).

Introduction

7

factor after the creation of the nation-state.23 Of the many studies of the extreme right in the Kaiserreich, only Michel Korinman’s and Peter Walkenhorst’s analyses cover the issue to a greater extent, particularly in connection with Pan-German Mitteleuropa conceptions.24 Interestingly, it has been primarily scholars of the Habsburg Empire who have stressed the need to study ‘the ongoing and important interaction among German speakers in the various states of Germany and those in the various provinces of Cisleithanian Austria before 1918’, to quote Nancy M. Wingfield. Mark Cornwall has similarly insisted that it is ‘rather difficult to interpret many aspects of German history without reference to a framework that was also Habsburg – whether the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation or the economic and cultural interactions of 1900 fin de siècle’.25 However, while in the wake of a ‘polycentrist’ and transnational turn in German historiography there has been a veritable explosion of interest in regional and borderland identities as well as in colonial imagination and practice, the actual role of Austria in German national discourse after 1871 up to 1918 (and beyond) still very much remains a desideratum.26 23

24

25

26

M. Hughes, Nationalism and Society: Germany, 1800–1945 (London, 1988); J. Breuilly (ed.), The State of Germany: The National Idea in the Making, Unmaking, and Remaking of a Modern Nation-State (London, 1992); O. Dann, Nation und Nationalismus in Deutschland, 1770–1990, 3rd rev. and exp. ed. (Munich, 1996); H. James, A German Identity: 1770 to the Present Day, 3rd pb. ed. (London, 2000); S. Berger, Inventing the Nation: Germany (London, 2004); T. Rohkrämer, A Single Communal Faith? The German Right from Conservatism to National Socialism (New York, 2007). For a recent overview, see P.M. Judson, ‘Nationalism in the Era of the Nation-State, 1870–1945’, in H.W. Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (Oxford, 2011), pp. 499–526. M. Korinman, Deutschland über alles. Le pangermanisme 1890–1945 (Paris, 1999), pp. 79–127; P. Walkenhorst, Nation – Volk – Rasse. Radikaler Nationalismus im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1890–1914 (Göttingen, 2007), pp. 203–26. On German right-wing politics and radical nationalism, see, with further references, U. Puschner, Die völkische Bewegung im wilhelminischen Kaiserreich. Sprache – Rasse – Religion (Darmstadt, 2001); L. McGowan, The Radical Right in Germany, 1870 to the Present (London, 2002); C. Geulen, Wahlverwandte. Rassendiskurs und Nationalismus im späten 19. Jahrhundert (Hamburg, 2004); J. Retallack, The German Right, 1880–1920: Political Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination (Toronto, 2006). Stefan Breuer has published numerous works on the topic, including Die radikale Rechte in Deutschland 1871–1945. Eine politische Ideengeschichte (Stuttgart, 2010). Both Wingfield and Cornwall contributed to a recent debate on the state of Habsburg history: R. Evans et al., ‘Forum: Habsburg History’, GH, 31/2 (2013), 225–38 (pp. 235–6). For a notable exception, see C.E. Murdock, Changing Places: Society, Culture, and Territory in the Saxon-Bohemian Borderlands, 1870–1946 (Ann Arbor, MI, 2010). For a recent plea for ‘polycentrist’ approaches to the study of German history, see H.G. Penny, ‘German Polycentrism and the Writing of History’, GH, 30/2 (2012), 265–82. For references to recent scholarship on regionalism and colonialism, see Chapter 1.

8

The First World War and German National Identity

Against this background, this work not only presents the first attempt of an intellectual and cultural history of the Dual Alliance during the war (from the point of view of Imperial Germany), but it also raises fundamental questions about the German idea of the Habsburg Monarchy and investigates the pervasiveness of civic and ethnic notions of the German nation. The study demonstrates that the wartime solidarity between Berlin and Vienna created new conditions and enabled certain interest groups to present an alternative idea of the German nation. Catholic and South German publicists as well as some left-liberal advocates of a closer political and economic union between the Central Powers endeavoured to challenge the kleindeutsch paradigm and to bring the Greater German idea with its federalist connotations back to the fore. They were, however, not driven by ethno-national sentiments and distinguished themselves from most politicians and intellectuals with a liberal-nationalist or conservative leaning by greater sympathy for the demands of the nonGerman nationalities. To some extent, the discussion about AustriaHungary thus mirrored the positions in the German debate on war aims and domestic reforms. Remarkably enough, völkisch attitudes played hardly any role in the glorification of the alliance and the discussion about the future relationship between both empires. During the war, the radical right advocated a state-centred rather than ethnic nationalism and ignored Austro-German aspirations whenever they clashed with the interests of the German Reich. The widespread notion of a breakthrough of völkisch thinking in wartime Germany has, at least as far as the GermanAustrian relationship is concerned, to be corrected: not the war itself, but defeat was decisive for the shift towards the ethnic idea of the German nation. Identity politics and mass mobilization: war and the nation The essential role of armed conflicts for nation-building and state formation has repeatedly been studied, including civil wars, wars of national liberation, ethnic clashes, or the break-up of multinational empires as a result of military defeat. But the actual relationship between war and nation or nationalism has long been neglected. Modern war is often brought about by nationalist sentiment and generates, fosters, or radicalizes it at the same time. On closer inspection, however, a more complex picture emerges. The nation, here deemed to be a modern concept that helps to explain and organize social reality by denoting a group of people as belonging together, is not a primordial entity which can be defined by certain

Introduction

9

permanent qualities. Rather, it has to be understood as a socially constructed, ‘imagined community’ which gains authority because of a shared belief in its real existence, the need for orientation in the modern world, the search for a sense of belonging and security. National identity is closely related to the political and social context; its situational and inconsistent disposition allows new definitions and interpretations in the competition for conceptual hegemony. By referring to the nation, various groups attempt to legitimize their interests and enhance their position in the struggle for authority and influence. However, it is only under particular circumstances that certain political and ideological agendas, visions, and interpretations receive social recognition. Such moments, setting new conditions for the redefinition of national identity, can be political and social crises, revolutions, and, last but not least, wars.27 Since the late 18th century, many wars were no longer fought for the benefit of dynastic interests but in the name of the nation.28 The implications were manifold. First, national wars drew on new resources by involving whole societies or significant sections of it, thus often transforming the abstract idea of the nation into a felt community of solidarity. This sense of togetherness was fostered by several elements: intensified social interaction, the experience of threat and insecurity, the demonization of the enemy, and recurring ‘moral’ appeals to give up the personal interest for the national weal. By providing future generations with ‘glorious’ examples of common efforts and sufferings, of bravery and 27

28

E.J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983); B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. and ext. ed. (London, 1991). Recent overviews include A.D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (London, 1998); H.-U. Wehler, Nationalismus. Geschichte, Formen, Folgen (Munich, 2001); P. Spencer and H. Wollman, Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (London, 2002); P. Lawrence, Nationalism: History and Theory (Harlow, 2005); R.-U. Kunze, Nation und Nationalismus (Darmstadt, 2005); S. Weichlein, Nationalbewegungen und Nationalismus in Europa (Darmstadt, 2006); H. Borggräfe and C. Jansen, Nation – Nationalität – Nationalismus (Frankfurt/M., 2007); U. Özkırımlı, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, 2010); J. Breuilly (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism (Oxford, 2013). See, with further references: H.-U. Wehler, ‘Nationalstaat und Krieg’, in W. Rösener (ed.), Staat und Krieg. Vom Mittelalter bis zur Moderne (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 225–40; J. Leonhard, ‘Nation-States and Wars: European and Transatlantic Perspectives’, in T. Baycroft and M. Hewitson (eds.), What Is a Nation? Europe 1789–1914 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 231–53; J. Leonhard, Bellizismus und Nation. Kriegsdeutung und Nationsbestimmung in Europa und den Vereinigten Staaten 1750–1914 (Munich, 2008); D. Moran and A. Waldron (eds.), The People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilization since the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2003); J. Hutchinson, ‘Warfare, Remembrance and National Identity’, in A.S. Leoussi and S. Grosby (eds.), Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture and Ethnicity in the Formation of Nations (Edinburgh, 2007), pp. 42–52.

10

The First World War and German National Identity

self-sacrifice, of legendary victories and desperate resistance – apparently made for the sake of the nation – modern wars have generated myths, shaped collective memory, and become an essential element of national identity. In wartime, the nation appears as an important protagonist, responsible for the war effort and constituting the supreme good to be defended by all means. It is mainly by referring to the national community that military events receive a higher meaning, that existing political, social, and ideological divides are overcome, and that wartime burdens appear justified. In turn, however, such endeavours and sacrifices raise the issue of legitimacy and participation. The appeal to collective solidarity and absolute commitment can cause discord and destabilization. War not only fosters communal spirit but also uncovers conflicts of interests. Behind the rhetoric of unity and harmony, it offers the opportunity to renegotiate the dominant idea of the nation and to enforce certain interests and values. It is in this regard that war as a discursive act, as a moment of intensified communication, and as a projection surface for competing interpretations reflects issues of national identity. What is important is that, in the struggle for ideological hegemony, the articulation of national(ist) messages and standpoints is seldom based on pure inventions but on latent attitudes and beliefs which are reformulated and combined in a novel way. The concepts that come to the fore can draw on former narratives and adapt them to the new situation. They can also produce new interpretations, or – and this is what is of interest here – vindicate suppressed or marginalized designs, such as the Greater German idea that had come to seem insufficiently plausible and substantial in the pre-war period to shape German identity and to play a significant role in practical politics.29 Press, public opinion, and censorship in wartime Germany In contrast to many other studies of German war ideology and nationalism, which concentrate on certain prominent thinkers or specific partypolitical camps, this book adopts a more comprehensive approach in 29

For the wider context, see J. Leonhard, ‘Vom Nationalkrieg zum Kriegsnationalismus – Projektion und Grenze nationaler Integrationsvorstellungen in Deutschland, Großbritannien und den Vereinigten Staaten im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in J. Leonhard and U. v. Hirschhausen (eds.), Nationalismen in Europa. West- und Osteuropa im Vergleich (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 204–40, and S.O. Müller, ‘Die umkämpfte Nation. Legitimationsprobleme im kriegführenden Kaiserreich’, in J. Echternkamp and S.O. Müller (eds.), Die Politik der Nation. Deutscher Nationalismus in Krieg und Krisen, 1760–1960 (Munich, 2002), pp. 149–71.

Introduction

11

order to substantiate the prevalence of certain thought patterns and beliefs within a broader German public. It draws primarily on newspaper and journal articles, pamphlets, printed speeches, and other typical wartime publications by a wide range of authors. These academics and publicists considered themselves as the intellectual elite of the nation and as representatives of the ‘real’ public opinion which, in the words of the historian Hermann Oncken, ‘takes into account not only the today and tomorrow but the great historical context and the consequences for the remote future’.30 However, due to censorship and official propaganda, many Germans were not fully informed about the actual course of the war, the scale of casualties, or the lack of resources. The imposition of a state of siege on 31 July 1914 suspended the freedom of the press and prohibited unauthorized coverage of military events. Overall, the German government lacked a unified press strategy; its efforts were characterized by administrative chaos (involving various civilian and military authorities) and poor coordination. Still, the initial focus on the censorship of sensitive information and critical articles was soon complemented by attempts to influence public discourse more directly, for instance by issuing instructions on how certain developments and events should be commented upon.31 For instance, in 1917 the War Press Office produced a small booklet, admonishing the German press not to disturb the 30

31

H. Oncken, ‘Geschichtsschreibung, Politik und öffentliche Meinung’ (1903/04), in H. Oncken, Historisch-politische Aufsätze und Reden, 2 vols. (Munich, 1914), I, pp. 205–43 (p. 243). On the role of intellectuals, see, more recently, R. v. Bruch, Wissenschaft, Politik und öffentliche Meinung. Gelehrtenpolitik im Wilhelminischen Deutschland (1890–1914) (Husum, 1980) and his Gelehrtenpolitik, Sozialwissenschaften und akademische Diskurse in Deutschland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 2006); G. Schmidt and J. Rüsen (eds.), Gelehrtenpolitik und politische Kultur in Deutschland 1830–1930 (Bochum, 1986); G. Hübinger and W.J. Mommsen (eds.), Intellektuelle im Deutschen Kaiserreich (Frankfurt/M., 1993); B. Giesen, Die Intellektuellen und die Nation, 2 vols. (Frankfurt/M., 1993–99); B. Giesen et al., ‘Vom Patriotismus zum völkischen Denken. Intellektuelle als Konstrukteure der deutschen Identität’, in H. Berding (ed.), Studien zur Entwicklung des kollektiven Bewußtseins in der Neuzeit, 3 vols. (Frankfurt/M., 1991–96), II: Nationales Bewußtsein und kollektive Identität, 2nd ed. (1996), pp. 345–93; G. Hübinger, Gelehrte, Politik und Öffentlichkeit. Eine Intellektuellengeschichte (Göttingen, 2006). On censorship, official propaganda, and press policy, see K. Koszyk, Deutsche Pressepolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1968); J.D. Halliday, ‘Censorship in Berlin and Vienna during the First World War: A Comparative View’, MLR, 83/3 (1988), 612–26; W. Deist, ‘Censorship and Propaganda in Germany during the First World War’, in J.J. Becker and S. Audoin-Rouzeau (eds.), Les sociétés européennes et la guerre de 1914–1918 (Nanterre, 1990), pp. 199–210; M. Creutz, Die Pressepolitik der kaiserlichen Regierung während des Ersten Weltkriegs. Die Exekutive, die Journalisten und der Teufelskreis der Berichterstattung (Frankfurt/M., 1996); J. Wilke, Presseanweisungen im Zwanzigsten Jahrhundert. Erster Weltkrieg – Drittes Reich – DDR (Cologne, 2007); K.-J. Bremm, Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Darmstadt, 2013); D. Welch, Germany and Propaganda in World War I: Pacifism, Mobilization and Total War (London, 2014).

12

The First World War and German National Identity

Burgfrieden and to help boost the population’s morale instead. Journalists and editors were also advised to engage in more detail with the Bulgarian ally, ‘its history, its participation in the current war, and its brave performance’. As for the Habsburg Monarchy, what was desired were ‘references to the spirit of steadfast camaraderie and trust . . . that inspires the allied troops’. More importantly, publicists were expected to ‘show necessary restraint with regard to Austria-Hungary’s economic conditions and measures concerning food provisions’ and to avoid ‘any disturbance of the relationship with our allies and the neutral countries’ in the debate on war aims.32 In January 1918, the Social Democratic newspaper Vorwärts, for example, was banned for three days after the publication of (assenting) reports about the strike movement in Austria-Hungary.33 However, the German press was not only influenced by German agencies; Habsburg officials attempted to shape public opinion in the Kaiserreich, too. They repeatedly complained to the authorities about unfavourable articles in German papers and demanded drastic measures against the authors and editors. The Foreign Ministry in Vienna also launched various proAustrian pieces, bribed journalists and publishers, and funded pamphlets and brochures.34 But the significance of official press policy, which was in any case only deficiently and incoherently executed, should not be overrated. Especially in the first half of the war characterized by euphoria and optimism, the great majority of German opinion leaders voluntarily devoted themselves to the cause of the fatherland. The mobilization of the intellectuals was much more the result of enthused war nationalism than of governmental propaganda efforts or censorship regulations. On the other hand, the control of the media remained important, especially in the more difficult period after 1916. A large variety of archival sources was used for this study as well, especially in connection with the war aims question. In late 1914, a public discussion of territorial claims and other war objectives was banned in order to maintain the domestic truce and to present a more favourable image to the neutral countries. However, as Meyer has highlighted, before its (partial) revocation in November 1916, the regulation had been ‘virtually nullified by private and semi-public discussion, circulation of memoranda “printed as manuscripts”, and contacts of interested groups and individuals with civilian and military officials’.35 Together 32

33 34 35

‘Kommunikationsüberwachende Vorschriften des Jahres 1917’, in H.-D. Fischer (ed.), Pressekonzentration und Zensurpraxis im Ersten Weltkrieg. Texte und Quellen (Berlin, 1973), pp. 194–275 (pp. 210, 251, 241). ‘Der Eindruck der Ereignisse in Oesterreich-Ungarn in Berlin’, NFP, 23 January 1918. See, for example, the records of the Literarisches Bureau in the HHStA (boxes 120–7). Meyer, Mitteleuropa, p. 131.

Introduction

13

with the diaries and correspondence of a wide range of personalities from both Germany and the Habsburg Empire and the files of several associations, such as the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband, ADV), this important set of documents provides further insights into the attitudes of intellectuals, economists, politicians, and other sections of the German (and, to a lesser extent, Austro-Hungarian) public. In order to complete the picture about the relationship between the German Reich and the Danube Monarchy, diplomatic records and other government papers were also studied extensively. They shed light on political practice and decision-making within the context of the alliance, thus providing the necessary background for the study of public reactions to certain events and developments. Beyond this, they allow us to examine the ‘official mind’, that is the role and prevalence of ethno-national views and sentiments amongst leading German statesmen, particularly in the Imperial Chancellery, the Foreign Office, and the military headquarters. While the complicated relationship between public opinion and foreign policymaking is not a main focus of this work, the various attempts of certain individuals and interest groups to influence Berlin’s position vis-à-vis Vienna (and Budapest) by means of public statements and confidential memoranda require investigation and explanation. These efforts were rarely successful (they certainly did not lead to a fundamental change of views) but German officials were not completely ignorant to the demands of influential political and economic elites or the growing war-weariness and resentment in both countries during the second half of the war. Structure of the book The first chapter explores Austria’s role in German national discourse between the formation of the kleindeutsch nation-state in 1871 and the July Crisis of 1914. Even though a certain sense of togetherness with Austrian Germandom persisted, what prevailed was a statist disposition of German society, that is the acceptance of and identification with the territory, political system, inhabitants, and interests of the PrussoGerman Reich. There were latent conflicts, for instance between North and South Germans or Protestants and Catholics, but alternative concepts of the German nation, including ethno-nationalist notions, could not compete with the Lesser German paradigm. The second part of the book (Chapters 2 and 3) describes the Greater German euphoria at the outbreak of war and demonstrates that the glorification of the Dual Alliance constituted a prominent feature of German war ideology in 1914 and 1915. There clearly was more contact and exchange than before 1914: German newspapers reported more

14

The First World War and German National Identity

regularly and exhaustively about the Habsburg Monarchy; joint associations were set up or gained more attention; government representatives, politicians, and economists met frequently with colleagues from Vienna or Budapest. The new image of Austria-Hungary as a domestically stable coalition partner, however, did not really signify a better comprehension of the empire. For many German commentators, especially from the national right, the Danube entity did not fulfil a ‘European mission’ but represented a means to neutralize the western and southern Slavs in order to guarantee German authority in Central and South-Eastern Europe. The multinational character of the Dual Monarchy, on the other hand, defied the interpretation of the alliance as a Germanic partnership. Moreover, critical views and attitudes re-emerged relatively quickly as a consequence of Vienna’s poor military performance. The following two chapters (Chapters 4 and 5) explore how Catholics and South Germans attempted to challenge the dominant reading of German history, an endeavour in which they were joined by AustroGerman authors who wanted to redefine Austria’s place in the national narrative. War might have created new conditions and a novel enthusiasm for Austrian Germandom, but the hegemony of interpretation rested with the same political and intellectual elites as before 1914. A closely related question is the significance of Greater German ideas and visions of a newborn Holy Roman Empire behind the Mitteleuropa project. More than by these or oft-stressed völkisch ambitions, most advocates of a closer union between the Central Powers were driven by sober considerations of political and economic interests and geo-strategic options. The hopes many Austro-Germans associated with Mitteleuropa played hardly any role in the German discussions. The debates on the Hungarian Germans and the Polish problem (Chapters 6 and 7) confirm that the interests of the German nation-state undoubtedly counted more for Reich German publicists and decisionmakers than ethnic solidarity with Germandom abroad, a view resolutely shared even by the radical nationalists of the ADV. Hungarian German grievances were widely ignored in order not to jeopardize the relationship with Budapest, while Austro-German hopes for the incorporation of Russian Poland into the Habsburg realm (the so-called Austro-Polish solution), which might have consolidated their domestic position, were thwarted by Imperial Germany’s own ambitions in the European East and fears of a ‘Slavization’ of the Danube Monarchy. Both chapters also demonstrate the variability of national stereotypes and idioms of thought according to different conditions and shifting interests. Hungary was considered the most significant non-German ally, apparently more reliable than conflict-ridden Cisleithania, while the early glorification of the

Introduction

15

German-Polish friendship challenges the widely held view of entrenched anti-Slavism in wartime Germany. Finally, the conflicts between Berlin and Vienna over Poland, which before long transcended the secret sphere of diplomats and generals, reveal the degree of alienation and resentment between the coalition partners, further undermining the spirit of camaraderie and countering Greater German notions on both sides. The final chapter (Chapter 8) deals more closely with the complicated nationality question in Cisleithania that became salient after 1916. Many observers acknowledged the necessity of national reforms in order to preserve the monarchy and its territorial integrity, with the signatories of the Reichstag Peace Resolution of July 1917 expressing more willingness to compromise than the supporters of a peace of victory. However, even moderate circles were not fully ready to abandon the claim to Austro-German hegemony, which was perceived as a guarantee of the Habsburg Empire’s loyalty to the alliance. Interestingly, for the extreme right, the support of Austrian Germandom was not just a matter of völkisch considerations but also of Realpolitik; radical nationalists, too, regarded the Austro-Germans first and foremost as agents of Reich German political and economic interests, as the leading section of an Austrian political nation and as upholders of the imperial idea. It was only after the end of the war and the break-up of the allied realm that a greater number of right-wing intellectuals and politicians took hold of the Reich myth and the Greater German idea, now serving as weapons against Weimar democracy and the post-war states system.

1

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

German-Austrian relations have always been special: they never matched the pattern of conventional state-to-state relations. In fact, from the early days of Habsburg rule in the Holy Roman Empire to the CounterReformation and the Thirty Years’ War, from the rise of AustroPrussian dualism in the 18th century to the Bruderkrieg of 1866, Austria represented an essential element and driving force in German history. However, despite close political, socio-economic, and cultural ties, Borussian historians succeeded in depicting the Habsburg Empire as a non-German power and the kleindeutsch unification of 1871 as a quasinatural event. Drawing a line from the late Middle Ages to Frederick the Great and the Hardenberg-Stein reforms, it was claimed that it had been the state of the Hohenzollerns which ‘achieved all that is truly great’ in German history, as Heinrich von Treitschke put it.1 The Danube Monarchy, in contrast, was portrayed as a backward and inferior state with an old-fashioned, lethargic society, paralysed by nationalist turmoil and undermined by Jesuitism. With the Counter-Reformation, multinationalism, and expansion towards South-Eastern Europe, it was often held, Austria had chosen a path different from all other German lands. Against this background, Treitschke deemed it ‘foolish to speak of a German Austria’ and denounced the Habsburg realm as an ‘enemy to all German kind’, which had hindered Brandenburg-Prussia from fulfilling its national mission.2 Austria’s exclusion from German affairs in the ‘great German revolution of the year 1866’ and the Prussian-led foundation of the Kaiserreich were justified as a necessary, preordained result and fortunate end of German national history, a decisive step on the

1

2

H. v. Treitschke, ‘Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat’ (1864), in H. v. Treitschke, Aufsätze, Reden und Briefe, ed. by K.M. Schiller, 5 vols. (Meersburg, 1929), III: Schriften und Reden zur Zeitgeschichte I, pp. 9–146 (p. 104). H. v. Treitschke, ‘Der Krieg und die Bundesreform’ (1866), in Treitschke, Aufsätze, Reden und Briefe, III, pp. 251–71 (p. 257) and his Deutsche Geschichte im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert, 9th ed., 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1913 [orig. 1879-94]), I, p. 4.

16

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

17

way of ordered progress towards German magnificence and prosperity in a modern and powerful nation-state.3 Yet the formation of a German polity without Austria (the so-called kleindeutsch or Lesser German solution) had been far from inevitable.4 Given the absence of a strong united state, the German national community had long been defined in linguistic and cultural terms, which naturally included the Germans under Habsburg rule. After the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire and the end of the Napoleonic order in Europe, Austria presided over the newly established Deutscher Bund, a loose association of sovereign states which frustrated the hopes of many liberal nationalists. The demand for a unified Germany persisted in these circles, but there was much disagreement concerning its political organization and territorial boundaries, as the debates during the revolution of 1848–49 demonstrated. It was beyond doubt that the German-speaking population of the Danube Monarchy formed an integral part of the German nation, but given Austria’s resistance to a großdeutsch entity (which would have entailed a division or constitutional transformation of the empire), a majority of the Frankfurt Assembly finally decided on the most pragmatic option: a nation-state not only without non-German Habsburg territories, but without any Austrian involvement at all. However, after the failure of the revolution, the Bund was restored, thus leaving the German question unsettled. Up to the war of 1866, when many German states such as Bavaria and Saxony fought unsuccessfully on the Austrian side against Berlin and its allies, alternatives to the Prusso-German solution included the continuation of the status quo, perhaps in a somewhat restructured form, a Greater German nationstate, or a Central European confederation under Habsburg leadership. In all these cases, Vienna would have retained a significant role in German politics, but following defeat it was eliminated as an active factor. For the 3

4

J.C. Bluntschli, Die nationale Staatenbildung und der moderne deutsche Staat (Berlin, 1870), p. 40. See F. Fellner, ‘Die Historiographie zur österreichisch-deutschen Problematik als Spiegel der nationalpolitischen Diskussion’, in Lutz and Rumpler (eds.), Österreich und die deutsche Frage, pp. 33–59; W. Hardtwig, ‘Von Preußens Aufgabe in Deutschland zu Deutschlands Aufgabe in der Welt. Liberalismus und borussianisches Geschichtsbild zwischen Revolution und Imperialismus’, in W. Hardtwig, Geschichtskultur und Wissenschaft (Munich, 1990), pp. 103–60; T. Brechenmacher, ‘“Österreich steht außer Deutschland, aber es gehört zu Deutschland”. Aspekte der Bewertung des Faktors Österreich in der deutschen Historiographie’, in Gehler et al. (eds.), Ungleiche Partner?, pp. 31–53. H. Gramley, Propheten des deutschen Nationalismus. Theologen, Historiker und Nationalökonomen 1848–1880 (Frankfurt/M., 2001); B.E. Vick, Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity (Cambridge, MA, 2002); J. Müller, Deutscher Bund und deutsche Nation 1848–1866 (Göttingen, 2005); M. Hewitson, Nationalism in Germany, 1848–1866: Revolutionary Nation (Basingstoke, 2010); C. Jansen, Gründerzeit und Nationsbildung 1849–1871 (Stuttgart, 2011).

18

The First World War and German National Identity

internal opponents of Lesser Germany – Catholics, the democratic left, anti-Prussian particularists, and the national minorities – the creation of the German Reich was the beginning of a long-lasting integration process which was characterized by many political disputes. Given strong regional, social, and ideological differences, the same, however, more or less applied to anyone now living within Imperial Germany: it took years to make Reich Germans. The forging of the Staatsnation and the German discourse on Austria The significance of the state for nation-building and identity formation has repeatedly been underlined for western nations, which are, it is often assumed in the tradition of Friedrich Meinecke and Hans Kohn, based exclusively on civic and voluntarist notions (Staatsnation).5 However, recent research has questioned the dichotomy between western and eastern, political and ethno-cultural, conceptions of the nation, contending that civic and ethnic components in fact often combined, and highlighting the diversity and contextuality of European national identities.6 In 19thcentury France and Britain, too, the national idea rested on shared myths of ancestry, cultural and linguistic unity, and long-standing enmities. In turn, nations such as Germany and Italy, where a sense of ethnocultural commonality and national solidarity had existed before the establishment of the nation-state (Kulturnation), gradually developed a political identity, a commitment to the population, territory, and institutions of the new polity. In the case of Germany, this shift was facilitated by pre-existing statist doctrines: Prussian reform absolutism and German idealism had provided the ‘state’ with a transcendental status and cast it as a higher idea, an end in itself, based on the principles of duty, loyalty, and rational (rather than ethno-cultural) political membership.7 This statepolitical conception, while originally developed in a regional context, was progressively applied to the national framework. It also combined with the practical consequences of political unification. After all, it is in the state that the nation is organized and that political, legal, economic, and cultural unity is achieved. It provides the framework and the prerequisites 5

6 7

F. Meinecke, Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat. Studien zur Genesis des deutschen Nationalstaates (Munich, 1908); H. Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background (New York, 1944). See, for instance, Baycroft and Hewitson (eds.), What Is a Nation? G.O. Kvistad, The Rise and Demise of German Statism: Loyalty and Political Membership (New York, 1999), pp. 27–54; D. Schirmer, ‘Closing the Nation: Nationalism and Statism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany’, in S. Godfrey and F. Unger (eds.), The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation-States (Toronto, 2004), pp. 35–58.

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

19

not only for societal modernization, political participation, and expansion of the public sphere, but also for active international engagement. Lawmaking, tax collection, education, the welfare system, and compulsory military service affect society on a daily basis. It is in the state that the abstract idea of the nation is experienced as the political community of citizens.8 In addition, Germany’s quick rise to a prosperous world power helped to foster an emotional attachment of many Reich Germans to the Prusso-German Empire.9 Considering the modern state a significant historical force and arguing in terms of perpetual great power struggles, a new generation of historians, the neo-Rankeans, shifted the focus from German Nationalpolitik (Austro-Prussian dualism) to German Weltpolitik. Although it was widely acknowledged that the new polity was an incomplete or imperfect nation-state – it contained various ethnic minorities, while excluding numerous German speakers in Central Europe – the German national interest, German strength, and German character were increasingly linked to the Kaiserreich, which stood for military power, economic success, and scientifictechnological superiority. Constitutional monarchism was praised as a distinctive element of Germany’s political system, especially when compared with the western parliamentarian model or tsarist autocracy. The complicated federal structure, too, was regarded as a unique and advanced feature, reconciling long-standing regional interests and loyalties with a sense of national identity.10 As a consequence of all this, the Lesser German nation-state was not perceived as a provisional entity, a temporary solution, but was gradually accepted as a legitimate political reality. It became, as Theodor Schieder explained, a ‘way of thinking’, 8 9

10

E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983); J. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 2nd ed. (Manchester, 1993). Recent synopses: M. Jefferies, Contesting the German Empire, 1871–1918 (Oxford, 2008); J. Retallack (ed.), Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (Oxford, 2008); B. Heidenreich and S. Neitzel (eds.), Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1890–1914 (Paderborn, 2011); S.-O. Müller and C. Torp (eds.), Imperial Germany Revisited: Continuing Debates and New Perspectives (New York, 2012); M. Jefferies (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Imperial Germany (Farnham, 2015). With a focus on the question of modernity: G. Eley and J. Retallack (eds.), Wilhelminism and Its Legacies: German Modernities, Imperialism, and the Meanings of Reform, 1890–1933 (New York, 2003); U. Puschner et al. (eds.), Laboratorium der Moderne. Ideenzirkulation im Deutschen Reich / Laboratoire de la modernité. Circulation des idées à l’ère wilhelminienne (Frankfurt/M., 2015). On federalism in German history, see D. Langewiesche, Reich, Nation, Föderation. Deutschland und Europa (Munich, 2008); D. Langewiesche and G. Schmidt (eds.), Föderative Nation. Deutschlandkonzepte von der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, 2000); O. Janz et al. (eds.), Zentralismus und Föderalismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Deutschland und Italien im Vergleich (Berlin, 2000); M. Umbach (ed.), German Federalism: Past, Present, and Future (Basingstoke, 2002).

20

The First World War and German National Identity

a basic attitude.11 This was true not only for National Liberal supporters of Bismarck but also for many conservatives who, having initially resisted the modern unified and parliamentary nation-state, increasingly embraced nationalism as a means of maintaining their socio-economic and political standing. Eventually Catholics and Social Democrats, too, dubbed ‘enemies of the Reich’ in the 1870s and 1880s, came to accept the new situation, even though many aspects of Imperial Germany’s political and social constitution remained contested. In the case of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), this basic acquiescence and growing identification was encouraged by major electoral gains (from 3.2 per cent in 1871 to 19.8 per cent in 1890 and 34.8 per cent in 1912), making it the most successful German party on the eve of the war.12 Catholics constituted about one-third of the population of the Kaiserreich (compared to 90.9 per cent in Cisleithania, according to the 1910 census) and were predominant in Bavaria, the Rhine Province, Alsace-Lorraine, and the Polish-speaking areas in the East. Despite fairly steady electoral losses from 27.9 per cent in 1874 to 16.4 per cent in 1912, the Catholic Centre Party represented the strongest or second-strongest party in the Reichstag and, following the end of the Kulturkampf, actively supported many governmental initiatives and decisions, especially as regards social and foreign policy issues.13 However, in spite of the consolidation of the German Reichsnation, a sense of togetherness with the ethnic Germans of the Danube Empire 11

12

13

T. Schieder, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich von 1871 als Nationalstaat, ed. by H.-U. Wehler, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1992 [orig. 1961]), p. 17. Also see the following titles by M. Hewitson: National Identity and Political Thought in Germany: Wilhelmine Depictions of the French Third Republic, 1890–1914 (Oxford, 2000); ‘Nation and Nationalismus: Representation and National Identity in Imperial Germany’, in M. Fulbrook and M. Swales (eds.), Representing the German Nation: History and Identity in TwentiethCentury Germany (Manchester, 2000), pp. 19–62; ‘Nationalism’, in Jefferies (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion, pp. 123-42; as well as S. Berger, ‘Germany: Ethnic Nationalism par Excellence?’, in Baycroft and Hewitson (eds.), What Is a Nation?, pp. 42–60. D. Groh, Negative Integration und revolutionärer Attentismus. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges (Frankfurt/M., 1973); D. Groh and P. Brandt, ‘Vaterlandslose Gesellen’. Sozialdemokratie und Nation 1860–1990 (Munich, 1992); S. Berger, Social Democracy and the Working Class in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Germany (Harlow, 2000). Recent studies: M. Martin, Der katholische Weg ins Reich. Der Weg des deutschen Katholizismus vom Kulturkampf hin zur staatstragenden Kraft (Frankfurt/M., 1998); J. Strötz, Der Katholizismus im deutschen Kaiserreich 1871–1918. Strukturen eines problematischen Verhältnisses zwischen Widerstand und Integration, 2 vols. (Hamburg, 2005); C. Dowe, Auch Bildungsbürger. Katholische Studierende und Akademiker im Kaiserreich (Göttingen, 2006); R.A. Bennette, Fighting for the Soul of Germany: The Catholic Struggle for Inclusion after Unification (Cambridge, MA, 2012); O. Weiß, Kulturkatholizismus. Katholiken auf dem Weg in die deutsche Kultur 1900-1933 (Regensburg, 2014).

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

21

survived, fostered by a common language, shared historical memories, various cultural and socio-economic ties, and the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a state-transcending public sphere.14 Indeed, the events of 1866–71 did not cut off all existing links. Numerous professional bodies, interest groups, and societies, in particular in the education sector, had Austrian members or continued to cooperate closely, such as the Association of German Historians and the Alpine Club. Many noble families were widely ramified and possessed estates in both Germany and Austria-Hungary, including the Houses of Nostitz, Lützow, and Schönburg. The Bohemian-born Prince Maximilian Egon II. zu Fürstenberg was not only vice-president of the Austrian Upper House (since 1908) but also a member of the counterparts in Berlin, Stuttgart, and Karlsruhe. A close friend of Wilhelm II, he even became chief marshal at the Prussian Court in 1904. The Austro-Hungarian diplomat Gottfried zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, ambassador in Berlin between 1914 and 1918, was a nephew of former Chancellor Chlodwig zu HohenloheSchillingsfürst, while Count Alexander Hoyos, who would play an important role during the July Crisis in 1914, was the brother-in-law of Bismarck’s oldest son, Herbert. Germans from the Habsburg Monarchy pursued distinguished careers in the Kaiserreich, as illustrated by the likes of the publisher Samuel Fischer, the philosophers Edmund Husserl and Alois Riehl, the bacteriologist and eugenist Max von Gruber, and the physicist Philipp Lenard (who won the Nobel Prize in 1905). Following his move to Munich in the 1860s, the Tyrolean artist Franz Defregger became one of the leading genre and history painters there. Many years later, the young expressionist illustrator and author Oskar Kokoschka had his first major successes in Berlin and Dresden. The writers Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Bahr, and Richard Arnold Bermann (known as Arnold Höllriegel) as well as the composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg all lived and worked in Germany at some point in their career, as did some of the most prominent actors, singers, and stage directors of their time, amongst them Josef Kainz and Max Reinhardt. As for Reich Germans in the Dual Monarchy, the architect Gottfried Semper and the composer Johannes 14

On German–Austrian relations after 1871, see also W.J. Mommsen, ‘Österreich-Ungarn aus der Sicht des deutschen Kaiserreichs’, in H. Rumpler (ed.), Innere Staatsbildung und gesellschaftliche Modernisierung in Österreich und Deutschland 1871 bis 1914 (Vienna, 1991), pp. 205–20; J. Kor ̆alka, ‘Deutschland und die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918’, in A. Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, 11 vols. (Vienna, 1973–), VI/II: Die Habsburgermonarchie im System der Internationalen Beziehungen (1993), pp. 1–158; J. Angelow, ‘Vom Dualismus zur Nibelungentreue. Preußen(Deutschland), Österreich(-Ungarn) und die nationale Frage 1866–1918’, in J. Luh et al. (eds.), Preußen, Deutschland und Europa 1701–2001 (Groningen, 2003), pp. 479–91.

22

The First World War and German National Identity

Brahms spent their last years in Vienna. In October 1866, the Saxon statesman Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust became foreign minister of the Habsburg Monarchy (until 1871), and Count Erich von Kielmansegg, who was the son of the former Hanoverian ministerpresident, served as the Statthalter of Lower Austria between 1889 and 1911. The anti-Prussian historian Onno Klopp followed his colleague Julius von Ficker to Austria, where he worked as a publicist and private teacher to the future heir apparent Franz Ferdinand. The philosopher Franz Clemens Brentano, the geographer Albrecht Penck, and the economist Alfred Weber, to name but a few, taught for some time at Austrian universities. Franz Servaes was a successful journalist and critic with the Viennese Neue Freie Presse, while Paul Schlenther managed the Burgtheater for more than ten years at the turn of the century. A certain asymmetry in German-Austrian relations, however, cannot be denied. Altogether, many more Austro-Hungarian academics and intellectuals lived and worked in Germany than vice versa, while the annual migration of mainly unskilled labour (but also of numerous students) from Cisleithania to Germany was four times higher than the overall number of Reich German citizens within the Danube Monarchy.15 In 1910, about 50 per cent of all foreigners living in Germany came from Austria (634,983), followed by Dutch (144,175) and Russian citizens (137,697).16 Most resided and worked in industrial and urban centres in Silesia, the Rhine Province, Westphalia, and Saxony.17 In terms of trade and investment, Austria-Hungary was highly reliant on the Kaiserreich, too. In 1900, 52 per cent of the Habsburg Empire’s exports went to the German Reich (from where it received 38 per cent of its imports). Its share of Germany’s foreign trade, in contrast, amounted to merely 8 per cent of imports and 12 per cent of exports (as of 1912).18 Representatives of the Dual Monarchy’s German-speaking 15

16 17 18

P. Langhans, ‘Die Volkszahl der Deutschen’, in A. Geiser (ed.), Deutsches Reich und Volk. Ein nationales Handbuch (Munich, 1906), pp. 217–21. Also see H. Faßmann, ‘Auswanderung aus der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie 1869–1910’, in T. Horvath and G. Neyer (eds.), Auswanderungen aus Österreich. Von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, 1996), pp. 33–55, and M. Tobisch, ‘Die österreichisch-ungarische Arbeiterwanderung ins Deutsche Reich vor dem 1. Weltkrieg – ein endloses Klagelied?’, in P. Gietl (ed.), Vom Wiener Kongreß bis zur Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands. Betrachtungen zu Deutschland und Österreich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stamsried, 1997), pp. 49–115. Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich 1914 (Berlin, 1914), p. 10. On the substantial number of Bohemian labour migrants in Saxony, see Murdock, Changing Places, pp. 33–56. K.C. Schaefer, Deutsche Portfolioinvestitionen im Ausland 1870–1914. Banken, Kapitalmärkte und Wertpapierhandel im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Münster, 1995), pp. 116–66.

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

23

intellectual elite were often under contract with publishers such as Ullstein in Berlin or Insel in Leipzig, placed their articles and reviews in newspapers and journals such as the Berliner Tageblatt or the Neue Rundschau, and frequently saw their plays – especially if they were avantgarde – put on stage in Berlin or Munich rather than in Vienna or Salzburg. Austria was a popular tourist destination, but real knowledge about the neighbour – its complicated constitutional structure, national composition, and socio-economic conditions – was relatively low in Imperial Germany, especially when compared with British or French observers such as André Chéradame or Robert W. Seton-Watson. Of course, German newspapers reported regularly about developments in the Danube Monarchy, but the great majority of contributions stemmed from Austro-Hungarian authors and correspondents. Overall, German attitudes towards the Dual Monarchy were characterized by ‘a good bit of indifference and ignorance’, as Hermann Oncken lamented in one of the few more detailed reflections of the time.19 When the Austrian legal expert and politician Josef Redlich travelled through Germany on his way to London in May 1903, he observed that German academics and the younger generation lacked any interest in and understanding of Austrian affairs: ‘These Neudeutschen all want to be particularly smart and demonstrate that they have comprehended Bismarck’s Realpolitik. That’s why they dream of colonies in China and Brazil, and do not care about what lies right in front of them: Austria.’20 According to the widely held belief that people were now living in an ‘age of national passions, ideas, and differences’, the multiethnic entity was often seen as a bizarre anomaly, an anachronistic realm.21 Considering the tensions between the Austrian and Hungarian halves and growing strife amongst the nationalities, it appeared as an anti-model to the German Reich and seemed to confirm the superiority of the nation-state (even though, as we will see, German leadership was often taken for granted). 19

20

21

H. Oncken, ‘Deutschland und Österreich seit der Gründung des Neuen Reiches (1871–1911)’ (1911), in Oncken, Historisch-politische Aufsätze, I, pp. 122–44 (p. 129). For other examples, see P. Dehn, Deutschland nach Osten!, 3 vols. (Munich, 1886–90); F. Naumann, Deutschland und Österreich (Berlin, 1900); E. Marcks, ‘Das deutschösterreichische Bündnis. Eine historische Betrachtung zu seinem 30. Gedenktage’ (1909), in E. Marcks, Männer und Zeiten. Aufsätze und Reden zur neueren Geschichte, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1911), II, pp. 293–304. J. Redlich, Schicksalsjahre Österreichs. Die Erinnerungen und Tagebücher Josef Redlichs 1869–1936, ed. by F. Fellner and D.A. Corradini, 3 vols. (Vienna, 2011), I: Erinnerungen und Tagebücher 1869–1914, p. 129 (6 May 1903). J.J. Ruedorffer [i.e. K. Riezler], Grundzüge der Weltpolitik der Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 1914), p. 59.

24

The First World War and German National Identity

The memoirs of the German-Jewish literary scholar Victor Klemperer – written alongside his more famous diaries after he had lost his professorship in Romance studies at the University of Dresden in 1935 – provide further insight into German perceptions of Austria during the Kaiserzeit. Even though a large part of the family lived in Bohemia, Klemperer’s father took great pride in being a Prussian and Reich German citizen. He was rather dismissive of the Czechs, considering them a ‘strange and uncivilised nation’, and also ‘did not take the Austro-Germans seriously’. In his view, ‘the genuine representative [Träger] of Germandom was the Reich and not the chaotic and variegated Austria. Whoever resided over there lived, thought, and felt not quite in the same way as we did, even if he was blood-related. Blood was insignificant – it all depended on spiritual commonality [geistige Zugehörigkeit]; that was what differentiated animal from humankind.’22 While the last sentence may well reflect Klemperer’s more recent experiences under Nazi rule and his views on German-Jewish identity in the age of racial anti-Semitism, a certain haughtiness and narrow-mindedness as regards non-Prussian Germandom seems to have been common in his family and beyond. As a result of educational standardization, a predominant Prussocentric historiography, and the official promotion of imperial symbols and national anniversaries, the Reichsnation was increasingly recognized as a culturally distinctive collectivity. However, despite a certain marginalization of Austrian culture and history in post-unification national discourse and the popularity of traditional prejudices towards the AustroGermans as backward, sluggish, and politically inept, an awareness of trans-border commonalities persisted also amongst those groups who fully embraced the Prusso-Protestant vision. There was no doubt that Austrian literature, art, and music constituted essential elements of the German national heritage. Some conservative intellectuals even praised Austrian society as an embodiment of authentic Germanness, largely unaffected by industrialization and modernity. This was often linked to the debate on the symbolic significance and cultural status or merit of the German capital. According to the art historian and philosopher Julius Langbehn, Berlin shared many characteristics with North American cities: rapid expansionism, a lack of homogeneity, and the prevalence of a rationalistic mindset instead of an organic cultural life. As he concluded: ‘Berlin is Germany’s political capital, but one does not wish for it to become Germany’s spiritual capital.’23 In a similar vein, the conservative 22 23

V. Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae. Erinnerungen 1881–1918, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1989), I, p. 19. [J. Langbehn], Rembrandt als Erzieher. Von einem Deutschen, 35th ed. (Leipzig, 1891), p. 114.

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

25

writer Friedrich Lienhard highlighted the dangers of the big city and the lack of artistic creativity, while Walther Rathenau, the well-known German-Jewish industrialist and writer, objected to architectural mediocrity and eclecticism in ‘Parvenupolis’, dryly suggesting a large-scale demolition and construction programme to really make Berlin into a global metropolis and ‘the most beautiful city in the world’, as Wilhelm II had once described it.24 Many authors compared Berlin unfavourably with ‘unspoiled’ Vienna, which had for centuries represented one of the most important political, commercial, and cultural centres of the German-speaking lands. Anticipating the wartime conception of a clash between Zivilisation and Kultur, the sociologist Werner Sombart criticized Berlin’s soulless ‘asphalt culture’, the overvaluation of size, speed, and technology, and the emergence of faceless and materialistic city dwellers – ‘fragmentary human beings – surly, loathsome patrons’ – as a consequence of urban modernity, juxtaposing it with Vienna’s more traditional society and rich artistic and intellectual life. To Sombart, the Austrian capital was ‘a symbol of that which we must preserve, of that which we must strive to regain’: ‘Vienna is for us – to speak in a Kantian manner – the regulative cultural idea. We orient ourselves to Vienna and the Viennese manner when we wish to know what culture is. We fortify ourselves once again with Vienna when we are overcome by horror at the prospect of modern human development.’25 Franz Servaes and the art critic Karl Scheffler shared this romanticized image of the capital on the Danube as a time-honoured and arguably more ‘German’ city (despite its distinctly multinational character), a positive counter-example to Americanized and high-paced Berlin with its purpose-built tenement blocks and a trivial mass-entertainment industry.26 These stereotypical differences were rarely considered a matter of opposition or rivalry. Rather, it was argued that the two cities – epitomizing the Germans in the Kaiserreich and those under Habsburg rule, 24

25 26

F. Lienhard, ‘Los von Berlin?’ (1902), in J. Schutte and P. Sprengel (eds.), Die Berliner Moderne 1885–1914 (Stuttgart, 1997), pp. 220–4; W. Rathenau, ‘The Most Beautiful City in the World’ (1899), in I.B. Whyte and D. Frisby (eds.), Metropolis Berlin, 1880–1940 (Berkeley, CA, 2012), pp. 214–17 (p. 215). For more contributions, see G. Wunberg (ed.), Die Wiener Moderne. Literatur, Kunst und Musik zwischen 1890 und 1910, exp. ed. (Stuttgart, 2000). W. Sombart, ‘Vienna’ (1907), in Whyte and Frisby (eds.), Metropolis Berlin, pp. 31–3 (pp. 31–2). B. Morgenbrod, ‘“Träume in Nachbars Garten”. Das Wien-Bild im Deutschen Kaiserreich’, in Hübinger and Mommsen (eds.), Intellektuelle im Deutschen Kaiserreich, pp. 111–23; B. Morgenbrod, ‘Wien – Berlin und die “deutsche Kulturnation”’, in Rumpler and Niederkorn (eds.), Der ‘Zweibund’ 1879, pp. 327–43; D. Frisby, Cityscapes of Modernity: Critical Explorations (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 159–79.

26

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respectively – stood in a complementary relationship to each other: while austere and industrious Prussia-Germany signified organizational skills, efficiency, and German overseas endeavours, Austria was seen as more colourful, versatile, and artistic, the embodiment of long-standing continental ambitions and the German cultural and civilizing mission. This was based on the assumption that German speakers constituted the pillar of Austrian state and society and, together with the Magyars, served as an indispensable integrative force within the Danubian realm, even though they only amounted to slightly more than a third of the Cisleithanian population (35.6 per cent as of 1910) and to a quarter of the whole Habsburg Empire (23.9 per cent).27 In contrast to the heyday of AustroPrussian dualism, when Borussian writers had stressed the multinational character of the Habsburg Empire in order to delegitimize Austrian claims for leadership, this fact now seemed less acknowledged.28 Wilhelm Schüßler, for example, called Austria ‘a second Germany’ and claimed that the realm was held together by the ‘German army, German dynasty, German capital, and German culture’.29 In arguing along these lines, Reich German observers followed Austro-German standpoints, spread in countless articles for German newspapers and journals, in guest lectures and pamphlets with the aim to inform, but also to generate more sympathy with Austrian Germandom, which, having lost the struggle for supremacy within Germany, was about to lose headship in the Dual Monarchy, too.30 The German perception of Austria-Hungary and of its domestic and foreign policies depended on party-political, confessional, and ideological positions. Catholics and South Germans were amongst the most sympathetic commentators. Due to long-standing dynastic, cultural, and 27

28 29 30

R.A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526–1918, 12th ed. (Berkeley, CA, 2004), p. 607. On Austro-Hungarian history in the period, see, with further references, J.W. Mason, The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867–1918, 2nd ed. (London, 1997); G.V. Strong, Seedtime for Fascism: The Disintegration of Austrian Political Culture, 1867–1918 (Armonk, NY, 1998); R. Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1765–1918: From Enlightenment to Eclipse (Basingstoke, 2001); A. Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815–1918, 2nd ed. (Harlow, 2001); A. Gero˝ (ed.), The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy Revisited (New York, 2009). P. Burian, ‘Deutschland und das Nationalitätenproblem der Habsburgermonarchie aus deutscher Sicht’, in Kann and Prinz (eds.), Deutschland und Österreich, pp. 398–411. W. Schüßler, ‘Neudeutschland und Österreich’, PJ, 153 (1913), 400–12 (p. 405). For the wider context, see R.A. Kann, Das Nationalitätenproblem der Habsburgermonarchie. Geschichte und Ideengehalt der nationalen Bestrebungen vom Vormärz bis zur Auflösung des Reiches im Jahre 1918, 2 vols., 2nd rev. ed. (Graz, 1964); B. Sutter, ‘Die politische und rechtliche Stellung der Deutschen in Österreich 1848–1918’, in Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, III/I: Die Völker des Reiches (1980), pp. 153–339. For a recent collection of related essays, see J.N. Ducange and J. Lajarrige (eds.), L’empire austro-hongrois: les enjeux de la présence allemande en Europe centrale (1867–1918) (Mont-Saint-Aignan, 2011).

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

27

religious ties, they preserved a particular affinity to the Dual Monarchy, venerating the House of Habsburg, Catholicism, and the Austrian ‘idea of the state’.31 Many representatives of the democratic left, in contrast, criticized Vienna’s repeated recourse to extra-parliamentarian measures, its oppressive nationality policies, and conduct in the Balkans. However, quite a few still stood in the liberal-humanistic tradition of 1848–49 and at least in the long term envisioned a democratic Greater Germany instead of a ‘Prusso-German rump state’.32 Others saw in a reformed Danube Monarchy the model to overcome nationalist hatred and to achieve international understanding, holding that its break-up would not bring national freedom and progress but instead lead to the Balkanization of the area and the extension of tsarist influence. The national right, on the other hand, typically argued that the Dual Monarchy was not governed strictly enough. For instance, critics of parliamentary rule objected to the extension of voting rights in Cisleithania (1907) and often demanded a more authoritarian leadership. Deeply sceptical about its multinational structure, most, however, considered the Danube Empire an important element of German foreign policy, even though some Prussian conservatives favoured a German-Russian rapprochement at Vienna’s expense. Despite völkisch maxims, quite a few Pan-Germans decried the Austro-Germans as political amateurs, as disordered and slothful. Clearly, there existed no single or dominant Reich German image of Austria-Hungary, and there were often contrasting and contradictory perceptions within political and ideological camps. Austrian attitudes towards Imperial Germany were characterized by a mixture of admiration and envy, affection and hostility.33 For instance, the comparison between the German and Austrian capitals seems to have been much more prevalent in Vienna than in Berlin. As the pacifist activist and publicist Alfred Hermann Fried observed: ‘There is indeed not 31

32

33

E. Bus, Großdeutsches im Kleindeutschen Reich. Wirkung und Verbreitung des großdeutschen Gedankengutes im Deutschen Reich zwischen Reichsgründung und Abschluss des Zweibundes (Darmstadt, 1986). W. Liebknecht, ‘Weltpolitik, Chinawirren, Transvaalkrieg’ (1900), in W. Liebknecht, Gegen Militarismus und Eroberungskrieg. Aus Schriften und Reden, ed. by G. Hofmann and A. Kuntzsch (Berlin, 1986), pp. 221–60 (p. 231). F. Fellner, ‘Wilhelm II. und das wilhelminische Deutschland im Urteil österreichischer Zeitgenossen’, in J.C.G. Röhl (ed.), Der Ort Kaiser Wilhelms II. in der deutschen Geschichte (Munich, 1991), pp. 79–89; H. Rumpler, ‘Das Deutsche Reich aus der Sicht ÖsterreichUngarns’, in Rumpler (ed.), Innere Staatsbildung, pp. 221–33; E. Bruckmüller, ‘Das neue deutsche Kaiserreich und die nationale Identität der Deutsch-Österreicher. Die Attraktivität Deutschlands für Österreich im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert’, Revue d’Allemagne, 24/4 (1992), 507–20; G. Kronenbitter, ‘Seitenblicke: Das Deutsche Reich aus Wiener Sicht’, in Heidenreich and Neitzel (eds.), Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, pp. 255–70.

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a single event, no innovation, no deplorable action here on the Danube that does not immediately raise the question: “how is it in Berlin?”, “how is it done in Berlin?”, “what would one do in Berlin in this or that case?” etc.’34 Still, the young and aspiring writer Karl Kraus probably represented an exception in his explicit preference for Berlin’s anonymous, sober, and progressive lifestyle over the – as he perceived it – antiquated and stifling atmosphere in Vienna. Whereas most intellectuals and artists of the Wiener Moderne dissociated Austrian culture from Reich German influences and stressed its distinctiveness, Kraus admired Detlev von Liliencron, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Frank Wedekind instead of Hermann Bahr and the members of Young Vienna. Celebrating the creation of Maximilian Harden’s journal Die Zukunft in 1892, he stated: ‘It is lamentable that all that is great, modern, epoch-making in literature always has to come from Germany. In Austria nothing really happens.’35 Aristocrats, higher officials, members of the Catholic clergy, and Christian Social politicians often criticized the Prusso-Protestant ‘parvenu’ and embraced the idea of a supra-ethnic Austrian state-nation. Crown Prince Rudolf (who committed suicide in 1889) often expressed very negative views of Imperial Germany and in particular Wilhelm II, complaining that the Habsburg Monarchy had become ‘a Prussian province’.36 In April 1888, he anonymously published an open letter to Emperor Franz Joseph, calling Bismarck the ‘tyrant of Berlin’ and a ‘warmonger’, and advocating a rapprochement with France and Russia. It concluded: ‘Away with Prussia! Hurrah Austria and the Habsburgs!’37 On the whole, however, conservative circles recognized the necessity of an alliance with Berlin, underlining dynastic amity and common historical memories as particular features of the coalition rather than ethnic sentiments.38 Many liberal and nationalist 34 35

36 37

38

A.H. Fried, Wien – Berlin. Ein Vergleich (Vienna, 1908), p. 2. K. Kraus, ‘Notizen’ (1892), in K. Kraus, Frühe Schriften 1892–1900, ed. by J.J. Braakenburg, 2 vols. (Munich, 1979), I: 1892–1896, p. 35. For the wider context, see J. Mikoletzky, ‘Die Wiener Sicht auf Berlin, 1870–1934’, in G. Brunn and J. Reulecke (eds.), Metropolis Berlin. Berlin als deutsche Haupstadt im Vergleich europäischer Hauptstädte 1871–1939 (Bonn, 1992), pp. 471–528; Sprengel and Streim, Berliner und Wiener Moderne; A. Husslein-Arco et al. (eds.), Vienna – Berlin: The Art of Two Cities from Schiele to Grosz (Munich, 2013). Letter to Szögyenyi, 7 January 1888, quoted in B. Hamann, Rudolf. Kronprinz und Rebell (Vienna, 1978), p. 362. J. Felix, Oesterreich-Ungarn und seine Alliancen. Offener Brief an S.M. Kaiser Franz Joseph I. (Paris, 1888), reprinted in B. Hamann (ed.), Kronprinz Rudolf. Majestät, ich warne Sie. . . Geheime und private Schriften (Vienna, 1979), pp. 190–227 (pp. 200–1, 227). M. Tobisch, Das Deutschlandbild der Diplomatie Österreich-Ungarns von 1908 bis 1914 (Frankfurt/M., 1994); G. Gutmann, Das Deutsche Reich und Österreich-Ungarn 1890 bis 1894/95. Der Zweibund im Urteil der führenden Persönlichkeiten beider Staaten (Münster, 2003).

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29

representatives, on the other hand, together with right-wing Social Democrats such as Engelbert Pernerstorfer and Karl Leuthner, cherished their Germanness and looked up to the Kaiserreich as a leading industrial and colonial power, a militarily powerful, well-managed unitary state.39 Even Rudolf’s younger sister Marie Valerie, who was the Empress’s favourite child, wrote in her diary in 1889: ‘We are, first and foremost, Germans, then Austrians, and only in the third instance Habsburgs. The well-being of the German fatherland has to be dearest to our heart. It does not matter whether it thrives under Habsburg or Hohenzollern. German is German, and the fatherland is above family.’40 While this was of course an exceptional position among aristocratic circles and the conservative elite, more than a few liberal-national contemporaries insisted that the Austro-Germans were not ‘lost children’ of the German nation but fulfilled a vital task, an Austrian duty. Originally part of the Habsburg myth and referring back to the Ottoman wars, the idea of an Austrian Kulturmission had traditionally focused on state, dynasty, and religion, which were claimed to ensure a peaceful and harmonious cohabitation of various nationalities.41 However, as a result of the radicalization of national discourse and the social-Darwinist belief in cultural and racial hierarchies, it increasingly obtained a different character, emphasizing instead the role of Austrian Germandom in containing Pan-Slav tendencies and safeguarding German influence in Central and South-Eastern Europe. By integrating the western Slavs into a German-led political entity, guaranteeing the endurance of the multinational realm, and ensuring the alliance with Berlin, it was claimed, 39

40 41

L. Höbelt, Kornblume und Kaiseradler. Die deutschfreiheitlichen Parteien Altösterreichs 1882–1918 (Vienna, 1993); P. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1996); L. Cole, ‘Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland’. Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols 1860–1914 (Frankfurt/M., 2000); J. Kirchhoff, Die Deutschen in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie. Ihr Verhältnis zum Staat, zur deutschen Nation und ihr kollektives Selbstverständnis (1866/67–1918) (Berlin, 2001); A. Suppan, ‘“Germans” in the Habsburg Empire: Language, Imperial Ideology, National Identity, and Assimilation’, in C. Ingrao and F.A.J. Szabo (eds.), The Germans and the East (West Lafayette, IN, 2008), pp. 147–90; J. Kwan, Liberalism and the Habsburg Monarchy, 1861–1895 (Basingstoke, 2013). Also see F. Heer, Der Kampf um die österreichische Identität (Vienna, 1981), and A. Blänsdorf, ‘Österreich und die Nation der Deutschen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, in H. Boockmann and K. Jürgensen (eds.), Nachdenken über Geschichte. Beiträge aus der Ökumene der Historiker in memoriam Karl Dietrich Erdmann (Neumünster, 1991), pp. 521–44. Quoted from Hamann, Rudolf, p. 488. See, most recently: P. Urbanitsch, ‘Pluralist Myth and Nationalist Realities: The Dynastic Myth of the Habsburg Monarchy – A Future Exercise in the Creation of Identity?’, AHY, 35 (2004), 101–41, and L. Cole, ‘Der Habsburger-Mythos’, in E. Brix et al. (eds.), Memoria Austriae, 3 vols. (Vienna, 2004–05), I: Menschen – Mythen – Zeiten (2004), pp. 473–504.

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the Germans of the Danube Monarchy carried out an essential duty for the security and power position of the whole German nation. A robust Austro-German status within the Habsburg Empire was thus very much in Germany’s own interest.42 On the whole, the German-speaking population came to terms with political division, combining Habsburg patriotism and ethnic allegiance, state loyalty and German identity. In fact, as several Habsburg scholars have stressed, large swaths of the German (and non-German) public demonstrated a remarkable degree of not only civic patriotism and engagement, but also pragmatism and ‘national indifference’.43 Nationalist circles, in particular from Bohemia, Moravia, and Carinthia, hoped for Reich German help and support in the struggles against Slav demands and Magyar separatism, but did not question the raison d’être of the empire, either.44 Only Georg Ritter von Schönerer and his Pan-German followers regarded the solution of 1866– 71 as temporary and formed an irredentist and anti-Catholic, yet marginalized, movement.45

42

43

44 45

K.J. Schröer, Die Deutschen in Österreich-Ungarn und ihre Bedeutung für die Monarchie (Berlin, 1879); O. Steinwender, Die nationalen Aufgaben der Deutschen in Österreich (Vienna, 1885); A. v. Dumreicher, Südostdeutsche Betrachtungen. Eine nationale Denkschrift (Leipzig, 1893); H. Herkner, Die Zukunft der Deutsch-Österreicher (Vienna, 1893); F.G. Schultheiß, Das Deutschtum im Donaureiche (Berlin, 1895); A. v. Peez, Die Aufgaben der Deutschen in Österreich, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1906); H. Rauchberg, Die Bedeutung der Deutschen in Österreich (Dresden, 1908); [A.] v. Falkenegg, Oesterreichs Kulturmission im Osten. Zeit-Betrachtungen (Berlin, 1909); L.M. Hartmann, Österreich. Deutschtum und Freiheit (Munich, 1910); P. Samassa, Der Völkerstreit im Habsburgerstaat (Leipzig, 1910). For some examples of the ‘revisionist’ scholarship on Habsburg nationalism, see D.L. Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848–1916 (West Lafayette, IN, 2005); D.L. Unowsky and L. Cole (eds.), The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy (New York, 2007); T. Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, NY, 2008); G.B. Cohen, ‘Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Civil Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914’, CEH, 40 (2007), 241–78; G.B. Cohen, ‘Our Laws, Our Taxes, and Our Administration: Citizenship in Imperial Austria’, in O. Bartov and E.D. Weitz (eds.), Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington, IN, 2013), pp. 103–21. Also see M. Cornwall, ‘The Habsburg Monarchy: “National Trinity” and the Elasticity of National Allegiance’, in Baycroft and Hewitson (eds.), What Is a Nation?, pp. 171–91. On the interaction of German nationalists in Saxony and Bohemia, see Murdock, Changing Places, pp. 57–80. M. Wladika, Hitlers Vätergeneration. Die Ursprünge des Nationalsozialismus in der k.u.k. Monarchie (Vienna, 2005); K.-R. Trauner, Die Los-von-Rom-Bewegung. Gesellschaftspolitische und kirchliche Strömung in der ausgehenden Habsburgermonarchie, 2nd ed. (Szentendre, 2006); J. Schmid, Kampf um das Deutschtum. Radikaler Nationalismus in Österreich und dem Deutschen Reich 1890–1914 (Frankfurt/M., 2009). Also see B. Hamann, Hitlers Wien. Lehrjahre eines Diktators, 3rd ed. (Munich, 2000).

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Ethnic nationalism and the concept of Mitteleuropa The Dual Alliance of 1879 between Imperial Germany and AustriaHungary was acclaimed by large sections of the Reich German public. Many saw in the coalition more than a conventional bilateral agreement. The Prussian-conservative Kreuzzeitung, for instance, referred to it as ‘practically the only feasible realization of the Greater German idea’.46 Catholic commentators, who had long demanded a GermanAustro-Hungarian rapprochement, but also many liberal-nationalist and conservative newspapers, too, hailed Bismarck’s strategy and stressed the special relationship between the two empires. Indeed, as James Joll has highlighted, ‘the alliance met not only immediate diplomatic requirements but also an emotional need among many people in both countries at a time when, as never before, the public (or at least the press) responded immediately to diplomatic moves, so that treaties could acquire a significance with which their actual contents had little to do’.47 Ethno-cultural ties were repeatedly invoked to legitimize foreign policy decisions and economic ambitions. Bismarck himself had referred to ‘national kinship, historical memories, and the German language’ as binding elements to win over Wilhelm I for the alliance with Vienna.48 In March 1909, Chancellor Bülow delivered his famous ‘Nibelungen Speech’, in which he stressed the unique quality of the coalition in order to counter widespread reproaches that Germany was becoming a vassal of the Habsburg ally: ‘There is here no argument over precedence as between the two queens in the song of the Nibelungs; but we do not want to exclude the loyalty of the Nibelungs from our relationship with Austria-Hungary . . . Remaining faithful is the best way to secure our interests.’49 It appears that the slogan of the Nibelungentreue proved persistent.50 Oncken, for instance, stated that the word was reminiscent of ‘the common cultural heritage, which connects Germany and German Austria’, and would guarantee a special ‘solidity of the 46 47 48

49 50

NPZ, 28 December 1882, cited in K. Hatzfeld, Das deutsch-österreichische Bündnis von 1879 in der Beurteilung der politischen Parteien Deutschlands (Berlin, 1938), pp. 104–5. J. Joll, The Origins of the First World War, 2nd ed. (London, 1992), p. 47. Bismarck to Wilhelm I, 24 August 1879, in J. Lepsius et al. (eds.), Die Große Politik der Europäischen Kabinette 1871–1914. Sammlung der Diplomatischen Akten des Auswärtigen Amtes, 40 vols. (Berlin, 1922–27), III: Das Bismarck’sche Bündnissystem (1922), pp. 16–20 (p. 20). Hereafter as GPEK. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 236, p. 7802 (29 March 1909). For some hints see H. Münkler and W. Storch, Siegfrieden. Politik mit einem deutschen Mythos (Berlin, 1988); W. Hoffmann, ‘The Reception of the Nibelungenlied in the Twentieth Century’, in W. McConnell (ed.), A Companion to the Nibelungenlied (Columbia, SC, 1998), pp. 127–52; P. Wapnewski, ‘Das Nibelungenlied’, in H. Schulze and E. François (eds.), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, 3 vols. (Munich, 2001–2), I (2001), pp. 159–69; K. v. See, ‘Das Nibelungenlied – ein Nationalepos?’, in J. Heinzle (ed.), Die Nibelungen. Sage-Epos-Mythos (Wiesbaden, 2003), pp. 309–43.

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alliance’.51 The renowned economist Gustav von Schmoller, who advocated a customs union with the Habsburg Monarchy and German commercial expansion towards South-Eastern Europe, similarly highlighted ‘the thousand-year-old community of blood and race, the commonality of law, literature, art, and culture’ between Berlin and Vienna.52 Of course, the Dual Alliance was a matter of Realpolitik and not an ethno-national project. Originally part of Bismarck’s complicated system to avoid the ‘nightmare’ of hostile coalitions and meant to bring Russia back in, the relationship with Vienna increasingly assumed a more central role in German foreign policy.53 The non-renewal of the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1890 facilitated a rapprochement between Paris and St Petersburg (1891/94), which was followed by the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain of 1904 and the Anglo-Russian Convention three years later. To some extent a consequence of Berlin’s naval and colonial ambitions, the formation of the Triple Entente greatly contributed to a sense of encirclement amongst German decision-makers and the wider public, who now fell back on their only reliable international partner.54 The alliance with Vienna was supposed to secure a strong continental position as a precondition for Germany’s overseas endeavours. Furthermore, by siding with Austria-Hungary, Germany hoped to gain economic access to South-Eastern Europe. Sceptical assessments of the Habsburg ally’s domestic stability, conflicts of interests in the Balkans and Romania, and disputes over the Polish question did not bring about a change in Germany’s commitment to Vienna, as seen in 1908–09 during the Bosnian Annexation Crisis, which shattered relations between Vienna and St Petersburg and seriously harmed Russo-German 51 52 53

54

Oncken, ‘Deutschland und Österreich’, p. 142. G. Schmoller, ‘Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, NFP, 11 April 1909. On the Dual Alliance, see B.B. Hayes, Bismarck and Mitteleuropa (Rutherford, NJ, 1994); Rumpler and Niederkorn (eds.), Der ‘Zweibund’ 1879; A. Skrˇ ivan, Schwierige Partner. Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn in der europäischen Politik der Jahre 1906–1914, trans. by H. v. Bülow (Hamburg, 1999); J. Angelow, Kalkül und Prestige. Der Zweibund am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges (Cologne, 2000); H. Afflerbach, Der Dreibund. Europäische Großmacht- und Allianzpolitik vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, 2002). Still useful: S. Verosta, Theorie und Realität von Bündnissen. Heinrich Lammasch, Karl Renner und der Zweibund (1897-1914) (Vienna, 1971). On German foreign policy in the period, see, most recently, the studies by K. Hildebrand, Das vergangene Reich. Deutsche Außenpolitik von Bismarck bis Hitler, rev. ed. (Berlin, 1999) and Deutsche Außenpolitik 1871–1918, 3rd rev. and exp. ed. (Munich, 2008); the works by K. Canis, Bismarcks Außenpolitik 1870–1890. Aufstieg und Gefährdung (Paderborn, 2004), Von Bismarck zur Weltpolitik. Deutsche Außenpolitik 1890–1902 (Berlin, 1997), Der Weg in den Abgrund. Deutsche Außenpolitik 1902–1914 (Paderborn, 2011); and A. Rose, Die Außenpolitik des Wilhelminischen Kaiserreichs (1890–1918) (Darmstadt, 2013). For the wider context, see B. Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present (London, 2013).

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33

affairs, too.55 Whereas some historians, such as Jürgen Angelow, have pointed to the crisis as the beginning of a more aggressive and imperialistic phase in German-Austrian alliance politics, aimed in particular at the economic penetration of the Balkans and involving closer (although still rather superficial) military ties, other authors, including Holger Afflerbach, have underlined the fundamentally peaceful character of the coalition and argued against the notion of a steady deterioration of the situation in South-Eastern Europe. In early 1913, Berlin in fact exerted a moderating influence on Vienna, refusing to support a war against Serbia and helping to avoid a military conflict with Russia, although it played a very different role during the Second Albanian Crisis later that year. In any case, the strong interest in the survival of the multinational realm as a great power and reliable ally led to a reluctant stance towards deutschnational and irredentist tendencies in Austria, which were perceived as a threat to the political stability of the coalition partner. For instance, during the Badeni Crisis of 1897, which will be discussed below, the semi-official Hamburger Nachrichten insisted that it would be the ‘duty’ of the Austro-Germans to engage in the nationality conflicts in a respectable way without harming ‘the public weal and foreign relations’.56 And while Chancellor Bülow was convinced that the AustroGermans guaranteed ‘the inner cohesion and further existence of the Austrian state in its present form’, publicly he asserted the directive of non-intervention.57 As he stated in the Reichstag in response to the demand for a more proactive policy, brought forward by the National Liberal deputy and chairman of the extremist Pan-German League, Ernst Hasse: ‘For our citizens – we have to stand up whenever and wherever they suffer injustice . . . But for our co-nationals, which are separated from us by international law, we cannot intervene. This is an 55

56 57

On Austro-Hungarian foreign policy, see, with further references, S.R. Williamson, Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (London, 1991); F.R. Bridge, ‘Österreich(-Ungarn) unter den Großmächten’, in Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, VI/I, pp. 196–373; I.F. Pantenburg, Im Schatten des Zweibundes. Probleme österreichisch-ungarischer Bündnispolitik 1897–1908 (Vienna, 1996); E. Kolm, Die Ambitionen Österreich-Ungarns im Zeitalter des Hochimperialismus (Frankfurt/ M., 2001); G. Kronenbitter, ‘Krieg im Frieden.’ Die Führung der k.u.k. Armee und die Großmachtpolitik Österreich-Ungarns 1906–1914 (Munich, 2003); S. Wank, In the Twilight of Empire: Count Alois Alexa von Aehrenthal (1854–1912), Imperial Habsburg Patriot and Statesman, 2 vols. (Vienna, 2009–); W. Rauscher, Die fragile Großmacht. Die Donaumonarchie und die europäische Staatenwelt 1866–1914, 2 vols. (Frankfurt/M., 2014). Quoted from H. Andics, Das österreichische Jahrhundert. Die Donaumonarchie 1804–1914 (Vienna, 1986), p. 326. Bülow to Lichnowsky, 18 June 1898, in GPEK, XIII: Die Europäischen Mächte untereinander 1897–1899 (1924), pp. 119–21 (p. 120).

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old principle of German policy, drawn up by Prince Bismarck, from which none of his successors will or can deviate.’58 Indeed, fearing the estrangement of the ally, Berlin refrained from providing official support for Austrian Germandom and resorted to informal means (newspaper articles and diplomatic pressure) in order to influence Vienna to follow a pro-German course in Cisleithania and to maintain the dualist status quo, commonly regarded as preconditions for domestic stability and an anti-Russian foreign policy.59 The large majority of the public shared this pragmatic realism with regard to the Austrian question. The absence of a popular irredentist movement demonstrates the extent to which Reich Germans had accepted the kleindeutsch nation-state. Even if a solution to the dynastic question (Habsburg vs Hohenzollern) could be found, it was widely believed that annexing Austria would change the political and socioeconomic status quo in Imperial Germany and challenge PrussoProtestant supremacy. In particular, it was feared that the incorporation of predominantly Catholic territory would strengthen the Centre Party and encourage particularist tendencies in the German South. Furthermore, the inclusion of the lands of Bohemia, Moravia, and Austrian Silesia, for which there were strong geo-strategic reasons, would bring a substantial number of non-German speakers into the Reich, thus jeopardizing the homogeneity of the nation-state. As Bülow stated in a letter to the German ambassador in Washington, annexing Austria ‘would not represent a gain in power but a weakening and tremendous danger for the continued existence of the German Reich, especially from the Protestant point of view’.60 Even more important, however, were the international situation and the Dual Monarchy’s significance as Germany’s diplomatic, military, and economic partner. The Austro-Germans as predominant ethnic group within the multinational empire simply seemed to be of greater use or value in this position than within Germany. Treitschke agreed: ‘If there are two great empires in the centre of the continent – one of them balanced and purely German, the other Catholic and polyglot but inspired by a German mindset – who can say that such a situation is 58 59

60

Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 188, p. 8730 (19 March 1903). S. Wank, ‘The Impact of the Dual Alliance on the Germans in Austria and Vice-Versa’, ECE, 7/2 (1980), 288–309; L. Höbelt, ‘Die deutschen Parteien, das Reich und der Zweibund’, in Rumpler and Niederkorn (eds.), Der ‘Zweibund’ 1879, pp. 345–64; P. Gietl, ‘ “. . . die Spalten der großen Blätter . . . öffnen”. Zur deutschen Pressepolitik in Österreich-Ungarn’, in Gietl, Vom Wiener Kongreß, pp. 117–58. Bülow to Speck v. Sternburg, 14 April 1905, in GPEK, XIX: Der Russisch-Japanische Krieg II (1925), pp. 598–9 (p. 599).

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humiliating for German national pride?’61 The prerequisite was, of course, Vienna’s willingness to maintain Austro-German supremacy in Cisleithania. This anxiety about the standing and future of the co-nationals in the Habsburg Empire was widespread in Imperial Germany, where, due to mounting ethnic strife since the 1890s, Austro-Hungarian domestic affairs hit the headlines more often than ever. In 1897, for example, the introduction of several language ordinances in Bohemia and Moravia, which led to the famous Badeni Crisis, prompted passionate professions of solidarity.62 Large sections of the German press issued aggressive commentaries and warnings against the ‘repression’ of the AustroGermans and ‘insatiable’ Czech demands. Four-fifths of all Reich German professors signed a proclamation, expressing warm sympathy with their German-Bohemian colleagues in the struggle for national ‘survival’. Five years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the eminent historian Theodor Mommsen published an open letter in which he condemned the undermining of the AustroGermans as ‘the monarchy’s suicide’ and ‘Cisleithanian madness’. He concluded by insisting to fight with all means: ‘Be tough! The Czech skull does not accept reason but is receptive to punches . . . It is all or nothing; defeat means extermination.’63 Austro-Slav demands for national autonomy and political parity were often considered unfounded and a threat to the cohesion of the empire. Indeed, the ideas of the Austro-Marxists Karl Renner and Otto Bauer about national-cultural autonomy and the personality principle went largely unnoticed.64 German Social Democracy was little concerned with the nationality question, leaving the field to 61 62

63 64

H. v. Treitschke, ‘Österreich und das Deutsche Reich’ (1871), in Treitschke, Aufsätze, Reden und Briefe, III, pp. 520–34 (p. 521). B. Sutter, Die Badenischen Sprachenverordnungen von 1897. Ihre Genesis und Auswirkungen vornehmlich auf die innerösterreichischen Alpenländer, 2 vols. (Graz, 1960–65); N.M. Wingfield, Flag Wars and Stone Saints: How the Bohemian Lands Became Czech (Cambridge, MA, 2007), pp. 48–78. B. Sutter, ‘Theodor Mommsens Brief “An die Deutschen in Österreich” (1897)’, OW, 10 (1963), 152–225 (159–60). H. Mommsen, Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitätenfrage im habsburgischen Vielvölkerstaat. Das Ringen um die supranationale Integration der zisleithanischen Arbeiterbewegung 1867–1907 (Vienna, 1963); H. Konrad, Nationalismus und Internationalismus. Die österreichische Arbeiterbewegung vor dem 1. Weltkrieg (Vienna, 1976); V.J. Knapp, Austrian Social Democracy, 1889–1914 (Washington, 1980); W. Maderthaner (ed.), Sozialdemokratie und Habsburgerstaat (Vienna, 1988); D. Langewiesche, ‘“Die Sozialdemokratie hält die Nation für unzerstörbar und für nicht zerstörenswert”. Theoretische Reflexionen im Austromarxismus um 1900 und ihre Bedeutung für die heutige Nationalismusforschung’, in Langewiesche, Reich, Nation, Föderation, pp. 93–11; O. Leiße, Der Untergang des österreichischen Imperiums. Otto Bauer und die Nationalitätenfrage in der Habsburger Monarchie (Marburg, 2012).

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Austrian-born publicists and theoreticians such as Karl Kautsky or Friedrich Stampfer.65 As the chairman of the SPD, August Bebel, stated in an ironic but revealing statement in 1901, it would be ‘incredibly difficult’ for any ‘reasonable outsider’ to comprehend this ‘tohubohu’.66 Altogether, only a few German observers argued for far-reaching interethnic conciliation, amongst them the left-liberal politician and legal expert Walther Schücking, who approved of the existence of the multinational empire on the basis of historical, geopolitical, and economic grounds, but demanded substantial democratic and federalist reforms. The negative experiences in Austria and Hungary should serve as a warning against a policy of Germanization and repression in the eastern provinces of Prussia.67 Most centre-right commentators followed deutschnational positions concerning an administrative and territorial reorganization of Cisleithania, although they did not always grasp the complexity of the issues at stake or elaborate on constitutional details, such as the exclusion of Galicia.68 Claims of ethno-cultural superiority and the belief in an existential struggle between Germandom and Slavdom were widespread, but altogether it seems that other, more traditional arguments for AustroGerman hegemony dominated, such as the assertion that the Habsburg Monarchy had always rested on German work and spirit. There was also the long-standing view – shared for instance by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – that the non-German nationalities were too small, geographically too dispersed, and culturally and socio-economically too backward to justify political parity or even national self-determination, whereas Austrian Germandom, as the largest, most loyal, and most progressive 65 66

67

68

H.-U. Wehler, Sozialdemokratie und Nationalstaat. Nationalitätenfragen in Deutschland 1840–1914, 2nd rev. ed. (Göttingen, 1971). A. Bebel, ‘Rede zur Begrüßung des österreichischen Parteitages, 2. November 1901’, in A. Bebel, Ausgewählte Reden und Schriften, ed. by H. Bartel et al., 10 vols. (Munich, 1970– 96), VII/1: Reden und Schriften 1899 bis 1905, ed. by A. Beske and E. Müller (1997), pp. 183–9 (p. 188). W. Schücking, Das Nationalitätenproblem. Eine politische Studie über die Polenfrage und die Zukunft Österreich-Ungarns (Dresden, 1908). He referred particularly to Synopticus [i.e. K. Renner], Staat und Nation (Vienna, 1899); R. Springer [i.e. K. Renner], Der Kampf der österreichischen Nationen um den Staat (Leipzig, 1902); R. Springer [i.e. K. Renner], Grundlagen und Entwicklungsziele der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (Vienna, 1906); A.C. Popovici, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Groß-Österreich. Politische Studien zur Lösung der nationalen Fragen und staatsrechtlichen Krisen in Österreich-Ungarn (Leipzig, 1906). On Austrian reform ideas, see, with further references: J.W. Boyer, ‘The End of the Old Regime: Visions of Political Reform in Late Imperial Austria’, JMH, 58 (1986), 159–93; H. Haselsteiner, ‘Die Nationalitätenfrage in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie und der föderalistische Lösungsansatz’, in Rumpler (ed.), Innere Staatsbildung, pp. 21–30; H. Mommsen, ‘Die habsburgische Nationalitätenfrage und ihre Lösungsversuche im Licht der Gegenwart’, in H.A. Winkler (ed.), Nationalismus, Nationalitäten, Supranationalität (Stuttgart, 1993), pp. 108–22.

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ethnic group, rightfully dominated at least the western half of the realm. Only such a situation, it was held, would guarantee a pro-German stance in Vienna – a simplistic view which of course misconstrued the concrete decision-making process in Austro-Hungarian foreign policy. However, with a few exceptions, overt intervention in Habsburg affairs seems to have been out of the question. Most observers were aware that official support for Austrian Germandom would estrange the ally and threaten its domestic stability (in this measure, the extreme statements during the Badeni Crisis were atypical). Leading sections of the German educated and propertied classes supported the activities of various organizations that took a strong interest in the nationality question, such as the German School Association (renamed Association for Germandom Abroad in 1908), which counted many prominent intellectuals, such as Adolf von Harnack, Rudolf Virchow, Heinrich von Sybel, and Karl Lamprecht, amongst its 40,000 members. This society was particularly concerned with German minority communities in mixed territories and in the peripheries of the Dual Monarchy, helping them in cultural and linguistic matters by providing financial and educational assistance. The Gustav-Adolf-Verein and the Protestant League, on the other hand, backed Austrian Protestantism and the Los-von-Rom movement.69 This generally reluctant stance prompted repeated criticism from deutschnational and Pan-German circles in Austria, who hoped for a more proactive Reich German engagement to stop the ‘Slavization’ of the Habsburg realm. Even Kraus found it ‘strange’ and deplorable that the AustroGermans ‘receive only little support from the German Reich’ against ‘the government’s policy of abandonment of Germandom’: ‘On the contrary, one is being admonished not to pour one’s heart out across the border, and protests against the oppression of Germandom in Austria are suppressed in Germany.’70 The German conservative thinker Constantin Frantz was one of the most fervent critics of Bismarck and the Reichsnation after 1871, combining the universalist and multinational tradition of the Holy Roman Empire with Friedrich List’s economic nationalism and the federalism of the ‘Third Germany’. To him, the Lesser German state was ‘an untenable entity’, a ‘deformed body [Missgestalt]’ in geopolitical and 69

70

G. Weidenfeller, VDA – Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland. Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein (1881–1918). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Nationalismus und Imperialismus im Kaiserreich (Bern, 1976); J. Kloosterhuis, ‘Friedliche Imperialisten’. Deutsche Auslandsvereine und auswärtige Kulturpolitik 1906–1918, 2 vols. (Frankfurt/M., 1994); P. Haslinger (ed.), Schutzvereine in Ostmitteleuropa. Vereinswesen, Sprachenkonflikte und Dynamiken nationaler Mobilisierung 1860–1939 (Marburg, 2009). K. Kraus, ‘Chronik’ (1897), in Kraus, Frühe Schriften, II: 1897–1900, pp. 122–7 (pp. 123–4).

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economic regard.71 Frantz proposed instead a Central European confederation, comprising a Greater German union (the smaller western and southern German states as one component, together with PrussiaPoland, and Austria) in loose association with Switzerland, the Benelux and Scandinavian countries, and stretching as far as to the Balkans and Asia Minor. Following List, Frantz also promoted the colonization of the European East and South-East in place of overseas expansionism.72 However, his ideas had no significant impact on his contemporaries. The Saxon librarian and publicist Ottomar Schuchardt was one of the very few who followed Frantz’s Greater German conservatism, opposing Prussia-Germany’s imperialist world and armaments policies, centralism, and urbanization.73 In this, and in their cooperative attitude towards the western Slavs, both Frantz and Schuchardt differed considerably from Pan-German advocates of Mitteleuropa such as the philosopher and orientalist Paul de Lagarde. Lagarde did not completely reject the new Germany of 1871. To be sure, he did criticise Kleindeutschland, calling it an ‘absurdity’ in history and a ‘provisional solution’.74 At the same time, however, Lagarde accepted the decision of 1866–71 as an ‘absolute necessity’, and argued that the Austrian Empire had rightly been separated from the rest of Germany.75 In contrast to Frantz, he not only approved of a German nation-state but also promoted – somewhat paradoxically – an ethnic national idea. ‘Germany’ for him meant ‘the totality of all Germans who feel German, think German, and act German’: ‘The Germans abroad remain our flesh and blood.’76 Ultimately, Lagarde conceived of a German-led Central European entity, based on an organic association of Germany and Austria-Hungary and stretching from Luxembourg and Belfort in the West to the Memel and the Black Sea in the East. Whereas Frantz took a conciliatory, non-violent stance 71 72

73

74

75 76

C. Frantz, Die Weltpolitik unter besonderer Bezugnahme auf Deutschland, 3 vols. (Chemnitz, 1882–83), II (1882), p. 142. Also see his Das neue Deutschland. Beleuchtet in Briefen an einen preußischen Staatsmann (Leipzig, 1871) and Der Föderalismus als das leitende Prinzip für die sociale, staatliche und internationale Organisation, unter besonderer Bezugnahme auf Deutschland, kritisch nachgewiesen und constructiv dargestellt (Mainz, 1879). O. Schuchardt and C. Frantz, Die deutsche Politik der Zukunft, 3 vols. (Celle, 1899–1902); O. Schuchardt, Constantin Frantz. Deutschlands wahrer Realpolitiker (Melsungen, 1896); O. Schuchardt, Der mitteleuropäische Bund (Dresden, 1913). P. de Lagarde, ‘Die nächsten Pflichten deutscher Politik’ (1886), in P. de Lagarde, Schriften für das deutsche Volk, 2 vols., 4th ed. (Munich, 1940), I: Deutsche Schriften, ed. by K.A. Fischer, pp. 443–81 (p. 455), and his ‘Vorrede zu den Politischen Aufsätzen’ (1874), in Lagarde, Schriften für das deutsche Volk, I, pp. 91–3 (p. 91). P. de Lagarde, ‘Über die gegenwärtige Lage des Deutschen Reichs. Ein Bericht’ (1875), in Lagarde, Schriften für das deutsche Volk, I, pp. 114–94 (p. 131). Ibid., p. 194; Lagarde, ‘Die nächsten Pflichten’, p. 452.

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towards the non-German nationalities in Central Europe, Lagarde was convinced that Magyars, Czechs, and the other ethnic groups in the Habsburg Monarchy were ‘a burden for Europe’ – the ‘sooner they disappear the better’ – and advocated a policy of oppression and reckless Germanization.77 Both Frantz and Lagarde opposed German statism, which put emphasis on citizenship and territory as definitional categories.78 In a more traditional sense, Frantz referred to the historic, linguistic, and cultural community of Central European Germandom (Kulturnation). Lagarde added descent and race. Often combined with strong anti-Semitic, antiSocialist, and anti-democratic beliefs, the concept of the German Volksnation became a prominent one in Wilhelmine Germany’s radicalized national discourse. Dennis Sweeney has described this völkisch nationalism as ‘a new ideological formation on the German right, emphasizing the ethnoracial unity of “Germandom”, the centrality of the “people” to all policymaking, and aggressive imperial expansion’.79 Indeed, as Ernst Hasse from the ADV declared: ‘The only thing that possesses stability in the flux of a thousand years of development is the Volk . . . States, as conglomerations of ethnic groups, come and go.’80 However, such statements conceal that German radical nationalists, too, held the nation-state in highest regard. There was no doubt that the elimination of Austro-Prussian dualism in 1866 and the formation of the politically unified and militarily powerful nation-state in 1871 had been a necessary and beneficial step in German national development. As regards the Austrian question, most Pan-Germans ultimately took a realist stance and rejected irredentist plans for the partition of the Habsburg Empire and the unification of Reich and Austrian Germandom in a unitary Greater German state, which had been intensely discussed in the 1890s.81 Many were convinced that the Danube 77 78 79 80 81

Lagarde, ‘Über die gegenwärtige Lage’, p. 130. Classic example: A. Kirchhoff, Was ist national? (Halle/S., 1902) and his Zur Verständigung über die Begriffe Nation und Nationalität (Halle/S., 1905). D. Sweeney, ‘Pan-German Conceptions of Colonial Empire’, in B. Naranch and G. Eley (eds.), German Colonialism in a Global Age (Durham, NC, 2014), pp. 265–82 (p. 266). E. Hasse, Deutsche Weltpolitik (Munich, 1897), p. 16. See, for example, [E. Hasse], Großdeutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950 (Berlin, 1895); [E. Hasse], Österreichs Zusammenbruch und Wiederaufbau (Munich, 1899); [M. Bewer], Der Untergang Österreichs (Dresden, 1891); [M. Bewer], Germania irredenta (Dresden, 1892); [K.A. Kaerger], Germania triumphans! Rückblick auf die weltgeschichtlichen Ereignisse der Jahre 1900–1915 (Berlin, 1895); T. Reismann-Grone, Die slawische Gefahr in der Ostmark. Vortrag, gehalten auf dem Alldeutschen Verbandstage zu Hamburg (Munich, 1899); [Anon.], Groß-Deutschland (Munich, 1900); [Anon.], Deutschland bei Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1900); [O. Schmidt], Wo liegt das größere Deutschland? Eine Kritik unserer gegenwärtigen Angst-Politik (Berlin, 1903); C. Jentsch, Die Zukunft des

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Monarchy would sooner or later disintegrate but, in view of Germany’s international isolation, at least temporarily acknowledged AustriaHungary’s right to exist and its importance as an allied great power, a bulwark against Pan-Slavism, and an instrument of German economic interests in South-Eastern Europe.82 Under the new leadership of Heinrich Claß and the influence of the Austro-German activists Paul Samassa, Albert Ritter, and Edmund Steinacker, and against the resistance of champions of a pro-Russian, anti-Habsburg course such as the publisher Theodor Reismann-Grone (and Austrian Pan-Germans around Schönerer and Viktor Lischka), the ADV officially deprecated irredentist schemes.83 Instead, it advocated a transformation of the Dual Monarchy into a federalized Greater Austria under Austro-German leadership and a deeper political and economic relationship between Berlin and Vienna. A closely associated, second German-led entity in Central Europe was considered more favourable with regard to Germany’s standing in Europe and the world than the division of the Danube Empire and the incorporation of its German lands into an enlarged yet friendless Greater German state (while Habsburg’s other territories would fall prey to Russian ambitions). Frequent and harsh criticism of AustriaHungary must be attributed to the concern about its domestic stability and the standing of the German-speaking population; it did not express fundamental disapproval of the monarchy’s existence. Friedrich Lange, for instance, the founder of the völkisch and anti-Semitic Deutschbund, termed the multinational empire a ‘state monster [staatliche Mißgeburt]’.

82

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deutschen Volkes (Berlin, 1905); O.R. Tannenberg, Groß-Deutschland. Die Arbeit des 20. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1911). On the history of the ADV (and other radical nationalist associations), see G. Eley, Reshaping the German Right: Radical Nationalism and Political Change after Bismarck (New Haven, CT, 1980); R. Chickering, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886–1914 (Boston, MA, 1984); M. Peters, Der Alldeutsche Verband am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges (1908–1914). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des völkischen Nationalismus im spätwilhelminischen Deutschland, 2nd rev. ed. (Frankfurt/M., 1996); R. Hering, Konstruierte Nation. Der Alldeutsche Verband 1890 bis 1939 (Hamburg, 2003); J. Leicht, Heinrich Claß 1868–1953. Die politische Biographie eines Alldeutschen (Paderborn, 2012). See G. Tokody, ‘Die Pläne des Alldeutschen Verbandes zur Umgestaltung ÖsterreichUngarns’, Acta Historica, 9 (1963), 39–67; G. Schödl, ‘Alldeutsch-deutschnationale Politik in der Habsburgermonarchie und im Deutschen Reich’, in G. Schödl, Formen und Grenzen des Nationalen. Beiträge zu nationaler Integration und Nationalismus im östlichen Europa (Erlangen, 1990), pp. 49–89; J. Angelow, ‘Alldeutsche, Reichsregierung und Zweibund am Vorabend und zu Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs. Zur Ambivalenz von nationalistischer Agitation, autoritärem Machtstaat und Bündnispolitik’, MIÖG, 106 (1998), 377–409; Korinman, Deutschland über alles, pp. 79–127; Walkenhorst, Nation – Volk – Rasse, pp. 203–26; S. Frech, Wegbereiter Hitlers? Theodor Reismann Grone. Ein völkischer Nationalist (1863–1949) (Paderborn, 2009), pp. 203–13.

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In order to stop the ‘Slavization’ of the Habsburg Monarchy, Lange demanded from the German government – the ‘champion of Germandom on earth’ – to exert pressure on Vienna.84 Likewise, Heinrich Claß wanted to ‘dismiss the sacred principle of nonintervention’ and even called for armed support to secure ‘the cultural and political leadership of the Germans’ in Austria.85 Pan-German circles became more actively involved in Habsburg domestic politics and cooperated closely with deutschnational groups in Austria and with Hungarian German representatives. Whereas centrist commentators seemed increasingly willing to accept at least limited concessions in favour of the non-German ethnic groups, radical nationalists employed a much more aggressive and antagonistic rhetoric, with some even demanding Germanization or resettlement measures. However, contrary to earlier conceptions aimed at the dissolution of the Danubian realm and the establishment of a Greater German nation-state, these ideas involved domestic reforms and the continued existence of the multiethnic monarchy. True, this change was tactical rather than strategic in nature and did not suggest the abandonment of the long-term PanGerman objective of the national unification of Central European Germandom, conceivable perhaps after a successful continental war which would strengthen the Kaiserreich and render the coalition with Austria-Hungary obsolete. But völkisch solidarity with the ethnic Germans abroad came only second to the interests of the nation-state, which was considered as the indispensable bedrock of national existence – a remarkable observation regarding the extreme right, which has often been associated with ideological fanaticism and politics of feelings, with racist utopias and mythical Teutonism, whilst its pragmatic, stateoriented nationalism has been neglected.86 Clearly, the statism of rightwing nationalists did not lead to unconditional support for the German 84 85

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F. Lange, ‘Deutsche Politik’ (1893), in F. Lange, Reines Deutschtum. Grundzüge einer nationalen Weltanschauung, 5th exp. ed. (Berlin, 1904), pp. 186–215 (pp. 210, 214). D. Frymann [i.e. H. Claß], Wenn ich der Kaiser wär’ – Politische Wahrheiten und Notwendigkeiten (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 165, 142. Also see E. Hasse’s later books: Das Deutsche Reich als Nationalstaat (Munich, 1905); Deutsche Grenzpolitik (Munich, 1906); Die Zukunft des deutschen Volkstums (Munich, 1907); Weltpolitik, Imperialismus und Kolonialpolitik (Munich, 1908). See e.g. H. Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York, 1960); F. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, CA, 1961); G.L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, 1964); J. Hermand, Der alte Traum vom neuen Reich. Völkische Utopien und Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt/M., 1988); K. v. See, Freiheit und Gemeinschaft. Völkisch-nationales Denken in Deutschland zwischen Französischer Revolution und Erstem Weltkrieg (Heidelberg, 2001); H.W. Smith, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2008).

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government. It contained strong collectivistic-authoritarian and culturally exclusive notions. But blunt racism and annexationist expansionism, aiming at the extension of the Reich into other areas of German settlement, remained a fringe phenomenon in German society. On the whole, there seem to have been other, more pressing topics for conservative and radical nationalists. The Polish question in the German East received particular attention. As the historian Dietrich Schäfer, a leading member of the ADV and the German Eastern Marches Society (Deutscher Ostmarkenverein, DOV), explained: ‘The state is power, that is its essence . . . There is only one criterion for what must be done in our Reich and what has to be avoided: “How does it affect our power position?” Its protection and expansion constitutes the spirit and purpose of the Reich.’ Germany’s central position in Europe had resulted in the exclusion of a large part of Germandom from the nation-state, but also – ‘and that is much more disturbing’ – the incorporation of four million non-German inhabitants.87 Völkisch ideas and Germanization schemes played a significant role in the Polish debate, but stood in connection with the ideal of a unified and homogeneous nation-state. The same holds true for Germany’s new citizenship law of 1913, which had been of Pan-German concern for many years. Codifying the principle of descent (ius sanguinis), it has been regarded as an indication of the prevalence of ethnic nationalism in Imperial Germany, an ideological forerunner even to Nazi policies.88 However, the new law, which had been opposed by Social Democrats, left liberals, the national minorities, as well as by some Catholic and even conservative parliamentarians, was primarily a regulatory measure against the increasing number of Eastern European immigrants. Poles and Jews in particular were deemed a threat or potential factor of instability due to their socio-economic status, religious affiliation, and relative aversion to cultural and linguistic assimilation.89 The established French-, Danish-, and Polish-speaking groups, on the other hand, were still legally considered 87 88

89

D. Schäfer, ‘Was bedeutet dem Deutschen sein Reich?’ (1912), in D. Schäfer, Aufsätze, Vorträge und Reden, 2 vols. (Jena, 1913), II, pp. 321–40 (pp. 336–7). See, for example, R. Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1992); W. Wippermann, ‘Das Blutsrecht der Blutsnation. Zur Ideologie- und Politikgeschichte des ius sanguinis in Deutschland’, in J. Baumann et al. (eds.), Blut oder Boden. Doppelpass, Staatsbürgerrecht, und Nationsverständnis (Berlin, 1999), pp. 10–48. D. Gosewinkel, Einbürgern und Ausschließen. Die Nationalisierung der Staatsangehörigkeit vom Deutschen Bund bis zur Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Göttingen, 2001); E. Nathans, The Politics of Citizenship in Germany: Ethnicity, Utility and Nationalism (Oxford, 2004); O. Trevisiol, Die Einbürgerungspraxis im Deutschen Reich 1871–1945 (Göttingen, 2006); G. Eley and J. Palmowski (eds.), Citizenship and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Germany (Stanford, CA, 2008); V.F. Gironda, Die Politik der Staatsbürgerschaft: Italien und Deutschland im Vergleich 1800-1914 (Göttingen, 2010).

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Germans; the Reichsnation thus remained ethnically and culturally heterogeneous. The law relinquished the stipulation that Germans living abroad lost their citizenship after ten years, but this move had to do with the general shift from unwanted emigration to official colonialism. It was justified with the political and commercial interests of the German Reich: loyal Auslandsdeutsche could open up new overseas markets, serve as a springboard for imperial ventures, and generally help to establish a positive image of Germany in the world.90 Altogether, the national right was more concerned with the homogeneous nation-state, with world politics and overseas imperialism, than with Germandom in Central Europe. The so-called Größere Deutschland was the order of the day, modelled after the concept of ‘Greater Britain’ and referring to Germany’s colonial-maritime course. It was in this context that the idea of a Central European entity came back to the fore.91 Most Mitteleuropa advocates in Wilhelmine Germany shared neither Frantz’s conservative federalism nor Lagarde’s Pan-Germanism, but thought in terms of power politics and economic imperialism. The scheme became particularly popular due to the ever more influential doctrine according to which the future belonged to world empires with abundant raw materials and a self-sufficient market.92 The geographer 90

91

92

R. Münz and R. Ohliger, ‘Auslandsdeutsche’, in Schulze and François (eds.), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte, I, pp. 370–88; K. O’Donell et al. (eds.), The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005); S. Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation im deutschen Kaiserreich (Munich, 2006); M. Perraudin and J. Zimmerer (eds.), German Colonialism and National Identity (New York, 2011), S. Manz, Constructing a German Diaspora: The ‘Greater German Empire’, 1871–1914 (London, 2014). Also see B. Naranch, ‘Inventing the Auslandsdeutsche: Emigration, Colonial Fantasy, and German National Identity, 1848–71’, in E. Ames et al. (eds.), Germany’s Colonial Pasts (Lincoln, NE, 2005), pp. 21–40. On the Mitteleuropa idea up to 1914, see Meyer, Mitteleuropa; J. Droz, L’europe centrale. Évolution historique de l’idée de ‘Mitteleuropa’ (Paris, 1960); P. Theiner, ‘“Mitteleuropa”Pläne im Wilhelminischen Deutschland’, in H. Berding (ed.), Wirtschaftliche und politische Integration in Europa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1984), pp. 128–48; C. Weimer, ‘Mitteleuropa als politisches Ordnungskonzept? Darstellung und Analyse der historischen Ideen und Pläne sowie der aktuellen Diskussionsmodelle’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Regensburg, 1992); R.G. Plaschka et al. (eds.), Mitteleuropa-Konzeptionen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Vienna, 1995); J. Brechtefeld, Mitteleuropa and German Politics, 1848 to the Present (Basingstoke, 1996); H.-H. Brandt, ‘Von Bruck zu Naumann. “Mitteleuropa” in der Zeit der Paulskirche und des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Gehler et al. (eds.), Ungleiche Partner?, pp. 315–52; J. Angelow, ‘Interessenidentität und Mächtekonkurrenz im Zweibund. Wirtschaftsräumliche, handelspolitische und militärstrategische Ziele im “Mitteleuropa”-Konzept zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhundert’, in Rumpler and Niederkorn (eds.), Der ‘Zweibund’ 1879, pp. 299–324; K. Thörner, ‘Der ganze Südosten ist unser Hinterland’. Deutsche Südosteuropapläne von 1840–1945 (Freiburg, 2008). K.-G. Faber, ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Geopolitik. Staat, Nation und Lebensraum im Denken deutscher Geographen vor 1914’, in H. Dollinger (ed.), Weltpolitik, Europagedanke, Regionalismus. Festschrift für Heinz Gollwitzer (Münster, 1982), pp. 389–406; Smith, The Ideological Origins; M. Korinman, Quand l’Allemagne pensait le monde.

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Friedrich Ratzel, for instance, was convinced that ‘greater areas are more and more becoming the general tendency of national and state development’.93 If Germany was to compete successfully in the global struggle for hegemony, it would need to improve its position in demographic, economic, and geopolitical regard. Only continental solidification, economic integration, and commercial expansion towards the Middle East, it was claimed by many authors, would guarantee Germany’s endurance: ‘Greater Russia, World Britannia, Pan-America – what can a Lesser German Empire, an Austrian chaos mean in comparison? But a quickly and viably organized Mitteleuropa stands on a par, qualified for leadership.’94 Most plans for closer German-AustroHungarian cooperation – reaching from improved trade agreements to detailed plans for a customs union or even a federal political and defence association – were driven by such power-political and economic considerations rather than by ethno-national concerns. They did not aim at the unification of German-speaking Central Europe in a common polity, as Lagarde and other Pan-Germans envisaged, but intended a betterpositioned German nation-state. Thus, contrary to what Harold James has claimed, Mitteleuropa did not represent a ‘criticism of the Wilhelmine state’; it was not supposed to counter but to supplement German Weltpolitik.95 However, as we will see, the Central European idea became an official objective and a more popular project only under the new conditions of the First World War.

Reichsnation, Kulturnation, Volksnation: defining Germany after 1871 In one of his famous Berlin lectures on politics, Treitschke stated that ‘for many centuries it had been our tragedy that no one knew where Germany ends’.96 The events of 1866 and 1870–71 brought a compelling answer, and the following years and decades proved that, for the large majority of Reich Germans at least, there was no German question any more.

93 94 95 96

Grandeur et décadence d’une géopolitique (Paris, 1990); S. Neitzel, Weltmacht oder Untergang. Die Weltreichslehre im Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Paderborn, 2000); C. Torp, Die Herausforderung der Globalisierung. Wirtschaft und Politik in Deutschland 1860–1914 (Göttingen, 2005); D. van Laak, Über alles in der Welt. Deutscher Imperialismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2005). F. Ratzel, Politische Geographie (Munich, 1897), p. 337. K. v. Winterstetten [i.e. A. Ritter], Berlin-Bagdad. Neue Ziele mitteleuropäischer Politik, 8th ed. (Munich, 1914), p. 17. James, A German Identity, p. 103. H. v. Treitschke, Politik. Vorlesungen gehalten an der Universität zu Berlin, ed. by Max Cornelicus, 2 vols., 5th ed. (Leipzig, 1922 [orig. 1897-98]), II, p. 338.

The concept of the German nation, 1871–1914

45

Although it was widely acknowledged that one did not live in an ‘ideal nation-state’, a new, state-centred German identity evolved.97 ‘Germany’, which had earlier been defined in linguistic and cultural terms or politically as the territory of the German Confederation, became increasingly associated with the borders, institutions, and citizens of the Kaiserreich. More than before 1871, state and nation were interrelated and intertwined. The German-Austrian ethno-cultural community stood in a complementary relationship to the state-nation, and national sentiments were easily mobilized whenever the dominant position of the Austro-Germans within the Habsburg Monarchy was perceived to be threatened. But it did not acquire any significance for Reich policy towards the multinational ally. The primary aims of German decisionmakers and the leading political and cultural elites were the domestic consolidation of the nation-state and a secure international power position. Demands for intervention on behalf of the Austro-Germans or for the unification of Central European Germandom also found no support amongst larger sections of the population. From the 1880s onwards, the dichotomy between Kulturnation and Staatsnation, which in fact often combined in an ambivalent way, became increasingly distorted or overlaid by a third concept, the Volksnation, which added genetic attributes to the political and cultural definition of the German nation.98 A particular terminology corresponded to this development: whereas Großdeutschland stood for the traditional idea of a German nation-state including Austria, and the Größere Deutschland signified the ‘new Germany overseas and in world politics’, AllDeutschland (sometimes also called Großdeutschland or Mitteleuropa) referred to radical-nationalist plans to establish German hegemony over Central Europe and to incorporate other ‘tribes’ of the ‘Germanic race’, such as the Dutch.99 The orientalist Paul de Lagarde, the cultural critic Julius Langbehn, and the English-born writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain were some of the most influential intellectuals who opposed citizenship and territory as central features of the nation, highlighting instead common descent and kinship as the basis of Germanness. 97 98

99

H. Oncken, ‘Die Ideen von 1813 und die deutsche Gegenwart. Eine säkulare Betrachtung’ (1913), in Oncken, Historisch-politische Aufsätze, I, pp. 21–36 (p. 27). On this classification, see M.R. Lepsius, ‘Nation und Nationalismus in Deutschland’, in M.R. Lepsius, Interessen, Ideen und Institutionen (Opladen, 1990), pp. 232–46; O. Dann, ‘Nationale Fragen in Deutschland: Kulturnation, Volksnation, Reichsnation’, in E. François et al. (eds.), Nation und Emotion. Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich. 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1995), pp. 66–82. P. Rohrbach, Deutschland unter den Weltvölkern. Materialien zur auswärtigen Politik, 3rd ed., special ed. of the Verband Deutscher Handlungsgehilfen zu Leipzig (Berlin, 1912), p. 25.

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To some extent, such notions had long been present, as various contributions to the Frankfurt Assembly debates demonstrated, but the ethnonational conception undoubtedly acquired greater salience and political significance in the Wilhelmine period. Promoted by various pressure groups and patriotic societies, such as the Pan-German League, and owing to the biologization of social and political thought, it increasingly permeated even liberal sections of German society – Schmoller’s reference to the ‘community of blood and race’ may serve as an example here.100 However, it is necessary to differentiate between rhetoric and politics, between the Volksnation as a cognitive and emotional concept on the one hand, and as a normative or guiding principle on the other. References to common ancestry were often used in a superficial way and in combination with kulturnational arguments for Austria’s membership in the national community; they do not automatically indicate an agreement with the conclusions and exclusionary demands of völkisch nationalists, such as racial anti-Semitism and the internal oppression of ethnic minorities. For some radicals, the principle of consanguinity implied the political inclusion of German-speaking communities outside the borders of the Kaiserreich, but tendencies aimed at the division of the Habsburg Empire and unification with Austrian Germandom in a common polity remained marginal. The consolidation of the Reichsnation did not mean that there was only one vision of the ideal Germany of the future. Official nationalism and the rhetoric of unity and harmony have to be distinguished from the existing variety of interests, loyalties, and expectations within German civil society. German identity was politically, socially, confessionally, regionally, and gender-specifically fragmented and contested. Confessional division, in fact, was ‘one of the fundamental, vital facts of everyday life’ in Imperial Germany.101 Despite increasing political and social 100

101

Somewhat overstressed by E. Kurlander in The Price of Exclusion: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898–1933 (New York, 2006) and ‘Between Völkisch and Universal Visions of Empire: Liberal Imperialism in Mitteleuropa, 1890–1918’, in M.P. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Liberal Imperialism in Europe (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 141–65. T. Nipperdey, Religion im Umbruch. Deutschland 1870–1918 (Munich, 1988), p. 155. Also see H.W. Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1871–1914 (Princeton, NJ, 1995); H.W. Smith (ed.), Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Germany, 1800–1914 (Oxford, 2001); G. Krumeich and H. Lehmann (eds.), ‘Gott mit uns’. Nation, Religion und Gewalt im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2000); D. Langewiesche and H.-G. Haupt (eds.), Nation und Religion in der Deutschen Geschichte (Frankfurt, 2001); M. Geyer and H. Lehmann (eds.), Religion und Nation, Nation und Religion. Beiträge zu einer unbewältigten Geschichte (Göttingen, 2004); M.B. Gross, The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor, MI, 2004); M. Borutta, Antikatholizismus. Deutschland und Italien im Zeitalter der europäischen Kulturkämpfe (Göttingen, 2010).

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47

integration after the end of the Kulturkampf, many Catholics remained critical of the prevalent identification of Germanness with Protestantism and Borussianism, and continued to adhere to other ideals and a different narrative of German history. When Klemperer, who had grown up in Berlin, started his studies in Munich in 1902, he encountered deeprooted Catholicism, which to him was ‘a completely new aspect of German life’. Klemperer was particularly impressed by the colourful Corpus Christi procession. As he noted in his diary: ‘In its theatrical nature [the whole procession] is un-German. I had believed that one could witness something like this only in Italy or Spain, or in Austria at the most.’ Equating Protestantism with Germandom, Klemperer was convinced that ‘the Bavarians simply were not genuine Germans like the Prussians’.102 Clearly, given Prussia’s political predominance, the Catholics’ minority status in demographic regard, their underrepresentation amongst the educated middle classes as well as the political, administrative, and intellectual elites, and widespread mistrust of their international links (Rome), the Catholic idea of the German nation remained marginalized. The same holds true for left-liberal and Social Democratic critics of the status quo, who retained their own associations, festivities, and anniversaries, and tended more towards a civic, voluntarist idea of the German nation.103 A third significant divide rested on local and regional identities, which often stood in a complementary and interconnected rather than fundamentally opposing relationship with the federal state.104 Hanoverians and other particularists certainly belonged to the most fervent opponents of the Prussian-dominated state. But the attempt to establish the Deutsche Rechtspartei as a high-ranking umbrella organization of the German-Hanoverian Party, dynastic legitimists, and conservative representatives from Hesse-Nassau, Brunswick, 102 103

104

Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae, I, 287. M.-W. Kohfink, Für Freiheit und Vaterland. Eine sozialwissenschaftliche Studie über den liberalen Nationalismus 1890–1933 in Deutschland (Constance, 2002); V.F. Gironda, ‘Linksliberalismus und nationale Staatsbürgerschaft im Kaiserreich. Ein deutscher Weg zur Staatsbürgernation?’, in Echternkamp and Müller (eds.), Die Politik der Nation, pp. 107–30. C. Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, CA, 1990); A. Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997); A. Green, Fatherlands: StateBuilding and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 2001); S. Weichlein, Nation und Region. Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich (Düsseldorf, 2004); M.B. Klein, Zwischen Reich und Region. Identitätsstrukturen im Deutschen Kaiserreich 1871–1918 (Stuttgart, 2005); N. Gregor et al. (eds.), German History from the Margins (Bloomington, IN, 2006); D. Blackbourn and J. Retallack (eds.), Localism, Landscape and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930 (Toronto, 2007); O. Zimmer, Remaking the Rhythms of Life: German Communities in the Age of the Nation-State (Oxford, 2013).

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and Mecklenburg against the ‘Prussianization’ and centralization of German political and cultural life ultimately failed.105 Under the given circumstances, there was no prospect of success with regard to a contestation of the dominant interpretation of Germanness. We shall see now to what extent the First World War and the military alliance with the Habsburg Empire created new conditions and opportunities for the opponents of the national status quo.

105

E. Knobel, Die Hessische Rechtspartei. Konservative Opposition gegen das Bismarckreich (Marburg, 1975); H.-G. Aschoff, Welfische Bewegung und politischer Katholizismus 1866–1918. Die Deutschhannoversche Partei und das Zentrum in der Provinz Hannover während des Kaiserreiches (Düsseldorf, 1987).

2

The Dual Alliance and the outbreak of war

In his satirical world-war drama The Last Days of Mankind, the Austrian writer Karl Kraus presents a telling Viennese scene in which a black marketeer from Berlin talks to a policeman and receives an answer in the local dialect. Not having understood, the Berliner addresses the passers-by and speaks of a ‘full-blown scandal’: ‘As a Reich German I have already experienced some surprises here; one is used to some real Viennese sloppiness. You are actually a neat bunch, but one could not have dreamt of this . . . You Viennese just do not have a clue that you are at war. That is why after just one year you are already done whereas at home, I can tell you, the mood is sober but optimistic.’ Utterly agitated, he explains to the crowd that – ‘I beg you, now in wartime’ – the police officer had spoken: English!1 There are more such scenes in the book, also involving politicians, diplomats, and military representatives, which display German haughtiness and a lack of understanding for Austrian peculiarities and difficulties during the war. Kraus operates with common prejudices and stereotypes, exposing the proud and ruthless Prussian who mocks Austrian incompetence and feebleness whereas the AustroGerman is depicted as a demoralized junior partner servilely admiring Reich German organizational skills and courage. Characterizing himself as a mere observer, the playwright declared that ‘the most fantastic deeds that are told here really happened’ and that ‘the most flamboyant inventions are quotations’, yet it goes without saying that the panorama he sketches is exaggerated for the sake of the book’s anti-war tendency.2 It certainly differed from Hugo Preuß’s perception of the wartime relationship between the Germans in both countries. In a lecture given in the spring of 1916, the liberal Professor of Politics and Constitutional Law in Berlin discussed the war’s repercussions on national identity and life: ‘In the sufferings and sacrifices it imposes, in the outrage it provokes, in 1

2

K. Kraus, Die letzten Tage der Menschheit. Tragödie in fünf Akten mit Vorspiel und Epilog, ed. by C. Wagenknecht, 12th ed. (Frankfurt/M., 2005 [orig. 1919]), pp. 235–6 (2nd Act, 1st Scene). Ibid., p. 9.

49

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the prospects it opens, so much has become uncertain which had seemed to most to have been concluded and decided once and for all.’ Whereas Simmel, Mann, and many others spoke in more general terms of national rejuvenation and a return to ‘authentic’ Germanness, Preuß pointed specifically to changes in the way the Germans perceived themselves as a distinct political and cultural community. He was describing a redefinition of German-Austrian relations on a popular level and the renaissance of the Greater German idea, instigated by the wartime solidarity between the German Reich and the Habsburg Empire.3 Arguably, despite the fictitious elements and hyperbole of his work, Kraus with his emphasis on the persistence of certain pre-war beliefs and attitudes captured the situation more accurately. On the other hand, while tensions and exasperation about the other were characteristic for much of the war period, the outbreak of hostilities did indeed induce a remarkable degree of Austrophilism and excitement in Germany, a new mindset that was well described by Preuß but ultimately did not prevail amongst wider sections of the population. It is the aim of the following chapter to investigate this initial alliance euphoria and the novel sense of unity with Austrian Germandom. We shall start with the decisions taken by German policy-makers in July 1914 and examine the significance of the Habsburg Monarchy’s image as a moribund entity in the critical stages of the international crisis. Whereas national sentiments did not play an important role in Berlin’s resolution to support the ally or in the broader public’s assessment of the situation in the Balkans, a Greater German reading of the coalition quickly became popular after the fighting began and contributed to the optimism and enthusiasm in the early phase of the war. July 1914: Vienna’s ‘last chance’ Franz Ferdinand had been widely disliked by the populace of the Dual Monarchy. Upon hearing of the assassination of the Archduke and his wife on 28 June 1914, Josef Redlich visited Isidor Singer, chief editor of the Viennese left-liberal daily Die Zeit, who considered the shooting ‘a fortunate stroke of fate for Austria’. While Redlich himself disagreed – he had backed the heir apparent, anticipating rigorous domestic reforms and a more aggressive foreign policy course – ‘thousands’ held similar views: There are deep antipathies against the Archduke, which are shared by wide sections of the population: his imperious character, his bigotry, his nit-picking 3

H. Preuß, ‘Großdeutsch, Kleindeutsch und die Idee des nationalen Staates’, in H. Preuß, Obrigkeitsstaat und großdeutscher Gedanke (Jena, 1916), pp. 29–57 (pp. 30–1).

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and pitiful attitude in financial matters, his tasteless art collecting . . ., his pathological lust to hunt and kill . . ., his customary and abusive distrust . . ., all these and the narrow-minded and bigoted, intolerant, arrogant, highly perturbing nature of his wife made him highly unpopular in Austria and in particular in Hungary.4

The following day, Redlich observed: ‘There is no sense of mourning in the city; over the last two days, there has been music all over the place here and in the Prater.’5 Some Reich Germans responded in a similarly indifferent way. Gerhart Hauptmann, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature of 1912, did not even mention the assassination in his diary. Travelling widely through southern Germany, he evaluated the performances of Wagner operas in Bayreuth or described his impressions of Würzburg and Nördlingen. It was not before 27 July that he started to pay more attention to international developments and mentioned the possibility of war.6 Victor Klemperer and his wife had just arrived at their hotel in Riva del Garda in southern Austria (now part of the Italian Trentino) on their way from Rome to Munich when a waiter came running and shouted that the heir apparent had been shot. Klemperer, however, replied with a simple ‘Oh!’, adding with an apologetic smile: ‘But we are incredibly hungry.’ When his wife remarked that the man was probably so upset because he anticipated war, Klemperer stated: ‘War? An Austrian punitive expedition at most. But I do not expect it as they are far too soft [schlapp].’7 The aspiring German jurist Carl Schmitt, on the other hand, recorded in his diary upon hearing of the shooting: ‘I was devastated.’ Unable to concentrate and work, he ‘ran around and pondered over the ultimate issues of human existence’.8 Such statements should warn us against overemphasizing press reactions to the assassination and against equating them with the multifarious views and attitudes of the population. In Germany, most papers in fact expressed indignation at what the Catholic daily Germania called a ‘truly terrible act’ and ‘one of the most detestable crimes in world history’.9 German journalists generally expressed sympathy, but differed in 4 5

6 7 8 9

Redlich, Schicksalsjahre Österreichs, I, pp. 609–10 (28 June 1914). Ibid., p. 610 (29 June 1914). This assessment seems closer to the truth than Friedrich Funder’s claim that the population received the news with ‘paralysing horror and genuine pain’. According to the memoirs of the Reichspost editor, Franz Ferdinand had ‘quite possibly been the greatest Habsburg since Joseph II and Archduke Karl’. See F. Funder, Vom Gestern ins Heute. Aus dem Kaiserreich in die Republik, 3rd ed. (Vienna, 1971), pp. 373, 377. G. Hauptmann, Tagebücher 1914 bis 1918, ed. by P. Sprengel (Berlin, 1997), p. 21. Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae, II, p. 167. C. Schmitt, Tagebücher. Oktober 1912 bis Februar 1915, ed. by E. Hüsmert (Berlin, 2003), p. 163 (28 June 1914). ‘Das Attentat von Serajewo’, Germania, 30 June 1914. Also see T. Raithel, Das ‘Wunder der inneren Einheit’. Studien zur deutschen und französischen Öffentlichkeit bei Beginn des

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assessing Franz Ferdinand’s merits or the crisis’s potential repercussions on international relations and the empire’s fabric.10 While the general public soon lost interest – according to Klemperer the populace in Munich remained completely unconcerned until the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum – decision-makers in Berlin and Vienna deeply engaged themselves in the matter.11 In a letter to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg of 2 July 1914, Germany’s ambassador to Austria-Hungary, Heinrich von Tschirschky und Bögendorff, expressed his regret that the Danube Monarchy had lost one of its most capable statesmen, determined to reform the Habsburg entity and to find a way out of the political deadlock. Tschirschky was apprehensive that Vienna continued its policy of ‘laisser faire and laisser aller’, which would ultimately lead to the empire’s dissolution.12 In the past, he had repeatedly expressed his doubts regarding the viability and solidity of Germany’s most important ally, as in a private letter to Foreign Secretary Gottlieb von Jagow of 22 May 1914: How often do I consider whether it is really worthwhile for us to bind ourselves so tightly to this entity which is falling apart at the seams, and to continue the burdensome effort of dragging it along with us. But I do not yet see any other

10

11

12

Ersten Weltkrieges (Bonn, 1996); B. Rosenberger, Zeitungen als Kriegstreiber? Die Rolle der Presse im Vorfeld des Ersten Weltkrieges (Cologne, 1998); T. Bendikowski, Sommer 1914. Zwischen Begeisterung und Angst – wie Deutsche den Kriegsbeginn erlebten (Munich, 2014). For reactions in Austria, see E. Haider, Wien 1914. Alltag am Rande des Abgrunds (Vienna, 2013). For the wider context: T.E. Paddock (ed.), A Call to Arms: Propaganda, Public Opinion, and Newspapers in the Great War (Westport, CO, 2004); M.S. Neiberg, Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I (Cambridge, MA, 2011); G. Eckert et al. (eds.), Die Presse in der Julikrise 1914. Die internationale Berichterstattung und der Weg in den Ersten Weltkrieg (Münster, 2014). Right-wing papers expressed more critical views: ‘Die politischen Folgen des Mordes’, RWZ, 29 June 1914; ‘Deutsch-Österreich bei Franz Ferdinands Tode’, DüZ, 30 June 1914; ‘Die Bluttat von Sarajewo, der Trialismus und das Slawentum’, DrN, 1 July 1914. Compare with: ‘Franz Ferdinands Großösterreich’, VZ, 1 July 1914; ‘Österreichs Zukunft’, BBC, 1 July 1914; G. Cleinow, ‘Habsburgs Sorgen. Gedanken am Grabe Franz Ferdinands’, Grenzboten, 8 July 1914, pp. 1–4. Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae, II, pp. 168–74. Recent works on the origins of the war and the July Crisis include W. Mulligan, The Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, 2010); C. Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London, 2012); M. MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War (London, 2013); G. Krumeich, Juli 1914. Eine Bilanz (Paderborn, 2014); T. Otte, July Crisis: The World’s Descent into War, Summer 1914 (Cambridge, 2014); J.S. Levy and J.A. Vasquez (eds.), The Outbreak of the First World War: Structure, Politics, and Decision-Making (Cambridge, 2014). For two excellent review articles, summarizing and reflecting on the most recent publications on the topic, see W. Mulligan, ‘The Trial Continues: New Directions in the Study of the Origins of the First World War’, EHR, 129/538 (2014), 639–66, and A. Mombauer, ‘Guilt or Responsibility? The Hundred-Year Debate on the Origins of World War I’, CEH, 48 (2015), 541–64. Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 2 July 1914, in I. Geiss (ed.), Julikrise und Kriegsausbruch 1914. Eine Dokumentensammlung, 2 vols. (Hanover, 1963–64), I (1963), pp. 65–9 (p. 68).

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political constellation which as a substitute could offer us anything more than the alliance with this Central European power. For without this alliance, our policy would of necessity have to be directed towards a partition of the monarchy.13

This account enunciates the precarious situation of German foreign policy in the pre-war period. Governing circles in Berlin were seriously concerned about the value of the alliance with a fragile polity, which, as Gary Shanafelt put it, ‘managed to be both a necessity and a liability at the same time’.14 Without Vienna, Germany’s ruling elites reckoned, the Kaiserreich would be completely isolated on the international stage – Italy and Romania were regarded as untrustworthy and subsidiary partners – and, given the lack of alternatives, the only solution to this dilemma seemed to buttress the ally and boost the coalition on every possible occasion. This strategy led to an ever more uncompromising and hazardous course, but it did bring about tangible results: Bülow’s brinkmanship during the Bosnian Crisis of 1908–09 had resulted in a diplomatic triumph for the Dual Alliance. Against this backdrop, the assassination of the heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne apparently offered another opportunity not just to consolidate the Danube Empire by eliminating the Serbian menace, but also to enhance the prestige and influence of the Central European grouping.15 German supreme authorities did not have to persuade the Habsburg Empire to react forcefully and to punish Belgrade, but they certainly encouraged their only dependable ally. Indeed, Austro-Hungarian leaders had long wanted to restore and preserve the monarchy’s damaged great-power status, and to curb Russian ambitions in the Balkans. Convinced that meekness after Sarajevo would be internationally regarded as evidence of incapacity and lead to a further decline of the government’s authority at home, Vienna considered the Serbian issue a matter of existential importance.16 Hungarian Prime Minister István 13 14 15

16

Tschirschky to Jagow, 22 May 1914, in GPEK, XXXIX: Das Nahen des Weltkrieges 1912–1914 (1926), pp. 361–4 (p. 364). Shanafelt, The Secret Enemy, p. 7. Specifically on Germany’s role, with further references: A. Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge, 2001); M. Hewitson, Germany and the Causes of the First World War (Oxford, 2004); A. Jansen, Der Weg in den Ersten Weltkrieg. Das deutsche Militär in der Julikrise 1914 (Marburg, 2005); L. MeyerArndt, Die Julikrise 1914: Wie Deutschland in den Ersten Weltkrieg stolperte (Cologne, 2006); P. Koenig, ‘L’Allemagne et la crise de juillet 1914 à la lumière de l’historiographie récente’, Revue d’Allemagne, 38 (2006), 571–94. See, with further references, M. Rauchensteiner, ‘Entfesselung in Wien? ÖsterreichUngarns Beitrag zum Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Gehler et al. (eds.), Ungleiche Partner?, pp. 355–73; G.A. Tunstall, Jr., ‘Austria-Hungary’, in R.F. Hamilton and H.H. Herwig (eds.), The Origins of World War I (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 112–49; S.R. Williamson, ‘Aggressive and Defensive Aims of Political Elites? Austro-Hungarian Policy

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Tisza, however, urged caution rather than immediate action. He was concerned about Romania’s response and opposed the incorporation of Serbian territory. Tisza agreed to send a strict ultimatum to Belgrade only in mid-July, won over by a variety of arguments, including the promise not to annex larger parts of Serbia. According to Thomas Otte, ‘none of these factors – Germany’s seemingly irrevocable offer of support, Russia’s lack of war preparations, a diplomatic offensive at Sofia and Bucharest, Franz Joseph’s appeal to Tisza – was sufficient in itself to move the Magyar prime minister. But combined they were irresistible.’17 As is well known, Count Alexander Hoyos had returned on 6 July from his special mission to Berlin with the so-called ‘blank cheque’, which sanctioned a war against Serbia and assured Vienna of German support in the event of Russian intervention. A few days later, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador László Szögyény-Marich in a letter to Foreign Minister Leopold Berchtold confirmed that Emperor Wilhelm and all other responsible personages would not only ‘stand firmly and faithfully behind the monarchy, but are encouraging us most emphatically not to neglect the present moment, but to treat Serbia most energetically, so as to clear out the revolutionary conspirators’ nest once and for all, and are leaving it entirely up to us which means we consider appropriate to choose’.18 In contrast to what Fritz Fischer has argued, German decision-makers did not pursue a deliberate strategy to bring about a major European conflict in order to establish German hegemony over the continent.19 Their culpability rather lies in having willingly taken the risk of not just provoking a local war but a European conflagration, and in failing to

17

18 19

in 1914’, in H. Afflerbach and D. Stevenson (eds.), An Improbable War? The Outbreak of World War I and European Political Culture before 1914 (New York, 2007), pp. 61–74; P.W. Schroeder, ‘Stealing Horses to Great Applause: Austria-Hungary’s Decision in 1914 in Systemic Perspective’, in Afflerbach and Stevenson (eds.), An Improbable War?, pp. 17–42; A. Hannig, ‘Lieber rasch zugrunde gehen’. Österreich-Ungarns Diplomatie am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna, 2014). Otte, July Crisis, p. 158. For Tisza’s attitudes and change of mind, see Otte, July Crisis, pp. 111–15, 154–9, and, in more detail, G. Vermes, István Tisza: The Liberal Vision and Conservative Statecraft of a Magyar Nationalist (New York, 1985), pp. 217–35. On Hungarian views and reactions more generally, see N. Stone, ‘Hungary and the Crisis of July 1914’, JMH, 1 (1966), 153–70; J. Galántai, Hungary in the First World War, trans. by É. Grusz and J. Pokoly (Budapest, 1989), pp. 28–47; A. Gero˝ , ‘Die politische Elite Ungarns und der Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkriegs. Politische Haltungen und kulturelle Motivationen’, in M. Mesner et al. (eds.), Parteien und Gesellschaft im Ersten Weltkrieg. Das Beispiel Österreich-Ungarn (Vienna, 2014), pp. 93–105. Szögyény to Berchtold, 12 July 1914, in A. Mombauer (ed.), The Origins of the First World War: Diplomatic and Military Documents (Manchester, 2013), pp. 235–7 (p. 235). F. Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht. Die Kriegszielpolitik des kaiserlichen Deutschland 1914/ 18, 3rd rev. ed. (Düsseldorf, 1964) and his Krieg der Illusionen. Die deutsche Politik von 1911 bis 1914 (Düsseldorf, 1969).

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critically question or overcome a set of ‘unspoken assumptions’ and longstanding attitudes, which were also shared by the broader public: the fear of encirclement, an irrational concern for national honour and prestige, a pervasive militarist mentality, the social-Darwinist notion of an eternal struggle between Germandom and Slavdom, and the anticipation of a short and relatively effortless war based on the experiences of 1864–71.20 The image of the Habsburg Empire as a polity in decay, which could hardly lay claim to great-power status any more, was another facet of this prevailing German mindset in July 1914. On 17 July, the Saxon chargé d’affaires in Berlin reported that forceful action against Serbia was considered desirable since it could ‘enhance the prestige of Austria-Hungary abroad, especially with the Balkan States’, and retard, ‘for some time at least, the inner decomposition of the Monarchy’. Germany could ‘only expect support from a strong, internally united ally’.21 For UnderSecretary of State Arthur Zimmermann, Austria-Hungary had become the actual ‘Sick Man of Europe’ due to its ‘indecision and her desultoriness’.22 In a circular letter of 21 July to the German ambassadors to the Entente powers, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg maintained that the Habsburg ally would have to resort to military means in the case of a negative reply from Belgrade, provided that ‘it does not want to completely renounce its standing as a great power’.23 His aide and confidant Kurt Riezler had earlier noted in his diary: ‘Austria increasingly weaker and immobile; the subversion from the North and South-East has very much advanced.’24 Vienna’s policy, Riezler argued a few days later, made a lamentable impression: ‘We will forever hobble behind this weak state 20

21 22 23 24

See J. Joll, 1914: The Unspoken Assumptions. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered 25 April 1968 (London, 1968); S. Förster, ‘Dreams and Nightmares: German Military Leadership and the Images of Future Warfare, 1871–1914’, in M.F. Boemeke et al. (eds.), Anticipating Total War: The German and American Experiences, 1871–1914 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 343–76; S. Förster, ‘Angst und Panik. Unsachliche Einflüsse im politisch-militärischen Denken des Kaiserreiches und die Ursachen des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in B. Aschmann (ed.), Gefühl und Kalkül. Der Einfluss von Emotionen auf die Politik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 2005), pp. 74–85; G. Krumeich, ‘Pour une histoire culturelle de la décision pendant la crise de juillet 1914’, in J.-J. Becker (ed.), Histoire Culturelle de la Grande Guerre (Paris, 2005), pp. 239–53; K. Cramer, ‘A World of Enemies: New Perspectives on German Military Culture and the Origins of the First World War’, CEH, 39 (2006), 270–98; MacMillan, War That Ended Peace, pp. 228–65. Biedermann to Vitzthum, 17 July 1914, in Mombauer (ed.), Origins, pp. 263–4 (p. 264). Schoen to Hertling (on his talks with Zimmermann), 18 July 1914, ibid., pp. 272–6 (p. 273). Bethmann Hollweg to the ambassadors in St Petersburg, Paris, and London, 21 July 1914, in Geiss (ed.), Julikrise, I, pp. 264–6 (p. 265). K. Riezler, Tagebücher, Aufsätze, Dokumente, ed. by K.D. Erdmann (Göttingen, 1972), p. 182 (7 July 1914).

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and devote our youthful vigour to delay its demise.’ However, just like other representatives of Germany’s governing elite, he was not ready to abandon the Dual Monarchy but recommended an attitude of solidarity in the current crisis: ‘We must sustain Austria. If Russia gets hold of the South Slavs, we are lost.’25 Indeed, as Wilhelm von Stumm from the Foreign Office stressed in his talk with the Württembergian military representative in Berlin, Germany should not simply look on helplessly ‘how the Austro-Hungarian state is being eaten away by Serbiandom’.26 Apart from the widely held notion that, ultimately, armed conflicts rather than diplomacy served best to preserve and substantiate greatpower status, and that, on a domestic level, they could function as an integrating force and cure society of debauchery and materialism, the elite’s readiness for war also derived from the military authorities’ advocacy of preventive war before Germany’s (alleged) superiority over the Entente could be neutralized.27 Many civilian and military leaders were convinced that war was inevitable anyway, and that it was better to fight it sooner rather than later. It was argued that Russia was not yet sufficiently prepared to successfully wage a campaign against the alliance, while Britain would not join in a war over a Balkan issue. The conflict between the Dual Monarchy and Serbia thus even held out the prospect of a breakup of the Entente and the possibility of a major realignment of European power relations to Germany’s advantage. Furthermore, even if the conflict could not be localized, Russia would at least appear the aggressor, which for domestic reasons was a point of great significance for German statesmen. The belief that after the assassination the international community was sympathetic to Austria-Hungary also contributed to the idea that the present moment was highly suitable for a reckoning with Serbia. In late 1914, former Chancellor Bülow fervently criticized these conclusions as imprudent and downright stupid, calling 5 July, the day of the ‘blank cheque’, ‘a black day for Germany’.28 However, this judgement, which he later elaborated in detail in his memoirs, was made with the wisdom of hindsight, when hopes for localization had proved in vain and 25 26

27

28

Ibid., pp. 188–9 (23 July 1914). Graevenitz to Weizsäcker, 26 July 1914, in A. Bach (ed.), Deutsche Gesandtschaftsberichte zum Kriegsausbruch 1914. Berichte und Telegramme der badischen, sächsischen und württembergischen Gesandtschaften in Berlin aus dem Juli und August 1914 (Berlin, 1937), pp. 75–6 (p. 76). On this particular issue, see W.J. Mommsen, ‘The Topos of Inevitable War in Germany in the Decade before 1914’, in V.R. Berghahn and M. Kitchen (eds.), Germany in the Age of Total War (London, 1981), pp. 23–45. Entry of 15 December 1914, in T. Wolff, Tagebücher 1914–1919. Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Entstehung der Weimarer Republik in Tagebüchern, Leitartikeln und Briefen des Chefredakteurs am ‘Berliner Tageblatt’ und Mitbegründers der ‘Deutschen Demokratischen Partei’, ed. by B. Sösemann, 2 vols. (Boppard, 1984), I, pp. 138–42 (p. 139).

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the Central Powers had experienced their first setbacks. It remains at least questionable whether Bülow would indeed have acted differently, had he been involved in governmental policy-making during the July Crisis. He himself had set a precedent in 1909 and had greatly contributed to Germany’s international isolation and the aggravation of relations between the European powers. Of all those involved in German decision-making in July 1914 – the Emperor and his entourage, military authorities, Bethmann Hollweg, and the Foreign Office – only Prince Karl Max von Lichnowsky, the German ambassador to London, raised serious doubts about the policy of calculated risk. He not only repeatedly advised Berlin against the misapprehension of the British position, but also cautioned against unconditionally supporting Austria-Hungary’s ‘adventurous’ policy in the Balkans. Vienna, Lichnowsky argued, lacked a forceful programme for the permanent settlement of the South Slav problem and would revert to its typical policy of ‘muddling through’, rather than attempting to resolve the constitutional gridlock of the monarchy.29 During the war, the diplomat reiterated these views in a secret memorandum, criticizing in particular Vienna’s Balkan policies and Berlin’s blank cheque, but also the invasion of Belgium and unrestricted submarine warfare. The document was leaked to the public in early 1918, leading to infuriated reactions and Lichnowsky’s expulsion from the Prussian Upper House.30 To come back to July 1914, Jagow’s reply to the ambassador elaborated once more the fundamental motives and parameters of German decisionmaking during these crucial weeks: Austria, whose prestige has suffered more and more from its failure to take resolute action, now scarcely counts any longer as a full-fledged great power . . . This recession in the Austrian power position has severely weakened our alliance group . . . We cannot and must not tie its hands now. If we did so, Austria (and ourselves) could rightly reproach us with having deprived it of its last chance to rehabilitate itself politically. This would only hasten the process of gradual extinction and decay from within . . . The preservation of Austria, and that Austria shall be as strong as possible, is essential to us . . . The more boldness Austria displays, the more strongly we support it, the more likely Russia is to keep quiet . . . I have no wish for a preventive war, but if the fight offers itself, we dare not flinch.31

Obviously, the perception of the Habsburg Empire as a moribund political entity, which in its current deplorable condition was undermining rather than reinforcing the Reich’s international standing, was a main 29 30 31

Lichnowsky to Bethmann Hollweg, 16 July 1914, in Geiss (ed.), Julikrise, I, pp. 190–2. K.M. v. Lichnowsky, ‘My Mission to London’ (1916), in K.M. v. Lichnowsky, Heading for the Abyss: Reminiscences, trans. by S. Delmer (London, 1928), pp. 48–82. Jagow to Lichnowsky, 18 July 1914, in Geiss (ed.), Julikrise, I, pp. 207–9 (pp. 207–8).

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factor in Germany’s resolution to bolster Vienna in the critical stages of the crisis. It is remarkable that large sections of German public opinion shared this point of view and supported Berlin’s goal of strengthening the Danube Monarchy. However, as Mark Hewitson has rightly stressed, ‘the press seemed to be following rather than making events in July 1914’; it did not exert pressure on the Wilhelmstraße or play a significant role in the German decision-making process.32 It was, in fact, only after 23 July and in connection with the delivery of Vienna’s ultimatum that the general public paid renewed attention to the Austro-Serbian issue. Overall, the attitude of the German press was relatively uniform; underestimating Belgrade’s resistance and misapprehending the Russian position, most papers supported the ally in its uncompromising stance towards the Balkan country. In this context, a strong response was often viewed as the guarantee for a peaceful solution. The majority did not really want a European confrontation, hoping instead for a diplomatic settlement or at least the localization of the conflict if war proved unavoidable. Nevertheless, Vienna was promised German loyalty and support if Russia intervened, although such interference was not expected.33 Only a few papers – the Social Democratic press together with some left-liberal broadsheets – expressed a different view. Criticizing the hasty and biased condemnation of Serbia in most German newspapers, some even blamed Austria-Hungary itself and its failed Balkan and nationality policies for the tragedy. For example, Vorwärts, in its first article on the assassination, argued that Franz Ferdinand had died ‘as the victim of a wrong, outdated system’.34 The Social Democratic weekly Neue Zeit commented mordantly: ‘Felix Austria – this term has long become the ridicule of guttersnipes for, in Europe, there hardly is a more unfortunate state than this empire, stunted in its development by a bitter and unproductive nationality struggle and tumbling . . . from disgrace to disgrace, from setback to setback.’35 The Social Democrats obviously shared the common negative image of the Habsburg Monarchy as a declining entity, but drew very different conclusions. Disapproval of the situation within the multinational realm went hand in hand with a request for democratic reforms without which, it was claimed, the Dual Monarchy would have no right to exist and continue to pose a threat to peace in Europe. Stressing that ‘only a deeply humiliated state could accept the 32 33

34 35

Hewitson, Germany and the Causes, p. 196. For the attitude of generally moderate papers, see for instance the editorial in the VZ, 24 July 1914 (evening edition), or Theodor Wolff, ‘Die Bemühungen zur Lokalisierung des Krieges’, BT, 27 July 1914. ‘Der österreichische Thronfolger und seine Frau erschossen!’, Vorwärts, 29 June 1914. ‘Tu felix Austria!’, NZ, 10 July 1914, pp. 649–52 (p. 649).

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ultimatum’, these papers continued to attack the Habsburg standpoint after 23 July and flatly refused any German support.36 Instead, they demanded that the German government exercise restraint and act as a moderating influence on the decision-makers in Vienna. As an official SPD proclamation declared: ‘Not a single drop of the blood of a single German soldier must be sacrificed for the Austrian despots’ thirst for power, for imperialist greed for profit.’37 Towards the end of July, the Catholic press, as well as most liberal and conservative broadsheets, unconditionally backed the Danube Monarchy. With regard to Reich German support, however, these papers hardly ever referred to treaty obligations – after all, the Habsburg Empire had not been attacked by a third party – but instead to Germany’s own interest in the continued existence of a strong and internationally acknowledged coalition partner. The influential journalist Paul Rohrbach, for instance, made it clear that ‘by defending AustriaHungary we defend ourselves’.38 Similarly, the liberal-nationalist Kölnische Zeitung maintained that Germany had to remain faithful since any damage to its Habsburg ally would ‘undermine our own position on the world stage’.39 Yet whereas these comments reflected rather soberly on alliance politics, international entanglements, and potential repercussions for the German nation-state, Pan-German observers argued on ethnic grounds and were much concerned with the standing of the Austro-Germans. By and large, the nationalist press was characterized by a particularly aggressive attitude towards Serbia and the South Slavs, urging Austria-Hungary to act without hesitation or clemency.40 Even so, it also criticized the ally heavily, albeit from a viewpoint diametrically opposed to that of the Social Democrats: the extreme right attributed the whole crisis to Vienna’s over-lenient nationality policy. In accordance with the notion that the Habsburg Empire served as an outpost or bulwark against eastern ‘barbarism’, the assassination was understood as another example of Slav terrorism and a challenge to the whole German nation. In this regard, right-wing commentators perceived Imperial Germany’s commitment not only as a matter of raison d’état, but also as a moral and völkisch duty, a question of self-defence in the ‘long expected, inevitable fight between Germandom and 36 37 38 39

40

Editorial, FZ, 24 July 1914 (evening edition). ‘Aufruf!’, Vorwärts, 25 July 1914 (special issue). P. Rohrbach, ‘Nur keinen Schritt rückwärts!’, GD, 1 August 1914, pp. 471–3 (p. 472). ‘Die Interessen Deutschlands’, KZ, 25 July 1914. Also see [F.] v. Bernhardi, ‘Zur Lage’, Tag, 28 July 1914; ‘Ein deutsches Ultimatum an Rußland’, NPZ, 1 August 1914; H. Delbrück, ‘Die Kriegsgefahr’, PJ, August 1914, pp. 374–80. See, for instance, ‘Vervollständigung des Ultimatums – Intervention Rußlands’, DTZ, 25 July 1914, and ‘Serbien vor der Entscheidung’, TR, 24 July 1914.

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Slavdom’.41 The Pan-German League reaffirmed its pragmatic stance and agreed on bolstering the Habsburg Monarchy, which was, at least for the time being, considered more useful as a military ally than as an object of irredentist aspirations. As Claß had put it during the executive committee’s meeting on 4 July: ‘We want to preserve Austria’s forces for the conflict with France and Russia; the German question in Austria can and should be solved only afterwards according to the interests of the Germans in Central Europe.’42 Two papers, however, stood out. The Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung and the Post presented the view of a minority which had for years caused discord within the ADV. Stating that ‘we are not obliged for wars of Habsburg conquest policy’, both dailies rejected military support for Austria-Hungary, which led to the remarkable situation that in a critical phase of German foreign policy, radical nationalists sided with Social Democrats.43 The reasons, of course, were poles apart. Motivated by fervent anti-Catholicism but even more so by völkisch considerations, Reismann-Grone (who edited both newspapers) and his followers objected to the idea of integrating more Slavs into the Habsburg entity after the defeat of Serbia and its subsequent annexation. They were convinced that in this case the position of the Austro-Germans could only worsen.44 However, in consideration of the uncompromising Russian attitude and not least due to pressure from the Foreign Office, the wider German public – even the Vossische Zeitung denounced this position as ‘anything else but national’ – investors, advertising customers, and the fact that hundreds of readers cancelled their subscription, both papers soon abandoned their fundamental opposition and henceforth expressed their solidarity with the Reich’s ally.45 In July, this emphasis on the ethnic aspect of the alliance remained a minority position, notwithstanding enthusiastic Reich German letters of encouragement to the editors of diverse Austrian papers or the passionate telegrams which academic fraternities and gymnastic clubs dispatched to their sister organizations in the Dual Monarchy, such as the one sent to 41 42 43 44

45

[H. Claß], ‘Vor der Entscheidung’, AB, 1 August 1914, pp. 277–8 (p. 277). ‘Verhandlungsbericht über die Sitzung des geschäftsführenden Ausschusses des Alldeutschen Verbandes’, Berlin, 4 July 1914, BArch, R 8048, No. 95. ‘Habsburgische Gewaltpolitik’, RWZ, 24 July 1914; ‘Für Kriege der habsburgischen Eroberungspolitik sind wir nicht verpflichtet’, Post, 25 July 1914. See also ‘Die österreichische Note an Serbien überreicht’, RWZ, 24 July 1914, and ‘Einige Entspannung’, RWZ, 27 July 1914. The Austrian Pan-Germans took a similar position. See V. Lischka, ‘Serbien und das deutsche Interesse’, AT, 16 July 1914 and his ‘Ruhe mit Serbien!’, AT, 19 July 1914, and, for a Reich German voice, L. Radebold, ‘Demarche in Wien!’, AT, 26 July 1914. ‘“Post” – “Vorwärts” – “Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung”’, VZ, 27 July 1914. For a more comprehensive discussion see now Frech, Wegbereiter Hitlers?, pp. 213–8.

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the Graz Akademischer Turnverein by the Alemannia in Leipzig: ‘Blood brotherhood at this solemn moment, faithful to Austria!’46 This was also the case regarding public assertions of sympathy and support for the Habsburg Empire on the streets of several German cities.47 As is well known, young people, students, and members of the educated middle classes (amongst them a considerable number of Austrian citizens) gathered in so-called ‘patriotic parades’ and vociferously articulated their solidarity with Austria-Hungary in the last days of July. The Bavarian attaché Hans von Schoen reported the following from the capital: Berlin’s population welcomed the news that Serbia has rejected the Austrian demands, which became known here yesterday evening, with warm sympathy for the allied Danube Monarchy. Everywhere crowds of people formed, later converging in large processions and rallying in front of the palace, the Palais of the Reich Chancellor, and the Austro-Hungarian embassy, singing patriotic songs and cheering the allied Houses of Hohenzollern and Habsburg.48

Such demonstrations also occurred in Munich, Cologne, and Hamburg, whereas in smaller German towns Austrophile incidents were limited to coffee houses and pubs. We can only assume that these gatherings happened spontaneously; there is no evidence for manipulation or control from above, as suspected by the editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt Theodor Wolff and the Social Democratic deputy of the Reichstag Eduard David.49 Some of these actions took on a violent nature. In his memoirs, Klemperer mentioned an attack on an ostensibly Serb-owned café in Munich after the rejection of the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum and described how the mob chased a critical bystander as a Serb or Serbian sympathizer – incidents that prompted a warning from the Police President.50 While several rallies took place over the following days, it must be remembered that many more people participated in the numerous anti-war campaigns organized by the SPD, involving up to 750,000 demonstrators all over Germany. Against this backdrop, the right-wing 46 47

48

49

50

‘Zustimmungskundgebungen aus dem Deutschen Reiche’, GT, 27 July 1914. Raithel, ‘Wunder der inneren Einheit’, pp. 227–77; Verhey, The Spirit of 1914, pp. 26–57; J.R. Smith, A People’s War: Germany’s Political Revolution, 1913–1918 (Lanham, MD, 2007), pp. 50–77. Schoen to Hertling, 26 July 1914, in E. Deuerlein (ed.), Briefwechsel Hertling – Lerchenfeld 1912–1917. Dienstliche Privatkorrespondenz zwischen dem bayerischen Ministerpräsidenten Georg Graf von Hertling und dem bayerischen Gesandten in Berlin Hugo von und zu Lerchenfeld, 2 vols. (Boppard, 1973), I, pp. 311–12. Also see ‘Stimmen und Demonstrationen in Deutschland’, Reichspost, 29 July 1914. E. Matthias and S. Miller (eds.), Das Kriegstagebuch des Reichstagsabgeordneten Eduard David 1914–1918 (Düsseldorf, 1966), pp. 5–6 (1 August 1914), and Wolff, Tagebücher, I, pp. 65–6 (26 July 1914). Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae, II, pp. 175–6.

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interpretation of pro-Austrian acclamations as a clear indication that the greater part of Germans unconditionally supported their ally and were enthusiastically ready for war must be regarded as incorrect: these crowds did not represent the German people, who in their majority were anxious and despondent rather than truly passionate about going to war. Moreover, the participation of many younger people and the gathering’s often jubilant appearance suggest that a desire for sensation and excitement rather than a profound gesamtdeutsch sense of togetherness motivated the agitation. In contrast to Schoen’s claim, there was no broad awareness that the Austro-Serbian conflict was about the ‘repulse of the Slavic surge against Germanic being’.51 ‘Hurrah Germania’: the outbreak of war The Austro-Hungarian declaration of war on 28 July 1914 set off a disastrous chain of mobilizations and declarations of war which transformed much of Europe into a battlefield for more than four years. Clearly, Prince Lichnowsky’s advice to restrain Vienna from issuing an uncompromising ultimatum and his backing of Sir Edward Grey’s mediating attempts had been ignored at the Wilhelmstraße. As late as 26 July, the ambassador had once again warned Jagow not to believe in the possibility of localization and added: ‘I would voice the very humble plea that our attitude should be entirely dictated by the need to spare the German people a struggle in which they have nothing to win and everything to lose.’52 Lichnowsky’s vigorous admonition to respect Brussels’ neutrality was equally to no avail: on 4 August, Germany invaded Belgium which caused Britain to declare war and join its French and Russian allies. By that time, the last critical voices had fallen silent in Germany. As had already become obvious in July, governmental agencies played little role in fostering a consistent tone in the media. The absence of unfavourable comment was less due to press censorship (implemented on 1 August) and official attempts to influence popular 51

52

Deuerlein (ed.), Briefwechsel Hertling-Lerchenfeld, I, p. 312. Also see T. Raithel, ‘“Augusterlebnisse” 1914 in Deutschland und Frankreich’, in N. Freytag and D. Petzold (eds.), Das ‘lange’ 19. Jahrhundert. Alte Fragen und neue Perspektiven (Munich, 2007), pp. 245–60; R. Chickering, ‘“War Enthusiasm?” Public Opinion and the Outbreak of War’, in Afflerbach and Stevenson (eds.), An Improbable War?, pp. 200–12; G. Hirschfeld, ‘“The Spirit of 1914”: A Critical Examination of War Enthusiasm in German Society’, in L. Kettenacker and T. Riotte (eds.), The Legacies of Two World Wars: European Societies in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2011), pp. 29–40. With a focus on public reactions and the mobilization of state and society in both Germany and Austria-Hungary: Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 53–103. Lichnowsky to Jagow, 26 July 1914, in Geiss (ed.), Julikrise, II, p. 42.

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opinion than to the self-mobilization and self-regulation of the majority of journalists, who blamed Serbia and Russia for the conflict’s escalation and backed the German government in its loyal stance towards AustriaHungary. The entire German press unconditionally supported official policy from the outbreak of hostilities onwards, not least because of the widespread conviction that Germany was fighting a defensive war.53 The Burgfrieden not only brought domestic political strife to an end; a uniform tone also developed regarding the Habsburg ally. Even the Social Democrats, who, as late as 30 July, had asked whether ‘madness should triumph’, proved to be conciliatory and expressed solidarity with the Danube Monarchy.54 In this regard, Eduard Bernstein, one of the leading party theorists, stated that it had been ‘incorrect’ to ‘blame the Austrian greed for power for the conflict between Serbia and Austria’.55 The Hamburger Echo similarly proclaimed: ‘It is not the moment to discuss and explore the inner reasons for this dreadful catastrophe. We are facing facts . . . Now it is a matter of iron and power!’56 Instead of criticizing Habsburg warmongering, the democratic left now condemned despotic rule in tsarist Russia and stressed that it was very much in Berlin’s interest ‘to defend and strengthen the existence and power of its only reliable ally since . . . Germany on its own could not resist the forces which push forward from the East’. As this editorial in the liberal Frankfurter Zeitung concluded: ‘By standing behind Austria we stand for ourselves.’57 While Germany experienced a wave of patriotism and national solidarity at the outbreak of the conflict, many newspapers went beyond a more or less rational assessment of the situation and enthusiastically expressed their confidence in winning the war, which was expected to be a short affair. The fact that Reich Germans were going to war together with the 53

54 55 56 57

Important studies of wartime Germany include L.V. Moyer, Victory Must Be Ours: Germany in the Great War, 1914–1918 (London, 1995); W.J. Mommsen, Die Urkatastrophe Deutschlands. Der Erste Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Stuttgart, 2002); M. Salewski, Der Erste Weltkrieg, 2nd ed. (Paderborn, 2004); R. Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, 2014); Smith, A People’s War ; G. Hirschfeld and G. Krumeich, Deutschland im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt/M., 2013); H. Münkler, Der Grosse Krieg. Die Welt 1914 bis 1918 (Berlin, 2013); S.F. Kellerhoff, Heimatfront. Der Untergang der heilen Welt – Deutschland im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne, 2014); T. Flemming and B. Ulrich, Heimatfront. Zwischen Kriegsbegeisterung und Hungersnot – wie die Deutschen den Ersten Weltkrieg erlebten (Munich, 2014). ‘Soll der Unsinn siegen?’, Vorwärts, 30 July 1914. E. Bernstein, ‘Der Krieg, sein Urheber und sein erstes Opfer’, SoM, 13 August 1914, pp. 1015–23 (pp. 1017–18). ‘Die Waffen sprechen!’, HE, 4 August 1914. ‘Wir müssen siegen, wir werden siegen!’, FZ, 4 August 1914. Similar: L. Quessel, ‘Das Schicksal unseres Volkes’, SoM, 13 August 1914, pp. 1013–15; C. Haußmann, ‘Europas Krieg’, März, 22 August 1914, pp. 246–52.

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twelve million Germans under Habsburg rule was widely noticed in this upsurge of collective emotion, as the following comment published in the Kölnische Zeitung on 2 August (before the British entered the war) proves: ‘Hurrah Germania! Two Germanic Völker against the Russians and French, two powerful, viable Völker against megalomaniac cultural barbarism and an already overripe civilization . . . Hurrah Germania!’58 The emotionalization and glorification of the war alliance by highlighting the ‘old cultural community of both empires’, as Wilhelm II did in his address at the opening of the Reichstag on 4 August, represented a significant element of German war nationalism in the early weeks of the war.59 Many professors, journalists, and other members of the intellectual elite, who contributed to the spiritual and moral mobilization of 1914, proved receptive to the ethno-cultural interpretation and declared the coalition of convenience a Greater German union of fate. For example, Gustav Roethe, Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Berlin, in a speech on 3 September expressed his deep delight that ‘in this hour Greater Germany stands together faithfully, that today we fight together with our old rivals, the Austrians, who once were separated from us by bitter necessity’. To him, it was unquestionable that the settlement of political and social differences for the sake of national camaraderie, that the new sense of community which became celebrated as the ‘spirit of 1914’, was not a phenomenon restricted to the boundaries of the German Reich but a Greater German experience: ‘The world and, what is more, German history, the German mind have never experienced a time in which the Germans were so unreservedly and completely united, from rock to ocean, from Graz and Bozen down to Flensburg and Hadersleben.’60 Similarly, Adolf Rapp, a young historian from Tübingen, spoke of a ‘Greater German war’, whilst Martin Spahn, a Catholic who taught history in Strasbourg, hailed the GermanAustrian alliance as the ‘rebirth of Greater Germany’.61 This romanticizing of the war coalition was also supported and popularized on a somewhat more trivial level – on postcards, through war 58 59 60 61

Editorial, KZ, 2 August 1914 (1st morning edition). Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 306, p. 2 (4 August 1914). G. Roethe, Wir Deutschen und der Krieg (Berlin, 1914), pp. 16, 3. A. Rapp, ‘Der großdeutsche Gedanke einst und jetzt’, SM, October 1914, pp. 46–51 (p. 49); M. Spahn, ‘An den Pforten des Weltkrieges’, Hochland, October 1914, pp. 13–29 (p. 20). With a similar rhetoric, see A. v. Ardenne, ‘Deutschland und OesterreichUngarn Schulter an Schulter’, NFP, 25 December 1914; H. Eulenberg, ‘Deutschland und Oesterreich-Ungarn’, NFP, 3 January 1915; T. Lorentzen, Deutschland und Oesterreich (Hamburg, 1914); R. Döring, Deutschland – Oesterreich Hand in Hand (Hamburg, 1915); K.A. Boetticher-Wechsungen, Die Grundlagen der natürlichen Kampf- und Lebensgemeinschaft Deutschlands und Oesterreich-Ungarns (Berlin, 1916).

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souvenirs, and in war poetry. In fact, several of the countless poems composed in the first months of the war glorified this comradeship-inarms, with contributions written by some of the most popular poets, novelists, and playwrights of the day. For instance, Richard Dehmel, who volunteered for war service at the age of fifty, celebrated ‘Alldeutschlands awakening’, while Hermann Sudermann in his poem ‘To the Austrians’ praised ‘the brotherhood of our blood’.62 The humorous writer and poet Karl Ettlinger also composed verses on ‘The Brothers in Arms’, typically employing family imagery and referring to the Watch on the Rhine, a well-known nationalistic theme since the pre-March era: Hoch klingt von den treuesten Brüdern Das Lied durch die lauschende Welt, Von des Rechtes tapfersten Hütern, Die je sich einander gesellt.

Of the most loyal brothers resonates A song through the listening world, Praising the bravest guardians of justice, Who have ever fought together.

Sind Beide furchtlose Recken Im schimmernden Schmucke von Erz, Hat Jeder den Schild ohne Flecken, Hat Jeder das wackerste Herz.

They are both dauntless warriors In shining armour, Each has a shield without blemishes, Each has the most valiant heart.

Ob Wetter und Sturm sie umdräuten, Nicht ducken, nicht lassen sie sich. Spricht Bruder zum Bruder mit Freuden: ‘Ich gäbe mein Leben für Dich!

And in the harshest weather and storms They don’t cower or give each other up, And joyfully brother speaks to brother: ‘I would sacrifice my life for you!

Und stünde das Weltall in Flammen, Uns Beide wird Keiner entzwei’n: Fest stehen in Treue zusammen Die Wacht an Donau und Rhein!’

And if the cosmos was in flames, No one will drive us apart: Steadfast stand side by side, The watches on the Danube and the Rhine!’63

In the same special issue of the Österreichische Rundschau, the novelist, poet, and translator Isolde Kurz, who was one of the most prominent female writers of the early 20th century, also contributed to the glorification of the German-Austrian war alliance, promising loyalty to the very end: Gruß dir, Österreich, dem ohne Wanken wir gesellt in Jubel oder Schmerzen! Zwischen unsern Gauen zieh’n sich Schranken keine Schranken zwischen unsern Herzen! . . .

I hail you, Austria, and without hesitation we have joined you in joy or pain! There are borders between our lands but not between our hearts! . . .

Nicht aus den geschriebenen Verträgen, aus der Muttersprache heiligen Lauten

Not from written contracts but out of the holy tones of our mother tongue

62

63

R. Dehmel, ‘Alldeutschlands Erweckung’, BT, 18 August 1914; H. Sudermann, ‘An die Österreicher’, in W. Eggert Windegg (ed.), Der deutsche Krieg in Dichtungen (Munich, 1915), pp. 58–9 (p. 59). K. Ettlinger, ‘Die Waffenbrüder’, in K. v. Amira (ed.), Liebesgaben aus dem Deutschen Reiche (Vienna, 1915), pp. 51–2.

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quoll uns, aus des Herzens gleichen Schlägen, Treue, der wir unser Heil vertrauten . . .

emerges, forged in concurrent heartbeat, loyalty, on which rests our hope . . .

Schwarz-gelb, Schwarz-weiß-rot ein einig Wollen! Seit’ an Seite kämpfen, schlagen, sterben! Euch und uns beim letzten Würfelrollen Ein Triumphtag oder Ein Verderben!

Black-yellow, black-white-red, a single will! To fight side by side, struggle, die! You and us when the last dice are cast A single triumph or a single downfall!64

While these examples come from well-known writers, the great majority of war poems were written by amateurs, mostly members of the educated middle classes. The motivation for this enormous artistic commitment – during the first months of the war the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten alone received up to one hundred poems per day – is complex and hard to pin down. The wish to participate in and contribute to the war effort at a time of general excitement played an important part, as did the desire for self-assurance and the need to come to terms with the events.65 Just like most affirmative war poetry, nearly all ‘comradeship poems’ stood out because of their aggressive tone and warmongering rather than their artistic or creative quality. The allies’ common identity was often affirmed through antiquated and quixotic symbols which conveyed a romantic image of war, sharply in contrast with the merciless reality of mass killing and dying. In verses that were repeatedly set to music, Max Bewer, a popular völkisch and anti-Semitic writer, spoke of a ‘union forged in blood’ and hailed ‘the common fatherland’ that would stretch ‘from the Belts to the Adriatic Sea’. Similar to Ettlinger and many other poets, he portrayed Germans and Austrians as ‘heroes’ and ‘warriors [Recken]’, fighting with ‘shield and sword’.66 Other authors depicted the allies as a fearless pair of eagles (the heraldic birds of both empires) ‘rising . . . to stars and to victories’.67 Some poems fell back on the emperors or on military leaders (Hindenburg and Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf), recalled prestigious historic battles, or praised celebrated war heroes like Prince Eugene in order to link contemporary events with a common triumphant past, thus 64 65

66 67

I. Kurz, ‘An Österreich’, in Amira (ed.), Liebesgaben, p. 81. H. Fries, Die große Katharsis. Der Erste Weltkrieg in der Sicht deutscher Dichter und Gelehrter, 2 vols. (Constance, 1994–95); W.G. Natter, Literature at War, 1914–1940: Representing the ‘Time of Greatness’ in Germany (New Haven, CT, 1999); U. Schneider and A. Schumann (eds.), Krieg der Geister. Erster Weltkrieg und literarische Moderne (Würzburg, 2000); N. Beaupré, Écrire en guerre, écrire la guerre: France, Allemagne 1914–1920 (Paris, 2006); N. Detering et al. (eds.), Populäre Kriegslyrik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Münster, 2013); Piper, Nacht über Europa, pp. 98–150; Bruendel, Zeitenwende 1914, pp. 62–85. M. Bewer, ‘Deutschland-Östreich Hand in Hand!’, in C. Peter (ed.), Deutschlands Kriegsgesänge aus dem Weltkrieg 1914, 2nd exp. ed. (Oldenburg, 1915), pp. 211–12. G. Reicke, ‘1914’, BT, 15 August 1914.

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sustaining confidence in a victorious outcome of the war.68 The same symbols were used for the representation of the alliance on postcards or as war kitsch, such as knick-knacks or specially shaped household tools. Passionate supporters of the German-Austrian coalition could purchase ‘fraternization’ badges and cockades in the colours of Germany and Austria-Hungary, commemorative medals, miniature versions of monarchical busts, two-piece cruet sets endowed with eagle depictions, or so-called ‘patriotic’ vases, plates, or cups with a common portrayal of both monarchs or army chiefs. More discerning collectors bought elaborate porcelain figures portraying a German and an Austrian soldier in joint action or showing both combatants shaking hands.69 Not all of these were ‘ethno-centrist’ in the sense that they portrayed the war as a Germanic venture. In fact, most were later extended to include the Bulgarian and Turkish allies. It is also worth noting that similar objects and symbols (flags, heads of state, soldiers in their characteristic uniforms) were produced to represent and celebrate the Entente. However, in contrast to Russian, French, and British cooperation, the ethnic aspect remains foremost in accounting for the widespread popularity of the German-Austrian fellowship. Depicting the war coalition as a ‘band of genuine, German character’ called for a reaffirmation of Austria’s Germanness.70 As shown, before 1914, the multinational empire was widely considered a Völkerchaos, an exotic anomaly deliberately surrendering its German character and thus doomed to pass away rather sooner than later. After the outbreak of war, however, Austria-Hungary represented Germany’s most important ally, indispensable for ‘survival’, and contempt was replaced by commitment: commonalities now counted instead of differences. It was in this context 68

69

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See, for example, R.A. Schröder and H. v. Hofmannsthal, Deutscher Feldpostgruß und österreichische Antwort (Vienna, 1914); J. Bliesenick, Deutsch-österreichische Bundestreue! (Berlin, 1914); Caliban, ‘Sieg’, Tag, 4 May 1915; Dornemann, ‘Deutsch-Österreichs Adler!’, KVZ, 9 November 1915; K. Rosner, ‘Schwertbrüder’, in C. Körber (ed.), Österreichs Geist und Schwert. Ein Gedenkbuch aus ernster Zeit (Leipzig, 1915), pp. 77–8; and some of the contributions to the following anthologies: K. Quenzel (ed.), Des Vaterlandes Hochgesang. Eine Auslese deutscher und österreichischer Kriegs- und Siegeslieder (Leipzig, 1914); G. Falke (ed.), Wir und Österreich. Kriegsdichtungen 1914/15 (Hamburg, 1915); Peter (ed.), Deutschlands Kriegsgesänge. For typical examples of postcards representing the war alliance, see H. Weigel et al. (eds.), Jeder Schuss ein Russ. Jeder Stoss ein Franzos. Literarische und graphische Kriegspropaganda in Deutschland und Österreich 1914–1918 (Vienna, 1983), pp. 51–2, 103, 105, 114–15, 129, 133. For war kitsch, see the reprint of a page of a department store catalogue in Kunstwart, 1st December issue 1915, p. 19, and T. Loidl, Andenken aus Eiserner Zeit. Patriotische Abzeichen der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie von 1914 bis 1918 (Vienna, 2004), in particular pp. 62–77. M. Hayek, ‘Deutschland – Österreich (Zum heutigen Geburtstag Kaiser Franz Josephs)’, NPZ, 18 August 1914.

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that Paul Feine, Professor of Protestant Theology in Halle (Saale), who had lived and worked in Vienna for several years, stressed that Austria was basically ‘German cultural territory’ and Vienna urdeutsch: Science and education, architecture, music, poetry; literary, aesthetic, and related cultural phenomena connect Germany and Austria in a spiritual unity. In all these areas Vienna has often led the way or at least provided a significant strain of German intellectual life. Grillparzer, Anastasius Grün, Nikolaus Lenau, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Schubert belong to the whole German nation.71

In a similar way Erich Jung, Professor of Law in Strasbourg, emphasized that the German-Austrian unity was ‘not an ordered, political unity’ but was instead rooted in the shared traits and aims of a single ‘cultural community’.72 Two elements in particular were highlighted in this glorification of the alliance: loyalty and unity, propagated as core virtues which would lie at the heart of the affinity between Germans in both empires. It was repeatedly asserted that a new fellow feeling had finally replaced a tense relationship characterized by ignorance and discord. The German-Jewish author and translator Ludwig Fulda, for instance, who was one of the most successful playwrights in Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic, stressed the aspect of unity and harmony in this ‘union of titans’: Wer hätte wohl geahnt noch ehegestern, Daß aller Trotz der engen Eigenart, Daß alles kleine Kritteln, Hadern, Lästern Als fortgewehte Spreu sich offenbart,

Who would have thought some time ago That all defiance of narrow peculiarity, That petty whingeing, quarreling, mocking Are blown away like chaff in the wind,

Ein einziger Drang zu Brüdern und zu Schwestern Die Millionen zweier Reiche schart Und tiefste Klüfte, die das Volk entzweiten, Nur noch ein Märchen sind aus alten Zeiten!

That a single longing to brothers and sisters Unites the millions of two realms, And that the deepest rifts dividing the people Are a mere fairy tale from the olden days!73

In Germany, many authors and poets praised the renaissance of a Greater German sense of togetherness, the experience of fraternity and community with the Austro-Germans as a ‘wonder which the earth has never seen’.74 Karl Scheffler, for instance, spoke of ‘Germany’s second unification’ after 1870–71, and Friedrich Naumann proclaimed: ‘Now 1866 is completely 71 72 73 74

[P.] Feine, ‘Deutschlands und Oesterreichs Geistes- und Kulturgemeinschaft’, NPZ, 20 March 1915. E. Jung, ‘Von deutscher Kultur und deutscher Freiheit. Auch eine Kriegsbetrachtung’, Grenzboten, 26 May and 2 June 1915, pp. 235–44, 264–71 (p. 236). L. Fulda, ‘Der Feind im Hause’, in Amira (ed.), Liebesgaben, pp. 68–9 (p. 68). F. Avenarius, ‘Deutsches Kampflied’, Kunstwart, 1st September issue 1914, pp. 313–14 (p. 313).

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over: a Volk of brothers!’75 As we will see, it was this rhetoric of mutual understanding and reconciliation, the notion of a rediscovered Greater German unity, which led some intellectuals and politicians – from both Germany and Austria-Hungary – to attempt to openly contest the kleindeutsch paradigm in German historiography and political culture. Naumann’s evocation of the brotherhood topos was not unusual; Sudermann, Ettlinger, and Fulda employed it as well. Austria and Germany were indeed often depicted as members of one family, as brothers who stick up for each other. Mutual support thus appeared as a moral necessity, while disloyalty or betrayal was a crime against one’s own family (i.e. the German people), an anti-German act. Roethe, for instance, perceived in the German-Austrian alliance ‘nothing but the simple brotherly loyalty which the German owes the German’.76 In this reading, the imagined community of the aligned monarchies was based on the idea of common descent or origin, something eternal, obligatory, and inescapable – an interpretation close to völkisch ideology. In fact, it was not only Pan-Germans but also liberal and Catholic voices that alluded to ‘national kinship [Stammesverwandtschaft]’.77 Germania, for example, enthusiastically declared that ‘Blood is thicker than water!’, and added: ‘We do not only feel ourselves allies of the Danube Monarchy, but realize that we are related to the Austrians as brothers who arose from the same parental home and stand together in unwavering loyalty.’78 Two weeks after the outbreak of war, Johannes Bell, a Centre Party Reichstag deputy and later one of the signatories of the Versailles Treaty, went even further when he spoke of a ‘völkisch war of decision’, and appealed to the Flemings in Belgium to acknowledge their ‘blood relationship’ with the Germans, already united with their Austrian kinsmen by the Nibelungentreue.79 Here, we encounter another strategy for providing comradeship-inarms with a unique quality: references to a dim and distant shared Germanic past, to the well-known myth of the Nibelungs. For example, Franz von Liszt, Professor of Law at the University of Berlin and leftliberal member of the Reichstag (though born an Austrian citizen), applied the myth to the war and inscribed the narrative with the very values and norms essential to sustain faith in the coalition’s stability and 75 76 77 78 79

K. Scheffler, ‘Der Deutschen zweite Einigung’, VZ, 27 August 1914; F. Naumann, ‘Der Krieg’, Hilfe, 6 August 1914, pp. 513–14 (p. 513). G. Roethe, ‘Nibelungentreue’, in Deutscher März. Zweite Liebesgabe deutscher Hochschüler (Kassel, 1915), pp. 66–75 (p. 68). ‘Kaiser Franz Joseph an Kaiser Wilhelm’, BLA, 27 August 1914. ‘Österreich-Ungarn und wir’, Germania, 27 August 1914. Dr. Bell, ‘Zum europäischen Völkerkrieg’, KVZ, 19 August 1914.

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superiority. Basing his argument on typical Prussian and Austrian stereotypes, Liszt envisaged ‘powerful [waffengewaltige], proud, furious Hagen on one side, the symbol of Prussian Germany; and Volker the cheerful minstrel on the other, skilful in battle and chant, the symbol of songloving and belligerent Austria-Hungary’. Liszt added that the Nibelungenlied – this ‘hymn of heroic courage and heroic loyalty’ – had never before been so close to the German heart. It was now necessary to maintain this loyalty, this Germanic commitment.80 However, the underlying fatalism of a concept signifying unshakable resolve right down to self-sacrifice and defeat, or, in Roethe’s words, ‘loyalty to death, down to the last man and the last drop of blood, unbreakable by danger or seduction’, was inescapable.81 This might account for the fact that references to the Nibelungentreue, as a mythical interpretation of German-Austrian companionship, were not widespread in German alliance discourse; they proved less popular than family imagery. Obviously, the motif of unwavering steadfastness even to the bitter end did not suit the optimistic and animated atmosphere of awakening at the war’s beginning, when most Germans expected a quick and victorious outcome. Liszt, in fact, tried to separate the exemplary Nibelungentreue from the defeat of Hagen and Volker, to modify or adjust the story to evade the awkward, disastrous end: ‘Victory not downfall will be the outcome of the joint fight.’82 Roethe’s commentary concluded with a similar attempt to distract from the ‘tragedy’ and the ‘moral gloominess’ of the theme: ‘We want to go forward courageously, arm in arm towards a praiseworthy peace, not the hopeless downfall which all devout followers of the Saga of the Nibelungs are willing to accept.’83 While the catchphrase was repeatedly used in a simple and superficial way in newspaper articles (e.g. when giving accounts of the Central Powers’ joint military campaigns), detailed commentaries aimed at political and ideological mobilization, such as those by Liszt and Roethe, remained relatively rare.84 The same applied to war poems. In this case, too, the myth of the Nibelungs was much less utilized than the topos of brotherhood which comprehensibly symbolized amity and reliability. The complex narrative structure of the myth might also have been problematic for lyrical writing which is usually characterized by conciseness and intensity. During the war, therefore, the Nibelungentreue was less accentuated in popular poems than in – rather unusual – verse epics, dramas, or novels. What is 80 81 83 84

F. v. Liszt, Von der Nibelungentreue (Berlin, 1914), pp. 16, 26. Roethe, ‘Nibelungentreue’, pp. 72, 66. 82 Liszt, Von der Nibelungentreue, p. 22. Roethe, ‘Nibelungentreue’, p. 68. For a typical use of the term, see ‘Nibelungentreue. S.M.S. “Elisabeth” in Tsingtau’, NFP, 26 August 1914.

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remarkable is that these were not written in the early phase of the struggle; appeals to stand firm and make sacrifices obviously became more appropriate in a later, less promising stage of the war.85 An invincible union: the myth of the Greater German alliance Highlighting the German bond between the Central Powers, as numerous articles in newspapers and magazines, speeches, and literary works did, made German-Austrian comradeship-in-arms seem to be a firm, quasinatural, and self-evident band of brothers, a true union of hearts. This special quality was believed to give Berlin and Vienna an advantage over the Entente, which was depicted as an artificial coalition of cold deliberation, a partnership of convenience connecting reluctant partners and unrelated interests. ‘Russia and France are a disparate couple which could only come together temporarily because of their common hatred of Germany, yet between Austria and Germany ancient ties of common tradition subsist’, the Berliner Tageblatt stated on 4 August 1914, concluding that ‘the Greater German union will resist the storms with a completely different firmness’ than its enemies.86 Gerhart Hauptmann in an essay on the occasion of the first wartime Christmas similarly proclaimed: ‘There has never been a more natural and thus more solid and invincible alliance.’87 References to key topoi such as the Nibelungentreue and the idea that comradeship-inarms rested on more than just plain necessity fostered a highly emotional and irrational faith in the coalition’s superiority and undermined a more rational assessment of military capabilities and resources. The myth of fraternal union simplified the complex reality of alliance politics, international relations, and war strategies. It legitimized the German Reich’s loyalty to the Habsburg Monarchy, made sense of the war, and justified casualties and sacrifices in the name of the whole nation. In this reading, the ‘German war’ was fought not for the sake of states or dynasties but for the survival of Germandom, defended by Germany in the West and the Dual Monarchy in the East. However, it seems useful to distinguish two notions here. On the one hand, references to the Greater German spirit of the coalition served many politicians, professors, poets, and journalists as a useful paraphrase for the alliance, a rhetorical means and historic reminiscence without 85

86 87

See, for instance, W. Scherer, Nibelungentreue: Kriegsgesänge (Regensburg, 1916); M. Reichert, Nibelungentreue 1914. Szene (Berlin, 1916); W. Jansen, Das Buch Treue. Nibelungenroman (Hamburg, 1917). ‘Die Thronrede des Kaisers’, BT, 4 August 1914. G. Hauptmann, ‘Weihnachten 1914’, NFP, 25 December 1914.

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concrete substance. For them, drawing on the latent sense of togetherness between Reich Germans and Austro-Germans, which was reactivated by the extreme situation of the war, did not represent a thoroughgoing shift in established notions of Germanness. Soon, in fact, they moved on to other topics. In terms of war ideology, Great Britain, or ‘perfidious Albion’, received most attention.88 On the whole, most protagonists of the geistige Mobilmachung were much more interested in interpreting the World War as a war of principles, a struggle between Zivilisation and Kultur, between the ‘ideas of 1789’ and those of 1914, than they were in the alliance with the multinational Danube Monarchy which soon represented only one (albeit the most important) ally alongside Turkey and Bulgaria.89 On the other hand, there were more detailed conceptions associated with the idea. Here, Großdeutschland represented the attempt to enforce an alternative idea of the German nation. It was mainly Catholic and South German intellectuals, as well as some left-liberal advocates of the Mitteleuropa idea, who challenged the dominant PrussoProtestant reading of German history and brought the Reich myth with its Christian and federalist connotations back to the fore. They were joined by Austro-German commentators and writers who tried to seize the opportunity in order to create in Germany more understanding and support for the Danube Monarchy. With the outbreak of war, the Habsburg Empire was indeed perceived differently: disparaging remarks were replaced by considerable sympathy for the multinational entity which was, however, often reduced to its western half and its Germanspeaking population. As we will see in the following chapter, the glorification of the war alliance as a Germanic partnership rested largely on the idea that Austria was a German state, or was at least dominated by Germans.

88 89

M. Stibbe, German Anglophobia and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 2001). See, for example, R. Eucken, Die weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung des deutschen Geistes (Stuttgart, 1914); O. v. Gierke, Krieg und Kultur (Berlin, 1914); W. Sombart, Händler und Helden. Patriotische Besinnungen (Munich, 1915); E. Troeltsch, Der Kulturkrieg (Berlin, 1915); J. Plenge, 1789 und 1914. Die symbolischen Jahre in der Geschichte des politischen Geistes (Berlin, 1916); T. Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, trans. by W.D. Morris (New York, 1983).

3

The idea of Austria-Hungary

Throughout the war, the coalition between the Central Powers played a much more prominent role in Austrian than in German public discourse. The alliance clearly had a different significance for both Berlin and Vienna. Germany was never really threatened in its existence, but the Danube Monarchy was struggling for its survival in Europe – and German troops more than once provided essential backing in critical situations.1 As Geoffrey Wawro has summarized: ‘Every time the Austrians were hard pressed, the Germans would ride to the rescue. They intervened in Galicia in 1914–1915, in Serbia in 1915, in Bukovina and Galicia again (after the shattering Brusilov Offensive) in 1916, and again in Galicia in 1917 after the first Kerensky Offensive. Caporetto in 1917, a feat of German and Austrian arms, was undertaken, as Ludendorff put it, as much “to prevent the collapse of Austria-Hungary” . . . as to knock out the Italians.’2 A first mixed unit was formed in January 1915, the German 1

2

On Austria-Hungary during the war, see A.J. May, The Passing of the Hapsburg Monarchy, 1914–1918, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA, 1966); R.A. Kann et al. (eds.), The Habsburg Empire in World War I: Essays on the Intellectual, Military, Political, and Economic Aspects of the Habsburg War Effort (Boulder, CO, 1977); B. Michel, La chute de l’Empire Austro-Hongrois, 1916–1918 (Paris, 1991); M. Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A MultiNational Experiment in Early Twentieth-Century Europe, rev. and exp. ed. (Exeter, 2002); M. Schiavon, L’Autriche-Hongrie dans la Première Guerre Mondiale: La fin d’un empire (Paris, 2011); M. Rauchensteiner, Der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Habsburgermonarchie 1914–1918 (Vienna, 2013); G. Bischof (ed.), 1914: AustriaHungary, the Origins, and the First Year of World War I (New Orleans, LA, 2014); J.P. Bled, L’agonie d’une monarchie: Autriche-Hongrie 1914–1920 (Paris, 2014); Mesner et al. (eds.), Parteien und Gesellschaft; Höbelt, ‘Stehen oder Fallen?’ Also see Herwig, The First World War, and Watson, Ring of Steel. For an excellent assessment of recent historiography, contesting the conventional narrative of inevitable decline and collapse, see J. Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, JMH, 86/2 (June 2014), 336–80. G. Wawro, A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of the Habsburg Empire (New York, 2014), p. 369. On developments on the eastern front, see, most recently, G.P. Groß (ed.), Die vergessene Front – der Osten 1914/15. Ereignis, Wirkung, Nachwirkung (Paderborn, 2006); G.I. Root, Battles East: A History of the Eastern Front of the First World War (Baltimore, MD, 2007); M.S. Neiberg and D. Jordan, The Eastern Front, 1914–1920: From Tannenberg to the Russo-Polish War (London, 2008); D. Boyd,

73

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Südarmee, comprising three k.u.k. divisions. Following setbacks in the Carpathian counteroffensive, which brought the Habsburg front close to collapse, a joint army group was established, led by the German General August von Mackensen and formally under the Austro-Hungarian High Command (AOK), although Conrad von Hötzendorf had to confer with the German Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL).3 The subsequent GorliceTarnów Campaign of May 1915 brought about the re-conquest of Eastern Galicia and, ultimately, the occupation of Russian Poland, Lithuania, and Courland. Having been promoted to Field Marshal, and despite initial Austro-Hungarian discontent, Mackensen directed a multinational army group (consisting of German, Habsburg, and Bulgarian troops) against Serbia in October 1915, defeating Belgrade within two months and forming a land bridge to Sofia and Constantinople. Even though Italy had opened up an additional front in May, 1915 was a highly successful year for the Central Powers. This was not least a result of novel allied cooperation, facilitated, for example, by the move of the German Headquarters from Mézières to Pless (Pszczyna), close to the AOK in Teschen (Cieszyn). Each side had plenipotentiaries with the corresponding command centre, although their status and influence varied significantly. Compared to their German colleagues, the AustroHungarian representatives were rarely informed of sensitive matters and military developments.4 What is more, German officials and the OHL repeatedly demanded a common supreme command.5 A military

3

4

5

The Other First World War: The Blood-Soaked Russian Fronts 1914–1922 (Stroud, 2014). For short but excellent recent overviews, see D. Showalter, ‘War in the East and Balkans, 1914–18’, in J. Horne (ed.), A Companion to World War I (Oxford, 2010), pp. 66–81, and H. Afflerbach, ‘The Eastern Front’, in J. Winter (ed.), The Cambridge History of the First World War, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 2014), I: Global War, pp. 234–65. On Conrad, see L. Sondhaus, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf: Architect of the Apocalypse (Boston, 2000), and W. Dornik et al., Des Kaisers Falke. Wirken und Nach-Wirken von Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, 2nd rev. ed. (Innsbruck, 2013). For a more general overview of Austria-Hungary’s military efforts, see R. Jerˇ ábek, ‘The Eastern Front’, in Cornwall (ed.), Last Years, pp. 149–65. See P. Broucek, ‘Der k.u.k. Delegierte im Deutschen Großen Hauptquartier Generalmajor Alois Klepsch-Kloth von Roden und seine Berichterstattung 1915/16’, MGM, 15/1 (1974), 109–26, and the following memoirs: J. v. Stürgkh, Im deutschen Großen Hauptquartier (Leipzig, 1921); H.F. v. Freytag-Loringhoven, Menschen und Dinge, wie ich sie in meinem Leben sah (Berlin, 1923); A. v. Cramon, Unser ÖsterreichischUngarischer Bundesgenosse im Weltkriege. Erinnerungen aus meiner vierjährigen Tätigkeit als bevollmächtigter deutscher General beim k.u.k. Armeeoberkommando, 2nd rev. ed. (Berlin, 1922); A. v. Cramon and P. Fleck, Deutschlands Schicksalsbund mit Österreich-Ungarn. Von Conrad von Hötzendorf zu Kaiser Karl (Berlin, 1932). On the intricate discussions and complex developments, see P. Broucek, ‘Die deutschen Bemühungen um eine Militärkonvention mit Österreich-Ungarn (1915–1918)’, MIÖG, 87 (1979), 440–70. On the relationship between the High Commands up to early 1917, see Silberstein, Troubled Alliance, pp. 251–333. Rauchensteiner repeatedly discusses the conflicts between the allies as regards military strategy and cooperation. For developments

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convention with the Habsburg Monarchy, as envisaged by the German Chief of the General Staff Erich von Falkenhayn in the second half of 1915, would have established German control of the operations and standardized the training as well as equipment of the armed forces in both countries. However, whereas certain Austro-Hungarian militaries (such as Carl von Bardolff and Edmund Glaise von Horstenau), deutschnational representatives, and Hungarian oppositional politicians seemed in favour of a far-reaching military agreement with the Germans, Conrad remained unyielding. His decision to withdraw Austro-Hungarian troops from the common army group after the successful Serbian campaign (in order to attack Montenegro) triggered a major conflict between the two Chiefs of Staff, who even refused to communicate with each other for several weeks. In February 1916, the German Headquarters moved back to Charleville-Mézières in France. Both the OHL and the AOK carried out separate military operations in early 1916: while Falkenhayn turned to the West again and launched a major offensive at Verdun in February, Conrad initiated a campaign in South Tyrol in mid-May. The operations had to be stopped when the Entente started a joint attack on the Central Powers with the Brusilov and Somme Offensives of June and July 1916. Initially, Brusilov’s crushing operation in the East produced fresh tensions (over the question of relief troops), but it ultimately resulted in new inter-allied negotiations. After much discussion, a compromise solution was reached in late July 1916: while the northern section from Riga to Eastern Galicia was put under Paul von Hindenburg’s command, the southern part (Carpathian front) was controlled by the AustroHungarian heir apparent Karl with German General Hans von Seeckt serving as his Chief of Staff. The formation of more mixed units (starting at the level of battalions) was also envisaged. Following Romania’s entry into the war in late August, Conrad finally agreed that the German emperor (and thus the new OHL under Hindenburg and Ludendorff) would henceforth direct the operations of the allied forces. However, an additional clause – kept secret from the Bulgarian and Turkish allies – bound Wilhelm II in certain cases to the explicit approval of Franz Joseph.6 While Vienna successfully refused to enter into further binding

6

until the establishment of a unified High Command, see his Weltkrieg, pp. 247–70, 306–25, 459–96, 522–60. Also see Höbelt, ‘Stehen oder Fallen?’, pp. 101–7. ‘Bestimmungen über den einheitlichen Oberbefehl der Zentralmächte und ihrer Verbündeten. 6. September 1916’, in H. Michaelis et al. (eds.), Ursachen und Folgen. Vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart. Eine Urkunden- und Dokumentensammlung zur Zeitgeschichte, 26 vols. (Berlin, 1958–79), I: Die Wende des Ersten Weltkrieges und der Beginn der innerpolitischen Wandlung 1916/1917 (1958), pp. 4–5. Hereafter as UF. For a more comprehensive discussion, see Rauchensteiner, Weltkrieg, pp. 565–74.

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agreements (military convention), at least until the conclusion of the Waffenbund in May 1918 (signed by Hindenburg and Arthur Arz von Straußenburg, since March 1917 Conrad’s less ‘difficult’ successor as Chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff), its dependence on German military help was evident, also to the wider public. AustroHungarian contributions to the war in the West were insignificant in comparison: the AOK merely deployed several smaller artillery units in Belgium and France and, following repeated requests from the German Supreme Command, reluctantly sent four infantry divisions in summer 1918.7 The Danube Monarchy quickly became reliant on the Reich’s financial and economic help, too. According to Ernst von Wrisberg, who had been director of the Allgemeine Kriegsdepartement in the Prussian Ministry of War and in charge of the shipments to the allies, Germany sent 60,000 Gewehr 88 rifles and 6 million rounds to AustriaHungary in the first month of the war alone. It also provided the Dual Monarchy with monthly credits of 100–200 million marks. The delivery of iron ore increased from 6,823 t in 1914 to 167,540 t in 1917, and between July 1916 and September 1918, the shipments of agricultural produce amounted to 262,776,686 marks. Overall, while German supplies to Turkey totalled 616 million and to Bulgaria 1 billion marks, consignments to the Habsburg Empire came to more than 4 billion marks. Austro-Hungarian deliveries (in particular petrol, artillery pieces, certain metals, furs, and horses) were worth circa 800 million marks.8 Arguably, this military and economic dependency added to pre-existing German-nationalist sentiments amongst a large part of Austria-Hungary’s German-speaking population. In fact, whereas before the war Imperial Germany’s political and intellectual elite had been more interested in colonial ventures and global trade rather than in the co-nationals under Habsburg rule, many Germans in the Dual Monarchy had retained a strong sense of togetherness with the Reich Germans. Much more than for the latter, the war and the military alliance constituted a critical experience and challenge to established notions of national identity, exposing (and deepening) structural weaknesses of the Danube Empire and raising questions about the Austro-German self-

7 8

J.-C. Laparra, Le prix d’une alliance: Les Austro-Hongrois sur le front ouest 1914–1918 (Louviers, 2002). E. v. Wrisberg, Erinnerungen an die Kriegsjahre im Königlich Preußischen Kriegsministerium, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1921–22), III: Wehr und Waffen 1914–1918 (1922), pp. 205–68, 288–98. For the broader context, see K.D. Stubbs, Race to the Front: The Materiel Foundations of Coalition Strategy in the Great War (Westport, CO, 2002).

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definition between ethno-cultural and civic allegiance, gesamtdeutsch community and state patriotism.9 ‘It’s not only for Austria’s banner’: Austro-German identity in war In Austria, even left-wing and Austrianist intellectuals displayed a Greater German attitude at the outbreak of war. The editor-in-chief of the ArbeiterZeitung, for example, declared 4 August 1914 the ‘day of the German nation’. ‘Now’, he wrote, ‘German life is at stake and there shall be no wavering and no hesitation! The German nation is united in the iron and uncompromising decision not to let itself be subjugated, and neither death nor the devil will succeed in bringing down this great, capable nation, our German nation.’10 Before long, many publicists replaced their inclination to profess a separate collective identity with a forceful affirmation of Austria’s German character. As Hermann Bahr, the former advocate of a distinct Viennese cultural movement (as opposed to the Berliner Moderne), declared: ‘The German appeared to us . . . For the first time we know who we really are . . . Now we are nothing but German.’11 The writer Stefan Zweig, too, known for his cosmopolitan attitudes, celebrated the revived sense of togetherness: ‘To us, Germany has never really been a foreign country . . . Each town formed part of our spiritual Heimat; their poets, their artists, their academics were ours, and ours theirs.’12 Richard 9

10

11 12

On nationalism and propaganda in wartime Austria, see Ramhardter, Geschichtswissenschaft und Patriotismus; Morgenbrod, Wiener Großbürgertum; Streim, ‘“Wien und Berlin’”; Kirchhoff, Die Deutschen in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie; Ehrenpreis, Kriegs- und Friedensziele; as well as the following studies: R.A. Kann, ‘Trends in Austro-German Literature during World War I. War Hysteria and Patriotism’, in Kann et al. (eds.), The Habsburg Empire, pp. 159–93; S. Beller, ‘The Tragic Carnival: Austrian Culture in the First World War’, in A. Roshwald and R. Stites (eds.), European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 127–61; M. Cornwall, The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds (Basingstoke, 2000); E. Sauermann, Literarische Kriegsfürsorge. Österreichische Dichter und Publizisten im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, 2000); P. Ernst et al. (eds.), Aggression und Katharsis. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Diskurs der Moderne (Vienna, 2004). F. Austerlitz, ‘Der Tag der deutschen Nation’, AZ, 5 August 1914. On the attitudes of Austrian Social Democracy at the outbreak of war, see now L. Musner, ‘Waren alle nur Schlafwandler? Die österreichische Sozialdemokratie und der Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in Mesner et al. (eds.), Parteien und Gesellschaft, pp. 55–69. For typical right-wing comments, see e.g. ‘Ein einig Volk von Brüdern’, OdR, 5 August 1914, and V. Lischka, ‘Deutschland – ein einig Volk von Brüdern!’, AT, 6 August 1914. H. Bahr, ‘Das deutsche Wesen ist uns erschienen!’, BT, 14 August 1914. Also see his ‘Gruß an Hofmannsthal’, NWJ, 16 August 1914. S. Zweig, ‘Ein Wort von Deutschland’, NFP, 6 August 1914. Also see his ‘Vom “österreichischen” Dichter. Ein Wort zur Zeit’, LE, 1 December 1914, cols 263–5.

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(von) Schaukal similarly rejoiced: ‘How big is the German’s fatherland!’13 A highly prolific producer of ‘comradeship poems’ before his Austrianist reorientation in 1916, this high-ranking civil servant acclaimed the German navy and the Zeppelins, and paid tribute to Bismarck, Wilhelm II, Moltke, and Hindenburg, to name but a few. In a typical example of October 1914, Schaukal wrote: Deutschland, wir halten hier im Prall der Moskowiterwogen, von deinen Siegen kommt ehern ein Hall aus Frankreich hergeflogen.

Germany, we brave the crush of the Moscovite waves, of your victories we hear an iron echo coming over from France.

Deutschland, wir kämpfen die Riesenschlacht um Ehre, Land und Leben. Heil dir, mein Hagen, dein Volker wacht und wird sich dem Tod nur ergeben!

Germany, we fight the mighty battle for honour, country, and life. Hail you, my Hagen, your Volker watches and will surrender but to death!14

The conservative philosopher Richard von Kralik also referred to the myth of the Nibelungs when celebrating ‘the heroic loyalty of a thousand years’ in a poem for the Christian-Social Reichspost.15 Again, we find the concept of brotherly camaraderie, the same images of the Rhine and the Danube, of flags, eagles, and entangled oak trees representing the idea of unity.16 Often, joint military action was interpreted as a final triumph over 1866’s cruel stroke of fate and as the hopeful beginning of a more intimate relationship with the Reich Germans. The novelist and editor Karl Rosner, for instance, spoke of a ‘holy war for German spirit and German light’, and anticipated after victory the forging of ‘an eternal union – a single country’.17 According to the German-Bohemian journalist Hermann Kienzl, ‘sister Austria’ defended the common ‘fatherland in the South and East’, and Emil Hadina, a popular writer from the Sudetenland, made up the following rhymes: 13 14 15 16

17

R. Schaukal, ‘Bundesweihe’, Kunstwart, 1st October issue 1914, pp. 13–14 (p. 13). R. Schaukal, ‘Österreich an Deutschland’, Kunstwart, 1st October issue 1914, p. 14. For numerous other examples, see his Eherne Sonette 1914, rev. and exp. ed. (Munich, 1915). R. v. Kralik, ‘An Deutschland!’, Reichspost, 5 August 1914. Also see R. v. Kralik and F. Eichert, Schwarzgelb und Schwarzweißrot. Kriegsgedichte (Vienna, 1914); L. v. Schroeder, ‘Der große Schicksalstag’, OdR, 4 August 1914; F. Harwalik, ‘Nibelungentreue’, OdR, 4 August 1914; F. Keim, ‘Der heilige Bund’, OdR, 20 August 1914; G. v. Urbanitzky, ‘Mein deutsches Volk!’, ATA, 19 August 1914; O. Kernstock, ‘Nibelungentreue’, ÖVZ, 5 December 1914; A. Gold, ‘Die Österreicher an Deutschland’, in Quenzel (ed.), Des Vaterlandes Hochgesang, p. 105; A. Wildgans, Vae Victis. Ein Weihelied den verbündeten Heeren (Vienna, 1914); A. Ohorn, ‘Deutschland und Österreich’, in H.R. Kreibich (ed.), Kriegsgedichte aus Deutschböhmen (Prague, 1915), pp. 9–11; M. Rudosky, Schulter an Schulter. Kriegsgedichte (Prague, 1915); P. Rosegger, ‘Deutschland-Österreich’, Der getreue Eckart, 7 (1916), 38. K. Rosner, ‘Schwertbrüder’, in Peter (ed.), Deutschlands Kriegsgesänge, pp. 209–10 (p. 210).

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The idea of Austria-Hungary Es gilt nicht Österreichs Banner nur, Es gilt Germania, Gilt bluten und sterben für deutsche Kultur – Nun sind wir wieder da.

It’s not only for Austria’s banner, It’s for Germania, Bleeding and dying for German culture – Now we are back again.18

However, there was another tendency alongside this pro-German euphoria, attesting once again to the intricacy of Austro-German identity: the propagation of the so-called ‘Austrian miracle’ (although it often referred to the whole empire) as a symbol or catchword signifying not just a cross-party truce, but even more so a cross-national one, which had finally overcome the seemingly hopeless friction between the numerous ethnic groups. Coined by Hermann Bahr, it stood for a revived sense of unity, for supranational identity and domestic harmony.19 Germans, Czechs, Poles, Magyars, and all the other nationalities, it was claimed, had prudently settled their differences and rallied together for the common defence of the fatherland. In the view of the Social Democrat Engelbert Pernerstorfer, the Dual Monarchy had become united: ‘What has happened here is almost a miracle. A miracle we want to praise.’20 The liberal journalist and historian Richard Charmatz noted likewise: ‘In the empire of eleven nations, of hundreds of parties and petty parties, of lethargy in silent times, something now glows and shines as if out of a million eyes, something burns through a million people, so mysteriously, so mightily, so wonderfully that one has to search for words to express this powerful, beautiful experience.’21 The Habsburg Monarchy had risen ‘like one man’: ‘No nation remains behind the other; in all blazes the readiness to make sacrifices and the love of one’s country.’22 After years of domestic turmoil and deadlock, there was no doubt a great deal of wishful thinking behind such comments. A revived state patriotism amongst Habsburg’s nationalities, especially shortly after the onset of war, might indeed have been present, but the relatively smooth mobilization of Austro-Hungarian society has to be attributed to other factors, too.23 18 19 20 21 22

23

H. Kienzl, ‘Schwester Austria’, Gegenwart, 21 November 1914, p. 745; E. Hadina, ‘Deutschösterreich’, VK, November 1914, p. 441. H. Bahr, Das österreichische Wunder. Einladung nach Salzburg (Stuttgart, 1915). E. Pernerstorfer, ‘Ein fester Bund’, März, 5 September 1914, pp. 289–92 (pp. 290–1). R. Charmatz, ‘Die große Stimmung’, März, 10 October 1914, pp. 1–5 (pp. 1–2). R. Charmatz, ‘Österreich und Deutschland’, Hilfe, 8 October 1914, pp. 668–9 (p. 669). Also see R. v. Scala, ‘An Deutschland!’, SM, September 1914, pp. 771–3; H. Steinacker, ‘Österreich und Ungarn’, SM, October 1914, pp. 66–73; H. Friedjung, ‘Österreichs Erwachen’, VZ, 18 August 1914; F. Ottmann and F. Kobler, Völkerfrühling in Österreich (Vienna, 1916); K. Rausch, Österreich-Ungarn in und nach dem Kriege. Das Emporsteigen der Staatsgewalt (Vienna, 1916). See now M. Cornwall, ‘The Spirit of 1914 in Austria-Hungary’, Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino, 55/2 (2015), 7–21. More generally on the nationality question during the war, see Z.A.B. Zeman, The Break-Up of the Habsburg Empire 1914–1918: A Study in National and Social Revolution (London, 1961), and L. Valiani, The End of Austria-Hungary (London, 1973).

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Nationalist leaders and radical agitators were called to arms, the press was put under strict censorship, and state authorities could easily order house searches and arrests on the basis of rigorous wartime regulations. In addition, as it turned out, reports about German-Czech reconciliation were overstated: the pro-German acclamations of Czech civilians in Prague had been stage-managed by Governor Thun. At any rate, the various efforts to identify ‘objective’ reasons for the continued existence of the empire contradicted the idea of a ‘miracle’. Bahr himself seems to have realized this predicament and stated: ‘Suddenly, disintegrated Austria is united, every dispute is forgotten, there is unity in all nationalities . . . Has distress worked a miracle? It has just helped them to understand, it just uncovered reality for them. Suddenly they know that Austria, which had so often been declared dead, is alive, and where? In all of them.’24 Charmatz, in fact, characterized the national truce as ‘the awakening of AustriaHungary’, while Kralik spoke of the monarchy’s ‘rebirth’ or ‘resurrection’.25 There obviously was a strong desire to establish that the national peace was not a coincidence or a short-lived phenomenon, but the logical consequence of historical, political, and economic conditions, or, to put it another way, that actually there was ‘no Austrian problem, no “Austrian question” ’.26 For the Graz Professor of Geography Robert Sieger, it was, as he explicated in several articles and books, primarily physical and environmental factors which held the complex conglomeration together as a ‘natural unity’.27 Others accounted for the strength of the Habsburg conception of state by highlighting the role of the dynasty, the authority of the Christian-Catholic community of values, or the common duty to defend European civilization against the dangers from the East.28 24 25 26 27

28

H. Bahr, ‘Österreich’, in A. Schremmer (ed.), Taschenbuch auf das Kriegsjahr 1914/15 für Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn (Munich, 1914), pp. 79–86 (p. 83). R. Charmatz, Österreich-Ungarns Erwachen (Stuttgart, 1915); R. v. Kralik, Österreichs Wiedergeburt (Regensburg, 1917). A. v. Mensdorff-Pouilly, ‘Völkerreich-Friedensreich’, SM, May 1917, pp. 227–32 (p. 228). See in particular the following works by R. Sieger: Die geographischen Grundlagen der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie und ihrer Außenpolitik (Leipzig, 1915); ‘Der österreichische Staatsgedanke und das deutsche Volk’, ZfP, 9 (1916), 2–98; Der österreichische Staatsgedanke und seine geographischen Grundlagen (Vienna, 1918). Also see G.A. Lukas, Viribus unitis. Politisch-geographische Gedanken über Österreich-Ungarn und den Weltkrieg (Vienna, 1915). See, for example, H. v. Hofmannsthal, ‘Die Bejahung Österreichs. Gedanken zum gegenwärtigen Augenblick’, ÖR, 1 November 1914, pp. 97–9; P. Ostwald, ‘Der Zusammenhalt Österreich-Ungarns’, Gegenwart, 28 August 1915, pp. 550–2; A. Winkler, Die Grundlage der Habsburgermonarchie. Studien über Gesamtstaatsidee, Pragmatische Sanktion und Nationalitätenfrage im Majorat Österreich (Leipzig, 1915); F.Z. v. Lobkowitz et al. (eds.), Austria Nova. Wege in Österreichs Zukunft (Vienna, 1916); I. Seipel, Nation und Staat (Vienna, 1916).

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In this context, several Austro-German politicians and intellectuals tried to dispel Reich German prejudices and to inspire sympathy and understanding instead. They published a considerable number of essays in German journals and newspapers to inform the German public about the eventful history, the complicated political structure, and ethnic composition of the Danube Monarchy.29 A certain bitterness and somewhat educative tone were often discernible in these contributions. The architecture critic Joseph August Lux, for example, stressed that ‘we live under different historical, national, and cultural conditions, and want to be assessed according to our own standards’.30 The renowned Austrian dramatist and essayist Hugo von Hofmannsthal complained in a similar way that ‘for the Germans, Austria is one of the least known countries on earth’. The theatre columnist Hans Wantoch even remarked that Germany before 1914 ‘had known its enemies better than its friend’.31 In 1917, the Austrian Comradeship Association (Österreichische Waffenbrüderliche Vereinigung) launched the Österreichische Bücherei, a series of pamphlets on Austrian arts, culture, science, and technology, intended primarily to enlighten the Reich German public and to gain more respect and recognition.32 Hoping to obtain German appreciation, Austrians emphasized the merits of Habsburg troops and vindicated the 29

30 31

32

See, for example, G. Gündisch, ‘Die Idee Österreich-Ungarns’, Hilfe, 31 December 1914, p. 868; R. Charmatz, ‘Wie studiert man Österreich-Ungarns Geschichte und Politik’, Hilfe, 10 June 1915, pp. 366–8; H. Gerbers, ‘Die wirtschaftliche Stellung Österreichs in Mitteleuropa’, GD, 29 January 1916, pp. 142–8; W. Winkler, ‘Die Bevölkerung Österreichs nach Nationalitäten’, Panther, November 1916, pp. 1360–6; F. Tezner, ‘Der innere Aufbau der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie’, in O. Hintze et al. (eds.), Deutschland und der Weltkrieg, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1915), I, pp. 239–48; O. Weber, ‘Die auswärtige Politik Österreich-Ungarns’, in Hintze et al. (eds.), Deutschland und der Weltkrieg, pp. 249–69; P. Samassa, ‘Nationalitäten und Parteien Österreich-Ungarns’, in D. Schäfer (ed.), Der Krieg 1914/19. Werden und Wesen des Weltkrieges, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1916–20), I (1916), pp. 57–65; B. Bretholz, ‘ÖsterreichUngarns Verfassung und Verwaltung’, in Schäfer (ed.), Der Krieg 1914/19, II (1917), pp. 22–5; R. Sieger, ‘Österreich-Ungarn’, in W. Goetz (ed.), Deutschland und der Friede. Notwendigkeit und Möglichkeiten deutscher Zukunft (Leipzig, 1918), pp. 156–83. Also see J.A. Lux, Der österreichische Bruder. Ein Buch zum Verständnis Österreichs, seiner Menschen, Völker, Schicksale, Städte und Landschaften als Grundlage der geistigen und wirtschaftlichen Annäherung (Stuttgart, 1915); H. Schrott-Fiechtl, Der deutsche Bruder und Österreich (Warnsdorf, 1916); R.H. Bartsch, Das deutsche Volk in schwerer Zeit (Berlin, 1916); M. Haberlandt, Die nationale Kultur der österreichischen Völkerstämme (Vienna, 1917). Lux, Der österreichische Bruder, p. 6. H. v. Hofmannsthal, ‘Wir Österreicher und Deutschland’, VZ, 10 January 1915; H. Wantoch, ‘Berlin-Wien’, Gegenwart, 7 August 1915, pp. 498–500 (p. 498). Also see H. Bahr, ‘Österreichisch’, NR, July 1915, pp. 916–33 and his ‘Deutschland und Österreich’, NR, April 1916, pp. 826–35. Altogether, sixteen volumes were published until 1920, including Haberlandt, Die nationale Kultur; Sieger, Die geographischen Grundlagen; and R. Kobatsch, Die österreichische Volkswirtschaft (Vienna, 1918).

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early failures in Galicia as a deliberate sacrifice of their own men in order to protect the open flank of Germany in the East.33 It appears that many authors were at pains to demonstrate that AustriaHungary was worthy of equal status within the coalition, a valuable partner whose views and interests had to be taken into account in the inter-allied discussion about military strategies and war aims. Nationalist publicists, however, amongst them many German Bohemians and other intellectuals from the Habsburg periphery, had a different motivation for drawing Reich German attention to Austrian issues: they hoped for substantial support in the domestic struggle against other nationalities. In numerous essays and articles for Reich-German periodicals, the historian Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, the editor of the influential right-wing journal Deutsche Arbeit Hermann Ullmann, and his co-editor and Moravian member of the Reichsrat Franz Jesser, openly condemned Berlin’s pre-war policy towards Austria-Hungary and the general lack of interest and sympathy with regard to its German-speaking population. In this regard, they were less interested in expounding the general conditions within the Habsburg realm. Rather, their writings highlighted the ostensibly endangered standing of the AustroGermans and emphasized the Germanness of Austrian culture and society. From Walther von der Vogelweide to Mozart and Adalbert Stifter, from the Turkish wars to Andreas Hofer and Metternich, it was commonly held, Austria had always played a significant role in German cultural and political history, and there should be no doubt that it represented a vital part of the German nation. Was not the Danube equally central to German identity as the Rhine? And was not Austria, the old German Ostmark, one of the first examples of successful German expansionism, attesting to the stupendous colonizing abilities of the German people and to the superiority of German culture and organization? Was it also not evident that the Habsburgs, who had ruled over Germany for many centuries, were a genuine German dynasty, on a par with the Hohenzollerns or the House of Wettin?34 As before 1914, the adherents of deutschnational positions supported the idea of the likeness between the Germans in both 33

34

See, for example, A. v. Minarelli-Fitzgerald, ‘Oesterreich-Ungarns Anteil am Kriege’, NPZ, 12 December 1914; R. Michel, ‘Österreichische Helden’, NR, December 1915, pp. 1657–64; H. Wantoch, ‘Das Vorbild: Conrad von Hötzendorf’, Gegenwart, 12 February 1916, pp. 99–101; M. Ritter v. Hoen, ‘Österreichs Kraftleistung im Kriege’, SM, May 1917, pp. 187–208. R.F. Kaindl, Deutsche Siedlung im Osten (Stuttgart, 1915); R.F. Kaindl, Die Deutschen in Osteuropa (Leipzig, 1916); R.F. Kaindl, Deutsche Ansiedlung und deutsche Kulturarbeit an der unteren Donau (Prague, 1917); H. Ullmann, Die Bestimmung der Deutschen in Mitteleuropa. Zu den Grundlagen des deutsch-österreichischen Bündnisses (Jena, 1915); H. Ullmann, Deutschösterreich und die deutsche Zukunft (Charlottenburg, 1916); R. Sieger, ‘Die Deutschösterreicher’, ND, 20 December 1915, pp. 110–15; R. Sieger, Vom heutigen Deutschösterreich (Munich, 1917); P. Samassa, ‘Die politische Vertretung

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states.35 As a German-Bohemian politician declared at a local gathering in late 1915: ‘No one can contest our pride to be part of the German nation, . . . that we are Germans, that we feel German, think German, speak German, and take pride in the world-political position of the German Reich.’36 In several articles, published in the rightwing Reich German journal Türmer, Hermann Kienzl sternly rejected the idea of an ‘Austrian nation’.37 He was convinced that the ‘Danube state’ represented ‘not only an ally but also a magnificent part of Germany’; in fact, it embodied the ‘Germany outside the German Reich’. Speaking of a ‘Germany of two empires [Deutschland zweier Reiche]’, Kienzl clearly distinguished between ‘Germany’ as an ideal term and the Prusso-German nation-state.38 Thus, he claimed, German national unity still existed on a higher level and was not distorted by political boundaries; on the contrary, it would now represent the very ‘basis and unbreakable guarantee for comradeshipin-arms and the brotherhood between the empires’.39 Jesser took a similar line when he highlighted the existence of a ‘spiritual nationstate’ and argued that the Austro-Germans belonged to the ‘wider Germany’: ‘We are not a “diaspora”, but a part of the German people that is of equal value and rights.’40 Arguably, the intention behind such statements was twofold. On the one hand, highlighting Austria’s German origins and character was supposed to unify the Austro-German community, to overcome social and ideological differences in order to build up a coherent opposition against those who

35

36 37 38 39 40

des österreichischen Deutschtums’, Panther, November 1916, pp. 1329–41; R. v. Scala, ‘Die Entwicklung des Deutschtums in Österreich’, Panther, November 1916, pp. 1341–6 ; W. Kosch, ‘Vergangenheit und Zukunft des Deutschtums in Österreich’, SM, October 1916, pp. 60–6; F. Jesser, ‘Der verkannte Österreicher. Ein Beitrag zur Verständigung zwischen Deutschland und Deutschösterreich’, ÖR, 15 January 1917, pp. 49–58; G. Groß, ‘Die Lage der Deutschen in Österreich’, SM, May 1917, pp. 221–6; R. Charmatz, ‘Die Politik der Deutschösterreicher’, März, 24 March 1917, pp. 251–9. Also see A. Müller-Guttenbrunn, Österreichs Beschwerdebuch. Einige Eintragungen (Constance, 1916) and A. Müller-Guttenbrunn (ed.), Ruhmeshalle deutscher Arbeit in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (Stuttgart, 1916). On deutschnational groups during the First World War, see now the useful summary by G. Stimmer, ‘Deutschnationale Parteien 1914 zwischen Irredenta und Mitteleuropakonzeption’, in Mesner et al. (eds.), Parteien und Gesellschaft, pp. 71–92. ‘Die Versammlung der deutschen Bezirksobmänner in Karlsbad’, PrT, 12 September 1915. H. Kienzl, ‘Deutsch-Österreich’, Türmer, 2nd March issue 1915, pp. 807–12. H. Kienzl, ‘Das neue Deutschland’, Türmer, 1st October issue 1915, pp. 1–6 (pp. 4–6). H. Kienzl, ‘Die Deutschen zweier Reiche’, Türmer, 1st January issue 1916, pp. 442–6 (p. 442). F. Jesser, ‘Der Nationalstaatsgedanke und Österreich-Ungarn’, DÖ, 1 August 1915, pp. 45–8 (p. 48) and his ‘Wir Deutsch-Österreicher’, Kunstwart, 2nd December issue 1915, pp. 214–17 (p. 215).

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contested German supremacy in Cisleithania. On the other hand, it was hoped that Reich German politicians as well as the broader public would develop a greater interest in Austrian affairs and a deeper sense of ethnic solidarity. ‘First the state, its rights, its demands, its borders – and then the Volk’: this is how Emil Lehmann, who would later become an intellectual leader of the Pan-Germans in the Sudetenland, summarized the prevalent yet ‘flawed’ idea of the nation in Imperial Germany. Like Kienzl and Jesser, Lehmann was convinced that Austria was German, that it represented an essential part of the wider Germany: ‘We also live in Germany . . . We as well as our country are as German as the other tribes and regions within the black-white-red borders . . . Our land is German . . . It is the second German empire in Central Europe.’41 Certainly, these authors reasoned, Austria was a multiethnic polity, but the Austro-Germans were the actual backbone of state and society as they had helped to build the realm and were the most advanced ethnic group in cultural and socio-economic regard. In addition, the Germanspeaking population had most readily supported the war effort and shown an exceptional willingness to make sacrifices, substantiating once again the claim for leadership within the western half. By upholding Germany’s most important ally and containing the Austro-Slavs, by permeating the Balkans and securing the trade route to the Middle East, the Austro-Germans apparently fulfilled an essential task for the German nation-state. To continue to ignore or denigrate their accomplishments, to regard them as secondary Germans, as irrelevant diaspora, or, even worse, as unrelated foreigners, would merely mean that Reich Germans were operating against their very own political and commercial interest. As seen previously, this line of reasoning had a long tradition. What was new, however, was the prevalence of pronounced pro-German sentiments and positions beyond the narrow circle of right-wing authors and politicians. The uncritical adulation of anything Reich German was a typical phenomenon in the early stages of the war. Several Austro-Germans considered the German nation-state a model of organization and efficiency and advocated the adoption of Reich German methods and arrangements. Wantoch, for instance, was convinced that Austria needed Germany’s ‘economic rigidity, its talent to tackle problems, and in particular its wonderfully accurate organization’, while Lux advised his fellow citizens: ‘More movement, more tasks, more work, and more German energy! . . . Learn German organization and discipline, German industriousness and 41

E. Lehmann, ‘Deutschösterreich und die österreichische Staatseinheit’, Panther, July 1916, pp. 847–64 (pp. 847–8). Also see his Deutschösterreich in Mitteleuropa (Prague, 1917).

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order.’42 Demands for a general rapprochement between Germany and Austria-Hungary, for more economic and cultural interaction, the exchange of industrial and administrative experts, of students, and of academics, proved popular even with Christian Socials and Social Democrats. Radical nationalists, however, asked for more. They requested German involvement in Austrian affairs, for instance by sending settlers, by donating money in support of Austro-German schools and defence associations, or by urging Vienna to introduce pro-German reforms.43 Austro-Germans embraced the military alliance with Imperial Germany for several reasons. It allowed many to reconcile their latent sense of German identity with their loyalty to state and the emperor. Liberal and nationalist circles expected specific political gains, in particular the strengthening of their domestic position against the Austrian Slavs. While conservative forces in the government, Church, bureaucracy, and army were much less passionate, they still hoped that the Dual Monarchy with the help of German troops and material would regain its status as a great power on the international stage. The ‘Austrian miracle’, the belief in the renewal of Habsburg society and politics, paradoxically relied on Germany’s military prowess, but with the progression of the military conflict and the deterioration of German-Austrian relations since late 1916, the situation changed. Dynastic-oriented Austrians objected to the empire’s junior status in the alliance, while pacifists and moderate groups, such as the supporters of the industrialist Julius Meinl and the jurist Heinrich Lammasch, campaigned for a peace of understanding as opposed to Berlin’s bellicosity and expansionist war aims. In this context, the debate on Austro-German identity between ethnic community and political nation received a new impetus. Old positions resurfaced, and the identification with the Reich Germans clashed anew with the importance given to differences stemming from centuries of diverse cultural and confessional and, more recently, separate political and socio-economic developments, a tension only seemingly buried in the first months of the war. Karl Kraus, who in 42 43

H. Wantoch, ‘Von Deutschland müssen wir lernen. Ein Vorschlag aus Österreich’, KZ, 21 March 1915; Lux, Der österreichische Bruder, pp. 4, 18. H. Ullmann, Zur Frage: Deutschösterreich und Deutschland. Wie werben wir bei den Reichsdeutschen? (Prague, 1914); H. Ullmann, ‘Mehr Güter oder mehr Menschen? Von den Kolonisationsaufgaben des Deutschtums’, DA, November 1914, pp. 74–83; H. Ullmann, ‘Deutschösterreichs Kämpfe und das Mutterland’, Panther, February 1916, pp. 121–57; F. Jesser, Deutscher Imperialismus oder mitteleuropäische Interessengemeinschaft? (Prague, 1915); Munin [i.e. K. Iro], Österreich nach dem Kriege. Forderungen eines aktiven österreichischen Politikers (Jena, 1915); E. Lehmann, ‘Zur Frage: Deutschösterreich in Mitteleuropa’, DA, May 1916, pp. 427–31; R. Sieger, ‘Was wünschen die Deutschösterreicher von den Deutschen im Reiche?’, DiA, 32 (1917), 219–20.

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his journal Die Fackel repeatedly wrote against war propaganda and nationalism, belonged to the first who expressed a more critical view, ridiculing the ‘worn-out comradeship terminology’ and certain initiatives at rapprochement, such as the exchange of journalists and academics.44 In late 1917, Hofmannsthal published his well-known catalogue of the spiritual differences between the ‘artificial’, disciplined Prussian and the traditionalist, sophisticated Austrian.45 There was also a renewed discussion about the existence of an independent Austrian literary tradition, which focused in particular on the playwright Franz Grillparzer.46 Bahr and Schaukal, who had initially contributed to the Greater German glorification of the alliance, before long rejoined the Austrianist camp and, together with Robert Müller and Franz Zweybrück, advocated the concept of an Austrian ‘mankind’ or nation encompassing all Habsburg nationalities.47 Compared to right-wing commentators, who soon took a confrontational stance with regard to the Austro-Slavs, these authors honoured the new-found concord with non-German nationalities and strongly propagated the idea that Austria(-Hungary) had a special, a world-historical vocation.48 The notion of an Austrian task or mission had long represented one of the most prominent themes in the debate on the nature and future of the 44

45 46 47

48

K. Kraus, ‘Waffenbrüder’, Fackel, 2 August 1916, pp. 69–71 (p. 69). Also see his other articles in the Fackel: ‘Von einem Mann namens Ernst Posse’, 2 August 1916, pp. 72–7; ‘Eine waffenbrüderliche Vereinigung’, 15 June 1916, pp. 12–14; ‘Österreich 1918’, 23 May 1918, p. 28; ‘Ausgebaut und vertieft’, 15 October 1918, pp. 1–12; ‘Das verjüngte Österreich’, 15 October 1918, pp. 184–7. H. v. Hofmannsthal, ‘Preuße und Österreicher. Ein Schema’, VZ, 25 December 1917. See, for example, H. v. Hofmannsthal (ed.), Grillparzers politisches Vermächtnis (Leipzig, 1915); W. Handl, Österreich und der deutsche Geist. Franz Grillparzer (Constance, 1915). H. Bahr, ‘Die Zukunft Österreichs’, Tat, April 1915, pp. 45–9; H. Bahr, Schwarzgelb (Berlin, 1917); W. Handl, ‘Österreichische Menschheit’, NR, August 1916, pp. 1128–32; R. Müller, ‘Österreichisches’, NR, February 1916, pp. 225–38; R. Müller, Österreich und der Mensch. Eine Mythik des Donau-Alpenmenschen (Berlin, 1916); R. Müller, Europäische Wege. Im Kampf um den Typus. Essays (Berlin, 1917); F. Zweybrück, Österreichische Essays (Berlin, 1916); R. Schaukal, Zeitgemäße deutsche Betrachtungen (Munich, 1916); R. Schaukal, ‘Deutsches Wesen’, DE, May 1917, pp. 181–2; R. Schaukal, Österreichische Züge (Munich, 1918); E. Hanslik, Österreich. Erde und Geist (Vienna, 1917); E. Hanslik, Österreich als Naturforderung (Vienna, 1917); A. Nathanksy, ‘Die österreichische Seele’, PJ, May 1918, pp. 188–97. Also see, for example, M. Benedikt, ‘Österreich als slawische Vormacht’, Zukunft, 27 March 1915, pp. 387–90; W. Handl, ‘Aus Böhmen’, Schaubühne, 21 October 1915, pp. 353–7; H. Bahr, ‘Böhmen’, NR, January 1916, pp. 36–49; H. Bahr, ‘Tagebuch’, NWJ, 22 July 1917; N. Bemold, ‘Deutsche und Slawen’, ÖR, 1 April 1916, pp. 1–8; R. Charmatz, ‘Das tschechische Volk’, März, 21 October 1916, pp. 41–8; K.W. Fritsch, ‘Zum österreichischen Nationalitätenproblem’, ESWZ, 7 August 1916, pp. 1046–50; K.W. Fritsch, ‘Der Krieg und Österreichs Nation’, ESWZ, 4 August 1917, pp. 761–7; Austriacus Observator [i.e. W. Schmidt], Germanentum, Slawentum, Orientvölker und die Balkanereignisse. Kulturpolitische Erwägungen (Kempten, 1917).

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Habsburg Monarchy. For most Austrians, it was a discourse of justification, vindicating the presence of a multiethnic empire in the age of nationstates and radical nationalism, and it is no surprise that the outbreak of war provoked a new discussion about the realm’s role in Europe. Intellectuals such as Bahr and Hofmannsthal, conservative members of the political and social elite, and Social Democrats such as Karl Renner stressed the multicultural and ostensibly egalitarian character of the Danube Monarchy, allowing a peaceful and mutually stimulating togetherness of various ethnic groups. Austria-Hungary in this regard did not appear as a peoples’ prison but, on the contrary, as ‘a Christian shelter and patron of the weak’, and as the first great attempt or scheme ‘of an organization of nations in freedom, an order of diversity in unity’, as Bahr put it.49 According to the liberal Reichsrat deputy Ernst Viktor Zenker, it was the empire’s task to demonstrate how to overcome the negative nationalism ‘which had set Europe alight’, namely ‘through freedom and justice, instead of violence’.50 Count Alfons MensdorffPouilly, a prominent member of the Austrian Upper House, similarly described the Habsburg Monarchy as an ‘empire of peace’ and as the ‘most modern and in the best sense of the word most democratic state entity of this globe’.51 The idea that Austria-Hungary was superior to the nation-state was common in these and similar contributions: ‘The Danube Empire as a multinational state does not belong to the past, but to the future.’52 Renner agreed, resuming his pre-war argument that the establishment of nation-states at any cost was a reactionary objective. ‘Petty’ states would be incapable of substantial socioeconomic progress and would thus impede a Socialist transformation of politics and society. The politician and author was convinced that multiethnic entities represented a progressive form of political organization – at least as long as they renounced imperialist aspirations and provided a maximum of national self-determination. In this sense, Renner defended the existence of the Habsburg Monarchy against demands for its dissolution, although he insisted on its transformation into a democratic federation, based on the principle

49 50 51 52

A. Ritter von Onciul, ‘Der Beruf der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie’, SM, May 1917, pp. 209–17 (p. 215); Bahr, ‘Deutschland und Österreich’, p. 829. E. Zenker, ‘Das österreichische Völkerproblem’, SM, May 1917, pp. 279–82 (p. 279). Mensdorff-Pouilly, ‘Völkerreich-Friedensreich’, p. 227. E. Zenker, Die nationale Organisation Österreichs (Berlin, 1916), pp. 16–17.

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of national-cultural autonomy.53 Others asserted that AustriaHungary guaranteed peace and stability in Central Europe, which would fall prey to a process of Balkanization if the realm were ever to break up: ‘strife and combat everywhere, Europe ablaze, a war of all against all’.54 The empire was, in this reading, of world-historical significance. It stood for the possible reconciliation of national interests and embodied Europe’s problems on a smaller scale. The ‘Austrian idea’ symbolized an alternative to the destructive nationalist and materialistic forces of history, and it is evident why non-political intellectuals, too – moved by the prevalent cultural pessimism of the period – identified with the concept, embracing it as an anti-modernist ideal, as myth and utopia.55 According to many authors, next to its exemplary function as a supranational organization, the Dual Monarchy fulfilled a second duty in the interest of Europe. As it had done for many centuries, the Habsburg Empire served again as an outpost of Christian-Occidental civilization, as a defensive bulwark against the ‘dark forces of eastern barbarism’.56 In this sense, the Danubian realm defended not only its own existence but also the survival of European culture and human progress in general.57 Hofmannsthal, however, saw Austria’s task in connecting rather than dividing East and West. It was ‘borderland, frontier rampart, dividing line . . . between the European domain and, in front of its gates, a bustle of peoples, half-Europe, half-Asia, continuously fluctuating in a chaotic way’. In his view, Austria was ‘a starting point for the colonization and penetration’ of the East, but also ‘receptive and prepared’ to receive cultural stimuli from there.58 For the various nationalities in the realm, all this naturally implied, as Wantoch declared, that ‘never and nowhere they are better off than here, and that the economic 53 54 55

56

57

58

K. Renner, Österreichs Erneuerung. Politisch-programmatische Aufsätze, 4th ed. (Vienna, 1916). T. v. Sosnosky, ‘Viribus unitis. Eine Studie’, Panther, March 1916, pp. 320–34 (p. 328). Also see R. v. Kralik, Der Beruf Österreichs (M. Gladbach, 1914); R. v. Kralik, Die Entscheidung im Weltkrieg. Drei Reden (Vienna, 1914); R. v. Kralik, Vom Weltkrieg zum Weltbund. Abhandlungen, Aufsätze, Gedanken und Stimmungen (Innsbruck, 1916); K. Brockhausen, Österreichs Kriegsziel (Vienna, 1915); Österreichischer Reichsverein, Europäische Ideen. Kriegsdenkschrift (Jena, 1915); W. Bauer, ‘Österreich’, Österreich, 15 November 1917, pp. 1–16; W. Bauer, ‘Die Entdeckung Österreichs’, Österreich, 30 July 1918, pp. 241–4. A. Chroust, ‘Österreich und der Balkan’, Hochland, February 1915, pp. 528–41 (p. 541). Also see R. Charmatz, ‘Österreich-Ungarn gegen Rußland’, März, 19 December 1914, pp. 237–42; R. Charmatz, Zarismus, Panslawismus, Krieg! (Vienna, 1915); H. Uebersberger, ‘Deutschland, Österreich-Ungarn, und Rußland’, NFP, 3 April 1915. F. v. Wieser, ‘Österreich und der Krieg’, ÖR, 15 December 1914, pp. 259–72; F. v. Wieser, ‘Das neue Österreich’, ÖR, 15 July 1916, pp. 49–57, and 1 August 1916, pp. 97–105; O. Weber, ‘Österreichs Aufgabe’, DA, October 1914, pp. 7–10. H. v. Hofmannsthal, ‘Die österreichische Idee’, NZZ, 2 December 1917.

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and cultural peak of each individual people cannot be reached other than in the Austro-Hungarian entity’.59 More often than not, however, the myth of an ‘eternal mission for mankind’ represented nothing but an excuse and euphemism for AustroGerman predominance: the rhetoric and pathos of community, freedom, and justice did not imply the equality of Habsburg’s nationalities.60 Indeed, it was commonly held that only Germans were able to rule the realm and to secure its continued prosperity and integrity. For Hofmannsthal, Austria was ‘the specific task of the German spirit within Europe’, the ‘field of action, assigned by destiny, of a purely spiritual imperialism’: ‘Austria must be recognized again and again as the German duty in Europe.’61 This widespread conception combined European mission and Austro-German supremacy: the Danube Empire guaranteed peace and stability in Europe, promoted the intellectual and material advancement of its Slav nationalities, but could do so only because of the selflessness and experience of Austrian Germandom. As a bulwark against the East and bridge to the Balkans and Asia Minor, it extended and reinforced German authority in Europe, while at the same time upholding European culture and working for the benefit of all Habsburg nationalities.62 There were thus obvious points of contact or concurrence between Austrianist intellectuals and right-wing authors who often employed a similar rhetoric when propagating German hegemony over the other nationalities. Ullmann, for instance, maintained that ‘Germany and Austria lead the cause of European culture against the surge of Asia’ but, in order to do so, had to rigidly ‘organize’ and ‘colonize’ the Slav faction within the empire.63 The writer Walter von Molo similarly praised the ‘Austrian miracle’ without, however, omitting to emphasize that it was the Germans who represented ‘the core of Austria’s being’ and the most valuable part of the Austrian state.64 There was often 59

60 61 62

63 64

H. Wantoch, ‘Die Mission Österreich-Ungarns’, Gegenwart, 17 July 1915, pp. 457–8 (p. 458). Also see A. v. Mensdorff-Pouilly, ‘Das österreichische Slawentum und seine Zukunft’, in A. v. Mensdorff-Pouilly, Mitteleuropäisches und anderes (Vienna, 1916), pp. 3–21; F. Jesser, ‘Vom deutsch tyrannisierten österreichischen Völkergefängnis’, Kunstwart, 2nd November issue 1916, pp. 176–81; R. Laun, Zur Nationalitätenfrage (The Hague, 1917). W. v. Molo, ‘Österreicher und Ungarn!’, in W. v. Molo, Deutschland und Österreich. Kriegsaufsätze (Constance, 1916), pp. 27–31 (p. 31). Hofmannsthal, ‘Wir Österreicher und Deutschland’. See also R. v. Kralik, ‘A.E.I.O.U.’, Tat, May 1915, pp. 113–20; B. Molden, ‘Austria erit’, Tat, August 1915, pp. 378–87; O. Redlich, Österreich-Ungarns Bestimmung (Warnsdorf, 1916); A. Dopsch, Österreichs geschichtliche Sendung (Vienna, 1917); L. v. Wimmer, Die Ostmark. Österreich-Ungarns Mission in der Weltgeschichte, 2nd rev. ed. (Vienna, 1917). H. Ullmann, ‘Der Beruf Österreichs’, Kunstwart, 2nd September issue 1914, pp. 345–9 (p. 348). W. v. Molo, ‘Die Bedeutung des Deutschtums in Österreich’, in Molo, Deutschland und Österreich, pp. 39–49 (pp. 41–2). See also e.g. E. Lehmann, ‘Österreichs Verjüngung’, DA, November 1914, pp. 103–6; W. Schmied-Kowarzik, ‘Die Wiedergeburt Österreichs

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only a very fine line between these positions, and it would be misleading to talk of a homogeneous deutschnational group of authors or a uniform Austrianist camp. In fact, despite an often conciliatory and fair-minded rhetoric, black-yellow monarchists, Christian Socials, and some Social Democrats, too, adhered to the idea that, in the end, it was the AustroGermans who in ‘historical, geographical, and moral regard’ represented the ‘core people’ of the state.65 Many Reich German observers and commentators shared this notion of a German Austria. The weeks and months following August 1914 were undeniably characterized by a higher interest in the Austro-Hungarian ally. Several journals published special issues dealing with the Habsburg Monarchy, amongst them Das Größere Deutschland or Süddeutsche Monatshefte.66 However, many articles stemmed from Austro-German authors: Charmatz wrote for Die Hilfe, Kienzl was published in Der Türmer, and Jesser and Ullmann placed their articles in Der Kunstwart. This situation can be explained as a necessary recourse to experts given the lack of substantial knowledge about the Danube Empire amongst German opinion leaders. Yet it also signifies the Austro-German attempt to exploit the German desire for information and understanding in order to communicate and impart own views and interests. Even though some of Hofmannsthal’s essays appeared in the Vossische Zeitung, it is noteworthy that most ‘Austrianist’ articles were printed in Austrian journals and newspapers such as the Österreichische Rundschau or Reichspost. Liberal and nationalist Austro-German authors thus shaped the German image of wartime Austria-Hungary to a considerable extent. The Ostmark: Austria in the German imagination As seen earlier, the outbreak of war produced in Germany a renaissance of a sense of togetherness with the Austro-Germans, leading to the glorification of the war alliance between the Central Powers as a fraternal union, a Germanic band of brothers. Remarkably, however, many German commentators also adopted the concept of an ‘Austrian miracle’. Large sections of the press revised their pre-1914 view of the Habsburg

65

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aus dem Geiste des Imperialismus’, DÖ, 1 October 1915, pp. 132–6, 1 December 1915, pp. 211–14, 1 February 1916, pp. 280–3, 1 April 1916, pp. 354–8; G.A. Lukas, ‘Das südöstliche Deutschtum und die Südmark’, Panther, November 1916, pp. 1439–46. R. Schaukal, ‘Der Österreicher’, GD, 25 December 1915, pp. 1727–30 (p. 1728). Also see R. Schaukal, ‘Österreichisch’, GD, 29 January 1916, pp. 153–5; E. Pernerstorfer, ‘Österreich nach dem Kriege’, März, 13 March 1915, pp. 221–4; E. Pernerstorfer, ‘Der Schiffbruch der Internationale’, DA, August 1915, pp. 654–7. GD, 29 January 1916; SM, March 1917. Also see März, 13 March 1915; Panther, November 1916.

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Monarchy as a disunited Völkerchaos heading for inevitable collapse, depicting it instead as a domestically steady and thus reliable ally. While Germania detected ‘Austria’s rebirth’, the Historisch-politische Blätter declared: ‘There is an Austria again.’67 According to the semi-official Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the Habsburg war effort was backed by all nationalities: War has not broken the vigour of the old monarchy; on the contrary, all seventeen nationalities have rallied around the Emperor and fight for the honour and glory of the dynastic House. No one shall believe that only Germans stand where peril is greatest. No, where the battle is raging most violently, where resistance is most tenacious, there stand Romanians, Poles, Magyars, and Croats.68

The left-liberal Reichstag politician Conrad Haußmann pointed to it as well: ‘The state’s fabric in Austria-Hungary has suddenly become firmer. The gruelling conflict of nationalities has given way to a sense of loyalty to the state which is of great significance for the war and almost even more so for the peace.’69 German loyalty to the alliance, to comradeship-in-arms with the Danube Monarchy, thus appeared justified, and every doubt was dispelled. To quote the historian Friedrich Meinecke: ‘And by supporting Austria we do not fight for a rotten and doomed entity! These days have shown that the cooperative forces within Austria are stronger than those that dissolve. Austria’s nationalities want to stay together!’70 Adolf von Harnack, renowned theologian and church historian at the University of Berlin, similarly concluded: ‘We have in Austria, as Austria has in us, the most loyal and strong ally.’71 Recent research on the German wartime image of the European East and the perception of the Slavs has highlighted the prevalence of disparaging stereotypes and negative views amongst soldiers, publicists, and politicians.72 It is well known that Wilhelm II and several high-ranking 67 68

69

70 71 72

‘Österreichs Wiedergeburt’, Germania, 13 August 1914; ‘Der Weltkrieg’, HPB, 16 August 1914, pp. 303–5 (p. 304). ‘Die Einigkeit Österreich-Ungarns’, NAZ, 22 March 1915; similar: ‘Österreich-Ungarns erfolgreicher Vormarsch’, MNN, 13 August 1914; ‘Kaiser Franz Joseph und Kaiser Wilhelm’, BLA, 27 August 1914. C. Haußmann, ‘Europas Krieg’, März, 22 August 1914, pp. 246–52 (p. 249). Also see ‘Das Erwachen des Staatsgefühls in Österreich’, FZ, 1 August 1914; O. v. Romstedt, ‘Das neue Österreich’, Tag, 13 August 1914. F. Meinecke, ‘Deutschland und der Weltkrieg’, GD, 29 August 1914, pp. 617–22 (p. 620). A. v. Harnack, Was wir schon gewonnen haben und was wir noch gewinnen müssen (Berlin, 1914), p. 7. V.G. Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I (Cambridge, 2000); P. Hoeres, ‘Die Slawen. Perzeption des Kriegsgegners bei den Mittelmächten. Selbst- und Feindbild’, in Groß (ed.), Die vergessene Front, pp. 179–200; D. Showalter, ‘Comrades, Enemies, Victims:

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decision-makers, including Secretary of State Gottlieb von Jagow and the Chief of the General Staff Helmuth von Moltke, held social-Darwinist and anti-Slavic positions. Moltke, for instance, spoke repeatedly of a struggle between ‘Germandom and Slavdom’.73 According to the memoirs of General Max von Gallwitz, German soldiers ‘were shocked’ when they crossed the Russo-German border in September 1914. One only saw ‘pitted rural roads, meagre vegetation and crops, miserable houses, poorly and dirty people! This is where Half-Asia begins. The many dark-curled wearers of caftans and their black-eyed women seemed particularly alien.’74 However, this is a somewhat one-sided picture, often deriving from a narrow focus on the border strip question and the military occupation regime Ober Ost – a point to which we shall return later in connection with the Polish question. It ignores other, important tendencies and developments, in particular during the early stage of the war. The notion of cultural superiority was indeed widespread, yet only rarely expressed in public. From early on, German statesmen oscillated between a rapprochement with St Petersburg and the curtailment of Russia’s power in its western territories, and Berlin was careful not to jeopardize potential advantages by an anti-Slavic rhetoric. Bethmann Hollweg’s declaration in parliament, made two weeks after the occupation of Warsaw, that Germany was and would remain ‘a stronghold of peace, of the freedom of greater and smaller nations’, has to be seen against this background.75 Publicly, Germany assumed the role as protector and liberator of non-Russian nationalities, hoping to win over the Poles, the Ruthenians, and the Balts. The alliance with AustriaHungary added to this reassessment of German-Slav relations, which was based on the differentiation between hostile eastern Slavs and cooperative western Slavs. Roman Catholic Czechs, Slovaks, and the other nationalities, it was contended, were closer to German civilization than to

73

74 75

The Prussian/German Army and the Ostvölker’, in Ingrao and Szabo (eds.), The Germans and the East, pp. 209–25; R.L. Nelson, German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 204–36; H. Rübsam, ‘Deutsche Kriegserfahrungen im Osten, 1914–1917’, in B. Bachinger and W. Dornik (eds.), Jenseits des Schützengrabens. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Osten: Erfahrung – Wahrnehmung – Kontext (Innsbruck, 2013), pp. 223–41. For the broader context, see G. Thum (ed.), Traumland Osten. Deutsche Bilder vom östlichen Europa im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2006); W. Wippermann, Die Deutschen und der Osten. Feindbild und Traumland (Darmstadt, 2007); Liulevicius, The German Myth of the East; G. Gebhard et al. (eds.), Das Prinzip ‘Osten’. Geschichte und Gegenwart eines symbolischen Raums (Bielefeld, 2010). See, for example, the letter to his wife Eliza of 22 July 1913, in H. v. Moltke, Erinnerungen, Briefe, Dokumente 1877–1916, ed. by E. v. Moltke (Stuttgart, 1922), pp. 373–4 (p. 374). For the Kaiser’s views, see Röhl, Wilhelm II, pp. 904–8, 950–3, and passim. M. v. Gallwitz, Meine Führertätigkeit im Weltkriege 1914–1916. Belgien, Osten, Balkan (Berlin, 1929), p. 47. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 306, p. 219 (19 August 1915).

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Orthodox Russiandom, and would faithfully hold their ground in the Danube Empire against the enemies of the Central Powers.76 The multinational character of Austria-Hungary no longer appeared as a deficiency, but as a virtue or advantage, and numerous articles and books celebrated the novel alliance between Germandom and Slavdom.77 The quotes above stemmed from Catholic, liberal, and semi-official sources, but conservative authors, too, commented positively or at least cautiously on the nationality issue, not least in order to avoid destabilizing the ally or undermining German-Austrian cooperation.78 Otto Hoetzsch, Associate Professor of East European History at the University of Berlin, regarded Austria as ‘a state organized and controlled by Germandom’, and called Hofmannsthal’s idea of an Austrian soul or nation a ‘dalliance [Spielerei]’.79 At the same time, however, he acknowledged that ‘merciful smiles or cheap witticism about the cultural backwardness of the Austrian Slavs are not appropriate any more’.80 In accordance with the idea of an ‘Austrian miracle’, many observers recognized the political significance and military value of the non-German nationalities, and argued even that the current war was not a ‘racial war’, since Germans were unified with western Slavs and Magyars in their fight against Russian ‘barbarism’ and tyranny, but also against Great Britain, a Germanicpower.81 As the cultural historian and philosopher Arthur Moeller van den Bruck stated, ‘states rather 76

77

78

79 80 81

See, for example, ‘Die slawischen Völker Österreichs gegen Rußland’, KVZ, 10 August 1914; K. Lamprecht, ‘Der Krieg der Völker’, BT, 23 August 1914; A. Schmidt, ‘Rußland und die Tschechen’, DK, 28 May 1915; J. Reinke, ‘Die Überwindung des Panslawismus’, Tag, 6 June 1916. See, for example, K. Nötzel, Der entlarvte Panslavismus und die große Aussöhnung der Slaven und Germanen (Munich, 1914); K. Nötzel, ‘Unsere slawischen Waffenbrüder’, Tat, March 1916, pp. 1008–18; F. Köhler, Der neue Dreibund. Ein politisches Arbeitsprogramm für das gesamte deutsche Volk und seine Freunde, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1915); A. Brückner, Der Weltkrieg und die Slawen (Berlin, 1915); A. Brückner, Die Slawen und der Weltkrieg. Lose Skizzen (Tübingen, 1916); G. Gothein, ‘Zum westslawischen Problem’, März, 7 and 14 August 1915, pp. 89–93, 109–15. See, for example, H. Kötschke, ‘Nationalitätenkampf und nationaler Aufschwung in Österreich’, DiA, 21 (1914), 119–22; R. Boschan, ‘Die böhmische Frage’, Grenzboten, 7 June 1916, pp. 295–308; K. Brand, ‘Die Tschechen und ihre Führer’, Tat, February 1917, pp. 1059–60; R. Regensburger, ‘Deutschtum und Slawentum’, Tat, April 1917, pp. 83–7; Dr. Hubatschek [i.e. H. Herbatschek], ‘Das österreichische Slawentum’, Tat, July 1917, pp. 358–9. O. Hoetzsch, Rußland als Gegner Deutschlands (Leipzig, 1914), p. 21; O. Hoetzsch, Der Krieg und die große Politik, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1917), II, p. 355. O. Hoetzsch, Österreich-Ungarn und der Krieg (Stuttgart, 1915), p. 33. ‘Der Sturmschritt des Deutschtums’, HN, 30 September 1914; H.W. Behm, ‘Deutschland im Lichte der Rassen- und Völkerkunde’, DTZ, 16 December 1914; ‘Staat und Rasse’, DTZ, 2, 5 and 7 July 1915; Prof. Dr. Haupt, ‘Der wahre Sinn des Völkerkampfes’, RWZ, 24 March 1915; A. Wirth, ‘Rassen- und Glaubensbünde’, Tag, 8 March 1918.

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than races fight for their right to exist in this World War’, and it was Austria’s task to bring the ‘peoples between the Alps, Carpathians, and the Balkans together’.82 However, the renewed spirit of harmony and cooperation amongst the diverse ethnic groups within Austria-Hungary was interpreted in a very particular way. All non-German nationalities – ‘all those little nations and petty nations [Natiönchen]’, as the liberal Heidelberg economist Alfred Weber expressed it – had finally realized ‘that their true independence but also their voice in European politics can only be preserved in such a state’.83 Many authors claimed that, in reality, the Slavs had simply recognized the necessity of German supremacy instead of continuing to make unjustified demands that threatened the empire’s stability. The Austro-Germans accounted for merely a quarter of the overall population, and possessed substantial political, social, and economic influence only in the western half of the empire, but the belief that they of all ethnic groups under Habsburg rule represented the ‘most powerful, still the leading’ nation was clearly not limited to the radical-nationalist camp.84 For the young Saxon historian Karl Buchheim, Austria was a German-led entity, ‘a second Germany, inextricably permeated by our own spirit’.85 Liberal papers, too, argued that the Austro-Germans represented an irreplaceable integrative force, destined to possess a leading position within the realm.86 Whereas the idea of a Kulturmission for Austrians such as Hofmannsthal or Bahr denoted a mediating role of the Habsburg Monarchy between Eastern and Western Europe – in the sense of mutual stimulation, of giving and taking – centre-right intellectuals in Germany understood the concept in a different way. Very similar to deutschnational views, it implied the cultural penetration of the various nationalities with a German way of thinking – in their very own interest. Karl Lamprecht, for example, asserted that next to the task of ‘repelling Russian barbarism’, the AustroGermans had to fulfil another duty, ‘a new, much nobler undertaking’, namely to ‘lead the Slavs of the South and of the West in a protective and brotherly way into the highest form of European culture’.87 A patronizing attitude blatantly surfaced in most contributions on the Austro-Slavs, who were depicted as being in need of protection and guidance. This 82 83 84 85 86 87

[A.] Moeller van den Bruck, ‘Weltkrieg und Rassenlehre’, Tag, 4 July 1916. A. Weber, Gedanken zur deutschen Sendung (Berlin, 1915), p. 63. Rapp, ‘Der großdeutsche Gedanke’, pp. 46–51 (p. 47). K. Buchheim, ‘Das Vermächtnis Brucks’, Grenzboten, March 1917, pp. 364–79 (p. 368). See, for example, Editorial, FZ, 16 October 1915; ‘Der Weg der Deutsch-Österreicher’, VZ, 27 May 1916; E. Ludwig, ‘Die deutschen Österreicher’, VZ, 8 September 1916. K. Lamprecht, ‘Geistige Mobilmachung’, AR, August/September 1914, pp. 563–5 (p. 565).

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stance, however, was not perceived as arrogant or demeaning but, on the contrary, as selfless assistance to national fulfilment, as a generous service of cosmopolitan and sophisticated people. Otto von Gierke, too, a highly esteemed Professor of Law at the University of Berlin, believed that German culture represented the ‘indispensable supplement’ to Slav life without which they would ‘decline and wither’.88 From here, it was only a short step to the belief that the neighbouring empire carried out a duty for Germandom. In the opinion of Paul Herre, who taught history in Leipzig, the Austro-Germans kept watch ‘for German culture and conduct [Gesittung] in the East’.89 Right-wing Catholics shared this view, holding that Austria worked as a ‘powerful protective wall’ and ‘cultivator of a German mindset in Slav soil’.90 Radical nationalists, however, did not even pay lip service to the idea of an ‘Austrian miracle’ and attacked it as propaganda of ‘flirtatious dreamers and political dilettantes of Austrian descent’.91 The Alldeutsche Blätter frankly declared that Austrian Germandom represented the ‘most valuable and most loyal element of all Habsburg nationalities’ and the ‘actual backbone of the Dual Monarchy’.92 In accordance with the social-Darwinist belief in an eternal struggle between the Germanic people and the Slavs, the extreme right continued to express an aggressive and confrontational attitude. The Austro-Slavs (in particular the Czechs) were described as unreliable, treacherous, and generally inferior to the Germans: ‘For our future actions, for our practical reasoning, Slavdom is completely irrelevant . . . The future does not belong to them but to us.’93 In the opinion of the Saxon Pan-German representative Felix Hänsch, Austria-Hungary was ‘the bulwark against the Slavic surge’; it also represented a bridge to the Orient and provided access to the Adriatic Sea.94 Of course, it could fulfil this role only as a German-led entity; according equal rights to all ethnic groups in the realm was out of the question. 88

89 90

91 92 93 94

Gierke, Krieg und Kultur, p. 19. Also see, for instance, A. Damaschke, ‘Der “Flickstaat” Österreich-Ungarn’, DN, 24 January 1915; J. Bab, ‘Gruß an Österreich’, Hilfe, 18 February 1915, pp. 105–6. P. Herre, ‘An Österreich-Ungarn!’, SM, September 1914, pp. 774–6 (p. 776). T. Henner, ‘Die Erbschaft des Wiener Kongresses’, Hochland, September 1915, pp. 658–67 (p. 667); F. Coar [i.e. H. Roselieb], ‘Vom sozialpolitischen zum weltgeschichtlichen Denken’, Hochland, June 1917, pp. 356–61 (p. 358). ‘Kleine Mitteilungen’, AB, 3 February 1917, pp. 61–2 (p. 62). See already ‘Ein böser Spuk’, AB, 14 November 1914, pp. 397–9; ‘Böhmen’, DZ, 8 February 1916. ‘Vor der Entscheidung’, AB, 1 August 1914, pp. 277–8 (p. 277); M. Bauer, ‘Die Deutschen Österreich-Ungarns im Kriege’, AB, 13 March 1915, pp. 81–2 (p. 82). R. Manasse, ‘“Deutschtum und Slawentum”’, Tat, July 1917, pp. 356–8 (p. 358). Also see F. Helmke, ‘Der wahre Sinn des Völkerkampfes’, RWZ, 28 March 1915. F. Hänsch, An der Schwelle des größeren Reichs. Deutsche Kriegsziele in politischgeographischer Begründung, den Wollenden unter seinen deutschen Mitbürgern dargelegt (Munich, 1917), p. 110.

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Restating his pre-war views, Wilhelm Schüßler, who would later become a prominent advocate of völkisch historiography and Pan-German Mitteleuropa conceptions, also argued that the Danube Monarchy was essentially a German entity, the second German power in Central Europe. Its army, capital city, society, and way of life, he claimed, were all German, and Habsburg’s nationalities required the German language as lingua franca in order to communicate with each other. To Schüßler, the Austro-Germans had the ‘world-political task . . . to organize and impregnate the areas between Lake Constance and the Bosphorus with the German mindset, with German culture, and to make them fruitful for the German people’.95 The article, which appeared in the influential Free Conservative journal Das neue Deutschland, prompted a complaint by Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Stephan Burián – Hungarian by birth and therefore arguably even more sensitive to interpretations that not only degraded the Austro-Slavs but also seemed to ignore the dualist character of the monarchy.96 Not surprisingly, Social Democratic observers distanced themselves from such viewpoints, while most Catholics celebrated the ‘Austrian idea’, pointing to dynasty and Catholicism as unifying bonds embracing the German-Slav community in the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire. For instance, the philosopher Max Scheler, who was one of the most eminent Catholic intellectuals in wartime Germany, highlighted the European mission of the Habsburg Monarchy: to guarantee peace in Central Europe and to serve as a model for the future European order. The Germans could merely be primus inter pares and would have to serve Austria’s exemplary supranational idea of the state.97 Still, a genuine interest in the Austro-Slavs and the sincere will to learn more about their political situation, history, and cultural heritage was only rarely observable. One notable exception was the left-liberal politician and publicist Friedrich Naumann. In several articles and speeches, the Mitteleuropa advocate drew attention to Berlin’s non-German coalition partners, the Magyars, western Slavs, but also the Bulgarians and Turks. As he explained in the Reichstag in October 1916, Germans had focused for too long on the European West and should now show more understanding and genuine consideration for the peoples of the East and 95 96 97

W. Schüßler, ‘Die deutschen Mächte’, ND, 27 February 1915, pp. 130–3 (p. 131). Burián to Hohenlohe, 6 March 1915, HHStA, Botschaft Berlin, K. 181; Hohenlohe to Burián, 30 March 1915, HHStA, PA III Preußen, K. 171. M. Scheler, ‘Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg’ (1915), in M. Scheler, Gesammelte Werke, 16 vols., ed. by M. Scheler and M.S. Frings (Bern and Bonn, 1954– 98), IV: Politisch-pädagogische Schriften (1982), pp. 7–250, see in particular pp. 178–80. Also see R. v. Nostitz-Rieneck, ‘Viribus Unitis. Zum Weltkrieg II’, StZ, March 1915, pp. 497–511 or H. Ritter, ‘Habsburgs Mission’, KVZ, 30 July 1915.

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South-East, embracing ‘a new common life’ with all those nations ‘who fight on our side in this din of battle’.98 Naumann was also one of the very few who made an effort to establish links with Austro-Slav politicians. Following a visit by the Czech Social Democrat Bohumir Šmeral in April 1915 (Naumann returned the visit in March 1916), he contacted the Foreign Office to have the politician received by the German consul in Prague or the ambassador in Vienna.99 Naumann similarly appealed to Reich German dailies to publish articles and viewpoints of Czech and other non-German authors, an undertaking he deemed vital in order to eliminate prejudices and to come to a better mutual understanding. As he wrote to Theodor Wolff, ‘the great German papers’ would have ‘to attend to the Austrian smaller nations more than to date’.100 In a letter to the left-liberal Frankfurter Zeitung, he averred similarly that the Czechs had ‘a right to favourable consideration’.101 The negative reply by the chief editor is remarkable: the Czechs would merely try to manipulate the public and to play off Reich Germans against Austro-Germans.102 Compared to Hungarian (and Polish) contributions, which will be discussed later, Czech and southern Slav articles remained a rare exception in German periodicals.103 98

99

100 101 102 103

Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 308, p. 1718 (11 October 1916). Also see F. Naumann’s articles in Hilfe: ‘Mitteleuropäische Bevölkerungsfragen’, 11 March 1915, pp. 153–4; ‘Die Nationalitäten Mitteleuropas’, 8 April 1915, pp. 216–17; ‘Tschechen und Polen’, 5 August 1915, pp. 492–3; ‘Unsere Bundesgenossen und wir’, 6 January 1916, pp. 5–9; ‘Die Tschechen’, 14 September 1916, pp. 596–7. Also see C. Rühmkorf, ‘“Volkswerdung durch Mythos und Geschichte”. Die deutsch-slawischen Beziehungen bei Friedrich Naumann und T.G. Masaryk’, Bohemia, 41/2 (2000), 295–325, and R. Jaworski, ‘Friedrich Naumann und die Tschechen’, in H. Mommsen et al. (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Beziehungen zwischen Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutschen (Essen, 2001), pp. 241–54. Naumann to Zimmermann, 14 April 1915, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 35. One year later, František Udržal, an influential member of the Czech Agrarian Party, travelled to Germany to meet several politicians, including Matthias Erzberger. See Z. Kárník, ‘Die Idee der Donaumonarchie und das Verhältnis der tschechischen Parteien zum Deutschen Reich’, in H. Mommsen et al. (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg, pp. 15–46. Naumann to Wolff, 15 April 1915, BArch, N 3001, No. 142. Naumann to Dr. Stein, 11 June 1915, BArch, N 3001, No. 16. Dr. Stein to Naumann, 1 June 1915, BArch, N 3001, No. 16 (a reply to Naumann’s letter of 14 April 1915). B. Šmeral, ‘Ein tschechischer Wunsch in der heutigen Situation’, Vorwärts, 6 May 1915; [B. Šmeral or B. Hlavácˇ ], ‘Prager Brief von einem tschechischen Abgeordneten des österreichischen Reichstages’, Hilfe, 29 July 1915, pp. 480–2; Z. Tobolka, ‘Die böhmische Frage’, SM, May 1917, pp. 283–90; Z. Tobolka (ed.), Das böhmische Volk. Wohngebiete, körperliche Tüchtigkeit, geistige und materielle Kultur (Prague, 1916); D. Prohaska, ‘Das slawische Kulturproblem’, Grenzboten, 16 September 1914, pp. 383–90, 23 September 1914, pp. 424–9, 21 October 1914, pp. 84–91, 4 November 1914, pp. 145–9, 25 November 1914, pp. 243–8; S. Gopcevic, ‘Serbien und Österreich vor einem Jahrhundert’, Grenzboten, 22 December 1915, pp. 353–69.

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The pacifist Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster also belonged to the narrow circle of those who questioned the idea of a German Austria. Having taught abroad for more than fifteen years, first in Zürich, then in Vienna, the Munich Professor of Pedagogy condemned the militarism and expansionism of the Lesser German nation-state. In a 1913 publication on the ‘Austrian problem’, which was published in a revised version during the war, Foerster appealed to the Habsburg elites and his Viennese students to recognize the Slavo-German community of culture and fate, and to commit themselves to a multinational Austria instead of worshipping German nationalism and breeding racial hatred. He agreed with Kralik and other Austrianists that the Danube Monarchy’s mission was foremost to facilitate the peaceful coexistence of several ethnic groups and languages, demonstrating how to overcome narrow national egoism by supranational patriotism, understanding, and cooperation: ‘the triumph of spirit over nature’, as he put it.104 On this account, Emperor Karl invited Foerster in July 1917 to discuss with him the problems and possibilities of constitutional reforms. In Germany, however, he became an arch-enemy of militarist and nationalist circles due to his antiannexationist and conciliatory attitudes.105 The Prussian-born writer and philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz, who moved to Austria in 1915, similarly believed in a higher vocation of the Habsburg Monarchy: ‘Austria is not just the core of Europe; it is also Europe in miniature’.106 Sponsored and encouraged by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, he regularly corresponded with Hermann Bahr, too, and, in late 1917, even travelled to Prague to meet with leading Czech intellectuals. Pannwitz’s deep-seated cultural pessimism, enunciated in his muchnoticed book Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur (1917), nurtured his conviction that the Slavs were ‘the emerging people, the people of the future, heirs of the Teutons’. To him, it was Austria’s task to develop the principle of supranational cooperation and to facilitate a Slavo-German synthesis, based on an initial rapprochement with the Czechs as the leading and most advanced of the Slavs under Habsburg rule.107 In this organic function, Austria was supposed to serve as counterbalance or regulatory influence to Prussia-Germany, which Pannwitz depicted as productive and disciplined, but also as an unprincipled, over-bureaucratic, and pretentious 104 105

106 107

F.W. Foerster, Das österreichische Problem vom ethischen und staatspädagogischen Standpunkte, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1916), p. 23. On Foerster’s relationship with Austria shortly before and during the war, see M. Hoschek, Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster (1869–1966). Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Beziehungen zu Österreich (Frankfurt/M., 2002), pp. 91–117. R. Pannwitz, Deutschland und Europa. Grundriss einer deutsch-europaeischen Politik (Nuremberg, 1918), p. 53. Ibid., p. 55. Also see R. Pannwitz, Die Krisis der europaeischen Kultur (Nuremberg, 1917).

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parvenu, ‘a strong and irreplaceable, but not exemplary state’.108 As he explained in a letter to Hofmannsthal: ‘The German as an individual can now become gargantuan [wahnsinnsgrosz] and incredibly strong but Germany itself will be a single factory.’ Austria, in contrast, embodied the cosmopolitan condition of Germandom, a model and prerequisite for the future Imperium Europaeum: ‘I would prefer . . . in case we get a greater common state that Austria rather than Germany was to make it, because of its deeper, infinite humanity, because of its cordiality, its versatility etc.’.109 Contrary to Foerster, Pannwitz did not principally object to Prussia-Germany’s existence. He considered the Lesser German unification a historical necessity, and deemed parliamentary democracy an anarchic, inept principle. However, by favourably comparing Austria with Germany, Pannwitz similarly stood out from most Reich German commentators. To be sure, the notion of a complementary division of labour between both monarchies for the sake of the wider German nation was a popular one. While the Kaiserreich defended the Germans in the West, it was often claimed, Austria served as the ‘safeguard and propagator [Vermehrer] of Germandom in the East’ and thus represented a ‘supplement to Prussia’, an ‘extended perspective of German life’.110 South German and Catholic commentators in particular celebrated the new-found German-Austrian concord as a means to secure German diversity and to progress from the narrow Prusso-German towards a ‘Greater German culture’, or, to put it briefly, to bring the South back in.111 For the writer Oscar A.H. Schmitz, a prominent member of the Munich Bohème, Austria and PrussiaGermany figured as two complementary forms of German life. The differences between North and South Germany should not be felt as something contradictory or unfavourable but be celebrated as enriching: ‘The North German is more conscious, pragmatic, and industrious; the South German is more oblivious, instinctive, and artistic.’112 Adolf Rapp paid tribute to Prussia’s willpower, organizational skills, and sense of duty, but also praised Austria’s Germandom ‘with its elemental 108 109

110 111 112

Pannwitz, Deutschland und Europa, p. 62. Pannwitz to Hofmannsthal, 11 August 1917, in H. v. Hofmannsthal and R. Pannwitz, Briefwechsel 1907–1926, ed. by G. Schuster (Frankfurt/M., 1994), pp. 24–32 (pp. 29–30). Coar, ‘Vom sozialpolitischen zum weltgeschichtlichen Denken’, p. 358; G. Briefs, ‘Mitteleuropa’, Hochland, May and July 1916, pp. 129–39, 385–97 (p. 130). E. Wolff, ‘Von deutscher Kultur. Vorbetrachtungen’, Tag, 20 January 1916. O.A.H. Schmitz, ‘Deutsche Mannigfaltigkeit und Einheit’, Tag, 8 January 1915. Also see O.A.H. Schmitz, ‘Der verblassende Weltmachtsgedanke’, Tag, 12 March 1915; W.M. Becker, ‘Naumann oder Bartsch?’, Grenzboten, 21 March 1916, pp. 353–9; F.W., ‘Paris-Berlin-Wien’, KM, August 1916, pp. 809–21.

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integrity and originality; its humour, dances, and songs; its musical soul; colourful imagination; and the countryside with its Nibelungenstraße, hills and castles, and the southern sea behind them’. As he concluded, both empires ‘open the world to Germandom’: ‘One will lead German trade over the North Sea, will protect with its battle fleet overseas endeavours; the other shall direct Germandom into the Danube countries and the Adriatic Sea. Together they are strong enough against a world of enemies.’113 In a somewhat more critical way, Willy Hellpach, a liberal publicist and psychologist who would later become State President of Baden, maintained that Austria represented the necessary complement to Prussian Germandom, to German egoism, statism, and power politics: ‘It is our second German, our ancient cosmopolitan face.’ The Germans, he went on, would greatly benefit if both types of German life were given equal consideration: ‘Here the Reich, the embodiment of Germandom as a political great power, strict and firm, austere and glorious; and there the Danube Monarchy, softer, more malleable and likeable, more colourful and versatile, the embodiment of the old German world mission to live and interact with the outside world.’114 The address on the Danube Monarchy as Bundesbruder by Hugo Ganz, the long-standing Viennese correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung, provides a telling example of such rhetoric, and more generally of ‘comradeship events’ in the first half of the war. Speaking in Stuttgart in early March 1915 for the benefit of the war relief effort of the local AustroHungarian association, Ganz was introduced by the Habsburg envoy Count Bolesta-Koziebrodzky to a select audience. It included various high-ranking government officials, such as Minister-President von Weizsäcker and War Minister von Marchtaler, the mayor of Stuttgart, members of the diplomatic corps, and numerous other prominent society figures. Ganz’s declared aim was to dispel the false and stereotypical image of the ally as weak and disorganized, hoping to instil instead a better understanding and appreciation of ‘these two beautiful countries and their valuable and noble people’.115 In his view, the Austro-Germans were like the Reich Germans, ‘minus some discipline but with much more cheerfulness and personal grace’. The war certainly was the time of German organization and willingness to make sacrifices, but at some point there would be peace again: ‘Do we really want the German nation to appear like large army barracks and a factory? We are too serious, too pragmatic. Let the Austrian be a little light-headed, let us keep this 113 114 115

Rapp, ‘Der großdeutsche Gedanke’, pp. 47, 50. W. Hellpach, ‘Deutschlands österreichisches Gesicht’, GD, 8 May 1915, pp. 615–29 (pp. 624, 628). H. Ganz, Der Bundesbruder (Stuttgart, 1915), p. 3.

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reservoir of cheerfulness, in which flourish the arts and above all the music, which we all love so much.’116 Given this amiable and unwarlike disposition, one could but praise the efficient mobilization and remarkable achievements of the Habsburg troops, who had saved the German East from a superior army and facilitated the liberation of East Prussia: ‘Yes, these singers and dancers are true heroes. The Styrians, Tyrolians, the Hungarians and Croats, the Polish legionnaires, and the regiments from the capital, too, fight with a vigour which has instilled respect in the Germans and the greatest fear in the Russians.’117 The various nationalities had come together for the defence of the fatherland, testifying to the vitality and stability of the multiethnic empire, and proving those wrong who argued in terms of a struggle between Germandom and Slavdom and called for centralizing reforms or even the Germanization of the realm. Of all European dynasties, the House of Habsburg had taken on ‘the most difficult and complicated task’, bringing about a cosmopolitan and creative culture that would provide an important counterweight to the harsh and resolute North German.118 As seen, such views were particularly popular in South Germany and promoted by some Austrians, too, notwithstanding the underlying paternalism. Interestingly, there were no attempts to ‘explain’ the Reich German to an Austrian audience, and it is quite telling that Ganz did not always follow his own advice and moral warning. In his diary, the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler in fact related various meetings with the German journalist who as early as September 1914 bitterly complained ‘about the pessimistic and defeatist behaviour and grumbling of the Viennese’, and at one point Ganz even suggested the ‘eradication of the Czechs’.119

Secret enemies? Propaganda and the reality of the alliance One of the first German units to experience coalition warfare in the First World War was the Scutari (Shkodër) detachment. Following the Serbian declaration of war against Germany on 6 August 1914, the company – originally a member of an international peacekeeping force in Albania – joined Austrian troops near Višegrad. After a few skirmishes, it reached Vienna in early September and was welcomed by a large crowd, including various Austrian ministers, the German Ambassador Tschirschky, a representative of the Austro-Hungarian foreign office, and the mayor 116 119

118 Ibid., p. 5. 117 Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 19. Diary entries of 26 September 1914 and 2 July 1916, in A. Schnitzler, Tagebuch 1913–1916, ed. by W. Welzig (Vienna, 1983), pp. 139, 300.

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of Vienna. When the train rolled into the Südbahnhof, which was decorated with numerous flags and pennants in German and Austrian colours, a military band played the ‘Heil Dir im Siegerkranz’. The company commander first greeted Tschirschky, before introducing himself to Interior Minister Heinold and Defence Minister von Georgi. Mayor Weiskirchner then exchanged a few cordial words with the German officers, after which the detachment marched ‘under continuous Hurrahs’ to the front of the hall where it positioned itself in formation. While the rank-and-file soldiers were accommodated in the Heumarkt barracks, the officers stayed in Hotel Imperial, one of the most luxurious buildings on the Ringstraße, where they dined with War Minister von Krobatin. The next morning, Emperor Franz Joseph received them in audience.120 This event was representative of the official image of the alliance as a harmonious and valuable partnership between equals. For most of the war period, a rosy picture of the coalition prevailed in the German and Austro-Hungarian press. Reich German papers praised the stamina and courage of Habsburg troops, for example after significant victories like the recapturing of Lemberg (Lviv) in summer 1915 or the storming of Mount Lovc´ en in January 1916. Publicly, Austria-Hungary appeared as a solid, glorious, and important ally, backed by all nationalities who had come together to defend the common fatherland (as seen, a view challenged only by the extreme right).121 Other events, such as joint diplomatic initiatives or mutual state visits, prompted affirmative comments on the alliance, too, stressing steadfast loyalty and absolute agreement between the coalition partners.122 Streets and official buildings were decorated after military successes, to celebrate the birthday of the allied emperor, or in order to welcome important guests from Vienna and Budapest. Medals and honours were awarded to allied political and military leaders, and numerous congratulatory telegrams and greetings 120 121

122

‘Das deutsche Skutari-Detachment in Wien’, Fremden-Blatt, 3 September 1914. See, for example, ‘Die Schlacht bei Krasnik’, KVZ, 27 August 1914; ‘Die Widerstandskraft Österreich-Ungarns’, KVZ, 29 April 1915; ‘Das gemeinsame Ziel. Der Brief eines Österreichers an einen Freund in Berlin’, BLA, 9 December 1914; ‘Österreich-Ungarns Opferwilligkeit’, FZ, 2 May 1915; ‘Österreich-Ungarns Verdienst’, BSt, 5 May 1915; O. Hoetzsch, ‘Lemberg’, NPZ, 27 June 1915; H. v. Rath, ‘Neuer Lorbeer um alte Fahnen’, Tag, 28 January 1916. See, for example, ‘Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn nicht zu trennen’, KVZ, 22 October 1915; ‘Österreich-Ungarns Antwort an Amerika. Eine deutliche Sprache’, KVZ, 16 December 1915; E. R[eventlow], ‘Baron Burians Antwort’, DTZ, 16 December 1915; ‘Der Gegenhieb’, Post, 16 December 1915; ‘Österreich-Ungarn und die Vereinigten Staaten’, HN, 15 April 1917. Also see e.g. ‘Der Kaiser in Wien’, DTZ, 30 November 1915; ‘Ein Wiedersehen’, KVZ, 30 November 1915; ‘Festmahl zu Ehren der Parlamentspräsidenten’, BT, 20 January 1917; R. du Moulin-Eckart, ‘Deutschland und Österreich. Zum Besuch des österreichischen Kaiserpaares in Süddeutschland’, Tag, 5 July 1917.

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were exchanged between government representatives, parliaments, but also universities and other associations.123 To give an Austrian example, quoting a telegram of Emperor Franz Joseph to Wilhelm II, the semiofficial Viennese Fremdenblatt stressed the ‘inseparable friendship’ and ‘unvarying loyalty’ between the Habsburg Monarchy and its German ally: ‘Never before has world history experienced such a grand spectacle as this common struggle of two large empires against the onslaught of spiteful enemies from all sides. We now witness days when the human soul may sometimes show itself from its worst side, but also from its very best.’124 In reality, however, the relationship between the allies was not free of tensions and difficulties. We will deal with diplomatic issues in subsequent chapters and shall focus on military cooperation here. According to the Centre Party politician Matthias Erzberger, one of the few German parliamentarians with excellent connections in Vienna and a more substantial knowledge of the peculiarities of the multinational empire, ‘the “floppy Austrians” were cursed more often in German officers’ messes and elsewhere than all our enemies taken together’.125 From the beginning, German and Austro-Hungarian political and strategic priorities differed substantially. Whereas Vienna regarded Serbia as a key enemy and intended to focus on eliminating the threat on its south-eastern flank, Berlin implemented the Schlieffen Plan and threw its military weight against France, relying greatly on the Habsburg Monarchy’s troops to protect the eastern front against the Russians. The failure to discuss issues of joint allied command and common military operations before the outbreak of hostilities now began to take its toll.126 Neither Berlin nor Vienna had an accurate idea of the ally’s strategic views and military capabilities, and both embarked on war with incorrect expectations. 123

124 125 126

See, for example, ‘Kaiser Franz Josefs Glückwunsch. Die höchste militärische Auszeichnung für Kaiser Wilhelm’, BBC, 28 August 1914; ‘Kundgebung der Universitäten Wien und Berlin’, BT, 11 October 1914; ‘Neujahrswunsch des Oberbürgermeisters von Berlin an den Bürgermeister von Wien’, NFP, 1 January 1915; ‘Telegrammwechsel zwischen dem deutschen Reichskanzler und dem österreichisch-ungarischen Minister des Äußern’, NAZ, 5 November 1917. ‘Ein Glückwunschtelegramm unseres Kaisers an Kaiser Wilhelm’, Fremden-Blatt, 27 August 1914. M. Erzberger, Erlebnisse im Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1920), p. 111. Recent studies include G.A. Tunstall, Jr., Planning for War against Russia and Serbia: Austro-Hungarian and German Military Strategies, 1871–1914 (New York, 1993); Kronenbitter, ‘Krieg im Frieden’, pp. 292–314; G. Kronenbitter, ‘Austria-Hungary’, in R.F. Hamilton and H.H. Herwig (eds.), War Planning 1914 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 24–47; A. Mombauer, ‘German War Plans’, in Hamilton and Herwig (eds.), War Planning 1914, pp. 48–79; Rauchensteiner, Weltkrieg, pp. 68–78. Tim Hadley has recently argued that Berlin and higher militaries knew of Austria-Hungary’s military weakness: Military Diplomacy in the Dual Alliance: German Military Attaché Reporting from Vienna, 1879–1914 (Lanham, MD, 2016).

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The military cooperation between the general staffs was far from ideal, and the lack of coherence and agreement quickly led to a sense of rivalry, to frictions and conspicuous resentment.127 Publicly, Helmuth von Moltke spoke in high terms of Austro-Hungarian soldiers, their ‘dynamic soldierly spirit, their freshness and optimism’, praising ‘the camaraderie of our allies and their impeccable morale’: ‘The troops deserve absolute praise.’128 Private statements, however, give a different impression. Almost three months earlier, in early September 1914, Moltke had in fact noted that ‘in Austria it is going badly’: ‘The army is not moving forward. I see it coming, they will be defeated.’129 At around the same time, Hans Georg von Plessen, adjutant general of Wilhelm II and commander of the imperial headquarters, similarly confided in his diary that ‘it looks bad with Austria’: ‘They demand a lot and accomplish very little, cry for help, ask for weapons, ammunition, troops! They really had enough reason and time to get properly prepared. Very sad!’130 Adolf Wild von Hohenborn, Prussian Minister of War since January 1915, was even more indignant when he blamed the difficult situation on the eastern front in late 1914 on the ‘sorry performance of the Austrians’: ‘They simply run away.’ As he wrote in another letter to his wife, the Austrians ‘would be no better than a militia’: ‘It was a mistake that no one realized what a wretched army this is.’ However, he was also realistic enough to observe that ‘one has to put up with them’: ‘We simply have no alternative.’131 Following a visit to Vienna in summer 1916 to discuss Austro-Hungarian armaments, Wild von Hohenborn praised the 127

128 129 130

131

H. Holborn, ‘The Political Cohesion of the Austro-German Alliance in World War I’, in H. Holborn, Germany and Europe: Historical Essays (Garden City, NY, 1970), pp. 151–62; N. Stone, ‘The Austro-German Alliance, 1914–18’, in K. Neilson and R.A. Prete (eds.), Coalition Warfare: An Uneasy Accord (Waterloo, ON, 1983), pp. 17–28; H.H. Herwig, ‘Disjointed Allies: Coalition Warfare in Berlin and Vienna 1914’, JMiH, 54 (1990), 265–80; R.L. DiNardo and D.J. Hughes, ‘Germany and Coalition Warfare in the World Wars: A Comparative Study’, WiH, 8/2 (2001), 166–90; G. Kronenbitter, ‘Waffenbrüder. Der Koalitionskrieg der Mittelmächte 1914–1918 und das Selbstbild zweier Militäreliten’, in V. Dotterweich (ed.), Mythen und Legenden in der Geschichte (Munich, 2004), pp. 157–86; G. Kronenbitter, ‘Von “Schweinehunden” und “Waffenbrüdern”. Der Koalitionskrieg der Mittelmächte 1914/15 zwischen Sachzwang und Ressentiment’, in Groß (ed.), Die vergessene Front, pp. 121–43. ‘Generalstabschef v. Moltke über die österreichisch-deutsche Waffenbrüderschaft’, PrT, 21 November 1914; reprinted in BT, 21 November 1914. Letter of 2 September 1914, in Moltke, Erinnerungen, Briefe, Dokumente, p. 383. Diary entry of 18 September 1914, in H. Afflerbach (ed.), Kaiser Wilhelm II. als Oberster Kriegsherr im Ersten Weltkrieg. Quellen aus der militärischen Umgebung des Kaisers 1914–1918 (Munich, 2005), pp. 665–6 (p. 666). Letters of 10 and 25 November 1914, and of 16 July 1915, in A. Wild v. Hohenborn, Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen des preußischen Generals als Kriegsminister und Truppenführer im Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. by H. Reichold and G. Granier (Boppard, 1986), pp. 32–3 (p. 32), 39–40 (p. 39), 77–8 (p. 78).

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cordiality of his hosts, but also showed himself shocked by the lack of military supplies and wrote: ‘Krobatin always amiable, promising everything and – smiling. No seriousness! No genuine determination! But they have to! We will send our officers to them and get on their case.’132 The Chief of the Military Cabinet General Moriz von Lyncker similarly described the ally as ‘slack and sloppy’, as ‘haughty and obstinate’: ‘The Austrians are just too disgraceful; they are hardly able to defend the Carpathians.’133 He was particularly annoyed by Vienna’s refusal to cede territory to Italy and to let Hindenburg assume supreme command over the allied troops in the East. Lyncker later even anticipated a move towards a separate peace: ‘It cannot be ruled out that they are perfidious and dishonourable enough to do such a thing. But that is how Austrian policy has always been, and they still have not got over the year 1866.’134 It is not difficult to find further critical remarks in the diaries and correspondence of these and other leading militaries, including those who were more directly involved in operational planning. In various letters to his wife, General Max Hoffmann, one of the highest-ranking and most influential staff officers on the eastern front, called the allies ‘a sorry gang’, ‘ragtags’, and even ‘swines’.135 In August 1916, he confided in his diary: ‘If after the war anybody talks to me again of Nibelungentreue and fighting shoulder-to-shoulder, I will beat him to death.’ In July 1917, he wrote in bitter irony that his ‘affection’ for Austria had increased substantially over the last fourteen days: ‘They run away, lie, and report incorrectly, and are also impertinent and constantly causing difficulties. One day I would love to wage war against these fellows.’136 In contrast to their favourable post-war statements, Ludendorff and Hindenburg were similarly dismissive of the military performance of the Habsburg Monarchy’s troops. Following Brusilov’s initial successes on the eastern front in summer 1916, Ludendorff complained furiously to Arthur Zimmermann from the Foreign Office: ‘There is no end to the Austrian mess. The troops will not last.’137 A few 132 133 134 135

136 137

Diary entry of 4 August 1916, in Hohenborn, Briefe und Tagebuchaufzeichnungen, pp. 186–7 (p. 187). Letters of 14 April and 3 April 1915, in Afflerbach (ed.), Kaiser Wilhelm II., pp. 242, 236. Letter of 19 July 1916, in Afflerbach (ed.), Kaiser Wilhelm II., pp. 398–9. Letters of 29 October 1914, 9 June 1916, and 1 April 1917, quoted from I. Geiss, Der polnische Grenzstreifen 1914–1918. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Kriegszielpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Lübeck, 1960), p. 35, fn. 104. K.F. Nowak (ed.), Die Aufzeichnungen des Generalmajors Max Hoffmann, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1929), I, pp. 134 (10 August 1916) and 172 (17 July 1917). Ludendorff to Zimmermann, 17 July 1916, in A. Scherer and J. Grunewald (eds.), L’Allemagne et les problèmes de la paix pendant la première guerre mondiale. Documents extraits des archives de l’Office allemand des Affaires étrangères, 4 vols. (Paris, 1962–78),

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months later, he remarked: ‘If the Austrians were only half as good as the French, the war would be over by now. They wreck all plans.’ Simply incorporating select officers into allied regiments would not be a solution: ‘The only thing that would really help would be the political take-over of their army.’138 During the Brest-Litovsk negotiations with revolutionary Russia, the quartermaster-general was so confident and sure of victory that he told the Bundesrat Committee for Foreign Affairs that ‘from a military point of view, we do not need Austria-Hungary’ (he also stated that Bulgarian help was insignificant and that Turkey had become a burden).139 Hindenburg also considered the AustroHungarian armed forces a liability and, apparently still shaped by the era of Austro-Prussian dualism, never fully ruled out a future war between Habsburg and Hohenzollern. In July 1917, he reportedly claimed ‘that he would consider it a particularly satisfying conclusion of his military career if he could lead the German armies to invade Bohemia’.140 Clearly, the notion that Austria-Hungary’s forces were inferior and that they lacked competent leaders, courage and vigour, a sense of duty, and the willingness to make sacrifices was prevalent amongst Germany’s military elite.141 The comprehensive memorandum on the question of a military convention between the two countries, drafted by Germany’s military plenipotentiary August von Cramon in November 1915, echoed many of these points and raised further issues, such as the generally low status of the Austro-Hungarian army in society, the high number of Jews amongst the officer corps, and the poor standard of the transport system. Cramon made a range of suggestions on how to raise the performance of the k.u.k. armed forces, including various new training and recruitment regulations, better military equipment, a more efficient railway administration, and a wider use of the German language. One of his key demands, however, was the exchange of officers on all levels to convey a different mentality. AustroHungarian officers were to spend between one and two years amongst German troops: ‘Not just to watch but to actually participate in all tasks,

138

139 140 141

I: Des origines à la déclaration de la guerre sous-marine à outrance (août 1914 – 31 janvier 1917) (1962), p. 411. Hereafter as SG. H. Kessler, Das Tagebuch 1880–1937, 9 vols., ed. by R.S. Kamzelak and U. Ott (Stuttgart, 2004–10), VI: 1916–1918, ed. by G. Riederer and C. Hilse (2006), p. 106 (7 November 1916). ‘Ausführungen Ludendorffs im Bundesratsausschuß am 2. January 1918’, in UF, II: Der militärische Zusammenbruch und das Ende des Kaiserreichs (1959), pp. 130–1 (p. 131). Quoted from Pyta, Hindenburg, p. 279. Also see Tucher’s report about his conversation with Falkenhayn, 8 December 1914, BHSA, MA 2481/2, and Grünau to Bethmann Hollweg, 5 December 1916, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 4.

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thus fully absorbing German spirit and German character, German discipline and order, the German sense of duty and German punctuality.’ Interestingly, German officers should be sent to the Habsburg Monarchy only to keep an appearance of fairness and equality with the additional benefit of educating the rank-and-file soldiers there, thus preparing the ground for the return of the officers from Germany. All this was meant to strengthen the allied forces whose weakness had repeatedly impeded and undermined the operations of the OHL and led to ‘much unnecessary bloodletting’ on the eastern front.142 Mackensen and Seeckt, who had both substantial first-hand experience of coalition warfare and often treated their Austro-Hungarian colleagues with respect, held more balanced views, although disapproving views and comments still existed. Mackensen was particularly wary of the varied background of the troops and the unreliability of the Czechs, and often expressed distrust of Kaiser Karl and the anti-German, clerical influence of his wife Zita.143 Hans von Seeckt, who showed a good understanding of Austro-Hungarian military conditions and domestic politics, was initially quite positive and characterized the ally as willing and amiable. However, the general grew increasingly bitter about its ‘constant and ever-present floppiness’.144 In a long report for the OHL of June 1917, Seeckt discussed the multinational configuration of the monarchy and its army, which would produce mixed-quality but ‘overall very useful and occasionally first-rate soldiers’, particularly but not only amongst the AustroGermans and Magyars. He criticized the AOK for being out of touch with the rank-and-file, argued that many officers lacked leadership skills, and lamented that the troops would fight in blind obedience rather than out of a sense of patriotism and common purpose.145 As Seeckt explained elsewhere, the ‘sloppiness’ and lack of organization amongst the k.u.k. units could only be overcome by some ‘old-Prussian sense of duty’.146 Apart from such more spontaneous and resentful remarks, Seeckt’s observations and opinions seemed relatively dispassionate and fair-minded. They probably influenced the secret OHL instructions of July 1918 on how to cooperate with the allied troops, numbering forty pages and providing

142

143 144 145 146

[A.] v. Cramon, ‘Gedanken über eine Militärkonvention zwischen Deutschland und O.U. nach dem Kriege’, 10 November 1915, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, Militärattaché, vol. 188. See [A. v.] Mackensen, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen des Generalfeldmarschalls aus Krieg und Frieden, ed. by W. Foerster (Leipzig, 1938), pp. 131, 167, 242. Letter to his wife, 27 July 1916, quoted from H. Meier-Welcker, Seeckt (Frankfurt/M., 1967), p. 129. Ibid., pp. 129–32 (p. 130). Letter to J. v. Winterfeldt-Menkin, 1 January 1917, quoted from ibid., p. 132.

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ample information on organization, equipment, training, the ethnic make-up of the troops, and so forth.147 To be sure, several Austro-Hungarian military leaders were aware of operational weaknesses and the limited combat effectiveness of their troops. The commander of the XII k.u.k. Corps, Hermann Kövess von Kövessháza, for instance, who would later become Austria-Hungary’s last commander-in-chief, in a letter to Conrad condemned the incompetence and impulsive behaviour of the generals in charge: ‘Above all, we need men. The old women and neurasthenics in uniform kill us!’148 One of Conrad’s own staff officers, Colonel Karl von Schneller, blamed ‘winter sleep, females, hunts, and concerts’ at the AOK headquarters for the losses during the Russian offensives in summer 1916. Friedrich von Wiesner, the Foreign Ministry’s representative at Teschen, criticized Conrad for a lack of ‘seriousness, thoroughness, and especially responsibility’, and suggested greater German authority over the Habsburg Monarchy’s troops and operations.149 Overall, however, German disapproval and arrogance produced a significant level of resentment and distrust between the allies. Conrad repeatedly clashed with his German counterpart Falkenhayn over the nature and purpose of the military alliance (though personal animosities seem to have played a role, too), and generally reproached Berlin for a lack of commitment and understanding of the Habsburg Empire’s peculiarities.150 In early 1915, he famously asked Austria-Hungary’s military plenipotentiary at the German Headquarters: ‘Well, what are our secret enemies the Germans up to, and what is that comedian, the German Emperor, doing?’151 In private letters, he showed himself frustrated by the ‘highhandedness and impertinence’ of the (North) Germans, which had made them ‘so hated throughout the world’.152 During an audience

147

148

149 150

151 152

See Chef des Generalstabes des Feldheeres, Abteilung Fremde Heere, ‘Mitteilungen über das österreichisch-ungarische Heer’ (July 1918), PAAA, Botschaft Wien, Militärattaché, vol. 188. Kövess to Conrad, 7 September 1914, quoted from G. Reichlin-Meldegg, Des Kaisers Prinz Eugen? Feldmarschall Hermann Baron Kövess v. Kövessháza. Der letzte Oberkommandant der k.u.k. Armee im Ersten Weltkrieg (Graz, 2010), p. 104. Both quoted from Herwig, The First World War, p. 207. On the relationship between Falkenhayn and Conrad, see H. Afflerbach, Falkenhayn. Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1996), pp. 249–54. Also see Shanafelt, The Secret Enemy, pp. 43–7. Stürgkh, Im Deutschen Großen Hauptquartier, p. 116. Conrad to Gina Conrad von Hötzendorf, 16 November 1916, quoted from L. Sondhaus, ‘Planning for the Endgame: The Central Powers, September 1916–April 1917’, in I.F.W. Beckett (ed.), 1917: Beyond the Western Front (Leiden, 2009), pp. 1–23 (p. 3).

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with Franz Joseph in July 1916, Conrad even remarked: ‘Any trip to Berlin is like an execution.’153 The diary of the cosmopolitan art critic and publicist Count Harry Kessler, who as a German orderly officer repeatedly interacted with Austro-Hungarian units, offers some interesting insights into the military partnership at the grass-roots level, although he seems to have been markedly critical of the ally and we thus have to take his observations with a pinch of salt. Advancing into Russian Poland in autumn 1914, Kessler described one of his first encounters with the allied troops as follows: ‘En route many confused Austrians. They make an aimless and disorganized impression . . . Many do not understand German, especially amongst the Ulans . . . Even the Russian prisoners appear more soldierly than these Austrian rambling troops who are always late.’154 Back in Silesia, he wrote similarly: ‘All roads between Lublinitz [Lubliniec] and Koschentin [Kosze˛ cin] are teeming with Austrians, hussars, infantry, supply troops; these consist of long-haired, wild-looking Slovaks or Bosniaks, bearded men or very young. All dressed in peasants’ furs, only the noncommissioned officers, Germans, Hungarians, Poles are in uniform: Wallenstein’s Camp.’155 The next day, Kessler came across an allied cavalry division and admired the good condition of the horses and soldiers. However, he could not refrain from comparing their colourful uniforms to operetta costumes.156 Over the following months, the essayist had the opportunity to observe and meet several Austro-Hungarian officers, describing them as amiable but carefree, unmotivated, incompetent, and disorganized. In late December 1914, he wrote about the staff of the 7th k.u.k. division: ‘Already at 5pm the officers sit around a gramophone, singing, drinking, and smoking cigarettes. They appear more like a touring Cabaret or a circus than a staff at war.’157 ‘Now I understand the constant breakthroughs’, Kessler commented bitterly after a visit to an allied trench near Czartorysk (Staryi Chortoryisk) in November 1915: ‘The men sit in their dugouts, eat, chat, sing, smoke; the rifles lie on the wall of the trench, there are no guards . . . Later, the Russians attack us poor lads, who are doing our duty, from behind, and we pay with infinite streams of blood for the Austrian Gemütlichkeit.’158 This notion of taking things not seriously enough, of lacking determination and focus, appears several times in Kessler’s records. In May, he had complained about the Austrians’ warweariness: they would ‘want to be left alone, be gemütlich again, dance 153 154 155 157

Quoted from Nebelin, Ludendorff, p. 599, fn. 197. Kessler, Tagebuch, V: 1914–1916, ed. by G. Riederer and U. Ott (2008), p. 136 (17 October 1914). 156 Ibid., p. 164 (14 November 1914). Ibid., pp. 164–5 (15 November 1914). 158 Ibid., p. 202 (26 December 1914). Ibid., p. 510 (24 November 1915).

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Waltzes and eat Viennese doughnuts’.159 And in August 1916, while based in Berlin, he characterized the Austrian as ‘a typical representative of a small state’, lacking the ‘demonic element’ that would be active in the great powers: The common Austrian is the very opposite of demonic: namely gemütlich, without rigour or the will to power, easily distractible, of a superficial cheerfulness that for the smallest reason can revert into sentimentality and a lack of self-confidence. Thus, how realistic is an internal reform, the re-construction of the Austrian type?160

But Kessler also noted the bitter disappointment of several German senior officers at Austro-Hungarian military efforts and retreats. In November 1914, General Remus von Woyrsch (who would shortly thereafter have to serve under Habsburg command) lamented that ‘the Austrians are completely done for, completely finished’: ‘There is nothing to be expected from them . . . We had made two mistakes before the war: overestimating the Austrians and underestimating the Russians.’161 In June 1915, the Commander-in-Chief of the XXIV Reserve Corps, General Friedrich von Gerok, and Kessler’s friend, Gerhard von Mutius, railed against ‘the rotten state of Austria and the lamenting over the military examinations; no patriotism at all. Gerok: What a fine ally we have!’162 In November, two officers from a Hessian infantry regiment ‘moaned in every third sentence about the Austrians; their heedlessness and unreliability. One would not feel safe with them as neighbours; they would desert, run off, slip away, and before you know it, you are left with uncovered flanks or with the Russians in your back. As comrades they are charming . . . but in a military sense our men do not respect them at all.’163 Some of Kessler’s fellow officers spoke positively about ordinary troops but criticized the quality of their colleagues and the aloofness of the general staff who lacked a proper understanding of the war. Austrian officers, on the other hand, repeatedly underlined the multinational character of the army and the unreliability of Czech and Ruthenian troops, as well as the differences between active officers and more nationalistic reserve officers. Current political and diplomatic developments could affect the relationship between the allied troops, too. In May 1915, an Austro-Hungarian lieutenant colonel confronted Kessler, heavily criticizing the German demands to give up Austrian territory in order to placate Italy: ‘Why should Austria make these concessions? Germany had conquered Belgium, Poland, Courland, while 159 161 163

Ibid., p. 311 (29 May 1915). 160 Ibid., pp. 599–600 (27 August 1916). Ibid., p. 152 (4 November 1914). 162 Ibid., p. 326 (15 June 1915). Ibid., p. 464 (2 November 1915).

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Austria stopped the first assault of the Russian troops who would otherwise have reached Berlin. Today, the armies of the enemy would still be on Austrian soil and now Austria is asked to bring such sacrifices.’164 On the other hand, daily exchanges and contacts were not always strained. Indeed, a few days later, news arrived of a major victory north of Przemys´ l: The effect was extraordinary. Meyer [the allied division commander] jumped up and almost hugged me; everyone was shouting Hurrah. Clam [who would later become Austrian prime minister] offered me his seat and ordered some Rhine wine from his supplies. The change of mood was unbelievable . . . The chubby chauffeur Opelmoster took his accordion and played with our orchestra, which consisted of a harmonica, a stool, and a broom. Together we played with surprising energy military marches and waltzes. Old-Austrian and Carinthian songs were played, and of course we stood when singing ‘Gott erhalte’ and ‘Wacht am Rhein’. The celebrations, which happened in the garden under Venetian lanterns, did not seem warlike at all and lasted until midnight when I was accompanied home with music and repeated Hurrahs.165

On the whole, however, the relations between German and AustroHungarian units on this part of the front became so hostile that, in June 1915, General von Gerok issued a secret order to his divisional and regimental commanders, admonishing them to counter criticism of the allied troops and to promote ‘a spirit of united and comradely cooperation’. The Austro-Hungarian leaders and soldiers would do their best for the common aim, and one should not forget own mistakes and shortcomings. Such negative judgements would be very dangerous and could lead to discord and ill feeling: ‘All of us, officers and rank-and-file, want to take pride in serving our allies as a model of bravery, strict order, and effectiveness, but also want to do our utmost to facilitate collaboration with them through loyal and unselfish camaraderie. Adverse tendencies are to be countered harshly.’166 A few months later, Kövess – now in command of the newly formed 3rd Army, which was to see action in Serbia – in a letter to Mackensen complained about German ‘excesses’ and ‘outrageous acts of violence against members of the AustroHungarian forces and their property’: Carriages, horses, foodstuffs and even the property of officers have been repeatedly and violently been taken away. The intervening Austro-Hungarian NCOs and officers were abused and even threatened with weapons . . . My troops are increasingly exasperated. They are even more offended by the recklessness of the

164 166

Ibid., p. 298 (21 May 1915). 165 Ibid., p. 306 (25 May 1915). The full order is reprinted ibid., p. 329 (18 June 1915).

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German soldiers given that the Austro-Hungarian side had always shown the greatest courtesy and expressed the most sincere camaraderie.167

Of course, governing circles and diplomats were well informed about Austro-Hungarian military failures and they seem to have vented their anger in no uncertain terms. As early as November 1914, former Austrian Minister of Trade Joseph Maria Baernreither noted during a trip to Berlin: ‘It seems that one is here very dissatisfied with Austria . . . One reproaches us that we had been unprepared, that we squandered away time instead of hitting Belgrade in Serbia with one stroke, that we have no weapons and no reserves, that from the outset we undermined the general position by our . . . policy towards Serbia, Romania, and Italy.’168 The broader public, on the other hand, was not meant to know of the operational difficulties and the tensions at the highest level. In fact, censorship provisions and propaganda efforts from both German and Austro-Hungarian officials had a significant impact on the amount and kind of information available to Reich German readers. However, many German intellectuals, businessmen, and politicians had at their disposal additional sources beside the press. Through their own travels, conversations with visitors, or the exchange of letters, they were able to get a different, less distorted picture of Austro-Hungarian developments. After a talk with his colleague Eberhard von Künßberg, who had just returned from Vienna, the Heidelberg historian Karl Hampe recorded in his diary in January 1915 that ‘the vaunted unity of the nationalities in Austria is a swindle’: ‘At the moment there seems to be peace, but in fact everything is as before.’169 To be sure, the domestic situation in AustriaHungary attracted increased interest mainly in the second half of the war. Habsburg military performance, in contrast, was at the centre of German attention from early on. In his diaries, Victor Klemperer repeatedly expressed his frustration at the official war reports for obscuring and euphemizing the actual situation. In mid-September 1914, he wrote: ‘The Austrian offensive in Galicia was obviously a failure, and our press debases itself . . . Now a lost battle is “no defeat”, a retreat is “deliberate and heroic”, a new position “impregnable”, defensive action “the more effective strategy”, the enemy “further weakened”, hardly able to follow, suffering from all kinds of difficulties.’170 In October 1914, Eduard David noted that ‘the Austrian comrades seem to fall way behind what the public 167 168 169 170

Quoted from Reichlin-Meldegg, Des Kaisers Prinz Eugen?, pp. 135–6. Diary entry of 1 November 1914, HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 6, vol. XIII, pp. 83–5 (p. 84). K. Hampe, Kriegstagebuch 1914–1919, ed. by F. Reichert and E. Wolgast (Munich, 2004), p. 186 (11 January 1915). Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae, II, pp. 207–8 (diary entry of 15 September 1914).

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gets to know. One did not hear a word about Auff[enberg]’s defeat and the encirclement of Przemys´ l.’171 A few days later, following news about a ‘regrouping’ of German and Austro-Hungarian forces in Russian Poland, David even commented: ‘The Austrians have probably failed again. It is a disaster for the German Reich to be linked to the fate of the Austro-Hungarian mix of peoples [Völkerpastete], which has only a dynastic justification anyway. The worst is that even after a break-up of this “monarchy” a satisfactory situation cannot be expected.’172 Klemperer and David made these remarks when German papers were still full of sympathetic articles about the ‘Austrian miracle’ and celebrating the loyalty and courage of Austro-Hungarian troops. The various disagreements and conflicts between ordinary German and Austrian soldiers could also not be concealed forever. When Klemperer’s mother, who received regular news from the eastern front through her son Felix and her nephew, visited Victor in Munich in early 1915, she mentioned the tensions between the allies: ‘The Germans accuse the Austrians of floppiness and unreliability, while the Austrians are upset about German arrogance. In Łódz´ there had even been bloody brawls between some units.’173 It is obvious to what extent public and private images of AustriaHungary clashed in wartime Germany and that the populace learned relatively quickly about the problems and setbacks on the eastern front. It is always difficult to gauge ‘public opinion’ and attitudes, and one has to be very careful not to make generalizing remarks, but it appears that the enthusiasm of the first months of the war – assuming that it was indeed shared by wide sections of the population – was soon replaced by more critical sentiments that related to pre-war disdain and feelings of superiority. Indeed, civilians, too, experienced resentment and prejudices. From November 1914 on, Austro-Hungarian consulates and the embassy in Berlin received numerous complaints about verbal attacks against Austrian citizens in Germany.174 The letter by the waitress Fritzi Drile from Hamburg, who had been living in Germany for fifteen years, may serve as a vivid example of this situation. Since the onset of war, Drile wrote to Consul General Princig, she did not have a calm moment any more: ‘I feel wretched and am very much ashamed’, compelled to swallow 171 172 173 174

Matthias and Miller (eds.), Kriegstagebuch, p. 49 (10 October 1914). Ibid., pp. 56–7 (28 October 1914). Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae, II, pp. 278–9. Also see Schnitzler, Tagebuch 1913–1916, p. 222 (21 September 1915). See, for example, Pitner to k.u.k. Embassy Berlin, 12 November 1914; Report Hohenlohe, 20 November 1914; Forgách to Hohenlohe, 21 December 1914, all in HHStA, Botschaft Berlin, K. 179.

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comments such as ‘well, your fellow countrymen are pretty limp chaps; without us, they would never have dared to wage a war’. Drile stated that she could not afford to return to Austria and that her last resort was to ask for official intervention in the form of a proclamation or corrective newspaper article: ‘I will get this article and when someone tells me again that the Austrians are cowards, I will throw it into his face, leaving him dumbfounded.’175 After the Russian summer offensive in 1916, Austrian miners in Westphalia faced hostility and abusive remarks by their Reich German colleagues and superiors, and finally protested to the German military authorities and k.u.k. representatives. Ambassador Hohenlohe eventually lodged an official complaint with the German Foreign Office.176 In Austria, on the other hand, many intellectuals and the broader public remained more enthusiastic about the alliance, constantly praising German loyalty, heroism, and leadership. As the Bavarian envoy Heinrich Tucher von Simmelsdorf wrote from Vienna in July 1915: ‘There is a sincere and even fervent admiration of Germany and its wartime achievements amongst widest circles in Austria-Hungary. One is full of praise for the organizational skills, the optimism, the economic power, and military efficiency of the ally. There is the sincere desire to transform certain branches of the military and civilian administration according to the German model.’ However, he also underlined the prevalent feeling of being underrated and treated unfairly by the Germans who would not fully recognize the Austro-Hungarian sacrifices for the allied campaign in the East: ‘To some extent, the admiration of Germany goes thus hand in hand with a certain touchiness, especially in Austria.’177 In fact, policymakers in Vienna resented Germany for the Belgian invasion, the neglect of the eastern front in favour of the war against Britain and France, and its assertive stance in the Trentino question, generally feeling that Berlin lacked the necessary understanding of the Habsburg Monarchy’s peculiarities and needs.178 Austro-Hungarian propaganda and censorship efforts have to be seen against this background. Foreign Minister Berchtold was particularly interested in placing anti-Russian articles in 175 176

177 178

Transcript in: Princig to Hohenlohe, 28 December 1914, in HHStA, Botschaft Berlin, K. 179. Protestschreiben westfälischer Bergmannsvereine, 28 January 1917, HHStA, PA I, K. 840; Notiz der K.u.K. Österreichisch-Ungarischen Botschaft, 11 March 1917, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22. Also see Hohenlohe to Czernin, 12 March and 23 May 1917, HHStA, PA I, K. 840. Report Tucher, 8 July 1915, BHSA, MA 2481/3. See, for example, diary entries of 27 and 29 January 1915, HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 6, vol. XIV, pp. 32–7 and 37–40. Also see Report Hohenlohe, 11 March 1915, HHStA, Botschaft Berlin, K. 180.

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order to raise in Germany the awareness that the main enemy was in the East.179 A book about Habsburg foreign policy by the Austro-German journalist Alexander Redlich was heavily subsidized and freely distributed to many German politicians: it not only blamed Russian Pan-Slavism for the outbreak of war, but also dissipated the idea that the Danube Empire was an unstable entity and a peoples’ prison.180 Moreover, the Foreign Office in Vienna advised its representatives in Germany to stress in talks with politicians, diplomats, and journalists that k.u.k. troops had altogether shown outstanding bravery in the field, that Germany on its own would have been quickly defeated, and that all nationalities backed the war effort to the same extent. It was also recommended to point to Germany’s setbacks on the western front and to highlight that the Habsburg Monarchy had altogether achieved a more remarkable accomplishment than Germany given its different, and more complicated, political structure.181 In 1915, Ambassador Hohenlohe, Austrian Prime Minister Karl von Stürgkh, his Hungarian colleague Tisza, and the new Foreign Minister Burián discussed repeatedly how to ‘enlighten’ public opinion in Germany and counter ‘Prussian conceit and a resulting tactlessness and arrogance’. Interestingly, they agreed that, above all, Austrian self-abasement had to stop: Austro-Germans ought to break with the prevalent tendency to idolize Germany while denigrating their own achievements and criticizing the conditions at home.182 Without doubt, Austro-Germans cherished the alliance much more than Reich Germans; the one-sidedness was conspicuous. In late 1914, numerous streets and squares were renamed in Austria after Wilhelm II and the German capital, particularly in German-Bohemian towns such as Iglau (Jihlava) and Gablonz (Jablonec nad Nisou), but also in Linz and Zwettl.183 In Germany, there was no such tendency. Nor was there anything comparable to the Austrian veneration of Mackensen and, arguably even more widespread, the Hindenburg cult: ‘His picture hangs in all shop windows and can be found in many apartments.’184 Hindenburg’s counterpart Conrad von Hötzendorf, in contrast, was blamed for the 179 180 181 182

183 184

Berchtold to Velics, 3 December 1914, HHStA, PA I, K. 842. A. Redlich, Österreich-Ungarn als Großmacht (Berlin, 1917). Forgách to Szarvasy, 29 January 1915, HHStA, Botschaft Berlin, K. 181. Hohenlohe to Burián, 16 March 1915 (here quotation); Tisza to Burián, 10 April 1915; Stürgkh to Burián, 21 April 1915; Hohenlohe to Burián, 6 October 1915, all in HHStA, PA I, K. 842. See Hohenlohe to Jagow, 30 November 1914, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 50, and the various letters and telegrams, PAAA, Österreich 70, vols. 34–5. ‘Aufzeichnung des hiesigen Vertreters der Neuen Freien Presse, Dr. Goldmann, über österreichisch-ungarische Verhältnisse’, 26 September 1916, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 4. Also see Nostitz to Vitzthum, 19 August 1916, SLHA, AM 2083. For the Mackensen praise, see e.g. Mackensen, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen, pp. 180–1, and

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early failures in Serbia and Galicia, and the object of much derision and gossip because of his feelings for Gina von Reininghaus. In Germany, spontaneous acclamations in front of the Austro-Hungarian embassy or consulates were rare, whereas ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’ could frequently be heard on Austrian streets after German victories.185 Most ‘comradeship poems’ and articles were written by Austro-Germans, while there were very few Reich German contributions to Austrian periodicals; the Liebesgaben aus dem Deutschen Reiche, a special issue of the Österreichische Rundschau on German-Austrian relations, was but an exception.186 A private call for gift parcels for Austro-Hungarian soldiers in Poland and the Carpathians of March 1915 was signed by almost one hundred persons, amongst them Ludwig Fulda, the artist Max Liebermann, the jurist Paul Laband, Jakob Riesser from the Hansa-Bund, and the politicians Matthias Erzberger and Ernst von Heydebrand und der Lasa. However, this, too, seems to have been a unique case, initiated by some of the founding members of the Reichsdeutsche Waffenbrüderliche Vereinigung (Reich German Comradeship Association, RWV) and supported by the Austro-Hungarian consul general to Berlin.187 In Germany, the glorification and public representation of the alliance became increasingly a matter of official concern, a tendency associated with a shift of focus from the German-speaking population to the Habsburg state as a whole. The RWV was founded in March 1915 ‘to keep alive the German people’s awareness of the high significance of the alliance’ with Vienna and ‘to increase the knowledge of the political and ethnic as well as economic situation of the allied Danube Monarchy’.188 Amongst the association’s 4,000 members (as of late 1917), there were not only representatives of the educated classes, intellectuals, journalists, and politicians of the bourgeois parties, but also heavy industrialists, economic experts, and government officials, such as Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg himself. Its executive committee included Adolf von Harnack, Field Marshall Mackensen, the general adjutant of the Kaiser Prince Wedel, and Philipp Heineken, the director general of the

185 186 187 188

T. Schwarzmüller, Zwischen Kaiser und ‘Führer’. Generalfeldmarschall August von Mackensen. Eine politische Biographie (Paderborn, 1995), pp. 121–2. See, for example,Redlich, Schicksalsjahre Österreichs, I, p. 631 (21 August 1914). Amira (ed.), Liebesgaben. See the remarks in Hohenlohe to Burián, 16 March 1915, HHStA, PA I, K. 842. ‘Satzungen’, HHStA, Groß papers, K. 5. Also see Otto König, Prof. Widemann and Dr. Bratz to Foreign Office, 11 December 1914, and ‘Schreiben über die Ziele der Vereinigung’, 10 December 1914, both in PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22; ‘Bericht über die bisherige Tätigkeit der Reichsdeutschen Waffenbrüderlichen Vereinigung und ihre künftigen Ziele’, September 1915, and ‘Geschäftsbericht’, January 1916, both in HHStA, Plener papers, K. 43.

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Norddeutscher Lloyd, one of the largest German shipping companies. Friedrich Naumann sat in the steering committee, together with the mayor of Dresden and a former Bavarian transport minister. A report about the organizational activities during the first two years of its existence mentions the call for gift parcels, various initiatives to decorate official buildings, hotels, shops, and private houses with the flags of the allied countries, tending Austro-Hungarian soldiers in German military hospitals, and numerous public lectures and celebrations. Its first major meeting took place in the Prussian Abgeordnetenhaus in December 1915, with Naumann delivering the keynote speech in the presence of the ambassadors and envoys of the allies. There were local branches in Munich and Dresden, with occasional meetings in Breslau (Wrocław), Gießen, Königsberg (Kaliningrad), and Kattowitz (Katowice), and several sections and sub-committees, for instance for legal matters, science and technology, transport, medicine, the press, and even history.189 These activities were related to the project of a Central European economic association and meant to foster a better understanding between the allies. Ethno-national attitudes, in contrast, played no substantial role. While pro-Austrian sentiments may have inspired some members, the organization clearly targeted the whole Habsburg Empire. In fact, a Hungarian sister organization was established half a year before an Austrian counterpart (June 1916 and January 1917). Altogether, it appears that the ethno-centrist enthusiasm of the initial period, the rhetoric of excitement and triumph, was soon replaced by more restrained and critical reflections. Many Reich German journalists, academics, and politicians mentioned the Danube Monarchy at some point or another in their wartime speeches and pamphlets. However, only a few went beyond paying mere lip service to the alliance and sought a deeper understanding of the history, the constitutional system, or the social structure of Austria-Hungary.190 Next to Mitteleuropa advocates such as Friedrich Naumann, it was in particular South German and Catholic intellectuals who also in a later stage of the war characterized by derision and scepticism maintained a positive notion of the Habsburg realm as a stable and reliable coalition partner. They were also behind most Austrophile poems, war reports, and travel accounts.191 Stuttgart 189

190

191

See Bratz, ‘Geschäftsbericht über die ersten zwei Jahre der Reichsdeutschen Waffenbrüderlichen Vereinigung (1915 bis 1916)’, and other related documents, all in BHSA MA 95070. See, for example, R. Knopf, Die Völker Österreich-Ungarns (Bonn, 1914); D. Schäfer, ‘Österreich-Ungarn’, in Schäfer (ed.), Der Krieg 1914/19, I (1916), pp. 46–51; K. Sapper, Österreich-Ungarn. Land, Völker und Staat (Munich, 1917). See, for example, L. Thoma, ‘Nach Österreich-Ungarn!’, März, 13 March 1915, pp. 230–3; S. Saenger, ‘Österreichische Visionen’, NR, May 1915, pp. 705–13;

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was mentioned above in connection with Hugo Ganz’s speech – similar talks would have been unlikely in Hamburg or Dortmund. Munich, however, was a popular destination with Austro-German intellectuals and politicians.192 Together with Dresden, the capital of Protestant Saxony, but also the seat of a Catholic dynasty and home to numerous German Bohemians (e.g. Ullmann), it arranged some of the most colourful pro-Austrian manifestations in Germany.193 Fritz Endres’s article in the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten of May 1917 may serve as an example of this (regional) sympathy for the Habsburg Monarchy. The SPD deputy to the Bavarian House of Representatives announced that Austria had proven its right to exist and that Reich Germans should concern themselves more extensively with the brave ally: At all our universities, we need lectures about Austrian history, about the Austrian constitution and administrational system, about Austrian political and psychological problems. We want to learn from the men of theory and from those of action, from officers and journalists, from employers and workers, from Germans, Slavs, and Magyars.194

Evidently, Endres and like-minded authors wanted a break with the prewar situation, a new relationship between Germany and Austria, more exchange and mutual understanding. To a great extent, such attitudes were motivated by regional, confessional, and cultural affinities. These were also mentioned and stressed by Viennese papers and politicians, who praised the military achievements of their Bavarian ‘relatives’ or pointed to the age-old friendship between Saxony and Austria (for instance during the wars of 1756–63 and 1866). The various family links between the dynastic houses were highlighted, too: Field Marshal Prince Leopold of Bavaria, the younger brother of King Ludwig III and Hindenburg’s replacement as supreme commander in the East

192 193

194

A.O. Klaußmann, Treue Waffenbrüder. Heldentaten der Österreicher, Ungarn und Deutschen im Weltkriege 1914/15 (Berlin, 1915); L. Ganghofer, Die Front im Osten (Berlin, 1915); L. Ganghofer, Bei den Heeresgruppen Hindenburg und Mackensen (Stuttgart, 1916); E. Moraht, Unser gemeinsamer Krieg (Frankfurt/M, 1915); W. Fischer, Schulter an Schulter. Eine Erzählung aus den Kämpfen der Verbündeten, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1915); O. Hellmann, ‘Das ist Altöstreichs Siegesschritt!’ Ein Buch von Habsburgs Kriegen und Siegen (Glogau, 1916); N. Jacques, In der Schwarmlinie des österreichisch-ungarischen Bundesgenossen (Berlin, 1916); A. Köster, Die Sturmschar Falkenhayns. Kriegsberichte aus Siebenbürgen und Rumänien (Munich, 1917). See, for example, ‘Deutsch-Österreichische Sympathiekundgebung’, MNN, 27 November 1915. See e.g. Braun to Berchtold, 22 August 1914, HHStA, PA I, K. 842; Velics to Berchtold, 24 August 1914, HHStA, PA I, K. 837; Braun to Burián, 19 January 1916, HHStA, PA I, K. 838. F. Endres, ‘Das österreichische Problem. Politische Sonntagsbetrachtung’, MNN, 20 May 1917.

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(August 1916), was married to Archduchess Gisela of Austria and thus Franz Joseph’s son-in-law. Archduke Karl, who succeeded Franz Joseph in late 1916, was the son of Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony and thus the nephew of the last king of Saxony, Friedrich August III.195 Nevertheless, it is important to note that such favourable attitudes were not just a matter of sentiments but also of interests. South German commentators presented themselves as a linking bridge and mediators between Berlin and Vienna, hoping to boost their standing within Germany. As seen above, some even declared Austria the better Germany, which had preserved the values, traditions, and supranational legacy of pre-modern times, whereas Prussia-Germany stood for national and confessional narrowmindedness, urbanization, and materialism and, thus, resembled the western democracies. The alliance with the Habsburg Monarchy and the renewed interest in Austria undoubtedly provided the opportunity to challenge established notions of Germanness. However, in contrast to the Pan-Germans, who focused on Austro-Hungarian Germandom and argued on the basis of ethno-national standpoints, these authors concentrated more on state and dynasty (thus including non-German nationalities as well) and made their case within traditional kulturnational categories, in particular common culture and history. This, of course, implied a re-reading of German history, a revaluation of the Holy Roman Empire and Greater German notions, traditionally ignored or denigrated within the established, Prusso-Protestant national narrative.

195

See, for example, Weiskirchner to Tucher, 6 August 1915, BHSA, Wien 2289; ‘Besuch des sächsischen Staatsminister Grafen Vitzthum in Wien’, Reichspost, 1 June 1917; ‘Besuch des sächsischen Ministers des Aeußern in Wien’, Fremdenblatt, 1 June 1917.

4

The Habsburg Monarchy in German history

National identity is insolubly linked to the use and abuse, interpretation and representation of history.1 Whoever holds the sovereignty of interpretation, the hegemony over the reading of certain developments and turning points, defines the nation and provides it with continuity, the right and justification to exist. The invocation of a common past, the formation of a collective memory – by drawing on ‘actual’ facts or by ‘inventing’ and communicating myths – is a highly selective and partial process of inclusion and exclusion, identifying what belongs to national history and thus who belongs to the nation. National(ist) historiography often puts forward a notion of perpetual continuity, individuating a group of people by tracing back their origins, political traditions, and cultural heritage to a golden age, a glorious past, and embracing historical (or fictional) figures as national heroes who allegedly did not act for plain survival and personal gain, for the interest of dynasties or to spread the will of God, but for the cause of the nation. Anything which had ostensibly held up continuous national progress is condemned, and those promoting an alternative reading of the past are marginalized. In this sense, Elie Kedourie’s statement that ‘nationalists make use of the past in order to subvert the present’ is only half of the truth.2 Undoubtedly, historians and other interpreters of the national past can take an oppositional stance and challenge or dismiss the current political and social situation as not corresponding with national traditions or needs. On the other hand, however, historiographic nationalism can also advocate the 1

2

A.D. Smith, ‘Nationalism and the Historians’, IJCS, 33 (1992), 58–80; J. Breuilly, ‘Historians and the Nation’, in P. Burke (ed.), History and Historians in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2002), pp. 55–87; K. Kumar, ‘Nationalism and the Historians’, in K. Kumar and G. Delanty (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (London, 2006), pp. 7–20; S. Berger, ‘The Power of National Pasts: Writing National History in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe’, in S. Berger (ed.), Writing the Nation: A Global Perspective (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 30–62; P. Lawrence, ‘Nationalism and Historical Writing’, in Breuilly (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism, pp. 713–29. E. Kedourie, Nationalism, 4th exp. ed. (Oxford, 1993), p. 70.

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status quo; it can justify certain conditions and be used to defend the present situation against demands for reforms. The First World War is a prime example of the legitimizing and mobilizing power of historical discourse.3 Politicians, academics, and publicists in Germany, Britain, France, and other belligerent countries engaged with the past in order to provide the war with meaning, to rally the population behind the war effort, and to instil a willingness to make sacrifices. History also served as a rhetorical weapon in the debate on war aims and territorial gains; Belgium and the Baltic area, for instance, were claimed for Germany by referring back to medieval times when these territories had formed a part of the Holy Roman Empire or had in some other way been connected to Germany (eastern colonization, Hanseatic League). In this manner, German annexationists could easily obscure their economic and political motivations and present themselves as selfless defenders of historic German rights. Especially in the early phase of the war, historical reminiscences were frequent. The legendary battle near Allenstein (Olsztyn) in East Prussia in late August 1914 was celebrated as a retribution for the momentous defeat of the Teutonic Knights against a Polish-Lithuanian army in Tannenberg (Grunwald) in 1410. Arminius and other Germanic ‘ancestors’ were called to mind in order to give evidence for the longevity and force of the furor teutonicus which would once again save the German people from hostile and overwhelming forces. The myth of the Nibelungs conveyed the German virtues of fortitude and loyalty, and references to the wars of 1756–63, 1813–15, or 1870–71 were supposed to provide glorious examples, propagate national solidarity, and evoke confidence in a victorious outcome of the war. What was at stake, it was often held by liberal-nationalist and conservative intellectuals, was the defence of the spiritual and political legacy of Luther and Frederick the Great against the ‘ideas of 1789’, and the protection of Bismarck’s creation, the German nation-state. In this reading, the World War appeared as a mere episode in the perpetual national story of success; it seemed necessary and just.4 3

4

J. Burkhardt, ‘Kriegsgrund Geschichte? 1870, 1813, 1756 – historische Argumente und Orientierungen bei Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges’, in J. Burkhardt (ed.), Lange und kurze Wege in den Ersten Weltkrieg. Vier Augsburger Beiträge zur Kriegsursachenforschung (Munich, 1996), pp. 9–86; J. Burkhardt, ‘Von der Geschichte zum Mythos. Historische Betrachtungen deutscher Gelehrter bei Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkriegs’, in D. Dahlmann and W. Potthoff (eds.), Mythen, Symbole, Rituale. Die Geschichtsmächtigkeit der Zeichen in Südosteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/M., 2000), pp. 25–36. See, for example, U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, ‘Die geschichtlichen Ursachen des Krieges’, in U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Reden aus der Kriegszeit, 5 vols. (Berlin, 1914–16), I (1914), pp. 15–31; A. Riehl, 1813 – Fichte – 1914 (Berlin, 1914); F. Meinecke, ‘Die deutschen Erhebungen von 1813, 1848, 1870 und 1914’, in F. Meinecke, Die deutsche Erhebung von 1914. Vorträge und Aufsätze (Stuttgart, 1915),

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However, as indicated by Kedourie, there is hardly ever a noncontested conception of history. It is most likely in times of instability, of significant changes in political and social regard, of new circumstances brought about by revolutions or war, that the predominant narrative of national history becomes challenged and that alternative views have the chance of gaining widespread recognition. As mentioned earlier, academic history-writing in pre-war Germany was dominated by the neoRankean school. Erich Marcks, Max Lenz, Georg von Below, and Dietrich Schäfer emphasized the role of the state against the representatives of a ‘new cultural history’ such as Lamprecht and Kurt Breysig, who paid attention to cultural, economic, and intellectual developments but remained marginalized. The neo-Rankeans were joined by historians such as Hans Delbrück, Otto Hintze, and Friedrich Meinecke, who equally wrote from a more traditional, state-centred point of view but did not share their colleagues’ right-wing political attitudes: the resistance to domestic reforms towards more equality and democracy, and the active support for an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy. In any case, despite significant differences from the Borussian School, most German historians continued to accentuate and venerate Prussia’s role in unifying the German people and establishing a powerful nation-state. It is the aim of the following chapter to examine to what extent the wartime alliance between Berlin and Vienna challenged such entrenched notions of the German national past. As we will see, the attempt of Catholic and other publicists to foster a ‘new historical conception’ and to obtain ‘more love for those forces and movements that were defeated in the great struggle for German unity’ was unsuccessful.5 The German-Austrian comradeship-in-arms did not lead to a revision of the dominant view of German history. From Königgrätz to Sarajevo: rereading German-Austrian history since 1866 In contrast to the historical reflections mentioned above, the German Bruderkrieg of 1866, which had led to the defeat of Austria and its alliance partners, did not represent an exemplary and triumphant event but a counter-example of strife and national frailty that had to be overcome. In fact, Catholic intellectuals often praised the war coalition for eventually terminating German discord symbolized by Königgrätz. ‘It is as if there

5

pp. 9–38; T. Mann, Friedrich und die große Koalition (Berlin, 1915); A.O. Meyer (ed.), Zum geschichtlichen Verständnis des großen Krieges, 2nd rev. ed. (Berlin, 1916). K. Buchheim, ‘Die Reichsgründung’, Grenzboten, 26 April 1916, pp. 97–105 (pp. 99–100).

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had never been a year 1866 in German history’, the jurist and journalist Heinrich Maria Krueckemeyer proclaimed in this regard.6 Martin Spahn understood the common military effort as the fortunate end of a fateful policy; to him, the World War figured as a redeemer liberating the German people from national aberration, leading them back towards a harmonious Greater German community: After what fights we stand anew on stable ground designated by history! It again bands us together with the Austrians in a complete entirety [zu einem großen Ganzen], and with compound interest Prussia can recompense for Austria’s wounds . . . For the historian it has something of compelling magnificence that the stream of German history has flowed back into its mighty bed.7

In a similar sense, the historian Ernst Vogt interpreted Reich German support for Vienna in July and August 1914 as compensation, as ‘atonement’ for 1866: ‘With this we make up again for the guilt we, obeying bitter necessity, burdened ourselves with against Austria.’ Evidently, Vogt claimed, the ‘best in Germany’ had anyhow never lost the ‘bitter feeling’ that ‘we had made splendid parts of Germandom to foreigners, that we had made it immensely more difficult for them to convey German culture to the East, and had exposed them to Slav superior strength in order to build our little house the more firmly’.8 The notion that the war was an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past and to lay the foundation for a new, more intensive relationship between Reich Germans and Austro-Germans was particularly prominent amongst deutschnational Austrians who hoped for a more supportive German stance. Franz Jesser claimed that the Habsburg Germans had suffered severely: ‘The German-led entity became a multinational state, our old standing within the state completely collapsed.’9 Raimund Friedrich Kaindl similarly condemned the events of 1866 as the ‘source of endless suffering and lamentable weakening of the Austrian Germans’. Even more so, however, Kaindl expressed disapproval of the subsequent ignorance of the Reich Germans who were exclusively fixated on the Lesser German nation-state. They forgot, he complained, that ‘AustroGermans are Germans, too’: ‘Frankly, one stated that in 1871 all German tribes had been unified . . . In Germany, one got used to regarding the Austro-Germans as foreigners. For most of the educated Reich Germans, 6 7 8 9

[H.M.] Krueckemeyer, ‘Im Kampf um unsere Zukunft’, HPB, 1 June 1915, pp. 766–78 (p. 777). M. Spahn, ‘An den Pforten des Weltkrieges’, Hochland, October 1914, pp. 13–29 (pp. 20–1). E. Vogt, ‘Die deutsch-österreichische Kampfgenossenschaft’, FZ, 9 August 1914. F. Jesser, ‘Was ist uns heute Königgrätz? Zum 3. Juli 1866’, Kunstwart, 1st July issue 1916, pp. 5–10 (p. 7).

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too, the German people were identical with the German Reich.’ Fortunately, the war had now put an end to the period of ‘estrangement and degradation’, and Imperial Germany experienced the ‘emergence of a deutsch-völkisch awareness and feeling of solidarity’, evident in a ‘growing interest in the coalition with Austria and a greater attention to German settlements in the East as well as to the establishment of closer relations with the Austro-Germans’.10 Other Austrian publicists promoted a greater historical awareness to underscore the Habsburg Empire’s right to exist (the Austrian historical mission) and to foster a sense of togetherness within a multinational and fragmented society. In late 1917, the Viennese historian Wilhelm Bauer established a new journal Österreich. Zeitschrift für Geschichte which was devoted to the study of Austrian history.11 Earlier already, Hugo von Hofmannsthal had initiated the Österreichische Bibliothek, a series of books similarly aimed at cultivating the Austrian idea by portraying idols like Grillparzer, Prince Eugene, or Radetzky, and by presenting a selection of non-German works of art and literature.12 Whereas the narrative strategy of deutschnational historians and commentators aimed at affirming Austria’s German character – by claiming that it had originated in the old German Ostmark and for centuries served as a bulwark of German culture against eastern barbarism – Bauer’s and Hofmannsthal’s endeavours were meant to demonstrate that the Danube Monarchy was not an artificial entity founded on fortuitous marriages and peace treaties, but an organic being in which numerous nationalities peacefully coexisted for mutual benefit. A tendency to consider the Austro-Germans the leading nationality and natural backbone of the Habsburg Empire was apparent in most of these writings, too, but in contrast to a small minority of Pan-German authors, conservative intellectuals such as Richard von Kralik seemed reconciled with the exclusion of Austria from German affairs: ‘Today we can talk without bitterness of the brotherly contestation between Austria and Prussia.’ Both powers, Kralik and other Austrianists maintained, had had to compete with each other in order to be later able 10

11 12

Kaindl, Deutsche Siedlung im Osten, pp. 13, 12, 24, 19. Also see H. Ullmann, ‘Das Ideal der deutschen Gemeinschaft heute und vor hundert Jahren’, Tat, October 1915, pp. 550–9; H. Kretschmayr, ‘Deutsche und österreichische Geschichte’, ÖR, 15 September 1915, pp. 280–6; W. v. Medinger, ‘Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und der Weltkrieg’, ÖR, 15 May 1918, pp. 145–51. W. Bauer, ‘Österreich’, Österreich, 15 November 1917, pp. 1–16. See e.g. O. Zoff, 1809: Dokumente aus Österreichs Krieg gegen Napoleon (Leipzig, 1916); E. Molden, Radetzky. Sein Leben und sein Wirken nach Briefen, Berichten und autobiographischen Skizzen (Leipzig, 1916); I. Hift, Prinz Eugen. Aus seinen Briefen und Gesprächen (Leipzig, 1916); P. Eisner, Tschechische Anthologie: Vrchlický – Sova – Brezina (Leipzig, 1917).

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to face the whole world as invincible allies, and therefore only benefited from separation. The successful brotherhood-in-arms of 1914 thus represented the natural consequence of the war of 1866.13 A similar notion prevailed in Germany, too, where attempts to foster a new interpretation of the German past and to bring Austria back in remained futile. Most commentators considered the separation of Austria an admittedly painful but necessary step for the advancement of the German nation towards a powerful political entity, or, in the words of Paul Rohrbach, as an inevitable measure ‘for the sake of Germandom in a higher sense, for the sake of the German idea’.14 Some intellectuals even denoted the ‘war between the brothers’ as ‘a blessing’, for it had finally resolved the German question and in the end made possible the faithful and powerful war alliance between the Central Powers.15 Otto Hoetzsch similarly described the decision of 1866 as ‘salutary’ for the Habsburg Monarchy, which consequently directed its full attention to its actual area of responsibility in South-Eastern Europe.16 Most comments on the 50th anniversary of the German ‘fratricidal war’ in summer 1916 essentially confirmed the ‘traditional’ interpretation of recent German and Austrian history, even though a certain relativization of the previously dominant view was noticeable. In fact, whereas in prewar Germany a teleological perspective had prevailed, classifying the war of 1866 into the triad of the Lesser German wars of unification and glorifying the victory over Austria as an epoch-making national event, most contributions now were characterized by a fair amount of reserve and consideration. Celebrating Königgrätz at the time of the brotherhoodin-arms was, of course, considered inappropriate, and attention turned towards reconciled present and future. In view of that, the (still relatively unknown) left-liberal journalist Theodor Heuss wished to conclude this unfortunate chapter of German history, stating that the ‘drumfire of our common enemies’ had ‘driven out the luxury of historical reflections about the If, and Whether and But’: ‘One does not argue about matters that have become history.’17 Interestingly, the Austro-Hungarian 13

14 15 16

17

R. v. Kralik, ‘Wien in Kriegszeiten’, in Kralik, Entscheidung im Weltkrieg, pp. 3–16 (p. 9). Also see F. v. Wieser, ‘1815–1866–1879–1915’, ND, 31 March 1915, pp. 207–12; H. Friedjung, ‘1866 und 1916’, DTZ, 2 July 1916. P. Rohrbach, Warum es der Deutsche Krieg ist! (Stuttgart, 1914), p. 6. D. v. Miltitz, ‘Im Kriege selber ist das Letzte nicht der Krieg’, Kunstwart, 1st August issue 1915, pp. 86–90 (p. 87). Hoetzsch, Österreich-Ungarn und der Krieg, p. 10. With a similar tendency: P. Herre, ‘An Österreich-Ungarn!’, SM, September 1914, pp. 774–6; P. Herre, ‘Bismarck und Österreich-Ungarn’, Panther, March 1915, pp. 284–311; F. Rachfahl, ‘Bismarck und der gegenwärtige Krieg’, ND, 31 March 1915, pp. 176–81. T. Heuss, ‘Nikolsburg. Zum 27. Juli’, Hilfe, 27 July 1916, pp. 487–9 (p. 489).

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ambassador to Berlin, Prince Hohenlohe, seems to have been of a different opinion. Following a congratulatory speech by General Ludendorff marking the demi-centenary of Hindenburg’s service in the Prussian army in April 1916, he intervened at the German Foreign Office and explained that the address was ‘one of the most tactless enunciations I have ever come across’. Hohenlohe complained that Ludendorff had repeatedly referred to Prussia’s victory over Austria in 1866 but never mentioned the achievements and sacrifices of the Habsburg Monarchy in the current war.18 Obviously, the topic continued to cause embarrassment and discomfiture amongst the vanquished, who, despite having come to terms with the outcome and subsequent developments, still deplored the defeat as a humiliation of the dynasty and a major weakening of the monarchy’s international standing. However, in accordance with the plea that ‘we shall not recall what divided us . . . but what reconciled us’, most essays and comments did not put Königgrätz, its origins and the military campaigns, victory or defeat, at the centre of the reflections. Rather, they focused on the end of the war and the agreements of Nikolsburg (preliminary peace) and Prague (peace treaty) as the starting point of a new and stable friendship between Prussia-Germany and the Habsburg Empire.19 Following this shift of attention, the year 1866 was no longer considered a symbol of conflict and division, but now stood for German-Austrian accord and cooperation. Against this backdrop, the political actions, intentions, and visions of Bismarck attracted renewed attention and caused competing interpretations.

The Iron Chancellor at war: the Bismarck myth in wartime Germany In April 1915, Bismarck would have been one hundred years old. Countless anniversary essays, speeches, and poems praised the founder of the German nation-state, continuing the pre-war tendency to replace the historical person with a glorified idol with mythical and sacred 18 19

Telegrams Hohenlohe, 8 and 10 April 1916, HHStA, PA I, K. 838. Also see ‘Die Hindenburg-Feier im Felde’, VZ, 8 April 1916. J. v. Newald, ‘Deutschland und Österreich. Zur Halbhundertjahrfeier des Prager Friedens am 23. August 1866’, Grenzboten, 23 August 1916, pp. 239–47 (p. 240). Also see K. Buchheim, ‘Frankreich und die Gründung des Norddeutschen Bundes. Zum halbhundertjährigen Gedächtnis des Präliminarfriedens von Nikolsburg, 25. Juli 1866’, Grenzboten, 19 July 1916, pp. 74–83. An Austrian example: A.O. Ritter v. Terzi, ‘Zum 50. Gedenktage des Prager Friedens. Ein österreichischer Rückblick’, Hilfe, 24 August 1916, pp. 552–4.

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qualities.20 In the difficult situation of war, Bismarck’s stylization as ‘redeemer’ and ‘deliverer’, as ‘salvation bringer’ and ‘patron saint’, fostered confidence in survival and victory: ‘He is with us . . . as he lives forth in our people, as force, as spirit, as flame burning in us, as power breathing in us, working and building for us, far beyond his time of life, our time of life.’21 Bismarck was Germany; he embodied faith in God, a sense of duty, patriotism, and defiant manliness; he stood for the superiority and immortality of German culture, for statism and power politics: ‘We are not just the nation of poets and thinkers; we are also the nation of work and deeds. Give us space in the East and West!’; this was Bismarck’s political legacy, according to a Pan-German journalist.22 Even the liberal historian Veit Valentin idolized Bismarck as ‘the great German of his time’, ‘a mighty person and leader’ who had made the German people the ‘ruler over weaker nations’.23 By orientating themselves towards the national hero, the Germans were supposed to overcome social and ideological differences, and to concentrate on the common goal: defending Bismarck’s creation, maintaining the German Reich.24 In Austria, the Bismarck myth had a wide appeal, too, even beyond Pan-German and deutschnational circles. Schaukal, who after 1918 nurtured the Habsburg myth, celebrated the ‘resurrection’ of ‘the ancient 20

21 22

23 24

E. Zechlin, ‘Das Bismarck-Bild 1915. Eine Mischung von Sage und Mythos’, in E. Zechlin, Krieg und Kriegsrisiko. Zur deutschen Politik im 1. Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1979), pp. 227–33. Recent studies of the Bismarck myth include W. Hardtwig, ‘Der Bismarck-Mythos. Gestalt und Funktionen zwischen politischer Öffentlichkeit und Wissenschaft’, in W. Hardtwig (ed.), Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit 1918–1939 (Göttingen, 2005), pp. 61–90; R.E. Frankel, Bismarck’s Shadow: The Cult of Leadership and the Transformation of the German Right, 1898–1945 (Oxford, 2005); R. Gerwarth, The Bismarck Myth: Weimar Germany and the Legacy of the Iron Chancellor (Oxford, 2005); V. Ullrich, ‘“Wie tief man ihn grollend geliebt hat”. Das Bismarckbild der Deutschen im Wandel der Zeiten’, in K. Hildebrand and E. Kolb (eds.), Otto von Bismarck im Spiegel Europas (Paderborn, 2006), pp. 183–200; V. Ullrich, ‘Der Mythos Bismarck und die Deutschen’, APuZ, 65/13 (2015), 15–22. E. Marcks, ‘Bismarck und unser Krieg’, SM, September 1914, pp. 780–7 (p. 784). A. Ripke, ‘Bismarcks Vermächtnis’, Panther, March 1915, pp. 257–66 (p. 262). Similar: M. Spahn, Bismarck, 2nd exp. ed. (M. Gladbach, 1915); M. Spahn, Bismarck und die deutsche Politik in den Anfängen unseres Zeitalters (Strasbourg, 1915); A. Bartels, Bismarck der Deutsche (Düsseldorf, 1915); G. Roethe, Zu Bismarcks Gedächtnis (Berlin, 1915); G. Roethe, Bismarck und das Gebot der Stunde (Berlin, 1917); H.S. Chamberlain, ‘Bismarck der Deutsche’, TR, 31 March 1915; U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, ‘Bismarck’, in Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Reden aus der Kriegszeit, III (1915), pp. 51–76; E. Brandenburg, ‘Bismarck als Erzieher der Deutschen’, Panther, April 1917, pp. 470–87. V. Valentin, Bismarck und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1915), pp. 4, 1. Also see M. Lenz and E. Marcks (eds.), Das Bismarck-Jahr. Eine Würdigung Bismarcks und seiner Politik in Einzelschilderungen (Hamburg, 1915); H. Delbrück, Bismarcks Erbe (Berlin, 1915); P. Rohrbach, Bismarck und wir (Munich, 1915); E. Marcks, Vom Erbe Bismarcks (Leipzig, 1916); G. Stresemann, Bismarck und wir (Berlin, 1916); D. Schäfer, Bismarck. Ein Bild seines Lebens und Wirkens, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1917).

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giant’, praising Bismarck as the embodiment of Germanness and ‘hero of his Mannesalter’: He is with Bach, Kant, Kleist, Jean Paul, Hoffmann, the Brothers Grimm, Uhland, Mörike, and Wagner what German Heimat means to my soul. I see myself in him, the person, the artist, the statesman. And to the Austro-German the history of Germany is not the history of a foreign country.25

Austrianist authors remained more unsympathetic. Franz Zweybrück, for instance, in a critical contribution to Hofmannsthal’s Österreichische Bibliothek, did not refrain from highlighting that Austrians associated ‘some bitter memories’ with Bismarck. The German chancellor had never really understood the political nature and the intrinsic driving forces of Austrian affairs – a peculiarity which would unfortunately still be noticeable in all German political circles: ‘Cold-heartedly, unlovingly, hostilely and distortedly, this is how Austrian matters are being treated.’ Even Zweybrück, however, acknowledged Bismarck’s great ‘political genius’, evident in his support for the continued existence of the Dual Monarchy.26 In Germany, the formation and consolidation of the nation-state was still regarded as Bismarck’s greatest accomplishment, yet in the context of the ongoing war and the diplomatic-military partnership with Vienna, his decisions and actions of 1866 (Prague and Nikolsburg) and 1879 (Dual Alliance) received fresh attention. One week after the jubilee, Friedrich Naumann expressed his astonishment about the fact that Bismarck’s ‘German-Austrian reconciliation policy was praised ubiquitously’.27 By resisting Prussia’s king in 1866 and insisting on moderate peace terms, the Reich’s founder, it was repeatedly held, had demonstrated remarkable foresight about a future cooperation between the two adversaries. It was only this very attitude – ‘a proof of his impressive wisdom and his greatest deed’ – which had made the Dual Alliance possible, and provided for the current war coalition against a world of enemies.28 ‘He got his own way; and only that is why’, Gustav Roethe stated, Germany and Austria ‘today stand faithfully together in a union of blood, in 25

26 27 28

R. Schaukal, ‘Bismarcks Auferstehung’, in his Eherne Sonette 1914, p. 49, and ‘Bismarck’, in his Zeitgemäße deutsche Betrachtungen, pp. 9–11 (p. 11). Also see H. Friedjung, ‘Bismarck und Österreich’, VZ, 1 April 1915; R. Charmatz, ‘Bismarcks Jahrhundert’, PL, 1 April 1915; H. Kretschmayr, ‘Bismarck’, ÖR, 1 April 1915, pp. 1–8. F. Zweybrück, ‘Bismarck und Österreich. Eine Vorrede (Österreichische Bibliothek)’, in his Österreichische Essays, pp. 155–64 (pp. 155, 160, 161). F. Naumann, ‘Die Nationalitäten Mitteleuropas’, Hilfe, 8 April 1915, pp. 216–17 (p. 217). G. Andrássy, ‘Entwicklung und Ziele Mitteleuropas’, DR, December 1915, pp. 321–36 (p. 328).

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a friendship never known before by any people’.29 Most of these judgements, however, did not represent a new interpretation of GermanAustrian history but an attempt to legitimize Germany’s war involvement in support of Austria-Hungary. Erich Marcks in this context asserted that, according to Bismarck, the continued existence of the Habsburg Empire had always been a ‘vital requirement for Germany itself’, and that the Iron Chancellor would have reacted in the same way with regard to the Serbian question in July 1914.30 In the light of this obvious continuance of Bismarckian Realpolitik, the alliance between the Central Powers appeared reasonable and justified. Only a few authors with a mostly Catholic background interpreted Bismarck’s policy towards Austria from a grossdeutsch point of view. As shown earlier, most Catholics had soon become reconciled with Bismarck after the end of the Kulturkampf without, however, giving up their affection for the Habsburg entity. The settling of the Dual Alliance – a fundamental Catholic concern in external relations since 1871 – had certainly made it easier for them to integrate into the Reich German statenation. During the war, most subscribed to the glorification of Bismarck as the master-builder and architect of German history, as a father figure and symbol of national greatness. Still, a minority did not hide its resentment because of the events of 1866–71 and the subsequent exclusion of Austria from Germany. These publicists insisted that Bismarck’s policy had resulted in the ‘destruction of the Central European community, the weakening of misapprehended Austria, and the encouragement of Hungary’.31 On the whole, however, a positive attitude towards Bismarck predominated amongst Catholics. Some even claimed that the chancellor had been motivated by Greater German ideas in 1879.32 Roethe went still further, contending that Bismarck had had Pan-German aims when he founded the nation-state in 1871 as ‘a mighty motherland’ to serve and support the whole German community all over the world: ‘The Greater German empire which he once had to destroy, he wanted to rebuild it in a different form.’33 This interpretation of Bismarck’s policy towards Austria soon became criticized. Whereas Otto Hintze, the author of a seminal volume on the Hohenzollern dynasty, at least described the Dual Alliance ‘as a supplement to the creation of German unity’, Hugo 29 31 32

33

Roethe, Wir Deutschen, p. 30. 30 Marcks, ‘Bismarck und unser Krieg’, p. 782. ‘Der österreichische Staatsgedanke – die Rettung Österreichs (Schluss)’, HPB, 16 December 1917, pp. 814–24 (p. 822). ‘Die Rehabilitierung der großdeutschen Idee’, HPB, 16 March 1917, pp. 413–17 (p. 417). Similar: J. Mumbauer, ‘Zu Bismarcks Säkulargedächtnis’, Hochland, April 1915, pp. 98–104; M. Spahn, ‘Bismarcks politisches Erbe und der Krieg’, Hochland, May 1916, pp. 140–52. Roethe, Zu Bismarcks Gedächtnis, pp. 6, 37.

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Preuß sternly rejected the idea that the driving force behind Bismarck’s decision in 1879 had been anything else but plain Realpolitik: ‘It was exclusively considerations of foreign policy . . . which led Bismarck to sign the German-Austrian alliance’; the chancellor did not attempt to revise the founding of the Reich ‘in the sense of a more ideal convergence towards the idea of the national state’.34 In any case, Bismarck continued to serve as ‘the great advisor of the dark present’ and was repeatedly referred to in discussions over charged and contested political questions.35 The conservative publicist Adolf Grabowsky rightly observed in this context that dealing with Bismarck had become ‘more than a matter for historians, it simply is German politics’.36 The struggle for conceptual hegemony was particularly evident during the war aims debate. Several commentators attempted to identify and define ‘Bismarck’s legacy’ with regard to disputed issues such as the future orientation of the German Reich between colonialist Weltpolitik and Central European commitment, the policy towards Russia, or the more general question of how to end the war. Theodor Heuss stressed Bismarck’s restraint in Nikolsburg in order to advance the idea of a Verständigungsfrieden, a peace based on understanding and compromises. Bismarck, he asserted, had after all been ‘the most resolute adversary of a primitive policy of annexations’.37 Likewise, the pacifist Hellmut von Gerlach maintained that the day of Nikolsburg ‘was definitely the greatest day’ in Bismarck’s life, and added: ‘Defeats are wounds which ache but heal. Annexations, in contrast, are amputations. Incurable. Unforgettable. An eternal barrier.’38 Social Democrats pursued a similar strategy. For the most part, they seem to have come to terms with Bismarck, too. Having endured the antiSocialist laws, and following internal struggles about the party’s strategy, the SPD had quickly become the strongest parliamentary group in the Reichstag, where it stood for severe but constructive and loyal criticism, for reform rather than revolution. What followed was a different stance towards Bismarck, who during his lifetime had often been attacked as a reactionary, a warmonger, and an enemy of the working class. Indeed, 34 35 36 37 38

O. Hintze, ‘Das Werk der Hohenzollern. Eine Jubiläumsbetrachtung’, DR, October 1915, pp. 1–25 (p. 12); Preuß, ‘Großdeutsch, Kleindeutsch’, p. 52. Naumann, ‘Die Nationalitäten Mitteleuropas’, p. 217. A. Grabowsky, ‘Bismarck und unsere Zeit’, ND, 31 March 1915, pp. 169–76 (p. 170). Heuss, ‘Nikolsburg’, p. 488. H. v. Gerlach, ‘Bismarcks größter Tag’, WaM, 29 March 1915. Also see F. Tönnies, ‘Der Friede’, DA, November 1914, pp. 93–7; M. Weber, ‘Bismarcks Außenpolitik und die Gegenwart’ (1915), in H. Baier et al. (eds.), Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe. Abteilung I: Schriften und Reden, 25 vols. (Tübingen, 1984–2015), I/15: Zur Politik im Weltkrieg: Schriften und Reden, 1914–1918, ed. by W.J. Mommsen (1984), pp. 71–92.

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employing his name in order to advance arguments in political discourse was no longer considered unthinkable.39 In June 1915, the Viennese Arbeiter-Zeitung described annexationist policy as ‘the most terrible sin against the future of the German nation’ and claimed that Bismarck would never have supported ‘predatory dreams of conquest’.40 In January 1918, Konrad Haenisch from the SPD’s right wing promoted the idea of a German-Russian rapprochement and a peace of understanding by referring to Bismarck’s policy in 1866. As he explained in the Prussian Abgeordnetenhaus, the negotiators in Brest-Litovsk should take ‘the moderate and far-sighted behaviour’ of ‘Germany’s greatest statesman’ as a guiding example, an argument previously brought forward by Eduard David in the Hauptausschuß of the German Reichstag.41 Erich Marcks and his Tübingen colleague Johannes Haller, in contrast, pointed to the Prussian annexations of 1866 and the seizure of AlsaceLorraine in 1871 in order to refute the notion of Bismarck’s fundamental moderation and to justify calls for a peace of victory (Siegfrieden) and territorial gains.42 For Marcks, the war was about the extension of the nation-state: ‘History cannot have come to an end with the giant’s deeds of 1866 and 1870.’43 Otto Hoetzsch similarly argued that ‘whoever disapproves of any expansion of our territory because Bismarck had concluded the peace of Nikolsburg and shown greatest moderation in the peace with France . . . speaks to us only of the half of Bismarck’.44 In connection with the negotiations with revolutionary Russia in late 1917 and early 1918, the Pan-German camp criticized the utilization of Bismarck’s authority in order to justify ‘a miserable peace 39 40 41

42

43

44

J. Müller-Koppe, ‘Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie und der Bismarck-Mythos’, in L. Machtan (ed.), Bismarck und der deutsche Nationalmythos (Bremen, 1994), pp. 181–207. ‘Was täte Bismarck?’, AZ, 20 June 1915. Also see ‘Bismarck über Annexionen’, Vorwärts, 18 July 1916. Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/17, vol. 7, 21 January 1918, col. 7475; R. Schiffers et al. (eds.), Der Hauptausschuß des Deutschen Reichstags 1915–1918, 4 vols. (Düsseldorf, 1981–83), IV (1983), pp. 1835–6 (3 January 1918). Also see already Dittmann’s remarks in Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 306, pp. 723–4 (18 January 1916), and K. Kautsky, ‘Bismarck und der Imperialismus’, NZ, 10 and 17 December 1915, pp. 321–8, 361–72. Marcks, Vom Erbe Bismarcks; J. Haller, Bismarcks Friedensschlüsse (Munich, 1916). Also see Freiherr v. Zedlich und Neukirch, ‘Friedensverhandlungen in Bismarcks Geist’, Tag, 1 April 1915; W. Eisenhart, ‘Streit über die Bismarckschen Traditionen in der auswärtigen Politik’, NPZ, 30 May 1916; G. Egelhaaf, ‘Bismarcks Friedensschlüsse’, SchM, 4 October 1916; ‘Falsche Schlüsse’, DTZ, 24 January 1917; ‘Geschichtsklitterungen’, DTZ, 11 December 1917. E. Marcks, ‘Bismarck und der deutsche Geist’ (1915), in his Männer und Zeiten. Aufsätze und Reden zur neueren Geschichte, 2 vols., 4th rev. ed. (Leipzig, 1916), I, pp. 147–67 (p. 161). O. Hoetzsch, ‘Bismarcks Erbe’, in his Politik im Weltkrieg. Historisch-politische Aufsätze (Bielefeld, 1916), pp. 161–70 (p. 163).

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[Jammerfrieden]’.45 Not only would the current position of the German Reich be ‘incomparably more favourable than that of Prussia towards the Habsburg Empire in 1866’, but the Austrians also represented a ‘sister people’.46 The new chairman of the National Liberals Gustav Stresemann argued along the same lines in the Reichstag when he stated in March 1918 that the situation of 1866 was not comparable with the war against the Entente and that Bismarck, ‘the grand master of diplomacy and statecraft’, had never abandoned power politics: It is something different whether I fight Bavaria and Saxony, one German power, one German brotherly tribe against the other, whether I reach out to the German brother, or whether I conclude peace with Russia, Romania, France, or England . . . That is the great fundamental difference between the Peace of Nikolsburg on the one side and the peace with non-German nations [Völkern anderen Bluts] on the other side.47

The debate on Nikolsburg had, of course, only little to do with Austria and its German-speaking inhabitants. But the frequent evocation and veneration of Bismarck demonstrates the pervasiveness of the kleindeutsch paradigm in German political culture and national discourse, despite Catholic challenges to the Prusso-Protestant narrative and the far right’s recurrent use of ethno-national rhetoric for political purposes.

The renaissance of the Holy Roman Empire: a new German history? As we observed above, the Greater German euphoria at the outbreak of war actually consisted of two different tendencies. It was mainly Catholic intellectuals who promoted more far-reaching ideas and concepts when praising the spirit of comradeship between the Central Powers. Großdeutschland here appeared as a ‘liberating, refreshing, leading, directing idea’ that emerged ‘in clear terms from the darkness of the past’, and was understood as a genuine counter-model to the ‘product of 1866 and 1870 which had been created by a policy of the sword’ and would still rest ‘on the point of the sword’, as Friedrich Norikus put it.48 The Catholic journalist in this context demanded ‘a political sacrifizio dell’intelletto: the break with the tradition of the last sixty years and the resumption of the old tradition’, without, however, failing to emphasize that he and his 45 46 47 48

‘Bismarcks Entsagungsfriede’, Türmer, 1st November issue 1917, pp. 200–1 (p. 200). ‘Bild der Lage’, DE, February 1918, pp. 142–57 (p. 144). Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 311, p. 4455 (19 March 1918). ‘Die Rehabilitierung der großdeutschen Idee’, p. 413; [F. Norikus], ‘Das alte, das neue und das kommende Reich’, HPB, 1 November 1916, pp. 573–609 (p. 599).

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companions ‘were German, just as we as Greater Germans had been in the past, also in the present and in the future’. He obviously felt the need to secure his position against reproaches of those camps that firmly stood on the grounds of the Prusso-German nation-state, typically condemning any deviation as non-German or even anti-German attitude. Norikus especially thought of the Pan-Germans and the ‘fanatic advocates of a uniformed “German” unity school’.49 The ‘resumption of the old tradition’ clearly meant the Alte Reich, the defunct Holy Roman Empire which for centuries had been ruled by the Habsburg dynasty. When the German nation-state was established at Versailles in 1871, there were several references to the entity which had been dissolved in 1806 under Napoleonic pressure. The terms ‘Kaiser’ and ‘Reich’ were reintroduced to highlight the federal character of the new German polity (not least in order to appease the crowned heads of the non-Prussian states) and to provide it with historical continuity, evoking memories of German hegemony and prestige in Europe.50 A mystical undertone contributed to the notion of singularity: the Reich as timetranscending instrument and executor of the divine will, as representative and upholder of Christian values and the Occidental tradition – such connotations clearly set Imperial Germany apart from (and above) its European counterparts. While South German contemporaries welcomed these reminiscences for historical and confessional reasons, liberalnationalist observers and Prussian conservatives remained unimpressed. Following the views of Heinrich von Sybel and Heinrich von Treitschke, they associated the Alte Reich primarily with Habsburg rule and Catholic supremacy. To them, it had been an unfortunate realm, disjointed and unable to defend the interests of the German nation, a pawn in the hands of the more powerful neighbours, and an impediment to Germany’s rise to a nation-state with great-power status. Scholars of German national and political ideas commonly argue that it was up to a new generation of right-wing intellectuals after the First World War, amongst them Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Edgar Julius Jung, and Josef Magnus Wehner, to establish the Reich as one of the most influential concepts in German political and imperial thought, and as ‘the perhaps most powerful anti-thesis against the state of Weimar’, as Kurt Sontheimer 49 50

[Norikus], ‘Das alte, das neue und das kommende Reich’, pp. 599, 605. E.Fehrenbach, Wandlungen des deutschen Kaisergedankens 1871–1918 (Munich, 1969); M. Stickler, ‘Reichsvorstellungen in Preußen-Deutschland und der Habsburgermonarchie in der Bismarckzeit’, in F. Bosbach and H. Hiery (eds.), Imperium – Empire – Reich. Ein Konzept politischer Herrschaft im deutsch-britischen Vergleich (Munich, 1999), pp. 133–54; H. Afflerbach, ‘Das Wilhelminische Kaiserreich zwischen Nationalstaat und Imperium’, in L. Höbelt and T.G. Otte (eds.), A Living Anachronism? European Diplomacy and the Habsburg Monarchy (Vienna, 2010), pp. 223–38.

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put it.51 According to Hans Fenske, for instance, the Reich ‘was nothing more than the name of a German state’ before the early 1920s, ‘an ideologically not especially burdened term’. In his view, ‘a conception of the Reich [Reichsgedanke] existed at best latently.’52 However, as we shall see now, the Reich had become a prominent topic of intellectual and political discourse already before 1918. But in contrast to the post-war period, when it was tied to anti-democratic and revisionist tendencies, the myth of the Reich bore a very different character during the First World War. On a domestic level, it was often aimed against centralizing tendencies and Prusso-Protestant hegemony. In connection with the German war aims debate, the Reich was brought up by moderate circles – in particular Catholics, South German intellectuals, and left-liberal advocates of economic cooperation in Central Europe – as an alternative or counter-model to large-scale annexations and rule by force. The revaluation of the medieval realm was clearly linked to wartime developments, such as the economic blockade of the Central Powers, the reconfiguration of German-Austrian relations, and the emerging discussion about the new order in Europe, but it has also to be seen within the context of long-standing imperialist ambitions and the debate over Kontinentalpolitik versus Weltpolitik. A few months before the outbreak of hostilities, the writer and journalist Alfons Paquet had published an essay on the imperial idea, which was reprinted in 1915 and promoted the Holy Roman Empire as a supranational and Christian-universal model for European unification (including France, Britain, and the Slavic peoples) under German leadership.53 Contrary to most wartime contributions on the Reich, the Habsburg Monarchy 51

52 53

K. Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik. Die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933, 4th ed. (Munich, 1994), p. 223. On the Reich myth, see K.O. v. Aretin et al., ‘Reich’, in O. Brunner et al. (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, 8 vols. (Stuttgart, 1972–97), V (1984), pp. 423–508; D. Langewiesche, ‘Reich, Nation und Staat in der jüngeren deutschen Geschichte’, HZ, 254 (1992), 341–81; D. Langewiesche, ‘Das Alte Reich nach seinem Ende. Die Reichsidee in der deutschen Politik des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Versuch einer nationalgeschichtlichen Neubewertung in welthistorischer Perspektive’, in Langewiesche, Reich, Nation, Föderation, pp. 211–34; H. Münkler, Reich – Nation – Europa. Modelle politischer Ordnung (Weinheim, 1996); D. Pöpping, Abendland. Christliche Akademiker und die Utopie der Antimoderne 1900–1945 (Berlin, 2002); H.A. Winkler, The Long Shadow of the Reich Weighing Up German History (London, 2002); M. Asche et al. (eds.), ‘Was vom Alten Reiche blieb . . .’ Deutungen, Institutionen und Bilder des frühneuzeitlichen Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2011); J. Whaley, ‘“Hier existiert noch das alte heilige deutsche Reich”: The Legacy of the Holy Roman Empire and the Unity of Germany’, PEGS, 83/1 (2014), 1–21. H. Fenske, ‘Das “Dritte Reich”. Die Perversion der Reichsidee’, in B. Martin (ed.), Deutschland in Europa. Ein historischer Rückblick (Munich, 1992), pp. 210–30 (p. 210). A. Paquet, Der Kaisergedanke (Frankfurt/M., 1915).

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did not figure prominently in Paquet’s scheme. The text would have been a rare exception, but after the outbreak of war, such conceptions were more widely circulated and discussed. In a 1915 article for Naumann’s influential periodical Die Hilfe, the young Jewish intellectual Eugen Rosenstock (later Rosenstock-Huessy) sketched out the vision of a supranational entity that would arise from the military partnership between Germany and Austria-Hungary: A new Reich comes into being, slowly building up from empires and states. In this Central European Empire [Reich der Mitte] we Germans keep our own empire of the German nation, the empire of 1867 and 1871. Yet this represented only a part of the dreams of 1785, of 1815 and 1848, the core and main element, admittedly, but one component only. There has long been the ‘eastern part of the empire’ next to the central empire of the German nation, namely Austria, of the German, Bohemian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovene nation. And who knows which other nations the Reich can comprise later on. In this addition lies . . . the reconciliation of nation and great power, the peaceful amalgamation of the two elemental forces in the history of states.54

Karl Lamprecht, too, imagined himself ‘a new Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’, wishing it ‘the lifespan and the abiding glory and splendour of the old during its first centuries’.55 However, it was usually Catholic authors who returned to the Reich and held it in the highest regard. In his well-known book Genius of War, Max Scheler spoke of ‘glorious times, the majesty and glamour of the old imperial idea’, which had originally been preserved by the Greater Germans but became marginalized in the nation-state of 1871. From the World War, he now expected a renaissance of old conceptions: ‘Arise, you Greater German idea with all proud reminiscences of the old German empire [Reich und Kaisertum]!’56 The philosopher considered the Lesser German unification a historico-political necessity to overcome Germany’s ideological and territorial antagonisms but rejected the Borussian reading of German history as a national doctrine and the only truth. As he put it in 1918: ‘We have to give up these teleological political constructs once and for all, and restore the diversity of Germanness . . . The German medieval world and its indigenous culture, the times of the great German empire, in brief, the universal-organizational periods of German history must occupy a different place in standard education. Because our future tasks derive from these lines and not from 54 55 56

E. Rosenstock, ‘Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation’, Hilfe, 2 December 1915, pp. 773–4. K. Lamprecht, ‘Das neue heilige römische Reich deutscher Nation’, in Amira (ed.), Liebesgaben, pp. 82–5 (p. 85). Scheler, ‘Der Genius des Krieges’, p. 51.

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Kleindeutschland.’57 Whereas Scheler advocated a synthesis of old and new, an organic combination of the Prusso-German work ethic and vigour and of more traditional South German (including Austrian) and Catholic qualities, such as cosmopolitanism and spirituality, other authors advanced the Reich as an alternative concept to the German nation-state of 1871. Norikus in this regard compared the old imperial idea with the values and fundamentals of the Lesser German entity: The big political contrast between the old and the new empire can shortly be characterized as follows: the old empire was big, Christian, and supranational, the new is small and national. The old empire with its elected Emperor was organized in a truly federalist way, the new empire with its hereditary Emperor, in which the leading state surpasses all other federal states several times in terms of territory and significance, stands for quasi-federalism. The old empire, the centre point of Europe, represented a guarantor of peace; . . . the new empire, which came into being by wrecking the old, . . . constitutes a permanent object of aggression and tension for the other powers.58

The recourse to the Christian-Occidental and federalist foundations of the Alte Reich, which was supposed to provide an orientation for the future political and territorial organization of the German nation and the relationship with Austria-Hungary, was also brought forward by nonCatholic intellectuals. Karl Buchheim, too, considered ‘medieval memories of the Reich’ a necessary counterweight to materialistic, Prusso-German Realpolitik and a basis or groundwork for a ‘new attitude’ which would overcome the narrow ‘Bismarckian nationalism’ and help to implement the ‘international idea’.59 Bismarck’s accomplishment certainly deserved to be honoured but should not be taken as an ever-valid model for political action: ‘Bismarck’s opinion does not any longer represent the norm for our political, not even for our domestic judgment.’60 It was, however, Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster who delivered one of the most fervent condemnations of the German nation-state during the war. In contrast to Scheler or Buchheim, he did not even grant the Bismarckian creation historic significance and merit as a temporary necessity but lamented the violent break of 1866. Presenting the Reich 57

58 59

60

M. Scheler, ‘Vom kulturellen Wiederaufbau Europas’, Hochland, February and March 1918, pp. 497–510, 663–81 (pp. 667–8). Also see his ‘Die Ursachen des Deutschenhasses. Eine nationalpädagogische Erörterung’ (1917), in Scheler, Gesammelte Werke, IV, pp. 283–372. [Norikus], ‘Das alte, das neue und das kommende Reich’, p. 597. K. Buchheim, ‘Der internationale Gedanke’, Grenzboten, 8 March 1916, pp. 290–8 (p. 295); K. Buchheim, ‘Bismarckgeist’, Grenzboten, 6 September 1916, pp. 289–97 (p. 291). K. Buchheim, ‘Reichsgründung’, p. 99. Buchheim eventually converted to Catholicism in 1942.

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as a model for a peaceful and conciliatory Central European entity, he severely criticized the chauvinist policy of the Lesser German state which had to be blamed for the outbreak of war. Neither Bismarck nor Treitschke, Foerster claimed, but rather Constantin Frantz had recognized Germany’s genuine ‘world-political task’ and ‘international vocation’, realized for the first time in the supranational Holy Roman Empire.61 With this essay, Foerster caused considerable irritation and annoyance amongst centre-right intellectuals and politicians. The Munich Faculty of Arts and Humanities publicly expressed ‘severe disapproval’, one of Foerster’s colleagues charged him with high treason, and the Bavarian minister of education suspended the professor for two terms.62 It does not come as a surprise that Foerster’s article had originally been published in a Swiss journal, and that one of his most prominent supporters, Richard von Kralik, was from Austria where the Reich had always been held in higher esteem than in Germany and figured prominently in discourse about the Austrian mission. Kralik, too, was convinced that the Germany of the Middle Ages represented ‘the real, the proper Germany’, and that Bismarck’s creation was merely ‘a provisional arrangement, an emergency contrivance [Notbau]’: ‘It was a mistake to raise this artificial nation-state against all historical tradition to a unitary state and a great power, at the expense of Austria and papacy.’63 In his view, the war should not be fought ‘for the creation of Bismarck but for its improvement or, to put it in a better way, for the cancellation of the provisional solution’. Kralik suggested the rebuilding of the Greater German fatherland, a higher political organization based on the associative principle and encompassing other nationalities, ‘the organism which was once named the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, later the German Confederation and then (1850) the Seventy-Million-Empire, and what is now somewhat faintly called “Mitteleuropa”’: To us, the concept of Germanness as advocated by Bismarck appears as too narrow. The German nation is not a nation like the eight or nine other great nations but something incomparable . . . The German being [Wesen] did not just enter world history in 1871, but it is the spiritual and actual force which since the fall of the Roman Empire has shaped all world history, and it must not remain diminished and fragmented as in Bismarck’s period.64 61 62 63

64

F.W. Foerster, ‘Bismarcks Werk im Lichte der großdeutschen Kritik’, Friedens-Warte, January 1916, pp. 1–9 (p. 2). F.W. Foerster, Erlebte Weltgeschichte 1869–1953. Memoiren (Nuremberg, 1953), pp. 187–93. R. v. Kralik, ‘Unsere Aufgaben im Weltkrieg’, in his Entscheidung im Weltkrieg, pp. 17–23 (p. 21); R. v. Kralik, ‘Konstantin Frantz und Bismarck’, Reichspost, 21 June 1916; R. v. Kralik, ‘So sprach Bismarck’, Reichspost, 7 July 1916. R. v. Kralik, ‘Noch einmal der Fall Foerster’, in Kralik, Vom Weltkrieg zum Weltbund, pp. 424–7 (pp. 425–7).

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Interestingly, Thomas Mann also came to Foerster’s defence. In his Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, he argued that the philosopher’s vision had to be seen as part of a wider trend, ‘the rebirth of the preBismarckian idea of Greater Germany’. While Foerster’s rejection of the Reformation was misguided and to be condemned, it would be ‘boorish and wrong’ to curse him: ‘How could it not happen, in spiritually uprooted and agitated times like ours, that his universal ideal of the Middle Ages would not also come to the fore.’ According to Mann, Foerster’s supranationalism was a fundamentally German idea and very different from western internationalism. At least Foerster was not ‘a civilization’s literary man’; his thoughts would be much preferable to the ‘unspeakably antiGerman declamations of our Italo-French Freemasons, revolutionary epigones and opera singers of progress’.65 Obviously, this was a case of intellectual solidarity and did not suggest a concurrence of views; Mann was not at all in favour of a return to the medieval Reich, and in fact interpreted the war of 1914 as the continuation and intensification of longstanding Prusso-Protestant opposition to western spirit and control: ‘The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the struggles against the Roman pope, Wittenberg, 1813, 1870 – all this was mere child’s play compared to the terrible, perilous, and, in the most magnificent sense, irrational struggle against the world entente of civilization.’66 Austria and the Alte Reich played no role in Thomas Mann’s wartime publications. Foerster’s essay was met with scathing criticism by radical nationalists who condemned not only his anti-Prussian stance and denunciation of Bismarck’s achievements, but also his leniency towards other nationalities, his disapproval of imperialist plans, and his demands for a peace of understanding as a ‘non-German attitude’.67 A Pan-German author from Austria called such views ‘a serious völkisch danger’ and repeated wellknown arguments against the glorification of the Reich: it had always been a ‘lifeless body’, a ‘rotten cadaver’ and ‘organizational monstrosity’, too weak to serve German interests and thus inferior to the unified and powerful German nation-state of 1871.68 Other right-wing commentators, however, took a different point of view and advanced an alternative interpretation of the former empire. In contrast to those who imagined the new Reich as a supranational entity based on Christian values and 65 67

68

66 Mann, Reflections, pp. 83–4. Ibid., pp. 33–4. [P.] v. Hoensbroech, ‘Offener Brief an Professor J.M. Förster [sic!] in München’, AB, 8 July 1916, pp. 262–3 (p. 263). Also see W. Stapel, ‘Konstantin Frantzens Mitteleuropa und F.W. Foersters Europa’, Kunstwart, 2nd July issue 1916, pp. 49–57. B. Imendörffer, ‘Das alte und das neue Deutsche Reich’, DÖ, 1 March 1916, pp. 332–7 (pp. 333–5). For more reactions and Foerster’s replies, see ‘Der Fall Foerster’, FriedensWarte, July 1916, pp. 203–8, and ‘Der Fall Foerster in den Schützengräben’, FriedensWarte, August/September 1916, pp. 241–3.

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guaranteeing a peaceful cohabitation of the Central European nations, they revaluated the Holy Roman Empire (and the German-Austrian relationship) for predominantly geopolitical reasons. In this regard, they were concerned with the ‘form’, not the ‘content’, with size and dimensions instead of federalist and pluralist organization.69 As Martin Spahn, who already before the war had favoured a policy of continental expansionism on the basis of closer German-Austrian cooperation, stated in October 1914: Against Russia and its allies only one big Reich is at arms, which stretches from the North Sea to the Adriatic Sea, from the Carpathian Mountains to the ridge of the Vosges . . . Through the gun smoke thus shimmer the boundaries of the ‘SeventyMillion-Empire’ the Germans of the 18th century and the Wars of Liberation as well as up to fifty years ago those of the Greater German party had dreamt of . . . It is the extended boundaries of the old Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.70

Friedrich von der Leyen, a renowned literary scholar, similarly maintained that the German people had never lost their yearning for a great German empire: ‘The year 1870 has not completely fulfilled this longing. Now, in this war, a German Reich seems to be emerging which is more comparable to the medieval empire – in terms of its prestige on land and sea, its extension, its dominant position in Europe.’71 Radical-nationalist authors repeatedly alluded to the Reich and its sheer territorial size in the discussion of German war aims. For Kurd von Strantz, a representative of the racist camp of the Pan-German League, it simply served as a shallow reference point, as a historical backdrop and justification for imperialist claims. According to Strantz, the World War had to be understood as a German ‘war of revenge’ that ‘shall finally restore our ancestral national and imperial frontiers that we had lost in the West since 1552 and gradually in the East. Neither 1815 nor 1871 brought them back. Bismarck was the beginner, not the accomplisher of our völkisch rise.’72 Wilhelm Augustin, another Pan-German author who had made his mark with pieces about the Aryan race and a Germanic religion, was even more forthright. He was convinced that God had bestowed the Germans with the right and mission to expand their Lebensraum, to subdue and resettle 69 70 71 72

See, for example, the discussion in C. Franke, ‘Die Bedeutung der mittelalterlichen Reichsgrenzen’, Grenzboten, 29 September 1915, pp. 408–12. Spahn, ‘An den Pforten des Weltkrieges’, p. 18. F. v. der Leyen, ‘Deutschlands weltgeschichtliche Sendung’, Panther, June 1915, pp. 641–59 (p. 653). K. v. Strantz, Unser völkisches Kriegsziel. Die Wiederherstellung der alten geschichtlichen Reichs- und Volksgrenzen im Osten, Süden und Westen, sowie die künftige deutsche Übersee (Leipzig, 1918), p. 1.

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other nationalities, and to erect ‘a new thousand-year-old Holy German Empire of the German Nation’.73 In contrast to those intellectuals who admired the Alte Reich because of its multinational tradition and who presented it as guiding idea for a federal European state order, Strantz or Spahn did not question the Lesser German power-state. Rather, what they had in mind was its territorial aggrandizement. For them, obviously, the Reich only represented a synonym for a German-dominated Europe which had ostensibly already existed in the Middle Ages and upon which the German nation had to fall back again. Reich and Germandom were regarded as identical; an equal participation of other nationalities in this context was, of course, not intended, nor was the actual rehabilitation of the Holy Roman Empire that had been marginalized and devalued by neo-Rankean and other recent history writing. All in all, we can hardly speak of a revision of the dominant historical view, of a new reading of German national history. The Bismarck centenary, the contributions to the 500th anniversary of Hohenzollern rule (April/October 1915), or the quatercentenary of the Reformation (October 1917) confirmed once again the prevalence of the established historiographical conception that focused on the Prusso-Protestant nation-state and essentially excluded Catholics and Austro-Germans, a certain relativization or reinterpretation of unpleasant memories notwithstanding. Centre-right historians and publicists continued to draw a straight line from the Brandenburg margraves and Luther to the proclamation at Versailles and the year 1914, describing Prussia’s ascent to power as an extraordinary accomplishment for the benefit of the German nation. As Philipp Zorn, Professor of Constitutional Law and member of the Prussian Herrenhaus, put it in a typical statement: ‘The new Reich, the state of the whole German people, is built on the granite fundament of the old Brandenburg-Prussian state, the work of the Great Elector and Friedrich Wilhelm I.’74 Fritz Bley, publicist and chairman of the 73

74

W. Augustin, Deutscher Siegesglaube, 3 vols. (Bochum, 1914–15), I: Das heilige deutsche Reich deutscher Nation (1914), p. 15. Also see [A.] Bonus, ‘Das Reich’, Kunstwart, 1st March issue 1917, pp. 224–7. P. Zorn, ‘Der Staat Preußen und das Deutsche Volk’, KM, April 1916, pp. 485–501 (p. 500). Also see H. v. Petersdorff, ‘Fünfhundert Jahre Hohenzollernherrschaft’, KM, October 1915, pp. 9–14; G. v. Below, Deutschland und die Hohenzollern. Eine Kriegsgedenkrede (Leipzig, 1915); O. Hintze, Die Hohenzollern und ihr Werk. Fünfhundert Jahre vaterländischer Geschichte (Berlin, 1915); ‘Ein halbes Jahrtausend Hohenzollernherrschaft’, NAZ, 30 April 1915; ‘Der Hohenzollerntag’, NPZ, 30 April 1915; F. Rachfahl, ‘Hohenzoller-Jubiläum’, FZ, 20 October 1915; ‘Graf Westarp zum Hohenzollerntage’, DTZ, 25 October 1915; E. Brandenburg, Die Reichsgründung, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1916); D. Schäfer et al., Preußen. Deutschlands Vergangenheit und Deutschlands Zukunft, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1916); F. Meinecke, ‘Reich und Nation seit 1871’, IM, 1 May and 1 June 1917, cols 907–52, 1097–116.

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conservative-monarchist Preußenbund, argued in a similar fashion that ‘Prussia is Germany’s most beautiful blossom and Germany is Prussia’s finest progeny’.75 Houston Stewart Chamberlain also identified Prussia with the ‘real Germany’, with political greatness and everything good in German culture and national life: ‘The South German has the same stamina and fights as well as the North German. We have seen that in 1870 and 1914; but the genius of organization, the strained alertness, the never-relaxing readiness, the marvellous faculty of being always prepared to spring, that is Prussia’s merit.’ The son-in-law of Richard Wagner even resumed arguments from the heydays of Borussian historiography by portraying the Thirty Years’ War as a ‘war between the genuine German and the non-German element’, and described the development of the German people to the Lesser German nationstate, the rise of Prussia, and the ultimate exclusion of Austria as a ‘process of fermentation, convalescence, and purification’.76 During the war, most intellectuals subscribed to what they understood as essentially Prussian virtues: hard work, discipline, a sense of organization and duty, militarism, and (Protestant) piety, thus sharing the opinions and beliefs of certain decision-making circles in government and the army. Seeckt, for example, regularly stressed self-command, calm prudence, and conscientiousness as core Prussian virtues and ‘spirit of the German people’. As he explained in a letter to his sister in November 1917, these qualities were evident in the unshakable loyalty of the civil servants, the death-defying courage of the submarine crews, and the dynamism and energy of the industry. They had infused other parts of Germany and enriched Europe: Small Prussia has educated the South of the Reich after a lot of hard work, instilled even in Austria military discipline and order, at least temporarily, while Bulgaria and Turkey owe their achievements to us. Japan and Chile have learned from us and today the whole world is marked by militarism after the Prussian model. Hence the hate against us, against Prussia, everywhere from Bavaria via Austria to the actual enemies.77

The founding appeal of the right-wing and annexationist Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (DVLP) of September 1917, which has repeatedly been described as a völkisch and even ‘pre-fascist’ movement, expressed in fact a similar, more traditionalist mindset. The proclamation explicitly 75 76 77

F. Bley, ‘Preußen’, DTZ, 5 May 1915. H.S. Chamberlain, ‘Deutschland’, in his Kriegsaufsätze, 4th ed. (Munich, 1914), pp. 68–84 (pp. 78, 82, 83). Seeckt to M. v. Rothkirch und Trach, 12 November 1917, in Meier-Welcker, Seeckt, pp. 717–20 (p. 718).

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referred to Bismarck and Wilhelm I, the ‘unifiers of the German tribes’ who had ‘fought like titans against this ruinous factionalism’ of the present day. Germany would owe its greatness and defensive capabilities to ‘the military education by the Prussian kings of the House of Hohenzollern’. For the enemies, this Prussian monarchical leadership represented the main obstacle to the total defeat of Germany.78 Moreover, despite the Protestants’ promise to keep the confessional truce, and even though the Reformation anniversary was not celebrated publicly, the wartime glorification of Luther as the ‘German archetype’, as educator and ‘leader of the nation’, and of the year 1517 as pivotal for the national development of the German people remained conspicuous.79 As Chamberlain declared: ‘We all became Germans through Luther’s works. He taught us to see in the German people and the German polity divine institutions worthy of love and veneration. Thus he laid the foundation.’80 Genuine attempts to come to a better understanding of Catholic life and of the history and politics of modern German Catholicism were scarce.81 Indeed, more characteristic for many Protestant circles was a keen disappointment about the lost opportunity of the Reformation jubilee ‘to rouse and boost the spirit which represents Germany’s genuine nature and has created its greatness’, and a growing feeling of confusion and mistrust considering the Centre Party’s involvement in the Peace Resolution of the Reichstag in July 1917, the Pope’s peace efforts, and the appointment of the Bavarian Catholic Georg von Hertling as chancellor (and minister-president of Prussia) in late 1917.82 Many Catholics, on the other hand, still felt marginalized. The priest and prolific writer Johannes Mumbauer reproached the Prusso-Protestant 78

79

80 81 82

‘Aufruf zur Gründung der Deutschen Vaterlands-Partei vom 2. September 1917’, in UF, II: Der militärische Zusammenbruch und das Ende des Kaiserreichs (1959), pp. 48–50 (p. 49). H. Hagenlücke, Deutsche Vaterlandspartei. Die nationale Recht am Ende des Kaiserreiches (Düsseldorf, 1997), highlights the more traditionalist elements of the party. For a brief discussion of the historiography and the ‘pre-fascist’ references, see pp. 14–18. A. v. Harnack, Martin Luther und die Grundlegung der Reformation (Berlin, 1917), p. 53; Verhandlungen des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/ 17, vol. 4, 28 February 1917, col. 4373 (G. Traub). Also see G. Maron, ‘Luther 1917. Beobachtungen zur Literatur des 400. Reformationsjubiläums’, ZKG, 93 (1982), 177–221, and C. Albrecht, ‘Zwischen Kriegstheologie und Krisentheologie. Zur Lutherrezeption im Reformationsjubiläum 1917’, in H. Medick and P. Schmidt (eds.), Luther zwischen den Kulturen. Zeitgenossenschaft – Wechselwirkung (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 482–99. H.S. Chamberlain, ‘Die deutsche Sprache’, in his Kriegsaufsätze, pp. 24–35 (p. 33). See, for example, K. Buchheim, ‘Aus der politischen Vergangenheit der deutschen Katholiken’, Grenzboten, 13 September 1916, pp. 329–37. J. Haller to Eulenburg, 10 November 1917, in J.C.G. Röhl (ed.), Philipp Eulenburgs politische Korrespondenz, 3 vols. (Boppard, 1976–83), III: Krisen, Krieg und Katastrophen 1895–1921 (1983), pp. 2234–7 (p. 2236). See, for example, H. Kremers, Die Einkreisung des deutschen Protestantismus. Ein Mahnruf (Bonn, 1917); H. v. Liebig, ‘Graf Hertling’, DE, February 1918, pp. 135–9.

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intellectuals for ‘a lack of historical awareness’ for ignoring that ‘within the present German empire a good third and within the German linguistic and cultural community more than half of the Germans fundamentally disapprove of the Reformation’.83 Catholics had contributed to the war’s glorification as just and in the spirit of God and repeatedly affirmed their devotion to the cause of the German nation. Many representatives of the Centre Party’s right wing supported expansionist war aims.84 In return, however, they expected to be recognized as full-value Germans and anticipated the Protestants’ commitment to equal opportunities in society and politics.85 It is from within this context that the attempt to take advantage of the re-emerged sense of togetherness between Reich Germans and Austro-Germans in order to ‘correct’ the historico-political thinking in Imperial Germany and to gain more social, political, and cultural recognition has to be seen. Confessional narrow-mindedness, it was also held, would negatively affect the relationship with the Catholic Habsburg ally and the German-speaking population in Austria. However, due to their fundamentally antagonistic or at least challenging approach, which critically compared Bismarck’s creation of 1871 with a supranational and federalist alternative, authors such as Norikus 83

84

85

J. Mumbauer, ‘Ein Katholik an die Protestanten’, Kunstwart, 1st November issue 1917, pp. 100–4 (p. 102). Similar: M. Reichmann, ‘Bekenntnis und Vaterland’, StZ, January 1915, pp. 382–5; J. Overmans, ‘“Der deutsche Gedanke in der Welt”’, StZ, February 1915, pp. 483–7; ‘Protestantismus und Katholizismus im neuen Deutschland’, KVZ, 14 June 1915; ‘Das Reformationsjubiläum und das deutsche Volk’, KVZ, 30 October 1917. See, for example, J. Mausbach, Vom gerechten Kriege und seinen Wirkungen (Münster, 1914); J. Mumbauer, Vaterland! Gedanken eines katholischen Deutschen über Volk, Staat, Rasse und Nation (M. Gladbach, 1915); G. Pfeilschifter (ed.), Deutsche Kultur, Katholizismus und Weltkrieg. Eine Abwehr des Buches: La Guerre allemande et le Catholicisme (Freiburg, 1915); H. Schrörs, Der Krieg und der Katholizismus (Kempten, 1915). On German Catholicism in the First World War, see H. Lutz, Demokratie im Zwielicht. Der Weg der deutschen Katholiken aus dem Kaiserreich in die Republik 1914–1925 (Munich, 1963); H. Hürten, ‘Die katholische Kirche im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in W. Michalka (ed.), Der Erste Weltkrieg. Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse (Munich, 1997), pp. 725–35; S. Fuchs, ‘Vom Segen des Krieges’. Katholische Gebildete im Ersten Weltkrieg. Eine Studie zur Kriegsdeutung im akademischen Katholizismus (Stuttgart, 2004); Strötz, Der Katholizismus im deutschen Kaiserreich, II: Wilhelminische Epoche und Erster Weltkrieg (1890–1918), pp. 181–239; M. Lätzel, Die katholische Kirche im Ersten Weltkrieg. Zwischen Nationalismus und Friedenswillen (Regensburg, 2014). With a focus on everyday practice, see now P.J. Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1922 (Cambridge, 2015). See, for example, J. Mausbach, ‘Die Wahrung und Förderung des konfessionellen Friedens’, in F. Thimme (ed.), Vom inneren Frieden des deutschen Volkes. Ein Buch gegenseitigen Verstehens und Vertrauens (Leipzig, 1916), pp. 142–67; A. Grunenberg, ‘Die Stellung der Katholiken in Deutschland. Die Paritätsfrage’, in M. Meinertz and H. Sacher (eds.), Deutschland und der Katholizismus. Gedanken zur Neugestaltung des deutschen Geistes- und Gesellschaftslebens, 2 vols. (Freiburg, 1918), II: Das Gesellschaftsleben, pp. 159–74.

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did not prevail but remained within an isolated Catholic and antiPrussian discourse. Unlike them, right-wing Catholics such as Martin Spahn, who despite condemning the year 1866 in the end firmly stood on the grounds of the Lesser German nation-state and associated their ideas with the dominant tradition, succeeded in obtaining more attention and recognition. Yet here the balancing act between the approval of Bismarck and the renaissance of the Reich often resulted in a shift from the Christian-conservative to a secular, völkisch-imperialist understanding of the Reich. Both tendencies, however, can only be understood against the background of the Mitteleuropa discussion, the debate on a closer cooperation between the two Central European empires. As we will see, most commentators responded to the attempt of ideologizing the project by referring to Greater German traditions and the Reich idea not only with indifference or scepticism, but more often with open rejection. For them, Mitteleuropa was an issue of territorial expansionism in the interest of the nation-state, not a matter of supranational arrangements or ethnic romanticism.

5

Mitteleuropa and the war aims debate

Despite the official ban on a public discussion, the subject of war aims quickly attracted the attention of wide sections of German society. Arguably more than ever before, expansion (in some form or another) became a matter of national concern and was perceived as a question of survival. The wartime economic blockade of Germany, the loss of overseas territories, and the disruption of vital trade connections, which soon caused considerable shortages of foodstuffs, raw materials, and consumer goods, greatly increased the interest in continental consolidation and economic autarchy.1 Many of these plans took up and often radicalized pre-war ideas of a closer relationship between Imperial Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy. This had practical reasons, but the rise of Mitteleuropa to one of the most popular (and most contested) schemes of the war was also due to the reshaping of German-Austrian relations. Indeed, the exuberance of feeling and optimism during the first months of the war, the experience of joint resistance against superior forces, and the novel sense of togetherness between Reich Germans and Austro-Germans led, as Henry Cord Meyer has rightly observed, to ‘the widest popular expression of grossdeutsch nationalism since the 1860’s’.2 In Germany, many commentators expressed a desire for a common future with the Dual Monarchy. Adolf Rapp, for instance, hoped for a new ‘political-military-spiritual community’ in the forthcoming ‘united Mitteleuropa, in this Greater Germany’.3 Karl Scheffler demanded the creation of a ‘huge, Central European Germanic empire which has the power to direct the fate of Europe and to secure the peace perpetually, . . . an even bigger, more powerful, more 1

2 3

On Mitteleuropa in the First World War, with a focus on the public debate, see Meyer, Mitteleuropa, pp. 116–290; R. Opitz (ed.), Europastrategien des deutschen Kapitals 1900–1945 (Cologne, 1977), pp. 211–466; Weimer, ‘Mitteleuropa als politisches Ordnungskonzept?’, pp. 69–114; S. Verosta, ‘The German Concept of Mitteleuropa, 1916–1918 and Its Contemporary Critics’, in Kann et al. (eds.), The Habsburg Empire, pp. 203–20; Neitzel, Weltmacht, pp. 293–389. Meyer, Mitteleuropa, p. 137. Rapp, ‘Der großdeutsche Gedanke’, pp. 46–51 (pp. 47, 49).

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united Germany, once we win’.4 The South German historian Karl Alexander von Müller envisioned ‘as the higher goal of victory, if God grants it to us, a Mitteleuropa surrounding our borders’, while the völkisch educationalist and theologian Wilhelm Schwaner wrote: ‘Now the new and Greater Germany has to emerge! Now the United States of Europe under Germanic leadership must appear!’5 Until late 1914, such requests often remained vague. Euphoric idealism rather than sober reflections dominated the public debate; superficial historical references to the Holy Roman Empire, Greater German ideas, or pre-war thinkers such as Friedrich List and Constantin Frantz prevailed instead of realistic and tangible political schemes for the future. As Friedrich Naumann remarked in November 1914: ‘We wish that a solution be found but at present we do not know it.’6 The division of Germany’s most important ally and incorporation of its western part was, of course, unthinkable. In connection with the widespread notion of an Austro-German civilizing task and the idea that the Habsburg Empire served as an outpost of Germandom in South-Eastern Europe, even radical nationalists strongly opposed irredentist tendencies. The Pan-German Felix Hänsch, for instance, rejected a break-up of the Danube Monarchy, ‘because even an enlarged German Reich could not forever withstand the Slavic surge . . . We need Austria and its Germans.’7 Naumann, too, reasoned in this sense: ‘We let the dual entity on the Danube have its twelve million Germans in order to create a frontier wall against Russia, which will last for further fights.’8 Despite profound feelings for the ‘German brothers’, the results of 1848–49 and 1866–71, that is, the exclusion of Austria from German affairs and its subsequent reorientation towards the Balkans, should not be questioned: It is Bismarck’s abiding achievement in German-Austro-Hungarian history to have barred this thought . . . Would the annexation of the German parts by the German Reich have been of much use? Now empires grow together. Or else, to whom would the Carpathian Mountains belong? The lands on the Drave and Sava? Where would, in the case of simple nationalism, Trieste on the Adriatic Sea belong?9 4 5

6 7 8 9

Scheffler, ‘Der Deutschen zweite Einigung’. K.A. v. Müller, ‘Das neue Deutschland!’, SM, October 1914, pp. 88–95 (p. 94); W. Schwaner, ‘Das alte und das neue Deutschland’, Volkserzieher, September 1914, pp. 137–40 (p. 139). F. Naumann, ‘Mitteleuropäische Zukunftsgedanken’, Hilfe, 19 November 1914, pp. 762–3 (p. 763). Hänsch, An der Schwelle, p. 101. F. Naumann, ‘Die Nationalitäten Mitteleuropas’, Hilfe, 8 April 1915, pp. 216–17 (p. 217). Naumann, ‘Unsere Bundesgenossen und wir’, p. 8.

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There were also domestic reasons against irredentist tendencies, as the Hamburg historian Theodor Lorentzen explained. Germany would become ‘half-Catholic’ if it was to incorporate the Austro-Germans: ‘The supremacy of the Centre Party in the new Reichstag would be sealed forever.’ Yet for Lorentzen, too, what proved decisive was the value of the Habsburg Empire as a right-hand man of Imperial Germany: a German-led entity neutralizing and incorporating the western and southern Slavs, a bulwark against the East, and a bridge to the Orient.10 For these and other commentators, there was no doubt that reasons of state had the priority over ethno-national politics of emotions. ‘And thus it seems that what used to be called Greater German nowadays has to be called mitteleuropäisch’, Hugo Preuß concluded, implying that a Central European union represented the right solution to the German question. The unification of all Germans, he declared, could not be achieved in a Greater German nation-state, but only in a federation or association of states.11 Naumann similarly demanded: ‘We must take up these old problems where they were left lying in 1866.’12 We still know relatively little about such attitudes and the actual significance of Mitteleuropa for German national identity. Arguably, an alliance between two unrelated states would not have caused such widespread enthusiasm and requests for closer political association. The crucial issue is, however, what happened once fervour waned, and whether the Central European idea really raised the German question again. This chapter demonstrates that for a large majority of the German political and intellectual elite, the union with the Habsburg Monarchy did not represent a national or völkisch aim, a popular project of eventual German-Austrian unification, or a means to strengthen Germandom abroad. Mitteleuropa was but one of several German wartime programmes, a highly contested concept in which the situation of the Austro-Germans played a marginal role compared with economic and geopolitical interests. In the following, the focus will be on the attitudes of various interest groups, political parties, and ideological camps, both within Germany and Austria, whereas governmental views and diplomatic affairs will be covered in more detail in connection with the Polish question.

10 11 12

Lorentzen, Deutschland und Oesterreich, p. 23. Preuß, ‘Großdeutsch, Kleindeutsch’, p. 53. F. Naumann, ‘Mitteleuropäische Literatur’, Hilfe, 18 March 1915, pp. 173–5 (p. 174). Also see, for example, Junius [i.e. S. Saenger], ‘Kleindeutsche und Großdeutsche’, NR, July 1916, pp. 996–1003.

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Rethinking federalism and the nation-state Friedrich Naumann’s famous Mitteleuropa book was one of the most significant intellectual contributions to the war in the German-speaking world and greatly enhanced the general interest in the Central European project.13 The volume appeared in October 1915, at a time when the German public appeared more receptive than ever before to ideas of a political and economic solidification of the alliance, given the territorial gains in western Russia, the Entente’s defeat in the Dardanelles Campaign, the Bulgarian entry into the war on the side of the Central Powers, and the subsequent victory over Serbia. But the book’s success must also be attributed to Naumann’s captivating rhetoric, which differed from the austere language of economists and legal experts. Naumann explicitly based his vision of a common future of both empires on the experience of comradeship-in-arms and portrayed the scheme as the continuation or consequence of the wartime community of fate: What ought to be our profit from the war? For what ought our dead to have died? To the end that we should part from one another again the day after the war and act as though we had never known one another? That would be to squander the noblest spiritual good. Mid-Europe is the fruit of war. We have sat together in the war’s economic prison, we have fought together; we are determined to live together!14

Naumann was convinced that a permanent and harmonious agreement between Germany and the Habsburg realm not only necessitated the discussion of trade and customs policy, of administrative and military details, but that it also required increased mutual understanding and a shared sense of belonging.15 In order to promote more comprehension and sympathy, the politician published several articles on the complicated domestic situation of the Dual Monarchy.16 Naumann also called for 13

14 15

16

On Naumann, see T. Heuss, Friedrich Naumann. Der Mann, das Werk, die Zeit, 3rd ed., ed. by A. Milatz (Munich, 1968 [orig. 1937]); P. Theiner, Sozialer Liberalismus und deutsche Weltpolitik. Friedrich Naumann im wilhelminischen Deutschland (1860–1919) (Baden-Baden, 1983); J. Frölich, ‘Friedrich Naumanns “Mitteleuropa”. Ein Buch, seine Umstände und seine Folgen’, in R. vom Bruch (ed.), Friedrich Naumann in seiner Zeit (Berlin, 2000), pp. 245–67; A. Peschel, Friedrich Naumanns und Max Webers ‘Mitteleuropa’. Eine Betrachtung ihrer Konzeptionen im Kontext mit den Ideen von 1914 und dem Alldeutschen Verband (Dresden, 2005). F. Naumann, Central Europe, trans. by C.M. Meredith (London, 1917), p. 287. See, for example, ‘Auf dem Wege nach Mitteleuropa. Vortrag des Reichstagsabgeordneten Friedrich Naumann’, NFP, 2 February 1916, and F. Naumann, ‘Der mitteleuropäische Wille’, WdZ, 11 February 1916, pp. 3–4. See, for example, his ‘Die Doppelmonarchie’, Hilfe, 25 February 1915, pp. 117–18 and ‘Zwei Nachbarländer’, Hilfe, 4 March 1915, pp. 133–4. Also note his Österreich-Ungarn der Waffengefährte Deutschlands (Berlin, 1917).

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a ‘fresh historical consciousness’, a ‘revolution in thought’, which he regarded as indispensable for the genesis of a ‘new sentiment for Mitteleuropa’: a kind of common identity to be promoted by young, energetic historians, ‘the educators of the people’.17 To him, it was necessary to forgive and forget the ‘numerous old disagreements’ between Austria and Prussia, such as the war of 1866.18 In a second step, Naumann declared the Holy Roman Empire a direct precursor of the future entity, stating that ‘the early German Emperors’ had been ‘Central European figures in the fullest sense of the word’ and that Mitteleuropa had once already existed as a world power: Now, during the Great War, this ancient Empire is striving and pushing under the earth, longing to return after its long sleep . . . Are you not conscious, in this superhuman war, of the spirits of our ancestors? Do our sons go side by side to their death merely because of a written treaty, or is there something behind? . . . All this was once one Empire! Now it is only the dream of an Empire. What will it become?19

By acknowledging the multinational tradition of the Alte Reich, Naumann seemed to share the view of many Catholic intellectuals, who honoured the medieval realm for its universalist and Christian values. However, the former Lutheran pastor merely utilized the Reich myth in order to provide his brainchild with additional legitimacy, as he confessed to his friend Walter Goetz, who had criticized the historical analogy as inaccurate. The Leipzig historian insisted that the Holy Roman Empire had been fragile and vulnerable because it went beyond ‘the more limited but firm basis of national life’. In reality, the Germans had ‘for centuries suffered powerlessness because of the old Mitteleuropa’.20 In his reply, Naumann justified the historical references to the Middle Ages as necessary in order to ‘communicate to the Reich Germans a more lenient and friendly understanding of the Magyars and western Slavs’ and to win over the nonGerman nationalities within the Danube Empire: ‘For the regions of the Habsburg Monarchy world history does not begin with Frederick the Second.’21 Convinced that the slogan of a struggle between Germandom and Slavdom was ‘a misconception’ and ‘a serious departure from ideas proper to the alliance’, he even promoted the idea that the cohabitation of the various ethnic groups within the German-AustroHungarian community would ultimately create a common ‘human type’. Instead of talking of a ‘German war’, one should consider the 17 20 21

Naumann, Central Europe, pp. 35, 39. 18 Ibid., p. 36. 19 Ibid., pp. 43–5. W. Goetz, ‘Deutschland und Österreich’, Hilfe, 10 February 1916, pp. 92–3 (p. 92). Also see his letter to Naumann of 4 February 1916, BArch, N 3001, No. 16. Naumann to Walter Goetz, 16 February 1916, BArch, N 3001, No. 16.

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conflict a Central European phenomenon: ‘We fight as Germans, but we fight with millions of non-Germans, who are prepared to go with us to battle and to death, so long as they have our respect and can believe that our victory will also be their victory.’22 On many points, Naumann followed his party colleague Franz von Liszt, who had presented one of the earliest, more specific programmes for the future relationship between Vienna and Berlin.23 Both shared the widespread belief that the future belonged to great empires, vast economic areas with considerable political influence on the world stage. According to Naumann, Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy would be too small on their own and not powerful enough to play a major role in international politics in the forthcoming ‘age of extending State federations and Great Powers’: ‘Our conceptions of size have entirely changed. Only very big States have any significance on their own account . . . The spirit of large-scale industry and of super-national organisation has seized politics.’24 Naumann also predicted the continuation of the ‘policy of the trenches’ after the war and the formation of power blocs in East and West, which would require the creation of a firm Central European association. Against this backdrop, traditional nation-state categories appeared as outdated, and Naumann consequently called for more openmindedness towards interstate cooperation: ‘The country without alliances is isolated, and the isolated country is endangered.’25 It is remarkable to what extent the World War and the coalition of the Central Powers sparked in Germany a novel discussion about state and nation, multinationalism and federalism.26 The ‘Austrian miracle’ was one of the main stimuli for this debate, demonstrating ‘how senseless the theoretical exaggeration of the nationality principle is’, as Veit Valentin put it.27 In mid-August 1914, the Frankfurter Zeitung announced the ‘collapse of racial nationalism’: ‘When Germans and Czechs’, it said, ‘when Hungarians and Serbo-Croats in sheer enthusiasm march against Russia and its Serbian dominion, then it is proved that there are stronger 22 23 24 26

27

Naumann, Central Europe, p. 11. F. v. Liszt, Ein mitteleuropäischer Staatenverband als nächstes Ziel der deutschen auswärtigen Politik (Leipzig, 1914). 25 Naumann, Central Europe, pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 8, 5. Still relatively little studied, but see W. Conze, ‘Nationalstaat oder Mitteleuropa? Die Deutschen des Reichs und die Nationalitätenfrage Ostmitteleuropas im ersten Weltkrieg’, in W. Conze (ed.), Deutschland und Europa. Historische Studien zur Völkerund Staatenordnung des Abendlandes (Düsseldorf, 1951), pp. 201–30, and T. Schieder, ‘Idee und Gestalt des übernationalen Staates seit dem 19. Jahrhundert’, in T. Schieder, Nationalismus und Nationalstaat. Studien zum nationalen Problem im modernen Europa (Göttingen, 1991), pp. 38–64. V. Valentin, ‘Was wir seit 1870 erstrebt haben’, SM, September 1914, pp. 788–90 (p. 790).

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ties for human beings than those of race’.28 Heinz Potthoff, like Naumann and Liszt a member of the Progressive People’s Party (FVP), observed that ‘the national idea has undergone a considerable change: the völkisch feeling based on blood relationship is replaced by the commitment to the state [Staatsgedanke], the organic cultural community’.29 Friedrich Meinecke brought this view to the simple formula that ‘political association [Staatsverband] surpasses ethnic affiliation [Volksverband]’.30 These left-liberal authors were joined by some Catholic commentators for whom Austria-Hungary proved the possibility of a peaceful and mutually stimulating coexistence of several nationalities within one political entity. As the Kölnische Volkszeitung argued in early September 1914: ‘The events of the last weeks have shown that it is a false doctrine that only the nation-state is justified and possible.’31 They thus followed Austrian intellectuals such as Richard von Kralik, who discovered in the multiethnic empire the model or solution for the future organization of Mitteleuropa, overcoming the rigid principle of nationality by a civicetatist conception, even though it was here coupled with the conservativedynastic ‘Austrian idea’.32 In principle, Social Democrats shared the notion of a necessary and inevitable trend towards greater, supranational units.33 Shortly after the 28 29 30

31 32

33

A. Köster, ‘Stamm oder Staat?’, FZ, 16 August 1914. H. Potthoff, ‘1815–1915’, Hilfe, 28 January 1915, pp. 53–4 (p. 54), and his Volk oder Staat? (Bonn, 1915). F. Meinecke, ‘Staatsgedanke und Nationalismus’, Hilfe, 15 October 1914, pp. 682–4 (p. 683); Also see his ‘Nationalismus und nationale Idee’, in Meinecke, Die deutsche Erhebung, pp. 84–99; ‘Der Triumph des Staatsgedankens’, FrZ, 13 September 1914; H. Oncken, ‘Die Zukunft unserer Bundesgenossenschaft’, NFP, 1 January 1915; F. v. Liszt, ‘Nationalität und Staatsgedanke’, VZ, 23 February 1915; F. v. Liszt, Vom Staatenverband zur Völkergemeinschaft. Ein Beitrag zur Neuorientierung der Staatenpolitik und des Völkerrechts (Munich, 1917); Junius [i.e. S. Saenger], ‘Mitteleuropäisches’, NR, December 1915, pp. 1716–23; W. Mitscherlich, Nationalstaat und Nationalwirtschaft und ihre Zukunft (Leipzig, 1916); P. Gutmann, ‘Staat oder Nation’, Schaubühne, 27 January 1916, pp. 73–6; W. Hellpach, ‘A.E.I.O.U.’, GD, 29 January 1916, pp. 129–33; A. Hofacker, ‘Der übernationale Staat und der Nationalstaat’, GD, 23 September 1916, pp. 1238–41; A. Meister, ‘Bundesstaat, Nationalstaat und überstaatlicher Staatenbund’, GD, 13 April 1917, pp. 472–8. ‘Österreichs Wiedergeburt’, KVZ, 4 September 1914. See K.C. Schneider, Mitteleuropa als Kulturbegriff (Vienna, 1916); E. Succovaty v. Vezza, Ein alter Österreicher und Friedrich Naumanns ‘Mitteleuropa’ (Graz, 1916); A. Gürtler, Österreich-Ungarn ein Schema für Mittel-Europa, 2nd ed. (Graz, 1916); A. v. MensdorffPouilly, ‘Mitteleuropa’, in Mensdorff-Pouilly, Mitteleuropäisches, pp. 37–72; R. v. Kralik, ‘Der Weltbund der Mittelmächte’, in Kralik, Vom Weltkrieg, pp. 15–25; R. v. Kralik, Die neue Staatenordnung im organischen Aufbau (Innsbruck, 1918). On the SPD in the First World War, see S. Miller, Burgfrieden und Klassenkampf. Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie im Ersten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1974); W. Kruse, Krieg und nationale Integration. Eine Neuinterpretation des sozialdemokratischen Burgfriedensschlusses 1914/15 (Essen, 1993); H. Niemann, Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie 1914–1945 (Berlin, 2008).

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proclamation of the Kingdom of Poland in November 1916, Heinrich Ströbel explained in the Prussian House of Representatives that the SPD supported national self-determination but would object to ‘the decomposition and atomization of nations, or separatism [Sonderbündelei] at any cost, because it knows that the great economic and cultural tasks of nations can only be solved in greater political associations’. Considering the nation-state ‘an intermediary stage’ in world-historical development, the Social Democrats would ultimately hope that the ‘United States of Europe’ – based on voluntary membership, international reconciliation, and disarmament – soon come into existence and replace imperialistic power politics.34 Right-wing Social Democrats such as Heinrich Cunow, together with Austrian Socialists led by Karl Renner, regarded Mitteleuropa as a first step towards this end. They supported the idea of a German-Austro-Hungarian customs agreement and the establishment of a Central European market of 120–150 million people, believing that the proletariat would greatly benefit from the abolition of tariff barriers and a common trade area. However, it was also argued that a policy of economic integration was a ‘vital matter’ in view of imminent trade wars after the conclusion of peace, and that Mitteleuropa would help to develop lucrative sales markets and sources of raw materials in the Balkans and Asia Minor.35 Many left-wing Social Democrats, in contrast, fundamentally disapproved of this specific scheme, contending that it was a tool of expansionist capitalism, a betrayal of Europe and of Socialist internationalism. The Austro-German Rudolf Hilferding held that such an endeavour would merely perpetuate the current political and military situation and result in a ‘customs war in permanence’. Instead of fortifying Central Europe, one should introduce in Europe ‘real democracy, autonomy, and 34 35

Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/17, vol. 3, col. 2416 (20 November 1916). E. David in Schiffers et al. (eds.), Hauptausschuß, III (1981), p. 1180 (7 March 1917). Also see, for example, H. Kranold, Der deutsch-österreichische Wirtschaftsbund als sozialdemokratische Aufgabe (Berlin, 1915); M. Schippel, ‘Zollvereinspläne und Friedensziele’, SoM, 31 March 1915, pp. 269–74; M. Schippel, ‘Mitteleuropa und Partei’, SoM, 31 May 1916, pp. 531–41; H. Poetzsch, ‘Das Imperium und die Arbeiter’, SoM, 2 March 1916, pp. 193–8; S. Kaff, ‘Zur Frage eines deutsch-österreichisch-ungarischen Zollverbandes’, NZ, 20 August 1915, pp. 657–62; S. Kaff, ‘Das Wirtschaftsbündnis und die Arbeiter’, WdZ, 28 July 1916, pp. 8–9; M. Cohen-Reuß, ‘Mitteleuropa’, Glocke, 15 January 1916, pp. 575–83. Broader: Vorstand der SPD (ed.), Die Bestrebungen für eine wirtschaftliche Annäherung Deutschlands und Österreich-Ungarns (Berlin, 1916); H. Herkner, ‘Die Stellung der Sozialdemokratie zur wirtschaftlichen Annäherung Deutschlands und Österreich-Ungarns’, ÖR, 1 May 1916, pp. 121–4. For Austrian standpoints: Renner, Österreichs Erneuerung; A. Hofrichter, ‘Der deutsch-österreichische Zollverein’, NZ, 1, 8 and 15 October 1915, pp. 25–8, 50–4, 82–9; ‘Beschlüsse der deutschen sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei in Österreich, abgehalten zu Wien vom 25. bis 28. März 1916’, HHStA, Groß papers, K. 2.

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the free right of national self-determination’.36 In Germany, the Independent Socialists Georg Ledebour and Eduard Bernstein equally objected to the division of the world into imperialist power blocs and ‘an armed peace in which both sides will rearm with all their might’.37 The official SPD organ Vorwärts took a sceptical stance, too, and reasoned against the ‘lunacy of a permanent economic war’.38 Intensified economic cooperation, the lowering of tariffs, the expansion of road and rail networks, and socio-political harmonization with Austria-Hungary would be a worthwhile effort and a first step towards universal free trade, but a customs union or a policy of preferential treatment would lead to protectionism and estrangement from other countries.39 Karl Kautsky, the prominent Prague-born theoretician, delivered one of the most comprehensive discussions of Mitteleuropa from a Social-Democratic point of view. Sharing the concern of many Austrian Socialists for the nationalities question, he made clear that ‘Austria nowadays is much less a German state than it had been in 1866’, and sternly criticized the subordinate standing of non-German elements in most schemes.40 Kautsky claimed that he would happily welcome and support ‘any abolition of boundaries between nations and states’, but insisted that it take place ‘without the violation of democracy and not in order to set up other boundaries’.41 To him, imperialist Mitteleuropa represented not a first step, but rather an impediment on the way towards the ‘United States of Europe’ and a ‘world union’ guaranteeing eternal peace and friendship between all nations.42 36

37

38 39

40 41 42

R. Hilferding, ‘Europäer, nicht Mitteleuropäer’, Kampf, November/December 1915, pp. 357–65 (pp. 358, 360). Also see the reply by K. Renner, ‘Wirklichkeit oder Wahnidee?’, Kampf, January 1916, pp. 15–25, and Hilferding’s reaction, ‘Phantasie oder Gelehrsamkeit?’, Kampf, February 1916, pp. 54–63. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 310, p. 3403 (Ledebour, 15 May 1917). Also see E. Bernstein, ‘Handelspolitik und Völkerbeziehungen’ and ‘Das kommende Europa’, in E. Bernstein, Sozialdemokratische Völkerpolitik. Die Sozialdemokratie und die Frage Europa (Leipzig, 1917), pp. 167–78, 179–206. ‘Ein wirtschaftliches Bündnis zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, Vorwärts, 16 May 1915. Also see the following articles in Vorwärts: ‘Handelspolitische Bewegungsfreiheit!’, 8 July 1915; ‘Die Frage der Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft’, 27 July 1915; ‘Freihandel und wirtschaftlicher Zweibund’, 4 August 1915; ‘Das Wirtschaftsbündnis mit ÖsterreichUngarn’, 2 December 1915; ‘Sozialdemokratie und Schutzzoll’, 4 April 1916; ‘Der “geschlossene Wirtschaftskomplex” ’, 7 April 1916. K. Kautsky, ‘Mitteleuropa. Fortsetzung’, NZ, 7 January 1916, pp. 453–68 (p. 460). Ibid., p. 453. K. Kautsky, ‘Mitteleuropa. Schluss’, NZ, 28 January 1916, pp. 561–9 (p. 569). Also see his Nationalstaat, imperialistischer Staat und Staatenbund (Nuremberg, 1915) and Die Vereinigten Staaten Mitteleuropas (Stuttgart, 1916). Other critical comments: K. Emil [i.e. R. Hilferding], ‘Handelspolitische Fragen’, NZ, 1 December 1916, pp. 205–16; O. Jenssen, ‘Österreichische Erneuerung’, NZ, 8 June 1917, pp. 222–8; ‘Ein Zollbündnis mit Deutschland’, Arbeiterwille, 12 June 1915; ‘Zur Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft mit dem Deutschen Reiche’, Arbeiterwille, 13 February 1916.

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Many Catholic commentators from early on embraced the idea of a closer economic union between the Central Powers and received Naumann’s book most enthusiastically, not least because of its Greater German allusions and the apparent sympathy for Austria-Hungary.43 However, there were also noticeable differences of opinion. For Martin Spahn, Mitteleuropa represented the opportunity to break with the ‘aimlessness’ and ‘lethargy’ of German pre-war foreign policy. Decisionmakers in Berlin had never understood the significance of continental great power politics and the necessity of close cooperation with the ‘second German power’ Austria-Hungary. Now, ‘Greater Germany’ would stand together again against British imperialism and defend German interests on the Adriatic Sea and in the Balkans.44 Whereas Baron Albrecht von Rechenberg and Matthias Erzberger from the Centre Party backed the idea of a Central European customs union, their party colleague Johannes Bell was not willing to give up colonial policy and considered Mitteleuropa merely a wartime expedient to regain world-power status. The Bavarian Reichstag deputy Gustav Mayer even called the project a ‘utopia’.45 The economist Goetz Briefs, too, was sceptical of Naumann’s design, favouring a Central European defence association but drawing attention to Germany’s vital world trade interests.46 Many other commentators, however, were less concerned with power politics and economic aspects. They supported Mitteleuropa as a concept in the universalist and Christian tradition of the medieval Reich, as a project of future European peace in which Catholicism would play an important role.47 The archbishop of Breslau, for example, described the Catholics in Germany and Austria as ‘a shining example’ 43

44

45 46 47

See, for example, ‘Deutschlands und Österreich-Ungarns Volkswirtschaft nach dem Kriege’, KVZ, 19 January 1915; ‘Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, Germania, 12 February 1916; R. v. Nostitz-Rieneck, ‘Naumanns Mitteleuropa’, StZ, March 1916, pp. 617–22; R. v. Nostitz-Rieneck, ‘Mitteleuropa’, StZ, October 1916, pp. 21–35; A. v. Rechenberg, ‘Die Frage einer wirtschaftlichen Annäherung zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, NS, October 1915, pp. 47–56; A. v. Rechenberg, ‘Das Wirtschaftsbündnis mit Österreich-Ungarn’, KMS, 20 April 1918, pp. 1–4 and 28 May 1918, pp. 2–3. M. Spahn, Im Kampf um unsere Zukunft, 2nd ed. (M. Gladbach, 1915), pp. 7, 8, 38, 49. Also see his ‘Die Mittelmächte auf dem Wege zur Weltmacht’, Reichspost, 17 October 1915. Schiffers et al. (eds.), Hauptausschuß, IV (1983), p. 1861 (8 January 1918). G. Briefs, ‘Mitteleuropa’, Hochland, May and July 1916, pp. 129–39, 385–97. See, for example, F.X. Kiefl, ‘Der Katholizismus als völkerverbindende Macht der Zukunft’, in Meinertz and Sacher (eds.), Deutschland und der Katholizismus, I, pp. 407–28; J. v. Schönburg-Glauchau, ‘Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, in Meinertz and Sacher (eds.), Deutschland und der Katholizismus, II, pp. 407–18; H. v. Grauert, ‘Die Rechts- und Friedenseinheit der Völker’, in Meinertz and Sacher (eds.), Deutschland und der Katholizismus, II, pp. 455–84; H. v. Grauert, ‘Deutsche Weltherrschaft?’, in Pfeilschifter (ed.), Deutsche Kultur, pp. 357–87.

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for the world, and for Bishop von Keppler they were the ‘peoples of the future’, initiating a spiritual renewal of Europe as the ‘world-power of peace, the haven of the weal of nations’.48 According to Max Scheler, Germany and Austria-Hungary constituted the core and spirit of Europe, defending its heritage against Russian barbarism and Anglo-American capitalism. In his view, Catholics from both countries could lead the Europeans away from materialism and imperialism to a new sense of togetherness, based on heartfelt solidarity rather than naked interests. The philosopher was less interested in politics and economics – even though he also mentioned economic autarchy, eastern settlements, and German military leadership – but stressed ancient traditions and the legacy of the Holy Roman Empire as predecessors and constituent elements of Mitteleuropa, which was to lead to the reunification of the continent. Interestingly, Scheler hoped that such an association would entail devolution on a domestic level, giving South Germans and Catholics greater weight in German political and intellectual life.49 The philologist Hermann Platz shared Scheler’s opposition to PrussoProtestant preponderance, even holding it partly responsible for the outbreak of war: ‘If next to mechanism and functionalism there had been more South German and Austrian rhythm in our industrial and commercial conquest of the world, more grace and form, more humanity and soul, we would probably have a couple of billions less in national wealth but might have got around this war.’50 The aversion to Prussianism – as an embodiment or symbol of the political and sociocultural status quo, of North German and Protestant predominance, of the war-induced centralization of German affairs (evident for instance in the establishment of numerous new agencies to control and direct the economy), of militarist imperialism, or simply as the manifestation of modern mass society – unified the most diverse camps behind the idea of Mitteleuropa, regardless whether one agreed fully with Naumann’s particular scheme or not. Rudolf Pannwitz was convinced of the necessary and inevitable evolution from the nation-state to greater supranational entities, but opposed Naumann and other 48

49

50

A. Bertram, Kirche und Volksleben. Hirtenworte über einige kirchliche Aufgaben unserer Zeit (Breslau, 1916), p. 446; P.W. v. Keppler, Unsere toten Helden und ihr letzter Wille (Freiburg, 1915), pp. 22, 24. See the following publications by M. Scheler: ‘Europa und der Krieg’, WB, January–March 1915, pp. 124–7, 244–9, 376–80; ‘Soziologische Neuorientierung und die Aufgabe der deutschen Katholiken nach dem Krieg’, in M. Scheler, Krieg und Aufbau (Leipzig, 1916), pp. 196–372; ‘Deutschlands Sendung und der katholische Gedanke’ (1918), in Scheler, Gesammelte Werke, IV, pp. 515–40. H. Platz, ‘Mitteleuropa und die Seelenkultur’, Hochland, February 1917, pp. 513–17 (p. 515).

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Mitteleuropa advocates for trying to organize the new Europe ‘like a coop [Konsumverein]’.51 In his opinion, they put too much emphasis on PrussoGerman achievements and lacked a proper understanding of Austria and the exemplary Habsburg idea of the state. Seemingly resuming the tradition of the ancient Roman empire and its medieval successor, the philosopher envisioned an Imperium Europaeum as the organic synthesis of various cultures and mentalities: ‘The way to Europe leads not via the foundation of a European confederation or federal state with a centre of power and mechanization, but entails the spreading and implementation of the European idea.’52 Pannwitz was not a politician or legal expert, and hardly concerned with economic questions. His concept must be seen against the background of his cultural criticism, and was particularly aimed against the United States as the incarnation of modernity and shallow commercialism. In May 1917, the so-called Verein ‘Mitteleuropäischer Staatenbund’ was founded with the dual aim to ‘establish a Central European federation and to preserve the fundamentals of German customs and culture’ through lectures and publications, the organization of conferences and discussions, and the exchange of experts.53 The association’s manifesto was signed by almost 1,600 personalities from both Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy. The Austro-Hungarian constituent included leftist politicians, liberal nationalists, and conservative circles alike, such as Gustav Groß from the Deutscher Nationalverband (DNV), Josef Redlich, and Richard von Kralik. The Reich German membership, in contrast, was more biased. There were only a very few Prussian representatives; the majority, in fact, had a South German and Catholic background. Many politicians were aristocrats, or of merely local and regional importance; Rechenberg from the Centre Party was but an exception. The philosopher Paul Natorp, the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, and the economist Julius Wolf were prominent intellectuals, but the greater part comprised academics and journalists of secondary significance, landowners, and members of the educated middle classes such as lawyers, pastors, and teachers.54 The initiators and leading figures were Ottomar Schuchardt from Dresden, the former pupil of Constantin Frantz, and Ludwig Alpers, a leading member of the particularistic German-Hanoverian Party, who had both promoted the idea of a Central European union already before 51 52 53 54

Pannwitz to Hofmannsthal, 30 October 1917, in Hofmannsthal and Pannwitz, Briefwechsel, pp. 144–8 (p. 145). Pannwitz, Deutschland und Europa, pp. 21, 23. Grundsatzpapier, Verein ‘Mitteleuropäischer Staatenbund’, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 5. See the full list of signatories of the ‘Leitsätze’, ibid.

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the war. They represented the two main currents within the organization, united by their conservative federalism and anti-Prussian stance. Schuchardt was more concerned with eastern colonization and the affiliation of non-German nationalities in the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire, while Alpers clearly had a domestic agenda, hoping that the permanent organizational connection with Austria would counter unitary tendencies and lead to the reappraisal of the diversity of German life.55 Both presented the federative-cooperative principle as the best guarantee for a peaceful international order, and held that the new polity would respect the national character and sovereignty of its German and nonGerman members. The association’s diversified membership included staunch monarchists, anti-Prussian particularists, Christian conservatives, antimodernists, and völkisch representatives (such as Adolf Bartels). However, its rhetoric of equality and tolerance, together with the commitment to a policy of disarmament and the rejection of annexations, seems to have appealed to some pacifists, too. Walther Schücking was a signatory of the Verein’s manifesto and embraced Mitteleuropa as a means to overcome destructive nationalism by a supranational order, a potential stronghold of peace paving the way for free trade and international conciliation.56 Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster (who was not a member) did not share this optimism and like many left-wing Socialists argued that the whole Central European project, which would rest on military considerations and power politics, represented nothing but ‘a permanent World War fought in ever larger units’: ‘In reality . . ., what is organized is the Second World War.’57 Not surprisingly, many right-wing observers disapproved of the revaluation of the supranational principle of state, the idea that multiethnic federations represented ‘a formation of at least equal status to the 55

56

57

O. Schuchardt, Der mitteleuropäische Staatenbund (Dresden, 1917); O. Schuchardt, ‘Die geistigen Grundlagen eines Mitteleuropäischen Staatenbundes’, DA, January 1917, pp. 153–6; O. Schuchardt, ‘Die geistige Kraft des Mitteleuropäischen Staatenbundes’, KMS, 20 April 1918, p. 4. Also see A. v. Schele-Schelenburg, ‘Mittel-Europa’, DVZ, 31 May 1917; ‘Der “Mitteleuropäische Staatenbund”. Rede des Reichstagsabgeordneten Alpers – Hamburg am Begrüßungsabend der Frankfurter Tagung am 30. Mai 1917’, DVZ, 10 June 1917; ‘Die Bestrebungen des “Mitteleuropäischen Staatenbundes”’, KMS, 28 May 1918, pp. 5–6; Kammerherr v. Klinggräff-Pinnow, ‘Eine Aufgabe des Mitteleuropäischen Staatenbundes’, KMS, July 1918, p. 6. See W. Schücking, Der Weltfriedensbund und die Wiedergeburt des Völkerrechts (Leipzig, 1917) and his Der Bund der Völker. Studien und Vorträge zum organisatorischen Pazifismus (Leipzig, 1918). F.W. Foerster, ‘Mitteleuropäische Schützengrabenpolitik’, in F.W. Foerster, Die deutsche Jugend und der Weltkrieg. Kriegs- und Friedensaufsätze, 4th ed. (Leipzig, 1918), pp. 101–9 (pp. 108, 104).

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nation-state’.58 According to the historian Erich Brandenburg, professor in Leipzig and author of a prominent study on the German Reichsgründung, nation-states were domestically more stable and thus more powerful. He objected to ‘Naumann’s phantasmagoria of a Central European “super-state” ’ and insisted that instead of restricting the national room for manoeuvre by compromises and concessions, Germans should extend their own power by annexing neighbouring territories and establishing indirectly controlled satellite states.59 Otto Hoetzsch also studied ways and means to enhance Germany’s power and to expand in Europe ‘without changing its nature as a nation-state’. In his view, Naumann’s proposal signified a return to the old German Confederation: ‘It would be against the spirit of Bismarckian policy, against Bismarck’s legacy if the independence of the German Reich . . . were to be tied and limited by such relations.’60 Erich Marcks equally warned against the ‘quick abandonment of our most precious possession’ and declared: ‘Whatever we wish and hope to establish in future has to rest on the granite fundament of our national state – or else it is doomed to be smashed externally and internally, just like the Alte Reich and the old Confederation.’ These had been ‘weak temporary shelters, always threatened by storms, without inner cohesion, without potential for development’. Only the nation-state had brought Germany ‘domestic vigour and external power’.61 The medievalist Georg von Below, who was one of the most aggressive opponents of Naumann, similarly criticized analogies between the Holy Roman Empire and Mitteleuropa. After all, the ‘national idea had not yet represented the decisive state-building force’ in the Middle Ages. But Naumann would, Below argued, ‘be very content if we were to lose the nation-state’.62 He condemned the limitation of Reich German sovereignty as a ‘dangerous utopia’: ‘We ban dreamy plans for a fairy-tale Central European community.’ Not the ‘cloud-cuckoo land Mitteleuropa’ but the ‘strengthened German state’ would lead the Germans into a great future.63 To give a final example, Houston Stewart Chamberlain in a long essay of February 1916 stressed the need for a Central European association in the tradition of List, Lagarde, and 58 59 60 61 62

63

Preuß, ‘Großdeutsch, Kleindeutsch’, p. 54. E. Brandenburg, Deutschlands Kriegsziele (Leipzig, 1917), p. 47; E. Brandenburg, ‘Der Zweibund und Mitteleuropa’, WZ, 1 August 1918. Hoetzsch, ‘Bismarcks Erbe’, pp. 163–4, 167–8. E. Marcks, ‘Deutsche Geschichte und deutsche Zukunft’ (1916), in Marcks, Männer und Zeiten, 4th rev. ed., II, pp. 399–413 (pp. 411, 413, 406, 408). G. v. Below, ‘Der deutsche Nationalstaat, Mitteleuropa und die deutsche Grenzsicherung’, in G. v. Below, Kriegs- und Friedensfragen (Dresden, 1917), pp. 1–59 (p. 33). Ibid., pp. 28, 33.

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Frantz, which would form the core of a wider German-dominated area from the Arctic Ocean to the Persian Gulf. However, the starting point was to be a reinforced Germany, whereas the liberal-minded Mitteleuropa idea would merely lead ‘to a weakening of the German national consciousness and of the monarchical regime’. The ‘forgers of the German Reich’ – Frederick the Great, Stein, and Bismarck – would turn over in their graves in view of the faint-hearted and dangerous scheme.64 Chamberlain pointed to Naumann’s stance in the nationality question, judged by the national right as over-lenient and undermining German authority in Central Europe. The Alldeutsche Blätter, for instance, stated that the actual aim of the war ‘was not the supranational Mitteleuropa but the enlarged Germany’. The Pan-Germans could, ‘on the basis of all experiences’ they had undergone, not believe in a ‘voluntary readiness of the Slavs to reach an understanding and to coexist peacefully with the Germans’.65 Below maintained that Naumann’s book was preaching ‘softness and weakness’: the liberal politician had sketched a completely wrong image of the Austrian situation and compromised himself as a ‘political aesthete who either does not recognize or does not want to see the true character of things’. What was necessary for Austria in order to prosper was not ‘a soft settlement between the numerous nations but the establishment of German predominance’.66 Prussian conservatives and radical nationalists disapproved of Naumann’s Mitteleuropa because of its spirit of political compromise and for fear of a restriction of German sovereignty and room for manoeuvre, often advocating annexations and military rule, expropriation measures, and in some cases even the transfer of population.67 However, other and more moderate liberal-nationalist and conservative publicists such as Hermann Oncken, Paul Rohrbach, and Adolf Grabowsky backed the concept as a novel idea to ‘support imperialist tendencies with federalist means’.68 Oncken, for example, took up his pre-war ideas of an organic union between Berlin and Vienna as a new 64 65 66 67

68

H.S. Chamberlain, ‘Hammer oder Amboß’, in H.S. Chamberlain, Hammer oder Amboß. Dritte Reihe der Kriegsaufsätze (Munich, 1916), pp. 7–28 (pp. 9–10). ‘Mitteleuropa’, AB, 15 January 1916, pp. 21–3 (p. 23). Below, ‘Der deutsche Nationalstaat’, pp. 28, 21, 26. See, for example, ‘Ein mitteleuropäischer Staatenbund?’, AB, 9 and 16 January 1915, pp. 9–11, 19–21; E. R[eventlow], ‘Nicht zuviel Eifer!’, DTZ, 24 April 1915; J. Kaftan, Wollen wir wirklich aus Deutschen Mitteleuropäer werden?, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1916); H. Wolf, Nationalpolitischer Egoismus, 2nd ed. (Bochum, 1916); F. Fromme, ‘Friedrich Naumanns “Mitteleuropa”’, DR, April 1916, pp. 134–41; G. v. Below, ‘Gegen F. Naumanns “Mitteleuropa”’, Türmer, 2nd February issue 1918, pp. 573–5. M.H. Boehm, ‘Mitteleuropa und das deutsche Kulturproblem’, PJ, March 1917, pp. 456–66 (p. 457). Also see, for example, [G. Cleinow], ‘Nationalitätsgedanke und das neue Mitteleuropa’, Grenzboten, 11 November 1914, pp. 161–5; C. Bornhak, ‘Das

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form of international cooperation to preserve Germany’s and AustriaHungary’s great-power status. The new circumstances of the war would allow implementing ‘Bismarck’s political legacy’.69 Like Kurt Riezler, who considered Mitteleuropa the ‘European embellishment of our will to power’, these authors were convinced that the methods of the Prussian territorial state, that a policy of violence and conquest had to be replaced by a more cooperative stance towards Central European nationalities, by new concepts of informal hegemony.70 As Riezler declared in his diary (and elaborated in several essays): ‘The centre of Europe requires a federative and attracting political entity, not one which appears uncompromising and conquering. Despite all misery of the Holy Roman Empire this had been the political talent of the Germans.’71 Instead of presenting the Central European project as a substitute or counter-model to the nation-state, centre-right authors aimed at a complementary relationship between both tendencies, not challenging but building on the creation of 1870–71. They projected a more or less informal empire comprising the extended nation-state and a cluster of smaller satellite states. Indeed, non-German ethnic groups were not to play a significant political role, even though this was often euphemistically disguised. To quote Hans Delbrück, conservative historian and editor of the influential Preußische Jahrbücher: ‘What will extend from the North and Baltic Seas to the Persian and Red Seas is not a territory of German rule but a field of work for German spirit, for German organizational talent and German economic power.’72 Ernst Troeltsch, Professor of Philosophy and Delbrück’s colleague at the University of Berlin, similarly conceived of a Mitteleuropa ‘under the strong, but gracious and voluntarily accepted influence of the German spirit’, a ‘German leadership but no German rule’ based on the exceptional ‘intellectual performance and politicomoral power’ of the German people.73

69

70 71

72 73

Nationalitätsprinzip und der Krieg’, Grenzboten, 23 February 1916, pp. 225–31; ‘Deutsche Schutzgebiete in Europa’, Grenzboten, 7 March 1917, pp. 289–95; A. Grabowsky, ‘Der innere Imperialismus’, ND, 27 February 1915, pp. 117–22; P. Rohrbach, ‘Warum Mitteleuropa?’, ÖR, 1 January 1916, pp. 1–5; O. v. Gierke, Unsere Friedensziele (Berlin, 1917). H. Oncken, Bismarck und die Zukunft Mitteleuropas (Heidelberg, 1915), p. 10. Also see his Das alte und das neue Mitteleuropa. Historisch-politische Betrachtungen über deutsche Bündnispolitik im Zeitalter Bismarcks und im Zeitalter des Weltkrieges (Gotha, 1917). Riezler, Tagebücher, p. 268 (18 April 1915). Ibid., p. 365 (6 July 1916). Also see his following articles in the ESWZ: ‘Ausschußpolitik, Nationalausschuß und Reichsgedanke’, 23 October 1916, pp. 1553–60; ‘Zwischen nationalistischer und pazifistischer Gefahr’, 26 November 1916, pp. 1489–510; ‘Polen, der Friede und die Freiheit’, 16 November 1916, pp. 1433–43. Delbrück, Bismarcks Erbe, p. 209. E. Troeltsch, ‘Die Ideen von 1914’, NR, May 1916, pp. 605–24 (pp. 619, 622).

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Friedrich Naumann certainly stood out because of his conciliatory rhetoric. However, even though he appears, in the words of HarmHinrich Brandt, as ‘the Reich German politician and journalist who . . . displayed most sympathy for the particular problematic nature of the Habsburg Monarchy as well as for the ethnic and cultural jumble’ in Central Europe, his Mitteleuropa concept proved ambiguous.74 In fact, Naumann’s vision only partly offered a liberal, moderate alternative to the imperialism of the national right. His calls for the integration of the western Slavs also came from a patronizing standpoint and remained elusive. Naumann’s Mitteleuropa did not imply the right of national selfdetermination, the principle of equality, or joint decision-making. Even though he argued for ‘toleration and flexibility’ in language matters, Naumann nevertheless stated that Mitteleuropa ‘will have a German nucleus’ and ‘will voluntarily use the German language, which is known all over the world and is already the language of intercourse within Central Europe’.75 By anticipating that the smaller nations would abandon the strife for an independent nation-state and accept a kind of informal German leadership, Naumann in the end backed the widespread notion that Mitteleuropa would secure German predominance in Central and South-Eastern Europe, a point that did not go unnoticed by Czech and Polish circles.76 He also declared that none of the member states would have to give up its sovereignty and that the new political entity would rest on the principle of equality, but insisted nonetheless: Austria will be assenting finally to that shifting of the weight of gravity which took place in 1866. She will renounce all future claim to be the chief ruling Power in Central Europe, as she was in her ancient days of splendour. There is no formal dependence involved, no curtailing of sovereignty, no giving up of inherited power, but all the same there will be an actual acknowledgment of the existing position of forces.77

According to Naumann, Imperial Germany had become ‘the first of the two leading States in population, military efficiency and unity’. Vienna and Budapest could not prevent Mitteleuropa from coming into existence: ‘Thus speaks past history, for Mid-Europe arose in the first instance out 74 76

77

75 Brandt, ‘Von Bruck zu Naumann’, p. 343. Naumann, Central Europe, p. 108. J. Korˇ alka, ‘Anpassung und Widerstand? Zu den tschechischen Reaktionen auf die deutsche Mitteleuropaidee vor und nach dem Jahre 1914’, in Plaschka et al. (eds.), Mitteleuropa-Konzeptionen, pp. 25–37; T. Kopys´ , ‘Die Haltung der tschechischen und polnischen Eliten zur Mitteleuropa-Konzeption Friedrich Naumanns’, Bohemia, 41 (2000), 326–42; S. Höhne, ‘Imperiale Ambitionen und das Recht der kleinen Nationen. “Mitteleuropa” bei Naumann und Masaryk’, in J. Lajarrige et al. (eds.), ‘Mitteleuropa’. Geschichte eines transnationalen Diskurses im 20. Jahrhundert (Dresden, 2011), pp. 143–68. Naumann, Central Europe, p. 61.

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of the Prussian victories, and especially that of 1870.’78 In spite of the many references to the Alte Reich and Greater German traditions, the PrussoGerman nation-state remained Naumann’s starting and focal point. In fact, he repeatedly referred to Bismarck, too, insisting that ‘his true successors are not those who stick to the contemporary form and limitation of his accomplishment but those who aim at keeping his creative spirit under new circumstances’.79 Like Oncken, the left-liberal politician and publicist justified his plan as the legacy and genuine interpretation of Bismarckian policy: ‘It rests with us to carry on the work.’80 Furthermore, despite the numerous pro-Austrian statements and continual efforts to generate more understanding for the Dual Monarchy, Naumann ultimately shared the common belief in German organizational and civilizational superiority, asserting that only the universal adoption of the Prusso-German business spirit, characterized by orderliness, discipline, and highest productivity, could guarantee prosperity and progress in Mitteleuropa. Following old Prusso-Austrian clichés, he granted the Habsburg Empire the ‘artistic’ task to add ‘taste and form’ to the new community: ‘We have more horse-power, and you more music. We think more in terms of quantity, the best of you think rather in terms of quality.’81 Clearly, there were significant differences between liberal imperialists and right-wing nationalists, for instance as to the extent of autonomy and level of participation of non-German members, the management of conquered and affiliated territories, the attitude towards resettlement schemes and border corrections, or the type of association with Austria-Hungary. However, there undoubtedly was a common preoccupation with power politics and state interests. A Central European empire under German hegemony, whether termed Mitteleuropa or not, was considered necessary to retain (or regain) Germany’s status as a ‘world power of prime rank’.82 For these politicians and commentators, it ultimately represented not a challenge or counter-model, but the ‘rescue’ of the nation-state. Völkisch motives and Austro-German concerns, in contrast, were of little relevance.

Same bed, different dreams: Mitteleuropa as a war aim By early 1915, many idealistic and formless conceptions had been replaced by a thorough discussion of clearly defined projects, a debate 78 79

80 82

Ibid., pp. 61–2. F. Naumann, ‘Bismarck und unsere Weltpolitik’, Hilfe, 31 December 1914, pp. 864–5 (p. 865). Also see his ‘Wer war Bismarck?’, Hilfe, 25 March 1915, pp. 185–8 and ‘Was tat Bismarck während des Krieges?’, Hilfe, 29 April 1915, pp. 264–5. Naumann, Central Europe, p. 60. 81 Ibid., pp. 140–1. A. Spiethoff, ‘Mitteleuropa’, DA, February 1916, pp. 249–58 (p. 250).

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in which emotional aspects and ideological motives were less significant compared to the sober assessment of risks and gains, tariff rates and joint commissions, legal regulations and military arrangements.83 German and Austro-Hungarian industrialists had early got in touch with each other and started to discuss ways and means of intensified cooperation. Economic associations such as the Deutsch-Österreichisch-Ungarischer Wirtschaftsverband (DÖUWV) and the Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein (MEWV) organized various conferences and soon concluded that a full customs and trade union without intermediate tariffs was not feasible.84 Politicians and academics from both states gathered to discuss political and constitutional implications of a closer alliance between the Central Powers. German left-liberal parliamentarians, for instance, got together with members of the DNV, the largest AustroGerman faction in the Reichsrat (bringing together non-Socialist and non-clerical deputies); Social Democrats held a common party congress in January 1916; and right-wing circles, too, met repeatedly with likeminded Austrians. In February 1916, the Arbeitsausschuß für Mitteleuropa (AfM) was created under the auspices of Naumann and the Austrian-born banker and academic Felix Somary as a sort of crossparty think tank on Central European political, military, and economic integration. Funded by the Foreign Office since 1917, it was joined and supported by leading representatives of the political and commercial elites, including the shipowner Albert Ballin and the agrarian Gustav Roesicke, General Seeckt, the conservative politician Count Kuno Westarp, the National Liberal Reichstag deputy Eugen Schiffer, the Centre Party politicians Erzberger and Rechenberg, and the Social Democrat Gustav Noske. Amongst the Austro-Hungarian members were General Conrad, Baernreither, Renner, the left-liberal economist Gustav Stolper, as well as the former Austro-Hungarian Finance Minister Leon von Bili n ´ ski and the leading Hungarian oppositional politician 83

84

Early examples: H. Losch, Der mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftsblock und das Schicksal Belgiens (Leipzig, 1914); M. Apt, Der Krieg und die Weltmachtstellung des Deutschen Reiches (Leipzig, 1914); W. Gerloff, Der wirtschaftliche Imperialismus und die Frage der Zolleinigung zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn (Stuttgart, 1915); E. Jaffé, Volkswirtschaft und Krieg (Tübingen, 1915); K. v. Stengel, Zur Frage der wirtschaftlichen und zollpolitischen Einigung von Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn (Munich, 1915); I. Jastrow, Die mitteleuropäische Zollannäherung und die Meistbegünstigung (Leipzig, 1915); J. Plenge, Der Krieg und die Volkswirtschaft, 2nd exp. ed. (Münster, 1915); J. Wolf, Ein deutsch-österreichisch-ungarischer Zollverband, 2nd rev. and exp. ed. (Leipzig, 1915). See, for example, DÖUWV (ed.), Die Stellungnahme der Regierungen und wirtschaftlichen Körperschaften in Deutschland, Österreich und Ungarn zu der Frage der Neuregelung der Handelsbeziehungen zwischen den verbündeten Monarchien (Berlin, 1916). Also see Tucher’s reports of 8 July and 25 November 1915, BHSA, MA 2481/3.

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Count Albert Apponyi.85 The Verein ‘Mitteleuropäischer Staatenbund’, founded a year later, clearly represented a counter-organization to the AfM, but it remained far behind the latter’s authority and influence. In principle, there was little disagreement amongst Reich German commentators concerning the more general objective of closer economic cooperation between the Central Powers and commercial expansion towards South-Eastern Europe. However, the views as to ways and means differed, and a clear definition of Mitteleuropa seemed impossible given the ideological and conceptual diversity. The geographic scope varied significantly: many schemes included Belgium and Luxembourg, and often referred to the Scandinavian countries, too. The idea of a ‘Greater Mitteleuropa’, comprising Bulgaria and Turkey and thus extending as far as to the Middle East, also proved very popular. Other authors suggested adding a Central African dominion to the new empire.86 The most extensive debate, however, centred on the core question of German-Austro-Hungarian economic integration. A majority of German economists had reservations about a Central European customs union, as demonstrated for example by the comprehensive debate of April 1916 in the influential Verein für Socialpolitik (VfS).87 As Hermann Schumacher from Bonn argued there, a common customs and trade policy would lead to frictions between Germany and Austria-Hungary and endanger the alliance instead of solidifying it. Contrary to what many campaigners claimed, enhanced cooperation would not suffice to establish an autarchical union independent from overseas trade.88 Franz Eulenburg, Schumacher’s colleague in Leipzig, agreed that Germany after the war should restore its world trade links instead of confining itself to a secluded economic alliance. After all, 85

86

87 88

‘Protokoll über die erste Sitzung des Arbeitsausschusses für Mitteleuropa’, 22 February 1916, BArch, N 3001, No. 29; W. Schotte, ‘Der Arbeitsausschuß für Mitteleuropa’, 20 July 1918, BArch, N 3001, No. 29; W. Schotte, ‘Bericht über den Arbeitsausschuß für Mitteleuropa’, 9 July 1918, BArch, R 703, No. 4. Also see F. Somary, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, 3rd ed. (Zürich, 1959), pp. 143–8. See as examples for this variety: H. Mühlestein, Deutschlands Sendung. Ein neuer mitteleuropäischer Völkerbund (Weimar, 1914); K. Mehrmann, Groß-Deutschland. Unsere Stellung in der Weltstaatengesellschaft (Dresden, 1915); E. Jäckh, Das Größere Mitteleuropa (Weimar, 1916); E.F.K. Gabriel, Vereinigte Staaten von Mitteleuropa! Ein FriedensProgramm (Berlin, 1916);P. Leutwein, Mitteleuropa – Mittelafrika (Dresden, 1917); E. Zimmermann, Das deutsche Kaiserreich Mittelafrika als Grundlage einer neuen deutschen Weltpolitik (Berlin, 1917); K. Hoffmann, Der kleineuropäische Gedanke, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1918). The comments and talks were published in H. Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung zwischen dem Deutschen Reiche und seinen Verbündeten, 3 vols. (Munich, 1916). H. Schumacher, ‘Meistbegünstigung und Zollunterscheidung’, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, I, pp. 61–132. Also see H. Schumacher, ‘Die Hauptaufgabe der deutschen Handelspolitik nach dem Kriege’, ND, 16 October 1915, pp. 15–20.

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Austria-Hungary represented only one amongst many other, and perhaps more important, markets for the German economy. Like the Freiburg economist Karl Diehl or the Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller (CDI), Eulenburg also highlighted substantial economic and social disparities between the allies, such as different tariff rates, the system of taxation and bank lending, social security, infrastructure, or conflicting interests in the Balkans. He ultimately proposed a ‘well-balanced [wohltemperierte] alliance’, ‘a rather moderate rapprochement’ in the form of an extended bilateral tariff treaty.89 Even left liberals, generally amongst the most enthusiastic supporters of Mitteleuropa, were divided, for instance over the question of intermediate customs for at least a transitional period.90 Georg Gothein, Naumann’s party colleague in the Reichstag, approved of a closer economic relationship with Austria-Hungary, preferably stretching towards the Balkans and Turkey, but expressed concerns about Mitteleuropa’s constitutional implications, objecting to all ideas that implied a political union with a common legislative body.91 In summer 1917, Prince Lichnowsky, who made no secret of his negative views of AustriaHungary, even started a debate on Naumann’s Mitteleuropa in the Berliner Tageblatt. He rejected the various references to the Holy Roman Empire, highlighted the economic differences and tensions between Austria and Hungary, held that Vienna as the weaker partner in the union would soon become resentful, and contested the restriction of German economic independence.92 Instead of a long-term commitment 89

90

91

92

Eulenburg’s comments, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III: Aussprache in der Sitzung des Ausschusses vom 6. April 1916 zu Berlin, pp. 48–57 (p. 49). Also see the contributions by Diehl (pp. 15–17), J. Pierstorff (pp. 17–19), W. Lotz (pp. 21–2), G. Gothein (pp. 22–4, 71–5), and L. Sinzheimer (pp. 67–71). For similar standpoints: F. Eulenburg, ‘Die Stellung der deutschen Industrie zum wirtschaftlichen Zweibund’, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, II, pp. 1–127; F. Eulenburg, Weltwirtschaftliche Möglichkeiten (Berlin, 1916); K. Diehl, Zur Frage eines Zollbündnisses zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn (Jena, 1915); and the CDI memorandum of 1915 ‘Die Herstellung eines engeren wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisses zu ÖsterreichUngarn’, HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 30. See, for example, ‘Die künftige Handelspolitik der Zentralmächte’, BT, 30 December 1914; G. Bernhard, ‘Vierverband und Handelsbund’, VZ, 22 November 1915; H. Potthoff, ‘Die künftige Wirtschaftspolitik Mitteleuropas’, Tat, November 1915, pp. 669–78; G. Schmoller, ‘Die Handels- und Zollannäherung Mitteleuropas’, SJ, 16/2 (1916), 529–50; A. Weber, ‘Für Mitteleuropa’, VZ, 3 January 1918; G. v. SchulzeGävernitz, Neubau der Weltwirtschaft (Berlin, 1918). See the following publications by G. Gothein: ‘Europäische Zollunion als Siegespreis’, Hilfe, 29 October 1914, pp. 715–19; Die wirtschaftlichen Aussichten nach dem Kriege (Berlin, 1915); Deutschlands Handel nach dem Kriege (Tübingen, 1916). Also see his memorandum of January 1916: ‘Wirtschaftsbündnis mit Österreich-Ungarn’, BArch, R 43, No. 406. See his ‘Das österreichische Problem’, BT, 29 July 1917, and the reactions in the BT: F. Naumann, ‘Offener Brief an Fürst Lichnowsky’, 31 July 1917; K.M. v. Lichnowsky,

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to the Habsburg Monarchy, the former ambassador advocated the resumption of Berlin’s pre-war links, in particular with the United Kingdom. As he stated in his memorandum of summer 1916, Germany’s future would lie on the water: Quite right; why seek it, therefore, in Poland and Belgium, in France and Serbia? This is a return to the days of the Holy Roman Empire and the mistakes of the Hohenstaufens and Habsburgs . . . The policy of the Triple Alliance is a return to the past, a turning aside from the future, from imperialism and a world policy. The idea of an all-powerful ‘Middle-Europe’ belongs to the Middle Ages, BerlinBaghdad is a blind alley and not the way into the open country, to unlimited possibilities, to the world mission of the German nation.93

Agrarian representatives, on the other hand, feared increased competition and insisted that they should not be ‘sacrificed for the friendship with Austria-Hungary’.94 As the Bavarian politician Georg Heim declared acrimoniously in December 1917: ‘It is about the survival of the Bavarian farmers . . . Public opinion in Germany is being influenced by German emotional rapture [Gemütsduselei] and sweet words’ of ‘utopians and imaginative dreamers’. One would be determined ‘to sacrifice the South German peasantry with brutal recklessness’.95 As seen, other Bavarians took a more positive view, motivated by anti-Prussian sentiments, South German affinities, or the ambition to enhance the region’s political and economic status, often presenting Bavaria as a bridge between Prussia and Austria, between Hamburg and Trieste.96 The government in Munich anticipated some disadvantages in agricultural regard but hoped for benefits elsewhere, such as increased

93 94

95 96

‘Offene Antwort an den Reichstagsabgeordneten Friedrich Naumann’, 5 August 1917; F.W. Foerster, ‘Deutschland und England. Betrachtungen zur Diskussion Friedrich Naumann – Fürst Lichnowsky’, 17 August 1917; F. Naumann, ‘Mitteleuropa als Friedensmacht’, 20 August 1917. The articles of 31 July and 5 August 1917 are reprinted in Lichnowsky, Heading for the Abyss, pp. 131–9. Lichnowsky, ‘My Mission to London’, p. 81. A. Arnstadt, ‘Zur Frage eines deutsch-österreichischen Zollverbandes’, Tag, 25 June 1915. Also see A. Arnstadt, ‘Die Stellung der deutschen Landwirtschaft zum Wirtschaftsverbande der Zentralmächte’, ESWZ, 20 March 1916, pp. 93–5; J. Flamm, ‘Die bayrischen Bedenken gegen den Wirtschaftsbund’, ÖV, 2 February 1918, pp. 296–300; ‘Niederschrift der zollpolitischen Beratung deutscher, österreichischer und ungarischer Landwirte, Budapest, 30. und 31. Januar 1916’, BArch, R 43, No. 406; U. Gerber, ‘Das Interesse der deutschen Landwirtschaft an der Regelung der mitteleuropäischen Frage, insbesondere an der künftigen Regelung des wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisses zu Österreich Ungarn’, 14 May 1917, BArch, N 3001, No. 29. G. Heim, ‘Eine schlimme Botschaft’, FB, 15 December 1917. See, for example, A. Schmid, München – Bagdad. Eine bayerische Zukunftsfrage (Diessen, 1916); ‘Bayern und Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert’, FK, 14 March 1917; ‘Bayern und Österreich’, MAA, 21 January 1918; and the report by Count Bothmer about his trip to Vienna, 16 August 1917, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 8/1.

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Danubian traffic and trade. Partly drawing on pre-war plans for linking the Danube to the Rhine and other German waterways, and prompted by wartime developments such as the naval blockade, Bavarian officials together with South German business representatives and journalists strongly lobbied in Berlin to develop the river as a transit artery, thus tying Germany to the Balkans and boosting the Bavarian economy. The military leadership also took a strong interest in new transport ways to move troops and in particular raw materials (e.g. food and oil from Romania). While the German Foreign Office seemed supportive, too, other Reich ministries warned against the financial costs of such building plans and the detrimental impact on North German shipping interests. Austro-Hungarian officials also reacted unenthusiastically, and by the end of the war the Danubian project had not moved beyond the planning phase.97 A private initiative of 1917–18 to establish a Bavarian-Austrian cultural and economic association also attracted a lot of interest from government circles, business representatives, and the press. In an article for the Bayerische Staatszeitung, Franz Xaver Zahnbrecher, a Bavarian citizen working for the Austrian forage department in Vienna, had suggested a closer cooperation in various fields, such as tourism, industry, trade, and agriculture. The association was to be based in Vienna and Munich, with regular meetings in Salzburg, where the local university was to be developed into a ‘GermanAustrian Oxford’.98 In January 1918, Zahnbrecher gave a talk on ‘The cultural and economic relations between Bavaria and Austria’ at the University of Munich, to which he had invited the Bavarian king, his ministers, and various other top-ranking decision-makers (many of whom actually attended). Apparently, the event did not meet the expectations of most of the audience; Zahnbrecher had given a dilettantish (and apparently rather boring) lecture on the role of the Bavarians in the colonization and Germanization of the Ostmark, instead of tackling organizational questions and providing a clear programme for the future. As a local paper commented: ‘What is required is practical, sober, organizational and political-economic planning.’ It was hoped that the next event in Vienna would offer more in this regard as the idea of ‘a closer cultural and economic association of Bavaria and Austria deserves all support’.99 Whereas the press continued to praise the special relationship between Munich and Vienna, based on long-standing ethno-cultural, historical, and geographical links, the initiative came to 97 98 99

D. Hamlin, ‘Water and Empire – Germany, Bavaria and the Danube in World War I’, FWWS, 3/1 (2012), 65–85. F.X. Zahnbrecher, ‘Bayern – Oesterreich’, BSt, 28 December 1917. ‘Bayern und Oesterreich’, MAA, 21 January 1918.

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nothing, not least because of the aggravating domestic situation in Cisleithania.100 Still, envoy Tucher reported regularly about the project (and the lack of progress), while the Saxon government, already nervous about the relatively high number of high-ranking Austro-Hungarian representatives in Bavaria, discussed whether a similar association should be set up for Saxony and Bohemia.101 More generally, the political leadership had early started to contemplate ways and means to achieve at least informal German hegemony in Europe.102 In early September 1914, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, together with his foreign policy advisor Kurt Riezler, elaborated a notorious catalogue of German war aims, known as the September Programme. It stated: ‘We must create a Central European economic association through common customs treaties . . . This association will probably not have any common constitutional supreme authority and all its members will seem equal, but in reality it will be under German leadership and must solidify Germany’s economic predominance over Central Europe.’ According to Bethmann, this permanent customs union, comprising not only Germany and Austria-Hungary but also France, the Benelux and Scandinavian countries, as well as Italy, would make the German Reich economically independent and enable it to compete with the British Empire and other world powers.103 The chancellor had earlier received several letters from the influential industrialist and pre-war Mitteleuropa advocate Walther Rathenau, urging him to create a German-dominated customs union in order to take over ‘the definitive leadership of 100 101

102

103

See, for example, R. v. Kralik, ‘Bayern und Oesterreich’, Reichspost, 2 June 1918, and ‘Bayern und die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa’, APZ, 10 July 1918. See Stieglitz to Vitzthum, 29 December 1917 and 30 January 1918; Vitzthum to Finance Ministry, 7 January 1918; Seydewitz to Vitzthum, 22 January 1918; Nostitz to Vitzthum, 29 April 1918, SLHA, 10730/384. For the correspondence between Munich and Tucher, see BHSA, Wien 2289. On German official war aims, see Fischer, Griff; K.H. Janßen, Macht und Verblendung. Kriegszielpolitik der deutschen Bundesstaaten 1914/18 (Göttingen, 1963); G. Ritter, Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk. Das Problem des ‘Militarismus’ in Deutschland, 4 vols. (Munich, 1954–68), III: Die Tragödie der Staatskunst. Bethmann Hollweg als Kriegskanzler 1914–1917 (1964) and IV: Die Herrschaft des deutschen Militarismus und die Katastrophe von 1918 (1968); G.-H. Soutou, L’or et le sang. Les buts de guerre économiques de la Première Guerre Mondiale (Paris, 1989). More specifically on Mitteleuropa: R.W. Kapp, ‘Bethmann Hollweg, Austria-Hungary and Mitteleuropa’, AHY, 19–20 (1983–84), 215–36; G.A. Tunstall, Jr., ‘German and Austro-Hungarian War Planning and War Aims and the Concept of Mitteleuropa’, in I. Romsics (ed.), 20th Century Hungary and the Great Powers (Boulder, CO, 1995), pp. 15–30; D. Stevenson, ‘The First World War and European Integration’, IHR, 34/4 (2012), 841–63. ‘Richtlinien über die Politik beim Friedensschluß’, September 1914, BArch, R 43, No. 2476.

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Europe’.104 Similar requests for continental integration and informal economic domination (instead of annexations) came from Matthias Erzberger, the prominent banker Arthur von Gwinner, and August Thyssen, one of the leading figures in Germany’s mining and steel industries.105 As seen, however, German economic circles were far from enthusiastic, highlighting the many difficulties and potential disadvantages for the Kaiserreich. Many high-ranking officials were sceptical about a far-reaching Central European arrangement, too, a point emphasized by Georges-Henri Soutou against Fritz Fischer’s interpretation of the September Programme as indicative of the views of leading businessmen, politicians, and militaries. Rather than expressing the official German war aims until 1918, the programme represented a provisional and adaptable outline that owed much to the optimism of the first months of the war.106 Indeed, as early as September 1914, Hermann Johannes from the Foreign Office underlined the need to protect German agriculture and Austrian industries, drew attention to the different currency values, and objected to the establishment of joint institutions.107 State Secretary of the Interior Clemens von Delbrück and Karl Helfferich, his colleague from the Treasury, similarly stressed fiscal and organizational difficulties.108 The Prussian Ministers of Trade Reinhold von Sydow and of the Interior Friedrich Wilhelm von Loebell maintained that continental markets could not replace Germany’s world trade links, while Rudolf Havenstein, who was the President of the Reichsbank, insisted that it was not Germany’s task to consolidate the Habsburg ally at any cost: ‘Our interest is the policy of the free hand.’109 The discussions continued until summer 1915 and demonstrated that the large majority of consulted officials rejected the idea of a full customs union. Ultimately, however, it was acknowledged that Mitteleuropa was, in the words of Vice-Chancellor Delbrück, ‘a question of high politics, which the leading statesman can and must decide by himself, if need be even against the reluctant departments’ 104 105 106 107

108 109

Rathenau to Bethmann Hollweg, Berlin, 28 August and 7 September 1914, BArch, R 43, No. 2476 (quotation from second letter). See Erzberger to Bethmann Hollweg, Berlin, 2 September 1914, and Memorandum Thyssen, 9 September 1914, BArch, R 43, No. 2476. See in particular Fischer, Griff, pp. 113–19, and Soutou, L’or et le sang, pp. 27–30. ‘Gutachterliche Äußerung und Vorschlag des Direktors im Auswärtigen Amt Johannes zu der Frage eines Zollbündnisses mit Österreich-Ungarn’, September 1914, BArch, R 43, No. 404. Delbrück to Bethmann Hollweg, Berlin, 3 and 13 September 1914, BArch, R 43, No. 2476. ‘Besprechung der Ressortchefs bei Reichskanzler Bethmann Hollweg’, Berlin, 5 June 1915, BArch, R 43, No. 405. On the internal discussions, see Fischer, Griff, pp. 310–18, and Soutou, L’or et le sang, pp. 30–45.

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and at the risk ‘that we worsen our politico-economic situation at least temporarily’.110 As we will see, the issue resurfaced in autumn 1915 in connection with the Polish question. Some academics of the VfS, such as Heinrich Herkner, Arthur Spiethoff, and Edgar Jaffé, came to the similar conclusion that political rather than economic concerns should take the priority.111 Max Weber, too, accepted compelling ‘political considerations’ and declared: ‘Economic aspects must not be . . . the decisive factor.’112 Paramount amongst these political motives was the notion that Mitteleuropa was essential to enhance Germany’s geo-strategic position in the imminent age of empires and federations. Most commentators followed this line of reasoning; Naumann had argued on this basis, and many right-wing Social Democrats, Catholics, National Liberals, and conservatives took a similar standpoint, even though there were substantial differences as to the concrete configuration of the Central European entity. In a later stage of the war, which was characterized by mounting tensions between the allies and increasing war-weariness in AustriaHungary, a second argument for Mitteleuropa became central: to tie the Habsburg Empire permanently to Germany in order to prevent it from concluding a separate peace or from allying with other states. Interestingly, Ambassador Tschirschky expounded a third issue: the strengthening of the Austro-Germans. As he explained to the chancellor in September 1914: ‘The closer the association, the more power [Austrian] Germandom will gain. For the Germans as the main pillars of industry and commerce a customs union with Germany would be of the highest importance . . . I am certain that the Germanic element in the German Eastern March would be effectively strengthened and permanently bound to us.’113 A few weeks later, he wrote in a similar sense to Under State Secretary Zimmermann that a common customs area would 110 111

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113

Delbrück to Wahnschaffe, Berlin, 28 April 1915, BArch, R 43, No. 405. H. Herkner, ‘Vorrede’, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, I, pp. V–VII; A. Spiethoff, ‘Gründe für und wider einen deutsch-österreichisch-ungarischen Zollverband’, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, I, pp. 1–59; his epilogue to the general debate, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III, pp. 108–27; and the contribution by Jaffé to the general debate, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III, pp. 19–20. M. Weber, ‘Deutschland unter den europäischen Weltmächten’, in Deutscher Kriegsund Friedenswille, special issue of Hilfe, March 1917, pp. 7–13 (p. 11). Also see his contribution to Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III, pp. 28–37. For a similar viewpoint, see W. Schotte, ‘Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung der Mittelmächte’, Hilfe, 18 January 1917, pp. 40–2 and his ‘Zollverein oder “Heimatpolitik”’, Hilfe, 19 April 1917, pp. 258–61. Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, Vienna, 1 September 1914, PAAA, Österreich 83, vol. 1.

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lead to an influx of ‘Reich German elements’, thus ‘bringing fresh Germanic blood to the effete Germans of the monarchy and promoting the sense of order and duty’ there.114 The ambassador repeated his arguments in July 1915: ‘Only by penetrating the monarchy’s economic life with our strict and constructive spirit, only by directing fresh blood from the German Reich into the monarchy’s withering body can the Germanic forces be reinforced to the extent that Austria-Hungary will also in the future be a strong and truly useful ally for us.’115 However, this standpoint was not very common. As we will see below, State Secretary Jagow was not completely indifferent to this argumentation, yet for him a strong Austro-German element within the Habsburg Empire ultimately represented a prerequisite for Mitteleuropa and not its objective. For German policy-makers, military leaders, members of the industrialcommercial elite, but also for the great majority of intellectuals, Mitteleuropa was not a völkisch objective – and only one amongst several other war aims. Many Austro-Germans, in contrast, appeared highly enthusiastic about entering into a close association with Germany, celebrating Naumann as a ‘prophet of a new age’ and in some cases even calling for a permanent political union beyond a mere economic partnership.116 To be sure, the military and bureaucratic elites, representatives of the court party, members of the Catholic clergy, and several Christian Social politicians shared the doubts of Emperor Franz Joseph (and his successor Karl), anticipating a subordinate position of the Habsburg Monarchy and ‘North German tutelage’.117 In summer 1915, the semi-official Fremdenblatt even spoke out against the public discussion of such 114 115

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Tschirschky to Zimmermann, Vienna, 21 October 1914, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 344. Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, Vienna, 22 July 1915, PAAA, Österreich 83, vol. 2. Also see Tschirschky to Jagow, Vienna, 18 August 1915, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, Geheimakten, No. 6/II, and Tschirschky to Jagow, Vienna, 29 October 1915, in SG, I, pp. 192–4. K. Helfferich, Der Weltkrieg (Karlsruhe, 1925), p. 412. On the Austro-Hungarian Mitteleuropa debate, see R.W. Kapp, ‘Divided Loyalties: The German Reich and Austria-Hungary in Austro-German Discussions of War Aims, 1914–1916’, CEH, 17 (1984), 120–39; F. Fellner, ‘Denkschriften aus Österreich. Die österreichische Mitteleuropa-Diskussion in Wissenschaft und Politik 1915/16’, in E. Brix (ed.), Geschichte zwischen Freiheit und Ordnung. Gerald Stourzh zum 60. Geburtstag (Graz, 1991), pp. 145–62; A. Müller, Zwischen Annäherung und Abgrenzung. ÖsterreichUngarn und die Diskussion um Mitteleuropa im Ersten Weltkrieg (Marburg, 2001). Also see Ramhardter, Geschichtswissenschaft; Morgenbrod, Wiener Großbürgertum; Ehrenpreis, Kriegs- und Friedensziele. Still useful: G. Gratz and R. Schüller, The Economic Policy of Austria-Hungary during the War in Its External Relations, trans. by W.A. Phillips (New Haven, CT, 1928), in particular pp. 3–69. Prinz Schönburg, ‘Mittel zur Herbeiführung eines baldigen Friedens’, June 1916, HHStA, PA I, K. 496.

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a complex subject matter that was best left to the officials in charge.118 The Meinl-Lammasch circle, already mentioned above, opposed a policy of seclusion, propagating a global or European league of nations instead.119 Quite a few Austrian industrialists and financiers were afraid of German economic superiority, intensified competition, and the loss of tariff income.120 However, given increasing economic problems (shortage of food and supplies) and the various military failures that made German assistance indispensable, many sceptics accepted limited economic integration as a means to secure the existence of the multiethnic empire and to solidify the alliance of the Central Powers. Liberal and deutschnational circles, on the other hand, from early on campaigned for a novel arrangement with Germany, one of the major points of the Linz Programme of 1882.121 In one of the first related memoranda of the war period (October 1914), Josef Redlich demanded the formation of a Central European customs agreement, which was to be established by a dynastic pact and included in the peace treaty.122 Various liberalnational politicians and some officials, too, amongst them Julius 118 119 120

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‘Wien, 20. Juli’, Fremdenblatt, 20 July 1915. Meyer argues that the warning had been prompted by Tisza. See Meyer, Mitteleuropa, pp. 183, 186. H. Benedikt (ed.), Die Friedensaktion der Meinlgruppe 1917/18. Die Bemühungen um einen Verständigungsfrieden nach Dokumenten, Aktenstücken und Briefen (Graz, 1962). See, for example, ‘Denkschrift des Bundes Österreichischer Industrieller’, 1 February 1915; G. Raunig, ‘Wirtschaftspolitische Annäherungen’ 2 March 1915; ‘Resolution des Industriellen Klub: Wirtschaftliche Annäherung Österreich-Ungarns an das Deutsche Reich’, 11 May 1915, all in HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 30; Österreichisch-deutscher Wirtschaftsverband (ed.), Stenographischer Bericht über die Tagung des Österreichisch-deutschen Wirtschaftsverbandes am 28. Juni 1915 in Wien betreffend die Neugestaltung der Handelsbeziehungen Österreich-Ungarns zum Deutschen Reiche (Vienna, 1915); ‘Leitsätze des Österreichisch-deutschen Wirtschaftsverbandes betreffend den wirtschaftlichen Zusammenschluß Österreich-Ungarns und des Deutschen Reiche, Oktober 1915’, SLHA 10730/317; J. Heller, Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn. Gesichtspunkte eines Industriellen zur Neugestaltung ihres wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisses (Leipzig, 1916); ‘Die Prager Handelskammer gegen einen wirtschaftlichen Zusammenschluß mit Deutschland’, NWT, 4 February 1916. See, for example, R. Pacher, ‘Vom Kriegs- zum Wirtschaftsbündnis. Zukunftsmusik und Vergangenheitsklänge’, DÖ, 15 October 1914, pp. 241–5; F. Jesser, ‘Blick nach vorwärts’, DA, October 1914, pp. 3–7; F. Jesser, ‘Voraussetzungen des mitteleuropäischen Staatenbundes’, Kunstwart, 2nd October issue 1915, pp. 46–52; R. v. Scala, ‘Zolleinigung (“Zollunion”) zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, DA, November 1914, pp. 73–4 and January 1915, pp. 210–12; E. Pernerstorfer, ‘Mitteleuropa’, BT, 1 November 1915; S. v. Haupt, ‘Unser künftiges wirtschaftspolitisches Verhältnis zu Deutschland’, NFP, 18 and 23 November 1915; V. Lischka, ‘Mitteleuropa’, AT, 15 February 1916; G. Stolper, ‘Naumanns Mitteleuropa’, ÖR, 15 December 1915, pp. 248–52; G. Stolper, Das mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftsproblem, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1918); A. Ritter, Nordkap-Bagdad. Das politische Programm des Krieges, exp. ed. (Frankfurt/M., 1916); C. Beurle, Die deutschösterreichische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft nach dem Kriege (Linz, 1917). J. Redlich, ‘Denkschrift über die Schaffung eines Zollvereines zwischen OesterreichUngarn und dem Deutschen Reiche’, 24 October 1914, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 425.

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Sylvester, Richard Riedl, and Karl Urban, advocated Mitteleuropa in various articles, speeches, and meetings with their German peers. In September 1915, the DNV together with the Christian Socials drew up joint political guidelines, including the request for closer economic relations with Germany.123 A few months later, about 900 Austrian professors and lecturers issued a declaration calling for a permanent economic union with the German Reich.124 The notorious ‘Easter Programme’ of 1916, put forward by the German Club and other radicalnationalist associations, advocated a military, economic, and customs alliance.125 Joseph Maria Baernreither and the historian Heinrich Friedjung, both in cooperation with like-minded politicians and intellectuals, elaborated two of the most significant and detailed Austrian memoranda on the question. The exposés anticipated a post-war situation that would necessitate substitute markets and new geo-strategic alignments. Mitteleuropa would open the way for the joint economic exploitation of the Balkans and the Orient, and secure the great-power status of the Habsburg Monarchy. Only by acting closely together in political, military, and economic regard, it was argued, would the Central Powers be able to play a substantial role in world politics also in the future.126 Baernreither spoke for the liberal-industrial elite, who objected to a full-scale union 123

124

125 126

‘Richtlinien. Beschlossen von der christlichsozialen Vereinigung deutscher Abgeordneter, dem Deutschen Nationalverbande und der Wiener christlichsozialen Partei’ [September 1915], HHStA, Groß papers, K. 4. On the Christian Socials in the First World War, see J.W. Boyer, Culture and Political Crisis in Vienna: Christian Socialism in Power, 1897–1918 (Chicago, IL, 1995), pp. 369–443, and J. Schönner, ‘Die Geschichte einer Flucht nach vorne. Die Christlichsozialen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Kaisertreue und Pragmatismus’, in Mesner et al. (eds.), Parteien und Gesellschaft, pp. 31–54. ‘Erklärung von 855 Hochschullehrern Österreichs betreffend einen wirtschaftlichen Zusammenschluß Österreich-Ungarns mit dem Deutschen Reich’, December 1915, HHStA, Groß papers, K. 5. ‘Die Forderungen der Deutschen Oesterreichs zur Neuordnung nach dem Kriege’ [Spring 1916], HHStA, Groß papers, K. 4. J.M. Baernreither, ‘Exposé über das wirtschaftspolitische Verhältnis der Monarchie zu Deutschland nach dem Kriege’ [Spring 1915] and ‘Denkschrift über das wirtschaftspolitische Verhältnis Österreich-Ungarns zu Deutschland’ [Summer 1915], HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 30; H. Friedjung et al., Denkschrift aus Deutsch-Österreich (Leipzig, 1915). Also see R. Kobatsch, Ein Zoll- und Wirtschaftsverband zwischen dem Deutschen Reiche und Österreich-Ungarn (Berlin, 1915); E. v. Philippovich, Ein Wirtschafts- und Zollverband zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn (Leipzig, 1915); F. Klein, Die Kulturgemeinschaft der Völker nach dem Kriege (Leipzig, 1915); E. Pistor, Die Volkswirtschaft Österreich-Ungarns und die Verständigung mit Deutschland (Berlin, 1915); C. Irresberger, Das deutsch-österreichisch-ungarische Wirtschafts- und Zollbündnis. Eine Studie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des österreichisch-ungarischen Standpunktes (Berlin, 1916); O. Weber, ‘Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, ZfP, 9 (1916), 99–155.

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but not to economic cooperation on a lower level. He promoted a sui generis trade and customs agreement, whereas Friedjung and the coauthors of the Denkschrift aus Deutsch-Österreich called for a more comprehensive scheme, including a military convention. They represented the deutschnational camp, which supported Mitteleuropa not least for domestic reasons. They were convinced that it would lead to a modernization of Austria-Hungary’s army; counter Hungarian separatism and replace the cumbersome decennial Austro-Hungarian economic compromise with a more permanent solution; establish German as the official state language; and settle the Polish and South Slav issues. The idea that Mitteleuropa would reinforce the position of Germandom in the Dual Monarchy was indeed very popular. Redlich had argued along these lines and described the Central European project ‘as one of the most important national tasks of the entire German people’ and ‘one of the greatest political achievements of Germans for Germans’. The ‘influx of German national elements to Austria’, which had almost ceased since 1866, would finally increase again.127 Wilhelm von Medinger, a GermanBohemian landowner, similarly held that an economic partnership with Berlin would bring German capital and immigrants to Austria-Hungary: ‘German mindset, German organization, German administrational methods, German sincerity will anew flow into our country.’ Without such a strengthening of the state-supporting Austro-German element, the Habsburg Monarchy could no longer fulfil its mission as a bulwark against the East and ultimately fall prey to a process of ‘Slavization’.128 Hermann Ullmann went as far as to demand a firm policy of Germanization and the creation of further German settlements in SouthEastern Europe: ‘We need land for farmers and spheres of activity for our surplus of intelligentsia . . . Healthy German farmers would be the best pillar of Mitteleuropa.’129 In a letter to Naumann, he even more frankly stated that the Central European project would only be achievable once the ‘Slav intelligentsia, which has been systematically cultivated over the last decades, is eliminated’.130 Ullmann and other radical nationalists promoted Mitteleuropa as a völkisch project that would finally bring Reich Germans and Austro-Germans back together and resolve the conflict (on both sides) between Staatspolitik and Volkspolitik, between 127 128 129

130

Redlich, ‘Denkschrift’. W. v. Medinger, ‘Zum wirtschaftlichen Anschlusse an Deutschland. Gesprochen im Industriellen Klub am 27. Mai 1915’, HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 30. H. Ullmann, ‘Mitteleuropa, von Deutschösterreich aus gesehen’, Kunstwart, 2nd January issue 1916, pp. 55–8 (p. 57). Also see his Die Bestimmung der Deutschen, and ‘Friedrich Naumanns “Mitteleuropa”’, Tat, January 1916, pp. 882–4. Ullmann to Naumann, 8 November 1915, BArch, N 3001, No. 215.

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reasons of state and ethnic solidarity. For Walther Schmied-Kowarzik, who taught philosophy at the University of Vienna, the union appeared as an ideal solution to the German question, unifying Central European Germandom (in connection with Hungary, Poland, and Croatia) in a Greater Germanic empire. Like Hermann Kienzl or Emil Lehmann, he argued that the ‘nation-state is merely a means, a tool of German power to achieve our world mission’. It was Germany’s task to establish overseas colonies and to compete on the world market, but it would have to cooperate closely with the second German power in Europe, the Habsburg Monarchy, which served as a rampart against Asia and contained western Slavdom. It is evident again that Austro-German nationalism was not irredentist in nature: Austria-Hungary’s right to exist was not questioned. As Schmied-Kowarzik reasoned: ‘The final goal of German state-building is not the völkisch unitary state but Central European imperialism, which is oriented towards the East and whose first and greatest carrier has been Austria.’131 The philosopher and publicist concluded with the worn-out statement that Mitteleuropa as ‘a cultural realm of Germandom, a world empire of German spirit’, should not be based on German tyranny and the use of force but on cooperation and the ‘voluntary’ political submission of Slav nationalities under German political and cultural guidance.132 However, the interest of most Reich German commentators in the situation of the Austro-Germans remained limited. To them, Mitteleuropa stood primarily for territorial expansionism and economic consolidation. Robert Sieger consequently complained that ‘the appraisal in the Reich is more exclusively based on economic standpoints’, whereas the Austro-Germans would care ‘about the entrance in a compact national working-group with our co-nationals, about the intensification of the cultural community by aligning the ways of life and economic conditions etc., in a word, about the development of the nation’. It would be lamentable, he went on, that the Reich Germans took such a reserved stance towards this ‘national movement’: ‘Its national spirit disconcerts some of those who stick to the “state-nation” and consider the political border more important than the cultural community.’133 This was a fairly accurate assessment of Reich German attitudes, as the 131

132

133

W. Schmied-Kowarzik, ‘Die Wiedergeburt Österreichs aus dem Geiste des Imperialismus: I. Die Aufgabe des Deutschtums im Osten’, DÖ, 1 October 1915, pp. 132–6 (p. 136). W. Schmied-Kowarzik, ‘Die Wiedergeburt Österreichs aus dem Geiste des Imperialismus: IV. Neuösterreichischer Staatsgeist’, DÖ, 1 April 1916, pp. 354–8 (p. 357). R. Sieger, ‘Politisches Leben in Deutschösterreich’, DP, 4 August 1916, pp. 1373–83 (pp. 1374–5).

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discussions in the VfS demonstrated. Austro-German representatives such as Stolper and Othmar Spann, professor in Brünn (Brno), were convinced of the necessity and feasibility of a customs union with some intermediate tariffs to protect Austro-Hungarian industries and German agrarians from competition during a transitional period.134 However, in the concluding discussion, Spann also promoted the customs union as a ‘national goal’ and reproached Reich German sceptics for caring only about ‘immediate business profit’ instead of acknowledging the ‘historic and national greatness of the unification effort’. He forcefully warned the Reich Germans against ‘confusing state with nation’ and ‘the commitment to the state with national consciousness’.135 It would not be right, he added later, to treat Austria like Turkey: What can you offer to us, what do we offer to you? One must not value Austria like this. Austria and Germany as the strong and united brothers of the German House – that shall be the conviction according to which the economist, too, shall approach the matter of a customs union.136

Michael Hainisch supported Spann’s call for Mitteleuropa. The liberal politician and co-author of the Denkschrift, who would later become President of the Austrian Republic, showed himself similarly convinced that only ‘a very close relationship’ with Germany could ensure ‘the safeguarding of our national survival and a strengthening of our position’ against Magyar separatism and Slav nationalism.137 Yet only a few Reich German participants agreed. Without fully sharing the Austro-German view, Tönnies at least stated that ‘national pathos must not be excluded from this question’.138 Gustav von Schmoller demanded more ‘optimism and belief in the future’, and argued that: Two almost completely distinct states with completely unrelated histories and separate political interests cannot form a customs union; their sons do not let themselves be shot dead for one another, either. Yet states, which are related in geographical, ethnological, and linguistic regard, and also concerning their national economic living conditions, which have a common history of thousand years, can create a common future regarding their customs policy, and they have to, if they want to make progress.139

134

135 137 139

See G. Stolper, ‘Über die Formen eines Wirtschaftsverbandes zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, I, pp. 153–81, and Spann’s contribution to the general discussion, in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III, pp. 2–15, 65–6. Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III, pp. 3, 4, 13, 14. 136 Ibid., p. 66. 138 Ibid., p. 103. Ibid., p. 37. G. v. Schmoller, ‘Vorrede’, ibid., pp. VIII–XI (p. XI).

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Schmoller’s former student Arthur Spiethoff, a Reich German who taught in the charged atmosphere of Prague, even held that one of the main benefits of a Central European economic and political association would be the ‘völkisch affiliation [Anschluss]’ of millions of AustroGermans.140 Overall, however, the Reich German participants took a very sober stance. Eulenburg, for example, insisted that there was no point in ‘emotional sentiments’: ‘Economics are always about expediency.’141 Karl Diehl was of the opinion ‘that the question of a customs union has nothing to do with national pathos, national enthusiasm, with German-Austrian friendship’.142 And according to Julius Pierstorff from Jena, Austria-Hungary and Germany were ‘two distinct states just like all the others’.143 The Berlin gathering between German and Austrian right-wing politicians, higher officials, and representatives of the financial and commercial elite in October 1916, following an earlier meeting in January, was characterized by similar dissent.144 Austro-German attendees again highlighted the significance of the subject matter for Germandom on the whole, demanding a close political and military association with a common external trade policy. For Max von Tayenthal from the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry, there was no doubt that the question of economic rapprochement should not be ‘assessed solely from a purely economic and profit-driven standpoint’. It would be in Germany’s own interest to support the Austro-German pillar of the Habsburg ally: ‘You will need us in order to contain the western and northern Slavs. You will need us to build a political and economic bridge to the Orient. And you will need us . . . also in order to keep the way towards the Mediterranean Sea open.’145 The deutschnational member of the Reichsrat Robert Freißler agreed that there were national-political reasons to deepen the relationship, but the majority of the Reich Germans appeared again very reluctant as to close-knit economic integration and detailed negotiations before the conclusion of hostilities. Another meeting did not come about. The prominent Rhenish-Westphalian industrialist (and leading Pan-German representative) Emil Kirdorf refused to gather again with the ‘doubtful allies’, who would abandon Germany at the first opportunity. Hugo Stinnes, Alfred Hugenberg, and Wilhelm 140 141 142 144 145

Spiethoff, ‘Gründe für und wider’, p. 33. Also see his epilogue in Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III, in particular pp. 121–6. Eulenburg, ‘Die Stellung der deutschen Industrie’, p. 7. Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III, p. 16. 143 Ibid., p. 18. ‘Erste Österreicher-Tagung in Berlin (Hotel Adlon) am 25. January 1916’, BArch, R 8048, No. 693. Bericht über die deutsch-österreichische Besprechung in Berlin vom 8. Oktober 1916 (Mainz, 1916), pp. 40, 42.

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Beukenberg, other top-ranking businessmen with links to the PanGerman League, were also sceptical: Germany could do without closer economic cooperation with the insignificant Austro-Hungarian trade partner.146 The destiny of Germandom? State interests and the ethnic community For many Austro-Germans, Mitteleuropa fulfilled a dual purpose: it was a surrogate for the non-existent and unfeasible state-political unity of Central European Germandom, and a means of reinforcing their domestic standing. In Germany, the project was about world politics and commercial gains. Here, wartime developments such as the economic blockade, fears of post-war isolation, prospects of economic expansion on the continent, and the conviction that both monarchies would have to come closer together in order to stand the competition with other world empires played a more substantial role than national sentiments and aspirations. The status quo with regard to the Habsburg Monarchy was reconsidered in order to secure the German nation-state, not to achieve German-Austrian unification on a higher level or to bolster the rest of German-speaking Europe. True, those in favour of the scheme, like Naumann or Schmoller, repeatedly referred to the novel sense of togetherness between Reich Germans and Austro-Germans and to ethnic commonalities in terms of language, culture, and history. Oncken, too, maintained that for the first time since the Middle Ages the German people were fighting side by side against a common enemy, and that the new spirit of German-Austrian unity represented a lasting and noble yield of the war: ‘All tribes of our nation have appeared united on the battlefield. When have the sons of the Nordmark, from Schleswig and East Prussia ever before shaken hands out there with the Germans from the Alpine lands and Bohemia?’147 Such statements may indeed reveal a deeper emotional attachment to the Austro-German kinsmen – especially in the agitated atmosphere during the early months of the war – but they ultimately served to legitimize and defend specific political and economic interests. Left-liberal advocates of a Central European free-trade zone emphasized the spirit of comradeship-in-arms and Greater German traditions to underpin their position against protectionist agrarians and Hanseatic circles. Right-wing 146

147

Kirdorf to Otto Fürst Salm, 16 December 1916 (quotation) and Hugenberg to Salm, 23 December 1916, BArch, R 8048, No. 697. Also see Beukenberg to Salm, 22 March 1916, BArch, R 8048, No. 453. Oncken, Das alte und das neue Mitteleuropa, p. 90.

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imperialists turned to Germandom in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in order to justify territorial demands (the Baltic provinces) and to rationalize commercial expansion towards the Balkans and the Orient. Catholics, Bavarians, and conservative particularists from Hanover, Hesse, or Mecklenburg were united in their anti-Prussian stance rather than because of a genuine pro-Austrian standpoint. Altogether, only a few Reich German commentators linked Mitteleuropa with völkisch questions, declaring it a ‘historical necessity’ and ‘the destiny of Germandom’.148 In yet another essay, Karl Buchheim disapproved of ‘materialistic’ Reich nationalism, which would consider the union with Austria a simple means to imperialist ends, not a national vision. ‘Unfortunately’, he wrote, ‘we are too deeply stuck in a political thinking which cares too much about markets and naval bases but not enough about the fate of the other ethnic Germans on earth’. German national influence, Buchheim insisted further, would be severely damaged if Berlin ignored the twelve million co-nationals living in the Danube Monarchy.149 Richard Bahr took a similar position. The National Liberal publicist criticized the widespread notion that the state was superior to the Volk, excluding the Austro-Germans from the German national community: ‘We Reich Germans have distorted the idea of the nation.’150 In line with Austro-German authors such as Sieger, Ullmann, or Jesser, Bahr lamented the scantiness of Reich German knowledge of the Habsburg Monarchy and the lack of interest in the Austro-Germans, the outpost of the wider German nation and pillar of the Habsburg ally. As he complained in one of the few more detailed Reich German books on the German-Austrian relationship: ‘To give attention to the future of German Austria is regarded by the majority of the Reich citizens as the sentimental sport of odd dreamers . . . Is there any other nation which . . . would be willing to ignore their conationals’ fate with arrogant indifference?’151 Buchheim’s attitude was probably spurred by his anti-Prussian and pro-Catholic mindset, whereas Bahr’s sympathy for Germandom abroad must be attributed to his Baltic German origins. They were joined by Wilhelm Schüßler, who argued that 148 149 150 151

E. Haendcke, ‘Mitteleuropa’, ESWZ, 7 August 1916, pp. 1052–8 (p. 1058). Also see C. Jentsch, Der Weltkrieg und die Zukunft des deutschen Volkes, 5th ed. (Berlin, 1915). K. Buchheim, ‘Das mitteleuropäische Kriegsziel’, Grenzboten, 24 October 1917, pp. 104–11 (pp. 108–9). R. Bahr, ‘Deutsch-Österreich und die deutsche Nation’, TR, 2 and 4 June 1917 (quotation from second article). R. Bahr, Von der Schicksals- zur Lebensgemeinschaft. Deutschland, Österreich und Ungarn (Berlin, 1917), p. 43. Also see his ‘Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung der Mittelmächte und der Verein für Sozialpolitik’, TR, 6 December 1916 and ‘Die Annäherung der Deutschen und was sie hindert’, DA, October 1917, pp. 5–9.

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Mitteleuropa represented ‘a legacy of German history’ and would secure German Lebensraum and geopolitical supremacy: ‘It is the unification of Germany from Transylvania to Flanders, the establishment of an impregnable, secluded, infinitely rich and future-proof position of power.’152 As he explained elsewhere, Reich Germans should take the AustroGermans as an example of federative governance: ‘Austria is not the rotten, “unviable” state, but the most modern, promising and creative! The Germans in Austria are not old-fashioned, light-headed, funny and thus useless people, but our teachers for a great future, pioneering architects of one of the greatest works of humankind!’153 Most members of right-wing and Pan-German circles, however, assessed the Central European scheme primarily from an austere economic and geo-strategic point of view, objecting to exuberant comradeship phrases and pleading for ‘uncompromising soberness and clarity’ instead.154 Protectionist agrarians feared for their position in an enlarged domestic market; Prussian conservatives demanded the preservation of Germany’s political independence and liberty of action; and heavy industrialists were often more interested in global exporting and shipping opportunities than in South-Eastern European endeavours. Most did not oppose commercial expansion towards the Balkans in some form or another, but considered it a supplement to Germany’s colonial-maritime orientation, ‘a makeshift’ and not ‘an end in itself’.155 As Stresemann declared in the Reichstag in April 1916: ‘Our future does not lie in the East, we do not relinquish the struggle for world markets . . . Our field was the world and it will remain so in future.’156 The notorious Intellektuelleneingabe (also known as Seeberg-Adresse) of June 1915 – signed by more than 1,300 German academics, intellectuals, and politicians – only briefly mentioned the Habsburg Monarchy and a Central European economic union (stretching towards the Balkans and Asia Minor), meant 152 153 154

155 156

Schüßler, ‘Die deutschen Mächte’, pp. 130–3 (pp. 132–3). W. Schüßler, ‘Das neu entdeckte Österreich’, ÖR, 15 June 1917, pp. 248–55 (p. 254). ‘Zum deutsch-österreichischen Wirtschaftsbündnis’, KNN, 1 January 1916. Also see e.g. E. R[eventlow], ‘Unverständige Vereinheitlichungswünsche’, DTZ, 23 December 1914; ‘Wirtschaftspolitische Zukunftsfragen’, RWZ, 11 June 1915; ‘Deutschösterreichische Wirtschaftsfragen’, KZ, 23 June 1915. P. Heineken, ‘Mitteleuropa und Weltwirtschaft’, WZ, 14 July 1918. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 307, p. 871 (6 April 1916). The speech is reprinted as ‘Weltkrieg und Weltwirtschaftslage’, in G. Stresemann, Michel horch, der Seewind pfeift. . .! Kriegsbetrachtungen (Berlin, 1916), pp. 96–111 (quote here on p. 109). Also see his ‘Brauchen wir Kolonien?’, in Stresemann, Michel horch, pp. 136–40 and Das deutsche Wirtschaftsleben nach dem Kriege (Leipzig, 1915); as well as the following articles: ‘Festlandwirtschaft und Überseewirtschaft’, HN, 19 March 1916; C. v. Tyska, ‘Weltwirtschaft oder Mitteleuropa’, ESWZ, 20 April 1916, pp. 320–5; E. Lederer, ‘Zum Programm: “Mitteleuropa”’, ESWZ, 17 June 1916, pp. 795–801.

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primarily to counter British naval and commercial predominance. It devoted more attention to the need for Lebensraum in the East, the establishment of a Polish border strip, the annexation of Belgian and French territory, and the colonial situation.157 The same applies to other war aims programmes such as the petition of the Six Economic Associations or the proposal of the German Army League.158 Heinrich Claß’s memorandum of September 1914 did call for domestic reforms in Austria-Hungary in favour of the German-speaking population, but did not relate it to the demand for a Central European economic area, which was to stretch far beyond the Central Powers and also included the Netherlands, Italy, or the Scandinavian countries.159 Of the greater nationalist pressure groups, only the Association for Germandom Abroad (Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, VDA) advocated a common customs and trade policy with the Habsburg Monarchy in order to bolster Austrian Germandom. An exposé of August 1915 reasoned that the strengthening of Austria-Hungary’s economy and the subsequent socio-economic modernization of the non-German population would secure the standing of the Austro-Germans and stop detrimental non-German migration into German districts, which would also be in the interest of the German Reich. The Danube Monarchy would contain the western Slavs, maintain the connection to the Adriatic Sea and the Dardanelles, and facilitate the economic and cultural expansion towards the South-East.160 However, for the large majority of the national right, other matters came first. Primarily concerned with power politics and economic questions, many commentators in fact considered Mitteleuropa and the relationship with Austria-Hungary ‘a question of secondary importance’ that had to stand comparison with other war aims and schemes concerning the future course of the German Reich and its geo-strategic options.161 Rather than a critical challenge to established notions of Germanness, 157

158

159

160 161

‘Vertrauliche Denkschrift deutscher Hochschullehrer und Beamter an Reichskanzler Bethmann von Hollweg, 20. Juni 1915’, in UF, I, pp. 355–62. On the war aims of the various economic associations, parties, academics, and federal states, see Fischer, Griff, pp. 184–222, and Soutou, L’or et le sang, pp. 51–85. ‘Eingabe der Wirtschaftsverbände an den Reichskanzler’, 20 May 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 642; ‘Eingabe des Deutschen Wehrvereins an den Reichskanzler’, 27 January 1916, BArch, R 8048, No. 627. H. Claß, ‘Denkschrift betreffend die national-, wirtschafts- und sozialpolitischen Ziele des deutschen Volks im gegenwärtigen Kriege’ [1914], BArch, R 8048, No. 633. Also see ‘Eingabe des Alldeutschen Verbandes an den Herrn Reichskanzler über das politische Kriegsziel’, 5 May 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 627. ‘Denkschrift betreffend die Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und ÖsterreichUngarn’, 5 August 1915, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22. R. Mumm, ‘Wirtschaftliche Besserung’, Reichsbote, 8 April 1916.

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the Mitteleuropa debate thus revealed a widespread preoccupation with the state. Left liberals, moderate Catholics, and Social Democrats reaffirmed the role of the (neutral) state for identity formation and practical politics, advancing a civic conception, which would permit the coexistence with Eastern European peoples in a supranational entity. The national right placed emphasis on political sovereignty and security, aiming at the subordination of minority interests under the authority of the German state. From early on, radical nationalists advocated annexation and settlement schemes in the European East on the basis of forced assimilation and displacement measures, recoiling from the idea of a novel and flexible Central European order rooted in a partnership with the Austro-Slavs. In contrast to the costly stalemate on the western front, the German army had in fact quickly made substantial territorial gains in tsarist Russia, reaching Warsaw in August 1915 and occupying Vilnius one month later. Given further military successes and under the influence of the new German Supreme Command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, but also of various nationalist pressure groups such as the DVLP, the idea of establishing a sphere of German influence (or rule) in the East gained in popularity.162 This was a clear move away from federalist towards annexationist imperialism. The incorporation or affiliation of the Baltic provinces and the creation of an Ostimperium seemed more manageable and offered greater prospects for commercial expansion and political hegemony than cooperation with the reluctant and increasingly war-worn Austro-Hungarian partner. A key argument against a closer relationship with the Habsburg Monarchy was indeed its domestic situation, the growing tensions between the ethnic groups, and the resistance against Mitteleuropa in the empire’s non-Austrian half. The Kingdom of Hungary is an interesting case: it was considered a vital partner, sharing Prussia-Germany’s idea of the homogeneous nation-state and appearing more stable and reliable than conflict-ridden Austria. It is to this issue that we shall now turn, demonstrating once again the primacy of state interests over ethnonational solidarity with Germandom abroad.

162

W. Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918. Von Brest-Litowsk bis zum Ende des 1. Weltkrieges (Vienna, 1966); A. Strazhas, Deutsche Ostpolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg. Der Fall Ober Ost 1915–1917 (Wiesbaden, 1993); K. Hildebrand, ‘Das deutsche Ostimperium 1918. Betrachtungen über eine historische “Augenblickserscheinung”’, in W. Pyta and L. Richter (eds.), Gestaltungskraft des Politischen. Festschrift für Eberhard Kolb (Berlin, 1998), pp. 109–24; Liulevicius, War Land; Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 257–76. On the war aims of the Vaterlandspartei in the European East, see Hagenlücke, Deutsche Vaterlandspartei, pp. 202–12.

6

The Hungarian alliance partner

The early glorification of the alliance of the Central Powers as a special coalition, a union of hearts and minds unmatched by the ‘shallow’ collaboration of the Entente powers, rested primarily on the affinity between Reich Germans and Austro-Germans. However, the other allies also played a significant role in German war ideology. In late October 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the fighting as a coalition partner of Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy, followed one year later by Bulgaria. Berlin had maintained good relations with Turkey in the pre-war period: German officials helped Constantinople to reorganize its army and bureaucracy, while German engineers were involved in the construction of the Baghdad railway. Turkey’s strategic position and its abundance of raw materials and agricultural resources promised to enhance Germany’s standing in the Middle East. Germans were, however, well aware of the empire’s relative backwardness and decline, and some commentators took a dim view of its Islamic culture. As for Bulgaria, the smallest of the allies in terms of population and military force, there had not been much political interaction before 1914, but the country was clearly economically dependent on Berlin. Even though its tsar stemmed from a German dynasty, Bulgaria – as a ‘Slav’ entity with traditional Russophile sentiments – was perceived as a potential menace to German interests in the Balkans. Furthermore, the wartime alliance of the Central Powers was partly a coalition of recent enemies: after centuries of Turkish rule, Bulgaria had finally achieved full independence in 1908, the same year Austria-Hungary formally annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bulgaria and Turkey had fought each other as late as 1912–13 in the Balkan Wars.1 1

Recent studies on German-Turkish relations include H. Goren (ed.), Germany and the Middle East: Past, Present, and Future (Jerusalem, 2003); W.G. Schwanitz (ed.), Germany and the Middle East, 1871–1945 (Princeton, 2004); T. Kontje, German Orientalisms (Ann Arbor, MI, 2004); S.L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge, 2009); S. McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power, 1898–1918 (London, 2010). On Bulgaria: S. Troebst, ‘Von den “Preußen des Balkans” zum “vergessenen Volk”: Das deutsche Bulgarien-Bild’, Études balkaniques, 40 (2004), 61–71; M.-C. Lercher and

183

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Despite these previous conflicts and disagreements, German politicians and intellectuals celebrated the war alliance with Sofia and Constantinople, claiming that it was more than a temporary combination of formerly unrelated (or antagonistic) forces to achieve a common purpose. For Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, the grouping of the Central Powers was an organic union, ‘a natural coalition’ of younger, uncorrupted nations fighting to protect European culture and civilization. The Entente, in contrast, was described as an inferior partnership of calculation, ‘an artificial coalition’ and ‘diplomatic-political union of convenience’, unifying adverse interests and destined to disintegrate soon after the war.2 The German press followed up the allies’ campaigns with marked attention, and frequently hailed their fortitude, loyalty, and willingness to make sacrifices. Indeed, the Bulgarians were now portrayed as a proud and unfaltering people, as westward-looking ‘Prussians of the Balkans’, and countless books and articles informed the Reich German public about Bulgaria’s political system, culture, and economic potential.3 Other authors declared their solidarity with oppressed Muslims under British, French, and Russian rule, and backed GermanOttoman efforts to revolutionize the enemies’ colonial areas by inciting a religious war (jihad).4 On the whole, there was a much greater interest in Turkey and Bulgaria than before the war. Both countries featured prominently in imperialist schemes for a Greater Mitteleuropa, which was presented as a logical extension of the Central European union between Germany and Austria-Hungary. The RWV soon became active in Sofia and Constantinople, too. Whereas its Hungarian and Austrian sister

2 3

4

A. Middeke (eds.), Wider Raster und Schranken. Deutschland – Bulgarien – Österreich in ihrer gegenseitigen Wahrnehmung (Göttingen, 2006). [A.] Moeller van den Bruck, ‘Schicksal ist stärker als Staatskunst’, DR, November 1916, pp. 161–7 (p. 165). E. R[eventlow], ‘Das siegreiche Bulgarien’, DTZ, 29 December 1915. Also see P. Schweitzer, Das Bulgarienbild im Spiegel der deutschen Presse der Jahre 1912–1918 (Munich, 2007); Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (ed.), Der unbekannte Verbündete – Bulgarien im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, 2009); O. Stein, ‘“Wer das nicht mitgemacht hat, glaubt es nicht.” Erfahrungen deutscher Offiziere mit den bulgarischen Verbündeten 1915–1918’, in J. Angelow (ed.), Der Erste Weltkrieg auf dem Balkan. Perspektiven der Forschung (Berlin, 2011), pp. 271–87. Classic study: F.G. Weber, Eagles on the Crescent: Germany, Austria, and the Diplomacy of the Turkish Alliance, 1914–1918 (Ithaca, NY, 1970). With further references: H.W. Neulen, Adler und Halbmond. Das deutsch-türkische Bündnis 1914–1918 (Berlin, 1994); D. McKale, War by Revolution: Germany and Great Britain in the Middle East in the Era of World War I (Kent, OH, 1998); T. Lüdke, Jihad Made in Germany: Ottoman and German Propaganda and Intelligence Operations in the First World War (Münster, 2005); A. Will, Kein Griff nach der Weltmacht. Geheime Dienste und Propaganda im deutsch-österreichischtürkischen Bündnis 1914–1918 (Cologne, 2012); W. Loth and M. Hanisch (eds.), Erster Weltkrieg und Dschihad. Die Deutschen und die Revolutionierung des Orients (Munich, 2014).

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organizations focused primarily on Berlin, with the declared aim to ‘disseminate in Germany knowledge of our situation’ and to ‘dissipate prejudices and do away with ignorance’, the RWV together with other German Mitteleuropa groups closely collaborated with lobby organizations such as the German-Bulgarian Society or the German-Turkish Association, founded to promote intellectual and economic exchange between the allied countries.5 Politicians and economists such as Friedrich Naumann or Gustav Stresemann, often for the first time in their lives, travelled to the Balkans and the Bosphorus, while their counterparts were received with great sympathy in Germany. It cannot be the aim here to fully investigate German strategies to vindicate and popularize brotherhood-in-arms with the Slavic and Muslim allies. But two points deserve special emphasis. First, armed conflicts, or, to be precise, military alliances, can lead to intensified cultural exchange and a better understanding of other societies and ways of life, even though it would be wrong to play down the bearing of official propaganda or to ignore the fact that there were tangible economic and political interests behind such efforts. It is, however, safe to assume that the war, at least for some time, altered perceptions and fashioned a more positive image of Germany’s coalition partners. Second, racial attitudes and stereotypes played a marginal role in alliance discourse. A feeling of superiority towards Bulgaria and Turkey certainly existed amongst many decision-makers and intellectuals, yet it was checked by the imperative necessity for cooperation, and was thus not expressed publicly. As we have seen, this also applied to the Habsburg Monarchy. Most German commentators were well aware of its multinational character and recognized the war effort of the Austro-Slavs. On the other hand, many remained suspicious as to the genuineness and longevity of the ‘Austrian miracle’ and showed no inclination to accept Czechs, Poles, or the South Slavs as equal partners. Of all non-German ethnic groups within the Danube Monarchy, it was, in fact, the Magyars who attracted most attention. Despite an often inconsistent use of terms – employing ‘Austria’ in order to describe the entire realm – which frequently caused outrage amongst Hungarians, Germans acknowledged the dualist structure of the Habsburg ally and attached much importance to Budapest, as the first part of this chapter will show. Subsequent sections will investigate to what extent the German-Hungarian relationship was complicated by the existence of two million ethnic Germans in Transleithania. Contrary to the claim of Friedrich Naumann that it represented ‘one of the most 5

Österreichische Waffenbrüderliche Vereinigung, Gründende Versammlung, Wien, 26. Januar 1917 (Vienna, 1917), pp. 15–16 (chairman Ernst v. Plener in his opening speech).

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intricate issues of the German nation and the Central European alliance’, the German question in Hungary was in fact of only minor significance to most Reich German observers and officials.6 The ‘Prussians of the South-East’: glorifying the Magyars With the Compromise of 1867, the Magyars seemed to have achieved most of their political aspirations. Hungary was established as a semisovereign state, equal to the Cisleithanian half with which it shared a common ruler and cooperated in matters of foreign affairs, defence, and finances. From now on, decision-makers in Budapest exerted a much greater weight on Habsburg politics. Still, compared with the Kossuthite dream of national self-determination, dualism appeared as a partial success only, and quite a few Hungarian politicians strove for its revision, demanding full independence, the establishment of a personal union, or at least the equal usage of the Magyar language in the common army. The main political parties – typically gentlemanly associations of aristocrats and owners of large estates – fundamentally agreed on the objective of transforming the Kingdom of Hungary into a unitary nation-state based on Magyar supremacy over the other ethnic groups. Even though the Magyars represented merely 54.5 per cent of the overall population (in 1910), they constantly held more than 90 per cent of the parliamentary seats and similarly dominated Hungarian society and economy. This situation led to protests and separatist or irredentist tendencies amongst some of the oppressed nationalities, further nurturing the ruling elite’s distrust of foreign culture and external influences.7 The Magyar attitude towards Imperial Germany was characterized by a mixture of scepticism 6 7

Naumann to Stadtpfarrer Schullerus, 18 August 1915, BArch, N 3001, No. 310. See L. Katus, ‘Die Magyaren’, in Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, III/1, pp. 410–88; G. Stourzh, ‘Der Dualismus 1867 bis 1918. Zur staatsrechtlichen und völkerrechtlichen Problematik der Doppelmonarchie’, in Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, VII/1: Verfassungsrecht, Verfassungswirklichkeit, zentrale Repräsentativkörperschaften (2000), pp. 1177–230; A. Gero˝ , Modern Hungarian Society in the Making: An Unfinished Experience, trans. by J. Patterson and E. Koncz (Budapest, 1995); F.T. Zsuppán, ‘The Hungarian Political Scene’, in Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years, pp. 97–118; L. Katus, Hungary in the Dual Monarchy, 1867–1914, trans. by P. Bo˝ dy and A.T. Gane (Boulder, CO, 2008). On Hungarian nationalism and identity, see A. Freifeld, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848–1914 (Washington, DC, 2000); A. v. Klimó, Nation, Konfession, Geschichte. Zur nationalen Geschichtskultur Ungarns im europäischen Kontext 1860–1948 (Munich, 2003); M. Turda, The Idea of National Superiority in Central Europe, 1880–1918 (Lewiston, NY, 2004); A. Gero˝ , Imagined History: Chapters from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Hungarian Symbolic Politics, trans. by M.D. Fenyo (Boulder, CO, 2006); L. Péter, Hungary’s Long Nineteenth Century: Constitutional and Democratic Traditions in a European Perspective: Collected Studies, ed. by M. Lojkó (Leiden, 2012).

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and admiration, of respect and apprehension. Many representatives of the liberal-conservative elite had studied in Germany, possessed an excellent command of the German language, and admired German efficiency and military power. Berlin appeared as an important coalition partner against the Russian threat, and only a few politicians questioned the Dual Alliance.8 Yet Germanophile tendencies were often countered by the fear of Viennese despotism, concerns about German competition in the Balkans, and anxiety about Hungarian German irredentism.9 A similar ambivalence holds true for the German perception of Hungary. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries, a romantic picture prevailed, the cliché of Gypsies and the Puszta, of genuine natural beauty and authentic Magyar culture – popular themes for instance in the music of Hungarian-born Franz Liszt and of Johannes Brahms. A recurring element in contemporary German statements and analyses was the Hungarian zeal for liberty, referring to the resistance against Mongolian and Ottoman invaders. In 1848–49, democratic forces quickly declared their solidarity with the Hungarian struggle for independence against Habsburg absolutism. A sympathetic stance towards Hungary persisted in the following period, but it was now held up by the political right. East Elbian Junkers took to the aristocratic Magyar elite, while the champions of a unified Lesser German nation-state considered a strong Hungary a valuable counterweight against Austrian revanchism after 1866, but also against Slavophile tendencies within the monarchy. As the German Ambassador Eulenburg wrote in February 1899, ‘a united, strong, liberal Hungary’ represented ‘the most effective factor’ and ‘counterweight’ against a possible Slavization of the Habsburg Monarchy: ‘each weakening of Hungary must be considered a serious impairment of our own interests’.10 As we have seen, Berlin based its policy towards the Danube Empire on the fundamental premise of German hegemony in the 8

9

10

I. Diószegi, Hungarians in the Ballhausplatz: Studies on the Austro-Hungarian Common Foreign Policy (Budapest, 1983); W.D. Godsey, Aristocratic Redoubt: The AustroHungarian Foreign Office on the Eve of the First World War (West Lafayette, IN, 1999). G. Vermes, ‘The Impact of the Dual Alliance on the Magyars of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy’, ECE, 7 (1980), 310–25; G. Seewann, ‘Ungarns Deutschlandbild in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts’, in H. Süssmuth (ed.), Deutschlandbilder in Polen und Rußland, in der Tschechoslowakei und in Ungarn (Baden-Baden, 1993), pp. 252–64; L. To˝ kéczki, ‘Politisches Deutschlandbild der ungarischen Liberalkonservativen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg’, in H. Fischer (ed.), Das Ungarnbild in Deutschland und das Deutschlandbild in Ungarn (Munich, 1996), pp. 55–61; R.J.W. Evans, ‘Hungary and the German Lands in the Nineteenth Century’, in R.J.W. Evans, Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: Central Europe, c. 1683–1867 (Oxford, 2006), pp. 228–41. ‘Diplomatischer Bericht des Botschafters von Eulenburg in Wien (Auszug)’, 10 February 1899, in M. Alexander (ed.), Quellen zu den deutsch-tschechischen Beziehungen 1848 bis heute (Darmstadt, 2005), pp. 81–2 (p. 82).

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Cisleithanian and Magyar supremacy in the Transleithanian half, perceived as guaranteeing the political stability and international reliability (that is, a consistent pro-German course) of the allied monarchy. Interestingly, the German government engaged some of the most promising diplomats to keep good relations with Hungary: Anton von Monts, Botho von Wedel, and Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau all served in the consulate general in Budapest at some point in their careers.11 However, this positive image was often mixed with negative or belittling stereotypes and ideas. Radical nationalists typically depicted the Magyars as uncouth, disloyal, and brutal people, and asserted that Hungary owed its cultural and economic achievements solely to the German element.12 Paul de Lagarde in an essay of 1853 had even counted the Magyars amongst those smaller nations who represent a ‘burden for history’ and could only serve to pave the way ‘upon which other nations will march’.13 Many right-wing observers attacked the Hungarian elites for discriminating against ethnic Germans, a point to which we shall return shortly. Left liberals and Social Democrats demanded an end of the oppressive policy towards Croatia and called for reforms of the restrictive franchise system. Governing circles were critical of Budapest’s agrarian trade policy (high tariffs on livestock and grain), which damaged the Habsburg Monarchy’s relationship with Romania and Serbia. The tensions between Austria and Hungary were also of concern, and Berlin repeatedly warned Budapest not to jeopardize the unity and integrity of the allied realm. Not surprisingly, German 11

12

13

See B. Sutter, ‘Die innere Lage Ungarns vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg in der Beurteilung deutscher Diplomaten’, SodA, 13 (1970), 119–94, and 14 (1971), 188–224; I. Diószegi, Bismarck und Andrassy. Ungarn in der deutschen Machtpolitik in der 2. Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, trans. by A. Friedrich (Vienna, 1999). With a focus on the perception of Prime Minister István Tisza by German diplomats: T. Gülstorff, ‘“Da kann nur Tisza helfen!” Graf István Tisza und “sein” Ungarn im Spiegel der diplomatischen und militärischen Berichterstattung des deutschen Kaiserreiches’, in Z. Maruzsa and L. Pallai (eds.), Tisza István és emlékezete. Tanulmányok Tisza István születésének 150. Évfordulójára (Debrecen, 2011), pp. 393–416. On the image of Hungary more generally, see T. Grau (ed.), Ungarn und Deutschland – Eine besondere Beziehung (Tübingen, 2002); M. Fata (ed.), Das Ungarnbild der deutschen Historiographie (Stuttgart, 2004); C. Horel, ‘The Hungarians in Europe: An Image of Civilised Barbarians, 19th–20th Centuries’, in B. Valota (ed.), National Stereotypes: Correct Images and Distorted Images (Alessandria, 2007), pp. 51–64. F. v. Löher, Die Magyaren und andere Ungarn (Leipzig, 1874); R. Heinze, Hungarica. Eine Anklageschrift (Freiburg, 1882); H. Wastian, Ungarns Tausendjährung in deutschem Lichte. Eine Festschrift zur Milleniumsfeier (Munich, 1896); E. Hasse, ‘Der Größenwahn der Magyaren’, AB, 22 February 1902, pp. 65–6; K. v. Strantz, ‘Die Lüge vom madjarischen Staat und Volk’, AB, 7 June 1913, pp. 189–91. Also see Korinman, Deutschland über alles, pp. 98–108. P. de Lagarde, ‘Über die gegenwärtigen Aufgaben der deutschen Politik’ (1853), in de Lagarde, Schriften für das deutsche Volk, I, pp. 22–44 (p. 33).

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diplomats and military experts were particularly dissatisfied with Hungarian obstruction of the monarchy’s armaments policy. However, convinced that the Dual Alliance depended greatly on Hungary and that the Magyars represented a useful counterweight against the Austro-Slavs, the large majority of Reich German politicians and publicists endorsed the special relationship with Budapest. The outbreak of war silenced all criticism. As seen, Prime Minister Tisza’s doubts in July 1914 had proved short-lived.14 From early on, German politicians, academics, and journalists celebrated GermanHungarian comradeship-in-arms. They published countless articles and commentaries, similarly referring to ‘brotherly camaraderie’ and steadfast loyalty as in the case of Austria. The Reichstag repeatedly exchanged messages and congratulatory telegrams with the parliament in Budapest (the Austrian counterpart remained closed until May 1917), and the Hungarian colours were hoisted next to Austria’s flag when buildings were decorated on days of victory or to commemorate special events such as the birthday of the Habsburg Emperor. Following a Hungarian initiative to rename an important street in Budapest after Wilhelm II (now Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út) and the adjacent square in front of the western train station after the city of Berlin (Nyugati tér), the German capital in return honoured its sister city by christening the prominent northern part of the Königgrätzer Straße (between the Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate) as Budapester Straße.15 On the initiative of the left-liberal fraction in the Prussian House of Representatives, a Chair of Hungarian Language and Literature was established at the University of Berlin, part of a remarkable, more general tendency in wartime Germany to 14

15

On Hungary in the First World War, see I. Deák, ‘The Decline and Fall of Habsburg Hungary, 1914–1918’, in I. Völgyes (ed.), Hungary in Revolution 1918–19 (Lincoln, NE, 1971), pp. 10–30; Galántai, Hungary; G. Jeszenszky, ‘Hungary through World War I and the End of the Dual Monarchy’, in P.F. Sugar et al. (eds.), A History of Hungary (Bloomington, IN, 1990), pp. 267–94; P. Pastor, ‘Hungary in World War I: The End of Historic Hungary’, HSR, 28/1–2 (2001), 163–84; and the relevant sections in Romsics (ed.), 20th Century Hungary; I. Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, trans. by T. Wilkinson (Budapest, 1999); M. Ormos, Hungary in the Age of the Two World Wars, 1914–1945, trans. by B. McLean (Boulder, CO, 2007). Very useful are Vermes, István Tisza, and G.A. v. Geyr, Sándor Wekerle 1848–1921. Die politische Biographie eines ungarischen Staatsmannes der Donaumonarchie (Munich, 1993). On Hungarian nationalist discourse during the first years of the war, see now E. Balázs, ‘“War Stares at Us Like an Ominous Sphynx”: Hungarian Intellectuals, Literature and the Image of the Other (1914–1915)’, in L. Rosenthal and V. Rodic (eds.), The New Nationalism and the First World War (New York, 2015), pp. 95–121. Fürstenberg to Bethmann Hollweg, 13 October 1914, PAAA, Österreich 92, No. 1, vol. 25; ‘Die “Budapester Strasse”’, BT, 14 October 1914; ‘Die Taufe der Budapester Straße. Ein Telegramm des Oberbürgermeisters Wermuth’, BT, 21 November 1914. Other towns followed this example, such as Pressburg (Bratislava) in late November 1914.

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promote and facilitate the study of foreign countries.16 Numerous parliamentarians, economists, and intellectuals travelled between Germany and Hungary, paying visits to their colleagues, holding speeches, and discussing ways and means of closer political and economic cooperation. On the whole, it seems that there was a much greater interest in Hungary than before the war. Several articles and books attempted to bring Hungary and the Magyars closer to the Germans, describing the natural beauty of the landscape and the customs of the people, or explicating the historical development and political system of the Hungarian state.17 It is, however, remarkable that most contributions came from AustroGermans, Hungarian Germans, or Magyars, who were better informed than the ‘average’ Reich German and appear to have aimed at influencing the German public. Austrians, for instance, spoke of a ‘discovery’ of Hungary.18 According to the historian Harold Steinacker, the defence of the common fatherland had led to a reconciliation of the two halves of the Habsburg Empire, and strengthened the sense of belonging together, the Gesamtstaatsidee. After all, he claimed, it had become widely accepted that both were dependent on each other, that common institutions and a common army were indispensable, and that separation would ultimately lead to downfall.19 Richard Charmatz similarly observed an invigorated ‘sense of community’ and remarked contentedly: ‘The cry for separation has relapsed into silence in Hungary.’20 While some comments expressed the genuine hope of better relations between Austria and Hungary, others were meant to counterbalance Budapest’s propaganda in Germany, denying for example the argument that Transleithania represented the ‘strongest, most resistant, and most significant part’ of the Dual Monarchy, as a member of the Hungarian parliament reasoned in a typical treatise.21 As we will 16

17

18 19 20 21

‘Antrag der Abgeordneten Aronsohn und Genossen zur zweiten Beratung des Etats des Ministeriums der geistlichen und Unterrichtsangelegenheiten für das Etatjahr 1916’, 10 March 1916, in Sammlung der Drucksachen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, vol. 434, p. 1295. See, for example, A. Madelung, ‘Ungarn. Ein Neujahrsgruß’, BT, 30 December 1914; Spectator, ‘Eine Ungarnreise’, Gegenwart, 21 September and 2 October 1916, pp. 538–40 and 562–5; ‘Die Ungarn und ihr Staat’, Türmer, 1st December issue 1915, pp. 319–24. See, for example, A. Höllriegel, ‘Ein paar Tage in Budapest’, März, 24 October 1914, pp. 55–60; J.A. Lux, Ungarn. Eine mitteleuropäische Entdeckung (Munich, 1917). H. Steinacker, ‘Österreich und Ungarn’, SM, October 1914, pp. 66–73. R. Charmatz, ‘Das österreichisch-ungarische Ausgleichsproblem’, Hilfe, 21 October 1915, pp. 673–4. K. v. Cserny, Deutsch-ungarische Beziehungen (Leipzig, 1915), p. 26. For Austrian reactions, see, for example, R. Sieger, ‘Der Dualismus und die österreichischen Gelehrten’, in R. Sieger, Aus der Kriegszeit für Friedenstage (Graz, 1916), pp. 110–15; A. v. Mensdorff-Pouilly, ‘Österreich und Ungarn’, in Mensdorff-Pouilly, Mitteleuropäisches und anderes, pp. 22–36; E. Treumund, ‘Grundprobleme des Dualismus’, ÖR, 1 August

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see, many Magyar authors in fact continued to exhibit a strong sense of national pride and self-confidence, often demanding a separate Hungarian army and the transformation of the Habsburg Empire into a mere personal union as a reward for the war effort. But to return to the first months of the war, there were initially substantial pro-German tendencies in Hungary. On 5 August 1914, Lajos Thallóczy, an influential Hungarian historian and Balkan expert in the Austro-Hungarian Finance Ministry, confided in his diary: ‘We Hungarians can be glad to serve as the outpost of the Germans in this war. We thus safeguard our national existence much better than with some Franco-Slavic friendships.’22 Following a talk with the Hungarian journalist and art historian József Diner-Dénes in October 1914, Josef Redlich noted somewhat sardonically: ‘Apparently, people in Budapest feel depressed by the Russian invasion of the Carpathians. Everyone trusts the Germans and Wilhelm II blindly, and the Hungarians would love to become a part of the German Reich!’23 However, such views and attitudes were not limited to the upper echelons of Hungarian society. According to the memoirs of Count Gyula Andrássy (the Younger), the Hungarian public was very fond of Hindenburg: ‘The thought of success was associated with his name, and trust in the leader is already half the victory.’24 Similarly, when Harry Kessler arrived with German troops in Máramarossziget (Sighetu Marmaț iei, now located on the RomanianUkrainian border) in early 1915, he was welcomed enthusiastically by the local, predominantly Magyar population: ‘The whole town seems to know of our presence. More and more people follow us, not just plebs and young boys, but also old and dignified citizens, gentlemen in comfortable furs, swinging their hats and cheering just like the others. The population here seems to be filled with gratitude and truly wants to demonstrate it.’ In the evening, Kessler and his companion Schoeler met several Austrian and Hungarian officers in a restaurant and started talking to them. The remarkable episode deserves to be quoted in full: Then someone asked the band to play the ‘Watch on the Rhine’. At once everyone stood up and shouted ‘Hurrah’. Next, the band performed the Hungarian national anthem, ‘God Save Emperor Francis’, and ‘Germany, Germany Above All’. Again and again the ‘Watch on the Rhine’ had to be played, which we renamed the ‘Watch in the Carpathians’. We were hailed more and more

22 23 24

1917, pp. 97–102; J. Bunzel, Ungarn und wir (Graz, 1918); R. v. Kralik, Ungarn (M. Gladbach, 1918). L. Thallóczy, Tagebücher 23. VI. 1914 – 31. XII. 1914, ed. by F. Hauptmann and A. Prasch (Graz, 1981), p. 84 (5 August 1914). Redlich, Schicksalsjahre Österreichs, I, p. 73 (8 October 1914). G. Andrássy, Diplomacy and the War, trans. by J.H. Reece (London, 1921), p. 161.

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fervently; we were lifted up, had to climb on the tables, give speeches. Schoeler’s fur cap was circulated: the ladies were proud to wear it for a moment, and one officer kissed Schoeler’s Iron Cross. A Honvéd Hussar presented him with a cap through which he had received a light head wound and into which his mother had stitched a talisman: he offered him his most valuable possession as a gift. When the hotel restaurant closed we had to join them in the coffee house where the ovations started again, a mixture of Austrian cordiality and Hungarian temperament; it was not before half past two in the morning that Schoeler and I got to bed.25

The Italian declaration of war in May 1915 triggered another popular wave of resolute enthusiasm and gratitude to the Germans in the Hungarian capital. Following an initiative of the municipal authorities and led by the mayor of the city, several thousand people marched to the German diplomatic mission, where, as Consul General Count Egon Fürstenberg reported, ‘the densely packed masses sang patriotic Hungarian and German songs and again and again brought out passionate cheers on His Majesty the Emperor and the German Reich’.26 Similar pro-German attitudes materialized in the wake of the Romanian invasion of Transylvania in late August 1916 and the first successful counteroffensives under the strategic leadership of Falkenhayn and Mackensen.27 Overall, Hungarian officials and intellectuals were at pains to demonstrate that Hungary was on an equal footing and generally of high value. As Tisza explicated in a letter to the editor of the Pester Lloyd, the most important Transleithanian newspaper published in German, it was necessary to seize the opportunity of the war to correct the German image of the Magyars as ‘German-eating monsters [Deutschenfresser]’ and ‘tyrants’, and to make clear that they were ‘the strongest supporters of Germany’s cause within the monarchy’.28 The prime minister encouraged Hungarian politicians and academics to deliver speeches in Germany and to establish closer personal links with their counterparts there. He also did not refrain from putting out concealed propaganda articles in German papers.29 The journalist Ede Pályi, in a pamphlet for German readers, accordingly described the Hungarian as ‘sanguine’ and ‘enthusiastic’, a ‘gentleman’ who would ‘stick to his friends and is true to his 25 26 27 28

29

Kessler, Tagebuch, V, pp. 219–20 (25 January 1915). Fürstenberg to Bethmann Hollweg, 27 May 1915, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, Militärattaché, vol. 166. See, for example, ‘Die Glückwunschdepeschen des Abgeordnetenhauses’, PL, 8 December 1916. Tisza to Vészi, 26 December 1914, in S. Tisza, Briefe (1914–1918), ed. by O. v. Wertheimer (Berlin, 1928), pp. 133–4 (p. 133). Also see his letter to the correspondent of the FZ Hugo Ganz, 3 April 1915, ibid., pp. 174–5. Tisza to Burián, 10 April 1915, HHStA, PA I, K. 842.

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words’, generally ‘brave, self-sacrificing, cheerful, persevering’.30 Gyula Wlassics, who was President of the Supreme Administrative Court, depicted Hungary as part and defender of the West, as ‘a protective barrier for the entire western civilization’ with the ‘world-political task’ to drive ‘a wedge into the great Slavic stream’, while other authors stressed Hungary’s role as intermediator and bridge between Germany and the Middle East.31 As Pályi wrote: ‘It is only through us that you can reach the Orient. Despite all your enormous power you cannot build a whole without us.’32 Within this framework, it could easily be asserted that a powerful Hungary – which was identified with Magyar supremacy in domestic affairs and the absence of Austrian paternalism – was in Germany’s own interest. ‘Anything which infringes the sovereignty and integrity, and thus the force and power of Hungary and its weight in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, is also harmful from the German point of view and to be opposed’ – this was the stance Berlin should adopt according to member of the Hungarian parliament Károly Cserny.33 From May 1915 on, the prominent Hungarian journal Kelet Népe appeared in a German-language version as Das junge Europa with the declared aim to ‘make public and vindicate . . . the views, interests, and aspirations’ of the Hungarian people.34 This venture was met with great acclaim by German politicians such as Matthias Erzberger, Ernst MüllerMeiningen, Count Westarp, and Field-Marshal Hindenburg, who all acknowledged the necessity of such a periodical – given the lack of Magyar language skills in Germany – and anticipated an enhanced mutual understanding between the allies. However, it was clear from the beginning that the journal’s main purpose was to spread and defend the Hungarian standpoint without much German or Austrian interference. Magyar politicians and intellectuals were eager to portray Hungary as a modern and cultivated society, an ambitious great power, and a determined and loyal ally of equal value to Germany. Of course, the more seriously it was taken by Germany, the easier it was for Budapest to promote and defend its standpoint in the Central Powers’ talks about war 30 31 32 33

34

E. Pályi, Deutschland und Ungarn (Leipzig, 1915), p. 43. G. Wlassics, ‘Deutschland und Ungarn’, NS, April 1916, pp. 15–21 (pp. 16, 17). Pályi, Deutschland und Ungarn, p. 50. Cserny, Deutsch-ungarische Beziehungen, p. 28. Also see A. Apponyi, Die naturgemäße Stellungnahme Ungarns in der Weltpolitik (Budapest, 1915); G. Andrássy, InteressenSolidarität des Deutschtums und Ungartums (Munich, 1916); R. v. Hegedüs, Ungarn nach dem Kriege (Warnsdorf, 1916); A. Apponyi, ‘Ungarn’, JE, May 1915, pp. 3–6; A. Apponyi, ‘“Mit”, aber nicht: “in”’, JE, August 1915, pp. 14–18; E. Halmay, ‘Der Zentralismus – eine Gefahr der dualen Monarchie’, JE, January 1916, pp. 13–19; L. Hatvany, ‘Ungartum und Deutschtum’, WdZ, 22 June 1917, pp. 3–4. ‘An die Leser’, JE, May 1915, pp. 1–2 (p. 1).

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aims and the conditions of peace. Moreover, in the ongoing struggle for power within the Dual Monarchy, it was certainly advantageous to have Berlin on one’s side. In economic regard, it was believed that Hungary’s industry would greatly benefit from increased German investment. It also seemed sensible to dispose of certain means and channels to influence the Reich German public in view of the delicate issue of the Hungarian Germans. When in June 1916 more than seventy politicians, academics, and other members of the German elite – amongst them the banker Bernhard Dernburg, the Catholic politicians Erzberger and Rechenberg, the rightwing Social Democrats Konrad Haenisch and Paul Lensch, Otto Hoetzsch, Friedrich Naumann, and Gerhart Hauptmann – visited Budapest in order to attend the establishment of the Hungarian counterpart of the RWV, they were very warmly received by Hungarian notables, party leaders, and ecclesiastical representatives.35 The programme for the three days at Whitsun included a meeting with the national legal association, a visit to the parliamentary building, several banquets, and a boat trip on the Danube. The main event, however, was the first general assembly of the Hungarian comradeship association. After the usual phrases of fraternity and loyalty, and several tributes to German organization and efficiency, the guests were given lessons about the ‘unbroken’ thousandyear-old history of the Magyar nation-state, official Hungarian constitutional doctrine, and the fact that Budapest represented the strongest pillar of the Habsburg Monarchy – the same line of arguments constantly put forward by Hungarian politicians and journalists during their visits to Germany or in articles for German newspapers and journals.36 In response, Adolf Wermuth, who was the mayor of Berlin, explained that the Germans ‘have long become fond of Hungary’ and that it was necessary to transform the alliance of the Central Powers into an 35 36

See the report by L. Stein, ‘Die Waffenbrüder in Ungarn’, NS, August 1916, pp. 133–40. ‘Reden und Aeußerungen gelegentlich der Tagung der Ungarischen Waffenbrüderlichen Vereinigung an den Pfingstfeiertagen 1916’, JE, May/June 1916, pp. 5–56. For Hungarian articles in German periodicals, see, for example, G. Andrássy, ‘Entwicklung und Ziele Mitteleuropas’, DR, December 1915, pp. 321–36; A. Apponyi, ‘Ungarn’, BBC, 7 September 1915; A. Apponyi, ‘Bilder aus der ungarischen Verfassungsgeschichte’, NS, January 1917, pp. 10–21; J. Szterényi, ‘Ungarns Verhältnis zu Österreich und zu Deutschland’, NS, November 1915, pp. 153–62; and, for some later examples, G. Lukács, ‘Die großen Probleme der österreichischungarischen Monarchie’, DN, 19, 22, and 29 June 1918; G. Wlassics, ‘Österreich und Ungarn. Ihr Verhältnis zueinander. Eine zeitgemäße Betrachtung’, NS, September 1918, pp. 232–43. Also see G. Szekfü, Der Staat Ungarn. Eine Geschichtsstudie (Stuttgart, 1918); and A. v. Berzeviczy et al. (eds.), Ungarn. Land und Volk, Geschichte, Staatsrecht, Verwaltung und Rechtspflege, Landwirtschaft, Industrie und Handel, Schulwesen, Wissenschaftliches Leben, Literatur, Bildende Künste (Leipzig, 1918).

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‘inner-organic partnership’ by organizing scientific and cultural exchange, promoting tourism, setting up common vocational associations, and intensifying trade and transport links.37 Eugen Schiffer similarly argued that it was necessary to come to a better mutual understanding and that Germans had to acquire a deeper knowledge of the Hungarians, a glorious, ‘proud and strong people’ with whom they were united in an ‘iron community of fate’: ‘Germany, Austria, and Hungary belong together, fight together, suffer and die together, will triumph together.’38 The trip had been arranged in close cooperation with the German Foreign Office, which supported the idea of strengthening the spirit of comradeship-in-arms and a sense of Central European community.39 Indeed, the German government was very interested in good relations with Budapest and closely watched the German press, repeatedly intervening against critical comments. As the semi-official Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung in an article clearly inspired by Berlin declared: ‘The political leadership of our allies is fully independent in its actions and decisions, which is in accordance with the principle of equality amongst the allied powers. No German politician has the right to upbraid the Hungarian prime minister.’40 Similarly to the notion of an ‘Austrian miracle’, Hungarians were praised for having settled their political differences and for rallying all nationalities behind the war effort. When the theologian and Reichstag deputy Gottfried Traub (at that time FVP) returned from a visit to Budapest in early 1915, he advised his fellow citizens in an article for the Berliner Tageblatt to pay more attention to Hungary and to take a stronger interest in its history and culture. Of course, Traub claimed, for ethnic reasons ‘Vienna is closer to us than Budapest’, yet this should not lead the Reich Germans to overlook ‘the firm and determined patriotic stance of Budapest and the Hungarian state’.41 As he expounded in a letter to Naumann, what was particularly admirable was ‘the resolute concept of the state idea’, which would distinguish Hungary from the ‘disintegrating political entity of Cisleithania’.42 Indeed, quite a few Germans considered Hungary, which was perceived as a strong, unified Magyar nation-state, more reliable than fragmented Austria, and thus closer to Imperial Germany itself. Otto Hintze, for instance, was 37 38 39 40

41 42

Quoted after ‘Die Gründungssitzung der Ungarischen Waffenbrüderlichen Vereinigung’, PL, 12 June 1916. See the complete text in NS, August 1916, pp. 173–80 (here pp. 175–6). See Bratz to Bergen, 17 February 1916, PAAA, Österreich 92, No. 10, vol. 5. ‘Politischer Tagesbericht’, NAZ, 23 February 1917. For another official article, admonishing the Germans to pay due attention not only to the Austrian but also to the Hungarian war effort, see ‘Ungarn nicht vergessen!’, DA, 31 December 1914. [G.] Traub, ‘Österreich-Ungarn’, BT, 25 February 1915. Traub to Naumann, Dortmund, 6 May 1915, BArch, N 3001, No. 107.

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impressed by Hungary’s ‘national energy and political talent’, and believed that it was ‘the actual military-political centre of gravity within the Dual Monarchy’.43 Count Kessler, who in 1915 spent several months as a soldier in Hungary, only spoke in positive terms about the kingdom and its inhabitants, admiring in particular the beauty of the landscape, the tidiness of the towns, and the amity of the people. Like Hintze, he was convinced that Transleithania represented ‘the actual political backbone’ of the Habsburg realm.44 Willy Hellpach glorified the Magyars as ‘sober, level-headed, state-committed Prussians of the South-East’.45 And in Hermann Sudermann’s opinion, they were ‘powerful, headstrong, autarchic people’. To him, comradeship-in-arms with Budapest was ‘a godsend’; Germans only now had discovered Hungary and realized that their partnership with the Habsburg Empire was in actuality ‘a triple alliance’!46 Many commentators in both Germany and Hungary argued that their partnership was not simply based on common political interests, but on intellectual and cultural affinities. Rooted in sentiment and shared ethics, it featured an almost mythical quality superior to the ‘artificial’ grouping of the Entente. According to Albert Berzeviczy, President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the coalition was ‘an organic union of hearts’, a ‘community of fate, an alliance which had not been signed with the ink of diplomats but with the heart and soul of the peoples’.47 Since ethnic bonds could not serve to substantiate the special relationship between Germany and Hungary, publicists and politicians often referred to the past. Claiming that the coalition represented merely the natural resumption of a thousand-year-old community of interests and values, they stressed Hungary’s role as defender of the West, first against the Turks and now against the Russians.48 Both Germans and Magyars, it was repeatedly held, were united in the struggle against Pan-Slavism, with Hungary serving as a frontier guard, an ‘outpost of the west’, ‘pioneer and shield bearer of western spirit and civilization’, as Ludwig Stein, the Hungarian-born political commentator of the Vossische Zeitung and editor 43 44 45 46 47 48

‘An den Herausgeber des “Jungen Europa”’, JE, January 1916, pp. 1–10 (p. 2). Kessler, Tagebuch, V, 311 (29 May 1915). W. Hellpach, ‘Deutschlands österreichisches Gesicht’, GD, 8 May 1915, pp. 615–29 (p. 616). ‘Sudermann über Deutschland und Ungarn’, BT, 19 September 1916. ‘Reden und Aeußerungen’, Berzeviczy’s speech on pp. 22–6, quotation on p. 23. See, for example, E. v. Wertheimer, ‘Bündnisprojekt zwischen Ungarn und den Hohenzollern’, Der Zeitgeist (supplement to BT), 28 December 1914; M. v. Réz, ‘Aus der Vergangenheit Mitteleuropas. Ungarn und Bismarck’, PL, 23 March 1916; A. Kalmár, ‘Der weltgeschichtliche Nutzen des ersten militärischen Bündnisses des Deutschtums mit den Ungarn’, JE, April 1916, pp. 28–32.

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of the renowned journal Nord und Süd, contended.49 In the context of the Mitteleuropa debate, Hungary was often described as a link to the Orient, as the ‘south-eastern extension of Central Europe, a main station on the way from Hamburg to Baghdad, the actual Porta orientalis’.50 One German publicist even proposed Budapest as Central European capital and seat of the common political, economic, and military institutions.51 German-Hungarian conflicts in the past and present were simply omitted, and the Hungarian Germans, of course, were mentioned as an element or symbol of amity and coexistence, not as a matter of discord. In May 1916, the famous philosopher Rudolf Eucken applauded the Magyars as ‘firm and brave people, a nation with high political talent’ and reliable ally against ‘Russian greed to conquer’: ‘Nowhere do the interests of both peoples clash, nothing hampers a lasting, friendly combining, and enduring mutual stimulation.’ Even though Eucken had been a co-founder of the VDA, he took a markedly reserved stance in the Hungarian nationality question, stressing the necessity of a strong, unified state with one established official language (Magyar). The German element in Hungary should be allowed to express its cultural individuality, but always remain loyal to state and Magyardom.52 In general, it seems that German commentators, at least in the first half of the war, followed the rhetoric put forward by the Hungarians. However, it does not come as a surprise that sober considerations soon took the place of such strained conceptions and that the rosy image of the Magyars was replaced by the recognition that Hungary in fact represented an awkward and uncompromising alliance partner. It is worth pointing out that during the war the oppressive system protecting Magyar domestic hegemony first came under fire not because of the Hungarian Germans, but in connection with the Romanian question. Despite various concessions in favour of the ethnic Romanian population (political amnesty, compromises in linguistic and educational regard), German officials, diplomats, and publicists argued for a more substantial change of Hungary’s policy in order to appease Bucharest, including territorial sacrifices (referring to the Austrian Bukovina, but also to the Banat and even Transylvania).53 Ambassador Tschirschky’s 49 50 51 52 53

L. Stein, ‘Ungarn und die Weltpolitik’, NS, April 1915, pp. 5–13 (p. 8). A. Werner, ‘Das Völkerbild Ungarns’, Panther, May 1916, pp. 507–18 (p. 507). H.T. List, Deutschland und Mittel-Europa. Grundzüge und Lehren unserer Politik seit der Errichtung des Deutschen Reiches (Berlin, 1916), p. 108. R. Eucken, ‘Deutschland und Ungarn’, DP, 5 May 1916, pp. 844–8 (p. 845). See, for example, ‘Ungarns Rumänenpolitik und das Deutsche Reich’, DiA, 21 (1914), 105–12; L. Korodi, ‘Madjarisch-rumänische Verständigung’, Panther, February 1915, pp. 171–7; E. R[eventlow], ‘Die ungarländischen Rumänen’, DTZ, 13 July 1915; ‘Die ungarländischen Rumänen’, NAZ, 20 July 1915; ‘Die Haltung der ungarländischen

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proposal to appoint the Hungarian Romanian politician Aurel Popovici into Tisza’s cabinet proved, however, as futile as Matthias Erzberger’s efforts in Vienna and Budapest.54 During the war, the Reichstag deputy repeatedly served as a special envoy and met with numerous AustroHungarian parliamentarians, politicians, clerical men, and members of the aristocracy. Having unsuccessfully tried to negotiate in the Trentino question, Erzberger in June 1915 met both Burián and Tisza to discuss the Romanian issue, hoping to placate Bucharest and to prevent it from entering the war on the side of the Entente (the transit of munitions to Turkey was an issue, too). The prime minister, however, defended the Hungarian nationality policy as just, and dismissed Erzberger’s suggestions as a dangerous ‘incitement of our Romanians against the government’ and a possible sign of weakness.55 Viktor Naumann, too, a liberal-minded, somewhat obscure figure with good contacts to Count Hertling in Munich, the German Foreign Office, and the Ballhausplatz, raised the issue in talks with Tisza and other Austro-Hungarian decisionmakers.56 In his memoirs, he later wrote that Hungarian domestic politics (beyond the Romanian issue) was one of the main reasons for the loss of the war. Tisza had been a ‘great man and splendid patriot’, but his obstinacy was a fundamental personal weakness.57 Hungary had produced some of the ‘most formidable diplomats and best parliamentarians’, and one could only ‘feel genuine respect for the political talent of the Hungarian nation’. Unfortunately, Naumann insisted, this had led them to ‘exaggerate the significance of their own country and to consider it a great power, independent from Austria’.58 Another significant difference of opinion between Berlin and Budapest occurred in the context of the Mitteleuropa question. Hungarians very early made clear that although they were generally in favour of closer cooperation with Germany (hoping in particular for more investment, a better access to raw materials, and new sales opportunities), they were not willing

54 55

56 57 58

Rumänen’, TR, 27 July 1915; Hoetzsch, Österreich-Ungarn, pp. 26–7. On the diplomatic negotiations, see Silberstein, Troubled Alliance, pp. 179–247, and Fried, AustroHungarian War Aims, pp. 42–50, 87–105. Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 8 October 1914, and Tisza to Tschirschky, 6 October 1914, both PAAA, Österreich 104, vol. 13. On Erzberger’s actions, see the following letters in Tisza, Briefe: Erzberger to Tisza, 8 June 1915, pp. 231–3; Tisza to Erzberger, 12 June 1915, pp. 233–4 (here quotation on p. 233); Erzberger to Tisza, 15 June 1915, pp. 234–6. Also see Erzberger, Erlebnisse, pp. 102–10, and Funder, Vom Gestern ins Heute, pp. 406–9 and 412–14 V. Naumann, Dokumente und Argumente (Berlin, 1928), passim. Also see Zimmermann to Tschirschky, 31 May 1915, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, Militärattaché, vol. 167. V. Naumann, Profile. 30 Porträt-Skizzen aus den Jahren des Weltkrieges nach persönlichen Begegnungen (Munich, 1925), p. 219. Ibid., p. 253.

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to sacrifice any of their national interests.59 Gustav (Gusztáv) Gratz, for instance, managing director of the National Federation of Industrialists, at a Berlin meeting of the DÖUWV in March 1915 insisted that Hungarian industry had to be protected against German competition, and even mentioned the possibility of setting up intermediary customs between Budapest and Vienna.60 More positively minded economists and politicians such as József Szterényi, member of the Hungarian parliament and Minister of Trade in 1918, or Sándor Wekerle, who in 1917 became Hungarian prime minister for the third time, rejected the idea of a complete customs union, too, and advocated an improved trade agreement (preferential tariffs) instead. They argued that ‘when it comes to business, politics cannot be decisive’. A far-reaching integration would set off anti-German sentiments and exacerbate German-Hungarian relations rather than foster cooperation.61 Agricultural producers were torn between the lucrative prospect of putting more items on the German market and the apprehension that Hungary would lose its economic and political independence after joining the union. It was in particular Friedrich Naumann’s notion of an Oberstaat which caused suspicion and resentment, provoking Tisza to call 59

60

61

Galántai, Hungary, pp. 156–61; I. Diószegi, ‘Die Reaktion Ungarns auf die deutschen Mitteleuropa-Konzeptionen’, in Plaschka et al. (eds.), Mitteleuropa-Konzeptionen, pp. 63–5; Müller, Zwischen Annäherung und Abgrenzung, pp. 101–7. Also see the contemporary summary ‘Ungarische Stimmen über die wirtschaftliche Annäherung an Deutschland’ (February 1916) in HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 20; Bunzel, Ungarn und wir, pp. 60–72; and Stresemann’s report about his trip to the Orient and talks with Hungarian politicians, January/February 1916, PAAA, Stresemann papers, No. 158. ‘Protokoll über die Versammlung des Deutsch-österreichisch-ungarischen Wirtschaftsverbandes: Ueber die Neugestaltung der künftigen Handelsbeziehungen Deutschlands zu Oesterreich-Ungarn’, Berlin, 27 March 1915, HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 20. As head of the department for trade policy in the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office, he would later be involved in the official Mitteleuropa talks and the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest. See for a similar position B. Rajnik, Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung der Zentralmächte. Gedanken und Anregungen zur Neuregelung der wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland, Österreich und Ungarn (Berlin, 1916); and G. Lukács, Die deutsch-österreichisch-ungarischen Handelsbeziehungen (Göttingen, 1916). ‘Verhandlungen der Ausschüsse der Mitteleuropäischen Wirtschaftsvereine in Wien und in Budapest’, Vienna 18 April 1915, HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 20. Also see A. v. Matlekovits, ‘Ungarn und die mitteleuropäische Zollunion’, JE, November/ December 1915, pp. 76–98; B. Földes, ‘Das Annäherungsproblem’, WdZ, 3 March 1916, p. 10; J. Szterényi, Wirtschaftliche Verbindung mit Deutschland (Warnsdorf, 1915); J. Szterényi, ‘Mitteleuropa in ungarischer Beleuchtung’ and ‘Das Problem der Schaffung “Mitteleuropas” vom Gesichtspunkt der ungarischen Interessen’, both in his Ungarn und Deutschland (Jena, 1917), pp. 103–24, 125–54; ‘Zur Frage der wirtschaftlichen Annäherung zwischen Deutschland, Österreich und Ungarn’, NS, March 1916, pp. 261–73; L. Lukács, ‘Zollunion und Vorzugszölle’, NS, September 1916, pp. 292–302. For more statements from numerous leading Hungarian politicians and economists, see the survey ‘Zur Frage der Mitteleuropäischen Zollunion’, JE, May 1915, pp. 15–23, June 1915, pp. 61–7, July 1915, pp. 62–5.

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the conception a ‘sweetened offer to become a vassal state’.62 Naumann had earlier reported to Bethmann Hollweg that Tisza clearly refused a contractual relationship with Germany: ‘He only thinks in Hungarian terms, discovers in all union plans Greater Austrian motivations [vergrösserte Oesterreicherei], does not want to slide into the position of a German federal state, and aims especially at presenting himself cleanhandedly on the international stage after the war.’63 A staunch supporter of the German alliance, the prime minister, together with the leading oppositional politicians Gyula Andrássy and Albert Apponyi, did not deny that Hungary was dependent on Berlin if it wanted to retain its international standing, but rather than a permanent association he advocated a defensive and terminable political agreement (possibly with a military convention).64 Even after the war, Andrássy showed himself convinced that Naumann had wanted ‘a complete fusion of the States of the allies, which would have involved the complete dissolution of the weaker monarchy in the German power’.65 Other commentators worried about German competition in the Balkans and the loss of Hungary’s bargaining power at the negotiations over the economic compromise with Austria.66 The Hungarian left seemed divided over the issue. The political theorist and sociologist Oszkár Jászi, in one of the few assenting Hungarian contributions to the Mitteleuropa debate, expressed his conviction that the future belonged to greater economic units which should, however, be based on democratic equality and free trade, and acknowledge the freedom and autonomy of the nations involved. He was particularly interested in the Balkans, which he hoped to reorganize in a Danubian confederation in close association with the Central European entity.67 Some Social Democrats, such as Ervin Szabó, agreed with Jászi and anticipated the socio-economic modernization of Hungary as a result of joining the more liberal and advanced Germany in an economic union, breaking the power of the traditional elites and providing the working classes with more influence. Many other left-wing politicians, however, shared the views of the leader of the anti-German opposition, Mihály 62

63 64 66 67

Entry of 16 January 1916, Baernreither diary, HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 6, vol. XV, p. 86. Other critical comments on Naumann: V. v. Smialovszky, ‘Zur Stellung Ungarns in Naumanns “Mitteleuropa”’, DR, May 1916, pp. 296–307, and E. Pályi, Das mitteleuropäische Weltreichsbündnis, gesehen von einem Nicht-Deutschen (Munich, 1916). Naumann to Bethmann Hollweg, 21 June 1916, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 3. See Andrássy, Diplomacy and the War, pp. 156–60. 65 Ibid., p. 156. See, for example, ‘Eine Interpellation über die wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen zu Deutschland’, PL, 17 May 1918. O. Jászi, ‘Mittel-Europa, Ungarn und der Balkan’, Tat, August 1915, pp. 388–92; O. Jászi, ‘Das wirtschaftliche Mitteleuropa und die Zukunft des Ungartums’, WdZ, 14 April 1916, pp. 9–10. He changed his mind after the fall of tsarist Russia.

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Károlyi, who sternly rejected Mitteleuropa as an imperialist project that would only prolong the war, cement the antagonist international system, preserve the status of the agrarian and reactionary classes under a military dictatorship, and threaten Hungarian political autonomy and territorial integrity.68 Tivadar Batthyány of the Independence Party later counted ‘the fight against the lunatic Prusso-German expansionary tendencies’ to the ‘most precious memories’ of his political life, while Károlyi himself insisted that Mitteleuropa was meant to ‘secure German world hegemony’, based on a military dictatorship under the Hohenzollerns: ‘We would have become a fortress, a beleaguered fortress, a military state surrounded by trenches and wire entanglements . . . Reaction all around!’69 German hopes that Hungarian concerns about the preponderance of German heavy industry and the loss of sovereignty would abate over time were disappointed. In fact, following the Spa Agreement and, more specifically, a rather moderate statement by Vice-Chancellor Friedrich von Payer (FVP) in the German press in June 1918, Hungarian papers rejected anew the ‘economic annexation’ of Hungary, which would, as some claimed, become a ‘slave’ and ‘colony’ of Germany as a result of the Central European union.70 German advocates of Mitteleuropa reacted impatiently to continued Hungarian obduracy. From the beginning, Naumann and his followers had demonstrated a great deal of understanding for Hungarian aspirations.71 Well aware of Budapest’s significance, the left-liberal politician and publicist encouraged his compatriots to learn the Magyar language and to contribute to a better mutual comprehension. To him, Hungary not only represented the ‘future Austrian and German Imperial corn store [Reichsgetreidelager]’, but also ‘the first and politically most significant non-German element’ in Central Europe. Good relations between Berlin and Budapest could demonstrate that the reconciliation of German and non-German interests was realizable in Mitteleuropa.72 However, at an informal meeting with Austro-German parliamentarians in July 1915, Naumann spoke more frankly and heavily criticized the 68

69 70 71 72

For the Social-Democratic viewpoint, see E. Varga, ‘Der Plan eines deutschösterreichisch-ungarischen Zollverbandes’, NZ, 21 May 1915, pp. 241–8; E. Varga, ‘Ungarische Sozialdemokraten und Radikale über Mitteleuropa’, NZ, 8 September 1916, pp. 661–7. On the Károlyi circle, see M. Károlyi, Gegen eine ganze Welt. Mein Kampf um den Frieden (Munich, 1924), pp. 157–63, and T. Batthyány, Für Ungarn gegen Hohenzollern (Zürich, 1930), pp. 117–27. Batthyány, Für Ungarn, p. 127; Károlyi, Gegen eine ganze Welt, pp. 160, 180. See the press reports of June 1918 in BArch, R 703, No. 15, vol. 1. See, for example, Naumann, Central Europe, pp. 90–9. Ibid., p. 133 and F. Naumann, ‘Wir und die Ungarn’, Hilfe, 22 June 1916, pp. 404–6 (p. 406). Also see W. Schotte, ‘Das ungarische Weltbild’, Hilfe, 15 June 1916, pp. 390–2.

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Magyar behaviour as ‘the biggest deficiency of the monarchy and greatest danger for the anticipated convergence of both empires’. Budapest’s policy had already caused considerable problems in the Balkans. Its narrow-minded ‘dictatorship’ over non-Magyar nationalities would estrange the Slavs and threaten the solidity of the whole realm. Naumann was convinced that the ‘chaos’ of the current dualist system of the Habsburg ally made any quick progress towards Mitteleuropa highly improbable and would, in fact, sooner or later lead to the dissolution of the Danubian entity.73 Several supporters of the Central European idea agreed, arguing that it was necessary to replace the economic compromise between Austria and Hungary, which had to be settled in tedious negotiations every ten years, with a more permanent agreement. The demand for a separate Transleithanian customs area was rejected categorically. According to Arthur Spiethoff, this ‘outmoded, futile and perilous effort’ would only turn Hungary into ‘a powerless medium state’.74 Karl Buchheim similarly insisted that ‘the era of economic autarchy’ was over; the Hungarians would have to adapt to the trend towards the establishment of large-scale economic entities.75 Given its economic standing and international trade connections, Germany would sacrifice more than Hungary, as other authors pointed out.76 German officials and commentators thus gradually developed a more critical stance towards Hungary. The breakdown of the domestic truce in summer 1916 (e.g. split of the Independence Party) came as a surprise and made a bad impression.77 Since 1917, the German press appeared increasingly concerned about Hungary’s role in the Habsburg Empire. Several papers commented disapprovingly on Budapest’s position in Austro-Hungarian economic matters and demands for a fully independent army. Its food policy towards Cisleithania was criticized in particular. As Watson notes, ‘by 1916, Hungarian imports dropped to around half of the milk and meat, less than a third of the fat and just 3 per cent of the cereals that had been supplied in peacetime’.78 All this seemed to threaten the political, 73 74 75 76

77 78

Quoted after W. v. Medinger, ‘Eindrücke von einer politischen Besprechung in München am 7. Juli 1915’, HHStA, Baernreither papers, K. 16. Spiethoff, ‘Gründe für und wider’, p. 49. K. Buchheim, ‘Der mitteleuropäische Gedanke und die deutsche Sprache in Ungarn’, Grenzboten, 19 September 1917, pp. 373–9 (pp. 373–4). See, for example, ‘Tisza über den Ausbau des Bündnisses. Ungarische Auseinandersetzungen über das Payer-Interview’, VZ, 21 June 1918, and H. v. Richthofen, ‘Ungarn und wir’, BBZ, 26 June 1918. Braun to Burián, 15 September 1916, HHStA, Literarisches Bureau, K. 120. Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 344–5. For the broader context, see C.F. Wargelin, ‘The Economic Collapse of Austro-Hungarian Dualism, 1914–1918’, EEQ, 34/3 (2000), 261–88.

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military, and economic unity of Germany’s most important ally.79 Catholic commentators condemned various Hungarian measures as ‘poison’, as a ‘threat to Habsburg’ and ‘an assassination attempt on the great-power status of the monarchy’.80 Social Democrats and left liberals attacked Budapest over its oppressive nationality policy, its aggressive imperialism in the Balkans, and the refusal to modernize its undemocratic electoral system. They thus resumed the pre-war grievances of the democratic left in Germany.81 Since mid-1916, German governing and diplomatic circles also became more suspicious of Hungary. In November 1914, Tucher had described Prime Minister Tisza as ‘the most distinguished statesman of the monarchy’.82 One year later, however, the Bavarian envoy warned against believing ‘in the beginning of a golden age of selfless Austrian and Hungarian understanding and cooperation’: the forthcoming economic negotiations would demonstrate that ‘the old distrust and the Hungarian hubris are still alive’.83 Still, following Tisza’s dismissal in May 1917, he wrote: ‘There is no point in denying Tisza’s flaws, his obstinate Hungarian mind-set, his inflexible insistence on dualism, and his terroristic severity in parliament and the administration, but in the monarchy Tisza has been the only element of stability, the only outstanding personality, and the only determined [zielbewusst arbeitende] statesman.’84 This mirrored the views of the German consul general in Budapest, Count Egon Fürstenberg, who did not deny that Tisza was a strong-minded and awkward partner, but emphasized that the prime minister at least ruled with a strong hand. The new German ambassador in Vienna, Botho von Wedel, showed himself less impressed. Having been one of Fürstenberg’s predecessors, Wedel possessed an excellent knowledge of Hungarian politics. He disapproved of what he called ‘the reckless egoism of the Hungarians’, their ‘stubbornness’ in negotiations, and general resistance

79

80 81

82 83 84

See, for example, [A. v.] Monts, ‘Wekerles Militärprogramm’, BT, 13 January 1918; ‘Österreich und Ungarn’, BBZ, 6 February 1918; G. Cleinow, ‘Österreichischungarische Kriegszielpolitik’, Grenzboten, 8 February 1918, pp. 145–56. ‘Die Ministerwechsel in Oesterreich’, HPB, 16 January 1917, pp. 117–25 (p. 125); ‘Habsburgs Gefährdung’, HPB, 3 March 1918, pp. 311–17 (p. 313). See, for example, Pannonicus, ‘Zur ungarischen Königsfrage’, Hilfe, 18 January 1917, pp. 36–7; Pannonicus, ‘Mitteleuropa und die ungarische Krise’, Hilfe, 7 June 1917, pp. 377–9; R. Charmatz, ‘Esterhazys Aufgabe’, März, 7 July 1917, pp. 621–6; H. v. Gerlach, ‘Der Sturz des Starken’, WaM, 22 May 1917; L. Quessel, ‘Nationale Bewegung’, SoM, 15 August 1917, pp. 838–43; M. Harden, ‘Gordische Knoten’, Zukunft, 11 May 1918, pp. 139–62; H. Wendel, ‘Südslawischer Aufstieg’, NR, August 1918, pp. 993–1021. Report Tucher, 19 November 1914 BHSA, MA 2481/2. Report Tucher, 7 September 1915, BHSA, MA 2481/3. Report Tucher, 26 May 1917, BHSA, MA 2481/5.

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to Mitteleuropa.85 As he wrote in January 1918 in connection with the Polish question: The Hungarians do not love us. They dislike Germanness [deutsches Wesen] from the bottom of their heart. They prefer the French much more and had been virtually enthusiastic about England . . . Before the war, the Hungarians would never have given up the German alliance. They were afraid of Russia and knew that they would find sufficient protection against Russia only in Berlin rather than in Vienna. Now they feel relieved of the Russian threat; this changes their position.86

By 1918, all German diplomats had expressed concerns about a destabilization of the Dual Monarchy as a consequence of Hungarian hard-headedness. In consideration of serious differences of opinion between Vienna and Budapest over the South Slav question and the Hungarian refusal to provide Austria with much-needed food, Berlin seemed convinced that relations between Austria and Hungary had not improved but rather worsened.87 Not only did the negotiations over the Ausgleich between Austria and Hungary take much longer than initially expected, but Hungarian demands for a separate army and a distinct customs area did not die down, either.88 However, the proposal by a member of the deputy general staff to take direct action against Budapest, to dismiss Tisza, and to install a military dictatorship instead, which was advanced in June 1915 in the context of the Romanian question in order to have Hungary follow German demands (regarding the status of Transylvania) and to stabilize the entire Danube Empire (abolition of the dualist structure), was not seriously taken into account.89 The same applied to a request from the German Army League, which argued that the poor performance of the Dual Monarchy’s troops was mainly due to Budapest’s obstruction policy before 1914 and demanded the compulsory and exclusive use of the German language also for Hungarian army units.90 In fact, the various OHL drafts of summer 1918, further specifying the Waffenbund arrangements of Spa, 85

86 87

88 89

90

See Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 11 January 1917; Wedel to Michaelis, 23 August 1917, both PAAA, Österreich 92, No. 6a, vol. 8; Wedel to Hertling, 27 June 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 6 (here quotation). Wedel to Ludendorff, 9 January 1918, in SG, III: De la révolution soviétique à la paix de Brest-Litovsk (9 novembre 1917–3 mars 1918) (1976), pp. 240–4 (pp. 242–3). See Hohenlohe to Burián, 13 September 1916, HHStA, PA III, K. 172; Nostitz to Vitzthum, 28 February 1917, SLHA, 10730/317; Wedel to Michaelis, 19 September 1917, PAAA, Österreich 92, No. 1, vol. 25. Fürstenberg to Hertling, 4 April and 28 May 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 426. Keudell, ‘Eingabe betreffend Notwendigkeit der Garantierung der Autonomie Siebenbürgens durch das Deutsche Reich und der Ersetzung des Grafen Tisza durch Militärdiktatur’, 21 June 1915, PAAA, Großes Hauptquartier, No. 23, vol. 1. Strantz to Bergen, 19 May 1915, PAAA, Österreich 83, vol. 1.

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acknowledged both German and Hungarian (Magyar) as command languages. Moreover, Reich German officers were encouraged to acquire knowledge of Magyar, which was to become a subject taught at the Prussian Kriegsakademie.91 The doctrine of non-intervention remained the prime principle of Germany’s official policy towards Budapest, but, as the Károlyi affair showed, this did not prevent Berlin from trying to influence Hungarian politics in more covert ways. Count Károlyi and his circle caused much suspicion amongst German political and military decision-makers. Demonstrating a pro-Entente attitude, demanding a peace of understanding without annexations and the transformation of dualism into a personal union (with a separate customs area and army for Hungary), and insisting on universal suffrage which would give non-Magyar nationalities more power and influence, the left-wing parliamentarian appeared as a threat to the Austro-Hungarian war effort and the whole alliance. Apparently, he was even spied on by the German military leadership, probably in the hope of eliminating Károlyi from the political scene and to put him on trial for high treason.92 The exposure of these activities (which included the interception of letters and personal search of family members at the Swiss border) by a Hungarian journalist in May 1918 created one of the most serious wartime incidents between Budapest and Berlin. The affair was even brought up in the Hungarian parliament, where one deputy slated these actions as ‘perfidious’: the German ‘subversive doings [Wühlarbeit]’ and ‘wretched agitation’ against a leading politician would represent an unacceptable impairment of Hungarian sovereignty and interference in national politics.93 It is unclear to what extent the Hungarian government was aware of and supported these activities: a German officer seems to have had access to confidential files.94 While Prime Minister Wekerle denied any knowledge, Berlin publicly dissociated itself from the culprit.95 The extensive reporting and quick reaction of Consul General Fürstenberg adds to the impression that German officials and diplomats attached a lot of importance to Hungarian public opinion. Parliamentary debates on the course of the war and Habsburg foreign policy were deemed particularly significant, as Austrian deputies were prevented 91 92 93 94 95

Broucek, ‘Die deutschen Bemühungen’, pp. 466–7. See Károlyi, Gegen eine ganze Welt, pp. 327–51. ‘Die Interpellation Urmánczy’, PL, 12 May 1918. Also see ‘Sitzung des Abgeordnetenhauses’, PL, 13 May 1918. The Saxon envoy to Vienna claimed that Budapest knew of these activities: Nostitz to Vitzthum, 18 May 1918, SLHA, AM 1797. On the whole affair, see the various reports of Fürstenberg to Hertling of May 1918 in PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 423.

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from discussing such matters due to the suspension of the Reichsrat until May 1917. Anti-German sentiments were taken very seriously, such as the rumours about the misconduct of German troops in Transylvania (looting and atrocities) which spread after June 1917, prompting Berlin to instruct the German Supreme Command to carefully investigate the case and stop the arrogant and brusque treatment of Hungarian troops about which Budapest had complained.96 Since early 1917, Transleithanian politicians and the wider public seemed increasingly willing to consider a peace without annexations and indemnities, prompted by the disappointing results of unrestricted submarine warfare and the stalemate on the western front, and encouraged by the events in Russia and various statements by Foreign Minister Ottokar Czernin. In the view of Fürstenberg, this situation necessitated a concerted propaganda campaign in Hungary. He suggested a more comprehensive news coverage of military developments in France and Belgium and the successes of German U-boats, the delegation of Austro-Hungarian officers to the western front to experience the ‘innovative and heroic efforts’ of the German troops, and stressing the fact that the Habsburg Monarchy was continuing the war also in its own interest, given the recent emphasis on full national self-determination or Serbian requests for an Adriatic port.97 These suggestions were backed by the Foreign Office and the military leadership, but it seems that the subsequent talk on submarine warfare by a German navy expert in front of a select audience in Budapest remained a singular event.98 In many ways, German officials tried to placate Hungarian politicians, for instance by travelling not just to Vienna but also to Budapest, by establishing a Hungarian chair at the University of Berlin, or indeed by trying to speed up the delivery of fourteen Benz automobiles which had been ordered by the Hungarian government for various ministries.99 But the question of how to influence the wider public was far from settled and repeatedly brought up again by the German consul in Kronstadt (Braș ov), Count Lerchen, who in early 1918 expressed concerns about the marked deterioration of 96

97 98

99

See Wedel to Michaelis, 7 August 1917, PAAA, Österreich 92, No. 10, vol. 5; Fürstenberg to Michaelis, 7 September 1917, PAAA, Großes Hauptquartier 23, vol. 4; Fürstenberg to Hertling, 26 September 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 423. The rumours proved unfounded. Fürstenberg to Bethmann Hollweg, 12 May 1917, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 423. Zimmermann to Holtzendorff, 24 May 1917; Holtzendorff to Zimmermann, 26 June 1917; Fürstenberg to Bethmann Hollweg, 14 July 1917, all in PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 423. See Fürstenberg to Michaelis, 31 July 1917; Fürstenberg to Wedel, 31 July 1917; Notiz Wedel, 4 August 1917; Fürstenberg to Michaelis, 15 August 1917, all in PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 423. Also see Fürstenberg to Hertling, 19 December and 20 December 1917, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 425.

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German-Hungarian relations, recommending more pro-German articles in Magyar papers, various photographic and cinematic propaganda efforts, and talks by German representatives also outside of the capital.100 Fürstenberg essentially supported these ideas but warned against acting too bluntly as this could lead to resentment in Budapest. He was convinced that the most effective way to influence Hungarian public opinion were sweeping military successes in the West.101 The fact that the chief editor of the German-language daily Pester Lloyd had to actually visit Fürstenberg in summer 1918 to request directives or guidelines from Berlin on how to foster Hungarian loyalty and confidence confirms the ineffective, dilatory, and amateurish nature of German propaganda efforts in Hungary.102 Shortly before the end of the war, Lerchen lamented that Germany had in fact never managed to win the sympathy of the Hungarian people: The Hungarian trips of German parliamentarians, representatives of the press and of various associations, and their meetings with Hungarian politicians cannot hide this fact. These events hardly penetrated through the outer shell; they did not reach the wider public. To my knowledge, an intensive propaganda campaign to familiarize the Hungarian people with German character and German mindset has not been carried out by us over these four years.103

It is evident that the relationship between Berlin and Budapest was far from perfect and not without problems. Whereas the early phase had been characterized by a great deal of optimism and mutual sympathy, serious clashes of interests could soon no longer be concealed. It is, however, worth stressing that German criticism was related to the Romanian question, the Central European project, or the relationship between Austria and Hungary rather than Budapest’s policy towards its German-speaking citizens. A ‘minor issue’: Berlin and the Hungarian Germans In comparison to their co-nationals in Cisleithania, the two million ethnic Germans in the Hungarian half constituted less of a coherent ethnic community. Having come as settlers in different waves since the Middle Ages, they were dispersed over the whole kingdom and differed considerably in cultural, confessional, and socio-economic regard. Whereas the 100 101 102 103

Lerchen to Hertling, 12 February 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 425. Fürstenberg to Hertling, 25 May 1918, and Fürstenberg to Max v. Baden, 7 October 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 425. Fürstenberg to Hertling, 27 July 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 425. Lerchen to Wedel, 14 October 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 427.

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Transylvanian Saxons had been able to retain certain privileges such as an independent educational system, the largest part of the German minority were less well organized and more exposed to an intensifying Magyarization policy. Overall, there was little sense of commonality or solidarity amongst the Hungarian Germans, who formed the secondlargest non-Magyar ethnic group (representing 9.8 per cent of the overall population) after the Romanians.104 Only in the last years before the outbreak of the war did they start to form pressure groups and associations for the promotion of their economic and political interests. In the struggle against Magyar oppression, politicians and intellectuals such as Edmund Steinacker repeatedly appealed to Austrian and German decision-makers as well as to the wider public for financial and political support. These efforts did not amount to fundamental opposition to state and dynasty; Transleithanian Germandom did not seek political union with national kinsmen abroad. In fact, Budapest remained the major focal point, but there was increased resistance to the concept of a ‘Magyar Hungary’.105 Berlin, however, gave priority to keeping good relations with Budapest over attempts to alter the situation of oppressed Germans under Magyar rule. Convinced that the solidity and reliability of the Danube Monarchy depended to a great extent on the Magyars, Bismarck had promised that Germany would not interfere in Hungarian internal affairs and take action on behalf of the German minority. The 1903 Reichstag dispute between Ernst Hasse and Bernhard von Bülow, which was mentioned earlier, had in fact been prompted by Hasse’s warning not to overrate Budapest’s value as an alliance partner and to sacrifice the Hungarian 104

105

Kann, Das Nationalitätenproblem der Habsburgermonarchie, I: Das Reich und die Völker, pp. 109–46; L. Gogolák, ‘Ungarns Nationalitätengesetze und das Problem des magyarischen National- und Zentralstaates’, in Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, III/2 (1980), pp. 1207–303; Z. Szász, ‘Nationality Policy in the Era of the Dualistic Monarchy: Possibilities and Restrictions’, in F. Glatz (ed.), Ethnicity and Society in Hungary (Budapest, 1990), pp. 183–90; Z. Szász, ‘InterEthnic Relations in the Hungarian Half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’, NP, 24/3 (1996), 391–408; J. v. Puttkamer, Schulalltag und nationale Integration in Ungarn. Slowaken, Rumänen und Siebenbürger Sachsen in der Auseinandersetzung mit der ungarischen Staatsidee 1867–1914 (Munich, 2003). I. Senz, Die nationale Bewegung der ungarländischen Deutschen vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Eine Entwicklung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Alldeutschtum und ungarischer Innenpolitik (Munich, 1977); F. Gottas, ‘Die Deutschen in Ungarn’, in Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, III/1, pp. 340–410; G. Schödl, ‘Am Rande des Reiches, am Rande der Nation. Deutsche im Königreich Ungarn (1867–1914/18)’, in G. Schödl (ed.), Land an der Donau (Berlin, 1995), pp. 349–454; J.C. Swanson, ‘Minority Building in the German Diaspora: The Hungarian Germans’, AHY, 36 (2005), 148–66; R.J.W. Evans, ‘The Transylvanian Saxons: A German Diaspora’, in Evans, Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs, pp. 209–27; G. Seewann, Geschichte der Deutschen in Ungarn, 2 vols. (Marburg, 2012), II, pp. 1860–2006.

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Germans. In his reply, the chancellor stressed that the strength and unity of the Hungarian state were more important than ethnic sentiments. The Foreign Office nevertheless lent (unofficial) financial support to organizations such as the Allgemeine Deutsche Schulverein (later VDA) or the Gustav-Adolf-Verein which took up the cause of the Hungarian Germans. The Schulverein, for instance, in its very first public appeal of November 1881 condemned Budapest’s Magyarization policy and the withering away of the German element in Hungary. It would be the ‘duty’ of the Reich Germans, the pamphlet argued, to oppose this ‘modern barbarism’ and to assist the Hungarian co-nationals in preserving their German culture.106 However, whereas such organizations concentrated on protecting the German element in Hungary in cultural and linguistic regard by funding churches and cultural institutions, or by providing scholarships for studies in Germany, the Pan-German League pursued more political objectives. As seen, radical nationalists belonged to the most fervent critics of the Magyars, which was mainly due to the Hungarian German issue.107 By sponsoring the establishment of German newspapers and political parties in Hungary, subsidizing election campaigns, and setting up closer links between Reich German, Austro-German, and Hungarian German leaders, the ADV hoped to instil a greater national consciousness and sense of community amongst the German-speaking population of Transleithania. As a strong, self-conscious, and united element in Hungary, one was convinced, the Germans could break Magyar supremacy and thus serve as a lever for the reorganization of the whole realm, securing full German leadership and boosting the Habsburg Monarchy’s value as Germany’s ally. As a bulwark against the Slavic East, as cultural pioneers elevating and integrating smaller nations, and as a bridge to the Orient, the Transleithanian Germans were also supposed to guarantee Germanic influence and authority in South-Eastern Europe, and thus featured prominently in many right-wing plans for a Central European empire.108 Still, the issue was of greater importance only for the extreme 106

107

108

Reprinted in Weidenfeller, VDA – Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, pp. 171–2 (p. 172). See J. Kwan, ‘Transylvanian Saxon Politics, Hungarian State Building and the Case of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein (1881–82)’, EHR 127/526, (2012), 592–624. See, for example, A. Korn, Die Deutschenverfolgung in Ungarn (Munich, 1903); L. Korodi, Ungarische Rhapsodien. Politische und minder politische (Munich, 1905); L. Korodi, ‘Das Deutschtum in Ungarn’, in Geiser (ed.), Deutsches Reich und Volk, pp. 240–7; M. Braunschweig, Vom Deutschtum in Ungarn. Politisches und Unpolitisches (Vienna, 1905); F.G. Schultheiß, Deutschtum und Magyarisierung (Munich, 1908). G. Schödl, Alldeutscher Verband und deutsche Minderheitenpolitik in Ungarn 1890–1914. Zur Geschichte des deutschen ‘extremen Nationalismus’ (Frankfurt/M., 1978).

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right whereas the majority of Reich German commentators and decisionmakers continued Bismarck’s pro-Hungarian policy. During the war, Hungarian German intellectuals and politicians published numerous articles and essays in Reich German periodicals, often highlighting ethnic kinship and calling for active help.109 Most contributions not only provided German readers with some more general information about the history, culture, and socio-economic conditions of Hungarian Germandom, but also drew attention to Budapest’s oppressive nationality policy. Moderate authors such as Gottfried Fittbogen and Emil Neugeboren, however, refrained from direct criticism, emphasizing instead the military and political significance of Hungary for Germany, the loyalty of ethnic Germans to the Hungarian state, and their role as mediators between German and Magyar culture.110 Jakob Bleyer, who after 1918 would play an important role as political leader of the (remaining) Hungarian Germans, even went as far as to argue that the muchregretted assimilation process was a natural development and that the primacy of the Magyar language was necessary for a strong, unified state. Certainly, he maintained, it would be in the Hungarian interest to strengthen the German element against the Slavs by reinstating German schools, but Bleyer seriously warned Berlin and his co-nationals in Hungary against endangering the German-Hungarian friendship. ‘The Germans must renounce the wish to organize two million Germans in a völkisch sense and to establish a German province within Hungary’, he insisted in this context.111 Such comments were published in liberal and centrist periodicals, which typically celebrated GermanHungarian comradeship-in-arms and community of interests, and were (at least initially) very careful in their discussion of Budapest’s nationality policy.112 109

110

111

112

On the general background, see C. Göllner, ‘Der Erste Weltkrieg 1914–1918’, in C. Göllner, Die Siebenbürger Sachsen in den Jahren 1848–1918 (Cologne, 1988), pp. 243–53; P. de Trégomain, ‘Die Siebenbürger Sachsen und der Erste Weltkrieg. Erfahrung der Moderne’, in Ernst et al. (eds.), Aggression und Katharsis, pp. 283–97. See, for example, G. Gündisch, ‘Deutsch-madjarische Interessengemeinschaft’, Tag, 23 January 1915; G. Fittbogen, ‘Ungarn während des Krieges’, Hilfe, 16 March 1916, pp. 174–6; G. Fittbogen, ‘Die ungarländischen Deutschen während des Krieges’, DR, June 1916, pp. 464–72; G. Fittbogen, ‘Siebenbürger Sachsen als Vermittler’, Kunstwart, 2nd November issue 1916, pp. 200–1; E. Neugeboren, ‘Ungarn und die weltpolitische Stellung Deutschlands’, DP, 20 April 1917, pp. 506–13. J. Bleyer, ‘Das ungarländische Deutschtum’, DR, March 1917, pp. 350–7 (p. 357). Also see his ‘Die deutsch-ungarischen Beziehungen und das ungarländische Deutschtum’, PL, 16 and 20 September 1917. See, for example, ‘Die Siebenbürger Sachsen und der Krieg’, BT, 9 October 1914; ‘Die Nationalitätenpolitik Ungarn’, FZ, 17 November 1914; ‘Ungarn und Deutsche’, FZ, 26 September 1915; L. Stein, ‘Tisza und die deutsch-ungarischen Beziehungen’, VZ, 17 August 1915.

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In this, they very much differed from right-wing and Pan-German papers, which provided a forum for more critical statements. Here, Rudolf Brandsch, Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, and Lutz Korodi contested Magyar claims that the World War had vindicated the idea of the Hungarian nation-state and that the Transleithanian Germans were in fact treated properly and could live as ‘free, satisfied, . . . beloved, and appreciated citizens of their fatherland’, as Tisza wrote in his preface to Cserny’s book.113 They also highlighted the fact that the privileged Transylvanian Saxons with their schools, churches, and autonomous local administration – to which Hungarian authors repeatedly referred – merely represented one-tenth of the overall Hungarian German population.114 In a contribution to a special issue of the Pan-German journal Der Panther on Hungarian Germandom, Brandsch openly lamented the ‘gradual decay’ of the German element in Hungary, the general lack of schools and a well-educated younger generation, as well as the assimilation of the German intelligentsia, and demanded a change of the sorrowful situation. In this regard, he anticipated considerable support from Imperial Germany, and reckoned to identify already a ‘völkisch change of heart’ as a result of the war: ‘German blood has been recognized as too precious to be further spilled carelessly in the world.’115 In order to convince Berlin to take up their cause, Brandsch and like-minded authors emphasized the intellectual, economic, and political significance of the Hungarian Germans as outposts of the German nation and linking elements to the Middle East.116 Lutz Korodi, a former member of the Hungarian parliament and one of the main Pan-German experts on Austria-Hungary, reasoned along the 113

114

115

116

Cserny, Deutsch-ungarische Beziehungen, p. 5. For further examples, see J. Szterényi, ‘Die Siebenbürger Sachsen im Krieg und im Frieden’, ÖR, 1 March 1915, pp. 199–208; E. v. Rákosi, ‘Nationale und wirtschaftliche Interessen-Zusammenhänge’, WdZ, 25 February 1916, p. 11; V. v. Smialovszky, ‘Naumanns “Mitteleuropa” und die Nationalitätenfrage in Ungarn’, JE, July/August 1916, pp. 33–40. See, for instance, R.F. Kaindl, ‘Deutsche Ansiedlungen und deutsche Kulturarbeit in Ungarn’, Panther, May 1916, pp. 531–41; A. Müller-Guttenbrunn, ‘Deutsches Leben in Ungarn’, Panther, May 1916, pp. 593–603; R.F. Kaindl, ‘Die Siebenbürger Sachsen’, DA, December 1916, pp. 108–13; L. Korodi, Siebenbürgen und das ungarische Mutterland (Charlottenburg, 1916), rev. ed. of Die deutsch-magyarische Freundschaft. Gegenwart und Zukunftsaussichten. R. Brandsch, ‘Das Deutschtum Ungarns und der Weltkrieg’, Panther, May 1916, pp. 574–81 (pp. 577–8). Also see A. Müller-Guttenbrunn, Deutsche Sorgen in Ungarn. Studien und Bekenntnisse (Vienna, 1918). L. Korodi, ‘Deutsch-ungarische Beziehungen’, AB, 7 August 1915, p. 271; L. Korodi, ‘Die deutschen Brücken nach dem Orient’, Panther, July 1916, pp. 865–73; L. Korodi, ‘Grundlagen der Waffenbrüderlichkeit’, Türmer, 1st November issue 1916, pp. 178–81; R.F. Kaindl, ‘Wir und die Madjaren’, Post, 31 March 1917; R.F. Kaindl, ‘Eine Lanze für die Karpathendeutschen’, Kunstwart, 1st June issue 1917, pp. 196–201.

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same lines in several letters to the German Foreign Office. Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Korodi asked for intervention in Budapest and the exertion of ‘effective pressure’ and ‘friendly admonition’ in favour of the Hungarian Germans, who would represent a ‘living bridge which extends from Germany via Austria to the near Orient’ and offered promising opportunities for the German economy. Berlin should stop Hungary from estranging its nationalities and fuelling irredentist tendencies, which would inevitably lead to the inner dissolution of the ally.117 It is not clear whether Korodi was also behind the memorandum of the VDA of summer 1916, but the arguments are very similar: the Hungarian Germans could serve as valuable ‘fulcrums for Reich German economic relations with the Orient’ and disposed of a fruitful settlement area with important raw materials. To the Magyars, they were an important coalition partner in the struggle against the ‘Moscovite surge’. As for Germany, the support for the Transleithanian Germans and the demand for a change of Budapest’s nationality policy would not only be a matter of völkisch solidarity but also a ‘duty of self-preservation’ in line with the German interest in a stable ally, where all nationalities contribute to the common war effort.118 Despite a significant number of such requests, it seems that Berlin never raised the issue during the war.119 The German consul in Transylvania stressed that his role was to represent and promote Reich German interests and that he would thus have to treat the ethnic German and non-German population in the same way.120 As Lerchen wrote in April 1917, the local Magyars had initially been reserved and even hostile when he arrived. He managed to convince them – not least by learning their language – that his task was not to spread Pan-German ideas amongst the Saxons but to work for better relations between both countries, especially in view of the war-related presence of a significant number of German troops in the region.121 It was not until late October 1918, and in consideration of imminent concessions to 117

118 119

120 121

[L. Korodi]‚ ‘Denkschrift über die augenblickliche politische Lage in Südungarn und Siebenbürgen’, 17 August 1914, PAAA, Österreich 104, vol. 13. Also see his letters of 10 September and 9 October 1914 in the same folder. The memorandum was attached to the letter of Reichenau to Bethmann Hollweg, 1 August 1916, PAAA, Österreich 92, No. 10, vol. 5. See for other examples ‘Denkschrift betr. die Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, 5 August 1915, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22; Dr. Andreas Breckner, ‘Zur deutschen Frage in Ungarn’ [April 1915], PAAA, Österreich 104, vol. 14; and J.F. Lehmann to Foreign Office, 17 April 1915, PAAA, Österreich 104, vol. 14. See Lerchen’s letters to Bethmann Hollweg, 10 October 1916 and 26 April 1917, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 427. Lerchen to Bethmann Hollweg, 26 April 1917, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 427.

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non-Magyar nationalities, that the consul asked Berlin more directly to ensure that the demands of the Transleithanian Germans would also be taken into account by Budapest.122 That this cautious stance was not an exception or due simply to the relatively comfortable situation of the Transylvanian Saxons is demonstrated by the like-minded views and attitudes of Lerchen’s colleagues in Budapest and Vienna. Indeed, in an early wartime letter to Ambassador Tschirschky, Fürstenberg agreed that the Hungarian Germans were living under difficult educational and economic conditions: ‘Altogether this is a pretty unpleasant picture . . . Dynamic and valuable Germandom is being ruined by Magyar nationalist intolerance.’ The German diplomatic representative in Budapest nevertheless made absolutely clear that in view of Magyar sensitivity he could not subscribe to the demand for German intervention: At this moment, one should avoid anything which could impair the big success for which we fight shoulder to shoulder. It would be almost petty-minded if one should now, when there are so much higher interests at stake, destroy existing sympathies for a relatively minor reason.123

Tschirschky seemed of the same mind. Writing a few days later to Bethmann Hollweg, the ambassador agreed that it would be unwise to officially intervene in favour of the Hungarian Germans. He considered it a mistake to get involved in arguments of ‘smaller’ German groups: ‘In our actions towards the ally we should always keep the entire monarchy in mind.’ Instead of trying to defend the ‘petty’ interests of the Germans in Bohemia, Carinthia, or Hungary, Berlin should aim at ‘strengthening the Germanic foundation of the Habsburg state’ as a whole. On this account, Tschirschky opposed Korodi’s demands: Herr Korodi identifies the interests of the South Hungarian Germans with the interests of Germany! Yet between these there is, especially now, a fundamental difference. As things are, we have to strive to influence the overall course of the monarchy’s domestic policy in our sense.124

Once Austria-Hungary was re-Germanized, the situation of smaller German settlements would also improve. In the event that some Auslandsdeutsche could not subsist any longer, Tschirschky advocated their re-migration to the German motherland.125 We will later deal more closely with Reich German ideas and concepts regarding the 122 123 124 125

Lerchen to Max v. Baden, 25 October 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 427. Fürstenberg to Tschirschky, 20 October 1914, PAAA, Österreich 104, vol. 13. Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 25 October 1914, PAAA, Österreich 104, vol. 13. Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 6 October 1916, PAAA, Österreich 104, vol. 13.

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reorganization of the Habsburg Monarchy; what is important here is that until the end of the war, Germany abstained from taking direct action in favour of the Hungarian Germans. The topic never attained a particular significance. In fact, it was only in the context of the Romanian question that Budapest was more seriously asked to change its nationality policy. Of course, more than in the Romanian case, official intervention in support of the ethnic Germans would have caused anxiety and embitterment amongst the Magyars (fears of Pan-Germanism) and have greatly damaged the German-Hungarian alliance. Berlin thus continued Bismarck’s line of putting the reasons of state above ethno-national solidarity. This position was championed by Friedrich Naumann, too, who was repeatedly asked to lend encouragement and support to the Hungarian German cause.126 In November 1915, Brandsch in a letter to the liberal politician wrote that the decision-makers in Berlin should use their power and influence with, if necessary, ‘the greatest brutality’. Non-intervention in the inner affairs of Germany’s ally ‘would be an act of gross negligence towards its [i.e. Germany’s] own future. The bankruptcy of its companion could easily drag it into the abyss.’127 Naumann, however, insisted that German interference was ‘impossible and disastrous’, and that Germany itself had to learn to tackle its nationality question differently.128 As he declared in a letter to Pályi: ‘Of course, we Reich Germans have to take care not to interfere in any sort in the domestic struggles of the Hungarian kingdom . . . Each allied state has to deal with its inner affairs by itself.’129 The general lack of Reich German comments in support of the German minority in Transleithania is conspicuous. Certainly, it made sense to leave the ‘discursive battlefield’ to Hungarian Germans such as Korodi or Brandsch, who had first-hand knowledge of the difficult situation in Hungary. Some deutschnational Austro-Germans, too, took a strong interest in the case. They utilized the Hungarian German question to challenge the positive stance of many Reich Germans towards Budapest and to gain more support in their calls for a reform of the dualist system. By referring to the dire situation of the German element in Hungary, radical nationalists, however, hoped to contest Reich German statism and 126 127

128 129

See, for example, E. Neugeboren to Naumann, 22 October 1915, BArch, N 3001, No. 8; Schullerus to Naumann, 21 December 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 703. R. Brandsch to Naumann, 6 November 1915, BArch, N 3001, No. 15. Also see, with a more moderate tendency, J. Bunzel to Naumann, 27 October 1916, BArch, R 8048, No. 703. Naumann to W. Keller, 16 December 1914, BArch, R 8048, No. 6. Naumann to E. Pályi, 24 December 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 8.

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to arouse general völkisch awareness for Germandom abroad.130 In an article for the Deutsche Arbeit, an Austrian monthly that was read by alldeutsch circles in Germany, Emil Lehmann called for an end of Germany’s ‘unassuming’ stance. The situation of the deprived Hungarian Germans should no longer be considered a taboo; one should give up this ‘self-censorship’ and the ‘dogma of non-intervention’.131 Writing in a Reich-German journal, Benno Imendörffer agreed, claiming that the ‘German nation does not only have the right, but the duty to demand that kinsmen living in a state allied to the German Reich are no longer treated as second-class citizens’. It was high time that the Hungarian Germans received a political representation according to their outstanding cultural and economic significance, for instance via a franchise reform.132 Even though several Austrian memoranda on war aims contained at least one paragraph on future Austro-Hungarian relations and Budapest’s nationality policy, many observers – especially but not exclusively from the Christian Social or leftist camps – refrained from referring to or accentuating the issue. As seen, most Reich German commentators, at least until mid-1916 or early 1917, demonstrated a very positive attitude towards the Magyars. Many right-wing publicists, too, celebrated the German-Hungarian partnership and Tisza’s strong leadership, as well as the Hungarian troops’ courage and willingness to make sacrifices.133 Some Pan-Germans held Budapest in a very high regard, perceiving it as more reliable than Vienna (given the deteriorating domestic situation in Cisleithania) and as an important coalition partner in the struggle against the Slavs.134 Richard Bahr was thus one of the very few who openly condemned Magyarization policies and the ‘manipulation’ of the German public by Hungarian politicians. In various publications, the prolific journalist and editor demanded more directness from Berlin, calling for an end of Budapest’s secret supremacy in the Habsburg Empire and a better treatment of the German speakers. He also criticized the inclination of many Hungarian 130

131 132 133 134

See, for example, K. v. Winterstetten [i.e. A. Ritter], ‘Deutsch-ungarische Beziehungen’, FK, 16 August 1915; Pannonicus, ‘Innerpolitische Sicherung der Zukunft des Zweibundes’, AB, 14 and 21 August 1915, pp. 277–8, 285–7; P. Samassa, ‘Deutsch-österreichische Forderungen’, AB, 22 December 1917, pp. 503–4. E. Lehmann, ‘Volksrechte für Deutschungarn!’, DA, November 1917, pp. 99–101 (pp. 100–1). B. Imendörffer, ‘Graf Tisza’, GD, 30 June 1917, pp. 803–16 (pp. 812–13). See, for example, E. R[eventlow], ‘Die Äußerungen Tiszas und Burians’, DTZ, 15 June 1916, and E. R[eventlow], ‘Viribus unitis’, DTZ, 26 February 1917. See, for example, the remarks by Vietinghoff-Scheel at a meeting of the Pan-German executive committee, 2 and 3 March 1918, BArch, R 8048, No. 117.

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Germans (in particular of the Danubian Swabians) to assimilate and become ‘artificial Magyars’.135 A similarly reserved approach was taken as regards the electoral reform question, one of the most contested issues in Hungarian domestic politics and ultimately the reason for Tisza’s dismissal in May 1917.136 The introduction of universal suffrage, as demanded by the democratic left in Hungary and many leaders of non-Magyar nationalities, would have broken Magyar preponderance, provided the Hungarian Germans with adequate political representation, and possibly even opened the way for a reform of the dualist system. Interestingly, this idea was not only opposed by the Magyar elite. Even the Hungarian German community was divided over the matter. Transylvanian Saxons such as Emil Neugeboren disagreed with a radical reform for fear of losing their privileged position in the political system and seemed indifferent to the standing of other ethnic Germans in Transleithania.137 Many Reich German commentators were of the opinion that a franchise reform in Hungary would deeply alter the foundations of the Austro-Hungarian entity. Gustav Stresemann and Otto Hoetzsch were convinced that Magyar supremacy was in the German interest, whereas a new electoral system would ultimately lead to the ‘Slavization’ of the Habsburg Empire and result in an anti-German foreign policy course.138 General von Seeckt was also concerned about the negative effects of a democratic reform according to Károlyi’s wishes: ‘The implementation of his programme would let the current Magyar and thus loyal and Germanophile majority disappear in parliament. Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks, and Social Democrats would predominate over Magyars and Germans.’139 Once 135

136 137

138

139

See the following texts by R. Bahr: ‘Das ungarländische Deutschtum’, KNN, 12 and 13 November 1916; ‘Ungarn und wir’, HK, 20 November, 5 and 12 December 1916. Also see his Von der Schicksals- zur Lebensgemeinschaft, in particular pp. 5–26 (quotation on p. 24). G. Vermes, ‘Leap into the Dark: The Issue of Suffrage in Hungary during World War I’, in Kann et al. (eds.), The Habsburg Empire, pp. 29–44. See, for example, E. Neugeboren, ‘Regierungskrise und Wahlrechtsfrage in Ungarn’, DP, 15 June 1917, pp. 762–6; E. Neugeboren, ‘Die überwundene Wahlrechtskrise in Ungarn’, DP, 20 September 1918, pp. 1201–7; R. Brandsch, ‘Das ungarische Deutschtum und die Erweiterung des Wahlrechts’, Post, 6 July 1917; J. Bleyer, ‘Das radikale Wahlrecht und das ungarländische Deutschtum (Ein Wort der Aufklärung an die Deutschen in Österreich und im Reiche)’, NS, January 1918, pp. 67–70. For an overview: M. Oinders, ‘Das Wahlrecht in Ungarn’, DA, October 1917, pp. 21–6. See, for example, Stresemann to Gratz, 10 April 1916, PAAA, Stresemann papers, No. 153; O. Hoetzsch, ‘Der Krieg und die große Politik’, NPZ, 31 October 1917; L. Stein, ‘Der ungarische Wahlrechtsentwurf’, VZ, 23 December 1917. Seeckt to Hindenburg, 22 July 1917, reprinted in H. Meier-Welcker, ‘Die Beurteilung der politischen Lage in Österreich-Ungarn durch Generalmajor von Seeckt im Sommer 1917’, MGM, 2 (1968), 86–104 (quotation on p. 101). Also see Deputy Chief of Staff,

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again, the standing of the Hungarian Germans, which could have improved as a result of a franchise reform, was an issue of secondary significance from the Reich German point of view. Nation-state and diaspora: wartime Germany and the Auslandsdeutsche ‘This war brings to the German people, whatever state they call their fatherland, a precious gift: a common national consciousness, based on shared world-historical experiences.’ This is how Franz Jesser assessed the impact of the war and the military alliance between Berlin and Vienna on German national identity.140 After 1914, many Austro-Germans, Hungarian Germans, and other ethnic Germans who were not citizens of the Kaiserreich anticipated a greater Reich German sense of togetherness and solidarity with Germandom abroad, a shift away from German statism towards the ethnic Volksgemeinschaft.141 They were joined by German nationalists such as Richard Bahr, Wilhelm Schüßler, and Franz von Reichenau, a leading member of the VDA and former diplomat with spells in South America, the Balkans, and Scandinavia. In Reichenau’s view, there was no doubt that the enemies did not simply intend to destroy the German Reich but that they fought against ‘the whole German people, against Germandom itself’, setting off ‘a new völkisch awareness and understanding’ in Germany.142 There undoubtedly was a greater interest in and more sympathy with Germandom abroad, spurred not least by discriminatory actions against Germans in the Entente states.143 The suffering caused by internment, expropriation,

140 141

142 143

Section IIIB to Ministry of War and Foreign Office, 4 September 1918, PAAA, Österreich 92, No. 6a, vol. 9. F. Jesser, ‘Blick nach vorwärts’, DA, October 1914, pp. 3–7 (p. 6). Also see, for example, L. Korodi, ‘Für das Deutschtum im Ausland!’, ND, 23 September 1916, pp. 446–9; G. Fittbogen, ‘Probleme des Auslandsdeutschtums’, DR, February 1917, pp. 292–310; G. Fittbogen, ‘Zum Begriff des Auslandsdeutschen’, DP, 7 September 1917, pp. 1159–61; W. Schmied-Kowarzik, Ein Weltbund des Deutschtums. Die Gegenwartsaufgabe einer Weltpolitik deutscher Kultur (Leipzig, 1917). F. v. Reichenau, ‘Die deutsche Volksgemeinschaft’, Panther, July 1916, pp. 755–9 (p. 755). See, for example, C.F. Lehmann-Haupt, Der Krieg und das Deutschtum im Auslande (Berlin, 1915); L. Hempel-Chuchul, Das Deutschtum im Ausland und der Krieg (Hamburg, 1915); H. Grothe, Unsere Volksgenossen im Auslande und der Krieg (Berlin, 1915); G. Holdegel and W. Jentzsch (eds.), Deutsches Schaffen und Ringen im Ausland. Ein Quellenbuch für Jugend und Volk, für Schule und Haus (Leipzig, 1916); VDA (ed.), Was jeder Deutsche vom Auslandsdeutschtum wissen muß. Ein nationales Merkblatt (Berlin, 1917); C.F. Weiser, Das Auslanddeutschtum und das neue Reich. Betrachtungen und Vorschläge (Gotha, 1918); VDA (ed.), Auslandsdeutschtum. Ein Wegweiser durch die über das Deutschtum im Ausland in den Jahren 1917 und 1918 erschienenen Drucksachen (Berlin, 1919). For an overview of the wartime situation of Germandom abroad, see now

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and deportation attracted a lot of attention in Imperial Germany. In June 1916, the Reichstag parties passed a common resolution for financial compensation of the Germans abroad. These had opened up new markets and made fresh sources of raw materials available, sustained invaluable business connections, and generally enhanced German prestige and authority in the world: ‘We need the Germans abroad also after the war. They shall restore our connections with the world.’ As ‘pillars of peace’, they would ‘win us friends again, be mediators of reconciliation, and work for a lasting peace amongst the nations’.144 However, whereas the Reichstag referred to Reich German citizens living in the colonies and foreign countries, the Entente measures often affected other Auslandsdeutsche as well, as the VDA stressed in numerous statements and appeals for political and moral support.145 The Baltic Germans in tsarist Russia were the most prominent and vocal group of these ethnic Germans, triggering wide-ranging expansionist and resettlement plans of right-wing politicians and authors.146 Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers also encountered German communities in the Banat and the Vojvodina, in Galicia and Volhynia, in Transylvania, the Bukovina, and along the Black Sea Coast as a consequence of the military campaigns in the European East and South-East. In the view of Karl Lamprecht, it was the task of the German Reich to protect and support these Auslandsdeutsche.147 Already before the war, the historian had advocated a greater appreciation of Germandom abroad, based on a conception that defined the nation as a cultural and spiritual community rather than as a state-political entity.148 While his suggestion to establish a Reich Office for the Protection of Germandom Abroad was not implemented, several exhibitions, museums, as well as research and information centres were set up during the war, partly with active governmental support or funding from industry and trade, such as the Museum and Institute for the Study of Germandom Abroad in Stuttgart (renamed Deutsches AuslandsInstitut in 1918) or the German Institute for Border and Foreign Germandom at the University of Marburg.

144 145

146 147 148

P. Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities during the First World War: A Global Comparative Perspective (Farnham, 2014). Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 307, pp. 1549–50 (6 June 1916). See, for example, ‘Aufruf für die vertriebenen Auslandsdeutschen!’ and ‘Aufruf für die aus Feindesland vertriebenen Deutschen’ of August and October 1914, DiA, 22 (1914), pp. 150–1, 155–6. Sammartino, Impossible Border, pp. 18–44. K. Lamprecht, ‘Die Deutsche Kultur und die Zukunft. Wünsche und Vorschläge’, in K. Lamprecht, Krieg und Kultur. Drei vaterländische Vorträge (Leipzig, 1914), pp. 59–88. See, for example, his speech ‘Deutsches Volkstum und deutsche Kultur im Auslande’ at the annual VDA conference in June 1909, DiA, July 1909, cols 97–107.

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Clearly, the definition and understanding of Auslandsdeutschtum varied, with some right-wing publicists and politicians not just including Reich German citizens and ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe, but also the ‘Germanic tribes’ of the Dutch, Flemings, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians.149 In September 1914, Kurt Breysig, for instance, appealed to the Swiss Germans to acknowledge that they were part of the German ‘community of blood and feelings’.150 When the Swiss writer Carl Spitteler insisted on neutrality instead, he caused a heated reaction by radical-nationalist authors such as Adolf Bartels, who stated that he was ‘finished with him as a German’: Volk should always come before the state.151 The relationship between ‘nation’ and ‘state’ in these and other comments is telling. The Baltic German Siegfried von Vegesack, for example, held that the state was the ‘representative of the whole national community [Volkstums]’, the ‘embodiment of Germandom’, and that it had to protect German outposts in foreign countries.152 The jurist Conrad Bornhak from the University of Berlin agreed, asserting that the ethnic Germans had at least ‘a moral right to be protected by the powerful state organization’ of the German Reich, which should initiate the evacuation of isolated and defenceless German settlements and expand via Poland to include the Baltic provinces.153 And Bartels left no doubt, either: ‘The task of the state is of course the preservation and development of the nation [Volkstums].’154 The influential right-wing philosopher Bruno Bauch even caused a veritable scandal in the Kant-Gesellschaft when he published his anti-Semitic and racist essay on the idea of the German nation in the society’s journal. In his view, the nation as the basis of the state was a community of descent and blood: ‘It is evident in the colour of the skin, the shape of the face, and the physique of each individual.’155 Such statements seem to speak against the prevalence of 149 150 151

152 153 154 155

See as one example H. Weck, Das Deutschtum im Ausland, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1916). ‘Der Rassenkrieg. Von einem deutschen Schweizer. Mit einem Geleitwort von Kurt Breysig’, Unterhaltungsbeilage der Täglichen Rundschau, 19 September 1914. A. Bartels, ‘Karl Spitteler und der Weltkrieg’ (1915), in A. Bartels, Rasse und Volkstum. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur nationalen Weltanschauung, 2nd exp. ed. (Weimar, 1920), pp. 197–204 (p. 204). For the broader debate, see C. Spitteler, Unser Schweizer Standpunkt (Zürich, 1915); F. Avenarius, ‘Über die Grenzen. An Karl Spitteler’, Kunstwart, 2nd January issue 1915, pp. 41–7; W. Schumann (ed.), Unser Deutschtum und der Fall Spitteler. Belege und Betrachtungen (Munich, 1915). S. v. Vegesack, ‘Deutschtum und Deutsches Reich’, Tag, 30 July 1915. C. Bornhak, ‘Die Zukunft des russischen Deutschtums’, Tag, 25 June 1915. A. Bartels, ‘Staat, Volk und Rasse’, BW, March 1916, pp. 101–4 (p. 102). B. Bauch, ‘Vom Begriff der Nation. Ein Kapitel zur Geschichtsphilosophie’, KantStudien, 21 (1916), 139–62 (p. 141), quoted from Piper, Nacht über Europa, p. 232. Following the protest and withdrawal of mostly Jewish members of the society, Bauch had to give up the editorship of the journal and got involved instead in the ‘FichteGesellschaft von 1914’.

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Reich German statism and to confirm a wide appeal of the völkisch or ethnic definition of Germanness. However, the picture was far more complicated, and even though there were many contradictory viewpoints, it appears that the large majority of radical nationalists, too, ultimately gave priority to the state rather than the Volk. According to the Pan-German theologian Karl Klingemann, it was not the state which creates the Volk but rather the Volk which creates the state. In his opinion, the war had revealed the unity of the German people despite political division, based on common descent, language, history, and values. At the same time, however, Klingemann underlined that it was the state which guaranteed the survival, power, and prosperity of the German people.156 For Heinrich Claß from the ADV, ‘all German-born and German-speaking people of this world’ were part of the ‘Volksgesamtheit’, even if they were not citizens of the German Reich. Claß included the Dutch, Flemings, Swiss Germans, and Hungarian Germans in his concept of the German nation: ‘They are all German, they belong to the German community of blood and culture and must be considered as such by the Germans of the Reich – no matter how they themselves feel about it.’157 Still, the Pan-German leader only promoted the fostering of cultural commonalities; the sense of togetherness with Germandom abroad was not to lead to limitless irredentism and annexationism. Any claim would have to comply with the political, military, and economic interests of the German nation-state. To Claß, the extension of the state borders to the East was primarily a matter of gaining new settlement areas; that Baltic Germandom would be ‘saved from demise’ was merely ‘a nice and pleasant side-effect’ but not the main inspiration. The fate of Germandom abroad would ultimately depend on the standing of Imperial Germany, which ‘we consider the homeland, the country of origin, the German supreme power’. The ADV would consequently concentrate ‘all its energy on the German Reich, its security, preservation, and development’.158 As Claß made clear, despite the widely held notion that the Volk was more important than the state, the main political concern should be the maintenance of the authority and power of the state, necessitating a pragmatic rather than ideologically or ethnically motivated course. The right-wing historian Dietrich Schäfer agreed: ‘Blood relationships [Stammeszusammenhänge] undoubtedly have a bearing on cultural developments . . . Yet in politics only state-building processes are decisive.’159 From here, it was only a small step to Count Ernst 156 157 158

[K.] Klingemann, ‘Deutsche Zukunft’, Panther, October 1915, pp. 1255–64. H. Claß, ‘Der Alldeutsche Verband’, Panther, October 1915, pp. 1137–47 (pp. 1139, 1140). Ibid., pp. 1142, 1144. 159 D. Schäfer, Staat und Volk (Leipzig, 1915), p. 42.

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Reventlow’s argument that the war was not about the survival of races and ethnic communities but above all about states. In the opinion of the prominent Pan-German journalist, it was beyond question that ‘our enemies lead this struggle against the German Reich, its power, its prosperity, and its future, and that all Germans have to fight and work exclusively for the German Reich . . ., without looking left or right’.160 The war thus confirmed the state-political fixation of German radical nationalism, which explains the flexible and opportunistic stance PanGermans and other representatives of the national right took towards Germandom abroad. Only a few Germans had been genuinely interested in the Dutch-speaking Flemings in Belgium before the war, and it had been mainly Baltic Germans who drew attention to the situation in western Russia. The Austrian question, in contrast, had been covered to a much greater extent, which was not least because of geographical proximity, greater economic, intellectual, and cultural exchange, and common political interests (Dual Alliance). After 1914, this situation reversed due to different circumstances: there now was the possibility of a state-political affiliation of the Baltic provinces and Belgian territory, whereas one had to show more consideration than ever for the multinational ally.161 Indeed, whenever the interests of the Volk and the state clashed, radical nationalists, too, left no doubt what came first. Thus, it should come as no surprise that despite the presence of large numbers of German-speaking inhabitants in the Austrian Trentino region, the greater part of Reich German commentators, also from the national right, did not hesitate to demand the area’s cession to win over Rome.162 In April 1915, the ADV discussed the issue in an internal meeting where a small minority 160 161

162

E. R[eventlow], ‘Rassenkampf?’, DTZ, 20 June 1915. See B. Mann, Die baltischen Länder in der deutschen Kriegszielpublizistik 1914–1918 (Tübingen, 1965); H.E. Volkmann, Die deutsche Baltikumpolitik zwischen Brest-Litovsk und Compiègne. Ein Beitrag zur ‘Kriegszieldiskussion’ (Cologne, 1970); W. Wippermann, Der ‘Deutsche Drang nach Osten’. Ideologie und Wirklichkeit eines politischen Schlagwortes (Darmstadt, 1981); H.C. Meyer, Drang nach Osten: Fortunes of a Slogan Concept in German-Slavic Relations, 1848–1990 (New York, 1996); E. Demm, Ostpolitik und Propaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt/M., 2002); Liulevicius, War Land; T. Tu, Die Deutsche Ostsiedlung als Ideologie bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs (Kassel, 2009); F. Wende, Die belgische Frage in der deutschen Politik des Ersten Weltkriegs (Hamburg, 1969); W. Dolderer, Deutscher Imperialismus und belgischer Nationalitätenkonflikt. Die Rezeption der Flamenfrage in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit und deutsch-flämische Kontakte 1890–1920 (Melsungen, 1989); T. Müller, Imaginierter Westen. Das Konzept des ‘deutschen Westraums’ im völkischen Diskurs zwischen Politischer Romantik und Nationalsozialismus (Bielefeld, 2009). See, for example, ‘Österreich-Ungarn und Italien’, FZ, 4 February 1915; ‘Italien und Österreich-Ungarn’, DTZ, 9 March 1915; ‘Italien und Österreich-Ungarn’, TR, 5 May 1915. Opponents often referred to economic reasons: ‘Das “Trentino”’, KVZ, 28 February 1915; W. Rohmeder, ‘Südtirol’, VZ, 21 May 1915.

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opposed such a concession as a sign of weakness. Samassa, Claß, the publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann, and others, however, considered a hostile Italy a disaster which would have to be avoided at all costs. For Lehmann, the ‘higher interest of the fatherland’ was more important than the South Tyrolese, and the publicist Heinrich Rippler agreed that one should not ‘risk our future’ because of the Trentino.163 As seen, similar reflections led to a relative neglect of the Hungarian Germans. Many centre-right observers would probably have agreed with Johann Viktor Bredt, Professor of Public Law in Marburg and Free Conservative member of the Prussian House of Representatives, who insisted that the Magyars had the right to rule with a firm hand and to defy any claims that would endanger the stability and vigour of the Hungarian state. Instead of intervening on behalf of the Hungarian Germans, Berlin should rather support such a policy: ‘Our German interest is first and foremost to have strong and efficient allies.’164 Hungary was indeed widely perceived as a factor of stability within the allied Habsburg Monarchy, and its value as a political, military, and economic partner in Central Europe was indisputable. Ethnic sentiments and considerations, in comparison, were of much less significance. Moreover, such statements reveal the widespread belief in the superiority of the nation-state: there was no space for minority rights and compromises which were seen as weakening and destabilizing factors. Liberalnationalist and conservative circles in both Hungary and Germany fundamentally adhered to the ideal of the homogeneous nation-state, and it is worth highlighting that Magyar politicians repeatedly referred to Berlin’s treatment of the German Poles as a model for their own policy towards other ethnic groups.

163 164

‘Verhandlungsbericht über die Sitzung des geschäftsführenden Ausschusses’, 24 April 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 99. [J.V.] Bredt, ‘Wir Deutschen und das Nationalitätenproblem’, JE, June/July 1917, pp. 38–41 (p. 39).

7

The Polish problem

Looking back at the Dual Alliance at war, Count Andrássy, the Habsburg Monarchy’s last foreign minister, wrote that after the Italian question ‘it was the Polish difficulty which, more than anything else, disturbed the harmonious co-operation of both powers’.1 Without doubt, the Polish problem represented one of the most complicated and controversial issues in the wartime relationship between Berlin and Vienna. It was so intricate because the fate of Congress (Russian) Poland was decided by two states which themselves included a considerable number of Poles and were much concerned about the repercussions of any arrangement on their respective domestic order. In this regard, Poland was more than a bargaining issue between two allies trying to reach a deal over the future of jointly conquered territory – it was a matter of immediate and vital interest for both Habsburg and Hohenzollern. What is more, the Polish question played a key role in the Mitteleuropa debate, and it was obvious that its settlement would have far-reaching consequences for the future configuration of the European East and the relationship with Russia. Against this background, diplomatic historians have focused on the interallied struggle over resources and territories.2 Those studying German war ideology and nationalism have, on the other hand, examined plans and proposals to annex a Polish border strip and to displace the indigenous population.3 More recently, the German and Austro-Hungarian 1 2

3

Andrássy, Diplomacy and the War, p. 154. W. Conze, Polnische Nation und deutsche Politik im Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne, 1958); W. Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik in Polen und im Baltikum 1914–1918 (Berlin/ Ost, 1962); H. Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität. Die Mittelmächte und Polen im Ersten Weltkrieg (bis zur Februarrevolution) (Berlin/Ost, 1977). Also see W. Sukiennicki, East Central Europe during World War I: From Foreign Domination to National Independence, ed. by M. Siekierski, 2 vols. (Boulder, CO, 1984). Geiss, Der polnische Grenzstreifen; W.J. Mommsen, ‘Anfänge des ethnic cleansing und der Umsiedlungspolitik im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in E. Mühle (ed.), Mentalitäten – Nationen – Spannungsfelder. Studien zu Mittel- und Osteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Marburg, 2001), pp. 147–62; C. Henschel, ‘Territoriale Expansion und “völkische Flurbereinigung”. Überlegungen für einen “polnischen Grenzstreifen” im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in K. Gil and C. Pletzing (eds.), Granica. Die deutsch-polnische Grenze vom

223

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occupation regimes have attracted particular scholarly attention, although alliance politics are rarely discussed in this context.4 It is not the aim of this chapter to recapitulate these issues in detail. Rather, it investigates to what extent German politicians and commentators were aware of the question’s significance for Habsburg domestic politics and the standing of Austrian Germandom. While such matters and concerns were repeatedly discussed, Reich German state interests dictated the decision-making process and public debate. Ethno-national views did exist in right-wing circles and amongst certain representatives of the political elite, but ultimately Austro-German aspirations were only taken into account when they combined with German Realpolitik. Border rectifications and Ostmarkenpolitik: the defence of the Prussian East A series of partitions in the late 18th century had ended Polish independence and put the territory of the once-powerful Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the foreign rule of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. In Imperial Germany, the 3.7 million Poles (as of 1910) constituted the largest national minority and together with the Danes, francophone Alsatians, Frisians, and Sorbs clearly demonstrated that the German nation-state was far from ethnically homogeneous. Living mainly in the Province of Posen, Upper Silesia, and the south of West Prussia, the Poles were subject to an oppressive nationality policy, entailing systematic Germanization efforts and settlement projects.5 The pre-war discourse

4

5

19. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2010), pp. 61–74. See also S.O. Müller, Die Nation als Waffe, pp. 154–71. See, for example, T. Scheer, ‘Österreich-Ungarns Besatzungsmacht in Russisch-Polen während des Ersten Weltkriegs (1915–1918)’, ZfO, 58/4 (2009), 538–71; R. Spät, ‘Für eine gemeinsame deutsch-polnische Zukunft? Hans-Hartwig von Beseler als Generalgouverneur in Polen 1915–1918’, ZfO, 58/4 (2009), pp. 469–500; S. Lehnstaedt, ‘Das Militärgouvernement Lublin. Die “Nutzbarmachung” Polens durch Österreich-Ungarn im Ersten Weltkrieg’, ZfO, 61/1 (2012), 1–26; A. Eisfeld et al. (eds.), Besetzt, interniert, deportiert. Der Erste Weltkrieg und die deutsche, jüdische, polnische und ukrainische Zivilbevölkerung im östlichen Europa (Essen, 2013); J. Kauffman, Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I (Cambridge, MA, 2015). Recent studies include K. Bullivant et al. (eds.), Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences (Amsterdam, 1999); T. Serrier, Entre Allemagne et Pologne: Nations et identités frontalières 1848–1914 (Paris, 2002); J.E. Bjork, Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland (Ann Arbor, MI, 2008); M. Tilse, Transnationalism in the Prussian East: From National Conflict to Synthesis, 1871–1914 (Basingstoke, 2011). Also see the various essays in H.H. Hahn and P. Kunze (eds.), Nationale Minderheiten und staatliche Minderheitenpolitik in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1999). Full of insights and information: B. v. Hutten-Czapski, Sechzig Jahre Politik und Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1936).

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often featured the myth of a Germanic mission in the European East and social-Darwinist notions of a struggle for survival between Germandom and Slavdom, put forward in particular by such organizations as the German Eastern Marches Society, founded in 1894, and the Pan-German League.6 As has recently been highlighted by various historians, ‘the interaction with the Polish-speaking populations in Prussia and beyond bore traces of colonial structures’. While it is important not to overlook the differences between the administration of overseas colonies and the treatment of national minorities within the German Reich, ‘the civilizing-mission rhetoric, the racial overtones, and the logic of settlement policies all bespoke affinities with colonial settings’.7 The Prussian Poles were usually supported by the Centre Party, the left liberals, and Social Democrats, who opposed many discriminatory measures without, however, really renouncing the common belief in the superiority of German culture over the Polish way of life.8 Compared to their twelve million co-nationals in Russia, the Prussian Poles were certainly better off in terms of basic civil rights, their economic situation, and level of education, yet conditions in the Habsburg Monarchy were more liberal. Indeed, in contrast to Germany, where Polish culture, language, and to some extent religious

6

7

8

S. Grabowski, Deutscher und polnischer Nationalismus. Der deutsche Ostmarkenverein und die polnische Straz˙ 1894–1914 (Marburg, 1998); J. Oldenburg, Der Deutsche Ostmarkenverein, 1894–1934 (Berlin, 2002); Walkenhorst, Nation – Volk – Rasse, pp. 252–81. S. Conrad, ‘Internal Colonialism in Germany: Culture Wars, Germanification of the Soil, and the Global Market Imaginary’, in Naranch and Eley (eds.), German Colonialism, pp. 246–64 (p. 260). Also see S. Conrad, Globalisierung und Nation, pp. 124–67; P. Ther, ‘Deutsche Geschichte als imperiale Geschichte. Polen, slawophone Minderheiten und das Kaiserreich als kontinentales Empire’, in S. Conrad and J. Osterhammel (eds.), Das Kaiserreich transnational. Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 129–48; R.L. Nelson (ed.), Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East: 1850 Through the Present (Basingstoke, 2009); K. Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor, MI, 2012). See in particular G. Behrens, Der Mythos der deutschen Überlegenheit. Die deutschen Demokraten und die Entstehung des polnischen Staates 1916–1922 (Frankfurt/M., 2013), pp. 229–69, and R. Spät, Die ‘polnische Frage’ in der öffentlichen Diskussion im Deutschen Reich, 1894–1918 (Marburg, 2014), pp. 24–168. For a broader picture: H. Orłowski, ‘Polnische Wirtschaft’. Zum deutschen Polendiskurs der Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1996); U.A.J. Becher (ed.), Deutschland und Polen im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert. Analysen – Quellen – didaktische Hinweise (Hanover, 2001); K. Roth (ed.), Nachbarschaft. Interkulturelle Beziehungen zwischen Deutschen, Polen und Tschechen (Münster, 2001); A. Lawaty and H. Orłowski (eds.), Deutsche und Polen. Geschichte – Kultur – Politik (Munich, 2003); I. Surynt and M. Zybura (eds.), Narrative des Nationalen. Deutsche und polnische Nationsdiskurse im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Osnabrück, 2010); J. Frackowiak (ed.), Nationalistische Politik und Ressentiments. Deutsche und Polen von 1871 bis zur Gegenwart (Göttingen, 2013); H.H. Hahn and R. Traba (eds.), Deutsch-polnische Erinnerungsorte, 5 vols. (Paderborn, 2012–15).

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denomination were regarded as a potential threat to national interests and integrity, the five million Galician Poles possessed a considerable degree of autonomy. There were also several Austro-Polish diplomats and politicians, such as Prime Minister Count Kazimierz Badeni, Common Finance Minister Leon von Bilin´ski, and Foreign Minister Count Agenor Maria Gołuchowski. Whereas many Czech and South Slav deputies in the last years before the outbreak of the war opted for parliamentary obstruction, the conservative Polish elite usually supported the course of the government.9 At the same time, it repeatedly expressed disapproval of ‘hakatist’ policies in Germany, for example the eviction of 30,000 Poles and Jews in the mid-1880s or the Expropriation Law of 1908.10 The Polish question thus affected relations between Berlin and Vienna already before 1914. Such was the general setting when war broke out between the Central Powers and Russia. The Polish problem now turned from a cause of solidarity between the three partitioning empires (united in ruling out full self-determination and the resurrection of a Greater Poland) into an object of contention: the territory represented an important war aim and an issue of diplomatic bargaining, ‘a battlefield not just in military but also in political terms’, as Conze noted.11 Viewing the national element on the side of the enemy as a potential ally, the governments in Berlin, Vienna, and St Petersburg started to appeal to the Poles.12 German civilian and military decision-makers immediately softened their tone and initiated a propaganda campaign with the aim of undermining the political situation in Congress Poland. For the time being, the German press spread a notion of German-Polish friendship and called for the liberation of the Russian Poles from the yoke of tsarism.13 Catholic Poland, it was 9

10 11 12 13

With further references: H. Batowski, ‘Die Polen’, in Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, III/1, pp. 522–54; W. Leitsch and S. Trawkowski (eds.), Polen im alten Österreich. Kultur und Politik (Vienna, 1993); R.A. Mark, Galizien unter österreichischer Herrschaft. Verwaltung, Kirche, Bevölkerung (Marburg, 1994); C. Hann and P.R. Magosci, Galicia: A Multicultured Land (Toronto, 2005); A.F. Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge, MA, 2005); H. Binder, Galizien in Wien. Parteien, Wahlen, Fraktionen und Abgeordnete im Übergang zur Massenpolitik (Vienna, 2005); L. Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford, CA, 2010). M.P. Fitzpatrick, Purging the Empire: Mass Expulsions in Germany, 1871–1914 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 93–142. Conze, Polnische Nation, p. 46. See Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität, pp. 1–24, and Sukiennicki, East Central Europe, I, pp. 88–117. Spät, Die ‘polnische Frage’, pp. 169–226. See, for example, ‘Für die nationale Unabhängigkeit Polens’, Vorwärts, 13 August 1914; M. Erzberger, ‘Die Befreier Polens’, Tag, 13 August 1914; G. Gothein, ‘Die Wiederherstellung Polens’, KHZ, 17 August 1914; P. Rohrbach, ‘Kongreß-Polen’, MZ, 22 August 1914; Freiherr

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commonly claimed in this regard, had culturally and politically always represented a part of the West, and its genuine place was at the side of the Central Powers to fight against eastern brutality and uncouthness. For some Catholic and left-liberal authors, this tendency was part of a more general reassessment of German-Slav relations and the need to differentiate between the educated and pro-German western Slavs, on the one hand, and the ‘uncivilized’ eastern Slavs, on the other. Friedrich Naumann argued along these lines when he demanded a new attitude towards the ‘intermediary peoples [Zwischenvölker]’, such as the Czechs and the Poles, asserting that ‘in order to be truly great a greater nation [Großvolk] must show understanding for its comrades-in-arms’.14 As he explained in a Reichstag speech in late 1916, the Poles ‘as the most important of all the western Slavs’ belonged to the western cultural community and should be treated as equal partners.15 Conservative Polish intellectuals and politicians, amongst them Wilhelm Feldman and Władysław Studnicki, put a similar conception forward in order to legitimize the claim for statehood.16 In numerous articles for German periodicals, but also for two new journals that were established in 1915 to promote the Polish point of view in Berlin and Vienna (the Polnische Blätter and Polen. Wochenschrift für polnische Interessen), they stressed the Polish nation’s sacrifices and maintained that an independent Poland as ‘a defender of western culture’ and ‘bulwark against eastern invasion’ was undeniably in the interest of the Central Powers.17 As in the case of Hungary, there was a substantial increase in interest among various sections of the German population. Journalists and politicians travelled to the areas that had been conquered from Russia,

14 15 16

17

v. Mackay, ‘Polen und Deutschland’, HK, 6 November 1914; J. Bachem, Der Krieg und die Polen (M. Gladbach, 1915). F. Naumann, ‘Tschechen und Polen’, Hilfe, 5 August 1915, pp. 492–3 (p. 493). Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 308, p. 1718 (11 October 1916). W. Feldman, Die Zukunft Polens und deutsch-polnischer Ausgleich (Berlin, 1915); W. Feldman, Deutschland, Polen und die russische Gefahr (Berlin, 1915); W. Studnicki, Die Umgestaltung Mittel-Europas durch den gegenwärtigen Krieg. Die Polenfrage in ihrer internationalen Bedeutung (Vienna, 1915); A. v. Guttry, Die Polen und der Weltkrieg. Ihre politische und wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in Rußland, Preußen und Österreich, 6th ed. (Munich, 1915); K. v. Srokowski, ‘Zur deutsch-polnischen Verständigung’, PB, 1 October 1915, pp. 12–20; A. Brückner, ‘Was war Polens historische Mission?’, PB, 20 March 1916, pp. 261–7; X. Drucki-Lubecki, ‘Gedanken zur polnischen Frage’, in Thimme (ed.), Vom inneren Frieden, pp. 481–9; F. Kwilecki, Polen und Deutsche gegen Rußland, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1916); S. Przybyszewski, Polen und der heilige Krieg, 2nd ed. (Munich, 1916); S. Przybyszewski, Von Polens Seele. Ein Versuch (Jena, 1917); A. Napieralski, Deutschland, Österreich-Ungarn und Polen. Ein Beitrag zur Lösung der polnischen Frage (Beuthen, 1918). On Polish viewpoints, see now K. Thakur-Smolarek, Der Erste Weltkrieg und die polnische Frage. Die Interpretationen des Kriegsgeschehens durch die zeitgenössischen polnischen Wortführer (Münster, 2014). ‘Unser Programm und unser Wirken’, Polen, 1 January 1915, pp. 1–4 (p. 4).

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reporting their impressions back home and often challenging anti-Polish stereotypes. Notions of backwardness and poverty did not disappear, but they often related to the Jews or were blamed on the Russian authorities rather than the Polish people and way of life. The various efforts of the German occupation regime to improve infrastructure and public services were often highlighted and praised, too, such as the reopening of the (Polish-language) University of Warsaw in autumn 1915.18 German and Polish authors published surveys of Polish history and literature; translated key works by Mickiewicz, Sienkiewicz, Wyspian´ski, and Reymont; and re-published some of the Polenlieder of the pre-March period. In 1917, a German-Polish Society was founded.19 Even centreright observers contributed to this (temporary) redefinition and improvement of German-Polish relations. The influential publicists Georg Cleinow and Maximilian Harden expressed doubts about the political reliability of the Poles, but the large majority of the national right – amongst them Adolf Grabowsky, Otto Hoetzsch, and Rudolf Eucken – at least in the first half of the war demonstrated conciliatory and pro-Polish attitudes.20 They were, however, driven by power-political considerations rather than by a more genuine interest in the people. Victor Klemperer, in fact, considered these efforts and tendencies unconvincing, especially the claim that Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy came as liberators: ‘How much have we contributed to the suppression of the Poles and kept the friendship with the Russians!’21 While many commentators supported the permanent separation of Congress Poland from Russia, even Polonophiles ruled out a fully sovereign state. According to Naumann, the restoration of Polish statehood 18

19

20

21

On the German and Austro-Hungarian occupation regimes, but highlighting aspects of cooperation and understanding, see S. Lehnstaedt, ‘Imperiale Ordnungen statt Germanisierung. Die Mittelmächte in Kongresspolen, 1915–1918’, Osteuropa, 64/2–4 (2014), 221–32; S. Lehnstaedt, ‘Fluctuating between “Utilisation” and Exploitation: Occupied East Central Europe during the First World War’, in J. Böhler et al. (eds.), Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe’s First World War (Munich, 2014), pp. 89–112; W. Chu et al., ‘A Sonderweg through Poland? The Varieties of German Rule in Poland during the Two World Wars’, GH, 31/3 (2013), 318–44. For a balanced overview, see Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 265–76 and 392–415. S. Lehnstaedt, ‘Der koloniale Blick? Polen und Juden in der Wahrnehmung der Mittelmächte’, in Bachinger and Dornik (eds.), Jenseits des Schützengrabens, pp. 391–410; Spät, Die ‘polnische Frage’, pp. 227–75. For Harden and Cleinow, see Spät, Die ‘polnische Frage’, pp. 176–80. For pro-Polish contributions see, for example, W. v. Massow, Wie steht es mit Polen? (Stuttgart, 1915); A. Grabowsky, ‘Polen’, ND, 16 October 1915, pp. 1–7; R. Eucken, ‘Polnisches und deutsches Geistesleben’, PB, 1 August 1916, pp. 100–3; O. Hoetzsch, Polen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Berlin, 1917). For an Austrian contribution, see R. v. Kralik, Polen (M. Gladbach, 1915). Klemperer, Curriculum Vitae, II, p. 209 (diary entry of 20 September 1914).

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should only be implemented within the framework of the Central European associative state system.22 There was also no doubt that the new polity would have to do without the Prussian provinces. As Ferdinand Tönnies remarked in this context, the Germans, too, once had to accept life in an imperfect nation-state and to learn that partition did not represent the mutilation of the national community but in fact a necessary step towards political rebirth in Mitteleuropa: Today we experience that it leads . . . to reunification which, although without a constitutional framework, can be interpreted also in a political sense as the resurrection of Greater Germany. Yes indeed, the upholding of the existing states, divided from each other, is generally considered the natural precondition for external cooperation and domestic support.23

In spite of political division, Tönnies concluded, Reich Germans had never given up their cultural and spiritual connection with Germandom abroad, and the Poles would similarly achieve national unity in a higher sense as part of the political and economic union of the Central Powers. Of course, not all observers agreed with Tönnies or Naumann concerning Mitteleuropa, but for most it remained indisputable that the new Poland would somehow be incorporated into the German sphere of influence and that a fully independent Polish state was out of the question. To quote Ernst Hunkel from the Ostmarkenverein: We have no obligation to the Poles . . . Is the dispersal of a nation among several states really that shocking? We Central European Germans ourselves belong to three, with Luxembourg four, and if we include the Low German Dutch and Flemings even to six different independent states, and we too have to put up with it. Yet whereas each national sentiment amongst the Germans is decried as ‘PanGermanism’ . . . one behaves as if there was a natural right of the Poles to a national unitary state. Why should we Germans at the end of a victorious, unspeakably hard world struggle present the Poles at our expense a gift which we ourselves are deprived of ?24

Referring to the partition of the German nation in order to rebuff Polish claims was a popular strategy despite the apparent lack of analogy: whereas the Germans enjoyed a sovereign nation-state and played a leading role in another polity, all that the Poles could expect was the establishment of a rump state that was subordinate to overpowering neighbouring countries. 22 23

24

F. Naumann, ‘Wir und die Polen’, PB, 1 January 1916, pp. 1–6. F. Tönnies, ‘Deutschland und Polen’, PB, 20 April 1916, pp. 81–7 (p. 84). Similar: F. Naumann, ‘Polnische Schwierigkeiten’, Hilfe, 1 March 1917, pp. 136–8; F. Naumann, ‘Polnische Zukunft?’, Hilfe, 28 February 1918, pp. 84–6. E. Hunkel, Deutschland und die Polenfrage im Weltkriege (Berlin, 1916), pp. 17, 19.

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Despite the initial rhetoric of German-Polish friendship, there was no fundamental change in the treatment of the Prussian Poles.25 Following earlier Social Democratic suggestions, Adalbert (Wojciech) Tra˛ mpczyn´ski, one of the leaders of the Poles in the Prussian House of Representatives, in March 1915 raised the topic again.26 Underlining Polish sacrifices for the state and emperor, he demanded the immediate and definitive end of this ‘inner war’ against his co-nationals but only found support from the Danes, the left liberals, and Social Democrats, while the Catholics remained ambivalent. The centre-right parties merely promised to re-examine the laws in question after the war but clarified that, as the chairman of the Prussian National Liberals Robert Friedberg stated, the ‘necessary protection of Germandom in the multilingual territories of the Prussian state’ could not be put into question.27 The German press soon took up this issue, too. Declaring that the German Poles had nothing to ask or expect in return for their loyalty, and claiming that ‘the liberation of Poland was merely an inevitable side effect’ and not ‘the main goal of this gigantic struggle’, more and more right-wing commentators returned to their unsympathetic pre-war posture.28 They also attacked moderate intellectuals and journalists, such as the Catholic Julius Bachem or the pacifist Hellmut von Gerlach, who called for an end of the Germanization efforts in Prussia.29 Bernhard von Bülow, for example, insisted that ‘in the struggle of nationalities a nation can only be hammer or anvil, victor or vanquished’. The former chancellor defended Prussia’s Germanization policy as the only sensible strategy against the advancement of the Poles: Prussia is the pillar of the German Reich and the national idea, is the German nation-state kat exochen and must not betray its national mission. Prussia has to be 25

26

27

28 29

A.S. Kotowski, Zwischen Staatsräson und Vaterlandsliebe. Die polnische Fraktion im Deutschen Reichstag 1871–1918 (Düsseldorf, 2007), pp. 169–92; Spät, Die ‘polnische Frage’, pp. 342–97. See Paul Hirsch (SPD) on 22 October 1914 and 9 February 1915, in Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, II. Session 1914/15, vol. 7, cols 8327–30, 8358–9. Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, II. Session 1914/15, vol. 7, cols 8745, 8749 (9 March 1915). For Polish demands, see, for example, O. Czartoryski, Müssen Deutsche und Polen sich immer befehden? Betrachtungen eines konservativen Polen (Stuttgart, 1915); W. Feldman, Die Wünsche der Polen (Berlin, 1915); W. v. Studnicki, Reale Bedingungen für ein polnisch-deutsches Bündnis. Denkschrift für deutsche Staatsmänner (Beuthen, 1915); W. v. Studnicki, Die polnische Ostmarkenfrage (Warsaw, 1917). ‘Eine falsche Voraussetzung’, Post, 10 November 1915; ‘Güte und Gerechtigkeit’, Post, 27 November 1915. See, for example, J. Bachem, ‘Etwas mehr aus dem Zwielicht heraus!’, Tag, 30 January 1916; H. v. Gerlach, ‘Polens Erwachen’, WaM, 21 August 1916.

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ruled and administered according to German national points of view . . . Our Ostmarkenpolitik is the national duty of the German people towards themselves.30

Even Gustav von Schmoller, far from being an extreme nationalist, advised the German Poles to conduct themselves as ‘committed and upright patriotic German citizens’ instead of expressing grievances and setting up Polish organizations and pressure groups. It would, he reasoned, be perfectly possible to act as a Pole in private, but German society and public life had to remain purely German. Schmoller firmly asserted that ‘for ideas of a multinational state there is no space within the German Reich’.31 Friedrich Naumann, however, disagreed and demanded that the Reich Germans ‘think about nationalities in a more Austrian way’.32 In a report to the German Foreign Office, the economist Ignaz Jastrow similarly stated that the German belief in the superiority of the nationstate was outdated: Reich Germans should acknowledge that the Habsburg Monarchy represented the advanced form of political organization and follow its example, in particular with regard to the treatment of non-German groups within Imperial Germany.33 Yet these were minority views. When in early 1918 Tra˛ mpczyn´ski referred to Austria-Hungary as a model for the treatment of national minorities, Prussian Interior Minister Drews angrily repudiated such a comparison, insisting that Prussia was a ‘unitary state’ and that ‘the dangers of being a multinational state are clearly before our eyes’.34 Earlier already, the Kieler Neueste Nachrichten had warned against the ‘treacherous decomposition of the national character of our Reich’. The Habsburg Empire, the right-wing paper maintained, could hardly set an example for Germany: a weak and unstable polity, it merely created a pitiful impression.35 At least in the second half of the war, such remarks were not untypical. They demonstrate to what extent Reich Germans adhered to the ideal of the homogeneous nation-state, but they also disclose the persistence of disparaging pre-war notions about the Dual Monarchy: the idea of an ‘Austrian miracle’ had clearly lost its appeal. A change in Berlin’s nationality policy became acute after the proclamation of the Polish Kingdom as a semi-independent entity on 30 31 32 33

34 35

[B.] v. Bülow, Deutsche Politik (Berlin, 1916), pp. 253, 286–7. G. Schmoller, ‘Deutsche und Polen’, PB, 20 October 1915, pp. 76–9 (p. 78). F. Naumann, ‘Zwischen national und international’, Hilfe, 13 May 1915, pp. 296–7 (p. 297). I. Jastrow, ‘Momentbild aus Wien’, 19 November 1915, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 2. Also see his ‘Provinzial, National, International. Ein kleiner Beitrag zur Methodologie der Polenfrage’, PB, 10 December 1915, pp. 236–43. Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/17, vol. 7, col. 7440 (21 January 1918). ‘Ein gefährlicher Polenkurs’, KNN, 21 November 1916.

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5 November 1916, reinstating Polish statehood after more than 120 years.36 Most Catholics, Social Democrats, and left-liberal commentators received the manifesto of the Central Powers with enthusiasm and optimism, celebrating it as the beginning of a new era of German-Polish relations and expecting a change of Prussia’s policy towards its Poles.37 Hans Delbrück, too, who had initiated a moderate counter-appeal to the annexationist Seeberg-Adresse in summer 1915, welcomed the new Poland and demanded the end of Germanization efforts and of oppressive language policies.38 Baltic German intellectuals, such as Paul Rohrbach and Theodor Schiemann, who were known for a particularly hostile attitude towards Russia and who generally supported the idea of German-Polish rapprochement, equally applauded, hoping that the creation of the Polish state would pave the way for the political affiliation of further Russian territory to Germany.39 For Naumann, the proclamation was a highly significant step towards the creation of the Central European community: From now on we are comrades-in-arms! . . . Germans, Magyars, western Slavs of all kinds, Bulgarians, Turks, and Hungarian Romanians, too, fight on the same fronts surrounding Mitteleuropa, and, if necessary, their blood will flow as one. All these nations are tied together as a unity and for mutual support by a higher force of historic destiny.40

Kurt Riezler also perceived the Polish question as exemplary for Mitteleuropa. As he explained in his diary, a protectorate under German control could represent a model for the future organization of Central 36 37

38 39

40

‘Manifest des deutschen Generalgouverneurs in Warschau General d. Inf. v. Beseler’, in UF, I, p. 39. ‘Zum Manifest von Warschau’, Vorwärts, 6 November 1916; ‘Resurrectio Poloniae’, KVZ, 6 November 1916; ‘Polens Befreiung’, Germania, 6 November 1916; ‘Das Königreich Polen’, BT, 6 November 1916; ‘Das neue Polen’, FrZ, 7 November 1916; K. Kautsky, ‘Das neue Polen’, NZ, 10 and 17 November 1916, pp. 153–6, 177–89; G. Gothein, ‘Der neue polnische Staat’, März, 18 November 1916, pp. 121–6; P. Lensch, ‘Polen und der Friede’, Glocke, 18 November 1916, pp. 245–51; J. Bachem, ‘Das neue Polen’, PB, 20 November 1916, pp. 173–8; E. David, ‘Die Wiedererstehung Polens’, PB, 20 November 1916, pp. 179–82. Also see the following press reports: Braun to Burián, 13 November 1916, and Velics to Burián, 7 November 1916, HHStA, Literarisches Bureau, K. 120. On the reactions of the press and political parties, see Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik, pp. 330–47; Behrens, Der Mythos der deutschen Überlegenheit, pp. 269–301; Spät, Die ‘polnische Frage’, pp. 276–92. H. Delbrück, ‘Glückauf dem neuen Polenstaat! I’, PB, 10 November 1916, pp. 136–7 and his ‘Deutsche und Polen’ Tag, 11 November 1916. T. Schiemann, ‘Die Wiederaufrichtung des Königreichs Polen’, MZ, 8 November 1916; P. Rohrbach, ‘Polen’, DP, 17 November 1916, pp. 2011–17; P. Rohrbach, ‘Der Kern der polnischen Frage’, in Thimme (ed.), Vom inneren Frieden, pp. 490–5; P. Rohrbach, Unser Kriegsziel im Osten und die russische Revolution (Weimar, 1917); R. Bahr, Im besetzten Polen. Stimmungen und Eindrücke, 4th ed. (Berlin, 1916). F. Naumann, ‘Polen in Mitteleuropa’, PB, 20 November 1916, pp. 182–7 (p. 183).

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Europe. For the Germans, this was the ‘only practicable way to achieve perpetual greatness’.41 A few days after the proclamation, he wrote: Poland, leap in the dark, can be . . . the greatest stupidity and the most ingenious coup . . . But it is the first step of a greater plan, leading us from Lesser German politics and the methods of the Prussian territorial state towards the old worldpolitical role of the Reich as a central focal point for the surrounding smaller entities, and further towards the United States of Europe.42

He had earlier criticized the Prussian conservatives for sticking to the outdated Ostmarkenpolitik and for obstructing a novel, more tolerant stance towards the Poles: ‘A new era – the future belongs to the idea of the Reich, slowly outgrowing the national form by loosely affiliating smaller states . . . Rule, but let live!’43 Most representatives of the national right, however, took a much more sceptical stance and expressed serious concerns about the potential consequences for Germany’s eastern provinces.44 On 17 November 1916, the conservative parties together with the National Liberals proposed a protest motion in the Prussian House of Representatives, passed three days later by a majority vote, which disapproved of the fact that parliament had not been consulted in the decision-making process and called for ‘lasting and efficient military, economic, and political safeguards’ for German interests in the new Poland. What is more, they ruled out any alteration of the domestic conditions within the Prussian East and warned against impairing ‘the German character of the eastern provinces which are insolubly linked to the Prussian state and indispensable for the existence and political power of Prussia and Germany’.45 Nationalist circles, amongst them the DOV and the newly formed DVLP, continued to spread anti-Polish sentiments and to treat the Prussian Poles as an internal enemy of the German nation, arguing even that Prussia’s previous policy had not been strict and consistent enough, and condemning concessions as a sign of weakness.46 41 42 44

45

46

Riezler, Tagebücher, p. 300 (23 September 1915). Ibid., pp. 379–80 (11 November 1916). 43 Ibid., p. 297 (29 August 1915). See, for example, ‘Das Königreich Polen’, NPZ, 6 November 1916, and ‘Zur Errichtung des Königreichs Polen’, RWZ, 7 November 1916. For party reactions, see the debate in the Hauptausschuß on 9 November 1916, in Schiffers et al. (eds.), Hauptausschuß, II (1981), pp. 1015–21. ‘Antrag der Abgeordneten v. Heydebrand, Dr. Friedberg, Frhr. v. Zedlitz und Neukirch und Genossen’, Sammlung der Drucksachen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/18, vol. 4, No. 285, pp. 2336–7 (p. 2336). Also see the debate on 20 November 1916 in Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/17, vol. 3, cols 2391–423. ‘Erklärung des Deutschen Ostmarkenvereins’, DTZ, 19 April 1917; ‘Eine Entschließung des Deutschen Ostmarkenvereins’, BNN, 29 October 1917; E. R[eventlow], ‘Die Gespräche über Polen’, DTZ, 27 January 1918; D. Schäfer, ‘Staat und Volk in

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These debates demonstrate the prevalence of the ethnic concept of the nation(-state) amongst many German politicians and publicists who refused to grant the Poles full equality. Even left liberals did not always refrain from employing the entrenched rhetoric of a German-Polish struggle for survival, and stressed the need to protect the Germans in the eastern territories. To quote Oskar Cassel from the FVP: ‘We will never separate from them, we will never abandon them, and we will be prepared to take all measures necessary to enable them to develop strongly and freely according to their German culture, mindset, origins, and language.’47 Still, the moderate parties continued to support the Prussian Poles in their calls for domestic reforms. These efforts were partly successful. In April 1917, the linguistic clause of the Vereinsgesetz of 1908 (according to which public gatherings would have to be carried out in German) was revoked after much debate. A few months later, Polish was admitted again as a language of religious instruction. Further substantial concessions and changes, however, did not materialize, largely because of the different majority situation in the Prussian House of Representatives (most of the anti-Polish laws were Prussian). Indeed, a more fundamental change of the Ostmarkenpolitik seemed realistic only once the restrictive Dreiklassenwahlrecht, which greatly favoured the centre-right parties, had been abolished. In addition to these internal issues, the majority parties of the Reichstag campaigned for an extension of Polish self-rule in the occupied areas. Concerned about increasing proEntente tendencies there, they prepared a joint resolution with Polish politicians in early 1918, rejecting the annexation of Polish territory (border strip) and demanding more political rights. At the same time, however, the supporters of the Polish cause became increasingly distrustful, at least of the more radical national-democratic camp. At the reopening of the Austrian Reichsrat in May 1917, Austro-Polish deputies had in fact demanded to ‘unify all Polish territories where the Polish people live and to create an independent, unitary Poland as a sovereign state’.48 The failed recruitment of Polish soldiers, the ‘oath crisis’ of summer 1917 (when the leader of the Polish legions Józef Piłsudski refused to declare his loyalty to the German emperor), protests against the exclusion from the negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, the outcry over the cession of

47 48

Osteuropa’, SM, May 1917, pp. 300–18; D. Schäfer, Kriegs- und Friedensziele (Berlin, 1917). Also see [Anon.], Der Deutsche Ostmarkenverein und die polnische Frage während des Krieges August 1914/Januar 1918 (Berlin, 1918). Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/17, vol. 7, col. 7421 (19 January 1918). Stenographische Protokolle über die Sitzungen des Hauses der Abgeordneten des Österreichischen Reichsrates, XXII. Session, vol. 1, 30 May 1917, p. 37 (Stapin´ksi).

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Chełm, and the open calls from Prusso-Polish parliamentarians for the international settlement of Germany’s minority issues led to further estrangement and polarization.49 The calls for the annexation of at least a small strip of Polish territory have repeatedly been mentioned.50 Alexander Watson has shown that this demand was a consequence of the traumatic Russian invasion of East Prussia in August 1914: ‘The possibility of attack on the Reich’s key industrial region of Silesia and an advance on Posen, the gateway to Berlin, had been real and frightening. This narrowly averted mortal peril was what focused minds on how Germany’s eastern border could in the future be secured.’51 Military and strategic reasons certainly were central, but in many memoranda economic factors and völkisch positions played a role, too. Not only was the Grenzstreifen supposed to rectify Germany’s borders but it was also projected as an extensive agrarian area (helping Germany to become self-sufficient) and space for German settlers, driving a wedge between the Prussian Poles and their conationals in Congress Poland.52 Upper Silesian industrialists desired the annexation of adjacent Polish territory in order to get their hands on the local mining industry, abhorring the prospect that their AustroHungarian competitors could gain access to the abundant resources of ore and coal there.53 Evidently, disagreement between major opinion leaders, diplomats, and military as well as civilian policy-makers related less to the question whether Germany should annex at all in the East, but rather concerned the extent of territorial aggrandizement and whether the population should be Germanized or displaced (although the use of force was mostly ruled out).54 The most important aspect, it was generally 49 50 51 52

53

54

See Behrens, Der Mythos der deutschen Überlegenheit, pp. 366–83; Spät, Die ‘polnische Frage’, pp. 293–342. Geiss, Grenzstreifen, pp. 41–70. Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 266. On the Russian invasion of East Prussia, see ibid., pp. 160–81. See for instance Hugenberg’s commentary to the memorandum of the five economic associations, 12 March 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 642; [D. Schäfer], ‘Denkschrift über die zukünftige Gestaltung unserer östlichen Nachbargebiete’, August 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 642; L. Bernhard and L. Wegener, ‘Die Ostgrenze’ [n.d.], BArch, R 8048, No. 642; ‘Eingabe des Deutschen Wehrvereins an den Reichskanzler’, 27 January 1916, BArch, R 8048, No. 627. See, for example, G. Williger, Die wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen Russisch-Polen und dem deutschen Reiche und die sich daraus für den Friedensschluß ergebenden Folgerungen (Oppeln, 1915); the memorandum of the Oppeln chamber of commerce, Das Interesse Oberschlesiens an der Zukunft Polens (Oppeln, 1917); and the ‘Eingabe schlesischer Professoren an den Reichskanzler’, November 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 627. On governmental plans and the views of the OHL, see Geiss, Grenzstreifen, pp. 70–147. For public resettlement demands, see, for example, L. v. Vietinghoff-Scheel, Die Sicherheiten der deutschen Zukunft (Leipzig, 1915); M. Kranz, Neu-Polen (Munich, 1915); G. v. Below, ‘Gebietserweiterungen als Forderungen des deutschen

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argued against those who resented a fourth Polish partition, was the protection of German interests, and tangible safety measures promised to serve this purpose much better than the precarious utopia of a GermanPolish friendship, which Count Westarp termed ‘the politics of illusion’.55 Of course, Ostmarkenpolitik, frontier adjustments, and resettlement schemes were just some aspects of a whole set of questions linked to the Polish problem in the First World War. These issues were only indirectly related to German-Austrian relations, but the concern of many German politicians and a large part of the public for the situation in the Prussian East is important and helps to understand responses to one of the Habsburg Monarchy’s major war aims: the annexation of Russian Poland. Germany, Mitteleuropa, and the Austro-Polish solution Following the occupation of Congress Poland in summer 1915, the Polish question, which had so far been treated dilatorily in the negotiations between the Central Powers, became a pressing issue.56 The area was divided into two administrative zones, the German Government General (Warsaw) and an Austro-Hungarian Military Government (Lublin), an expedient solution for the time being, but certainly no suitable scheme for the long term.57 Over the course of the war, countless proposals and schemes concerning the future of Poland were put forward by German politicians, economic circles, and intellectuals. Only a few seriously considered the annexation of the whole territory and the incorporation of millions of Slavs (and Jews) into the German nation-state, an issue that was much discussed by Prussian officials in connection with the border strip question. The idea of setting up a wholly independent and self-governing Polish state was only supported by a marginal minority of pacifists and left-wing Social Democrats. For the national right, the prospect of a sovereign Poland on Germany’s eastern borders, a potential instrument of the Entente and source of irredentism in the Prussian provinces, was a horror vision. National Liberals and conservatives heavily resented Bethmann Hollweg for the establishment of the

55 56

57

Nationalstaats’, Tag, 6 March 1918; E. R[eventlow], ‘Die polnische Frage’, DTZ, 15 June 1918. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 313, p. 5628 (24 June 1918). On the discussions and negotiations between the Central Powers up to summer 1915, see Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 46–76; Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität, pp. 24–38, 54–73, 135–55; J. Županicˇ , ‘Die polnische Frage in der Politik der Mittelmächte am Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs’, PPHIR, 2 (1998), 298–312. Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 77–105; Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität, pp. 186–212.

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kingdom in November 1916 and insisted on keeping full political and military control over the new polity. According to Dietrich Schäfer, the German government would commit the ‘murder of its own people’ and set off the inevitable ‘demise of Prussia’s and Germany’s great-power status’ if it granted full autonomy to Poland.58 As he put it in another article: ‘The blood of our sons was shed for Germany, not for Poland.’59 The range of plans and suggestions was truly remarkable and included, amongst others, the proposal of Adolf Grabowsky to establish a permanent German-Austro-Hungarian condominium, while the leftliberal Reichstag deputy Georg Gothein promoted a semi-independent multinational Greater Poland (with Lithuania and Courland).60 General Seeckt, on the other hand, advocated the division of Congress Poland between Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary.61 Ultimately, however, it came down to three main options: the Russo-Polish, the GermanPolish, and the Austro-Polish solution. The return of Congress Poland to Russia was repeatedly contemplated by government representatives who hoped to reach a separate peace in the East.62 Conservatives such as Otto Hoetzsch, joined by right-wing Social Democrats such as Max Cohen-Reuß and a small group of liberals (e.g. Georg Bernhard from the Vossische Zeitung and Karl Max von Lichnowsky), also promoted better relations with Russia, partly out of discomfort over other solutions of the Polish question, but also for economic reasons or with the intention of uniting Central and Eastern Europe against the western democracies. These ideas became more prominent again after the Russian February Revolution and the Polish political crisis of summer 1917.63 58

59 60 61 62

63

D. Schäfer, ‘Die Neuorientierung und des Vaterlandes Lage’, Panther, May/June 1917, pp. 639–63 (pp. 651–2). See already his ‘Deutsche und Ostland in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart’, Panther, August 1916, pp. 939–50. Schäfer, ‘Staat und Volk’, p. 317. A. Grabowsky, Die polnische Frage, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1916); G. Gothein, Das selbständige Polen als Nationalitätenstaat (Stuttgart, 1917). ‘Denkschrift des Generalmajors v. Seeckt über die Teilung Polens’ [1916], in UF, I, pp. 31–6. For the broader context, see L.L. Farrar, Divide and Conquer: German Efforts to Conclude a Separate Peace, 1914-1918 (New York, 1978); R. Chickering, ‘Strategy, Politics, and the Quest for a Negotiated Peace: The German Case, 1914–1918’, in H. Afflerbach (ed.), The Purpose of the First World War: War Aims and Military Strategies (Berlin, 2015), pp. 97–115. See Hoetzsch’s memorandum ‘Gedanken über die politischen Ziele des Krieges’ of early December 1914, BArch, R 43, No. 2476; G. Bernhard, ‘Der Osten’, VZ, 21 May 1917; G. Bernhard, ‘Polen und das Ende’, VZ, 10 September 1917; K.M.v. Lichnowsky, ‘Das selbständige Polen’, BT, 2 September 1917; M. Cohen-Reuß, ‘Polenfahrt’, BT, 30 September 1917; O. Wolters, ‘Die polnische Frage’, MZ, 27 October 1917; G. Anschütz, Zukunftsprobleme deutscher Staatskunst (Berlin, 1917).

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The foundation of a Polish buffer state, subject to German control in political, economic, and military regard, and possibly with a German king on its throne, was the most common scheme. Most memoranda argued more or less for this solution; high-ranking industrialists, east-Elbian Junkers, politicians and intellectuals with close links to business, commerce, and agriculture such as Walther Rathenau or Gustav Stresemann, and radical nationalists such as Dietrich Schäfer made a case for eastern expansion, often recommending frontier changes and the transfer of population. After the ban on the war aims debate was lifted, these early demands were circulated in countless periodicals and pamphlets and undoubtedly represented the dominant standpoint of the national right towards the Polish question. The least popular idea was the unification of Congress Poland with Austrian Galicia and the incorporation of the new entity into the Habsburg realm, the so-called Austro-Polish solution. It was, however, the preferred scheme of most diplomats and policy-makers in Vienna.64 Anything else, one was convinced at the Ballhausplatz, would greatly endanger Austria’s inner cohesion. Another partition, an affiliation to Imperial Germany, or a return of Congress Poland to Russia would estrange the Galician Poles who were a long-standing pillar of the regime and important factor of stability. Indeed, there was little doubt about the stance of the conservative Austro-Polish elite, represented by the Supreme Polish National Committee (Naczelny Komitet Narodowy), which in various statements in parliament and press demanded the unification of Russian Poland with Galicia in a trialist Habsburg Empire but dismissed Ruthenian claims for the separation of the Galician East.65 Hungarian politicians, however, were very concerned about the constitutional implications of the AustroPolish solution. A trialist reorganization of the Dual Monarchy was 64

65

W. Bihl, ‘Zu den österreichisch-ungarischen Kriegszielen 1914’, JGO, 16 (1968), 505–30; J. Lilla, ‘Innen- und außenpolitische Aspekte der austropolnischen Lösung 1914–1916’, MÖSTA, 30 (1977), 221–50; H. Batowski, ‘Trialismus, Subdualismus oder Personalunion. Zum Problem der österreichisch-polnischen Lösung (1914–1918)’, Studia austro-polonica, 1 (1978), 7–19; J. Gaul, ‘The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Its Political Allies in the Polish Kingdom 1914–1918’, in A. Gottsmann (ed.), Karl I. (IV.), der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Donaumonarchie (Vienna, 2007), pp. 203–21; C.F. Wargelin, ‘The Austro-Polish Solution: Diplomacy, Politics, and State Building in Wartime Austria-Hungary 1914–1918’, EEQ, 42/3 (2008), 253–73; L. Höbelt, ‘Die austropolnische Lösung – eine unendliche Geschichte’, in Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (ed.), Der Erste Weltkrieg und der Vielvölkerstaat (Vienna, 2012), pp. 35–54. See, for example, M. v. Straszewski, Die polnische Frage (Vienna, 1915); W.L. v. Jaworski, ‘Der gegenwärtige Krieg und die polnische Frage’, Panther, August 1915, pp. 911–18; ‘Polen und Oesterreich-Ungarn’, Polen, 9 November 1917, pp. 169–71; A. v. Halban, ‘Zur Polenfrage in Österreich’, SM, May 1917, pp. 244–9.

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sternly rejected by Tisza, who was not willing to accept Poland as an equal partner.66 While the prime minister anticipated the loss of Hungarian influence on the Gesamtstaat (as a consequence of a PolishAustrian majority or a further concentration of power in Vienna) and similar Southern Slav demands, Gyula Andrássy and Albert Apponyi promoted trialism precisely because they expected a decentralization of the empire (possible transformation into a mere personal union), even though this was not declared publicly.67 Together with Foreign Minister Burián, Tisza preferred the so-called sub-dualistic solution, according to which Poland was to become a dependent part of Cisleithania, and in this context insisted on territorial compensations for Hungary (Bosnia, Herzegovina, possibly also Dalmatia), thus maintaining dualism and parity within the realm. However, how exactly subdualism was to be arranged remained a matter of debate.68 As for deutschnational politicians, the large majority wanted to seize the opportunity to implement one of the central demands of the Linz Programme of 1882: the exclusion of the Galician delegates from the Reichsrat in Vienna, thus guaranteeing the parliamentary majority of Austro-German representatives and their control over Cisleithanian affairs. Next to the calls for a closer relationship with Germany, the establishment of German as the state language, and a Bohemian administrative reform, the rearrangement of Galicia’s position within Austria (Sonderstellung) appeared in most Austro-German memoranda on war aims and constitutional reforms.69 The Austro-Polish solution promised to achieve this goal and perhaps even more – such as the economic union 66 67

68

69

See already Tisza’s letter to Burián, 11 August 1914, in Tisza, Briefe, pp. 50–4. Andrássy, Diplomacy and the War, pp. 144–54; Batthyány, Für Ungarn, pp. 128–37. For some wartime articles by Andrássy, see ‘Die polnische Frage’, NFP, 12 September 1915; ‘Die Rede des deutschen Kanzlers’, FZ, 23 April 1916; ‘Über die polnische Frage’, NS, February 1918, pp. 128–35; ‘Zur Polenfrage’, JE, May/June 1918, pp. 1–8. Also see G. v. Polónyi, ‘Ungarn, Polen und Mitteleuropa’, JE, January/February 1918, pp. 68–80; Report Jagow, 7 October 1915, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, Militärattaché, vol. 169. See the discussion in the Austro-Hungarian Council of Ministers on 6 October 1915, in M. Komjáthy (ed.), Protokolle des Gemeinsamen Ministerrates der ÖsterreichischUngarischen Monarchie (1914–1918) (Budapest, 1966), pp. 285–314. See also Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 2 January 1917, PAAA, Österreich 86, No. 2, vol. 22; Wedel to Hertling, 20 June 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 6; Wedel to Hertling, 27 June 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 6; Fürstenberg to Michaelis, 20 October 1917, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 423. See, as some of the most important, ‘Gemeinsames Programm des Deutschen Nationalverbandes, der Christlichsozialen Vereinigung deutscher Abgeordneter und der Wiener christlichsozialen Parteileitung’, 7 September 1915, HHStA, Baernreither papers, vol. 16; and ‘Die Forderungen der Deutschen Oesterreichs zur Neuordnung nach dem Kriege’ (the so-called ‘Easter Programme’ of 1916), HHStA, Groß papers, vol. 4. Also see Baernreither’s memorandum ‘Grundriss für eine Beratung der polnischen Frage’ of February 1916, and Karl Urban’s reflections in his ‘Die polnische und

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with Germany. As early as September 1914, Paul Samassa submitted a detailed memorandum to German decision-makers to obtain their assent to the Austro-Polish solution. Not only would the AustroGermans gain domestic hegemony in Cisleithania and thus be able to secure the continuation of the Habsburg Empire’s pro-German foreign policy course, but as a compensation for Poland the German Reich could also oblige the Dual Monarchy to join a customs union (and to even take up the Prussian Poles).70 About a year later, Bethmann Hollweg (and many other high-ranking German politicians) received the Denkschrift aus Deutsch-Österreich, which argued for a closer political, military, and economic partnership between Berlin and Vienna and also made a case for the Austro-Polish solution. In an accompanying letter, Heinrich Friedjung explained that ‘it was the genuine wish of influential circles within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy to incorporate as large as possible a part of Russian Poland with Warsaw as its capital into the Danubian realm and to unite these territories with Galicia to a Polish commonwealth, subject to the sovereignty of the Austrian Emperor’. In order to protect German economic interests in Congress Poland, Berlin should insist on the creation of a customs union with the Habsburg Monarchy.71 However, there were doubts, too. Higher officials in Vienna were concerned about the constitutional implications of the Austro-Polish solution, anticipating a weakening of the cohesion of the monarchy or a substantial reconfiguration of the domestic balance of power. In the case of trialism, they envisaged a long-term trend towards a personal union or confederation. A sub-dualistic solution and Hungarian annexations in the Balkans, on the other hand, could provide Budapest with political supremacy within the empire. Industrialists highlighted the economic significance of Galicia as a market and supply of irreplaceable natural resources, demanding a solution which would keep Galicia within the Austrian economic area. Austro-German Social Democrats were divided.72 Holding up the principle of national self-determination, the majority seemed in favour of an independent Polish state, possibly

70 71

72

ukrainische Frage nach dem Kriege’ of late 1915 or early 1916, HHStA, Baernreither papers, vol. 38. P. Samassa, ‘Zur Polenfrage’, BArch, R 43, No. 2476. Friedjung to Bethmann Hollweg, 31 August 1915, PAAA Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 1. Also see the following memoranda for the German Foreign Office: ‘Denkschrift Robert Sieger für die Deutsche Mittelstelle für Österreich-Ungarn’, 22 July 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 25; A. Ritter, ‘Die Notwendigkeit der austro-polnischen Lösung’ [1918], PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 25. See, for example, the parliamentary debate on 9 November 1917, Stenographische Protokolle des Hauses der Abgeordneten des Reichsrates, XXII. Session, pp. 1859–911.

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in association with Galicia. Some left-wing authors criticized the Austro-Polish solution as a concealed annexation and claimed that it would hamper efforts to come to a peace of understanding. There was disagreement for instance as to the extent of Polish sovereignty, whether annexations were legitimate and necessary, and whether the new Poland ought to be a member of the Central European economic area.73 Several German-nationalist politicians, including the right-wing Social Democrat Karl Leuthner, also appeared unenthusiastic about the incorporation of Russian Poland, claiming that it would not strengthen the Austro-German element but, on the contrary, lead to the ‘Slavization’ of the Habsburg realm.74 Overall, however, such views were the standpoints of a minority. They became more prevalent only in connection with the decline of the general military situation and the resurgence of domestic nationality conflicts. In fact, the largest part of the Austro-German political and intellectual elite supported the Austro-Polish solution, and many attempted to persuade the Reich German public and decisionmakers that it would guarantee Austro-German predominance and the continued existence of the Dual Alliance. In this context, confessional commonalities and the multinational tradition of Habsburg rule were often stressed, too.75 It is evident to what extent the future of Poland was related to Cisleithania’s domestic order, and the historian Heinz Lemke is right in pointing out that certain points such as the territorial 73

74

75

See, for example, F. Austerlitz, ‘Galiziens Sonderstellung’, Kampf, December 1916, pp. 409–17; F. Austerlitz, ‘Die austro-polnische Lösung’, Kampf, October 1918, pp. 649–59; K. Renner, ‘Erstaunliche Geschichtsklitterung’, Kampf, July 1918, pp. 451–69. See, for example, K. Leuthner, ‘Deutsche und tschechische Politik’, DP, 7 June 1918, pp. 711–18; K. Leuthner, ‘Der austropolnische Plan’, SoM, 25 June 1918, pp. 571–7. Also see ‘Die österreichische Sphinx. (Von einem deutschen Politiker in Wien)’, GD, 6 September 1918, pp. 1141–6. See, for example, P. Samassa, ‘Westösterreich und Galizien’, DÖ, 1 March 1917, pp. 293–6; P. Samassa, ‘Polen und Deutsche’, DÖ, June 1918, pp. 391–3; F. Jesser, ‘Deutschösterreich und Polen’, DÖ, 15 December 1916, pp. 167–70; F. Jesser, ‘Galizien und die Mittelmächte’, DA, December 1916, pp. 121–2; F. Jesser, ‘Die österreichischpolnische Lösung’, BNN, 28 June 1918; R.F. Kaindl, ‘Die Selbständigkeit Galiziens und die Deutschen’, Grenzboten, 13 December 1916, pp. 321–7; R.F. Kaindl, ‘Deutsche, Polen und Ruthenen in Österreich. Zur Orientierung in der Frage der Sonderstellung Galiziens’, GD, 24 März 1917, pp. 371–6; R.F. Kaindl, ‘Die Deutschen Oesterreichs und die austro-polnische Lösung’, Mittel-Europa, 25 December 1917, pp. 251–2; E. Bergson, ‘Die austropolnische Lösung. Eine Erwiderung an Karl Leuthner’, DP, 28 June 1918, pp. 808–12. For more moderate contributions, see G. Stolper, ‘Polen’, ÖV, 10 November 1917, pp. 89–90; G. Stolper, ‘Das polnische und das österreichische Problem’, ÖV, 17 November 1917, pp. 105–8; G. Stolper, ‘Polen, der Eckstein Mitteleuropas. Die österreichische Beurteilung’, Mittel-Europa, 10 September 1918, pp. 414–15; ‘Die Zukunft Polens’, Reichspost, 8 November 1917; Austriacus Observator [i.e. W. Schmidt], ‘Die polnische Frage und die Verfassungsreform’, Reichspost, 13 November 1917; ‘Die österreichische Lösung der polnischen Frage’, NFP, 8 November 1917.

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extent of the region, its constitutional standing within the monarchy, and the Ruthenian problem ‘certainly were important questions but subordinate to the purely negative aim of preventing the creation of an independent Poland’.76 As a matter of fact, it first seemed as if Vienna would obtain the consent of the German leadership.77 As seen, most German politicians and publicists argued for the creation of a Polish état barrière, with a few promoting the return of Poland to Russia (after some border corrections) instead. Baron von Rechenberg, who had been consul general in Warsaw, however, demanded the Austro-Polish solution as early as August and September 1914, holding that it would consolidate the Habsburg Monarchy, facilitate the economic union between Germany and AustriaHungary – Rechenberg was an early advocate of Mitteleuropa – and buttress the German element in Cisleithania. In return for Poland, Rechenberg proposed, Germany could claim parts of Austrian Silesia or even the German-speaking districts of Bohemia.78 German decisionmakers started to review the various options in more detail from mid1915 onwards, following the conquest of Congress Poland. Whereas the Kaiser and Falkenhayn seemed to favour the creation of a semiautonomous buffer state, the German Secretary of State Gottlieb von Jagow and Karl Georg von Treutler, the influential representative of the Foreign Office at the German court, supported the affiliation of the territory to Austria. Any other solution, Treutler reasoned, would alienate Vienna. Jagow, on the other hand, argued that the Polish entity would represent a hotbed of irredentism that needed to be ruled with a very firm hand: coercing and educating millions of unwilling Poles and Jews should be left to others. Moreover, in the case of the German-Polish solution, it would be impossible to shut off Prussia against the influx of more members of these unwanted groups.79 By mid-October, both Bethmann Hollweg and Falkenhayn, the latter in connection with his Mitteleuropa scheme, had also come to consider the (sub-dualistic) Austro-Polish 76 77

78 79

Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität, p. 27. For a useful overview of the negotiations between Berlin and Vienna in 1915 and 1916, see also S. Burián, Drei Jahre. Aus der Zeit meiner Amtsführung im Kriege (Berlin, 1923), pp. 62–87; P.R. Sweet, ‘Germany, Austria-Hungary and Mitteleuropa (April 1915 – April 1916)’, in H. Hantsch and A. Novotny (eds.), Festschrift für Heinrich Benedikt (Vienna, 1957), pp. 180–212; Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik, pp. 87–158; Fischer, Griff, pp. 242–67 and 318–21; Ritter, Staatskunst, III, pp. 124–44; V. Ullrich, ‘Die polnische Frage und die deutschen Mitteleuropapläne im Herbst 1915’, HJb, 104 (1984), 348–71; and Soutou, L’or et le sang, pp. 86–107. See Rechenberg’s letters to Under State Secretary Wahnschaffe of 15 and 27 August, 1 and 5 September 1914, BArch, R 43, No. 2476. See Treutler to Bethmann Hollweg, 31 August 1915, and Jagow’s memorandum of 2 September 1915, both in SG, I, pp. 165–6 and 174–9.

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solution ‘the least disadvantageous’.80 For the chief of the general staff, a firm union with Vienna was a must before agreeing to such a substantial strengthening of the ally in geopolitical and economic regard. In August 1915, Falkenhayn had presented his idea of a close political and economic association with Berlin’s current coalition partners and possibly some neutral states, intended primarily as a psychological instrument to overawe the Entente and to counter plans to draw Germany into a war of exhaustion.81 Over the following months, he elaborated his thoughts in several talks and letters. Interestingly, Falkenhayn refused to enter into a military convention with the Habsburg Monarchy, which he considered a ‘cadaver’, and to associate the German army even more with the ally’s ‘sloppy’ troops – unless Germany was in the position to fully dominate and control the (junior) partner.82 While Wilhelm II and General Seeckt showed great interest in these ideas – Seeckt himself proposed an economic association of the Central Powers and Belgium (with the later addition of Holland, Romania, Greece, and the Scandinavian countries) – Bethmann Hollweg and the Prussian Minister of War Wild von Hohenborn expressed serious doubts, questioning the economic practicalities as well as the value and actual effects of such long-term commitments beyond the war, and arguing that such an infringement of Austro-Hungarian sovereignty was hardly realistic.83 Still, the whole discussion demonstrated an increasing preoccupation with geo-strategic questions, and the next months saw a growing consensus amongst officials that political considerations were more important than economic matters and concerns.84 There was no doubt that Germany needed to strengthen its continental position, which gave the Polish question a particular significance. On the one hand, the AustroPolish solution promised to consolidate the Danube Monarchy, which 80 81 82 83

84

Bethmann Hollweg to Falkenhayn, 11 September 1915, and Bethmann Hollweg to Jagow, 13 October 1915, both in SG, I, pp. 173–9 (here quote on p. 173) and pp. 188–9. Treutler to Bethmann Hollweg, 30 August 1915, and Falkenhayn to Bethmann Hollweg, both in SG, I, pp. 163–4 and 171–3. See Bethmann Hollweg to Jagow, 13 October 1915, in SG, I, pp. 188–9 (p. 189), and Bethmann Hollweg’s memo, 15 October 1915, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 1. See Treutler to Bethmann Hollweg, 31 August 1915; Bethmann Hollweg to Falkenhayn, 5 September 1915; Bethmann Hollweg to Falkenhayn, 16 September 1915; all in SG, I, pp. 165–6, 168–70, 180–1. For a detailed discussion, see Afflerbach, Falkenhayn, pp. 321–35. For Seeckt’s plan, see his letter to Winterfeldt-Menkin of 29 October 1915, reprinted in Meier-Welcker, Seeckt, pp. 713–16. ‘Besprechung des Reichskanzlers mit den stimmführenden Bevollmächtigten zum Bundesrat’, 13 November 1915, BArch, R 43, No. 405; Lentze to Bethmann Hollweg, 23 April 1916, BArch, R 43, No. 406; ‘Zum wirtschaftlichen Zusammenschluß zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, 23 May 1916, BArch, R 43, No. 406; ‘Ergänzung der im Auswärtigen Amt gefertigten Aufzeichnung über den “Wirtschaftlichen Zusammenschluß mit Österreich-Ungarn”’, 25 August 1916, BArch, R 43, No. 406.

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was widely seen as a vital precondition for deepening the partnership. On the other hand, many advocates of a closer relationship between Berlin and Vienna argued for using Congress Poland as a lever to achieve Habsburg’s consent to enter into such an agreement. We already mentioned the Catholic Rechenberg and Austro-German activists such as Heinrich Friedjung in this context, and their views and reasoning obviously did have some bearing on policy-makers in the Wilhelmstraße, who began to insist on a Central European agreement as a precondition for leaving the territory to the Habsburg Empire. At a meeting with Burián in November 1915, Bethmann Hollweg suggested a customs arrangement based on preferential tariffs (seen as a first step towards a full customs union), which was to last for thirty years and to remain open to third countries. The Austro-Hungarian foreign minister, however, replied in an unimpressed manner, highlighting the need to protect Austro-Hungarian industries and referring to the economic Ausgleich negotiations between Vienna and Hungary, which took place every ten years and would impede such long-lasting arrangements. He also refused to relate the Polish question, which was essentially a political problem, to such economic matters.85 In the end, it was agreed to enter into economic talks at a lower level. These proved long-winded and only led to an agreement in October 1918.86 In addition to geo-strategic, military, and economic guarantees, the safeguarding of the Austro-Germans against the ‘Slavization’ of the Danube Monarchy was discussed at length in mid-November. At an earlier meeting with Burián in mid-August 1915, Bethmann Hollweg had voiced his opposition to a representation of the Austro-Polish polity in the Reichsrat as this would ‘condemn the Germans in Austria to powerlessness’. The possibility of a Pan-Slav majority and anti-German course in Vienna would not simply be a domestic issue but have an ‘international significance’ with direct consequences for the ‘vital interests’ of the German Reich.87 Clemens von Delbrück, the State Secretary of the 85

86

87

See Jagow’s Promemoria, 13 November 1915, in SG, I, pp. 211–15; ‘Aufzeichnung über die Unterredungen mit Baron Burian in Berlin am 10. und 11. November 1915’, in SG, I, pp. 218–21; ‘Aufzeichnung über die Unterredung mit dem kaiserlich-deutschen Reichskanzler Herrn von Bethmann Hollweg’, 14 November 1915, HHStA, PA I, K. 501; ‘Notiz’, 24 November 1915, in SG, I, pp. 221–3. Also see Hohenlohe to Burián, 24 November 1915, HHStA, PA I, K. 501. Jagow to Tschirschky, 9 January 1916, in SG, I, p. 247. For the evolution of the official German views on Mitteleuropa between summer 1916 and May 1918, see Soutou, L’or et le sang, pp. 415–45, 599–631. Note Bethmann Hollweg, 13 August 1915, in SG, I, pp. 161–2 (p. 161). Also see ‘Aufzeichnung Baron Burián über Unterredung mit Reichskanzler v. Bethmann Hollweg’, 14 August 1915, HHStA, PA I, K. 500. For a more substantial discussion of the meeting, see Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität, pp. 178–86.

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Interior, was so concerned about greater Slav weight in Habsburg affairs that he rejected this option altogether, suggesting instead a division of the conquered territory between Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy.88 The November meeting confirmed that Berlin wanted to see the Austro-Germans as the leading national group within Cisleithania. Asserting that the Dual Alliance had originally been founded on German and Magyar hegemony in the two halves of the Danube Monarchy, the German chancellor demanded that Vienna take measures against the further strengthening of non-German nationalities in Austria. As Jagow’s subsequent memorandum for Vienna insisted, the Habsburg leaders were to guarantee ‘that the Germanic element is granted a leading position again’, which would also be in Austria’s own interest as a ‘Germanic Eastern March’.89 Burián replied by rejecting the notion of a united Austro-Slav bloc and the claim that the alliance rested on GermanMagyar predominance. On the other hand, he also reiterated that the sub-dualistic arrangement would ensure a strong standing of the Austro-Germans without giving the Poles too much power and influence as in the case of trialism.90 Berlin had made clear that its assent to the Austro-Polish solution required a guarantee for Austro-German predominance. However, it would be overstated to claim that Jagow and Bethmann Hollweg were driven by a sense of ethno-national solidarity or Pan-German motives. Back in March 1914, the state secretary in a conversation with the British Ambassador Edward Goschen had expressed his concerns about the cohesion of the monarchy, which he described as a ‘crumbling edifice’. His main worry, Jagow said, was that the Austro-Germans ‘were also falling victim to the nationality fever’, ‘looking entirely after their own interests and neglecting those of the Empire’. To him, this was the most disquieting symptom of all, as the Austro-Germans had always been ‘the best and most reliable element in the State and really the chief factor in keeping the Empire together’.91 Berlin obviously considered the German-speaking population of Cisleithania a major pillar of stability and guarantor of the Dual Alliance, a function or quality that, unsurprisingly, became even more critical during the war. In a memorandum of September 1915, the state secretary 88 89 90 91

Delbrück’s letter to Bethmann Hollweg of 21 September 1915 is reprinted in Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik, pp. 383–6. Jagow’s Promemoria, 13 November 1915, in SG, I, pp. 211–5 (p. 212). See footnote 85. Nicolson to de Bunsen, 30 March 1914, in Mombauer (ed.), Origins, pp. 122–4 (p. 123).

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contemplated the integration of the Austro-Germans into the German Reich. He argued that in the long term the Habsburg Monarchy would inevitably first be transformed into a de facto personal union and sooner or later completely break up. This, Jagow reasoned, would be the moment to add the German provinces to the Kaiserreich, but until then one would need to buttress the Germans in Austria, who together with the Magyars in Transleithania were the only guarantee of a pro-German foreign policy course of Berlin’s most important coalition partner. As he wrote in late October 1915: ‘The continued existence of AustriaHungary and our alliance is a necessity . . . We must thus strive with all means to keep the Habsburg state viable.’ In his opinion, only the Austro-Polish option secured the continuation of the coalition without which Germany would be isolated and lose the connecting link to the Balkans and Turkey. The refusal to give Poland to Austria-Hungary would lead to a lasting estrangement from Vienna, whereas the incorporation of Congress Poland into the Danube Monarchy would reinforce the political position of the Austro-German element, stabilize the Habsburg ally, and ensure its survival.92 Berlin’s stance in the Polish question in late 1915 reveals to what extent German statesmen were concerned with Austrian domestic politics. However, their overall strategy remained flexible and was revised according to circumstances. Indeed, by early 1916, Berlin had performed a U-turn and started to call for the establishment of a non-Austrian Polish polity again: Mitteleuropa had to be achieved by other means than by leaving Poland to the Habsburg ally, an option which was ultimately discarded as too risky. Habsburg vs Hohenzollern: the politics of distrust Military and geo-strategic considerations played a key role in the decision to abandon the Austro-Polish solution. Following the successful Balkan campaign, Falkenhayn had changed his mind in view of Vienna’s prospective gains in Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania.93 Jagow was similarly 92

93

See Jagow’s memoranda of 2 September 1915, in SG, I, pp. 174–9, and of 25 October 1915, in Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik, pp. 387–89 (quote on p. 389). Against Herwig, The First World War, p. 162. Treutler to Foreign Office, 23 January 1916, in SG, I, p. 259. On Austro-Hungarian war aims in the Balkans, see A. Mitrovic´ , ‘Die Kriegsziele der Mittelmächte und die Jugoslawienfrage 1914–1918’, in A. Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Donaumonarchie und die südslawische Frage von 1848 bis 1918 (Vienna, 1978), pp. 137–72; A. Mitrovic´ , ‘Die Balkanpläne der Ballhausplatz-Bürokratie im Ersten Weltkrieg (1914–1916)’, in F. Glatz and R. Melville (eds.), Gesellschaft, Politik und Verwaltung in der Habsburgermonarchie

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concerned about the ally’s extensive increase in power and resources, especially given the Slavic character of these areas. Vienna’s guarantees for a safeguarding of the Austro-German position were considered insufficient, too.94 Delbrück had been sceptical anyway; he was joined by Prussian Interior Minister Loebell, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Ludendorff, who had never fully given up the hope of bringing the whole of the conquered Polish territory under German control. Berlin also insisted that its economic interests could not accept the loss of such a crucial market and that, even more importantly, only German military suzerainty over Poland guaranteed the protection of the German East.95 In his Berlin talks with Burián in mid-April 1916, Bethmann Hollweg asserted that the Austro-Polish solution required the annexation of an even greater border strip by Germany for security purposes. This, however, would represent another division of Poland and lead to the undesirable incorporation of 2.5 million Poles and Jews into the Prussian state. Instead, he suggested either the permanent division of the occupied territory or a semi-autonomous, undivided Polish entity under predominantly German control but possibly with an Austrian archduke on its throne (and the cession of some Southern Polish strips) to placate Vienna. The latter scheme was taken up again in 1918 as the so-called Kandidatenlösung.96 As Conze has stressed, for the first time since the outbreak of war, Berlin had taken a clear stance against the Austro-Polish solution.97 Unimpressed, Burián, however, continued to push for Vienna’s preferred option with the familiar arguments that the Habsburg Monarchy was experienced and ‘elastic’ enough to cope with Congress Poland, and that any other solution would greatly alienate the Austro-Poles, sooner or later leading to the loss of Galicia due to irredentism. A buffer state would also be subject to Russian intrigues and cause continuous tensions between the allies. The Dual Monarchy would not

94 95 96

97

1830–1918 (Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 343–72; and, more recently, M. Cornwall, ‘The Habsburg Elite and the Southern Slav Question’, in Höbelt and Otte (eds.), A Living Anachronism?, pp. 239–70; M.B. Fried, Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the Balkans during World War I (Basingstoke, 2014). For the broader context, see Soutou, L’or et le sang, and M.B. Fried, ‘“A Life and Death Question”: Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the First World War’, in Afflerbach (ed.), The Purpose of the First World War, pp. 117–40. Jagow to Tschirschky, 3 January 1916, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 345; Jagow to Tschirschky, Berlin, 16 February 1916, in SG, I, pp. 270–2. For the development of German views until April 1916, see Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 138–64. Bethmann Hollweg to Treutler, 10 April 1916; Jagow to Treutler, 16 April 1916; Beseler to Bethmann Hollweg, 22 April 1916; Jagow to Tschirschky, 29 May 1916, all in SG, I, pp. 298–9, 306–7, 310–12, 350–3. Also see ‘Aufzeichnungen über die Beratungen in Berlin am 14. und 15. April 1916’, HHStA, PA I, K. 500. Conze, Polnische Nation, p. 150.

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intend to annex large areas in the Balkans whereas Berlin already claimed Lithuania and Courland.98 In summer 1916, military developments prompted new concerns and discussions.99 The Russian Brusilov Offensive, launched in early June, exposed the Habsburg Monarchy’s military weakness and dependency, making Berlin even less inclined to leave the protection of Germany’s eastern provinces to Vienna’s troops.100 The Romanian entry into the war in late August further aggravated the situation of the Central Powers. Against this background, worries about the implications of the AustroPolish solution on the structure of the Habsburg Monarchy and the standing of the Austro-Germans seem to have waned in importance. Bethmann Hollweg had raised the issue again during the April meeting with Burián, who once more referred to the sub-dualistic option as a safeguard and maintained that Vienna would never act in the interest of one national group only. Subsequent official notes of the German government refrained from mentioning or stressing the subject matter and put the main emphasis on German economic and military interests. True, in several letters to Ambassador Tschirschky (who continued to comment on this issue in his talks with Burián), Jagow expressed his doubts that Vienna was really willing to prevent the decline of Germandom in Cisleithania. However, the Secretary of State made very clear that ‘the decisive factor’ against the Austro-Polish option was ‘our military protection against the East’. Given the experiences of the war and the recent Russian successes, the Viennese government could not seriously expect the Germans to entrust the Habsburg troops with ‘our security’: ‘for the second time the Russians have broken through the Austro-Hungarian positions and yet again we have to protect the Austrian borders with German blood.’101 98

99

100

101

Burián to Bethmann Hollweg, 25 February 1916; Note of the Austro-Hungarian Government, April 1916; Jagow to Treutler, 16 April 1916; Note of the AustroHungarian Embassy, 15 May 1916; Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 7 June 1916; Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 16 June 1916; Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 7 July 1916, all in SG, I, pp. 274–6, 300–2, 306–7, 334–6, 361–2, 366–70, 386–8. On the developments leading to the proclamation of the Polish kingdom, see L. Grosfeld, ‘Die Proklamation des Königreichs Polen am 5. November 1916’, ZfG (1956), 135–76; Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 165–225; Fischer, Griff, pp. 294–307; Ritter, Staatskunst, III, pp. 253–84; Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität, pp. 253–358; W. Steglich and W. Winterhager, ‘Die Polenproklamation vom 5. November 1916’, MGM, 23/1 (1978), 105–46; Sukiennicki, East Central Europe, I, pp. 240–301. See ‘Notiz’, 19 June 1916, in SG, I, pp. 376–8; Jagow to Tschirschky, 17 July 1916, in SG, I, pp. 410–11; the meetings of the Prussian Staatsministerium of 19 August and 8 October 1916, in SG, I, pp. 440–54, 492–508; Report Tucher, 26 July 1916, BHSA, MA 2481/4. Jagow to Tschirschky, 19 June 1916, in SG, I, pp. 374–5 (p. 375); Tschirschky to Foreign Office, 21 June 1916, in SG, I, pp. 378–9.

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The critical military situation did not just heighten German concerns about frontier defence and the fighting value of the Habsburg ally; opportunities to make up for lost military resources were also explored to a greater extent. Moreover, prospects for a separate peace with Russia seemed very bleak indeed. In mid-July, both Ludendorff and Falkenhayn called for Polish troops.102 From the formation of a semi-independent Polish state, German officials anticipated a considerable number of volunteers (in addition to Piłsudski’s Polish legions) who would fight together with the Central Powers against Russia.103 Interested in keeping good relations with Berlin and similarly hoping for further soldiers, Vienna finally agreed to give up the Austro-Polish solution. The new Poland was to have a hereditary, constitutional monarchy and to be autonomous in domestic matters, but under German military control.104 It was proclaimed on 5 November 1916, despite concerns about the potential impact on the Prussian Poles and on German public opinion, the likely number of volunteers, and the chances for an agreement with St Petersburg.105 This Polish kingdom resembled more a puppet state than a sovereign entity with full control over its foreign policy and military affairs. In January 1917, a Provisional Council of State (Tymczasowa Rada Stanu), which only had an advisory function, was established in Warsaw, but numerous issues remained undecided, such as the territorial boundaries, the actual constitutional system, and the dynastic question. The long-term consequences of the proclamation for the position of Galicia, the dualist structure of the Danube Monarchy, and the precarious equilibrium between the empire’s nationalities were far from clear, either.106 Moreover, hopes that relations between the Central Powers, which had gone through hard times over the Polish matter, would now return to a harmonious state proved illusive. 102 103

104

105

106

Ludendorff to Zimmermann, 17 July 1916, in SG, I, p. 411; Grünau to Bethmann Hollweg, 19 July 1916, in SG, I, pp. 412–3. See, for example, Meeting of the Prussian State Ministry, 8 October 1916, in SG, I, pp. 492–508, and ‘Unterhaltung Seiner Majestät des Kaisers und Königs mit Seiner Kaiserlichen Hoheit dem Erzherzog-Thronfolger und mit Graf Berchtold’, 9 October 1916, in SG, I, pp. 513–15. Tschirschky to Foreign Office, 22 July 1916; ‘Aufzeichnung’, July 1916; ‘Aufzeichnung über die in Wien am 11. und 12. August 1916 geführten Verhandlungen’; Note Jagow, 18 October 1916, all in SG, I, pp. 413–14, 416–20, 427–8, 520. ‘Sitzung des Königlichen Staatsministeriums’, Berlin, 19 August 1916; Meeting of the Prussian State Ministry, 8 October 1916; Bethmann Hollweg to Hindenburg, 10 October 1916; Grünau to Foreign Office, 13 October 1916; Meeting of the Prussian State Ministry, 24 October 1916, all in SG, I, pp. 440–54, 492–508, 510–13, 515–16, 525–31. On reactions to the proclamation and developments until January 1917, see Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 226–57; Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik, pp. 159–72; Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität, pp. 359–405.

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Indeed, the discussions, for instance as regards administrative issues or the establishment of a Polish army, remained intricate and tense, characterized by longer spells of silence and frequent shifts of opinion due to war developments, internal dissent, as well as a change of key players and decision-makers.107 Austria-Hungary’s new foreign minister Ottokar Czernin quickly raised the Polish question again, insisting on military parity in the occupied areas, pointing to the Galician problem, and describing Poland as a potential bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia (in return for occupied Habsburg territories).108 In March 1917, he suggested that Germany directed Polish affairs while the Habsburg Monarchy gained Wallachia and played the leading role in Serbia, a proposal that was accepted by the German government in the Bad Kreuznach Agreement of 18 May (with a guarantee for the protection of German economic interests in Romania).109 Hoping to improve the chances for a peace of negotiation, Czernin even offered leaving Galicia to the new Poland if Germany was to give up Alsace-Lorraine; unsurprisingly, this was quickly and very firmly repudiated by the Germans.110 In mid-September, a provisional constitution was introduced in Poland which gave Polish authorities (a Regency Council and the office of prime minister were established a few weeks later) certain legislative and executive powers in domestic affairs.111 By this time, the Austro-Polish solution was back on the agenda.112 Berlin had started to take a greater interest in Romania again and, in view of clear pro-Austrian tendencies amongst the Poles within the German 107

108 109

110

111 112

On the developments until September 1917, see Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 258–306; Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik, pp. 173–204; Lemke, Allianz und Rivalität, pp. 406–58 (until March 1917). Also see I. Meckling, Die Aussenpolitik des Grafen Czernin (Vienna, 1969), pp. 165–90, and Sukiennicki, East Central Europe, I, pp. 393–413. Wedel to Zimmermann, 28 December 1916, in SG, I, pp. 646–8; ‘Besprechung vom 6. Januar nachmittags’, 6 January 1917, in SG, I, pp. 663–7. ‘Mémoire des österreichisch-ungarischen Außenministers Graf Czernin an Kaiser Karl I’ [Spring 1917], in UF, I, pp. 373–8; ‘Sitzung vom 26. März 1917’, 26 March 1917, in SG, II: De la guerre sous-marine à outrance à la révolution soviétique (1er fevrier 1917–7 novembre 1917) (1966), pp. 50–60; ‘Aufzeichnung über die Besprechungen am 23.4.17’, in SG, II, pp. 149–51; ‘Aufzeichnung über die Kreuznacher Besprechung am 17. und 18.5.17’, 18 May 1917, in SG, II, pp. 204–6. Also see Fischer, Griff, pp. 447–69. Note [1 August 1917], in SG, II, pp. 296–306. Also see Wedel to Foreign Office, 2 April 1917, in SG, II, pp. 75–6; Michaelis to Czernin, 17 August 1917, in SG, II, pp. 346–9; ‘Schreiben Kaiser Karls I. von Österreich an den deutschen Kronprinzen’, 20 August 1917, in UF, I, pp. 406–7. ‘Patent vom 12. September 1917, betreffend die Staatsgewalt im Königreich Polen’, in UF, I, pp. 51–2. On the following developments until early February 1918, see Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 307–42; Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik, pp. 204–15; Ritter, Staatskunst, IV, pp. 183–215; Meckling, Aussenpolitik, pp. 190–220 (until April 1918).

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administrative area, several strikes, and the ‘oath crisis’ which led to the resignation of the Regency Council, appeared more inclined to consider Polish preferences, though hardly out of generosity.113 As Wilhelm II stressed on his return from a journey through Romania, the country had the potential to develop into ‘a source of greatest wealth’: ‘It would be suicidal if Germany gave up Romania!’ It offered access to the Black Sea and would be easier to govern than ‘hysterical Poland’. According to the Kaiser, the ‘ordinary man’ would never forgive Berlin the relinquishment of Romania whereas the public would not care about Poland; after all, the differences between Germans and Poles were just too great for a trustful and fruitful coexistence. Border corrections and certain military rights within Poland should dispel the doubts and concerns of the OHL.114 Chancellor Michaelis, who had replaced Bethmann Hollweg in July, and State Secretary Kühlmann (in office since August) were similarly inclined to return to the Austro-Polish solution, not least because of its positive effects on the relationship between Berlin and Vienna. However, they also underlined the need for political, military, and economic guarantees.115 Ambassador Botho von Wedel, on the other hand, seemed primarily concerned about Austrian domestic questions, stressing again and again that the attachment of Poland was ‘a matter of survival’ for the ally.116 He agreed with Czernin that Galicia would most probably be lost if Poland remained a separate state. The Poles would be very difficult to control and poison relations between Berlin and Vienna until they had unified with the region. This would not only lead to a significant deprivation of demographic and economic resources but also represent a dangerous precedent for other nationalities and potential signal for the dissolution of the monarchy. By agreeing to the Austro-Polish solution, one could also counter anti-German sentiments and the war-weariness in the Habsburg Empire, and finally attain Vienna’s consent to a military convention and Central European union. The fact that Austro-Germans would benefit from a reorganization of the Danube Monarchy was also highlighted by Wedel. As he wrote to Ludendorff: ‘Austria will become a Slav state if the Galicians remain within the monarchy. The Germans will go to the dogs.’ Given Hungarian unreliability and egoism, the ally 113

114 115 116

Kühlmann Note, 2 September 1917, in SG, II, pp. 381–5. On the pro-Austrian attitudes, see ‘Bericht des Verwaltungschefs beim Generalgouvernement Warschau, v. Kries, über die politische Lage in Polen’, 24 April 1917, in Basler, Deutschlands Annexionspolitik, pp. 395–9. On the Polish-Romanian discussions in autumn 1917, see also Fischer, Griff, pp. 568–82. Wilhelm II to Michaelis, 24 September 1917, in SG, II, pp. 452–3. Michaelis to Grünau, 27 September 1917, in SG, II, pp. 458–9; Bussche to Lersner, 29 September 1917, in SG, II, p. 459, fn. 4. Wedel to Michaelis, 22 July 1917, in SG, II, pp. 276–83 (p. 281).

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would eventually change its foreign policy and seek a rapprochement with the western powers.117 The subsequent months saw again discussions between the Reich Chancellery, representatives of the Foreign Office, the heads of various federal and Prussian state ministries, and the German Supreme Command. In this context, the domestic situation in Austria-Hungary was repeatedly mentioned, but officials seemed divided over the potential consequences of the Austro-Polish solution for the German-speaking population in the allied realm, speculating whether it would strengthen or in fact undermine the position of the Austro-Germans.118 Ultimately, however, the Galician question, the attitude of the Austro-Poles, and the parliamentary situation in Cisleithania were issues of minor significance from the German point of view. Despite strong misgivings, the civilian political leadership favoured the Austro-Polish solution primarily because of Romania’s economic potential (oil and grain) and strategic significance (access to the Black Sea), because of the fact that other options seemed (even) more problematic, and not least because the unification of occupied Poland with the Habsburg Monarchy offered a means to deepen the Dual Alliance (an increasingly pressing issue given the war-weariness in Austria-Hungary) and to reach an economic agreement.119 Moreover, as Shanafelt has pointed out, ‘since Poland would be included in any German-run Mitteleuropa organization, it would not really be lost anyway’.120 In late October 1917, a non-binding agreement about the Austro-Polish and German-Romanian solutions was concluded by Kühlmann and Czernin, involving an alliance for twenty years, a military convention, and steps towards a full customs union.121 117

118 119

120 121

Wedel to Ludendorff, 9 January 1918, in SG, III, pp. 240–4 (p. 242). Also see Wedel to Stumm, 4 August 1917; Wedel to Kühlmann, 12 September 1917; Wedel to Kühlmann, 29 September 1917, all in SG, II, pp. 313–15, 422–3, 461–4; and Wedel to Kühlmann, 6 October 1917, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4. The Saxon and Bavarian envoys to Vienna argued similarly. See Nostitz’ report, 1 September 1917, in A. Opitz and F. Adlgasser (eds.), Der Zerfall der europäischen Mitte. Staatenrevolution im Donauraum. Berichte der Sächsischen Gesandtschaft in Wien, 1917–1919 (Graz, 1990), pp. 62–6, and Tucher’s report of 13 November 1917, BHSA, MA 2481/5. See, for example, ‘Sitzung des Königlichen Staatsministeriums’, Berlin, 4 November 1917, in SG, II, pp. 526–32. See ‘Besprechung in Kreuznach am 7. Oktober 1917’, in SG, II, pp. 487–92; ‘Protokoll der Verhandlungen am 3. November 1917 über Polen’, in SG, II, pp. 523–6; ‘Sitzung des Kronrats im Schloß Bellevue am 5. November 1917’, in J. Kocka and W. Neugebauer (eds.), Die Protokolle des Preußischen Staatsministeriums 1817–1934/38, 12 vols. (Hildesheim, 1999–2004), X: 14. Juli 1909 bis 11. November 1918, ed. by R. Zilch (1999), pp. 204–5 (p. 205). Shanafelt, The Secret Enemy, p. 159. Reprinted in SG, II, pp. 521–2. Also see ‘Nachmittagssitzung vom 6. November 1917’, in SG, II, pp. 538–9.

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However, Hindenburg and Ludendorff remained opposed. The ascent to power of the Third Supreme Command in August 1916 (following the Romanian declaration of war and Falkenhayn’s dismissal) was a turning point in the history of wartime Germany. With the introduction of the Auxiliary Service Law in December and the attempt to mobilize the whole German population, the OHL implemented a much harsher domestic course, contributing significantly to Bethmann Hollweg’s dismissal in July 1917. Hindenburg and Ludendorff also intervened in matters of foreign policy and repeatedly disputed or even overruled the more moderate views of civilian policy-makers and diplomats, emphasizing ‘irrefutable’ military and strategic factors as in the case of the commencement of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917.122 The same applied to the Polish question. The OHL expressed grave concerns about Polish irredentist demands for Prussian and Lithuanian territory, highlighted the need for the direct protection of the eastern borders, and even considered a return of occupied Poland to Russia a lesser political and military risk than the Austro-Polish solution.123 As Hindenburg explained at a major meeting between German decision-makers in Kreuznach in early October 1917, relinquishing Poland would be an act of ‘feeble resignation [Schwächlichkeitsverzicht]’ and reduce ‘the Hohenzollerns to vassals of the Habsburgs’.124 Indeed, the Field Marshal repeatedly argued that an enlarged Danube Monarchy, with gains not just in Poland, but probably also in Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania, could turn against Germany.125 Neither Hindenburg nor Ludendorff were convinced that a military convention and a customs union with the ally represented an adequate compensation for the AustroPolish solution or guaranteed unwavering loyalty. In return, the OHL made excessive demands, requesting not only full control over Romania, but also – amongst numerous other economic, military, and geopolitical points – the annexation of large parts of Congress Poland, German naval 122

123

124 125

On Austria-Hungary’s role in this context, see now V. Horcˇ icˇ ka, ‘Austria-Hungary, Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and the United States’ Entrance into the First World War’, IHR, 34/2 (2012), 245–69, and Höbelt, ‘Stehen oder Fallen?’, pp. 131–50. Ludendorff to Michaelis, 28 July 1917; ‘Ergebnis der Besprechung zwischen dem Herrn Reichskanzler und der Obersten Heeresleitung. – Kreuznach, 9.8.1917’, 14 August 1917; ‘Die päpstliche Friedensnote und ihre Folgen’, forwarded by Lersner to Michaelis on 11 September 1917, all in SG, II, pp. 289–91, 339–41, 413–20. Apparently, Kühlmann did not rule out a return of Congress Poland, either. See ‘Denkschrift des Staatssekretärs v. Kühlmann für Reichskanzler Michaelis vom 27. Juli 1917’, in UF, I, pp. 398–400. ‘Besprechung in Kreuznach am 7. Oktober 1917’, in SG, II, pp. 487–92 (p. 488), and Michaelis to Wilhelm II, 8 October 1917, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4. Also see ‘Protokoll der Verhandlungen am 3. November 1917 über Polen’, in SG, II, pp. 523–6.

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bases in the Adriatic Sea, and the takeover of parts of Austrian Silesia.126 When Czernin at an inter-allied meeting in early November mentioned that the Austro-Polish solution would lead to a German parliamentary majority in Cisleithania, both Hindenburg and Ludendorff ignored this point completely and merely reiterated their usual arguments and concerns.127 In fact, following Chancellor Michaelis’s question at the Kreuznach meeting whether the Austro-Germans should be given up (as only the Austro-Polish scheme seemed to guarantee their political survival), Hindenburg replied: ‘The Germandom in Austria is worthless.’128 The conversation between the Austrian-born banker Felix Somary and Ludendorff over various financial matters in the German Headquarters in summer 1917, as retold in Somary’s memoirs, provides further insights into the mindset and views of the German Generalquartiermeister. As one of the leading figures within the influential AfM, Somary advocated the Austro-Polish solution on the condition of an economic and military association.129 In May 1917, the association had presented a memorandum to the German chancellor, highlighting the three main benefits Germany could expect from this option: Vienna’s approval to subscribe to the Mitteleuropa treaty, the strengthening of the domestic position of the Austro-Germans, and winning over the Poles as reliable allies of the Central Powers.130 Apparently, Ludendorff was fuming, calling the memo ‘nonsense’ and claiming that Somary would plan to encircle Germany: ‘But now we are doing there what we want, and Vienna has given in. The Pole must be controlled, day and night, or else he attacks us. We know how to rule, in contrast to your kiss-the-hand people.’ When Somary warned that this would lead to a fiasco, Ludendorff replied angrily: ‘What fiasco! Once the Poles experience our firm hand, they won’t budge. Prussia as the master of Poland – I would happily give up all the softies from south of the Main who are only weakening us.’131 Of course, one has to be very careful with memoirs, even though Somary claimed that he usually took notes after meetings 126 127 128 129

130 131

Lersner to Foreign Office, 9 October 1917, in SG, II, pp. 495–6, and Lersner to Foreign Office, 11 October 1917, in SG, II, pp. 500–1. ‘Vormittagssitzung vom 6. November 1917’, in SG, II, pp. 533–7 (p. 535). ‘Besprechung in Kreuznach am 7. Oktober 1917’, in SG, II, pp. 487–92 (p. 489). See his memorandum of April 1916, partly reprinted in Somary, Erinnerungen, pp. 363–6. For Naumann’s views, see his following publications: Was wird aus Polen? (Berlin, 1917); ‘Die österreichisch-polnische Lösung’, Hilfe, 15 November 1917, pp. 684–6; ‘Die österreichisch-polnische Lösung’, Mittel-Europa, 20 November 1917, pp. 209–10. ‘Mitteleuropa und Polen. Denkschrift des Arbeitsauschusses für Mitteleuropa’, 21 May 1917, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 5. Somary, Erinnerungen, p. 158.

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and discussions. While the actual wording may be questioned, Ludendorff’s tone and anti-Habsburg line of reasoning are probably well captured. Without doubt, Germany’s military leaders represented the most fervent opponents of the Austro-Polish option, although strong opposition also came from several governmental departments and Hans Hartwig von Beseler, the governor general in Warsaw. The OHL’s resistance was largely responsible for the fact that Germany never fully agreed to leave Poland to the Dual Monarchy, despite Wedel’s repeated pleas and warnings that the German-Polish solution would undermine and potentially wreck the alliance.132 Indeed, the demands of the Supreme Command were met with disbelief and bitterness in Vienna. Czernin made the economic negotiations and an agreement over Romania dependent on this issue.133 Known as a major pro-German factor in Austro-Hungarian politics, his threat to resign caused diplomatic circles great headaches.134 In January 1918, Kühlmann complained to Chancellor Hertling about the obstinate attitude of Hindenburg and Ludendorff concerning the border strip question and the military convention with the Habsburg ally. The OHL’s ‘very strong fundamental aversion to Austria-Hungary’ would represent ‘an almost insuperable obstruction of one of the most important aspects of our foreign policy’. After all, the economic and military affiliation of the Dual Monarchy would allow to influence Habsburg foreign affairs and produce ‘an immense permanent benefit for the cause of Germandom in the world’. The state secretary admitted that he was at his wits’ end as to how to direct German diplomacy ‘when central measures, for which we can win a majority in the Reichstag and for which the Kaiser stands up for personally, cannot be implemented due to the negative standpoint of the army command’.135 Concerned about tendencies in Vienna and Budapest to seek a separate peace, Kühlmann deemed it ‘highly desirable’ to offer the Monarchy ‘something positive’ to secure its loyalty.136 The situation was further complicated by the Vilnius question and the Lithuanian declaration of independence, the difficult peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, and the inter-allied ‘scramble’ for Romania. The harsh 132

133 134

135 136

See, for example, Wedel to Michaelis, 20 October 1917, in SG, II, pp. 510–6, and Wedel to Ludendorff, 9 January 1918, in SG, III, pp. 240–4. Compare with Hindenburg to Wilhelm II, 7 January 1918, in UF, II, pp. 133–5. Czernin to Hertling, 26 November 1917, in SG, II, pp. 32–3. Czernin to Hertling, 13 December 1917; Wedel to Kühlmann, 14 December 1917; Wedel to Foreign Office, 18 December 1917; Cramon to Hindenburg, 21 December 1917, all in SG, II, pp. 112–13, 120–2, 140, 144–6. Kühlmann to Hertling, 7 January 1918, in SG, II, pp. 216–18 (pp. 217–18). Also see his subsequent letter of 26 February 1918, in SG, II, pp. 422–3. Kühlmann to Hertling, 30 January 1918, in SG, II, pp. 311–13 (p. 313).

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terms of the peace treaty with Russia demonstrated the power of the OHL and the definitive shift from Kühlmann’s strategy of creating a sphere of indirect German rule to a policy of annexations, with significant repercussions on the Polish question (border strip).137 The cession of the Chełm region to Ukraine, as stipulated by the first Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 9 February 1918, was perceived by many Poles as a fourth partition and led to a ‘storm of protest’, involving numerous demonstrations, a general strike, and mutinies within the Polish Auxiliary Corps. The Regency Council condemned the decision in harsh terms, while Prime Minister Jan Kucharzewski handed in his resignation. Further irritated by Vienna’s plans for Eastern Galicia and the Bukovina, many Polish parliamentarians in Cisleithania declared that they would from now on go into opposition, thus exacerbating domestic affairs in Austria. Prussian-Polish deputies and publicists protested, too, supported by a few left-liberal and Social Democratic papers, which lamented the deterioration of German-Polish relations and aggravation of the national situation in the European East.138 German and Austro-Hungarian officials continued to discuss a number of possibilities, including the idea of a Kandidatenlösung as sort of a compromise between the German-Polish and Austro-Polish schemes, leaving it (officially at least) to the Poles to nominate a new king.139 However, whereas Vienna insisted on the possibility of a personal 137

138

139

W. Steglich, Die Friedenspolitik der Mittelmächte 1917/18 (Wiesbaden, 1964); Baumgart, Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918; W. Bihl, Österreich-Ungarn und die Friedensschlüsse von BrestLitovsk (Vienna, 1970); W. Hahlweg, Der Friede von Brest-Litowsk (Düsseldorf, 1971); S.M. Horak, The First Treaty of World War I: Ukraine’s Treaty with the Central Powers of February 9, 1918 (Boulder, CO, 1988). Also see Fischer, Griff, pp. 627–74; Ritter, Staatskunst, IV, pp. 90–150; Meckling, Aussenpolitik, pp. 250–313; Sukiennicki, East Central Europe, I, pp. 498–654 and II, pp. 655–731; Shanafelt, Secret Enemy, pp. 161–76; Soutou, L’or et le sang, pp. 632–66; and Höbelt, ‘Stehen oder Fallen?’, pp. 206–29. For recent and more general overviews, see A. Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order (London, 2014), pp. 108–40, and W. Mulligan, The Great War for Peace (New Haven, CT, 2014), pp. 223–42. On the reactions in Germany and Austria-Hungary, see Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 343–6; Sukiennicki, East Central Europe, II, pp. 732–44; Spät, Die ‘polnische Frage’, pp. 317–28. For the reactions in Galicia and the growing alienation of the Austro-Poles, see Zeman, Break-Up, pp. 154–8, and Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 498–506. For the wider context, see C.F. Wargelin, ‘A High Price for Bread: The First Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Break-Up of Austria-Hungary, 1917–1918’, IHR, 19/4 (1997), 757–88. ‘Die Berliner Besprechungen zwischen den Vertretern Deutschlands und ÖsterreichUngarns vom 6. Februar 1918’, in UF, II, pp. 159–61; Note Grünau, 22 February 1918, in SG, III, pp. 410–2; Grünau to Foreign Office, 23 February 1918, in SG, III, p. 413; Grünau to Foreign Office, 7 March 1918, in SG, IV: De la paix de Brest-Litovsk à la demande d’armistice (4 mars–4 octobre 1918) (1978), pp. 7–8; Lersner to Foreign Office, 7 March 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 9–10; Hertling to Kühlmann, 16 March 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 42–3. For an overview of the negotiations in 1918, see Burián, Drei Jahre, pp. 254–64; Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 343–75; Fischer, Griff, pp. 698–713; Sukiennicki, East Central Europe, II, pp. 819–52.

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union between the Habsburg Empire and Poland with Karl as joint ruler, thus indicating that it was not willing to give up the Austro-Polish scheme, Berlin was thinking of a German prince or an Austrian archduke: of course, a Polish ruler in Warsaw (rather than in Vienna) was much easier to influence.140 In view of the negotiations in Bucharest, the AustroHungarian scheme was vetoed by Germany with the argument that a onesided aggrandizement of the Dual Monarchy threatened Germany’s political, military, and economic interests and was thus not tolerable. As Hindenburg wrote in April with a characteristic choice of words, Vienna’s gains in Romania (which were limited but still resented by the OHL and right-wing groups in Germany) and Karl’s intervention in the dynastic question there represented ‘another act in the struggle of the House of Habsburg against the House of Hohenzollern. The acceptance of the Austro-Polish solution would be another success for Habsburg in this struggle.’141 Following the Sixtus revelations and the subsequent Spa Agreement of May 1918, which will be discussed in the next chapter, Kühlmann finally gave up the Austro-Polish scheme, too. Concerned about an alienation of the Habsburg ally and the preponderance of military power politics over pragmatic diplomacy, the foreign secretary had long sided with Vienna against the OHL, but also against the Kaiser and Chancellor Hertling, who by March had equally come to prefer the Kandidatenlösung, and even offered to resign over the question.142 As a consequence of the Sixtus Affair, however, Kühlmann concurred that a deepening of the Dual Alliance did not require major concessions in the Polish matter any longer.143 When Foreign Minister Burián, who had replaced Czernin in April, visited Berlin in mid-June and in a lengthy and tiring conversation once again presented the various arguments in favour of the Austro-Polish solution (taking for granted that Karl would be elected king), Kühlmann replied very decisively that ‘the difficult, secular problem must by no means be solved on the basis of changeable domestic and parliamentary tendencies and velleities’. Rather, Berlin’s policy would have to be determined by the permanent military and economic interests of the German Reich.144 In early July, 140 141 142 143

144

Hertling to Kühlmann, 16 March 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 42–3; Grünau to Foreign Office, 6 April 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 90–2. Lersner to Foreign Office, 7 April 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 92–3 (p. 93). See his letters to the Foreign Office of 7, 9, 16, and 18 March 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 10–11, 13, 36–7, and 46–7. See ‘Protokoll’, 11 May 1918; Lersner to Foreign Office, 15 May 1918, and Kühlmann’s reply of 17 May; ‘Sitzung in der Reichskanzlei am 7. Juni 1918, nachmittags 5 Uhr’, all in SG, IV, pp. 149–56, 168–9, 182–92. Kühlmann to Grünau, 11 June 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 193–5 (p. 194). Also see the discussion with Burián on the following day, in SG, IV, pp. 198–203. For

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the German Crown Council clearly stated: ‘The Austro-Polish solution is dead.’145 Until the end of the war, the positions remained unchanged and irreconcilable, even though both sides aimed for a fait accompli before the conclusion of peace and seemed aware that time was running out. Assuming that the main obstacle to a compromise settlement was Burián, German officials attempted to persuade Karl, who had appeared indecisive, to dismiss the obstinate foreign minister. They soon learned that Burián had the full backing of his Kaiser and that the latter insisted just as much on the Austro-Polish solution, rejecting Archduke Karl Stephan as a potential candidate for the Polish throne.146 In order to dissuade Vienna and to create ‘secure borders’ in the East, Berlin, urged by the OHL, continued to make far-reaching territorial demands, despite persistent concerns amongst civilian decision-makers about the possible incorporation of Poles and Jews into Prussia and the Reich.147 Again, the domestic situation in the Habsburg Empire was only rarely mentioned during the internal German discussions about the Polish question. As seen, since Bethmann Hollweg’s exchange with Burián in late 1915 and early 1916, the topic had also played no major role in diplomatic negotiations. Interestingly, it was Burián who raised the issue again as an argument for claims to Congress Poland when German and Austro-Hungarian officials met for a last major consultation in Vienna in early September 1918. In reply, State Secretary Hintze, who had succeeded Kühlmann in July, reiterated the German concerns about the overall balance of power within Austria-Hungary and the foreign policy of the ally. Hintze also argued that a modernized and strengthened Poland would sooner or later secede from Vienna and represent a dangerous new enemy in the East. In the end, it was agreed

145 146

147

Hindenburg’s positive reaction, see Berckheim to Foreign Office, 25 June 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 220–1. ‘Kronrat in Spa über die Kriegsziele. 2. und 3. Juli 1918’, in UF, I, p. 424. See the following documents in SG, IV: Wedel to Hertling, 8 July 1918, pp. 242–3; Hertling to Grünau, 15 July 1918, pp. 247–8; Wedel to Bussche, 28 July 1918, pp. 262–4; Hintze to Stolberg, 29 July 1918, pp. 264–5. For the Austro-Hungarian position, see also in SG, IV: ‘Notiz’, 22 July 1918, pp. 254–6; Grünau to Foreign Office, 21 July 1918, pp. 259–60; Wedel to Foreign Office, 23 August 1918, pp. 297–8; Lersner to Foreign Office, 24 August 1918, pp. 304–5; Wedel to Foreign Office, 27 August 1918, pp. 306–7. Wedel to Foreign Office, 23 August 1918; Hintze to Wedel, 24 August 1918; Hintze to Lersner, 28 August 1918; Berckheim to Foreign Office, 31 August 1918, all in SG, IV, pp. 298, 298–9, 311–12, 318–19. For the discussions about the extent and implications of the border strip, see ‘Ergebnis der Besprechung im Grossen Hauptquartier am 18. Dezember 1917’, in SG, III, pp. 138–40; the two gatherings of the Prussian Staatsministerium on 4 February 1918, in SG, III, pp. 339–41 and 341–8, and ‘Besprechung bei Exzellenz von Payer am 9. August 1918’, in SG, IV, pp. 276–80.

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to form a commission for further discussions.148 These took place from late September but merely confirmed the incompatible standpoints.149 By this time, of course, the whole question had become overshadowed by Vienna’s peace initiative and turned into a purely academic matter.150 In their talks with Austro-Hungarian officials, German statesmen had repeatedly referred to public opinion to justify the rejection of the Austro-Polish solution.151 There was indeed only a minority, mostly Catholics and left-liberal advocates of Mitteleuropa, who supported the idea of attaching Congress Poland to the Habsburg Monarchy.152 Having earlier contemplated a Saxon-Polish union, Hans Delbrück, too, eventually joined the small group of Reich German champions of the Austro-Polish solution. His change of mind was certainly prompted by the renewed nationality conflicts in Austria. The continued existence of the Habsburg Monarchy, Delbrück was convinced, was dependent on German-Polish cooperation within Austria. Berlin could accept this solution under certain conditions and should renounce all ideas to separate a border strip which would only impair relations with the Poles.153 Viktor Naumann also preferred the incorporation of the new Polish entity into the Habsburg Monarchy (ideally leading to trialism), and he spoke about the question with numerous German, Polish, Austrian, and Hungarian decision-makers to gather views and to negotiate informally.154 But such standpoints remained a fringe phenomenon in Germany. Even Mitteleuropa supporters seemed divided, with some like Hermann Oncken or Kurt Riezler preferring a semiindependent Polish buffer state as part of the Central European customs 148

149 150 151

152 153

154

‘Besprechung in Wien am 5. September 1918, 4 Uhr 30 nachmittags’, in SG, IV, pp. 328–30. See, however, already ‘Ausführungen Hintzes in der Besprechung mit den Bundesratsbevollmächtigten am 27. August 1918’ and ‘Ausführungen Hintzes in der Sitzung des Bundesratsausschusses für auswärtige Angelegenheiten am 2.9.1918’ in J. Hürter (ed.), Paul von Hintze. Marineoffizier, Diplomat, Staatssekretär. Dokumente einer Karriere zwischen Militär und Politik 1903–1918 (Munich, 1998), pp. 524–30, 552–6. Also see the summaries in BHSA, Gesandtschaft Berlin, 1095. See the various notes of late September in SG, IV, pp. 382–6, 392–5. On the developments from September to November 1918, see Conze, Polnische Nation, pp. 376–403. See, for example, ‘Aufzeichnung über die Unterredungen mit Baron Burian in Berlin am 10. und 11. November 1915’, in SG, I, pp. 218–21 (p. 220), and Hertling to Czernin, 1 December 1917, in SG, III, pp. 47–8 (p. 47). For party reactions, see the debate on 27 August 1917, in Schiffers et al. (eds.), Hauptausschuß, III (1981), pp. 1702–11. Also see Erzberger, Erlebnisse, pp. 170–83. H. Delbrück, ‘Politische Korrespondenz’, PJ, July 1918, pp. 127–43. For earlier views see his ‘Die Rede des Reichskanzlers und die Zukunft Polens’, PJ, September 1915, pp. 556–61. V. Naumann, Dokumente.

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union.155 Max Weber agreed, highlighting the problematic geographical situation of Silesia and the nationality question in the German East, and warning that the fate of Congress Poland affected the German Reich more than Austria-Hungary: ‘For us, the Polish question extends to the gates of the Imperial capital.’ The Austro-Polish solution, the retired Heidelberg professor maintained, would only be possible in case of an ‘eternal, indissoluble commonwealth’, a perpetual military, economic, financial, and political federation between Berlin, Vienna, and Warsaw. Weber was very sceptical about such a union and considered the political affiliation of Congress Poland to a more tolerant Germany, which would pursue a policy of rapprochement and understanding towards its domestic Poles and the western Slavs in general, more realistic.156 Other left-liberal opponents of the Austro-Polish solution highlighted the potentially negative effects on the political cohesion of the Habsburg Empire or the relations between Berlin and Vienna, and some even argued that it would not strengthen the domestic position of the AustroGermans but instead lead to their oppression.157 Count Harry Kessler, who took a great interest in the Polish question while he was serving in the European East, was another outspoken critic of the scheme. He expressed his views in several letters to friends, which were often forwarded to businessmen, publicists, and higher officials, including Clemens von Delbrück and Bethmann Hollweg. In November 1914, Kessler had ruled out a completely independent state, holding that the Poles are ‘a beautiful, noble, only much too idealistic and childish race’ and would thus ‘never be capable of governing themselves’.158 He later warned against a Slavized and strengthened Habsburg Empire. Thanks to their rich natural resources, their demographic strength, and the political acumen of their aristocratic leaders, Kessler was convinced, the irredentist and anti-German Poles would soon play a leading role in 155

156

157

158

Oncken, Das alte und das neue Mitteleuropas, pp. 124–30; ‘Denkschrift Riezlers über die polnische Frage, 20 August 1915’, in Riezler, Tagebücher, pp. 680–2; [K. Riezler], ‘Leitsätze zur Polenfrage’, ESWZ, 25 August 1916, pp. 1123–6. Also see M. Sering (ed.), Westrußland in seiner Bedeutung für die Entwicklung Mitteleuropas (Leipzig, 1917); G. Gothein, ‘Zollunion und austropolnische Lösung’, BT, 29 January and 2 February 1918. M. Weber, ‘Deutschland unter den europäischen Weltmächten’, in Deutscher Kriegs-und Friedenswille. Drei Reden, special issue of Hilfe, March 1917, pp. 7–13 (p. 12). Also see already Weber’s contribution to Herkner (ed.), Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung, III, pp. 28–37 and his ‘Deutschlands äußere und Preußens innere Politik. I. Die Polenpolitik’ (1917), in Baier et al. (eds.), Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe, I/15, pp. 197–203. E. Ludwig, ‘Eine Schicksalsfrage’, VZ, 17 December 1917; T. Wolff, Editorial, BT, 31 December 1917; A. Redlich, ‘Unser Verbündeter’, VZ, 19 May 1918; ‘Die polnische Frage’, FrZ, 23 August 1918. Kessler to G. v. Mutius, 8 November 1914, in Kessler, Tagebuch, V, p. 158.

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the neighbouring monarchy and seek a rapprochement with Russia. To the painter Gustav Richter, he wrote: ‘In ten to twenty years there would be a new encirclement and a new world war. And with what borders for us: completely encircled by Poland-Austria which could easily invade us. Any German statesman who agreed to such a solution of the Polish question would be guilty of high treason or insane.’159 And in a letter to the art collector Eberhard von Bodenhausen, Kessler insisted: ‘A Greater Poland under Habsburg rule is the end of the German Reich because it would quickly alienate Austria from us, leading to a life-and-death struggle and imposing a world war on us which we could never win.’ Instead, he proposed a German-dominated Polish kingdom (ideally with the German emperor as its crowned head), a new partition, or joint German-Austrian military rule. Kessler recommended a liberal constitution and a maximum of domestic autonomy, but in return for its ‘independence’ the Polish entity was to assist in the resettlement of the Prussian Poles and the Germanization of Posen, West Prussia, and Silesia: ‘I would consider this a conditio sine qua non as it is the only radical means against a future Polish irredenta.’160 While these ideas resembled those of the national right and of decision-makers in the OHL, the count moderated his general political views over the course of the war. Since September 1916, he worked at the German embassy in Switzerland, organizing German cultural propaganda and exploring chances for a separate peace with France. Two years later, during the early stages of the German Revolution, he was sent by the Foreign Office to release Piłsudski, whom he had met in October 1915, from the prison in Magdeburg and soon joined him in Warsaw as Weimar Germany’s first ambassador to Poland, although this assignment came to a quick end due to the suspension of relations between the two countries in December 1918. Social Democrats rejected the Austro-Polish option, too. Most had welcomed the manifesto of late 1916 and opposed large-scale annexations of Polish territory. Right-wing party members such as Gustav Noske, however, prioritized German political and economic interests and emphasized the necessity of secure borders against Russia, not willing to fully denounce the idea of bringing Congress Poland in political and military dependency to Germany.161 Others favoured the return of the territory to Russia, a popular idea after the February Revolution of 1917 159 160

161

Kessler to G. Richter, 17 August 1915, in Kessler, Tagebuch, V, p. 383. Kessler to E. v. Bodenhausen, 25 August 1915, in H.-U. Simon (ed.), Eberhard von Bodenhausen – Harry Graf Kessler. Ein Briefwechsel 1894–1918 (Marbach/N., 1978), pp. 101–6 (pp. 103, 105). Also see his letter of 2 October 1915, pp. 109–11. G. Noske, ‘Das polnische Problem’, Glocke, 11 November 1916, pp. 207–17.

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opened the prospect of a democratic multinational Russian entity.162 The Social Democratic mouthpiece Vorwärts, on the other hand, demanded a cutback of military provisions in the occupation zone and the prorogation of the decision over Poland.163 Not surprisingly, the Independent Socialists were unwilling to accept any decision against the will of the Polish people, arguing that the manifesto had merely been a concealed annexation and deceptive manoeuvre to win more soldiers and extend the German sphere of influence.164 The national right was alarmed for a variety of reasons, often putting similar arguments against the Austro-Polish solution forward as higher officials in Berlin. In a speech at a meeting of the annexationist Unabhängiger Ausschuß für einen deutschen Frieden (UA) on 14 July 1917, Dietrich Schäfer made clear that a strengthening of the Austro-Germans would be highly desirable but maintained that it was more important to protect Germany against Polish claims. He was convinced that the formation of an Austro-Polish state would lead to ‘the annihilation and definite downfall’ of Germany because it would encourage the Poles to seek to liberate their co-nationals under Prussian rule or put the Habsburg Monarchy on a pro-Russian course: ‘What is the German Reich, what is Prussia, if a hostile power stands right in front of Breslau?’165 In a subsequent article, the Pan-German historian confirmed that the Austro-German wish to separate Galicia in order to gain a parliamentary majority was justified and right but raised the question whether the international standing of Germany, which would be greatly endangered by an Austrian Poland, would not be an even more ‘crucial precondition for their [i.e. Austro-German] existence’: after all, the collapse of the German Reich would directly lead to the demise of Austrian Germandom.166 Several right-wing commentators shared these concerns about the ‘Slavization’ of the Danube Monarchy. They doubted that the removal of the Poles from the Reichsrat was sufficient to preserve the standing of the Austro-Germans – widely considered the pillar of the alliance – in the long term. ‘On the contrary’, the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung maintained, ‘the Poles will absolutely rule in Vienna and take on the leadership of Austrian 162 163 164

165 166

See, for example, L. Quessel, ‘Wir und das neue Polen’, Glocke, 2 December 1916, pp. 338–45; L. Quessel, ‘Das polnische Problem’, WdZ, 12 October 1917, pp. 1–2. Editorial, Vorwärts, 8 November 1917; ‘Polen’, Vorwärts, 18 August 1918. See already Ströbel’s comments in Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/17, vol. 3, cols 2409–11 (20 November 1916), and Ledebour’s speech in Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 311, pp. 3974–7 (1 December 1917). ‘Dietrich Schäfer über Polen’, BNN, 19 July 1917. D. Schäfer, ‘Zur polnischen Frage’, BNN, 15 November 1917.

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Slavdom’.167 In the case of sub-dualism, the Austro-Germans would have to deal on their own with the additional Slavs, a gloomy prospect even if Poland was assigned a subordinate status (like Croatia), as the Poles could easily form an overpowering alliance with the Czechs and other Austro-Slavs. In the case of trialism, it was feared that the Poles would associate with the Slavs in the other parts of the empire, thus forming an overall majority against the Austro-Germans and the Magyars and jointly directing Habsburg politics.168 All this shows how complicated the question was and that no one really knew whether the Austro-Polish solution would in fact stop the Slavization of the Habsburg Monarchy, as most Austro-German nationalists claimed (pointing to the parliamentary situation), or in fact facilitate the process, as many representatives of the national right in Germany argued (influx of millions of Slavs). There was indeed a widespread concern that the Danube Monarchy would develop into a hostile power, and many publicists seemed ill at ease over the prospect of having Austria-Hungary(Poland) as Germany’s eastern neighbour, a highly unreliable rampart against Russian attacks and potential aggressor itself, with Poland representing an ideal location for the invasion of the Prussian provinces.169 It is for this reason that Posen’s largest newspaper described the AustroPolish solution as ‘unacceptable’: ‘We must not let the Prussian state be encircled by an Austrian Poland.’170 Given these various objections, it is remarkable that the ADV first backed the Austrian scheme. At two meetings of the Pan-German executive committee in August and October 1914, Heinrich Claß maintained that the annexation of Congress Poland to Prussia was not a realistic option because it would imply the incorporation of millions of Poles into the German Reich. He also rejected the idea of creating a Polish buffer state, fearing irredentist tendencies in Galicia and Russian intrigues. Claß concluded that the only sensible solution was the personal union of 167 168

169

170

‘Die polnische Frage im österreichischen Abgeordnetenhause’, RWZ, 16 November 1917. See, for example, Dr. Gürten, ‘Der Zusammenbruch der deutschen Polenpolitik’, AB, 16 February 1918, pp. 49–51; H.S. Weber, ‘Deutsche Forderungen zur polnischen Frage’, Post, 29 March 1918; ‘Die austropolnische Lösung und die Sonderstellung Galiziens’, DTZ, 12 June 1918. See, for example, C. Bornhak, ‘Oesterreichische Kriegsziele’, Grenzboten, 30 May 1917, pp. 257–61; C. Bornhak, ‘Österreich und Polen’, Grenzboten, 28 November 1917, pp. 233–8; G. Cleinow, ‘Die Polenpolitik der Deutschen und Polen’, Grenzboten, 1 March 1918, pp. 233–40; G. Cleinow, ‘Mitteleuropa und die Polen’, Grenzboten, 14 June 1918, pp. 265–9; G. Cleinow, Die Polenfrage vor der Entscheidung (Berlin, 1918); ‘Mitteleuropa’, ESWZ, 24 November 1917, pp. 1089–91; L. Wegener, Politik, Diplomat und Kriegsziele (Posen, 1917). ‘Die Politik der Polen’, PT, 25 May 1918.

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Poland with the Habsburg Monarchy and its unification with Galicia, leading to the parliamentary majority of the Austro-Germans.171 The same argumentation can be found in Claß’s Denkschrift, the official Pan-German war aims agenda (1914), which additionally highlighted the necessity of border corrections and suggested the transfer of the Polish population.172 Resuming his anti-Habsburg stance from the pre-war period, Theodor Reismann-Grone, the Westphalian publisher and internal enemy of the chairman, in a circular letter to the local branches of the ADV raised emphatic protest against this programme. He particularly warned against extensive Austro-Hungarian annexations (Serbia, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine), arguing that this would bring about ‘Prussia’s encirclement from the Baltic Sea to Trieste by a huge Habsburg realm of ninety million inhabitants, more dangerous than Russia’. Poland on its own would already represent a great menace to the Prussian East, but become even more of a threat if it was ruled ‘by a member of a rival dynasty’.173 Holding that he could not identify with the Pan-German war aims programme, as it expressed ‘not a German but an Austro-Habsburg spirit’, Reismann-Grone in March 1915 left the ADV. In his resignation letter, he once more stressed the importance of good relations with Russia ‘in continuation of the historical Prussian tradition’ and attacked the Pan-German League for being committed to Austria-Hungary, a militarily weak and politically unstable coalition partner. With regard to the Polish question, he declared that an independent Poland (by this he also referred to the Austro-Polish solution) would be ‘the most serious blow which could hit Prussia’, the ‘bedrock and precondition of the Reich and of Germandom’.174 Interestingly, by mid-1915, Claß had changed his mind.175 Following discussions in the executive committee, the Pan-German president publicly dismissed the incorporation of Congress Poland into the Habsburg Monarchy over concerns that the influx of ten million Poles entailed the ultimate step in the ‘Slavization process’ of the Danubian realm (in particular in view of further annexations in the Balkans) and push aside the German element. Vienna, it was to be expected, would act according 171

172

173 174 175

‘Sitzung des geschäftsführenden Ausschusses des Alldeutschen Verbandes’, 28 August 1914, BArch, R 8048, No. 96, and ‘Sitzung des Geschäftsführenden Ausschusses des Alldeutschen Verbandes’, 24 October 1914, BArch, R 8048, No. 97. H. Claß, ‘Denkschrift betreffend die national-, wirtschafts- und sozialpolitischen Ziele des deutschen Volkes im gegenwärtigen Kriege’ [1914], BArch, R 8048, No. 633. Also see ‘Leitfaden für die Erörterung der Kriegsziele und Siegespreise’ [1914], BArch, R 8048, No. 828. Circular letter by Dr. Reismann-Grone, 15 September 1914, BArch, R 8048, No. 448. Reismann-Grone to executive committee, 20 March 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 448. See Claß to F. Avenarius, 5 June 1915, BArch, R 8048, No. 199.

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to Austro-Polish interests and pursue an irredentist policy towards Prussia’s eastern provinces, leading to serious conflicts between the German Reich and Austria-Hungary, and to the end of the Dual Alliance.176 Proposing the formation of a Polish satellite state with full German control over military affairs, foreign policy, and the economy, the Pan-Germans nevertheless anticipated a constitutional reform in Austria (excluding Galicia from parliamentary affairs) and for this purpose suggested the separation of a small part from Congress Poland and its attachment to the Habsburg Monarchy.177 At a meeting of the PanGerman executive committee in September 1918, Claß revealed why he had initially supported the Austro-Polish solution and later decided to dismiss it. In autumn 1914, the chairman declared, he had been confident that the war would be short and that Germany would emerge from it more powerful than ever. Convinced that the Austro-Hungarian state would not persist in the long term, his intention had been to cede Congress Poland to the Danube Monarchy in order to burden it with even more Slav territory and ‘to let it collapse by itself as soon as possible’. The Austro-Polish solution would have offered the opportunity to remove the Habsburg dynasty from Austrian affairs and to put it on the Polish throne, making space for the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach, which could then ‘fulfil its German mission as south-eastern outpost of Germandom’. However, in view of the unexpected duration and costs of the war, the disintegration of the ally did not seem sensible any more. Germany would need ‘a breathing pause’ after the war in order to recover and thus required the continued existence of the Habsburg Empire and of the Dual Alliance. He would still hope to bring Central European Germandom together one day, Claß affirmed, but would now have to adapt to circumstances and postpone the final solution to the German question, which could only be implemented after a system change in Germany and once the Czechs ‘are slain with fire and sword’.178 It is difficult to assess whether Claß spoke the truth when he described this back-door irredentism or whether he was trying to articulate a retrospective justification of a position that had appeared to favour the Habsburg Empire. His support of the Austro-Polish scheme in late 1914 and early 1915 may very well have been motivated by the same 176 177

178

H. Claß, ‘Grundsätzliches zur polnischen Frage’, AB, 20 May 1916, pp. 185–8; ‘An der Schwelle eines neuen Polen’, AB, 11 November 1916, pp. 433–6. See ‘Sitzung des Geschäftsführenden Ausschusses’, Berlin, 25 and 26 March 1916, BArch, R 8048, No. 104; ‘Sitzung des Geschäftsführenden Ausschusses’, 29 April 1916, BArch, R 8048, No. 105. ‘Sitzung des Geschäftsführenden Ausschusses’, 13 September 1918, BArch, R 8048, No. 120.

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considerations that had influenced Jagow and Bethmann Hollweg: the hope to consolidate the Danube Monarchy by introducing an AustroGerman parliamentary majority (rather than accelerating its disintegration, as Claß claimed). Having realized that this option was extremely unpopular with the German public and in fact caused a lot of internal resentment, the chairman may then have changed his mind. Given the ADV’s close links with heavy industrialists, commercial groups, and East Elbian annexationists, Poland’s value as a market and source of raw materials may have been brought to Claß’s attention, too. What is undisputable, however, is that for the time being the ADV put back völkisch aspirations (the unification of Imperial Germany with German-Austria), pursuing a realistic approach and prioritizing the reasons of state instead. While these views and statements expressed concerns about the future development of Habsburg affairs and were largely based on anti-Polish and anti-Slav sentiments, anticipating the formation of an enlarged and united Slav bloc against the Austro-Germans (and the Magyars), other right-wing critics were driven by a more fundamental distrust of the ally, deeming the monarchy a rival or potential threat to German territorial and economic gains. The occupied Polish territory was considered a valuable agrarian and settlement area, and disposed of important natural resources. Many conservative and liberal-nationalist observers insisted that the region, which had been conquered by means of ‘German blood and efforts’, should also be controlled and exploited by Germany – a point repeatedly stressed by Hindenburg and Ludendorff.179 Gustav Stresemann opposed the Austro-Polish solution on such grounds, too, and refused to accept what he termed ‘the squandering of Poland’.180 Publicists and business representatives were concerned that the aim of setting up an array of satellite buffer states in Central and Eastern Europe, and of creating a sphere of economic domination, would be seriously hampered if Vienna, which showed an irritating lack of willingness to negotiate over Mitteleuropa, was to get hold of Poland and to drive a wedge between the German and Eastern European economic areas.181 In this context, long-standing antiHabsburg attitudes resurfaced repeatedly. The official papers of ViceChancellor Friedrich von Payer (in office since November 1917), for instance, contain a memorandum which advised against a strengthened 179

180 181

See, for example, ‘Die Verschleuderung Polens’, TR, 8 November 1917 or ‘Die österreichisch-polnische Lösung’, RWZ, 19 November 1917. Also see Hertling to Czernin, Berlin, 1 December 1917, in SG, III, pp. 47–8. G. Stresemann, ‘Neue Entwicklungen’, National-Zeitung, 11 November 1917. See, for example, ‘Immediatvorstellung der Handelskammer zu Königsberg an den Deutschen Kaiser’ [early 1918], BArch, R 703, No. 12.

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Austria-Hungary on Germany’s eastern border on the basis of historical ‘facts’ and ‘experience’: ‘We must not forget that Prussia-Germany from Frederick to Bismarck was created not only against France but also in the struggle against Austria, repulsing it from territories where it only impeded our progress.’182 In several newspaper articles, Fritz Bley similarly warned against the consequences of the Austro-Polish solution for the Prussian East and prophesied the ‘reversal of the whole of Prusso-German history’ in case Congress Poland would be annexed to the Habsburg realm.183 And Johannes Haller, who taught Medieval History in Tübingen, in a letter to Philipp Eulenburg, former diplomat and confidant of Wilhelm II, stated that it was completely incomprehensible to him how one could seriously discuss the association of Poland with Austria: It is as plain as the nose on the face that this will lead with necessity to a war with Austria. Ultimately, this war seems inevitable anyway – in the historico-political meter 1866 follows on 1914 – yet this is particularly why it would be madness to draw our Polish problem into this clash.184

Obviously, comradeship-in-arms between Berlin and Vienna had not fundamentally altered certain preconceptions with regard to AustriaHungary within Prussian conservative circles. While it is important not to exaggerate the prevalence of such views, to ignore the fact that most of these statements were made privately in letters or memoranda, or to imply a link between such attitudes and the actual decision-making process, it is worth pointing out that Hindenburg repeatedly argued along these lines, too, and that several Pan-German politicians (such as Reismann-Grone) held similar, traditionalist rather than ethnonationalist opinions. As shown, most politicians and commentators assessed the Polish question primarily from the point of view of state politics while neglecting Austro-German aspirations. Key reasons for supporting (or at least not completely dismissing) the Austro-Polish scheme between circa September 1914 and April 1916 and again between September 1917 and February 1918 had been indecisiveness and uncertainty as to the best solution; the reluctance to incorporate more Poles and Jews into the German Reich; the hope to prevent Austria-Hungary from leaving the 182 183 184

F. Kallmann, ‘Einige Bemerkungen zur Frage der Ueberlassung Polens an Oesterreich’, May 1917 (postscript November 1917), BArch, R 703, No. 12. F. Bley, ‘Rückbildung der preußischen Geschichte?’, Zeitfragen (supplement to DTZ), 13 June 1917. Also see his ‘Zurück hinter 1864?’, DTZ, 16 November 1917. Haller to Eulenburg, 10 November 1917, in Röhl (ed.), Philipp Eulenburgs politische Korrespondenz, III, pp. 2234–7 (p. 2235).

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alliance; and potential gains in Romania. The fact that the unification with Congress Poland could consolidate the Danube Monarchy and create a parliamentary majority for the Austro-Germans was repeatedly taken into consideration as well, but it was never a decisive factor and offset by the fear of a Slavization of the allied empire. The preservation of the Austro-German political position was only one of several conditions Berlin stipulated, in addition (and probably secondary to) border rectifications, economic and military concessions (e.g. rail transit, customs union, military convention), and geopolitical compensations (Romania and Baltic territories). Conversely, the resolution to set up a satellite state (which for Berlin was the first step towards the German-Polish solution) was taken in view of manpower shortages in the army, Vienna’s reluctance to agree to the Central European project and several of the other preconditions, and the fact that since 1917 Poland had become an essential part of the OHL’s eastern conception (transit area towards the Baltic region and the Ukraine). It is unlikely that more substantial guarantees for Austro-German and Magyar predominance beyond the vague promises of sub-dualism (an issue which was only rarely brought up since early 1916) would have tipped the balance again in favour of the Austro-Polish solution. For the national right, too, there was no doubt that German interests alone should determine the future of Poland. These ‘German interests’ stood, of course, for the interests of the Prusso-German nationstate, the ambitions and objectives of the Hohenzollern Monarchy – or what commentators claimed were the interests of the German Reich. It was this very stance which Richard Bahr, one of the few right-wing supporters of the Austro-Polish solution, attacked as a typical expression of the ‘prevalent complacency’ and national ‘self-satisfaction [Selbstgenügsamkeit]’ in Imperial Germany.185 However, we have also observed that Berlin and the Reich German public were not generally indifferent towards the German element in Austria. After all, the Habsburg Monarchy was not just any foreign country or random ally, and governing circles as well as publicists followed Austro-Hungarian home affairs closely. They obviously considered Austro-German (and Magyar) control of the Danubian realm a precondition for the maintenance of the Dual Alliance. As seen in the case of the Hungarian Germans, there was little concern for questions of national self-fulfilment and autonomy, at least not as a value per se. Berlin’s support for Austro-German predominance within Cisleithania was a matter of Realpolitik, although inspired and sustained by a belief in 185

R. Bahr, ‘Die Zukunft Polens und die deutsche Gesamtnation’, BBZ, 16 November 1917; R. Bahr, ‘Die polnische Frage’, BBZ, 11 June 1918.

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fundamental German-Slav antagonism. While certain völkisch ideas may have contributed to the distrust of the Slavs amongst German decisionmakers and certain sections of the population, the growing independence movements and peace demands within the Habsburg Monarchy did indeed threaten the stability and survival of Germany’s most important international partner.

8

The nationality question in Austria

For many observers of the Habsburg Monarchy’s political scene, Emperor Franz Joseph embodied ‘the lasting, permanent element in the up and down of politics and in the midst of all those transformations of state, society, and life’, as the Austrian historian Oswald Redlich wrote in September 1914.1 The monarch enjoyed an exceptional moral authority during the seven decades of his rule and was held in high esteem even by some of the most fervent critics of Austria-Hungary. Still, following his death on 21 November 1916, the Reich German press expressed confidence concerning the ally’s prospects and declared, in the words of the Catholic Historisch-politische Blätter, that ‘the hope of Austria’ was ‘not at all buried with its Emperor’. It was widely affirmed that the succession to the throne would not alter the status quo; the new sovereign, too, would ensure domestic stability and loyalty to the alliance. For the last time, the notion of an ‘Austrian miracle’ prevailed in Germany’s leading newspapers and journals.2 The second half of the war demonstrated that the nationality question was the most central and pervasive problem of the Habsburg Empire. According to Oszkár Jászi, the fundamental issue was: ‘How is it possible to unite national individualities of very divergent ideals and traditions in such a way that each of them can continue its own particular life, while at the same time limiting its national sovereignty enough to make a peaceful and effective international co-operation possible?’3 In other words, how could a time-honoured multiethnic realm, primarily held together by the dynasty, the army, and the bureaucracy, survive in the age of nation-states 1 2

3

O. Redlich, ‘Kaiser Franz Joseph’, SM, September 1914, pp. 794–5 (p. 795). ‘Neujahr 1917’, HPB, 1 January 1917, pp. 1–26 (p. 2). Similar: O. Hoetzsch, ‘Kaiser Franz Joseph’, NPZ, 23 November 1916; R. Charmatz, ‘Zwei Kaiser’, Hilfe, 30 November 1916, pp. 782–4; Freiherr v. Richthofen, ‘Kaiser Franz Josephs Vermächtnis’, BBZ, 2 December 1916; E. Ludwig, ‘Neue Bahnen’, VZ, 8 December 1916; H. Kienzl, ‘Der Thronwechsel in Österreich-Ungarn’, Türmer, 2nd December issue 1916, pp. 373–8. Also see Hohenlohe to Burián, 25 November 1916, and Nemes to Burián, 27 November 1916, HHStA, Literarisches Bureau, K. 120 (press reports). O. Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago, IL, 1929), p. 4.

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and mass nationalism? The war itself was to a great extent a result of unresolved domestic issues, and further exacerbated centrifugal tendencies which challenged the authority and legitimacy of government and state. The revolutions in Russia and the subsequent proclamation of the right of national self-determination, the propaganda of Slav exiles, and the related statements and demands of the Entente states turned the nationality struggles in the Danube Monarchy into a world-political issue.4 Obviously, foreign policy and internal affairs were insolubly linked in the empire. It comprised eleven recognized nationalities, and many of them such as the Poles, Romanians, and Italians felt attached to their kinsmen in non-Habsburg lands. The situation was complicated by Austro-Hungarian dualism which inhibited a comprehensive federalization of the realm, administrative complexities (alone in Austria there were sixteen provincial diets), and the linguistic and national heterogeneity of many areas. Official attempts to reorganize the monarchy inevitably met fierce resistance from one ethnic group or another, and it should come as no surprise that Austro-German parties and political camps were often divided within themselves. There was considerable disagreement over war aims and annexations (which would have affected the domestic equilibrium just as much as the loss of territory). It was also unclear whether constitutional reforms should be imposed from above or negotiated in parliament, whether dualism should be maintained or replaced by another configuration (such as trialism or Greater Austrian schemes), and whether national rights should be recognized on a territorial or on a personal basis (if at all). There was consensus on only one point: the need for change.5 As before 1914, the German press mirrored the multifaceted debate only to a degree. Slav views were rarely reported or discussed, but major Austro-German and Hungarian reform proposals went largely unnoticed, too.6 Other themes and events such as the course of the war and the peace 4 5

6

B. Chernev, ‘The Brest-Litovsk Moment: Self-Determination Discourse in Eastern Europe before Wilsonianism’, DS, 22/3 (2011), 369–87. Kann, Nationalitätenproblem, II, pp. 233–91; Morgenbrod, Wiener Großbürgertum; Ehrenpreis, Kriegs- und Friedensziele. See also P. Broucek, ‘Reformpläne aus dem Beraterkreis Erzherzog Franz Ferdinands und Kaiser Karls’, in Plaschka et al. (eds.), Mitteleuropa-Konzeptionen, pp. 111–21; H. Rumpler, ‘Zur staatsrechtlichen und realpolitischen Bewertung der Reformpläne Seidler-Hussarek-Lammasch 1917/1918’, in Plaschka et al. (eds.), Mitteleuropa-Konzeptionen, pp. 123–39; F. Höglinger, Ministerpräsident Heinrich Graf Clam-Martinic (Graz, 1964); H. Rumpler, Max Hussarek. Nationalitäten und Nationalitätenpolitik in Österreich im Sommer des Jahres 1918 (Graz, 1965); Meckling, Aussenpolitik. See, for example, Renner, Österreichs Erneuerung; K. Renner, Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen in besonderer Anwendung auf Österreich (Leipzig, 1918); I. Seipel, Gedanken zur österreichischen Verfassungsreform (Innsbruck, 1917); Austriacus Observator [i.e.

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question, territorial enlargement in East and West, or, on a domestic level, the difficult food situation, rising prices, and civil commotions were more pressing than the nationality problem in the Dual Monarchy. At any rate, radical-nationalist views did not preponderate.7 True, even Catholics, Social Democrats, and left liberals for long adhered to the notion of a German Austria. But they soon acknowledged the necessity of at least national-cultural autonomy in order to preserve the Danube Empire. For the national right, the support of Austrian Germandom was not only a matter of völkisch ideas but, arguably even more so, of Realpolitik; liberal and conservative nationalists regarded the AustroGermans (together with the Magyars) first and foremost as leading constituents of Austro-Hungarian state and society, as upholders of the imperial idea, and main proponents of the alliance within the Habsburg realm. The post-war statement of Count Arthur Polzer-Hoditz, who had been Emperor Karl’s chief of cabinet, that German civilian and military decision-makers as well as the broader public had been driven by PanGerman motives, and that ‘the démembrement of Austria, the aim of our official enemies in the Entente, was the motto of our ally at a much earlier period’, is clearly exaggerated.8 The incorporation of the Germanspeaking lands of Austria only became a serious subject for debate once the fragmentation of the Danube Monarchy was imminent. ‘The hydra . . . raises its head again’: the end of the ‘Austrian miracle’ During the first half of the war, the German press had been little interested in Austrian domestic developments. The discussion was largely left to Austro-German intellectuals, who disseminated an idealized picture of the Habsburg Monarchy’s multinational character.

7 8

W. Schmidt], Zur Wiederverjüngung Österreichs. Versuch eines Entwurfes der Verfassungsreform (Vienna, 1917); Österreichische Politische Gesellschaft (ed.), Das nationale Problem in Österreich (Vienna, 1917); R. Charmatz, Österreich als Völkerstaat (Vienna, 1918); O. Jászi, Der Zusammenbruch des Dualismus und die Zukunft der Donaustaaten, trans. by S. v. Hartenstein (Vienna, 1918); R. Lodgman v. Auen, Die Autonomie und ihre Bedeutung für Oesterreich-Ungarn (Prague, 1918). Against B. Morgenbrod, ‘Die “böhmische Frage” in der reichsdeutschen Publizistik 1914–1918’, in H. Mommsen et al. (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg, pp. 221–40. A. Polzer-Hoditz, Emperor Karl, trans. by D.F. Tait and F.S. Flint (London, 1930), p. 267. For another post-war vindication of Karl, criticizing in particular German recklessness in the peace question and the Hungarian rejection of far-reaching reforms, see K. v. Werkmann, Deutschland als Verbündeter. Kaiser Karls Kampf um den Frieden (Berlin, 1931). Recent studies with a similar tendency: E. Kovács, Untergang oder Rettung der Donaumonarchie, 2 vols. (Vienna, 2004); E. Feigl (ed.), ‘Gott erhalte . . .’ Kaiser Karl. Persönliche Aufzeichnungen und Dokumente, 3rd rev. and exp. ed. (Vienna, 2006).

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‘Politically and economically rejuvenated, domestically refined, free from all uncertainties, self-confident, and optimistically looking into the future’, that is how Richard Charmatz had imagined the empire after the war.9 However, barely three months after Karl’s succession to the throne and the last glimmers of the ‘Austrian miracle’, the liberal Neue Rundschau observed the end of the Burgfrieden, stating that the ‘hydra of the nationality conflict raises its head again . . . Apparently, even the world war ogre could not fully break its neck.’10 In fact, following the trial of the Russophile Czech politician Karel Kramárˇ in mid1916 and the assassination of Prime Minister Karl von Stürgkh in October 1916, the German public increasingly turned to Cisleithanian affairs. The resignation of Stürgkh’s successor Ernest von Koerber after merely six weeks in office raised doubts and criticisms, in particular amongst the national right, which saw a lack of will in Vienna to follow a pro-German course and asked for a strong leader to solve urgent issues such as the lengthy Ausgleich negotiations with Hungary.11 Whereas Social Democrats and left liberals welcomed the reopening of the Reichsrat after three years of suspension (30 May 1917), right-wing commentators reacted unsympathetically, lamenting that Austro-German demands had not been fulfilled before by imperial ordinance.12 Instead of harmoniously supporting the common war effort, Slav deputies in fact expressed their long-standing grievances and requested ‘the transformation of the Habsburg Monarchy into a federal state consisting of free and equal national 9 10

11

12

Charmatz, Österreich-Ungarns Erwachen, p. 31. Junius [i.e. S. Saenger], ‘Politische Chronik’, NR, February 1917, pp. 277–83 (p. 277). On the Austrian home front and developments in the second half of the war, see R.G. Plaschka et al., Innere Front. Militärassistenz, Widerstand und Umsturz in der Donaumonarchie 1918, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1974); A. Opitz, Zeitenwende im Donauraum. Von der Doppelmonarchie zu den Nachfolgestaaten (Graz, 1983); P. Broucek, Karl I. (IV.). Der politische Weg des letzten Herrschers der Donaumonarchie (Vienna, 1997); Gottsmann (ed.), Karl I. (IV.); Rauchensteiner, Weltkrieg; Watson, Ring of Steel. For regional case studies, see M. Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, 2004); A. Pfoser and A. Weigl (eds.), Im Epizentrum des Zusammenbruchs. Wien im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, 2013); M. Moll, Die Steiermark im Ersten Weltkrieg. Der Kampf des Hinterlandes ums Überleben 1914–1918 (Graz, 2014). Less useful, not least due to its bias and nostalgic tendency, is F. Fejto˝ , Requiem pour un empire défunt: Histoire de la destruction de l’Autriche-Hongrie (Paris, 1988). ‘Der Ministerwechsel in Österreich’, DTZ, 15 December 1916; ‘Kurs Clam-Martinitz’, TR, 21 December 1916; ‘Von Spitzmüller zu Clam-Martinitz’, BNN, 22 December 1916. R. Charmatz, ‘Der Zusammentritt des österreichischen Reichsrats’, BBC, 30 May 1917; R. Charmatz, ‘Die Parlamentslosigkeit und der Parlamentarismus in Österreich’, DP, 8 June 1917, pp. 733–9; Editorial, FZ, 30 May 1917; L. Lederer, ‘Die Eröffnung des österreichischen Reichsrats’, BT, 30 May 1917. Critical: ‘Österreichisches Wunder?’, TR, 30 May 1917; ‘Babylonische Verwirrung’, Post, 15 June 1917.

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states’, thus officially challenging the dualist status quo of the empire.13 Southern Slav politicians called for the unification of the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs under the Habsburg sceptre; the Ruthenians for a common Ukrainian state; while the Poles referred to their earlier demand for a united and autonomous Poland. Czech deputies were divided, with a small minority of radicals blaming the Central Powers for the war and insisting on a fully independent Czecho-Slovak polity.14 This situation ultimately led to another change in government: in late June 1917, Ernst Seidler von Feuchtenegg replaced Count Heinrich Clam-Martinic and took office as the fourth Austrian prime minister within eight months (not including the one-week interim government under Alexander von Spitzmüller-Harmersbach). Against this background, several conservative and nationalist publicists in Germany demanded the dissolution of parliament and rule by decree.15 They also condemned the general amnesty of 2 July 1917, which set Kramárˇ and other political prisoners free, and considered it a betrayal of loyal Austrian Germandom. Even liberal papers reacted with surprise and scepticism, whereas most Catholic commentators praised Emperor Karl’s clemency and policy of conciliation.16 As before 1914, there was an obvious preoccupation with the Bohemian question, spurred by geographical proximity and fuelled by the strenuous efforts of German-Bohemian publicists to gain understanding and support for their cause.17 However, there was also a novel concern with Polish issues, whereas the intricate South Slav problem attracted far less attention and its discussion was largely left to Austrian 13 14 15

16

17

Stenographische Protokolle über die Sitzungen des Hauses der Abgeordneten des Österreichischen Reichsrates, XXII. Session, vol. 1, 30 May 1917, p. 34 (Staneˇ k). Zeman, Break-Up, pp. 120–30. ‘Die Umwandlung Österreichs. Programmatische Erklärungen’, MAA, 3 June 1917; ‘Gesamtrücktritt des Ministeriums Clam-Martinitz’, TR, 22 June 1917; Hagen, ‘Die bisherigen Leistungen des österreichischen Reichsrats’, AB, 23 June 1917, pp. 285–6; E. R[eventlow], ‘Der Rückritt des Kabinetts Clam-Martinitz’, DTZ, 24 June 1917. Also see Braun to Czernin, 24 June 1917, and Hohenlohe to Czernin, 25 June 1917, HHStA, Literarisches Bureau, K. 124 (press reports). ‘Kramarsch redivivus’, TR, 3 July 1917; ‘Gnade für Hochverrat?’, LNN, 4 July 1917; ‘Kaiser Carls Amnestieerlaß’, DNN, 6 July 1917. Also see Braun to Czernin, 6 July 1917, and Thurn to Czernin, 14 July 1917, HHStA, Literarisches Bureau, K. 124 (press reports). On German-Czech relations, see, most recently: H. Mommsen et al. (eds.), Der erste Weltkrieg; J.K. Hoensch and H. Lemberg (eds.), Begegnung und Konflikt. Schlaglichter auf das Verhältnis von Tschechen, Slowaken und Deutschen 1815–1989 (Essen, 2001); W. Koschmal et al. (eds.), Deutsche und Tschechen. Geschichte – Kultur – Politik (Munich, 2001); S. Höhne and A. Ohme (eds.), Prozesse kultureller Integration und Desintegration. Deutsche, Tschechen, Böhmen im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich, 2005); D. Brandes et al. (eds.), Wendepunkte in den Beziehungen zwischen Deutschen, Tschechen und Slowaken 1848–1989 (Essen, 2007).

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authors and correspondents; the Social Democratic Reichstag deputy Hermann Wendel was but an exception.18 The interrelatedness of the matter with the Austro-Polish solution, the special status of Croatia within Hungary and of Bosnia and Herzegovina within the realm, and the Serbian, Albanian, and Montenegrin questions as well as the generally complex ethnic, linguistic, and confessional setting in the region obviously made it very difficult for Reich German commentators (and Berlin) to take a clear stance in favour of a particular scheme.19 While left liberals, Social Democrats, and Catholics expressed moderate views, often in support of at least national-cultural autonomy and increased codetermination, the German right was primarily interested in maintaining unrestricted access to the Adriatic Sea via Trieste and in protecting German economic and trade interests in the Balkans, thus opposing an autonomous South Slav entity (e.g. via trialism) and insisting on keeping the Slovenes under tight control.20 More generally, Catholic attitudes towards Austria-Hungary were often characterized by marked sympathy and understanding, regularly trying to make the German public aware that ‘a multiethnic state . . . cannot be ruled as easily and consistently as a unitary nation-state’, as the Munich historian Hermann von Grauert explained.21 Many Catholic observers severely disapproved of Slav nationalism and Hungarian inflexibility while stressing the ‘organic’ nature of the Danube Monarchy as a spiritual and religious community. Without the imperial frame, it was contended, the smaller nationalities would 18

19

20

21

For Austrian contributions, see, for example, H. Wantoch, ‘Oesterreichs Südosten’, Gegenwart, 4 December 1915, pp. 769–71; [Anon.], Die nationale Abgrenzung im Süden. Ein Beitrag zur Realisierung der Selbstbestimmung der Vö lker Österreich-Ungarns (Zagreb, 1917); E.V. Zenker, ‘Südslawen. Eine Frage für Mitteleuropa’, VZ, 19 March 1917; J. Krek, ‘Die Habsburger Monarchie und die südslawische Frage’, SM, May 1917, pp. 237–43; R. Siewel, ‘Die südslawische Frage’, DN, 5 December 1917; L. v. Südland [i.e. I. Pilar], Die südslawische Frage und der Weltkrieg. Übersichtliche Darstellung des Gesamtproblems (Vienna, 1918); R. Sieger, ‘Die südslawische Frage in OesterreichUngarn’, Grenzboten, 19 April 1918, pp. 62–7; R. Sieger, ‘Deutschösterreich und die südslawische Frage’, Grenzboten, 7 June 1918, pp. 241–5. A more substantial study of German attitudes towards the South Slav problem and of German war aims in the Balkans would be useful. Wedel in fact considered the South Slav question more significant than the Czech problem. See Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 9 July 1917, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22. See, for example, H. Wendel, Südosteuropäische Fragen (Berlin, 1918); H. Wendel, ‘Südslawischer Aufstieg’, NR, August 1918, pp. 993–1021; Editorial, Germania, 6 December 1917; ‘Deutsche und Südslawen’, KVZ, 15 September 1918; ‘Die südslawische Frage’, FZ, 26 September 1918. Right-wing views: ‘Nur eine innerpolitische Angelegenheit?’, DTZ, 19 March 1918; ‘Die Deutschösterreicher und die südslawische Frage in Österreich’, RWZ, 31 March 1918. H. v. Grauert, ‘Kaiser Franz Joseph und die Lebenskraft Österreich-Ungarns’, HPB, 1 and 16 July 1917, pp. 1–21, 91–112 (p. 11).

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sooner or later waste away as they were unable to exist on their own. Some considered the principle of nationality a wrong ideal or purpose in life.22 In this sense, the Historisch-politische Blätter simply appealed for a return to the Habsburg idea of the state: ‘The Austrian nationalities must learn again to think and feel Austrian!’ They should give up all petty quarrels and self-centredness and recall the fundamentals of the Slavo-German community: a shared past, a common religion, and communal imperial allegiance.23Deutschnational tendencies were equally regarded as a threat to the unity of state and society. The notion that the Austro-Germans were increasingly subjugated was called a ‘pure legend, a fable without moral’, invented by ignoramuses and nationalist agitators, even though German was often considered a necessary lingua franca in the empire.24 Right-wing Catholic voices, such as the Kölnische Volkszeitung, were generally more critical of Habsburg politics. They sympathized openly with the AustroGermans, who were considered the pillar of the realm, and advocated the establishment of German centralism.25 However, these views represented a minority opinion within the Catholic camp. Moderate publicists promoted Greater Austrian schemes or at least the introduction of limited national autonomy within the territorial framework of the historic crownlands.26 German Social Democrats called for fundamental political change. They criticized the conditions in Austria, the lack of parliament (until May 1917), the food situation, war absolutism, and growing ethnic 22

23 24 25

26

‘Der moderne Nationalismus im jetzigen Krieg’, HPB, 16 May 1915, pp. 703–14; S. v. Dunin-Borkowski, ‘Weltkrieg und Nationalismus’, StZ, November 1915, pp. 121–42; A. Schulte, ‘Nation und Staat. Die Nationalitätenfrage in Deutschland’, in Meinertz and Sacher (eds.), Deutschland und der Katholizismus, II, pp. 63–82. ‘Der österreichische Staatsgedanke – die Rettung Österreichs’, HPB, 16 November, 1 and 16 December 1917, pp. 639–50, 689–99, 814–24 (pp. 820, 698). ‘Die Deutschen in Österreich’, HPB, 1 September 1917, pp. 333–44 (p. 337). ‘Österreichische Stimmungen’, KVZ, 1 March 1918. See already W. Kosch, ‘Zukunftsaufgaben Österreichs’, KVZ, 26 June 1916. But compare with ‘Verfassungsänderung in Neu-Österreich’, KVZ, 21 July 1917, and ‘Das österreichische Völkerproblem’, KVZ, 18 November 1917. R. v. Nostitz-Rieneck, ‘Das “zweideutige” Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker’, StZ, December 1917, pp. 336–9; R. v. Nostitz-Rieneck, ‘Ein schicksalsschweres Schlagwort’, StZ, April 1918, pp. 29–42; ‘Österreichs innere Politik’, Germania, 14 March 1918. For reform discussions, see, for example, ‘Die Frage der nationalen Autonomie in Österreich’, Germania, 27 May 1916; J. v. Schönburg-Glauchau, ‘Die Donau monarchie unter Kaiser Karl’, KVZ, 7 June 1917; J. v. Schönburg-Glauchau, ‘Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, in Meinertz and Sacher (eds.), Deutschland und der Katholizismus, I, pp. 407–18; and the Austrian contributions by A. Gessmann, ‘Was verlangen wir vom österreichischen Parlament’, KVZ, 19 December 1916, and T. v. Sosnosky, ‘Die Aufteilung Österreich-Ungarns und das Nationalitätsprinzip’, KVZ, 1 August 1917.

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tensions.27 When in March 1916 Karl Liebknecht in the Prussian House of Representatives openly condemned Austrian war regulations and censorship provisions as ‘a reign of horror, worse even than during Russia’s most terrible times’, he clearly broke a taboo and was immediately interrupted in parliament.28 Over the subsequent months, however, these views became more widespread, even beyond the radical Spartakusbund and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). Most agreed with the idea of national reforms, but remained disunited on actual constitutional arrangements and the general reasoning behind the right of national self-determination. If there was such a right, how could the continued existence of the Danube Monarchy be upheld whereas the nationalities of Russia had to be liberated? Should there be more than just national-cultural autonomy, which left political and economic matters to a central government? And to what extent was some sort of Austro-German predominance to be preserved? The party’s executive committee championed a peace without annexations but rightwing Social Democrats justified territorial gains and German hegemony in Eastern Europe.29 They also denounced national self-determination as a reactionary phrase. To quote Heinrich Cunow: ‘The general developmental trend points towards bigger economic and political complexes, and during this process smaller, weaker, and backward nations are again and again subjugated, annexed, and absorbed by the greater ones.’ Marx and Engels had already suggested that national independence was no natural right but would depend on circumstances; it would find its limit in historical necessities and inevitable socio-economic progress.30 27

28 29

30

See, for example, P. Lensch, ‘O du mein Österreich!’, Glocke, 28 October 1916, pp. 121–5; P. Lensch, ‘Das Zeitalter Franz Josephs’, Glocke, 2 December 1916, pp. 333–7; ‘Ein Rückfall in alte Methoden?’, MP, 20 December 1916. Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/17, vol. 2, 3 March 1916, col. 1346. See, for example, ‘Eingabe des Partei- und Fraktionsvorstandes der Sozialdemokratischen Partei an Reichskanzler v. Bethmann Hollweg’, 25 June 1915; ‘Programmatische Entschließung des Parteiausschusses und der Reichstagsfraktion der Sozialdemokratischen Partei vom 16. August 1915’; ‘Beschluß des Parteiausschusses und Parteivorstandes der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands vom 19. April 1917’; ‘Aus einer Resolution der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands auf dem Parteitag in Würzburg am 20. Oktober 1917’, in UF, I, pp. 362–4, 366–7, 387, 413–14. H. Cunow, ‘Marx und das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen’, NZ, 22 and 29 March 1918, pp. 577–84, 607–12 (p. 578). Also see P. Lensch, ‘Die Selbstbestimmungsflause’, Glocke, 15 December 1915, pp. 465–76; P. Kampffmeyer, ‘Das Nationalitätsprinzip und das Recht der Entwickelung’, SoM, 13 April 1916, pp. 361–6; H. Kranold, ‘Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen’, SoM, 29 August 1917, pp. 859–68; L. Quessel, ‘Selbstbestimmungsrecht und Separatismus’, SoM, 5 February 1918, pp. 157–8; L. Quessel, ‘Marx’ deutsche Politik und das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen’, SoM, 1 May 1918, pp. 386–92.

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Following Karl Renner, these authors proposed the introduction of national-cultural autonomy in Austria on the basis of the personality principle. Austro-German preponderance was to be maintained, ostensibly based on socio-economic and cultural superiority, as well as a higher sense of state loyalty and political responsibility.31 Left-wing Social Democrats contested this relativization of national self-rule, even though the dissolution of Austria-Hungary was not promoted, either. Eduard Bernstein from the USPD defended the existence of smaller states and the principle of modern, democratic federalism, which would facilitate a long-lasting peace in Europe in contrast to the belligerent imperialism of greater entities and empires.32 Kautsky, too, was convinced that Social Democracy should always defend national equality and independence, and backed wide-ranging national-political autonomy in a democratic multiethnic Austria.33 The Vorwärts equally promoted a peace of understanding and objected to privileging the Austro-Germans. Reich Germans should realize that they were not just allied to the German speakers but to all Habsburg nationalities and take a cooperative, sympathetic stance towards the Austro-Slavs. The solution to the nationality question was seen in the transformation of Austria-Hungary into a democratic federation of free and equal nations.34 Since mid-1916, the left-bourgeois camp had come to pay more attention to Austrian developments, too, taking an increasingly critical stance after about two years of mostly favourable statements. Early comments about the nationality question had remained vague and general, celebrating the German-Slav ‘community of fate’ and honouring the ostensible renewal of the state idea, the triumph of civic patriotism over ethnic nationalism, although German leadership within Austria was often taken for granted at the same time.35 In this context, Friedrich Meinecke had alleged that there could be no ‘a priori right of nations’ to 31 32 33 34

35

L. Quessel, ‘Krieg und nationale Bewegung’, SoM, 31 January 1917, pp. 99–101 (p. 100); L. Quessel, ‘Deutsch-Österreicher’, SoM, 15 August 1917, pp. 838–40. E. Bernstein, ‘Vom geschichtlichen Recht der kleinen Staaten’, in his Sozialdemokratische Völkerpolitik, pp. 107–17. K. Kautsky, ‘Noch einige Bemerkungen über nationale Triebkräfte’, NZ, 3 March 1916, pp. 705–13; K. Kautsky, Die Befreiung der Nationen (Stuttgart, 1917). ‘Der Jungtscheche Dr. Kramarz verhaftet’, Vorwärts, 27 May 1915; ‘Im Kampf ums neue Österreich’, Vorwärts, 7 April 1917; ‘Die österreichische Ministerkrisis’, Vorwärts, 9 February 1918; ‘Die österreichische Krise’, Vorwärts, 16 April 1918; ‘Die Krise in Österreich’, MP, 20 April 1917; ‘Die innere Politik Österreichs. Zur Eröffnung des Reichsrats’, PfP, 30 May 1917; ‘Die österreichische Krise’, SchT, 21 June 1917. See, for example, ‘Der Weg der Deutsch-Österreicher’, VZ, 27 May 1916; E. Ludwig, ‘Die deutschen Österreicher’, VZ, 8 September 1916; Editorial, FZ, 16 October 1915; Editorial, FZ, 16 January 1916; Editorial, FZ, 20 January 1916. Also see ‘Der österreichische Kabinettswechsel’, BBC, 23 December 1916.

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have ‘an own nation-state comprising all co-nationals’ because this would lead to ‘a war of all against all’. According to the historian, it was necessary to learn modesty and mutual understanding, bringing about ‘a federative and tolerant national idea . . . and acknowledging the necessities of the situation’.36 Friedrich Naumann, too, had stressed that there could be no ‘absolute national or historic right to pure nation-states’.37 Many liberals held that most Central European nationalities would not be able to exist independently and thus required some sort of association in order to secure political stability, economic progress, and cultural evolution.38 In this manner, it was argued that constitutional reforms in Austria should be kept within certain limits in order not to threaten the cohesion of the multinational empire. Whereas the Frankfurter Zeitung seems to have remained disinclined to far-reaching reforms and full national equality, the Vossische Zeitung, the other leading liberal daily, soon joined the more left-leaning Berliner Tageblatt, which had started to publish comments and reform proposals in favour of a democratic, Greater Austrian federal state of autonomous nations.39 Samuel Saenger, the editor and political commentator of the widely-read Neue Rundschau, who before 1914 had been in contact with the prominent Czech politician and philosopher Tomáš G. Masaryk and would later become the Weimar Republic’s diplomatic representative in Prague, advocated democratic federalism in AustriaHungary, too, insisting that one should give up trying ‘to extend the authority and culture of Germandom towards the East’ and finally agree to substantial concessions in favour of the non-German nationalities.40 The pacifists Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and Hellmut von Gerlach argued in a similar vein against Austro-German hegemony 36 37 38

39

40

F. Meinecke, ‘Probleme des Weltkriegs’, NR, June 1916, pp. 721–33 (pp. 726, 727, 728). Naumann, ‘Nationalitäten Mitteleuropas’, pp. 216–17 (p. 216). See, for example, F. Oppenheimer, ‘Nationale Autonomie’, NR, February 1917, pp. 145–60; A. Weber, ‘Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker und der Friede’, PJ, January 1918, pp. 60–71; F. Naumann, ‘Selbstbestimmung der Völker’, Hilfe, 24 January 1918, pp. 36–7. For BT articles, see L. Lederer, ‘Die Demokratisierung Österreichs’, 21 April 1917; E.V. Zenker, ‘Die Neuordnung in Österreich’, 22 May 1917; E.V. Zenker, ‘Der Wille des österreichischen Parlaments’, 29 June 1917. VZ examples: G. Bernhard, ‘Endlich Klarheit’, 23 April 1917; E. Ludwig, ‘Die Tschechen und der Friede’, 28 December 1917. For FZ views, see e.g. ‘Um Österreichs Zukunft’, 11 March 1917; ‘Politische Schicksalstage’, 14 June 1917; Editorial, 3 August 1917; Editorial, 24 July 1918; ‘Das “konföderierte” Österreich’, 20 August 1918; and the collected articles by B. Guttmann, Österreich-Ungarn und der Völkerstreit (Frankfurt/M, 1918). Junius [i.e. S. Saenger], ‘Politische Chronik’, NR, July 1917, pp. 994–9 (pp. 995–6). Also see some of his other NR articles: ‘Österreichische Visionen’, May 1915, pp. 705–13; ‘Politische Chronik’, February 1917, pp. 277–83; ‘Politische Chronik’, March 1918, pp. 425–8.

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in Cisleithania, demanding equal rights for all nations (in both Austria and Hungary) and a democratic federation after the Swiss model.41 Identifying national self-determination with political co-determination, many centre-left observers in Germany for long agreed with the large majority of Austro-Slav leaders who requested free autonomous development within a reorganized Habsburg entity. As seen, however, since mid1917, the demands of non-German nationalities radicalized, now striving for independent statehood rather than constitutional reforms. In spite of that, left-liberal commentators wanted to preserve Austria-Hungary, fearing the Balkanization of Central Europe after the disintegration of the realm. There was little doubt about the standpoint of the national right. Many National Liberal and conservative publicists, who had initially kept a cautious approach or even embraced the idea of a community of interests between western Slavs and Germans, soon joined Pan-German critics who disparaged the ‘Austrian miracle’ as a belief of ‘coquettish dreamers and political dilettantes’.42 From mid-1916 on, the right-wing press dealt regularly with the Austrian nationality question, undoubtedly more extensively than other political camps. Journals and newspapers were full of disapproving accounts of Czech brigades on the Russian side, the agitation of the exiles, and Pan-Slav manifestations in Prague and other cities.43 They published numerous articles by Austro-German authors such as Robert Sieger and Franz Jesser, who held that the transformation of Austria-Hungary according to Slav demands meant for Germany the loss of the war and the ‘annihilation’ of millions of AustroGermans in the peripheries.44 More generally, German nationalists 41

42 43

44

F.W. Foerster, ‘Weltpolitische Betrachtungen zu Kaiser Karls Amnestieerlaß’, NFP, 19 July 1917; H. v. Gerlach, ‘Das Problem Österreich’, WaM, 18 December 1916; H. v. Gerlach, ‘Kaiserbekenntnis zur Demokratie’, WaM, 1 June 1917; H. v. Gerlach, ‘Monarchen-Trust’, WaM, 29 July 1918. Also see M. Harden, ‘Gordische Knoten’, Zukunft, 11 May 1918, pp. 139–62. ‘Kleine Mitteilungen’, AB, 3 February 1917, pp. 61–2 (p. 62). See, for example, ‘Das Zukunftsprogramm der Tschechen’, Post, 26 January 1916; ‘Böhmen’, DZ, 8 February 1916; P. Dehn, ‘Ein Vorkämpfer Rußlands in Österreichs’, Türmer, 1st May issue 1916, pp. 166–8; E. Boetticher, ‘Der tschechische Größenwahn und der österreichische Staatsgedanke’, Reichsbote, 19 and 20 February 1917; ‘Die slawische Politik in Österreich’, KZ, 6 July 1917; H. Hartmeyer, ‘Masaryk und die Umtriebe der Auslandstschechen’, GD, 7 July 1917, pp. 848–54; ‘Tschechische Verrätereien’, DTZ, 26 November 1917; ‘Der tschechische Übermut vor dem Fall’, Post, 30 November 1917. F. Jesser, ‘Nationale Autonomie’, DP, 23 November 1917, pp. 1502–10; F. Jesser, ‘Österreichs innere und äußere Politik’, DP, 22 February 1918, pp. 230–7; R. Sieger, ‘Der Stand der österreichischen Probleme und das neue Ministerium’, DP, 24 November 1916, pp. 2056–70; ‘“Neuordnung” und Reichsrat’, DP, 12 January 1917, pp. 45–51; ‘Der Umschwung in Österreich’, DP, 3 August 1917, pp. 988–94; ‘Zur “nationalen Autonomie”’, Mittel-Europa, 25 September 1917, pp. 130–3; H. Ullmann, ‘Böhmen

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agreed with the pre-war declaration of the Alldeutsche Blätter that ‘equality amongst nations means injustice towards the better, the superior ones’.45 As the Hungarian-born jurist Fritz Stier-Somlo, who taught in Cologne, put it: ‘Only those who are strong enough can found a state. The solution to the nationality question is a matter of facts and power.’46 Such statements were often made with reference to a new, German-dominated order in the European East but they also applied to the Danube Empire. Right-wing commentators typically argued that the AustroGermans represented the most advanced and most reliable ethnic group, the ‘actual backbone’ of the monarchy.47 Their hegemony was also justified on the basis of pseudo-historical claims: ‘States and empires are being sustained by the same forces by which they had been created. For Austria, this means: German colonization, German political leadership, German language, German culture, and German mindset.’48 As an integrating, state-sustaining force, the German-speaking population ostensibly secured the political unity of Berlin’s most important coalition partner. In this sense, it was usually argued that the redress of AustroGerman grievances, that the strengthening of loyal forces against subversive nationalities would be in Vienna’s own interest. Federal reforms were dismissed as detrimental, making the state unmanageable, endangering the cohesion of administration and army, and bringing the AustroGermans into a subordinate, oppressed situation. It was ruled out that the Habsburg Monarchy would still represent a reliable ally if the AustroSlavs had a greater say: ‘The first day as a federation of autonomous

45 46

47 48

und Österreich’, ND, 18 March 1916, pp. 231–4; H. Ullmann, ‘Die tschechische Frage’, Panther, November 1916, pp. 1347–59; P. Samassa, ‘Die Ordnung der Sprachenfrage in Österreich’, TR, 14 December 1916; K. Hermann, ‘Die Tschechen während des Krieges’, Türmer, 2nd March issue 1917, pp. 820–4; K. Herrmann, ‘Die tschechischen Erfolge seit Eröffnung des österreichischen Parlaments’, Grenzboten, 12 September 1917, pp. 342–5; K. Grube, ‘Der Weltkrieg und Deutschösterreich’, GD, 13 January 1917, pp. 49–53; O. Eichler, ‘Zustände und Gedanken in Österreich’, AB, 26 May 1917, p. 245; W. Kosch, ‘Die innere Bedrohung des österreichischen Staates und ihre Abwehr’, DE, June 1917, pp. 230–48; F. Wichtl, Dr. Karl Kramarsch, der Anstifter des Weltkrieges. Auf aktenmäßiger Grundlage dargestellt, 6th rev. ed. (Munich, 1918). ‘Alldeutsche Umschau’, AB, 24 July 1914, p. 269. F. Stier-Somlo, Grund- und Zukunftsfragen deutscher Politik (Bonn, 1917), p. 313. Also see, for example, R. Seeberg, Unsere Kriegsziele (Berlin, 1915); E. Heyck, ‘Die Befreiung der Nationalitäten durch den Zehnverband’, VK, April 1917, pp. 122–7; B.L. v. Mackay, ‘Wie die Völker ihr Recht selbst bestimmen!’, VK, May 1918, pp. 57–61; ‘Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der kleinen Völker und der Friede’, Kunstwart, 1st February issue 1918, pp. 74–5; F. Hartung, ‘Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker’, ND, 1 March 1918, pp. 294–5; C.C. Eiffe, ‘Hie Selbstbestimmungsrecht! Hie deutsches Volkstum!’, GD, 7 June 1918, pp. 705–12; O. Hoffmann, ‘Nation und Staat’, in Goetz (ed.), Deutschland und der Friede, pp. 46–68. ‘Vor der Entscheidung’, AB, 1 August 1914, pp. 277–8 (p. 277). ‘Österreichische Streiflichter’, AB, 10 August 1918, pp. 254–6 (pp. 255–6).

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nations would be the last day for the alliance with the German Reich.’49 In order to solidify Austro-German control over Cisleithania, most publicists backed classic deutschnational demands for the establishment of German as the exclusive state language, a special status for Galicia (although not via the Austro-Polish solution), an administrative division of Bohemia along national lines, and the revision of the standing orders of the Lower House of the Reichsrat.50 Only a very small minority of conservative and right-wing commentators promoted the establishment of limited national-cultural autonomy and administrative changes within the crownlands to stabilize the Habsburg ally.51 The constitutional historian Fritz Hartung, a member of the Free Conservative Party, and his younger, and more radical, colleague Wilhelm Schüßler wrote two of the most detailed German wartime analyses of the political and constitutional situation in the Habsburg Empire. In January 1918, Hartung gave a talk at his university in Halle (Saale), discussing the various unifying elements and structural problems of the Dual Monarchy. He was convinced that the empire was more than ‘a residue of long-forgotten dynastic politics, a random result of marriages and inheritances’, and that the various Danube countries were in fact unified in a natural union, based on geographic 49

50

51

R. Bahr, ‘Österreichische Krise’, BBZ, 27 July 1918. For the whole line of argumentation, see e.g. M. Bauer, ‘Die Deutschen Österreich-Ungarns im Kriege’, AB, 13 March 1915, pp. 81–2; R. Naumann, ‘Forderungen an Österreich-Ungarn’, PK, 25 August 1916; J.E. v. Grotthuß, ‘Deutsch-Österreich’, Türmer, 1st April issue 1917, pp. 24–8; ‘Österreichs Zukunft’, AB, 1 September 1917, pp. 368–9; ‘Das neue österreichische Kabinett’, DrN, 8 September 1917; O. Hoetzsch, ‘Der Krieg und die große Politik’, NPZ, 31 October 1917; ‘Kaiser Karls erstes Regierungsjahr’, LNN, 25 November 1917; ‘Krise in Österreich’, BBZ, 12 February 1918; ‘Eine Krise des Ministeriums in Österreich’, RWZ, 13 February 1918; ‘Der Zusammenbruch des Parlaments in Österreich’, DK, 21 February 1918; ‘Die Methode des Fortwurstelns’, BNN, 27 February 1918; ‘Der Weg Österreichs’, BNN, 4 and 5 May 1918. For deutschnational and right-wing Austro-German programmes, see, for example, Friedjung et al., Denkschrift aus Deutschösterreich; ‘Der Standpunkt des Deutschen Nationalverbandes zur Neuordnung der Dinge in Österreich’ [1915], HHStA, Groß papers, K. 4; ‘Denkschrift der Deutschen Arbeiterpartei Österreichs über das Verhältnis der Deutschen Österreichs zum Staate’ [December 1915], HHStA, Groß papers, K. 4; ‘Die Forderungen der Deutschen Österreichs’, HHStA, Groß papers, K. 4; A. Ritter, ‘Ein starkes Österreich. Ein Ruf zur Tat in entscheidender Stunde’ [December 1916], PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 4; A. Ritter, Autonomie? Zur Frage der Neugestaltung Österreichs (Graz, 1916); R. Slawitschek, ‘Länderautonomie’, DA, March 1917, pp. 241–8; F. Jesser, ‘Nationale Autonomie?’, DÖ, July 1917, pp. 1–6; P. Samassa, ‘Die nationale Autonomie in Österreich’, MZ, 17 November 1917; A. Schachermayr, ‘Zur Neugestaltung Österreichs’, DE, December 1917, pp. 790–809; H. Ullmann, ‘“Autonomie” in Österreich?’, TR, 27 April 1918. See, for example, Civis, ‘Österreich’, GZ, 7 August 1917; ‘Was wir Deutsche in Österreich-Ungarn nach dem Kriege fordern müssen’, AB, 1 December 1917, pp. 479–81; A. Grabowsky, ‘Die Zukunft Österreich-Ungarns’, ND, 15 April 1918, pp. 353–60.

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circumstances, the fruitful interaction and complementary relationship between agrarian and industrial areas, the prevalence of Catholicism, and the common stance against eastern invaders (the Turks and the Russians).52 Only together could the various nationalities successfully master the social and economic challenges of the day. Unfortunately, however, the realm would lack a positive idea or aim, and suffer from substantial problems, more evident again since Franz Joseph’s death: ‘Austria is the only belligerent country without a Burgfrieden.’53 Agrarian interest groups had poisoned the relationship with Serbia; the nationality policy of the Magyars had alienated the Romanians; and, following the restoration of Poland, the Russian Revolution, and continual clemency towards the Czechs, the Slavs would be more demanding than ever. Hartung was particularly critical of Hungarian obstinacy, but argued nevertheless that the most serious and pressing problem of the Austro-Hungarian constitution was not dualism any longer but the nationality question. As a historian, it would not be his task to make hasty and superficial judgments or prophecies. He would rather like to remind his readers and the German public – especially ‘now that a democratic wave is sweeping over the whole world’ – that political questions require careful consideration and moderation. However, given the complexity of the Austro-Hungarian domestic situation and the unlikelihood of a predominant position of Germandom within the realm, it would be advisable to remain flexible and not to insist on the Mitteleuropa idea: The community of the trenches and the faith of the Nibelungs, comradeship-inarms and gratitude are certainly wonderful things. And who does not comprehend that out of the battles and hardships of difficult war years there emerges the longing for a lasting and peace-bringing international agreement [Völkerbündnis]. But the pragmatic politician will have to follow the lesson that the Great Elector of Brandenburg had learned from the misery and gloom of the Thirty Years’ War: alliances are good, but self-reliance is better.54

Wilhelm Schüßler was less pessimistic and much more outspoken. He completed his comprehensive manuscript in May 1918, a few months after the Czech Epiphany Declaration, which had called for a democratic and fully sovereign Czecho-Slovak state (including Prussian areas). However, the historian even rejected the more moderate option of national equality within the federal framework of the monarchy, denouncing the right of national self-determination as a ‘rubber term [Kautschukbegriff]’ and condemning democratic parity as ‘egalitarianism 52 53

F. Hartung, Österreich-Ungarn als Verfassungsstaat (Halle/S., 1918), p. 20. Ibid., p. 25. 54 Ibid., pp. 31–2.

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according to numbers’.55 Like many other commentators from the national right, Schüßler disapproved of universal and equal electoral suffrage (Law of 1907), which had made the Austro-Germans a minority in parliament, even though they were the ‘fundamental pillar’ of the state: Germans had founded Austria; German was the language of the dynasty, the army, and higher bureaucracy; and Austrian Germandom contributed two-thirds of the federal tax revenue.56 Schüßler favoured the transformation of the Habsburg Monarchy into a centralized Greater Austrian federation under de facto Austro-German leadership. However, he considered the continuation of the dualist system more probable and insisted that in this case Austria be reformed and consolidated by Polish sub-dualism and the creation of national units within the crownlands. In the long term, Schüßler remarkably expected a final shift to Hungarian predominance. Given the Austro-Germans’ ‘lack of political acumen’, Cisleithania would always remain behind the more tightly organized and managed Hungarian half. The Magyars, he contended, were the only ethnic group that demonstrated sufficient determination to direct a great power: ‘The Magyars represent the masculine element within the monarchy; they are entitled to take over the political leadership of the empire.’57 From the Reich German point of view, this Hungarian solution would be acceptable because of the German-Magyar community of interests against the Slavs. Backing Austrian Germandom: the problem of intervention Schüßler’s book appeared only a few weeks before the end of the war, and did not have any bearing on right-wing positions towards AustriaHungary.58 His conclusions should not simply be equated with the opinion of the national right (see, for instance, his support of the AustroPolish solution), but they do confirm a prevalent pro-Magyar stance and occasional disdain for Austrian Germandom. Interestingly, Schüßler did not advocate German intervention in Austrian domestic politics, even though numerous Austro-German politicians and publicists asked Berlin 55 56 57

58

W. Schüßler, Das Verfassungsproblem im Habsburgerreich (Stuttgart, 1918), pp. 184, 193. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., pp. 222–3. After 1918, Schüßler consequently considered Hungary the main culprit for the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy. In his view, German statesmen of the pre-war period should have supported Franz Ferdinand’s anti-dualist plans for a federalization of the Danubian realm against Budapest’s resistance. See W. Schüßler, Österreich und das deutsche Schicksal. Eine historisch-politische Skizze (Leipzig, 1925). Theodor Heuss reviewed the book in October 1918: ‘Österreich-Ungarns Verfassungsfragen’, Hilfe, 10 October 1918, pp. 481–3.

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and the German public to take a more proactive role and to exert pressure on Vienna, regularly highlighting the value and significance of the Habsburg Monarchy’s German-speaking population for the German Reich and the wider nation. As Jesser insisted: ‘Germany’s future worldpolitical and economic situation is decided on Austro-Hungarian soil.’59 In various memoranda, Austro-German nationalists demanded more Reich German attention and direct support, ranging from informal diplomatic interference to financial and economic assistance and even largescale settlement initiatives.60 German Bohemians appealed to German decision-makers to intervene against the Czechs and the gradual ‘Slavization’ of the Danube Monarchy.61 The numerous appeals for a Central European union and the Austro-Polish solution have to be seen against this background, too. General Carl von Bardolff, a former confidant of Franz Ferdinand, suggested a military convention and expected Kaiser Wilhelm’s help to overcome Franz Joseph’s and Hungarian resistance against the establishment of Greater Austria as a multinational state under Austro-German leadership.62 József Kristóffy, a former Hungarian Interior Minister, similarly suggested a revision of the dualist system (joint parliament).63 Max Egon II. zu Fürstenberg was less interested in pro-German constitutional arrangements but nevertheless asked German authorities to urge Vienna to form a strong government. He suggested in particular German military control over the inefficient Austrian system of provisions.64 In Germany, the Pan-German League and the Association for Germandom Abroad, the two most significant right-wing associations consistently dealing with Austro-Hungarian matters, held the opinion that Cisleithanian affairs and the nationality question were not just a matter of Austrian concern but also of particular significance for the German Reich. The ADV backed the German centralist scheme for 59 60

61

62 63

64

F. Jesser, ‘Deutschösterreichische Wünsche an Deutschland’, MZ, 3 February 1917. Deutscher Volksrat für Wien und Niederösterreich, ‘Heil und Sieg den Waffen und ihren Verbündeten!’, March 1915, BHSA, Wien 2289. This memorandum, which contained ten demands meant to safeguard German hegemony in Austria, was sent to the Bavarian envoy Tucher with the request to forward it to Berlin. Prof. Zycha, ‘Deutschböhmische Gedanken zur österreichischen Frage’ [1914/15], PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 35; Franz Gerbershofen to the German government [December 1915], PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 37. Also see the numerous detailed reports by the architect Adolf Foehr, PAAA, Österreich 101, vols. 34–7. Reports by Stoltzenberg, Busk, 4 and 6 September 1916, PAAA, Großes Hauptquartier, No. 23, vol. 1. [Kristóffy], ‘Bemerkungen zur “Denkschrift aus Deutsch-Oesterreich”’ [March 1916?], PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 346. Also see Tschirschky to Zimmermann, 3 April 1916, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 346. Grünau to Bethmann Hollweg, 15 October 1916, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 346.

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Austria, as promoted for instance by Paul Samassa, and demanded the introduction of German as the state language, a change of the electoral system (introduction of census suffrage), and the administrative division of Bohemia.65 As seen, the Austro-Polish solution was initially advocated, too. In November 1914, Heinrich Claß (unsuccessfully) requested to be received by the German Kaiser, explicating that the Habsburg Empire was about to collapse and could only be saved by Germany: ‘The rescue and domestic recovery of Austria-Hungary cannot be achieved by Austria-Hungary itself but has to come from outside.’ After the war, Vienna would not grant the Austro-Germans the appropriate position according to their historic, economic, and cultural significance but would instead yield to Magyar and Slav demands. According to Claß, Wilhelm II represented the last hope of Austrian Germandom, which as the pillar of Cisleithanian state and society would have to be supported also from the point of view of Reich German interests.66 Since early 1917, the situation in Austria was discussed more often in the executive committee, where leading Pan-German representatives condemned the Habsburg Monarchy’s growing war-weariness, the reopening of the Reichsrat, the pro-Entente attitude of the Slavs, and Emperor Karl’s lenience.67 Yet the ADV did not come up with explicit proposals on how to influence Austrian politics. Claß’s war aims programme specified a re-configuration of the Dual Monarchy but did not mention German intervention. Preoccupied with many other issues, such as the Belgian question and annexations in the European East, it seems that the ADV took a wait-and-see attitude, clearly anticipating the disintegration of Austria-Hungary but hoping that the ally would persist until the war was won. After victory, one could finally embark on ‘liberating’ the Austro-Germans from the Slavs and the Habsburg dynasty.68 As Claß explained in July 1918 to the editor of the Pan-German journal Deutschlands Erneuerung, caution would be the best policy: ‘I am convinced of the inevitability of a break-up of the Austrian state but must insist that nothing happens from the German side to accelerate this 65

66 67 68

See ‘Verhandlungsbericht über die Sitzung des geschäftsführenden Auschusses des Alldeutschen Verbandes’, 28 August 1914, BArch, R 8048, No. 96; H. Claß, ‘Denkschrift betreffend die national-, wirtschafts- und sozialpolitischen Ziele des deutschen Volkes im gegenwärtigen Kriege’ [1914], BArch, R 8048, No. 633; Memorandum Samassa [September 1914], BArch, R 43, No. 2476. Claß to Wilhelm II, 15 November 1914, BArch, R 8048, No. 594. See, for example, the proceedings of 7 and 8 July 1917, BArch, R 8048, No. 114, and of 8 and 9 September 1917, BArch, R 8048, No. 116. See the proceedings of the executive committee of 2 and 3 March 1918, BArch, R 8048, No. 117, of 13 April 1918, BArch, R 8048, No. 118, and of 29 and 30 June 1918, BArch, R 8048, No. 119.

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process until the military situation is clear and secure.’69 Arguably, however, with its aggressive press activities, Germany’s radical right alienated the non-German nationalities and contributed to a lack of willingness amongst deutschnational circles to accept necessary domestic reforms, thus undermining the stability of Austria-Hungary. The VDA took a somewhat more assertive stance than the ADV. In several memoranda for the German government, it warned against Slav subversion and anti-alliance attitudes in the Habsburg realm, and championed Austro-German ideas for a unitary state with a strong central authority and German as the state language. The VDA demanded that Germany give up the principle of non-intervention and not only fully engage in the creation of a Central European union as an instrument to back the Austro-Germans but also lend financial support, engage in a more proactive press policy, facilitate the exchange of civil servants and students, and promote new settlements to strengthen endangered German-speaking communities in southern Austria and Hungary. A military intervention was not taken into account; most proposals in fact resembled pre-war demands.70 Apart from the VDA, only a few campaigners came up with such requests. In May 1915, the Army League forwarded an appeal by an anonymous Reich German, who was resident in the Danube Empire and called for more interest in AustroHungarian matters, mutual visits of higher officials, militaries, and students, but also for German pressure to reorganize the monarchy’s administration and restore ‘German order, practicality, and justice’.71 The Reich German journalist Paul Goldmann, who worked for the liberal Austrian Neue Freie Presse, wanted Berlin to insist on a pro-German domestic course in Vienna in return for financial and military help.72 Paul Raabe from the Allgemeine Zeitung in Chemnitz was particularly 69 70

71

72

Claß to Erich Kühn, 31 July 1918, BArch, R 8048, No. 204. ‘Denkschrift betr. die Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, 5 August 1915, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22; two memoranda on the Czech question and German-Austrian press relations were forwarded by Reichenau to State Secretary Zimmermann, 9 December 1916, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22; ‘Denkschrift über bündnisfreundliche und –feindliche Kräfte in Österreich’ [November 1917], PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 23. Further VDA requests: Reichenau to Zimmermann, 30 January 1917, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 51; Reichenau to Kühlmann, 29 September 1917, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 52. ‘Die gegenwärtigen Bestrebungen für eine engere dauernde politische Annäherung zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, forwarded by Strantz to Bergen, 19 May 1915, PAAA, Österreich 83, vol. 1. See, for example, ‘Vertrauliche Aufzeichnung Dr. Goldmanns’, 7 November 1915, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 2.; ‘Aufzeichnung des hiesigen Vertreters der Neuen Freien Presse, Dr. Goldmann, über österreichisch-ungarische Verhältnisse’, 26 September 1916, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4; Goldmann to Kühlmann, 1 October 1917, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4.

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worried about the Bohemian question and in June 1915 wrote to Jagow ‘that the German Reich must not remain indifferent when the German wall at the southern frontier of Saxony is being torn down’.73 The archive of the Bavarian State Ministry of Foreign Affairs contains an anonymous memorandum from Breslau (Wrocław), demanding the transformation of the Habsburg Monarchy into a Greater Austrian realm (consisting of Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Ukraine, and Serbo-Croatia) under German leadership and with German as the official state language. The ‘lands between Hamburg and Baghdad’ would have to be ruled exclusively according to German interests.74 On a public level, too, there were only a few demands for German involvement or intervention. Censorship regulations are only part of the explanation. Most Catholic, Social Democratic, and left-liberal observers abhorred such ideas. Friedrich Naumann, in a review of an Austrian pamphlet calling for German action, explained that this would merely jeopardize the stability of the multinational empire: ‘A Reich German intervention is . . . a highly dangerous experiment which should rather not be taken into account. Austria must arrange its internal affairs alone!’75 Right-wing commentators linked Austro-German hegemony to fundamental foreign and security interests of the German nation-state, considering full national equality as a threat to the stability of the Habsburg Empire and its loyalty to the alliance. Richard Bahr, who promoted völkisch views and belonged to the most devoted Austrophiles in Germany, suggested similar measures as the VDA to secure German predominance in Cisleithania.76 But other statements remained vague, declaring for instance that Germany should use its ‘moral power’ to influence Austria.77 As the Dresdner Nachrichten put it without further explanation: ‘There is a limit to restraint which is reached when it is about our own existence . . . A complete reorganization of the Austrian state also affects our future.’78 Many authors in fact argued rather in terms of

73

74

75 76

77 78

Paul Raabe to Jagow, 12 June 1915, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 36. Also see the enclosed manuscript ‘Tschechisierung von Deutsch-Böhmen mitten im Kriege!’ and Jagow’s reply, 17 June 1915, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 36. Practicus, ‘Oesterreichs Innere Linie’, February 1916, BHSA, MA 95070. Given its strong anti-Magyar tendency, it may well have been written by a Hungarian German. Also see F. Lezius, Deutschland und der Osten. Eine Denkschrift ([n.p.], 1918). Naumann, ‘Mitteleuropäische Literatur’, p. 175, with reference to Munin. See the following publications by R. Bahr: Von der Schicksals- zur Lebensgemeinschaft; ‘Das österreichische Problem’, DP, 20 July 1917, pp. 919–24; ‘Deutschösterreich und das Reich’, DP, 26 July 1918, pp. 943–6; ‘Der Wert des österreichischen Deutschtums’, BBZ, 3 November 1917. ‘Unangebrachte tschechische Forderungen’, DTZ, 29 July 1917. ‘Das neue österreichische Kabinett’, DrN, 8 September 1917.

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self-discipline and self-help, pointing to Austro-German party strife and suggesting the establishment of a unified national-political platform as the first and most important step towards a change for the better. Indeed, Austro-German disunity had long been identified as a major drawback given Czech, Polish, and South Slav party-political cooperation on a national basis.79 As Tschirschky’s deputy Prince Stolberg wrote to Bethmann Hollweg in November 1916, the Austro-Germans had always lacked ‘the necessary political talent, joint determination, and, above all, the right leaders’ to regain their apposite rank within the monarchy.80 The common guidelines of the DNV and the Christian Socials of September 1915 were heavily contested, and an arrangement with Austro-German Social Democracy was not found. In 1917, the Nationalverband even split up, divided inter alia by contradictory regional and socio-economic interests, the Polish question, and personal animosities. German informal (and even more, formal) interference in the domestic affairs of an allied state was in any case a problematic issue but what would it bring, it was reasoned, if the Austro-Germans were not even able to agree on a common line and form a coherent bloc to defend their interests? Furthermore, many Austro-German nationalists considered the creation of a political, economic, and military union with Germany, as well as the Austro-Polish scheme as important measures to bolster their standing in Cisleithania. They repeatedly attempted to persuade German decision-makers and the wider public in this sense. As seen, however, the large majority of the German national right was reluctant to cede Congress Poland to the Habsburg Monarchy, fearing unpredictable consequences for the Prussian East. It was also held that the exclusion of Galicia from Austrian affairs might indeed bring AustroGerman parliamentary majority (provided the German-speaking deputies opted for permanent cross-party collaboration) and permit proGerman political reforms (e.g. the division of Bohemia), but this was a matter of domestic Cisleithanian politics only, while the overall course of the monarchy would become unreliable under the influence of 79

80

For the Austro-German discussion, see, for example, R. Sieger, ‘Alpen- und Sudetendeutsche’, DA, April 1916, pp. 365–74; R. Sieger, ‘Zur nationalpolitischen Arbeitsteilung’, DA, August 1916, pp. 585–91; R. Slawitschek, ‘Programm und Parteien’, DA, December 1916, pp. 103–8; H. Ullmann, ‘Sammlung!’, DA, October 1917, pp. 1–5; R. Charmatz, ‘Zersplitterung deutscher Kräfte’, BBC, 30 October 1917; F. Jesser, ‘Was sollen die Deutschen in Österreich anstreben?’, ÖR, 15 August 1916, pp. 145–55; F. Jesser, ‘Deutschösterreichische Reichspolitik’, DA, November 1916, pp. 60–3; F. Jesser, ‘Die deutsche Gemeinschaft in Österreich. Ein offenes Wort in entscheidender Stunde’, DÖ, January 1918, pp. 217–20; P. Samassa, ‘Nationalpolitische Organisation’, DÖ, pp. 220–8. Stolberg to Bethmann Hollweg, 11 November 1916, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 346.

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ten million additional Slavs. Mitteleuropa clearly had a different significance for Reich Germans and Austro-Germans, and many centre-right opinion leaders were highly sceptical about closer ties with such an unstable multinational entity. Only a very few Germans seriously considered a political and economic union a means to influence Austrian domestic politics and improve the Austro-German position – a standpoint that was shared by the German government. Officials were of course well informed about the situation in the Habsburg Monarchy, receiving reports not just from Vienna and Budapest, but also from diplomats and envoys in Prague, Brünn (Brno), Trieste, Lemberg (Lviv), and several other cities. Already before August 1914, Ambassador Tschirschky had highlighted the necessity of structural reforms in Austria in favour of the German-speaking population, arguing that the cohesion and great-power status of the Danube Empire had to be protected against Slav pretensions.81 As he explained in January 1915, it was ‘a matter of self-preservation for the German Reich to maintain the glacis of the Germanic fortress in the centre of Europe’: ‘Germandom in Austria fulfils also in our interest the important task of domesticating the western Slavs in order to prevent them . . . from allying with the eastern Slavs against Germandom.’82 In late 1914, the ambassador together with the German consul in Prague Friedrich von Gebsattel (informally) campaigned for the dismissal of the Governor of Bohemia, former Austrian Prime Minister Prince Franz von Thun und Hohenstein, because of leniency towards Czech disloyalty and widespread Russophilism.83 The long-standing Saxon envoy to Vienna, Count Rudolf von Rex, expressed similar views. Outraged by the ‘flagrant disloyalty’ of several Czech troops, he hoped that Viennese decision-makers would finally realize that Austria ‘can only be governed in a German way’!84 At around the same time, in early December 1914, his Bavarian colleague Tucher wrote to Munich: ‘If the power of the Slavs in the North and South of the monarchy is not contained soon, Austria may well collapse even after a victorious outcome of the war, as only the Germanic element can hold this realm together.’85 81

82 83 84 85

See, for example, Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 18 November 1912, in GPEK, XXXIII: Der Erste Balkankrieg 1912 (1926), pp. 366–71; Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 11 March 1914, PAAA, Österreich 91, vol. 17; Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 2 July 1914, in Geiss (ed.), Julikrise, I, pp. 65–9. Tschirschky to Helfferich, 24 January 1915, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 6/II. Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 1 December 1914, and Gebsattel to Bethmann Hollweg, 20 December 1914, both PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 35. Rex to Vitzthum, 6 December 1914, SLHA, AM 2082. Report Tucher, 8 December 1914, BHSA, MA 2481/2. Also see his reports of 20 December 1915, BHSA, MA 2481/3, and of 22 November 1916, BHSA, MA 2481/4.

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The question attracted new attention in connection with the Polish problem in the second half of 1915. As seen in the previous chapter, in their dealings with Austro-Hungarian representatives, Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg and State Secretary Jagow objected to the ‘Slavization’ of the Habsburg Monarchy, arguing that such an entity would not represent a reliable ally any longer and insisting on a German course. Jagow’s memorandum of November 1915, which held that Austro-German predominance was a vital question for Germany, had in fact been greatly influenced by Tschirschky.86 As for the Kaiser, he had repeatedly expressed strong anti-Slav views before the war. In his opinion, Austria could not be ‘ruled in the Czech fashion, nor the Bohemian, nor the Magyar, as has been tried, but only in the German’!87 When Wilhelm II visited Vienna in late 1915, he raised the issue in talks with Franz Joseph, Crown Prince Karl, Stürgkh, Burián, and other officials, heavily criticizing the Czechs and demanding that the Germans in Austria regain preponderance again, for instance by banning persons who do not speak German from becoming civil servants (in both Austria and Hungary).88 In September 1916, Tschirschky wrote a long report about the conditions in the Habsburg Monarchy, highlighting the pessimism among the population, the difficult economic situation, and the antagonism between Budapest and Vienna: ‘The longer the war lasts, the more acute becomes the anxious question of how much longer the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy will be able to stand the fight, economically as well as militarily.’ The ambassador concluded that the German government would have to get involved: Wilhelm should influence Franz Joseph (via Karl) to elect an energetic personality who would put an end to the deplorable situation and provide Austrian Germandom with a leading position again: ‘I believe that it is up to us to stabilize the situation here. Otherwise, we run the danger that the monarchy suddenly sickens, pulling down the German Reich with it.’89 The chancellor forwarded the report to the Kaiser and Hindenburg. Having gained a similarly gloomy impression of the atmosphere of despair and resignation during a visit to Vienna, Bethmann stressed that Tschirschky would not ‘paint too blackly’, equally suggesting a change of government in Austria, preferably 86 87 88 89

Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 25 October 1914, PAAA, Österreich 104, vol. 13; Tschirschky to Foreign Office, 9 November 1915, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 2. Marginal comments on a report by Tschirschky, 20 November 1912; quoted from Röhl, Wilhelm II, p. 893. Treutler to Foreign Office, 1 November 1915, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4; Treutler to Bethmann Hollweg, 29 November 1915, in SG, I, pp. 226–9. Tschirschky to Bethmann Hollweg, 28 September 1916, in SG, I, pp. 477–81 (pp. 478, 481). Also see already Tschirschky’s report of 8 September 1916, PAAA, Österreich 86, No. 2, vol. 21.

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replacing Prime Minister Stürgkh with Archduke Eugen and, if possible, Foreign Minister Burián with Counts Gyula Andrássy or Miklós Szécsen.90 The German High Command followed Austro-Hungarian developments very closely, too, increasingly getting involved in political matters and expressing strong views as to the future of the GermanAustrian relationship. Falkenhayn’s Mitteleuropa scheme of late 1915 had included ideas of a German-dominated military convention. While he was less concerned with internal affairs, Bardolff’s initiative prompted Hindenburg in September 1916 to turn to the domestic situation in the Danube Empire. In rather vague terms, the Generalfeldmarschall expressed his conviction that without reforms the monarchy was doomed. It would be Germany’s ‘duty’ to ‘help’ and ‘mediate’ in the recovery, but first it was necessary to gain a better understanding of the problem and of potential remedies.91 However, following Franz Joseph’s promise of November 1916 to establish Galician autonomy in order to compensate the Austrian Poles for the negated unification with Congress Poland, Hindenburg was much more outspoken and furiously complained to Bethmann Hollweg about ‘Austria’s cabal’, declaring that: The maxim of non-intervention in the internal affairs of Austria-Hungary, before and during the war, has made the conduct of war extremely difficult for us. If we further recoil from interference in matters which affect our interests, we can give up all hopes for Austria-Hungary’s consolidation and the question can then be raised why we fight for Austria at all.92

In July 1917, General von Seeckt warned Hindenburg against the federalization of Austria, which would strengthen the anti-German, war-weary forces and endanger the alliance, proposing pro-German reforms by extra-parliamentary decree instead. Afraid of revolutionary tendencies and Reich German tutelage, Emperor Karl would be an unreliable partner and most likely yield to Slav demands to settle domestic unrest.93 Clearly, the German military leaders’ engagement with the Cisleithanian question was not spurred by national sympathy with Austrian Germandom but by a more general concern about the domestic stability of the ally and the repercussions of Austro-Hungarian political acts on 90 91 92

93

Bethmann Hollweg to Wilhelm II, 16 August 1916, in SG, I, pp. 433–5, and Bethmann Hollweg to Wilhelm II, 30 September 1916, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4. Hindenburg to Bethmann Hollweg, 19 September 1916, PAAA, Deutschland 180 secr., vol. 4. Hindenburg to Bethmann Hollweg, 7 November 1916, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4. Also see Grünau to Foreign Office, 6 November 1916, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4. Seeckt to Hindenburg, 22 July 1917, reprinted in Meier-Welcker, ‘Die Beurteilung der politischen Lage’, pp. 99–104.

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Germany: Hindenburg was afraid that Galician autonomy would encourage similar demands by the Poles in Prussia, and Seeckt expected the Slavized realm to betray Germany. Research has paid a lot of attention to such statements and highlighted Germany’s attempts to ‘subordinate’ the Habsburg ally and to bolster Austrian Germandom against Slav ambitions.94 However, what has been neglected is that following indignant reactions by Austro-Hungarian diplomats and decision-makers, Berlin soon abstained from raising the issue in official negotiations, a point made earlier in connection with the Polish question. In September 1916, Bethmann Hollweg replied to Hindenburg’s first letter that recent experiences had shown that it was ‘completely pointless’ to confer about structural domestic reforms with the politicians in charge, especially Emperor Franz Joseph. Bardolff’s Greater Austrian scheme would be hardly realizable against Hungarian resistance; any solution would have to be founded on German and Magyar predominance in the two halves. In case an improvement of the situation within the monarchy was not attainable during the war, one could – but only as a last resort and given the right international political circumstances – refuse a renewal of the alliance treaty, unless Vienna agreed to ‘accommodate our demands’. At the moment, however, such measures would be ‘extremely risky’: Austria-Hungary could well choose a separate peace with the enemies to escape Reich German supremacy.95 While the chancellor did support Tschirschky’s suggestion to work towards the dismissal of Stürgkh and Burián, he clearly rejected Hindenburg’s demand for a renunciation of the doctrine of nonintervention: ‘I consider attempts to curtail the sovereignty of the Danube Monarchy . . . politically impracticable and harmful.’ Germany would neither have the power nor the means to influence Austrian politics in favour of the German-speaking population, which would, as he stressed again, only estrange Vienna.96 The Kaiser, too, seemed less inclined to interfere in Habsburg affairs than one year before. Asked by Tschirschky (and Bethmann Hollweg) to try to influence the heir apparent, Wilhelm in fact replied that he would have to think about this request 94

95 96

Sweet, ‘Germany, Austria-Hungary and Mitteleuropa’; J. Korˇ alka, ‘Die Haltung des Deutschen Reiches zu den nationalstaatlichen Bestrebungen in Zisleithanien (April bis Oktober 1918)’, in R.G. Plaschka and K. Mack (eds.), Die Auflösung des Habsburgerreiches. Zusammenbruch und Neuorientierung im Donauraum (Munich, 1970), pp. 209–18; Gonda, Verfall der Kaiserreiche; Shanafelt, Secret Enemy; Mommsen, ‘Das Deutsche Reich und Österreich-Ungarn’; Kovács, Untergang oder Rettung. Stimulating: Höbelt, ‘Die deutschen Parteien’. Bethmann Hollweg to Hindenburg, 29 September 1916, in SG, I, pp. 482–4 (pp. 483–4). Bethmann Hollweg to Grünau, 10 November 1916, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4.

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‘very carefully’, as it would amount to ‘the takeover of Austria’s government and politics’.97 In the end, the Kaiser did discuss these matters with Karl after an exchange about the Polish question. The Crown Prince also seemed far from enthusiastic about Stürgkh and Burián and suggested former Prime Minister Konrad zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst as Stürgkh’s successor and Szécsen or Konrad’s brother, the ambassador in Berlin, as the new foreign minister. Wilhelm concluded his report to Bethmann by saying that he did his best to convince Karl to become active, but that there was no guarantee for that.98 This incident seems to have been the last time that the German Kaiser interfered in Austrian domestic affairs. As for the German High Command, it became increasingly apprehensive of Habsburg war-weariness but did not consider an ‘intervention’ to implement a German course. Hindenburg and Ludendorff showed generally little regard for the situation and needs of the ally and were primarily interested in extending Imperial Germany’s power through a (unilateral) policy of force and conquest. Ludendorff merely mulled over means to influence and stimulate Austrian public opinion, to instigate optimism in a victorious outcome of war, and to counter anti-German tendencies by highlighting Germany’s economic and military help for the ally (for instance in the Austrian press).99 The Károlyi affair has to be seen in this context, too – it was not part of a more sustained, long-term strategy to get involved in and direct AustroHungarian internal affairs. Moreover, the second half of 1916 saw a change of personnel amongst civilian policy-makers and diplomats. State Secretary Jagow and Ambassador Tschirschky had repeatedly expressed anti-Slav views and promoted pro-German reforms in Cisleithania. Tschirschky, however, died in November 1916, and Jagow was dismissed from office one week later. His successor, Arthur Zimmermann, a favourite of the OHL and supporter of unrestricted submarine warfare, was much less concerned with Habsburg developments, while Richard von Kühlmann, who followed him in August 1917, pursued a relatively moderate foreign policy course and was on good terms with the new Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Czernin, who had replaced the obstinate Burián in 97 98

99

Wilhelm II to Bethmann Hollweg, 1 October 1916, in SG, I, pp. 487–8 (p. 487). ‘Unterhaltung Seiner Majestät des Kaisers und Königs mit Seiner Kaiserlichen Hoheit dem Erzherzog-Thronfolger und mit Graf Berchtold’, 9 October 1916, in SG, I, pp. 513–15. On these efforts and growing tensions between Berlin and Vienna in late 1916, see also Rauchensteiner, Weltkrieg, pp. 614–28. Ludendorff to Michaelis, 22 July 1917, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 51; Ludendorff to Foreign Office, 10 February 1918, PAAA, Großes Hauptquartier, No. 23, vol. 4. Also see Wrisberg to Foreign Office, 2 May 1918, and Kühlmann to Wedel, 31 May 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 425.

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late December.100 In addition, Botho von Wedel, Tschirschky’s successor as German ambassador, seemed more open-minded and sympathetic to the views and needs of his host country.101 In a talk with Prime Minister von Koerber in December 1916, Wedel openly expressed Germany’s disapproval of Slav disloyalty and Vienna’s patience. Berlin would expect strict measures to ‘contain the Slav flood’, preferably by decree without parliamentary consent.102 By mid-1917, however, the ambassador had recognized the impossibility of introducing or imposing German centralism in Austria, probably influenced by the Austro-Slav demands at the reopening of the Reichsrat. Given the inevitability of constitutional reforms in Austria towards national autonomy, he wrote to Bethmann Hollweg, it would be necessary to prepare the Reich German public and make it understand that the Austro-Slavs were not a ‘quantité négligeable’. The coalition could not rest on national kinship alone but would have to appeal to all nationalities in Austria-Hungary. Kaiser Wilhelm’s marginal note on this report read ‘good, and important’.103 A week later, Wedel rejected a VDA request for a more proactive press policy and insisted that intervention in Austro-Hungarian affairs would alienate the Slavs and Magyars, thus endangering the alliance.104 Highlighting the Habsburg Empire’s value as a military ally, as a Mediterranean naval base, as well as a source of important raw materials (Galician oil), the ambassador repeatedly argued for a different, more sympathetic and considerate attitude towards Vienna. One could only keep Austria ‘in line’ by encouragement, by showing an understanding for its difficulties, but above all by pointing to valuable war gains and emphasizing the importance of German support. Most important, however, were veritable military victories.105 The new Saxon envoy Alfred von Nostitz-Wallwitz, appointed in June 1916 after Count Rex’s death, held similar views. A cosmopolitan homme de lettres with excellent connections, he was married to the renowned writer Helene von Nostitz (Hindenburg’s niece) and a close friend of Harry Kessler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Nostitz quickly established himself as a prominent German representative in Vienna, constantly working for better relations 100 101 102 103

104 105

J. Hürter, ‘Die Staatssekretäre des Auswärtigen Amtes im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Michalka (ed.), Der Erste Weltkrieg, pp. 216–51. See, for example, Wedel to Zimmermann, 28 December 1916, in SG, I, pp. 646–8. Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 5 December 1916, PAAA, Österreich 86, No. 2., vol. 21. Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 1 July 1917, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 51. Also see Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 26 June 1917, and Wedel to Hertling, 12 February 1918, PAAA, Österreich 91, vol. 17. Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 9 July 1917, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22. Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 12 June 1917, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 51; Wedel to Hertling, 24 January 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 23.

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and not refraining from contradicting Count Vitzthum von Eckstädt, the Saxon Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs.106 In a private letter of November 1916, Vitzthum expressed strong misgivings about a federalization of the neighbouring empire. The establishment of an autonomous Czech entity on Saxony’s borders could incite the Sorbs (a Slav ethnic minority in Lusatia) and amount to a renunciation of German leadership in Austria, undermining ‘our position in European affairs’.107 In his reply, Nostitz, however, rejected centralistic reforms and the idea of ‘reckless German hegemony’. Exerting Reich German pressure would accelerate the dissolution process of the Habsburg Monarchy rather than prevent it. Whereas Tschirschky had been influenced by Pan-German ideas and been unreceptive to rational arguments, Ambassador Wedel would share his own views.108 Even though Vitzthum remained sceptical about federal reforms (preferring some sort of German leadership instead) and was particularly anxious about Czech autonomy, Nostitz continued to follow a more understanding and tolerant approach in Vienna than his predecessor.109 Obviously, Austrian internal affairs would not have caused greater interest and concern amongst German politicians and publicists if it had not been for their repercussions on Vienna’s foreign policy, the conduct of war, and prospects for victory. Clearly, a domestically unstable ally was an unreliable partner. Flour and bread had become scarce as early as autumn 1914, and ration cards for fat, milk, sugar, and coffee had to be introduced the following year. The first food riots in Vienna took place in May 1915.110 In October 1916, Tucher described the lack of foodstuffs, highlighting in particular Austro-Hungarian tensions and the inefficiency of the administration: ‘I am convinced that Austria-Hungary cannot be helped under its current rulers. A rescue can only come from a whole new set of statesmen – whether they will really succeed is an open question.’111 106

107 108 109

110

111

Both envoys criticized Stürgkh, but in contrast to Tschirschky did not propose German interference in Austrian affairs. See Rex to Vitzthum, 23 October 1915, SLHA, AM 1803, and Nostitz to Vitzthum, 4 September 1916, SLHA, AM 1797. Vitzthum to Nostitz, 23 November 1916, SLHA, AM 1803. Nostitz to Vitzthum, 4 December 1916, SLHA, AM 1803. Vitzthum to Nostitz, 8 December 1916, SLHA, AM 1803. Also see Nostitz’s letters of 11 July 1917, 1 August 1917, and August/September 1917, in Opitz and Adlgasser (eds.), Zerfall der europäischen Mitte, pp. 41–5, 52–4, 55–9. On the economy, see R.J. Wegs, Die österreichische Kriegswirtschaft 1914–1918 (Vienna, 1979); M.-S. Schulze, ‘Austria-Hungary’s Economy in World War I’, in S. Broadberry and M. Harrison (eds.), The Economics of World War I (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 77–111; Wandruszka et al. (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, XI/2: Weltkriegsstatistik Österreich-Ungarn 1914–1918. Bevölkerungsbewegung, Kriegstote, Kriegswirtschaft (2014). Tucher’s reports of 8 and 17 October 1916, BHSA, MA 2481/4 (quote from the second letter).

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Tschirschky had drafted his long report against this background. Shortly before his own death, when expressing condolences for Stürgkh’s demise, the ambassador directly criticized high-ranking Austrian officials for their policy of ‘leniency’ and poor management of the food situation, emphasizing that he felt obliged to state these things in the name of the 65 million Germans who would also fight for the Austro-Hungarian cause.112 Since late 1916, Austro-Hungarian decision-makers warned their German colleagues that the empire was exhausted and, given insufficient food, raw materials, and human capital, would not be able to continue the war much longer. In October 1916, Burián had proposed new peace negotiations on this ground, which led to the joint initiative of December.113 In March 1917, his successor Czernin repeatedly pointed to the growing war-weariness of the lower classes and proRussian tendencies amongst many Slavs, arguing that the monarchy could hardly maintain the war effort beyond autumn and calling for a compromise peace with as little annexations as possible: ‘Our weeks and months are numbered.’114 The foreign minister reiterated these points in his famous April memorandum for Kaiser Karl, who forwarded the exposé two days later to Wilhelm II. In his accompanying letter, Karl wrote: ‘We fight against a new enemy, who is more threatening than the Entente: it is the international revolution which finds its strongest ally in the hunger crisis.’115 It was during these weeks that the AustroHungarian emperor secretly wrote to his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, with the promise to influence the Germans to return Alsace-Lorraine to France and to restore Belgian independence, thus facilitating a peace of understanding.116 Nostitz and Tucher confirmed 112 113

114

115

116

Report Hoffmann, 22 October 1916, BHSA, MA 2481/4. ‘Das Friedensangebot der Mittelmächte vom 12. Dezember 1916’, in UF, I, pp. 68–9. See W. Steglich, Bündnissicherung oder Verständigungsfrieden. Untersuchungen zu dem Friedensangebot der Mittelmächte vom 12. Dezember 1916 (Göttingen, 1958), and Fischer, Griff, pp. 377–401. ‘Aufzeichnung über eine am 16. März 1917 unter dem Vorsitze seiner Exzellenz des Herrn k.u.k. Ministers des Äußern Ottokar Grafen Czernin stattgehabten Besprechung’, in SG, II, pp. 32–9; ‘Sitzung vom 26. März 1917’, 26 March 1917, in SG, II, pp. 50–60 (quote on p. 53); Zimmermann to Lersner, 28 March 1917, PAAA, Großes Hauptquartier, No. 23, vol. 2; Wedel to Foreign Office, 31 March 1917, in SG, II, p. 73. For the full exchange, see Grünau to Bethmann Hollweg, 14 April 1917, in SG, II, pp. 103–8 (quote on p. 104). Also see Hohenlohe to Bethmann Hollweg, 29 April 1917, in SG, II, pp. 165–6. See Karl’s letters of 24 March and 9 May 1917, in UF, II, pp. 89–90, 90–1. On AustriaHungary’s ‘new men’ and their peace efforts since December 1916, see Steglich, Friedenspolitik; Meckling, Aussenpolitik, pp. 7–164, 221–49; Shanafelt, Secret Enemy, pp. 97–148; Benedikt (ed.), Friedensaktion der Meinlgruppe; Broucek, Karl I. (IV.).

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that the domestic situation in Austria had worsened further because of economic hardship and ethnic tensions. Austro-Slavs and Social Democrats would demand federal reforms and highly disapprove of Germany’s expansionist war aims.117 Viktor Naumann, too, reported that the food situation was critical. To the Bavarian Crown Prince, he wrote that Austria-Hungary needed a peace as soon as possible, or else both Central European monarchies would fall.118 The German civilian and military leadership, however, reacted with surprise and disbelief to this alarming news. The OHL, the Navy General Staff, the German Kaiser, and Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg all pointed to the successes of unrestricted submarine warfare and warned against demonstrating weakness. Showing an imprudent and hasty readiness for peace would only backfire and further encourage the Entente to carry on its efforts against the Central Powers. The situation in Germany would be excellent, while France showed signs of exhaustion and revolutionary Russia was unlikely to maintain military order and resistance for much longer.119 Interestingly, Wedel disagreed with the pessimistic assessment of his Saxon and Bavarian colleagues, and the views of the ambassador were, of course, of much more significance than the reports for Dresden and Munich. In his view, Kaiser Karl was surrounded by defeatist politicians and personalities: ‘Everyone speaks to him of the danger of revolution; no wonder that he is getting anxious.’120 These worries would be greatly exaggerated, and an unfavourable peace at all costs would only lead to disappointment and domestic instability.121 As mentioned earlier, Wedel however changed his views by July, realizing the severity of the domestic crisis and the prevalence of the longing for peace, even though he kept on criticizing Karl and his entourage.122 Indeed, the Austro-Hungarian emperor and his foreign minister continued to stress the difficult situation on the home front and to campaign 117

118 119

120 121 122

See, for example, the reports by Nostitz of 30 April 1917 and 5 May 1917, in Opitz and Adlgasser (eds.), Zerfall der europäischen Mitte, pp. 22–8, 28–33; Report Tucher, 28 April 1917, BHSA, MA 2481/5; Emil Ludwig for Zimmermann, 3 July 1917, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 51. ‘Aus einem Bericht an Kronprinz Rupprecht’, 16 June 1917, in V. Naumann, Dokumente, pp. 458–60 (p. 458). Grünau to Foreign Office, 19 April 1917; Holtzendorff to Zimmermann, 18 April 1917; Bethmann Hollweg to Wilhelm II, 4 May 1917; Wilhelm II to Karl, 11 May 1917; Note Wilhelm II, 15 May 1917. Also see Ludendorff’s assessment of 14 September 1917, all in SG, II, pp. 130–1, 122–4, 169–72, 191, 201–2, 431–5. Wedel to Zimmermann, 8 April 1917, in SG, II, pp. 84–6 (p. 84). Wedel to Bethmann Hollweg, 18 April 1917, and Wedel to Foreign Office, 19 April 1917, in SG, II, pp. 126–8, 128. Wedel to Foreign Office, 15 May 1917; Wedel to Foreign Office, 30 June 1917; Wedel to Michaelis, 20 July 1917, all in SG, II, pp. 203, 248–9, 272–4.

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for a negotiated peace, even offering Galicia (for inclusion in a Germandominated Poland) to compensate for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. The non-German nationalities in particular would not comprehend why the Habsburg Monarchy was still fighting and increasingly saw in Germany an obstacle to peace.123 Berlin, however, did not yield, even though high-ranking officials did (internally) acknowledge the rising warweariness and anti-German atmosphere in Austria-Hungary, and grew nervous about the possibility of a separate peace.124 Georg Michaelis, the former head of the Reichsgetreidestelle and successor to Bethmann Hollweg, was inexperienced in the field of high politics and thus an ideal candidate from the point of view of the German High Command. In his dealings with Austro-Hungarian policy-makers, he backed the OHL’s assessment of the military and international situation and warned against boosting the morale of the enemy by making precipitate offers or desperately putting out peace feelers.125 Vienna should follow the German example, demonstrating steadfastness and unwavering determination. As the High Command stated very clearly in connection with the papal peace initiative (August/September 1917): ‘Austria is in crisis . . . The mood is depressed, the energy low . . . The main burden is on Germany. It all depends on our attitude.’126 State Secretary Kühlmann, on the other hand, was determined not to let Vienna take the initiative in matters of peace-making and international relations, especially where Austro-Hungarian interests were hardly relevant, as in the case of Belgium or Alsace-Lorraine.127 As a consequence, the relationship between the allies deteriorated further, already strained by disagreements over the Polish question and the Central European project. In the Austrian press and in parliament, left-wing Socialists and followers of Julius Meinl and Heinrich Lammasch criticized Berlin’s ‘lunatic warmongering’, submarine warfare, and German annexationism. This would prolong the war and together with the widespread anti-Slav rhetoric greatly destabilize the Habsburg 123 124

125 126 127

Karl to Wilhelm II, 7 June 1917; Note [1 August 1917]; Cramon to Michaelis, 10 October 1917, all in SG, II, pp. 224–5, 296–306, 497–9. Grünau to Foreign Office, 27 June 1917, in SG, II, pp. 244–5; Zimmermann to Grünau, 28 June 1917, in SG, II, p. 245 fn. 5; ‘Sitzung des Staatsministeriums am 2. Juli 1917’, in Kocka and Neugebauer (eds.), Protokolle, X, p. 191. Also see the meeting of 4 September 1917, in SG, II, pp. 391–406. Michaelis to Czernin, 17 August 1917, in SG, II, pp. 346–9. ‘Die päpstliche Friedensnote und ihre Folgen’, forwarded by Lersner to Michaelis on 11 September 1917, in SG, II, pp. 413–20. Kühlmann to Michaelis, 30 August 1917, in SG, II, pp. 378–80; ‘Besuch in Wien’, 2 September 1917, in SG, II, pp. 381–5. Also see his note of 3 September, in SG, II, pp. 387–90. On German reactions to Austro-Hungarian peace requests between April and August 1917, see also Fischer, Griff, pp. 459–63, 473–6, 530–43.

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entity.128 As Wedel reported to Berlin in July: ‘One cannot talk of resentment any longer; rancour and hate are the proper terms to describe the present feelings.’129 In his diary, Arthur Schnitzler also noted a rise in anti-German views and sentiments amongst friends and acquaintances.130 Since late 1916, the writer had detected growing ‘hate against Germany’, in particular against Wilhelm II because of his aggressive and tactless behaviour.131 Baron Tucher similarly observed an aggravation of the situation. Fortunately enough, he reported back to Munich, this resentment was aimed in particular at Prussia; the Bavarians were still very popular in Vienna and should exploit this circumstance to counter the influence of North German companies such as the HamburgAmerika-Linie and the Norddeutscher Lloyd.132 In the following weeks, however, he became increasingly concerned about Czernin’s position and the influence of anti-German circles in court and society.133 There were, of course, moments of pro-German euphoria, as in the wake of the Romanian invasion of Transylvania and the relatively quick overthrow of the aggressor. Similarly, following the first victories during the Battle of Caporetto, Tucher in late October 1917 reported that the news was greeted with excitement and pride in Austria: ‘Vienna is emblazoned with flags, including many German colours. Where music bands play the audience demands to hear the Austrian and the German anthems, and listens to them solemnly – the atmosphere reminds of the outbreak of 128

129

130

131 132 133

Redlich, Schicksalsjahre, II: Tagebücher Josef Redlichs 1915–1936, p. 346 (13 October 1917). The major discussion in the Österreichische Politische Gesellschaft about the peace question and internal political reforms in July 1917, with contributions from Lammasch, Redlich, Šmeral, Foerster, and others, attracted a lot of attention: Österreich und der Friede. Verständigung unter den Völkern Österreichs (Vienna, 1917). See also ‘Die Imperialisten hindern den Frieden’, AZ, 28 April 1917; J. Ude, ‘Friede in Sicht’, AZ, 24 July 1917; ‘Nach drei Jahren’, AZ, 1 August 1917; H. Lammasch, ‘Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie und der Friede’, NFP, 17 July 1917; H. Lammasch, ‘Unsere Antwort auf die päpstliche Note zum Frieden’, NFP, 2 September 1917; J. Meinl, ‘Das Bündnis mit dem Deutschen Reich’, Zeit, 30 September 1917; ‘Unsere Kriegsziele. Eine Friedenskundgebung vor dem vierten Kriegswinter’, NWJ, 19 August 1917; ‘Berliner Polemiken gegen den Grafen Czernin’, Reichspost, 15 December 1917; H. Pachnicke, ‘Die Vaterlandspartei’, Reichspost, 29 December 1917. Wedel to Michaelis, 22 July 1917, in SG, II, pp. 276–83 (p. 276). Also see already his letters to Bethmann Hollweg of 15 April, 9 and 11 May 1917, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 22, and to the Foreign Office of 16 July 1917, in SG, II, pp. 267–8. See the entries of 1 June, 6 July, 16 July, 17 July, 1 August, and 15 August 1917, in A. Schnitzler, Tagebuch 1917–1919, ed. by W. Welzig (Vienna, 1985), pp. 52, 57, 61, 64, 68, and 72. Schnitzler, Tagebuch 1913–1916, p. 322 (21 October 1916). Report Tucher, 11 July 1917, BHSA, MA 2481/5. Reports Tucher of 4 and 25 August 1917, BHSA, MA 2481/5, and of 1 March 1918, BHSA, MA 2481/6.

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war.’134 Moreover, Georg von Hertling’s appointment as German chancellor in November 1917 was welcomed by conservative-clerical Austrian papers (who highlighted his previous role as Bavarian minister-president and leader of the Catholic Centre Party) and liberal broadsheets (as a chancellor with parliamentary backing) alike. According to Tucher, Czernin, too, expressed his satisfaction: ‘On the whole, I only hear satisfied and optimistic statements. As Bavaria’s representative I have been congratulated many times and greeted with the words: Forward Bavaria, at the front and in the Reich.’135 However, such episodes were temporary and short-lived. Indeed, following a longer stay in the Habsburg Monarchy in autumn 1917, the German liberal journalist Bernhard Guttmann in a talk with State Secretary Kühlmann described the situation in Austria as ‘dull’: Everywhere just the feeling of imminent collapse. The resentment against Germany was very evident in Vienna; it often turns into hate. The genuine blackyellows consider Germany a misfortune for their state. In their opinion, the alliance has taken a wrong path; Austria should have taken the diplomatic lead as the whole world has sympathy for it, whereas Prussia is unpopular everywhere. The petite bourgeoisie complains that it is starving because Germany does not want to relinquish Alsace-Lorraine – is that Austria’s business? The nationalist Germans, however, and this view is shared by some Social Democrats, argue that Germany is crazy to sacrifice itself for a cadaver.136

On 9 August 1918, seven Italian planes under the command of the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio famously dropped leaflets over Vienna, trying to exploit such anti-German sentiments and to drive a wedge between the allies: ‘Viennese! . . . Since you put on the Prussian uniform you have sunk to the level of a Berlin brute and the whole world has turned against you. Do you want to continue the war? Do it, if you want to commit suicide!’ A second leaflet similarly spoke of a ‘Prussian war of conquest, plundering, and subjugation’ and proposed an end to the military conflict: ‘This peace shall not bring a greedy, mistrustful, violent, and unjust MittelEuropa but a full and lasting harmony between nations for our mutual benefit.’137 However, whereas Czechs and South Slavs increasingly turned against Germany and demanded a break of the alliance, the Austro-German peace movement was aimed more specifically against the German Supreme Command and annexationist circles such as the UA and the DVLP. 134 135 136 137

Report Tucher, 30 October 1917, BHSA, MA 2481/5. Report Tucher, 6 November 1917, BHSA, MA 2481/5. B. Guttmann, Schattenriss einer Generation 1888–1919 (Stuttgart, 1950), pp. 145–6 (diary entry of 20 November 1917). The leaflets were attached to Tucher’s report of 10 August 1918, BHSA, Wien 2289.

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In Germany, on the other hand, right-wing observers heavily criticized Austria-Hungary’s ‘pacifistic fantasies’ and ideas of returning AlsaceLorraine to France and relinquishing Belgium.138 As Count Bothmer from the DVLP declared at a deutschnational and anti-Czech gathering in Vienna in December 1917: ‘We fight for common aims, we defend the branches [Lungenflügel] of Germandom from Antwerp to Trieste. What we protect in the West is not Alsace-Lorraine but the free trade route from Antwerp to Baghdad.’139 The national right was greatly concerned about the ally’s dire economic and financial situation, mismanagement, and warweariness, and afraid that Emperor Karl would yield to such demands out of fear of a revolution and Slav separatism.140 However, many German Social Democrats, left liberals, and more and more Catholics, too, shared Czernin’s public calls for a new international order, disarmament, as well as a negotiated peace without annexations, and later considered AustriaHungary’s moderate stance in Brest-Litovsk a model for Berlin.141 They sympathized with the Austrian peace movement and repeatedly referred to the situation in the Habsburg Monarchy in order to support their own demands for a peace of understanding. For example, Matthias Erzberger, an advocate of wide-ranging war aims and unrestricted submarine warfare in the first half of the war, knew of Czernin’s pessimistic memorandum of April 1917 and had even met the foreign minister and Kaiser Karl in Vienna to discuss the situation in Austria-Hungary. He later used this information to convince critics within the Centre Party that the Reichstag 138

139 140

141

‘Österreichische Phantastereien’, BNN, 3 October 1917. Also see W. Bacmeister, ‘Die Unbelehrbaren’, GD, 14 April 1917, pp. 449–60; ‘Österreich-Ungarn und wir’, KVZ, 28 April 1917; E. R[eventlow], ‘Die Bemühungen des Grafen Czernin’, DTZ, 24 May 1917; ‘Kaiser Karls Thronrede’, TR, 1 June 1917; ‘Kaiser Karls Pfingstbotschaft’, BNN, 2 June 1917; ‘Unerbetene pazifistische Ratgeber’, HN, 7 September 1917; ‘Ein gefährliches Spiel’, MNN, 19 September 1917; ‘Die politische Entwicklung in Österreich’, KVZ, 20 October 1917, ‘Die politische Lage in Österreich’, KVZ, 16 November 1917; ‘Graf Czernin und die österreichischen Maximalisten’, BNN, 19 January 1918; E. R[eventlow] ‘Das Programm Czernins’, DTZ, 24 January 1918; ‘O du mein Österreich!’, SZ, 24 February 1918; ‘Wiener Pazifismus’, TR, 14 March 1918; ‘Graf Czernin der Friedensvermittler’, DZ, 3 April 1918. ‘Für einen ehrenvollen Frieden. Die deutsche Massenversammlung im Musikvereinssaal’, Fremden-Blatt, 11 December 1917. See, for example, G. Stresemann, ‘Berichterstattung über die politische Lage’ (23 September 1917), in K.-P. Reiß (ed.), Von Bassermann zu Stresemann. Die Sitzungen des nationalliberalen Zentralvorstandes 1912–1917 (Düsseldorf, 1967), pp. 309–51. See, for example, F.W. Foerster, ‘Nicht Macht, sondern Recht’, AZ, 31 May 1917; F.W. Foerster, ‘Antwort an meine Kritiker’, MP, 24 January 1918; ‘Demokratie und Frieden’, Vorwärts, 1 June 1917; ‘Der Friedenswille in Österreich’, Vorwärts, 5 July 1917; ‘Österreich-Ungarn!’, Vorwärts, 21 January 1918; ‘Graf Czernin in Berlin’, BT, 8 December 1917; ‘Für Brot und Frieden’, MP, 21 January 1918; Editorial, FZ, 3 April 1918.

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Peace Resolution (19 July 1917) had been justified and necessary.142 As is well known, this parliamentary declaration – prompted by the disappointing results of unrestricted submarine warfare, growing domestic unrest, and fears of a spillover of Russian revolutionary upheaval – had no immediate bearing on German decision-making. Under the influence of the German High Command, Berlin continued to ignore Vienna’s requests for a compromise peace based on the status quo ante bellum, and its rigid position in Brest-Litovsk was one of the main triggers (in addition to reduced food rations) for the Austro-Hungarian strike movement in January 1918, which involved 600,000 workers in Cisleithania alone and was followed by the naval mutiny at Cattaro (Kotor).143 Germany experienced similar mass demonstrations and walkouts, partly encouraged by the events in the allied realm. The radical-socialist Spartakusbund in fact asked German labourers to follow the example of Vienna and Budapest: ‘Let us go on mass strike! Let us fight! The Austro-Hungarian proletariat has shown its power . . . Working women and men! Let us finish what our Austro-Hungarian brothers have begun! The power of decision over war and peace lies with the German proletariat!’144 For Kühlmann, who had a hard time contesting the expansionist demands of the OHL, the critical situation in the Habsburg Monarchy vindicated his more moderate standpoint and support of the Austro-Polish solution. In late January, he wrote to Hertling: ‘In my opinion, an Austrian separate peace would be the beginning of the end for us.’145 Reporting from Vienna, Ambassador Wedel insisted similarly: ‘We cannot change the people here; we must take Emperor Karl and his officials the way they are. We also have to understand the Austrian people. The Austrians reject a war which goes beyond a war of defence.’146 In a much disputed Herrenhaus speech of late February, Heinrich Lammasch, one of the foremost supporters of 142

143 144 145 146

See Erzberger, Erlebnisse, pp. 116–22; K. Epstein, Matthias Erzberger and the Dilemma of German Democracy (Princeton, NJ, 1959); pp. 193–5, 210, and 229–31; Meckling, Aussenpolitik, pp. 128–33. On the Reichstag Peace Resolution and its consequences, see W. Ribhegge, Frieden für Europa. Die Politik der deutschen Reichstagsmehrheit 1917–1918 (Essen, 1988), and E.-A. Seils, Weltmachtstreben und Kampf für den Frieden. Der deutsche Reichstag im Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt/M., 2011), pp. 301–438. On Czernin’s efforts to use his contacts in Germany to influence Berlin’s foreign policy, see Meckling, Aussenpolitik, pp. 153–61, and Rauchensteiner, Weltkrieg, pp. 789–91 and 799–805. Also see P. Hanák, ‘Die Volksmeinung während des letzten Kriegsjahres in ÖsterreichUngarn’, in Plaschka and Mack (eds.), Auflösung des Habsburgerreiches, pp. 58–66. ‘Streikaufruf der Spartakus-Gruppe, Ende Januar 1918’, in UF, I, pp. 242–4 (pp. 242–3). Kühlmann to Hertling, 30 January 1918, in SG, III, pp. 311–3 (p. 313). Wedel to Hertling, 17 January 1918, PAAA, Großes Hauptquartier, No. 23, vol. 4. Also see Wedel to Foreign Office, 31 January 1918, and Wedel to Hertling, 18 February 1918, both in SG, III, pp. 318–19, 388–9.

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internal reforms and a peace of understanding, had made this very clear: Austria-Hungary could not be expected to fight for Prusso-German interests. Those who backed Berlin’s course were mere ‘advocates of the Rhenish-Westphalian heavy industry’ and of the German Vaterlandspartei, but not representatives of the interests of the Austrian people. These public statements, together with his call for a different constitutional status of Alsace-Lorraine, caused much protest amongst the parliamentarians. As the Neue Freie Presse reported, ‘the Herrenhaus has rarely witnessed such commotion’.147 At around the same time, Viktor Naumann reported to Hertling that General Ludendorff was ‘probably the most hated man in the Monarchy’.148 The German military leadership, however, continued to criticize Vienna’s ‘inflexibility’, especially in the context of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.149 As Hindenburg declared to Kühlmann in early February, if Austria-Hungary was to continue with its opposition, ‘our troops will simply march in’. And following Czernin’s remark that he would be ready to negotiate on his own with the Russians in case Germany insisted on large-scale territorial gains, Ludendorff rang Cramon in Vienna and complained: ‘It is an outrageous rascality how the Austrians behave again in Brest. Declare war on Austria!’150 Wilhelm II, too, who by this time had, however, lost much of his influence on foreign policy-making, advocated a hard line against Russia and Romania. He described yet another written request by Kaiser Karl for a moderate peace (with the subtle insinuation to go alone, if necessary) as a ‘joke’, insisting that he would always follow German interests and that he was not afraid of Vienna’s defection: ‘Thanks from the House of Habsburg! One traitor more!’ While the Kaiser did tone down his language in a subsequent meeting with the Austro-Hungarian emperor, he remained firm and did not give in to Karl’s pleas.151 Not surprisingly, the German national right backed the OHL’s uncompromising approach. In a meeting of the Mittwochsgesellschaft, a small and exclusive circle of politicians and intellectuals, Gustav Stresemann attacked the ally’s position harshly, complaining that Vienna obstructed the German initiatives ‘to put an end to the war by acting energetically, thus only 147 148 149 150

151

‘Oesterreichischer Reichsrat – Herrenhaus’, NFP, 1 March 1918. Also see Report Tucher, 1 March 1918, BHSA, MA 2481/6. V. Naumann, Dokumente, p. 332. See, for example, Seeckt to his wife, 1 February 1918, in Meier-Welcker, Seeckt, p. 149. Quoted from W. Bihl, ‘Der Weg zum Zusammenbruch – Österreich-Ungarn unter Karl I. (IV.)’, in E. Weinzierl and K. Skalnik (eds.), Österreich 1918–1938. Geschichte der Ersten Republik, 2 vols. (Graz, 1983), I, pp. 27–54 (p. 37). Grünau to Foreign Office, 20 February, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 4 (here quote), and Note Grünau, 22 February 1918, in SG, III, pp. 410–12.

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prolonging the bloodshed and misery’. Leader of the National Liberal Party in the Reichstag since September 1917, Stresemann called in particular for an end of Austria’s efforts ‘to undermine our current action against Russia with its newspapers, speeches, and demonstrations’. The effect of Stresemann’s outburst must have been remarkable. Richard Riedl from the Austro-Hungarian Trade Department, an early Mitteleuropa advocate who was present at this session, apologized feebly by pointing out that the Danube Monarchy was a multinational state and thus more difficult to govern and to keep united than Germany. Kessler, who reported the incident in his diary, tried to mediate, but Stresemann went on to discuss the delicate issue of Habsburg machinations behind the Reichstag Peace Resolution, finally concluding by saying that the German government was determined to execute its current action against Russia, with or without Austria-Hungary.152 In the end, the OHL’s line prevailed in the negotiations with the Bolsheviks, who in March 1918 agreed to a substantial loss of territory and economic resources. Interestingly, apart from the Social Democrats (the majority abstained while the USPD rejected the agreement), all Reichstag parties ratified the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, thus nullifying the parliamentary declaration of the previous year and further aggravating the resentment amongst pacifist circles and the non-German nationalities in the Habsburg Monarchy.153 In April 1918, it was revealed that Emperor Karl had secretly contacted Paris by the agency of his brother-in-law Prince Sixtus.154 For Kessler, who was back in Bern where he worked for the German embassy, this was an act of ‘treason’, ‘a sensation more powerful than the one of the 120 kilometres cannon’. Apparently, even Austrian diplomats there were 152 153

154

Kessler, Tagebuch, VI, p. 301 (20 February 1918). Report Nostitz, 16 March 1918, in Opitz and Adlgasser (eds.), Zerfall der europäischen Mitte, pp. 119–21. Also see H. Lammasch, ‘Österreich-Ungarn und der Bündnisgedanke’, MNN, 27 March 1918; J. Meinl, ‘Ölzweig und Schwert’, ÖR, 1 August 1918, pp. 101–3; ‘Paktieren oder diktieren’, Zeit, 15 January 1918; ‘Die wahren Schuldigen’, Zeit, 31 January 1918; K. Mann [i.e. O. Bauer], ‘Deutschland und wir’, Kampf, May 1918, pp. 308–24. Also see K. Kraus, ‘Der begabte Czernin’, Fackel, 474–83 (23 May 1918), pp. 1–22; K. Kraus, ‘Eine prinzipielle Erklärung’, Fackel, 484–98 (15 October 1918), pp. 232–40; and the various press reports of the German embassy, SLHA, 10730/361. See in particular R.A. Kann, Die Sixtusaffäre und die geheimen Friedensverhandlungen Österreich-Ungarns im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, 1966); T. Griesser-Pecˇ ar, Die Mission Sixtus. Österreichs Friedensversuch im Ersten Weltkrieg (Vienna, 1988); A. Demblin, Minister gegen Kaiser. Aufzeichnungen eines österreichisch-ungarischen Diplomaten über Außenminister Czernin und Kaiser Karl, ed. by A. Demblin (Vienna, 1997); E.P. Keleher, ‘Emperor Karl and the Sixtus Affair: Politico-Nationalist Repercussions in the Reich German and Austro-German Camps, and the Disintegration of Habsburg Austria, 1916–1918’, EEQ, 26/2 (1992), 163–84; H. Rumpler, ‘Kaiser Karl, die Friedensprojekte und das deutsch-österreichische Bündnis’, in Gottsmann (ed.), Karl I. (IV.), pp. 13–22.

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shocked.155 According to the Austrian writer Berta Zuckerkandl, who spoke to Kessler in mid-May, the affair had triggered a noticeable antidynastic movement in Vienna, even amongst the higher aristocracy; the Kaiser and his wife were afraid of leaving Baden and suffered from crying fits.156 Ambassador Wedel described renewed pro-German sentiments amongst Austro-Germans and Magyars as a consequence of ‘the sunken trust in the rule of the Crown’ and the widespread demand ‘for the deepening and firm maintenance’ of the alliance. Even the Christian Socials had recognized that the Habsburg Empire could only survive ‘under the protection of the German Reich’.157 Berlin immediately upped the pressure on Vienna, expressing deep disappointment and the wish to see a sign of goodwill, thus exploiting the opportunity to push through its long-standing demand for a deeper relationship (without having to offer the Austro-Polish solution in return).158 As a result, the Danube Monarchy signed the Spa Agreement on 12 May 1918, finally assenting to the future establishment of an extended, long-term political alliance with Germany, a far-reaching economic agreement, and a military convention (the Waffenbund).159 While Shanafelt has described the treaty as ‘a final humiliation’ of Austria-Hungary, he also points out that Vienna still ‘had plenty of leeway for opposition and foot-dragging since the specific details remained to be worked out’.160 Moreover, a common solution to the Polish question was mentioned as a precondition for any future measures in alliance matters (a point highlighted by Burián, who again pushed for the Austro-Polish solution in subsequent meetings). Arguably, German decision-makers could have exploited the situation to get involved in Austrian internal affairs, but they clearly seemed more interested in tying the Habsburg Empire inextricably to the alliance. Having brought the monarchy into a (potentially) secure, unwavering position, it did not seem necessary to press for an authoritarian, pro-German course in Vienna any longer, to back those forces that 155 156 157 158

159

160

Kessler, Tagebuch, VI, p. 351 (9 April 1918). Also see the entries of 12, 13, 15, and 16 April. Kessler, Tagebuch, VI, pp. 382–3 (13 May 1918). Also see Wedel’s letter to Hertling, 15 April 1918, and Bussche’s Note, 22 April 1918, both in SG, IV, pp. 113–15, 118–19. Wedel to Hertling, 22 April 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 119–22 (p. 120). Wedel to Hertling, 24 April 1918; Cramon to Wilhelm II, 24 April 1918; Grünau to Foreign Office, 29 April 1918; Kühlmann to Foreign Office, 3 May 1918; Kühlmann to Foreign Office, 9 May 1918, all in SG, IV, pp. 122–4, 124–6, 134, 136–8, 149. ‘Vereinbarung zwischen Seiner Majestät dem Kaiser u. Kaiser Karl betr. engere Gestaltung des deutsch-österr. Bündnisses vom 12.5.1918’, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 5, and ‘Grundsätze des deutsch-österreichisch-ungarischen Waffenbundes. 12 Mai 1918’, in UF, II, pp. 259–60. Shanafelt, Secret Enemy, pp. 195–6. The latter aspect is also stressed by Höbelt, ‘Stehen oder Fallen?’, pp. 234–7.

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seemed most committed to the alliance. Considering Czech, Polish, and South Slav defiance, a German course simply seemed not possible, or would at least have seriously exacerbated the domestic situation. Wedel and Nostitz were regularly reporting in this way, and during the pre-Spa talks between Germany’s major policy-makers, State Secretary of the Treasury Count Siegfried von Roedern had in fact doubted that the Austro-German question could be discussed at all with the Habsburg ally: ‘It seems better to leave things to history.’161 The main issue during these meetings had been how to prevent the Austro-Polish solution and other separate Austro-Hungarian peace attempts, and a Central European union under Berlin’s leadership appeared as a more practical way to contain the Habsburg Empire.162 Thus, six months before the end of the war, Berlin deepened the coalition; it did not, as Polzer-Hoditz argued after 1918, deliberately work towards the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian ally. While the actual agreement was kept secret, it was obvious to many observers that the Habsburg Monarchy had failed to break free from German ‘tutelage’. As a consequence, the non-German nationalities were further alienated from the regime in Vienna and Budapest, while the Entente finally turned to the plans of Slav exiles to dissolve the monarchy. Wilson’s Fourteen Points of January had included demands for a free and autonomous development of the Austro-Hungarian nationalities, but the US President had still envisaged this to happen within a reformed imperial framework. Following the Rome Congress of Oppressed Nationalities in early April, the Allied governments, however, increasingly called for national independence: on 29 May, Wilson stated that ‘the nationalistic aspirations of the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs for freedom have the earnest support of this Government’. The joint Versailles Declaration of 3 June proclaimed a fully sovereign Polish state with free access to the sea an official war aim, while the other Slav nationalities were assured of ‘warm sympathy’ for ‘their struggle for liberty and the realization of their national aspirations’.163 A few weeks later, on 29 June, France was

161

162

163

‘Niederschrift über die Besprechung im Reichskanzlerpalais am Mittwoch, den 8. Mai 1918 nachmittags 5 Uhr über Österreich-Ungarn’, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 5. See, however, Diego v. Bergen’s memorandum of 28 December 1917, reprinted in Zeman, Break-Up, p. 148, and Kühlmann to Foreign Office, 3 May 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 136–8. Also see ‘Besprechung über Österreich-Ungarn in der Reichskanzlei, 10.5.1918’, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 5, and ‘Besprechung in Spa am 13.5.1918’, PAAA, Großes Hauptquartier, No. 16a. Quoted from D. Stevenson, The First World War and International Politics (Oxford, 1988), pp. 220, 218.

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the first country to recognize the Czecho-Slovak National Council as the de facto government of Czecho-Slovakia. Having lost faith in Emperor Karl and the government after the general amnesty and the Sixtus Affair, and in view of the desolate supply situation, many Austro-Germans, in particular in the peripheries, argued increasingly in Greater German terms, even though most still underlined their allegiance to state and dynasty.164 Representatives from German Bohemia, Tyrol, and Salzburg openly asked to join the German system of provisions, reproaching Vienna that it was incapable of securing a fair distribution of foodstuffs in the empire.165 Related gatherings in Bodenbach (Podmokly), Tetschen (Deˇ cˇ ín), and Aussig (Ústí nad Labem) in April and May 1918 attracted several thousand people.166 As early as January 1918, the Saxon government had authorized a VDA appeal for food aid in the districts next to Bohemia, and – wary not to upset its own population – secretly sold and donated potatoes, dried vegetables, and sour turnips across the border.167 In late May 1918, the nationalist Volksräte formed an Austrian-wide umbrella organization, the Deutscher Volksrat für Österreich, to better coordinate their efforts. Right-wing Christian Socials such as Albert Gessmann soon joined this movement, reaffirming Austria’s loyalty to the alliance and demanding the protection of Austrian Germandom – if necessary by the use of force or with the help of German troops.168 In August 1918, the Alldeutsche Blätter published a desperate Austrian call for German intervention; large sections of the Austrian population would hope for a break-up of the state and the destruction

164

165

166 167 168

‘Kundgebungen der Deutschen in den Kronländern’, NWT, 1 May 1918; ‘Die Deutschen in Österreich’, FZ, 2 May 1918; ‘Der deutsche Volkstag in Marburg’, Fremden-Blatt, 14 May 1918; L. Quessel, ‘Österreich’, SoM, 14 May 1918, pp. 491–2. Also see Wedel to Foreign Office, 15 April 1918, PAAA, Österreich 86, No. 2, vol. 24. ‘Ein Hilferuf aus Tirol’, MAA, 27 April 1918; ‘Traurige Ernährungsverhältnisse und deutsch-mittelständische Politik’, MP, 29 April 1918, ‘Der deutsche Volkstag in Sterzing’, IN, 10 May 1918; ‘Das treue Tirol gegen die österreichische Politik’, RWZ, 17 May 1918. Also see the report by Winkler from the Saxon border police, 29 April 1918, SLHA, AM 1803; [H.] Ullmann, ‘Bericht über die Stimmung in Nordböhmen’, 29 April 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, Militärattaché, vol. 188; and Treutler to Hertling, 9 May 1918, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 53. ‘Eine stürmische Versammlung in Aussig’, NWT, 30 April 1918; ‘Für den Anschluß Deutschböhmens an das deutsche Wirtschaftsgebiet’, NWJ, 3 May 1918. See the various letters and reports of April and July 1918, SLHA, 10730/384. On SaxonBohemian relations in the First World War, see Murdock, Changing Places, pp. 81–111. ‘Der Deutsche Volkstag in Wien. Eine machtvolle Kundgebung des Willens der Deutschösterreicher’, Reichspost, 17 June 1918. Also see Wedel to Hertling, 28 May 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 5, and report Greiml ‘Vom Deutschen Volkstag in Wien, 16. Juni’, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 53.

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of Germany: ‘There is only one resort: the German Reich must prevent it . . . Act recklessly, stop at nothing, and it will work out.’169 Since mid-1918, Reich German public opinion became more hostile towards Vienna. Already in April, the Prussian envoy to Württemberg had reported a remarkable increase in bitterness and antipathy amongst the traditionally Austrophile population (the Catholic heir to the throne, Duke Albrecht, was the son of an Austrian archduchess and married to a sister of Franz Ferdinand). He pointed to repeated military failures, domestic instability, Austrian gains in Romania, and continuous requests for food aid. Even non-annexationist circles would deem Czernin’s peace policy exaggerated and detrimental.170 Right-wing papers continued to publish articles against the Austro-Slavs and federal reforms, often with an increasingly aggressive tone.171 The nationalist Türmer, for instance, openly pressed for intervention to ban the Slav threat, arguing, however, that it was not an issue of politics of emotion but a necessity from a Realpolitik point of view: It is a matter of self-preservation not only for the German people but for the German Reich, it is about the Reich’s survival . . . Where would we stand today, where would the Russians, French, English, and Italians stand if there had been no Germans in Austria to direct the Monarchy and to hold it together? Where else than in Berlin and Vienna? Let us not forget that! Woe betide us if we ever forget it!172

169 170 171

172

Dr. B., ‘In letzter Stunde. Ein Ruf aus Österreich’, AB, 3 August 1918, pp. 246–7. Seckendorff to Weizsäcker, 15 April 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 425. See, for example, ‘Die Stimmung in Deutschösterreich’, KVZ, 21 May 1918; ‘Die Tschechen und Österreich’, BM, 24 May 1918; ‘Deutsch-österreichischer Irredentismus?’, APZ, 7 June 1918; ‘Die Nationalitätenfrage in Österreich’, DTZ, 20 June 1918; ‘Nationalitätenstaat und Nationalitätenkämpfe’, RWZ, 29 June 1918; ‘Deutscher Kurs in Österreich?’, KVZ, 18 July 1918; ‘Österreich-Ungarn und wir’, KVZ, 20 July 1918; ‘Der deutsche Kurs in Österreich’, NPZ, 21 July 1918; D. Schäfer, ‘Tschechischer Deutschenhaß’, GD, 9 August 1918, pp. 998–1004; ‘Die Politik der Tschechen’, KVZ, 13 August 1918; Bahr, ‘Österreichische Krise’; R. Bahr, ‘Österreich als Staatenbund’, BBZ, 29 August 1918; E. Boetticher, ‘Umwandlung der österreichischen Monarchie?’, Reichsbote, 7 September 1918; ‘Hofrat Lammasch wieder an der Arbeit. Er will Österreich föderalisieren’, Post, 8 September 1918. For Austrian contributions, see, for example, F. Jesser, ‘Das böhmische Problem’, DP, 14 June 1918, pp. 750–9; R. Sieger, ‘Die Bewegung in Deutschösterreich’, DP, 15 May 1918, pp. 615–20; R. Sieger, ‘Erfolge und Hemmungen der deutschen Bewegung in Österreich’, DP, 2 August 1918, pp. 970–6; R. Sieger, ‘Die Volksbewegung in Österreich’, Mittel-Europa, 21 May 1918, pp. 222–6; P. Samassa, ‘Die Verfassungskrise in Österreich’, DE, July 1918, pp. 459–66; B. Imendörffer, ‘Die neue Kreiseinteilung in Böhmen und das österreichische Deutschtum’, GD, 26 July 1918, pp. 951–5; K. Leuthner, ‘Deutsche und tschechische Politik’, DP, 7 June 1918, pp. 711–18; J. Bunzel, ‘Der österreichische Staatsgedanke’, Tat, August 1918, pp. 377–80; O. Teutsch, ‘Die böhmische Frage’, Türmer, 1st October issue 1918, pp. 19–23. ‘Türmers Tagebuch’, Türmer, 2nd June issue 1918, pp. 270–9 (pp. 275, 279).

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Complaints about the provision of the Germans in Bohemia with foodstuffs became more frequent, and many commentators backed the call for a separate province of Deutschböhmen. There were informal as well as open requests for intervention against the ostensible oppression of the ethnic Germans by the Czechs, who would keep produce for themselves.173 The VDA called Kaiser Wilhelm’s attention to the dire situation in Bohemia and Tyrol, and (unsuccessfully) asked the emperor to convince Karl to requisition comestibles from the non-German nationalities.174 Now, even some left-liberal observers turned anxious, too: followers of Friedrich Naumann realized that, despite the rhetoric of a German-Slav partnership, Mitteleuropa in Austria was only supported by the German-speaking population. A different tone emerged; it was openly argued that the Austro-Germans were Germany’s ‘natural allies’ and the only upholders of the Austrian state.175 In the Hilfe, the left-liberal publicist and politician Wilhelm Heile demanded that Reich Germans give up their restraint with regard to Austrian affairs and explicitly declare their sympathy with Prime Minister Seidler and his German course.176 The Austrian liberal journalist Richard Charmatz agreed: only the Austro-Germans would still be committed to state and dynasty, but unfortunately the new government under Baron Max Hussarek von Heinlein, who had replaced Seidler on 25 July, would not recognize the basic truth that the future belonged to the Austro-Germans or else ‘there will be no Austria any more!’ A new, strong-minded leader was required: ‘We need a Hindenburg of the hinterland!’177 Even Samuel Saenger from the Neue Rundschau asked for Reich German intervention to protect Austrian Germandom and counter radical Slav demands: ‘It is in the German interest to prevent a Balkanization, the liquidation of the

173

174 175

176 177

See, for example, ‘Eine gemeindeutsche Gefahr. Von einem deutschösterreichischen Politiker’, MZ, 16 November 1917; ‘Die tschechische Hungerblockade’, LNN, 7 May 1918; E. Keitel to Hertling, 9 May 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 41; O. Dahlke to Hintze, 31 July 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 42; Stein to Hertling, 2 September 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 384. The most detailed German discussion of the Bohemian question appeared in mid-1918, too: G.H. Müller, Deutsche und Tschechen. Ein Überblick über Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Dresden, 1918). On the whole issue, see H. Haas, ‘Im Widerstreit der Selbstbestimmungsansprüche. Vom Habsburgerstaat zur Tschechoslowakei – die Deutschen der böhmischen Länder 1918 bis 1919’, in H. Mommsen et al. (eds.), Der Erste Weltkrieg, pp. 141–220, and Murdock, Changing Places, pp. 97–111. Reichenau to Wilhelm II, 11 May 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 24. W. Schotte, ‘Ein neues Österreich?’, Mittel-Europa, 29 January 1918, pp. 41–2 (p. 42). Also see W. Schotte, ‘Werdende Welt’, Mittel-Europa, 26 March 1918, pp. 121–2; W. Heile, ‘Der deutsche Schwur von Graz’, Hilfe, 23 May 1918, pp. 240–2. W. Heile, ‘Deutsch-Österreich’, Hilfe, 25 July 1918, pp. 352–4. R. Charmatz, ‘Österreichs Schwankungen’, Hilfe, 8 August 1918, pp. 376–7 (p. 377).

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Danube state and its disintegration into a bustle of petty, pseudosovereign entities.’178 However, it is important to note that despite this obvious radicalization, hardly anyone demanded the annexation of German-Austria; Anschluss was not yet an issue.179 Also, quite a few observers continued to express a more favourable view of the Habsburg Empire. In several articles, the German and Austro-Hungarian governments disseminated a positive picture of the alliance and the Dual Monarchy’s political situation.180 The German philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz travelled to Prague and subsequently published his series of pro-Czech articles (though in an Austrian journal).181 The Berliner Tageblatt advocated federal reforms, while the Vossische Zeitung became a zealous champion of German-Czech rapprochement, promoted as the first step towards a new policy concerning the Slavs in general.182 Social Democratic commentators kept on supporting full national equality, and Catholics celebrated the supranational Habsburg idea of the state or highlighted federalism as a modern principle that deserved more recognition not only in Austria but in Prussia-Germany, too, where it would enhance the standing of Catholics and South Germans.183 In the Prussian House of Representatives and the Reichstag, there were discussions about the 178

179

180

181 182

183

Junius [i.e. S. Saenger], ‘Politische Chronik: “Befestigung und Vertiefung”’, NR, July 1918, pp. 983–8 (p. 988). Also see his ‘Bemerkungen zu deutsch-österreichischen Beschwernissen’, NR, April 1918, pp. 552–9 and ‘Politische Chronik: Das östliche Licht’, NR, June 1918, pp. 850–60, and T. Heuss, ‘Wiener Krise’, DP, 5 July 1918, pp. 840–6. For an exception, see F. Körting, ‘Fragen des Ostens. Eine Betrachtung’, 14 July 1917, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 25; F. Körting, ‘Wie vertiefen wir das Bündnis? Oder DIVIDE ET IMPERA’, 24 August 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 24. Austrian propaganda: ‘Österreichische Fragen’, WüZ, 30 June 1917, placed by Consul Nemes; ‘Ministerpräsident Hussarek über den österreichischen Staat. Eine Rede an die deutschen Pressevertreter’, DTZ, 12 September 1918. German contributions: ‘Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, NAZ, 28 July 1917; ‘Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn’, NAZ, 1 November 1917; ‘Österreichs Stimmungen und Verstimmungen’, KZ, 5 April 1918. Also see V. Hahn, ‘Österreich-Ungarn und der Weltkrieg’, National-Zeitung, 16–19 May 1918; H. Friedjung, ‘Gegen die Unterschätzung Österreichs’, VZ, 3 July 1918. Collected in R. Pannwitz, Der Geist der Tschechen (Vienna, 1919). See the following VZ articles by A. Redlich: ‘Unser Verbündeter’, 19 May 1918; ‘Böhmen und Österreich’, 3 June 1918; ‘Die Deutschen in Österreich’, 19 June 1918; ‘Deutschtum und Slaventum’, 22 June 1918. Also see L. Lederer, ‘Das Ende des Kabinetts Seidler’, BT, 24 July 1918; E.V. Zenker, ‘Der einzige Ausweg’, BT, 9 August 1918; ‘Nach der Lösung der österreichischen Krise’, SNT, 3 July 1918. See, for example, ‘Die Wiederauferstehung Stürgkhs’, Vorwärts, 11 May 1918; ‘Deutschland und Deutschösterreich’, PfP, 19 July 1918; ‘Die schwarz-gelbe Sphinx. Österreich als ehrlicher Makler’, Vorwärts, 21 July 1918; ‘Die österreichische Krise’, Vorwärts, 24 July 1918; ‘Aus Österreich’, MP, 23 September 1918; ‘Wir und Österreich’, Germania, 11 May 1918; ‘Föderalismus die Grundlage der Gesundung’, APZ, 7 July 1918.

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inadequate administration of foodstuffs in the Habsburg Monarchy and nutritional transfers from Germany; Otto Braun from the SPD, for instance, held that one could not expect the Reich German population to hunger to compensate for ‘Austrian sloppiness and Hungarian egoism’.184 But it was only Ferdinand Werner from the extremist Deutschvölkische Partei who drew particular attention to the AustroGermans and blamed the Slavs for the desolate domestic conditions and the poor performance of the Habsburg army. He openly asked the German government to comply with the demands of Austrian Germandom and to prevent the establishment of a Czecho-Slovak kingdom (also encompassing Slovenia!) that would ‘force back the German national body from the Adriatic Sea’.185 Werner’s politico-geographical ignorance is shocking, but what is more important here is that until late October 1918 he was in fact the only Reichstag politician to openly discuss the situation of the German-speaking population of the Habsburg Empire. Right-wing Austro-German authors heavily criticized the large number of disparaging and generalizing comments about the Danube Monarchy (which often failed to differentiate between the state and Austrian Germandom) on the part of conservative and liberal-nationalist commentators, on the one hand, and the pro-Slav, even-handed tendencies amongst moderate groups, on the other. Feeling abandoned by the Reich German public, these publicists reiterated their attacks on German statism, highlighting the significance of Austrian Germandom as the pillar of the Danubian state and of the Dual Alliance, but also as an essential element of the German nation.186 In July 1918, the so-called Deutsche Mittelstelle für Österreich-Ungarn was established by the VDA and Austrian sponsors to promote in Germany more solidarity with the Germans in the Habsburg Empire.187 Headed by Franz von Reichenau 184 185 186

187

Verhandlungen des Preußischen Hauses der Abgeordneten, 22. Legislaturperiode, III. Session 1916/17, vol. 10, col. 11314 (21 June 1918). Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 313, p. 5676 (25 June 1918). See, for example, K. Hermann, ‘Reichsdeutsche Öffentlichkeit und DeutschÖsterreich’, Türmer, 2nd July issue 1917, pp. 543–6; K. Hermann, ‘Die Streikbewegung in Österreich und die reichsdeutsche Presse’, Grenzboten, 31 January 1918, pp. 139–43; K. Hermann, ‘Die Wiener Ausstandsbewegung und die reichsdeutsche Öffentlichkeit’, Türmer, 1st March issue 1918, pp. 621–2; H. Ullmann, ‘Die Deutschen im Reiche und “außerhalb”’, DÖ, March 1918, pp. 290–3; H. Ullmann, ‘Zur Vertiefung des Bündnisses’, Grenzboten, 31 May 1918, pp. 223–6; H. Ullmann, ‘Zur Bündnisfrage’, DA, May 1918, pp. 311–14; H. Ullmann, ‘Vertrauen zu Volksgenossen’, DA, June 1918, pp. 353–6; F. Jesser, ‘Deutschland und Deutschösterreich’, DÖ, July 1918, pp. 1–6; ‘Deutschland und die österreichischen Wirren’, DVB, 7 August 1918. Also see the embassy’s press reports, SLHA, 10730/361. Reichenau to Hintze, 17 July 1918; Pistor to Bergen, 26 July 1918; Bussche to Reichenau, 12 August 1918, all in PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 24.

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from the VDA and the publicists Richard Bahr and Hermann Ullmann, the association forwarded three Austrian memoranda to the German Foreign Office, but it did not succeed in changing Berlin’s passive stance with regard to the Austro-German question.188 In the wake of the Sixtus Affair, Ambassador Wedel had written to Chancellor Hertling that there were only two possibilities for AustriaHungary’s future: ‘Either the monarchy recovers under the auspices of the German Reich, or it breaks up.’ Apprehensive of a greater and more powerful German Catholic South in the case of Anschluss, which would threaten the hegemony of Protestant Prussia in Germany, Wedel stated that ‘for us, there can only be one policy: to create and preserve a strong Austria-Hungary, as long and as good as possible’. Kaiser Wilhelm’s comment read ‘very good’, although he also mentioned that a break-up and Anschluss would ‘possibly come after all’.189 After Spa, it seems that even a reformed Austria did not appear as a threat to German interests any more. In a report of early June, the ambassador showed himself convinced that Austria-Hungary was facing a major transformation: Galicia would be lost in five years at the latest, and rump Austria would have to be converted into a federation. Hungary, connected to Austria by personal union only, should incorporate all South Slav territories, apart from Slovenia, which was to remain Austrian because of the access to the Adriatic Sea. While ultimately it was probably just a question of time until German-Austria would become a part of the German Reich, it was necessary to keep the Habsburg Monarchy viable as long as possible. In this context, an arrangement with the Czechs was to be found.190 In subsequent reports and letters, Wedel in fact suggested unofficial contacts with Czech leaders: one would not need to be afraid of national autonomy as long as the political and territorial integrity of the Habsburg Monarchy was sustained.191 He also proposed a new press policy to facilitate German-Slav rapprochement: ‘Sympathetic judgment of the difficulties of a multinational state. Requested reorganization of Austria: equal rights for all nationalities.’ Berlin would have to intervene to break the political deadlock in Cisleithania: ‘It is the perfidious Habsburg strategy to artificially cultivate the hostility of the Slavs against Germandom and the German Reich to avoid getting dependent on us 188

189 190 191

Reichenau to Hintze, 13 September 1918, forwarding memoranda by Robert Sieger, Albert Ritter, and Franz Jesser, 12 August 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 25. Also see Hermann Ullmann to Major Kröger, 19 August 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 24. Wedel to Hertling, 22 April 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 119–22 (p. 121). Wedel to Hertling, 7 June 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 347. Wedel to Kühlmann, 8 June 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 41; Wedel to Hertling, 11 and 19 July 1918, PAAA, Österreich 70, vol. 53; Stolberg to Hertling, 1 August 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 42.

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and be able to rule after the method of divide et impera.’ Once Vienna had been persuaded to introduce the necessary political reforms – Hungary was to be left untouched – the chances for peace would improve as the Entente was just waiting for the monarchy’s collapse.192 The actual practicality of these proposals is, of course, highly questionable. However, it is worth highlighting that Wedel advocated a ‘moral intervention’, as he called it, to stabilize the ally, but not to back the Austro-Germans or annex the German-speaking lands. The highest priority was the preservation of the Danube Monarchy as a fighting ally; since it could not be re-established as a Germanic Ostmark, a new strategy was needed: rapprochement with the Austro-Slavs, the acceptance of national reforms. Yet neither these nor his earlier suggestions (Austro-Polish solution) were adopted. While Berlin in summer 1918 became increasingly displeased with the situation in Austria, new steps or actions were not taken.193 The German government maintained its observant and reserved stance.

Finis Austriae: Habsburg collapse and the Anschluss question The last year of the war saw more and more strikes and demonstrations in Austria-Hungary. In Bohemia alone, there were 235 food riots in 1918, often involving more than 1,000 people.194 In May, General Landwehr von Pragenau from the Common Food Committee even requisitioned more than 2,400 Germany-bound grain cars from Romania – an exceptional act (with serious diplomatic consequences) that was indicative of the despair also amongst high-ranking officials and decision-makers.195 In late September, the general war-weariness and a disquieting lack of resources led to yet another wave of food protests and demonstrations, including in the border town of Salzburg. Since early July, the difficult economic talks between the Central Powers were held in this city (despite persistent scepticism of some Prussian and Bavarian officials), and the Europäische Hof was a prominent target of the rioters.196 As a local newspaper reported: 192 193

194 195 196

Wedel to Bergen, 29 June 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 225–8 (p. 227). Hohenlohe to Burián, 12 July 1918, HHStA, PA III, K. 174; Hohenlohe to Burián, 7 and 11 September 1918, HHStA, PA I, K. 505. Also see Cramon to Hindenburg, 29 August 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 6. Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 373. O. Landwehr, Hunger. Die Erschöpfungsjahre der Mittelmächte 1917/18 (Vienna, 1931), pp. 189–96. For the German views in June and July, see ‘Sitzung in der Reichskanzlei am 7. Juni 1918, nachmittags 5 Uhr’, in SG, IV, pp. 182–92; ‘Grundlagen für die wirtschaftlichen Verhandlungen mit Österreich-Ungarn’ [29 June 1918], in SG, IV, pp. 229–31; and the

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Hundreds stormed the hotel where the food was being made ready for the guests. The members of the economic conference had to flee from the mob who destroyed all windows and mirrors in blind rage, smashed the lights, and threw the plates onto the street. The looters were the undisputed masters of the big house, tore the dishes from the cases, cut the valuable carpets, bed sheets, tablecloths, and curtains, opened the water taps and took everything away that was not nailed down. The precious silverware disappeared at once and the most valuable things were in the hands of scallywags . . . The grocery stores and stores of the city and military administration were not spared, either, and thousands of sugar packages, butter boxes, soap containers etc. were stolen. Some women were besmeared with marmalade all over and some looked like savages because of all the bell peppers and black pepper.197

Not surprisingly then, given this striking discrepancy between high politics and the worries of ordinary people, when on 11 October 1918 after more than three months an agreement on a customs and trade union (with temporary intermediate tariffs) between Germany and the Habsburg Empire was finally reached, the news was received with a remarkable lack of interest. For four years, the Mitteleuropa project had constituted one of the most hotly debated issues amongst politicians, economists, and publicists, and now, upon its impending realization (in fact, the treaty was never ratified), hardly anyone seemed to take notice any more. Clearly, other developments were of more concern. The German spring offensive on the western front had proved a failure, and allied troops were relentlessly pressing forward to reach German soil. Following Ludendorff’s and Hindenburg’s avowal that the war was lost, a new – the last – imperial government was formed under Prince Max von Baden (3 October 1918). In the Habsburg Monarchy, as seen, the situation looked grim, with nationalist strife and a paralysed political order adding to the critical food situation. Against this background, Austro-Hungarian officials again warned their German colleagues that the monarchy could not sustain the war effort much longer.198 In early September, at a meeting with the new German Secretary of State Paul von Hintze, a former naval officer who had entered the diplomatic service before the war and served in Mexico, China, and Norway, Burián declared very firmly that ‘for us, it is definitely over’. Given the lack of food, clothing, and coal, the population would expect

197 198

reports by Lerchenfeld, 4 July, and by Schoen, 6 and 26 July 1918, BHSA, Gesandtschaft Berlin, 1095. For the preliminary talks between Berlin and Vienna, see ‘Besprechung mit Graf Burian im Reichskanzlerpalais am 12. Juni 1918 um 10 1/2 Uhr vormittags’, and Wedel to Foreign Office, 3 July 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 198–203, 237. For a good overview, see Soutou, L’or et le sang, pp. 709–25. Gratz and Schüller, Economic Policy of Austria-Hungary, offers more details on the actual outcome on pp. 59–69. ‘Die Ausschreitungen in Salzburg’, APZ, 26 September 1918. See, for example, Stolberg to Foreign Office, 7 August, in SG, IV, pp. 275–6.

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immediate peace efforts: ‘We do not have any time any longer.’199 These pleas, however, did not have an immediate impact on German diplomatic and governmental circles. As Tucher’s deputy had written in late August 1918: In 1916, Austria-Hungary declared that its strengths are running out. In early 1917, it pointed out that it could only persist until the beginning of last winter. For fifteen months it has been afraid of a revolution. One has often miscalculated here but has never been optimistic. Instead, given the total lack of self-confidence here, one always tended towards exaggerated pessimism.200

Hintze, on the other hand, seemed convinced that the situation was particularly precarious and anticipated an ‘unusual step’.201 Whereas Berlin insisted on involving a neutral country instead of making a desperate unilateral move and warned against ‘seriously endangering our alliance’, Emperor Karl eventually decided to issue a peace note without the consent of the German coalition partner (14 September).202 At this point, however, and regardless of the Entente’s rejection of the note, the Danube Monarchy could hardly be saved any more. The Italian front was close to collapse, and the unconditional surrender of Bulgaria by the end of the month created a highly dangerous situation in the Balkans and in Hungary, too. As Viktor Naumann reported from Vienna, the mood amongst the population was ‘really lousy [hundsmiserabel schlecht]’: ‘The people are done for; they do not want and cannot continue any longer.’203 The publicist, who had earlier sent a memorandum to Kaiser Karl, suggesting constitutional reforms, the restoration of Serbia, and the introduction of universal suffrage in Hungary, was, however, still hoping that Vienna would persist until a negotiated peace could be achieved.204 To State Secretary 199 200 201 202

203 204

‘Besprechung in Wien am 5. September 1918, 10 Uhr vormittags’, in SG, IV, pp. 324–8 (pp. 327–8). Report Hoffmann, 30 August 1918, BHSA, MA 2481/6. ‘Aufzeichnung über die Sitzung des Auswärtigen Ausschusses vom 2.9.1918’, BHSA, Gesandtschaft Berlin, 1095. ‘Aus der Note der Österreich-Ungarischen Regierung an alle kriegführenden Mächte vom 14. September 1918’, in UF, II, pp. 309–12. For the discussions, see the following documents in SG, IV: Wedel to Foreign Office, 10 September 1918, pp. 332–3; Hintze to Foreign Office, 11 September 1918, p. 333; Wedel to Foreign Office, 12 September 1918, pp. 334–5; Hintze to Wedel, 12 September1918, p. 335; Wedel to Foreign Office, 13 September 1918, p. 336; Grünau to Foreign Office, 13 September 1918, pp. 336–7; Hintze to Grünau, 14 September 1918, pp. 338–40 (quote on p. 340). On Austria-Hungary’s peace efforts until the break of the alliance, see Shanafelt, Secret Enemy, pp. 201–8. V. Naumann to Dandl, 21 September 1918, in V. Naumann, Dokumente, pp. 383–8 (pp. 383, 387). V. Naumann, ‘Denkschrift für Kaiser Karl’, 18 August 1918, ibid., pp. 480–5.

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Wilhelm Solf, who had succeeded Hintze in early October, he recommended food deliveries and a determined conduct in intergovernmental talks to raise the ally’s spirits.205 Ambassador Wedel similarly observed an ‘apathetic-resigned’ atmosphere and ‘helpless despondence’. The war would not be decided on the battlefield, he wrote in late September, but ‘in the kitchen, in the workshop, in the factory’.206 Interestingly, he also believed that the Habsburg Empire could fight on for another six months, provided Germany boosted the morale of the population and the policy-making elites by offering financial concessions and the AustroPolish solution.207 Following the declaration of the Social Democratic Reichsrat deputies on 3 October that they would acknowledge the right of national self-determination but claim it for the German-speaking population, too, Wedel reported to Berlin that ‘Franz Joseph’s old Austria is certainly gone’ but that there might still be a chance ‘to rebuild a new Austria, an Austria in which no nation predominates and which is based on free cooperation’.208 He was wrong. When on 16 October, Karl, in an attempt to appease the nationalities and to reach an agreement with US President Wilson, issued a manifesto promising the federalization of Austria, it had become clear already that most of the nonGerman ethnic groups would not be satisfied with limited autonomy any more.209 What Czechs, South Slavs, and Poles now demanded was independent statehood. Even the Austro-Germans, long regarded as the steadfast backbone of the regime, formed a provisional national assembly in the process of disintegration. In Hungary, national-democratic reforms were supported by various left-wing parties, but neither Tisza and his successors as prime minister nor the leaders of the centrist opposition parties (Andrássy and Apponyi) were willing to make more substantial concessions and to renounce the doctrine of the Magyar nation-state. The question was further complicated by South Slav and Czecho-Slovak unification tendencies and claims to Hungarian territory. When Karl announced his federalization plans, he thus explicitly 205 206 207 208 209

V. Naumann to Solf, 12 October 1918, ibid., pp. 399–400. Wedel to Hertling, 20 September 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 350–3. Wedel to Hintze, 28 September 1918, in SG, IV, pp. 387–9. Wedel to Max v. Baden, 4 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 43. H. Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest Kaiser Karls vom 16. Oktober 1918. Letzter Versuch zur Rettung des Habsburgerreiches (Munich, 1966); S. Verosta, ‘Heinrich Lammasch’ Verfassungsentwurf für das Kaisertum Österreich vom September 1918’, in I. Ackerl et al. (eds.), Politik und Gesellschaft im alten und neuen Österreich. Festschrift für Rudolf Neck zum 60. Geburtstag, 2 vols. (Munich, 1981), I, pp. 366–78. On German reactions, see Report Hohenlohe, 18 October 1918, HHStA, Botschaft Berlin, K. 187. More generally on the last days of the Habsburg Monarchy, see Rauchensteiner, Weltkrieg, pp. 1027–52.

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excluded Hungary.210 In such circumstances, the last Austrian Prime Minister Heinrich Lammasch could only lead a powerless cabinet into liquidation from the day he took office (28 October). The previous day, by unilaterally requesting armistice, Foreign Minister Andrássy had de facto brought the alliance to an end which his father had concluded with Bismarck nearly forty years ago.211 Until mid-October, and despite all criticism, the majority of German observers had still been of the opinion that the Dual Monarchy would once again prove resistant and overcome the crisis, be that in its current or a restructured form. All ethnic groups would, in the end, realize the benefit of staying within the multinational framework instead of setting up unviable states on their own, as for instance the Vossische Zeitung argued.212 Geopolitical ties, economic links, the dynasty, and the common army were considered guarantees that the Habsburg entity would not break up but continue to fulfil its ‘world-political mission’.213 Against this background, Catholic and left-of-centre opinion leaders received Austro-German demands for Anschluss only half-heartedly and declared that unification could only be the ‘ultima ratio’ after ‘the serious attempt to come to an understanding and to create a new federalised Austria’.214 Right-wing commentators, however, took a very different stance and for instance praised Otto Bauer’s pro-Anschluss articles in the Viennese Arbeiter-Zeitung.215 For the Tägliche Rundschau, there was no doubt that the Austro-Germans now ‘had the full right and the 210

211

212 213 214

215

For more details, see H. Fischer, Oszkár Jászi and Mihály Károlyi. Ein Beitrag zur Nationalitätenpolitik der bürgerlich-demokratischen Opposition in Ungarn von 1900 bis 1918 und ihre Verwirklichung in der bürgerlich-demokratischen Regierung von 1918 bis 1919 (Munich, 1978). ‘Telegramm des österreichischen Kaisers Karl I. an Kaiser Wilhelm II. vom 27. Oktober 1918’ and ‘Österreichische Note an den Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. 27. Oktober 1918’, in UF, II, pp. 438–9 and 440. For a discussion of these developments, see Andrássy, Diplomacy and the War, pp. 271–5. He took office on 24 October 1918. K. Lahm, ‘Die Stunde Deutsch-Österreichs’, VZ, 15 October 1918. ‘Österreich als Nationalitäten-Bundesstaat’, KVZ, 18 October 1918. A. Redlich, ‘Fragen des Selbstbestimmungsrechtes’, VZ, 15 October 1918. Also see L. Lederer, ‘Die Krise in Österreich-Ungarn’, BT, 12 October 1918; W. Schotte, ‘Die Mitte Europas’, Mittel-Europa, 15 October 1918, pp. 474–6; W. Schotte, ‘Was wird aus Mitteleuropa?’, Hilfe, 17 October 1918, pp. 493–5; W. Schotte, ‘Randstaatenpolitik und Friedenskongreß’, Mittel-Europa, 22 October 1918, pp. 493–5; T. Heuss, ‘A.E.I.O.U.’, DP, 25 October 1918, pp. 1359–62. On the early Anschluss debate, see W. Münch, Der Anschluss Österreichs und das Echo im Reich 1918–1922 (Bad Kreuznach, 1968), and A.D. Low, The Anschluss Movement, 1918–1919, and the Paris Peace Conference (Philadelphia, PA, 1974). See Otto Bauer’s articles in the AZ: ‘Der deutschösterreichische Staat’, 13 October 1918; ‘Selbstbestimmungsrecht und Wirtschaftsgebiet’, 15 October 1918; ‘Deutschland und wir’, 16 October 1918.

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full duty to remember that they were part of the wider nation, tied together by blood, language, manners, and culture’.216 A few days later, following Heinrich Claß’s statement at a meeting that ‘now Austria is of no use to us any longer’, the ADV publicly expressed its hope ‘that a near future will bring the unification of all separated tribes’.217 Gustav Stresemann was the first Reichstag politician to publicly comment upon the Anschluss movement in Austria. During the war, he had demonstrated a great interest in the question of the Auslandsdeutsche and referred to Austria as a ‘non-foreign country’.218 A staunch supporter of the Dual Alliance, Stresemann had nevertheless been convinced that ‘Austria’s downfall would mean our total encirclement by hostile powers’, as he made clear in a letter of January 1915 to a retired teacher who had bitterly complained about Germany’s Nibelungentreue.219 In concurrence with the large majority of German decision-makers and intellectuals, he had not questioned the exclusion of the Austro-Germans from the nation-state, considering them more useful as the leading ethnic group within the Habsburg realm where they would guarantee a pro-German foreign policy course and thus directly serve the interest of the German Reich. Now, in late October 1918, Stresemann seemed to have given up the Habsburg ally, replacing loyalty to the coalition partner with the call for Anschluss. He publicly stressed the cultural unity of the Germans in both empires and spoke of the possibility of political union in line with the right of national selfdetermination: ‘In all the darkness of these days we will not overlook this glimpse of light for the future.’220 At this time, German military leaders were considering an invasion of Bohemia in order to defend the German-speaking population against Czech units and to create a fait accompli in the area.221 On 14 October, Ambassador Wedel convened an emergency meeting in Vienna, 216

217

218 219 220 221

‘Neues Österreich?’, TR, 18 October 1918. Also see ‘Die Zersetzung Österreichs’, LNN, 17 October 1918; ‘Österreich und wir’, LNN, 19 October 1918, and the following press reports: Nemes to Burián, 16 October 1918; Braun to Burián, 18 October 1918; Telegram Hohenlohe, 21 October 1918, HHStA, Literarisches Bureau, K. 127. Claß at a meeting of the executive committee of the ADV, 19 October 1918, BArch, R 8048, No. 121; ‘Gruß an die Deutschen in Österreich’, AB, 26 October 1918, pp. 341–2 (p. 342). Also see already the committee’s meeting on 13 September 1918, BArch, R 8048, No. 120. Notes for speech on ‘Weltkrieg und Auslandsdeutschtum’ (1915/16), PAAA, Stresemann papers, No. 151. Stresemann to Erhorn, 21 January 1915, a reply to Erhorn’s letter from 10 January 1915, PAAA, Stresemann papers, No. 145. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 314, p. 6173 (22 October 1918). See Nostitz to Vitzthum, 11 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 43; Bennsdorf’s memoranda of 9, 11, and 12 October 1918, SLHA, 10730/384; and Freybe to OHL Auslandsabteilung, 11 October 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 347.

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including the Bavarian and Saxon envoys, General Cramon, and other members of the German diplomatic corps. He declared that he had received reliable information that the Czechs were determined to establish a Czecho-Slovak state with the force of arms. One would have to prepare for Austro-German calls for troops and foodstuffs. Whereas Cramon suggested the smuggling of weapons, both Nostitz and Tucher advised caution in view of possible Entente reactions to German ‘expansionism’.222 Ludendorff, on the other hand, in a letter to Solf, explained that Germany might soon have to extend its military protection to the Germans in Austria, contending that ‘Anschluss of the areas of German nationality will come about sooner or later’. After all, the first quartermaster-general argued in the same way as Stresemann, this development would be ‘a valuable compensation for the disappointments the war brings us in other fields’.223 In a memo of the same day, Kaiser Wilhelm II held that the war as a struggle between Slavdom and Germandom had led to a stronger sense of togetherness between Europe’s Germanic nations which would now ‘feel drawn to us, the centre’, and claimed that it would also be the best for German-Austria ‘to join the German Reich, in some form or another, in order to preserve the existence and future of its race’.224 The Foreign Office, too, had given up any hope for the continued existence of the Habsburg Monarchy and was already discussing strategies of how to deal with the Austrian Anschluss movement. In a letter to Wedel, Solf declared that he would have preferred to continue along Bismarck’s line of preserving and strengthening the Danube Monarchy but that ‘all indications are that this process of disintegration cannot be stopped’. However, the state secretary remained more tentative than Ludendorff and the Kaiser. He maintained that it was not reasonable to pursue an active policy and ordered the ambassador to inform the Austro-Germans that ‘it was neither in their interest nor in ours to accelerate the present panic-like process of dissolution’. His instructions are remarkable for they formulate a programme which was also followed by post-war German decision-makers until the Treaty of Versailles, that is to say a policy of cautious risk management which put Anschluss second only to other, apparently more important interests:

222 223 224

Report Tucher, 15 October 1918, BHSA, MA 2481/6, and Nostitz to Vitzthum, 13 October 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 347. Ludendorff to Solf, 14 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 7. Wilhelm II, ‘Bemerkungen über Österreich!’, 14 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 7.

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Otherwise, I fear that the increase in territory and power . . . would provide the Entente with the justification to demand territorial compensations and to lay claim not only to Alsace-Lorraine and areas with Polish population, but also to territories on the left bank of the Rhine, especially the Saar Basin.225

One week later, he suggested secretly encouraging Austro-German politicians to protest against the Austro-Hungarian peace effort and to establish their own state institutions, without, however, implicating Germany and issuing an official Anschluss declaration. Germany would be willing to incorporate Austria after the conclusion of peace, but what was essential at the moment was the protection of the Tyrolean frontiers against Entente troops.226 The German press was advised to exert caution, with the Kriegspresseamt representative stressing again the possibility of territorial losses and the need of the Austro-Germans to unify themselves in the first place.227 By this stage, the OHL’s loss of power – a consequence of Max von Baden’s moderate course and restoration of the primacy of politics over military strategy – was becoming increasingly obvious; Ludendorff was dismissed on 26 October. Interested in favourable armistice terms, the German government in the end only lent unofficial, quiet support to the Anschluss movement in Austria and also declined to send weapons, as discussed internally and demanded by various German Bohemian towns and several branches of the VDA in Saxony.228 Given the difficult food and housing situation in the kingdom, the Dresden government even told its border guards and local authorities to turn down German Bohemian refugees with no relatives or proof of work and residence in Saxony.229 Tucher, too, suggested a cautious approach, arguing that Anschluss should only be offered as the very last resort: ‘The inclination of the AustroGermans to moan in front of others and to let themselves be helped is wellknown, as is their indiscretion and tendency to exaggerate.’ One should be careful not to aggravate the domestic situation by expressing sympathy and support for the Austro-Germans.230 In Prague, Baron von Gebsattel 225

226 227 228 229 230

Solf to Wedel, 19 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 7. For the Bavarian position, see Lerchenfeld to Lössl, 26 October 1918, BHSA MA 103024. On the background with further references: D.P. Myers, ‘Berlin versus Vienna: Disagreement about Anschluss in the Winter of 1918–1919’, CEH, 5 (1972), 150–75; D.P. Myers, ‘National Self-Determination in 1918–1919: The Case of Austria’, in N. Finzsch and H. Wellenreuther (eds.), Liberalitas. Festschrift für Erich Angermann (Stuttgart, 1992), pp. 45–66. See Solf’s telegrams of 27 and 28 October 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 347. Kriegspresseamt, Oberzensurstelle, ‘Aufzeichnungen aus der Pressebesprechung vom 21.10.1918’, BHSA MA 103024. See the various letters, reports, and petitions, SLHA, AM 1822, and PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 384. Circular letter of the Ministry of the Interior, 6 November 1918, SLHA, AM 1822. Report Tucher, 15 October 1918, BHSA, MA 2481/6.

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rejected pleas for German intervention, fearing frictions with the Czech leaders and the impairment of Germany’s position towards the Entente. The German consul had earlier reported extensively about Czech subversion and anti-German tendencies, and after the general amnesty of July 1917 even stated that ‘the current policy of the Crown and the government’ was ‘completely mistaken’: ‘Now would be the perfect moment to demonstrate to this pretentious and yet so spineless people who the lord and master is.’231 In October 1918, however, Gebsattel quickly adopted a pragmatic position and made a case for GermanCzech rapprochement, advising the German Bohemians to seek an understanding with the new rulers and arguing that an affable relationship between Berlin and Prague would be very much in the Reich German interest, in particular from the economic point of view. The excellent connections of the Czechs to the Entente states and the United States could soon become beneficial: ‘In my opinion, it can only be of use to us to draw a line under the Czech past and to consider them no longer as former traitors but as an independent nation of equal status with which we should strive to be on good terms in our own interest.’232 Gebsattel would later be the first foreign representative to officially recognize the new CzechoSlovak polity (2 November 1918).233 Interestingly, Ambassador Wedel, who like Solf had from early on taken a very careful approach with regard to the Austrian Anschluss movement in order not to jeopardize Germany’s post-war standing, argued differently. In the charged atmosphere of the last weeks of the war, even he could not refrain from employing völkisch rhetoric. Wedel was afraid that the 1.5 million German Bohemians would be irretrievably lost once incorporated into the Czecho-Slovak polity and thus promoted German moral and diplomatic support: ‘We are and remain the leader [Führervolk] of the German tribes and must not shirk our duties towards our own people, now less than ever.’ Without the industrialized German-speaking parts, the new state would economically be highly dependent on Germany: a preferable option to the existence of a strong and untrustworthy rival on Germany’s south-eastern 231

232

233

Gebsattel to Bethmann Hollweg, 19 July 1917, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 39. Also see his reports of 20 December 1914, 8 April 1915 (vol. 35), 24 August 1915 (vol. 36), 12 January 1916 (vol. 38), 23 October 1917 (vol. 39), and 3 May 1918 (vol. 41), and the letter from the German consulate in Brünn (Brno) to the Foreign Office, 13 March 1918 (vol. 40). Gebsattel to Max v. Baden, 30 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 43. Also see his reports of 25 and 29 October, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 43, and of 4 November 1918, SLHA, AM 1822. For an opposing view, see Wever to Wedel, 30 October 1918, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 384. See his report of 2 November 1918, in Alexander (ed.), Quellen zu den deutsch-tschechischen Beziehungen, pp. 117–18. Note, however, Solf’s reply of 7 November 1918 (on p. 119).

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border.234 However, Wedel disagreed with military intervention and, returning to his previous views, soon acquiesced in the situation and acknowledged the merit of a conciliatory policy towards the new Slav entities, which would orientate themselves towards Germany and seek future cooperation.235 Of course, not all Austro-Germans were in favour of unification with Germany. Critical voices did exist, especially amongst some industrialists (fearing German competition), Habsburg loyalists, clerical circles, and others who appeared concerned about the course of the German Revolution (Bolshevism) and the reaction of the Entente states (reparations, territorial losses).236 Some commentators expected better and quicker help in terms of foodstuffs and coal from the western democracies as well as from their Slavic and Hungarian neighbours. They also hoped to maintain the access to the Adriatic Sea and not to have to pay heavy indemnities if Vienna disassociated itself from Berlin, which was widely seen as the main culprit for the war. Altogether, however, Anschluss was a popular cause in Austria. In Germany, in contrast, it received only lukewarm reactions. Speaking two days after Stresemann, the Social Democratic Reichstag deputy Gustav Noske, for instance, merely expressed his ‘greatest sympathy’ with the Austro-Germans without mentioning a possible unification.237 In fact, during the last weeks of the war and until the opening of the Weimar National Assembly in February 1919, the SPD demonstrated almost total indifference to the developments in Austria, not least because of its preoccupation with domestic upheaval and the peace question. Whereas in German-Austria the Social Democrats soon took the lead in the unification movement, it was only a small group within the Reich German Socialist camp – mostly

234

235

236

237

Wedel to Max v. Baden, 28 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 43. Also see his letters to the chancellor of 16 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95 secr., vol. 7, of 21 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 103, vol. 8, and to Hintze, 22 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 103, vol. 9. See already Wedel to Foreign Office, 2 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 95, vol. 25. See Wedel to Solf, 22 October 1918, his letters to Max v. Baden, 23 and 30 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 103, vol. 9, and his telegram to the Foreign Office, 16 November 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 44. On the German-Czech question in late 1918, see with further references: H. Lemberg, ‘1918: Die Staatsgründung der Tschechoslowakei’, in Brandes et al. (eds.), Wendepunkte, pp. 119–35. See Wedel to Max v. Baden, 14 October 1918, PAAA, Österreich 101, vol. 43, and the embassy press reports of 14 and 21 November as well as of 12 December 1918, SLHA, 10730/361. Verhandlungen des Reichstags, vol. 314, p. 6214 (24 October 1918). For the German official position in early November 1918 and Austrian reactions, see Wedel’s reports of 7 and 17 November, PAAA, Botschaft Wien, No. 347.

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former advocates of Mitteleuropa and expansionist war aims – who openly supported the establishment of Greater Germany.238 By the end of the war, Catholic politicians and commentators had not fully embraced Anschluss, either. Many remained loyal to the Habsburg Monarchy and hoped for its revival. Catholics did back the AustroGermans in their demand for self-determination but avoided bringing up the question of political unification.239 In an interview with the Viennese Reichspost, Matthias Erzberger, who was state secretary without portfolio in Max von Baden’s cabinet, even suggested that in case the Austro-Germans voted for ‘a federation with other non-German states, our sympathies for German-Austria would not be any smaller’.240 The leader of the Bavarian Centre Party Heinrich Held, on the other hand, promoted a separate settlement and unification between Vienna and Munich, a marginal idea but indicative of the long-standing (and increasing) anti-Prussian tendencies in South Germany.241 Of all the moderate forces in Germany, it was thus mainly left liberals who disputed the right-wing monopolization of the Anschluss idea. The breakthrough of liberal-democratic support of a grossdeutsch solution took place after Andrássy’s note of 27 October and once it had become clear that Austro-German coexistence with the other nationalities was no longer a realistic option. Alexander Redlich, who in the Vossische Zeitung had campaigned for German-Czech amity and the federalization of Austria, on the basis of the right of national self-determination explained himself in favour of the incorporation of German-Austria (including the Sudetenland) into the German Reich. However, he distinguished himself from the aggressive tone of nationalist opinion leaders by stressing that 238

239 240 241

L. Quessel, ‘Nation, Staat, Imperium’, SoM, 29 October 1918, pp. 1001–7; L. Quessel, ‘Deutsch-Österreich’, SoM, 31 December 1918, p. 1213; H. Peus, ‘Das Grossdeutsche Reich’, SoM, 10 December 1918, pp. 1113–15. See S. Miller, ‘Das Ringen um “die einzig großdeutsche Republik”. Die Sozialdemokratie in Österreich und im Deutschen Reich zur Anschlußfrage 1918/19’, AfS, 11 (1971), 1–51; E. Panzenbröck, Ein deutscher Traum. Die Anschlußidee und Anschlußpolitik bei Karl Renner und Otto Bauer (Vienna, 1985); H. Steiner, ‘Die österreichische Arbeiterbewegung und die Anschlußfrage 1918/ 19’, in C. Jansen et al. (eds.), Von der Aufgabe der Freiheit. Politische Verantwortung und bürgerliche Gesellschaft im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1995), pp. 151–62; R. Saage, ‘Die deutsche Frage. Die Erste Republik im Spannungsfeld zwischen österreichischer und deutscher Identität’, in H. Konrad and W. Moderthaner (eds.), ‘. . . der Rest ist Österreich’. Das Werden der Ersten Republik, 2 vols. (Vienna, 2008), I, pp. 65–82; E. Hanisch, ‘Im Zeichen von Otto Bauer. Deutschösterreichs Außenpolitik in den Jahren 1918 bis 1919’, in Konrad and Moderthaner (eds.), ‘. . . der Rest ist Österreich’, I, pp. 207–22. ‘Die Auflösung Österreich-Ungarns’, KVZ, 2 November 1918. ‘Ein deutscher Gruß an Deutschösterreich’, Reichspost, 2 November 1918. See the discussion at a meeting of the War Cabinet on 3 November 1918, in E. Matthias and R. Morsey (eds.), Die Regierung des Prinzen Max von Baden (Düsseldorf, 1962), pp. 477–84.

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this union was not ‘aimed against the non-German nationalities of former Austria’ but constituted a prerequisite for the unification of Europe and the reconciliation of Germany with its neighbours.242 This cooperative attitude was confirmed by the Frankfurter Zeitung one day later: ‘We have to rearrange our relationship to the peoples who emerge from the rotten political shell and must base it on healthy and lasting foundations.’ As for Germany, it would still have enough energy to build a new political structure ‘without the inner faults of the old’.243 Next to the conciliatory rhetoric, it was in particular this condemnation of the ‘old Germany’ which marked liberal-democratic support of Anschluss, put forward as the ‘great, common, positive goal for the German nation’: ‘War would not have been fought in vain. The emerging new is more precious and promising than the old which was smashed in the struggle of arms.’244 The national right employed völkisch rhetoric in order to justify the enlargement of the German nation-state as a compensation for losses in other fields, hoping that Greater Germany would withstand the assault of American capitalism and Russian Bolshevism.245 The democratic left, in contrast, linked Großdeutschland to parliamentary democracy, envisioning better relations with the new republics in Central and South-Eastern Europe and the restoration of a community of economic interests. Thus, the eventual disintegration of the Dual Monarchy did not come as a total surprise to German decision-makers and the largest part of the German public. The break of comradeship-in-arms, followed by AustriaHungary’s unconditional surrender at Villa Giusti on 3 November, nevertheless caused ‘a real storm of indignation’, as the Habsburg envoy to Württemberg reported to Vienna.246 Far from acknowledging that the German Reich, too, was incapable of continuing the war effort, nationalist commentators condemned the one-sided action as an ungrateful and dishonourable ‘betrayal’ by a ‘disguised enemy’.247 To them, as for many Austro-Germans such as the right-wing Social Democrat Karl Leuthner, 242 243 244

245 246 247

A. Redlich, ‘Für wen spricht Andrassy?’, VZ, 28 October 1918. Editorial, FZ, 29 October 1918. Also see ‘Die Auflösung Österreich-Ungarns’, FZ, 27 October 1918. ‘Einheit der deutschen Nation!’, VZ, 31 October 1918. Also see W. Schotte, ‘Das deutsche Volk’, Mittel-Europa, 5 November 1918, pp. 517–20; ‘Großdeutschland’, Mittel-Europa, 19 November 1918, p. 537; T. Heuss, ‘Schwarz-Rot-Gold’, DP, 22 November 1918, pp. 1475–9. See, for example, R. Fester, ‘Auf neuen Wegen’, DR, November 1918, pp. 169–79; ‘Willkommen, Deutsch-Österreich!’, Kunstwart, 1st December issue 1918, pp. 148–9. Nemes to Andrássy, 30 October 1918, HHStA, Literarisches Bureau, K. 127. ‘Habsburgs unrühmliches Ende’, BNN, 1 November 1918; ‘Österreich-Ungarn will einen Sonderfrieden’, WZ, 29 October 1918. Also see ‘In wessen Namen, Graf Andrassy?’, WZ, 30 October 1918; Braun to Flotow, 5 November 1918, HHStA, PA I, K. 841 (press report).

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it was beyond question that the responsibility for the dissolution of the Danube Empire and the end of the coalition lay with the Slav nationalities, which had undermined the war effort and secretly conspired with the Entente against Germandom. While Leuthner also attacked the Habsburg dynasty for not having backed the Austro-Germans, converting them into ‘state slaves’ and ‘second-class Germans’ instead, the conservative Grenzboten directed their fury at the propagators of the Austrian idea, who had made the Germans believe that they were allied to ‘the legendary k.k. Austrian people’.248 And the nationalist Türmer in a remarkable critique of German wartime statism lamented: ‘If we had just directed the Nibelungentreue towards our own Volkstum in Austria which fought for us and suffered for us instead of wasting this loyalty to the House of Habsburg!’249 Clearly, in contrast to what Polzer claimed after the war, Germany did not actively work towards the disintegration of its most important ally. It did also not prevent the introduction of domestic reforms, quite in contrast to Budapest, which was deeply opposed to a change of the dualist system and a more comprehensive federalization of the realm. In the first half of the war, Berlin attempted to influence Austrian internal affairs in favour of the German-speaking population, often meeting negative reactions. In November 1915, however, Burián admitted that the call for a strengthening of the German element in Austria was ‘justified’ and that certain ‘mistakes had been committed as regards the treatment of the Czechs’.250 In fact, a pro-German octroi was considered until spring 1917, and quite a few Viennese officials advocated the Austro-Polish solution because of its impact on the national composition of the parliament. As seen, Kaiser Karl, influenced by pacifist and reform-minded circles, promoted conciliatory measures, such as the reopening of the Reichsrat and the political amnesty, but several of his leading ministers were more inclined towards a German course, including Foreign Minister Czernin and Prime Ministers ClamMartinic and Seidler. In May 1918, Seidler finally announced the administrative division (Kreiseinteilung) of Bohemia, a long-standing Austro-German demand yet widely perceived as a consequence of Reich German pressure (as the declaration was made a few days after 248

249

250

K. Leuthner, ‘Das Ende des übernationalen Staates’, SoM, 29 October 1918, pp. 993–1001 (p. 997); R. Fester, ‘Der Zusammenbruch Österreichs und unsere Diplomatie’, Grenzboten, 15 November 1918, pp. 153–57 (p. 156). ‘Türmers Tagebuch’, Türmer, 2nd November issue 1918, pp. 186–97 (p. 195). Also see E. R[eventlow], ‘Der frühere Bundesgenosse’, DTZ, 31 October 1918; ‘Dank vom Hause Österreich’, Kunstwart, 2nd November issue 1918, pp. 131–2. Report Tucher, 19 November 1915, BHSA, MA 2481/3.

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the allied conference in Spa). In reality, Berlin’s efforts – consisting mainly in informal proposals and admonitions in the style of pre-war diplomacy – had proved ineffective and were given up by late 1916. At no point did the German government (or the OHL) threaten to use military force, stop financial transfers, or withhold the delivery of foodstuffs and coal to enforce pro-German reforms in Austria. Officials and diplomats did not publicly speak out for Austrian Germandom, and Ambassador Wedel even advocated a conciliatory approach towards the Austrian Slavs. In fact, it is conceivable that Berlin would have accepted a federalization of Cisleithania as long as the dualist system and Magyar preponderance in Hungary were preserved and the Habsburg Monarchy joined a firm political and economic union, thus securing a continuation of the alliance and Austria-Hungary’s military dependability. Arguably, however, Germany bore some indirect responsibility for the domestic instability and non-implementation of constitutional reforms in wartime Austria-Hungary. The reluctance to conclude a peace of understanding alienated the Austro-Slavs, who lost their trust in the Habsburg regime as it seemed unwilling or unable to oppose Berlin and the OHL. The non-German nationalities gradually understood that their hopes for an end of the war could only be realized in the case of a defeat of the Central Powers. Moreover, Berlin did not act strictly enough against the right-wing press, whose hard-line and antagonistic articles may well have encouraged many Austro-Germans to oppose the national demands of the Slavs. Numerous commentators believed in German cultural and civilizational superiority, and increasingly argued in pre-war terms of a struggle between Germandom and Slavdom, holding that the task of the Habsburg Monarchy was to contain western Slavdom and to secure German predominance in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. This view was to a great extent a result of the influence of German-Bohemian and other Austro-German nationalists, but the large majority of Germany’s national right did not make the attempt to acquire a proper, unbiased understanding of the political situation and the nationality conflicts in Austria-Hungary. There was no awareness that a German course in Austria would estrange the Slavs, destabilize the realm, and ultimately endanger the solidity of the alliance. On the other hand, most centre-right politicians and publicists put state interests above völkisch solidarity, and remained reluctant concerning Austro-German demands for the AustroPolish solution, the establishment of Mitteleuropa, or intervention in Austrian domestic politics. Furthermore, it would be wrong to condemn German public opinion in toto, as many Catholic, Social Democratic, and left-liberal commentators recognized the necessity of constitutional

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reforms in Cisleithania, even though support for the Austro-Slavs usually stopped short of accepting full national self-determination. In contrast to the national right, moderate circles acknowledged the infeasibility of German centralism and continued war absolutism in Austria, regarding the Austro-Germans not as a bulwark against Slavdom but rather as mediators and interpreters.

Conclusion

Without doubt, the wartime coalition between Berlin and Vienna was a central episode in the history of German-Austrian relations, renewing and amplifying an underlying sense of togetherness. In the mid-19th century, Borussian intellectuals and politicians had characterized the Danube Monarchy as a non-German, Slavo-Catholic pandemonium in order to undermine Vienna’s claim for supremacy in the German lands. Even after the conclusion of the Dual Alliance in 1879, the realm was widely considered a Völkerchaos, an anachronistic entity in terminal crisis. During the early stages of the World War, a positive image prevailed, engendered by optimistic confidence and the perception of common threats and interests. The initial popularity of the military partnership must also be attributed to national sentiments, the realization that Reich Germans were fighting alongside Austro-Germans with whom they were united by historical, cultural, and linguistic ties. The sense of national kinship made the alliance appear a superior fellowship, a faithful ‘band of brothers’, promising to be more resilient than the Entente, which was depicted as a superficial and disparate grouping. The enthusiasm in press and public debate proved that after half a century of political division, Reich Germans from across all camps still regarded the German-speaking population of the Habsburg Empire as ‘genuine and true Germans’, as Hugo Preuß put it.1 However, on closer inspection, it becomes evident that the Austrophilism and Greater German fervour were temporary phenomena without practical consequences and substantial long-term effects on German national identity. Großdeutschland was not born during the war. First of all, apart from the early months of the war, alliance discourse was not Germano-centric. The participation of the Bulgarian and Turkish coalition partners alone precluded such a reading. Perhaps more significantly, there was a broad awareness of Czech, Polish, South Slav, and – most importantly – Magyar involvement on the side of the 1

Preuß, ‘Großdeutsch, Kleindeutsch’, p. 51.

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Central Powers. More than ever, Reich Germans realized that the other ethnic groups in the Danube Monarchy had to be taken into account as well. Only a small group of extreme nationalists on the fringe of the political spectrum labelled the events a struggle between Germandom and Slavdom, and at least in the first half of the war even centre-right commentators took up the idea of German-Slav and German-Hungarian comradeship-in-arms. For a large part of the German public, this caution was, of course, less due to a sudden and novel appreciation of the nonGerman nationalities but a result of statist priorities, a matter of expediency also with regard to plans for a more or less informal, multinational but German-ruled empire in Central and Eastern Europe. The new, seemingly more tolerant and open-minded stance did not imply full parity, or challenge the long-standing belief that the Austro-Germans were the culturally and socio-economically most advanced ethnic group within the Habsburg realm, rightfully dominating at least the western half. According to the notion of an ‘Austrian miracle’, the war fostered the idea of a German Austria and thus rationalized the political division of Germandom. As before 1914, there was no doubt that Bismarck had been right to establish a powerful Lesser Germany by excluding the AustroGermans, who together with the Magyars were understood to neutralize the western and southern Slavs and guarantee a pro-German foreign policy course of the allied realm. As long as Austro-German supremacy within Cisleithania seemed secure, there was no need to question the status quo of German-Austrian relations. However, the course of the war soon contested the positive image of the Dual Monarchy as a stable and reliable coalition partner. Officially, a notion of unity and accord was propagated until 1918: from the renaming of streets and squares to dressing buildings with the ally’s flags, from the exchange of congratulatory telegrams and awards after military victories to the suppression of critical newspaper articles and the bribery of journalists, almost everything was done in order to maintain a harmonious idea of the war alliance. Anything else, German and Austro-Hungarian officials were convinced, would be interpreted as a sign of weakness by the Entente and neutral countries. Of course, this propaganda also had a domestic objective: sustaining the faith in a victorious outcome of the struggle in order to rally the people behind the war effort and to warrant sacrifices and restrictions. Yet military failures and the re-emergence of the nationality conflicts in the Dual Monarchy could not be concealed forever. Nor could the allies’ disagreements about war aims and military strategies, or the clashes over the Trentino, the Romanian question, and the Polish problem be kept secret. In Germany, routinization and disenchantment soon replaced the early

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passion for the ally, restoring pre-war disdain and feelings of superiority. Amongst Germany’s political and intellectual elite as well as in broader sections of the population, there was growing resentment against the coalition partner, which often mixed with traditional prejudices about ostensibly feeble and ineffective Austrian Germandom (which, as the ‘leading’ element at least within Cisleithania, was made responsible for the various problems in Habsburg state and society). Overall, it seems that derision, scepticism, and anger were more prevalent in wartime Germany than a novel sense of commonality or solidarity with the conationals in the Danube Monarchy. On the other hand, there never was a single, uniform German idea of Austria-Hungary. Private perceptions and attitudes differed considerably from the public image of the ally in the press and in speeches. Different sociocultural and political backgrounds led to diverse standpoints, and positions changed according to new developments. It is essential to explore the interests and motivations behind certain statements and propositions. Before the war, the democratic left had commented critically on Austro-Hungarian domestic politics and the empire’s role in the Balkans. In August 1914, Social Democrats and left liberals took up a neutral standpoint, only cautiously expressing disapproval of wartime repressions and extra-parliamentary rule. In a later stage of the war, the supporters of a compromise peace even demonstrated pro-Austrian attitudes, backing Foreign Minister Czernin’s and Emperor Karl’s proposals for disarmament and new international arrangements. They also referred to the difficult political and economic situation in the Dual Monarchy to make a case against continued fighting and demands for far-reaching annexations. Not surprisingly, National Liberal and conservative commentators reacted irritably to attempts to present the Habsburg entity as a model for Imperial Germany due to its more even-handed nationality policy or moderate stance in the war aims question. Many right-wing politicians and opinion leaders supported a deepened partnership with Vienna and Budapest in order to solidify the alliance and to compensate for the loss of international commercial links. However, fearing impairment of German independence and room for manoeuvre, they expressed strong scepticism regarding a firm political and economic union with the ostensibly unreliable ally (at least as a relationship between equal partners), and, more often than not, Germany’s new orientation towards South-Eastern Europe was understood as but a short-term expedient or supplement to its overseas activities. The tedious negotiations over the Central European project also contributed to the popularity of other schemes,

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most prominently the plan for an Ostimperium, which seemed realizable without much Austro-Hungarian interference and offered more interesting opportunities for economic exploitation and the protection of Germany’s eastern borders. Most Mitteleuropa advocates, mainly with a left-liberal or moderate conservative leaning, equally intended to secure and enhance Germany’s international position, but instead of following conventional concepts of imperial governance, such as annexations and direct control of occupied areas, many embraced new, informal or federal forms of rule, the pénétration pacifique of East-Central Europe. Attempts to revalue the legacy of the Holy Roman Empire, the ideas of Greater German thinkers of the 19th century, and Habsburg multinationalism have to be seen against this backdrop. In this, they were joined by some Catholic and South German politicians and publicists who generally belonged to the most fervent supporters of the Dual Alliance and for long refrained from any criticism of the coalition partner. To them, the Central European union represented a potential counter-model or challenge to the kleindeutsch paradigm and national status quo. Their sympathy with Vienna was spurred by longstanding confessional, cultural, and regional affinities, but they also hoped that an association with Austria-Hungary would strengthen German federalism and boost their standing in state and society. It was the attempt to exploit the prevalent ethno-cultural sense of community between Reich and Austrian Germandom to gain more power and prestige in the Kaiserreich. In this context, there was a stress on Christianfederative and supranational patterns in German history, put forward against established Prusso-centric historiography, and a belief in a German cultural mission in Eastern Europe in opposition to overseas imperialism. Essentially, however, this camp was united by the rejection of the political and sociocultural status quo and Prusso-Protestant hegemony rather than by the commitment to a common alternative idea of the German nation. In the popular understanding, German-Austrian unity was based on common ground in terms of history, language, and culture. Radicalnationalist references to biological or genetic attributes, ‘the community of blood’ with ethnic Germans abroad, were rather uncommon in German public discourse. In fact, most representatives of the national right shared German statism. Before the war, Pan-Germans, too, had been primarily interested in maintaining and enhancing the political and economic position of the nation-state, in naval policy and global colonialism. They agreed that the Austro-Germans served Germany best by preserving and directing its most important ally; together, Germany and

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the Habsburg Monarchy constituted a more powerful factor in European politics than an enlarged, Greater German nation-state. During the war, some authors did promote völkisch plans for a Germanic Mitteleuropa but altogether it seems that Pan-German wartime imperialism aimed at the extension of the power and authority of the German Reich through the forced acquisition of territory and the establishment of satellite states rather than the political unification of Central European Germandom. The state, not the Volk, was the starting and focal point of radicalnationalist war aims. For the large majority of commentators, the war vindicated the nationstate, which seemed to successfully master the various domestic challenges and the military efforts on several fronts. The conflict was indeed perceived as an attack on Germandom but interpreted in ideological terms as a struggle between state-political doctrines and moral principles, between the ideas of 1789 and those of 1914, rather than as a fight for ethnic survival. Within this framework, the German nation was construed as a spiritual community of values and Kultur, naturally including the Austro-Germans. Yet when it came to practical politics, ‘Germany’ was identified with the Kaiserreich. Nation-state interests remained fundamental in German national and political discourse. Not surprisingly then, the union with the Habsburg Empire represented merely one amongst an extraordinary array of war aims and schemes concerning the future course of the German Reich and its geostrategic options. Mitteleuropa was not prompted by a concern about ethnic Germandom abroad, notwithstanding the hope of liberalnationalist Austro-German and Hungarian German representatives that it would bolster their domestic status and instigate Reich German support in the struggle against Austro-Slav demands and Magyar nationality policy. In fact, the Kingdom of Hungary was widely considered Berlin’s closest non-German ally, a reliable political and military partner with whom good relations were to be kept even at the expense of the Germanspeaking population in Transleithania. A similarly pragmatic approach was taken with regard to Austrian Germandom. To be sure, Austro-German political supremacy in Cisleithania was long considered a conditio sine qua non for a stable and supportive foreign policy course of the Danube Monarchy, and the fear of a ‘Slavization’ of the realm was one of the reasons for German intransigence vis-à-vis the Austro-Polish solution. The notion of indispensable Austro-German leadership, which was prevalent already in the pre-war period and related to the idea of an Austrian Kulturmission, that is, the belief that the Austro-Germans served as ‘bearers’ of civilization and order and that they secured German authority in Central and South-Eastern

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Europe, showed the rhetoric of German-Slav friendship to be mere camouflage for German claims to hegemony, at least amongst the centre-right camp. Moreover, it was assumed that the ethno-cultural sense of togetherness would automatically produce political solidarity with the German Reich, thus overlooking the socio-economic and party-political diversity of Austrian Germandom which was reduced to its sheer Germanness. In fact, many Austrian Socialists and Christian Socials were disinclined to unconditionally back Berlin’s policies. Hence, irrational, unquestioned conjectures had a significant bearing on the Reich Germans’ stance towards the Austrian nationality problem. It would be wrong to rule out emotional attachment to the AustroGermans, the sincere concern for their domestic standing in the context of the re-emergence of national strife in Cisleithania. However, to many contemporaries, the German-speaking population in the Habsburg Empire ultimately mattered only as a parameter determining AustriaHungary’s loyalty to the Kaiserreich. The situation of the AustroGermans was a matter of alliance politics; they remained a tool, an object of Reich German policy towards the Danube Monarchy rather than an end in itself. Thus, overt intervention in Habsburg affairs remained out of the question, even for the large majority of the far right which also prioritized good relations with Vienna and the continued existence of the multinational realm over active support for disunited Austrian Germandom. Once the monarchy was tied to Germany by the Spa Agreement, senior decision-makers contemplated a new, conciliatory policy towards the Slavs, and the sources suggest that Reich Germans may have accepted a federalization of Austria, finally realizing the impracticality and potentially destabilizing effects of pro-German constitutional reforms there. The war alliance of the Central Powers did not lead to a fundamental break with previous national thought, to a new national idea or consciousness in the German Reich. There certainly was a greater awareness of Germandom abroad, but altogether German statism remained prevalent. In fact, despite a radicalization and ethnization of German national discourse, at least amongst right-wing contemporaries, the nation-state continued to represent the ultimate source of political legitimacy. Ethnonational rhetoric was applied for political reasons, to justify geo-strategic and economic ambitions, for instance in Belgium or the Baltic area. But such notions only acquired significance because they did not conflict with the interests of the German Reich. Only a small, extremist part of the political spectrum held that it was a prime duty of the nation-state to protect and support the German-speaking population living beyond its

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borders. To this extent, there is a strong element of continuity in German national thought and practice with the pre-war period. In fact, more than the outbreak of war in 1914, unexpected defeat, the collapse of the established political, social, and economic order, the experience of the revolution, and the loss of former Reich German territories as a consequence of the Versailles Settlement must be considered a major watershed in the history of the German national idea, leading to the breakthrough of the ethnic or völkisch concept of the German nation. Nevertheless, Prusso-Protestant notions and German statism remained powerful national doctrines even after 1918. Arguably, in the Weimar Republic, the Anschluss of Austria was much more a matter of Realpolitik, of tangible political and economic interests than of Greater German sentiments and ideas ostensibly fostered during the war. Germania irredenta: the role of Großdeutschland in Weimar nationalism ‘Habsburg and Hohenzollern, Austria and Prussia – they dominated, divided, split up the German people. Now their time is over.’ This is how the Austrian Arbeiter-Zeitung reacted when on 9 November 1918 Germany was proclaimed a Republic. Anticipating Emperor Karl’s withdrawal from Austrian state affairs, the Socialist paper hailed the end of dynastic rule in both countries as the beginning of Greater Germany: ‘The Austrian Monarchy is dissolved, the old Prussia has perished, and out of the rubble emerges, free and united, the German Republic which will unite all German tribes . . . We return to where we belong according to history, language, culture: we return to Germany.’2 A few days later, the Provisional National Assembly declared German-Austria a constituent part of the German Republic.3 Long-standing national sentiments were

2

3

‘Heil Deutschland!’, AZ, 10 November 1918. On the Anschluss question, see N. v. Preradovich, Die Wilhelmstraße und der Anschluss Österreichs 1918–1933 (Bern, 1971); S. Suval, The Anschluss Question in the Weimar Era: A Study of Nationalism in Germany and Austria, 1918–1932 (Baltimore, MA, 1974); N. Schausberger, Der Griff nach Österreich. Der Anschluss (Vienna, 1978); A. Hillgruber, ‘Das Anschlussproblem (1918–1945) aus deutscher Sicht’, in Kann and Prinz (eds.), Deutschland und Österreich, pp. 161–78; G. Botz, ‘Das Anschlussproblem (1918–1945) aus österreichischer Sicht’, in Kann and Prinz (eds.), Deutschland und Österreich, pp. 179–98; F. Mathis, ‘Wirtschaft oder Politik? Zu den “wirtschaftlichen” Motiven einer politischen Vereinigung zwischen 1918 und 1938’, in Gehler et al. (eds.), Ungleiche Partner?, pp. 427–39. ‘Gesetz über die Staats- und Regierungsform von Deutschösterreich’, 12 November 1918, in UF, III: Der Weg in die Weimarer Republik (1959), p. 285.

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important, especially for liberal circles, yet what proved decisive were more practical considerations. Economically isolated and suffering from a lack of vital supplies and a ruined infrastructure, many seemed convinced that an independent rump-Austria was not viable. Only the union with Berlin, it appeared, could contain the separatist tendencies in Tyrol and Salzburg and secure German-Austrian territory against Italian, Yugoslav, and Czecho-Slovak claims. Party-political ideology and the struggle for power also played a role. In the view of the Social Democrats, joining highly industrialized Germany with its powerful labour movement would facilitate a ‘social revolution’ in (predominantly agrarian) German-Austria and offer a guarantee against reactionary tendencies.4 Anschluss thus looked more advantageous (and realistic) than the other option, a Danubian Confederation with some of the Habsburg successor states. Initially, it seemed as if the hopes for rapid unification were met by Germany where large swaths of the population welcomed the Austrian initiative. At a time of military defeat, political upheaval, social unrest, and uncertain prospects – many Germans feared that at least AlsaceLorraine would be lost – the possibility of ‘reunification’ with the AustroGermans appeared as ‘the only ray of hope’ that remained ‘in this gloomy period of time’, as one commentator put it.5 Shortly after the pivotal German-Austrian declaration, a major gathering took place in the Berlin College of Music with such prominent speakers as Konrad Haenisch, member of the Prussian government and representative of the right-wing Socialists, and Werner Sombart, the famous sociologist from the University of Berlin. Whereas Austro-German speakers heavily criticized Bismarck for his policy towards Austria and stressed that German-Austria would join as an equal partner, Reich German participants took a rather patronizing stance. Employing deep-seated stereotypical images, Haenisch compared German-Austrian unification to a marriage between the political, state-building Prussian element and Austrian cheerfulness. Sombart agreed: ‘Nothing more apt than this comparison: the North and the South of the German people belong to each other like husband and wife: hard-working, sober North Germany and colourful, rich, melodious Austria. It is indeed . . . as if the groom takes his bride home.’6 All speakers, however, agreed in their demand for immediate elections to a common constituent National Assembly and 4 5 6

See, for example, M. Adler, ‘Der Krieg ist aus, der Kampf beginnt’, Kampf, December 1918, pp. 776–85. A. Jirku, ‘Deutsch-Österreich’, Reichsbote, 18 December 1918. H. Kienzl et al., Großdeutsch oder Kleindeutsch? Reden über den Anschluß Deutsch-Oesterreichs an die Deutsche Republik (Berlin, 1919), p. 30.

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appointed an Austro-German committee (which later developed into the Deutsch-Österreichischer Volksbund). Almost all political camps supported Anschluss during the first weeks and months after the war. In its founding proclamation of late November 1918, the right-liberal German People’s Party (DVP), for instance, announced that it would fight ‘for a Greater Germany from the Brenner to the Belt, for freedom, order, and public welfare’.7 In mid-December, the German Democratic Party (DDP) declared that ‘the separation of the Austro-Germans from the common fatherland’ had always been ‘unnatural’: ‘The new German democratic state would be incomplete if the Germans of Austria were not to join.’8 By the end of the year, the conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP) as well as the Centre Party had also expressed their support for the Anschluss movement.9 As mentioned earlier, the two Socialist parties, both forming the government at that time, were less enthusiastic. Ultimately, however, the SPD and the USPD also supported the call for union and the joint declaration of 21 February 1919 that ‘Germany and Austria form an inseparable unity’, which was signed by all parties of the Weimar National Assembly.10 The German press, too, almost unequivocally backed Anschluss. In mid-January, numerous papers published a common statement, demanding the ‘immediate realization’ of the Austro-German proclamation of mid-November: ‘We greet our brothers in GermanAustria, in particular the brave defenders of German-Bohemia, of the Sudetenland, and the German South Alps as citizens of Greater Germany.’11 This widespread popularity of the Greater German idea is a significant difference to the pre-war period, when unification with Austrian Germandom had been out of the question. An encroachment upon the political and territorial integrity of Berlin’s most important ally had been unthinkable. The dynastic question had also spoken against such tendencies. Now, after the break-up of the Dual Monarchy and the establishment of republican democracy in both Weimar Germany and 7

8

9

10 11

‘Aufruf des Vorläufigen Ausschusses der Deutschen Volkspartei’, 22 November 1918, in UF, III, pp. 183–4 (p. 184). Note the exclusion of South Tyrol, which was criticized by right-wing commentators: for example, ‘Ein Wort aus Süddeutschland’, DTZ, 1 December 1918. ‘Die demokratische Partei an die Deutschen Österreichs’, VZ, 19 December 1918. Also see ‘Wahlaufruf der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei’, 15 December 1918, in F. Salomon (ed.), Die neuen Parteiprogramme, mit den letzten der alten Parteien zusammengestellt, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1919), pp. 59–62. ‘Aufruf des Vorstandes der Deutschnationalen Volkspartei’, 27 December 1918, and, ‘Aufruf und Leitsätze des Reichsausschusses der Deutschen Zentrumspartei’, 30 December 1918, in Salomon (ed.), Die neuen Parteiprogramme, pp. 85–91, 47–52. ‘Antrag in der Deutschen Nationalversammlung’, 21 February 1919, in UF, III, p. 288. See, for instance, ‘Kundgebung der deutschen Presse’, KVZ, 17 January 1919.

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German-Austria, the situation looked more favourable, but two important arguments against Großdeutschland remained valid: the opposition of other European powers and the potential impact on Germany’s domestic order. Both factors help to explain why after a temporary collective surge of emotion – perhaps comparable to the Greater German euphoria of summer 1914 – many Germans remained rather reluctant concerning the political union with Vienna. In fact, even though Anschluss was a crossparty objective in Weimar, it never acquired the same significance as in Austria, where it was widely considered a matter of existential importance.12 Despite a pivotal change in German discourse about Austria from coexistence to irredentism, this asymmetry indicates certain continuity with the imperial period. Whereas broad sections of the German public initially embraced the Greater German option, Berlin sought to avoid any conflict with the victorious powers and refrained from expressing open support for the Austrian unification movement. In his reply to Under StateSecretary Otto Bauer’s warmly worded telegram and wish to enter into direct negotiations, the joint leader of the revolutionary government Hugo Haase (USPD) merely expressed his sympathy for GermanAustria without directly mentioning Anschluss.13 When the historian and newly appointed envoy to Berlin Ludo Moritz Hartmann appeared unexpectedly at the Reichskonferenz of the German federal states on 25 November and submitted the official request of the Viennese government to join the German Republic, he was rebuffed by State Secretary Solf and Haase’s colleague Friedrich Ebert (SPD), who argued that such a step would endanger the peace process.14 Apart from a non-committal 12

13

14

See, for example, G. Aubin, Deutsch-Österreich (Halle/S., 1919); H. Herkner, Deutschland und Deutsch-Österreich (Leipzig, 1919); G. Seeliger, Deutsch-Österreichs Anschluß (Dresden, 1919); A. v. Spitzmüller, Der politische Zusammenbruch und die Anschlußfrage (Vienna, 1919); G. Stolper, Donaukonföderation oder Großdeutschland (Berlin, 1919); A. Verdross, Deutsch-Österreich in Groß-Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1919); R. v. Kralik, Der großdeutsche Gedanke. Eine historische Übersicht (Hamm, 1921); F. Schreyvogel, Oesterreich das deutsche Problem (Cologne, 1925); F.G. Kleinwaechter, Der deutschösterreichische Mensch und der Anschluß (Vienna, 1926); F.G. Kleinwaechter and H. v. Paller (eds.), Die Anschlußfrage in ihrer kulturellen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung (Vienna, 1930). Reich German contributions are marginal in comparison. See, for example, F. v. Payer, Deutsch-Österreich und wir (Stuttgart, 1919); P. Löbe and H. Neubacher, Die Oesterreichisch-Deutsche Anschlußbewegung (Wurzen, 1926); and the German contributions to Kleinwaechter and v. Paller (eds.), Die Anschlußfrage. See ‘Telegramm des österreichischen Unterstaatssekretärs Otto Bauer an den Volksbeauftragten Haase’, 13 November 1918 and ‘Die Antwort Haases an Bauer’, 15 November 1918, in G.A. Ritter and S. Miller (eds.), Die Deutsche Revolution 1918–1919: Dokumente, 2nd rev. and exp. ed. (Hamburg, 1975), pp. 443–4, 444. ‘Oberst von Haeften über das Auftreten des deutsch-österreichischen Gesandten auf der Reichskonferenz am 25.11.1918’, in Ritter and Miller (eds.), Die Deutsche Revolution 1918–1919, pp. 445–6.

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public statement that ‘the Austro-German brothers are heartily welcome’, Berlin remained cautious about the Anschluss question, although it allowed Austro-German residents to cast their votes in the elections for the German National Assembly and invited two Viennese representatives into the constitutional affairs committee.15 Carefully stressing national self-determination and European reconciliation, it was hoped that the Entente would, as a reward for German moderation, take a less vindictive and relentless position at the peace conference.16 The incorporation of German-Austria with its financial debts and lack of resources represented in any case a great risk for the young republic, which was struggling with demobilization and civil war. Moreover, separatist activists in southern and west Germany were promoting Anschluss to further their cause. For instance, Georg Heim, who as a defender of Bavarian agrarian interests had previously opposed a closer relationship between Germany and the Habsburg Monarchy, now propagated the unification of Bavaria with parts of Austria as a defensive measure and counterweight against the radical north of Germany and Bolshevist Vienna.17 Together with Heinrich Held, he co-founded the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP), a semiautonomous branch of the Centre Party and the first party to openly declare itself in favour of a union of Germany and Austria (including German Bohemia).18 The Bavarian branch of the DVP similarly promoted Greater Germany to ‘reduce Prussia’s predominance’ and to ‘create a healthy balance between North and South’.19 In Cologne, in the meantime, a ‘Los von Berlin’ movement had emerged, supported by the local Centre Party and demanding the formation of a RhenishWestphalian Republic as part of a Greater German Confederation.20 15

16

17 18

19 20

‘Aktennotiz des Auswärtigen Amtes vom 28.11.1918’, in Ritter and Miller (eds.), Die Deutsche Revolution 1918–1919, pp. 446–7 (p. 447); ‘Verordnung über die Teilnahme der Angehörigen der deutsch-österreichischen Republik an den Wahlen zur Verfassungsgebenden Deutschen Nationalversammlung’, 7 January 1919, in Ritter and Miller (eds.), Die Deutsche Revolution 1918–1919, pp. 447–8; ‘Erklärung des Verfassungsausschusses der Deutschen Nationalversammlung’, 21 March 1919, in UF, III, p. 289. A point also emphasized by K.M. v. Lichnowsky in ‘Friedensprobleme’, BT, 29 November 1918 and ‘Die zukünftige deutsche Außenpolitik’, NR, February 1919, pp. 129–34. ‘Georg Heim über die Zukunft Bayerns’, 30 November and 1 December 1918, in Ritter and Miller (eds.), Die Deutsche Revolution 1918–1919, pp. 419–22. ‘Aufruf der Bayerischen Volkspartei’, 18 November 1918, in UF, III, pp. 200–2. Compare with the ‘Berliner Aufruf der Zentrumsfraktion des Reichstags’, 15 November 1918, in Salomon (ed.), Die neuen Parteiprogramme, pp. 42–4. ‘Wahlaufruf der Deutschen Volkspartei in Bayern’, December 1918, in Salomon (ed.), Die neuen Parteiprogramme, pp. 71–6 (p. 74). M. Schlemmer, ‘Los von Berlin’. Die Rheinstaatsbestrebungen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Cologne, 2007).

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Over the following years, Anschluss in fact remained closely linked to the discussion about a reform of the federal structure of Weimar Germany, receiving particularly strong support from those who contested PrussoProtestant supremacy.21 On the other hand, certain Catholic and South German intellectuals, such as Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and Oscar A.H. Schmitz, rejected German-Austrian unification, advocating instead the continuation or resurgence of Austria’s supranational task in Central Europe, reconciling the Germans with the Slav and Magyar world as a first building block towards a European federation.22 As is well known, the Paris Peace Settlement of summer 1919, widely perceived as a punitive Diktatfrieden aiming at Germany’s humiliation and economic ruin, had profound and long-lasting effects on the Weimar Republic’s political culture and significantly undermined the legitimacy of the democratic regime.23 Next to the war guilt clause, the demand for substantial financial compensation, and the reduction of the armed forces, it was in particular the wide-ranging territorial losses which shocked the Germans. The Anschluss question, too, was affected: the victorious powers rejected an enlarged Germany with some eighty million inhabitants and prohibited a union (unless the League of Nations agreed), requesting Weimar Germany to amend its constitution and obliging Vienna to adopt ‘Republic of Austria’ as the official name of the German-Austrian state. During the subsequent months, several Austrian federal states took the initiative and, despite protests from the central government and the West, in early 1921 carried out referenda, with an overwhelming majority voting in favour of union with Germany (achieving more than 98 per cent in Tyrol and Salzburg). Clearly, this had nothing to do with the notion of a socialist Greater Germany that had driven the unification movement in the immediate post-war period. Arguably, nationalist sentiments or Pan-German ideas were not decisive, either: the conservative federal governments despised ‘Red Vienna’ and preferred to join Germany (or indeed Switzerland in the case of Vorarlberg) on an individual basis to gain food and other much-needed 21

22

23

See, for example, B. Schmittmann, Preußen-Deutschland oder Deutsches Deutschland? (Bonn, 1920); K. Heldmann, Das deutsche Deutschland. Dreißig Sätze vom Deutschen Föderalistenbund, 3rd exp. ed. (Ludwigsburg, 1921). See, for example, F.W. Foerster, Mein Kampf gegen das militaristische und nationalistische Deutschland. Gesichtspunkte zur deutschen Selbsterkenntnis und zum Aufbau eines neuen Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1920), especially pp. 219–20; O.A.H. Schmitz, Der österreichische Mensch. Zum Anschauungsunterricht für Europäer, insbesondere für Reichsdeutsche (Vienna, 1924). M.F. Boemeke et al. (eds.), The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (Cambridge, 1998); G. Krumeich (ed.), Versailles 1919. Ziele, Wirkung, Wahrnehmung (Essen, 2001); T. Lorenz, ‘Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht!’. Der Versailler Vertrag in Diskurs und Zeitgeist der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt/M., 2007).

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resources. It was only once the Christian Social Ignaz Seipel took office as chancellor and secured financial aid from the League of Nations in the Geneva Protocols of October 1922 – on the condition to secure Austrian independence for the next twenty years – that Anschluss lost some of its appeal in Austria. Certain clerical-conservative groups (such as the members of the Österreichische Aktion), Austrianist intellectuals (e.g. Anton Wildgans), and Habsburg loyalists never embraced the idea of unifying with Prussia-Germany, while other circles feared German economic competition and political domination.24 On the other hand, throughout the 1920s, all major Austrian parties committed themselves to Anschluss in their electoral programmes.25 Unification was still considered indispensable by many in both countries, but it now became a long-term goal, to be prepared by economic cooperation and the harmonization of legal and administrative practices and institutions. At a mass German-Austrian gathering in Berlin in May 1922, the Social Democrat Paul Löbe, President of the Reichstag and chairman of the Volksbund, explicated the new strategy of Angleichung: The Treaty of Versailles explicitly allows the unification of Austria and Germany on the condition of the League of Nations’ permission. We want to prepare this day by cherishing our cultural and national community, by abolishing passport and visa chicanes, by harmonizing railroading and railway schedules, by adjusting our school and educational system, and by adapting our economy and our trade to each other. We want to be domestically prepared so that on the day, when the boundary posts fall, the united Reich is already existent.26

In Germany, the unsettled state of the Anschluss problem and, arguably even more importantly, the loss of Reich German areas widened the gap between the territorial-political entity and the ethno-cultural national community. There was a high interest in the fate and suffering of the 24

25

26

For the broader context, see G. Romsics, Myth and Remembrance: The Dissolution of the Habsburg Empire in the Memoir Literature of the Austro-Hungarian Political Elite, trans. by T.J. DeKornfeld and H.D. Hiltabidle (Boulder, CO, 2006) and The Memory of the Habsburg Empire in German, Austrian and Hungarian Right-Wing Historiography and Political Thinking, 1918–1941, trans. by T. Cooper (Boulder, CO, 2010); K. Müller and H. Wagener (eds.), Österreich 1918 und die Folgen. Geschichte, Literatur, Theater und Film (Vienna, 2009); A. Koz˙ uchowski, The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary: The Image of the Habsburg Monarchy in Interwar Europe (Pittsburgh, PA, 2013); M. Cornwall and J.P. Newman (eds.), Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War (New York, 2016). ‘Das “Linzer Programm” der Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei Österreichs’, November 1926; ‘Das Programm der Christlichsozialen Partei’, November 1926; ‘Das “Salzburger Programm” der Großdeutschen Volkspartei’, September 1920; ‘Politische Leitsätze des Landbundes für Österreich’, 1923, all in K. Berchtold (ed.), Österreichische Parteiprogramme 1868–1966 (Munich, 1967), pp. 247–64, 374–6, 439–82, 482–3. ‘Deutschösterreichische Kundgebung im Lustgarten. Öffentliches Konzert der Wiener und Berliner Sänger’, BT, 26 May 1922.

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Germans abroad, the Auslandsdeutsche, with a special focus on former Reich German citizens now living under foreign rule.27 Together with numerous ethnic Germans from revolutionary Russia and the Baltic states, many of these left their homes and migrated to post-war Germany, thus creating a ‘crisis of sovereignty’ and forcing the state to choose between citizenship and ethnicity.28 By officially following a cautious and pragmatic line, Berlin tried to regain the trust of the victorious powers and to be accepted again as an equal partner in the international community. At the same time, however, it indirectly backed the remaining German communities in their struggle against assimilation and national ‘oppression’ (and sponsored German-Austrian lobby groups to maintain and promote a sense of national togetherness between the two countries). Only by stressing and upholding the German character of these regions, one was convinced, could Germany justifiably request a revision of the political and territorial terms of Versailles. Together with the powerlessness and lack of legitimacy of the republican regime, which had originated in defeat and revolution and was made responsible for civil war, mass unemployment, and inflation, this situation fostered the shift from state to Volk as a historical actor, source of political authority, and basis of German identity. By describing the nation as an organic entity, a primordial community, the separation of territory and populace from the national core appeared as unwarranted, preposterous encroachment on the ethnic body. Given Berlin’s incapacity to act forcefully, keeping the nation together and defending Germany’s integrity could not be a matter of state politics any more but was assigned to the Volksgemeinschaft. More than before 1918, the terms ‘Germany’ and ‘German’ transcended the nation-state: the German nation became ethnically defined.29 27

28

29

On the eastern question after the First World War, see, with further references, P. Krüger, ‘The European East and Weimar Germany’, in E. Mühle (ed.), Germany and the European East in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2003), pp. 7–27; V. Conze, ‘“Unverheilte Brandwunden in der Außenhaut des Volkskörpers”. Der deutsche GrenzDiskurs der Zwischenkriegszeit (1919–1930)’, in W. Hardtwig (ed.), Ordnungen in der Krise. Zur politischen Kulturgeschichte Deutschlands 1900–1933, (Munich, 2007), pp. 21–48; B. Störtkuhl et al. (eds.), Aufbruch und Krise. Das östliche Europa und die Deutschen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Oldenburg, 2010); W. Chu, The German Minority in Interwar Poland (Cambridge, 2012); Liulevicius, The German Myth. Also see D.T. Murphy, The Heroic Earth: Geopolitical Thought in Weimar Germany, 1918–1933 (Kent, OH, 1997), and G.H. Herb, Under the Map of Germany: Nationalism and Propaganda 1918–1945 (London, 1997). Sammartino, Impossible Border, p. 13. Also see J. Hiden, ‘The Weimar Republic and the Problem of the Auslandsdeutsche’, JCH, 12 (1977), 273–89, and J. Oltmer, Migration und Politik in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 2005), pp. 89–217. On Weimar nationalism, see Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken; H. Mommsen, ‘Nationalismus in der Weimarer Republik’, in O. Dann (ed.), Die deutsche Nation.

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Certainly, by trying to appear ‘truly’ national even in opposition to the government’s careful standpoint towards Anschluss, and by giving such importance to the situation of ethnic Germans under foreign rule, parts of the democratic left (mainly DDP) undermined the authority of the new political system and helped to transform völkisch thinking from a manifestation of a small minority into a salonfähig concept.30 However, the republican camp did not adhere to extreme PanGermanism; it did not hold Germans superior to other nations or propagate a Germanic empire in Europe. References to the Volk usually related to the idea of popular sovereignty, and, in the case of Anschluss, democrats argued on the basis of national self-determination and envisioned Greater Germany as an integral and peaceable part of the new European state system. For the representatives of the Weimar Coalition, GermanAustrian unification was tied to ideas of international reconciliation and cooperation. By referring back to the revolution of 1848–49 and by asserting that the new Germany fulfilled the national and democratic aspirations of the Frankfurt parliamentarians, which had been thwarted by power-political struggles between autocratic dynasties, they attempted to provide the republic with historical legitimacy. In this view, Großdeutschland represented a break with the recent past, the natural outcome of the 1918 revolution which had put an end to Bismarck’s militaristic and authoritarian system.31 Not surprisingly, the national right contested the link between Greater Germany and Weimar democracy, between Anschluss and the new

30 31

Geschichte – Probleme – Perspektiven (Vierow, 1994), pp. 83–95; H. Matthiesen, ‘Von der Massenbewegung zur Partei. Der Nationalismus in der deutschen Gesellschaft der Zwischenkriegszeit’, GWU, 48 (1997), 316–29; S. Reichardt, ‘“Märtyrer” der Nation. Überlegungen zum Nationalismus in der Weimarer Republik’, in Echternkamp and Müller (eds.), Die Politik der Nation, pp. 173–202; L.E. Jones (ed.), The German Right in the Weimar Republic: Studies in the History of German Conservatism, Nationalism, and Antisemitism (New York, 2014); F. Krobb and E. Martin (eds.), Weimar Colonialism: Discourses and Legacies of Post-Imperialism in Germany after 1918 (Bielefeld, 2014); G. Eley, ‘Review Essay: The German Right from Weimar to Hitler: Fragmentation and Coalescence’, CEH, 48 (2015), 100–13. Kurlander, The Price of Exclusion. J.C. Heß, ‘Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein’. Demokratischer Nationalismus in der Weimarer Republik am Beispiel der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei (Stuttgart, 1978); K. Ruppert, ‘Der Nationalismus der systemstabilisierenden Parteien der Weimarer Republik’, in H. Timmermann (ed.), Nationalismus und Nationalbewegung in Europa 1914–1945 (Berlin, 1999), pp. 183–234; D. Bussenius, ‘Eine ungeliebte Tradition. Die Weimarer Linke und die 48er Revolution 1918–1925’, in H.A. Winkler (ed.), Griff nach der Deutungsmacht. Zur Geschichte der Geschichtspolitik in Deutschland (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 90–114; R. Gruhlich, Geschichtspolitik im Zeichen des Zusammenbruchs. Die Deutsche Nationalversammlung 1919/20: Revolution – Reich – Nation (Düsseldorf, 2012); E.R. Hochman, ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Republik: Großdeutsch Nationalism and Democratic Politics in the Weimar and First Austrian Republics’, GH, 32/1 (2014), 29–52.

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political order which they despised. For many conservatives and radical nationalists, the union with Austria constituted a starting point for Germany’s rise back to great-power status and served as a weapon in the struggle against Versailles and Erfüllungspolitik. To quote Arthur Moeller van den Bruck: ‘The revolution . . . left us in a rump state whose mutilated form we cannot accept as a German Reich of the German nation.’32 By constantly referring to the Volk as the basis of the national community and by claiming that the liberal-democratic regime did not represent the ‘real’ Germany but a foreign imposition, Weimar was denied the right to exist. However, this did not necessarily signify a fundamental break with the traditional, state-centred idea of Germany; kleindeutsch nationalists had not suddenly turned into keen Greater or Pan Germans. As much as there was no uniform republican grouping, we have to differentiate between old-style conservatives and liberal nationalists on the one hand, and younger radicals, the new right, on the other. Both camps, which were highly heterogeneous in themselves, concurred in their anti-democratic views and rejection of the Paris Peace Settlement. The new hyper-nationalists, including members of the front generation, the Free Corps, right-wing student associations, and so-called conservative revolutionaries, altogether exhibited a more aggressive, militaristic, and often anti-bourgeois rhetoric.33 Paying fresh and greater attention to geopolitics and concepts of ‘space’, many were convinced of the need for territorial expansion to create Lebensraum and promoted the idea of a political union of all ethnic Germans in Europe. But such visions only acquired greater significance in German political and historical discourse in the late 1920s. For long, right-wing nationalism and political practice remained dominated or at least strongly influenced by pre-war activists and intellectuals who longed for the restoration of a powerful and authoritarian nation-state, though not always with a monarchical head. To them, the rejection of Weimar’s system did not automatically imply the abandonment of the ‘state idea’ that was venerated as a timeless and 32 33

A. Moeller van den Bruck, Das dritte Reich, ed. by H. Schwarz, 3rd ed. (Hamburg, 1931 [orig. 1923]), p. 242. A. Mohler, Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918–1932. Ein Handbuch, 6th rev. and exp. ed. (Graz, 2005); S. Breuer, Anatomie der konservativen Revolution, 2nd rev. ed. (Darmstadt, 1995); R. Woods, The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (Basingstoke, 1996); S. Vopel, ‘Radikaler, völkischer Nationalismus in Deutschland 1917–1933’, in Timmermann (ed.), Nationalismus und Nationalbewegung, pp. 161–82; W. Schmitz et al. (eds.), Völkische Bewegung – Konservative Revolution – Nationalsozialismus. Aspekte einer politisierten Kultur (Dresden, 2005). Also see the more specific studies by V. Weiß, Moderne Antimoderne. Arthur Moeller van den Bruck und der Wandel des Konservatismus (Paderborn, 2012), and U. Prehn, Max Hildebert Boehm. Radikales Ordnungsdenken vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis in die Bundesrepublik (Göttingen, 2013).

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higher impersonal principle independent of the current political regime and transcending party quarrels and particularistic interests.34 Otto Hoetzsch, to give one example, found solace in the fact that the Reich of 1871 had survived the war: ‘It is a torso, enchained, robbed, powerless, and disarmed. But it still exists, this political organization of the Germans in Central Europe . . . Whether I love it or not, it is my state, . . . the state of my people of today, . . . the legal and political entity of the nation.’ To him, this state would have to be consolidated and strengthened in power-political terms first before one could engage in far-reaching ethnonational projects.35 Interestingly, many of these conservative nationalists were rather sceptical towards a union with ‘feeble’ Austrian Germandom, which had never managed to bring the Austro-Slavs under control. Together with some German industrialists, they highlighted the difficulties and risks of Anschluss in economic regard, or maintained that it would strengthen particularism and political Catholicism at the expense of Protestant Prussia. Anschluss was not rejected, but also not a priority for these circles. Indeed, commentators were often preoccupied with the liberation of the Rhineland, the re-acquisition of lost territories in the East, and rearmament rather than with the German-Austrian union which they disliked because of its democratic, federalist, and Catholic connotations. Traditional, Prusso-centric notions persisted after 1918, as proven by the generally positive interpretation of the Dual Alliance and the unbroken popularity of Bismarck. In the post-war period, many right-wing observers regarded the coalition with the Habsburg Empire, this ‘battered and stinky twin apparatus’, as Maximilian Harden had labelled it in November 1918, as a disastrous mistake.36 There were reflections on whether Berlin should have sought an alignment with Britain or Russia, or whether German diplomats had acted appropriately in the July Crisis of 1914. The influential philosopher and publicist Oswald Spengler, for instance, contended that Germany should have cooperated with the tsarist empire in the old Prussian tradition rather than commit itself so strongly to Austria-Hungary. Since 1879, he argued, the Kaiserreich had more and more become ‘the protector and preserver of the decaying Habsburg state and unfortunately . . . of its Balkan plans as well’.37 In a book on German foreign policy and the 34 35 36 37

Kvistad, The Rise and Demise of German Statism, pp. 55–84. O. Hoetzsch, Deutschland als Grenzland, Deutschland als Reich (Marburg, 1925), pp. 10–11. M. Harden, ‘Kaiserkrisis’, Zukunft, 9 November 1918, pp. 101–44 (p. 101). O. Spengler, ‘Das Doppelantlitz Russlands und die deutschen Ostprobleme’ (1922), in O. Spengler, Politische Schriften. Volksausgabe (Munich, 1933), pp. 107–26 (p. 117).

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origins of the war, Erich Brandenburg was highly critical of former politicians and diplomats, who had misjudged the international situation in summer 1914. Moreover, by allying with the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire, they had bound Germany’s fate to two ‘rotten and doomed relicts of bygone times’. Instead, the historian argued, one should have followed Bismarck’s more pragmatic and flexible strategy, which could well have meant a Greater German policy.38 However, most representatives of the former elites maintained a more positive view, judging the coalition a necessary and reasonable diplomatic tool to secure Germany’s standing on the continent.39 In their memoirs, many World War generals acknowledged that there had been serious frictions and that the Austro-Hungarian army had never matched its German counterpart in terms of training, equipment, or morale.40 Hindenburg, for example, condemned the ally’s ‘strong tendency to unjustified pessimism in critical moments’. On the other hand, he rejected the idea that the Kaiserreich could have ‘fought this enormous struggle without any coalition partner’ or that it had relied on ‘cripple-like allies’: ‘Overall, we must not underestimate Austria-Hungary’s performance in this mighty struggle . . . The Danube Monarchy was always a faithful comrade-in-arms. Together, we went through glorious times and we should be careful not to part in common misery.’41 Most military experts and commentators agreed with August von Cramon that Berlin from the beginning should have enforced its supremacy in the military decision-making process, although Conrad was often presented in positive terms.42 Ludendorff 38

39

40

41

42

E. Brandenburg, Von Bismarck zum Weltkriege. Die deutsche Politik in den Jahrzehnten vor dem Kriege. Dargestellt auf Grund der Akten des Auswärtigen Amtes, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1925), p. 463. The historian and diplomat Friedrich Stieve also described Austria-Hungary as a weak, ill, and antiquated entity which had dragged Germany into the abyss. See F. Stieve, Die Tragödie der Bundesgenossen. Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn 1908–1914 (Munich, 1930). See, for example, G. v. Jagow, Ursachen und Ausbruch des Weltkrieges (Berlin, 1919); T. v. Bethmann Hollweg, Betrachtungen zum Weltkriege, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1919–21); Helfferich, Der Weltkrieg. For the broader context, see M. Pöhlmann, Kriegsgeschichte und Geschichtspolitik: Der Erste Weltkrieg. Die amtliche deutsche Militärgeschichtsschreibung 1914–1956 (Paderborn, 2002). [P.] v. Hindenburg, Aus meinem Leben. Illustrierte Volksausgabe (Leipzig, 1933), pp. 130, 129, 131. For Austrian viewpoints, similarly stressing the need to focus on positive experiences, see F. Conrad v. Hötzendorf, Aus meiner Dienstzeit 1906–1918, 5 vols. (Vienna, 1921–25), IV: 24. Juni 1914 bis 30. September 1914. Die politischen und militärischen Vorgänge vom Fürstenmord in Sarajevo bis zum Abschluß der ersten und bis zum Beginn der zweiten Offensive gegen Serbien und Rußland (1923), pp. 252–61, and A. Arz v. Straußenburg, Zur Geschichte des Grossen Krieges 1914–1918. Aufzeichnungen (Vienna, 1924), pp. 384–5. See Cramon, Unser Österreichisch-Ungarischer Bundesgenosse; Cramon and Fleck, Deutschlands Schicksalsbund.

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described the former chief of the general staff as ‘an intelligent, flexible, and distinguished general’, ‘a commander with an extraordinary wealth of ideas’, while Max Hoffmann simply called him ‘a man of genius’.43 The main reason behind the poor performance of the ally, it was held, had been political rather than military: the multinational composition of the k.u.k. troops (with many mediocre and disloyal Slav units), the intricate domestic situation (including Magyar obstinacy), and Kaiser Karl’s lack of leadership and determination. But on this point, Falkenhayn maintained, the OHL had been powerless: ‘It had no means to influence the situation in the Danubian realm and to prevent the turmoil from affecting the Austro-Hungarian army . . . One could not reach the roots of the evil.’44 Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven, who had been Cramon’s predecessor at the AOK, agreed: ‘No state in the world is able to exert such considerable influence on a neighbouring state, not even if it is an ally and close friend.’45 Still, to many conservatives, the ultimate reason for Germany’s defeat had not been Austria-Hungary’s weakness or Karl’s ‘betrayal’ in late October 1918 but the home front’s ‘stab in the back’ of the fighting army, ‘the most immoral deed listed in the pages of German history’, as former Prussian Minister of War Karl von Einem declared.46 In the domestic struggle against parliamentary democracy and Erfüllungspolitik, it seemed more important and expedient to put the blame for Germany’s downfall on the new political regime than to argue over alliance policy or the Habsburg Monarchy’s role in the First World War, which would also have implicated the former decisionmaking elites.47 43 44 45 46

47

E. Ludendorff, Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914–1918, 5th ed. (Berlin, 1920), p. 58; Nowak (ed.), Die Aufzeichnungen des Generalmajors Max Hoffmann, II, p. 106. E. v. Falkenhayn, Die Oberste Heeresleitung 1914–1916 in ihren wichtigsten Entschließungen (Berlin, 1920), pp. 128–9. Freytag-Loringhoven, Menschen und Dinge, p. 198. K. v. Einem, Erinnerungen eines Soldaten 1853–1933 (Leipzig, 1933), p. 189. For the general background, see U. Heinemann, Die verdrängte Niederlage. Politische Öffentlichkeit und Kriegsschuldfrage in der Weimarer Republik (Göttingen, 1983); J. Duppler and G.P. Groß (eds.), Kriegsende 1918. Ereignis, Wahrnehmung, Wirkung, Nachwirkung (Munich, 1999); J. Dülffer and G. Krumeich (eds.), Der verlorene Frieden. Politik und Kriegskultur nach 1918 (Essen, 2002); B. Barth, Dolchstoßlegenden und politische Desintegration. Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1933 (Düsseldorf, 2003). For a different assessment, highlighting the responsibility of the German decisionmaking elites before and after 1914, see G. Gothein, Warum verloren wir den Krieg?, 2nd rev. ed. (Stuttgart, 1920); [F.C. Endres], Die Tragödie Deutschlands. Im Banne des Machtgedankens bis zum Zusammenbruch des Reiches. Von einem Deutschen, 4th exp. ed. (Stuttgart, 1925); H. v. Gerlach, Die große Zeit der Lüge (Berlin, 1926). For a proAustrian but overall fairly balanced perspective, see the works by Karl Friedrich Nowak: Der Sturz der Mittelmächte (Munich, 1921) and Chaos (Munich, 1923). His Der Weg zur Katastrophe (Berlin, 1919) was critical of German pre-war diplomacy and much discussed.

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Thus, even though many right-wing politicians and intellectuals embraced the prospect of Greater Germany, they were not willing to fully condemn the kleindeutsch paradigm and the foreign policy of the Kaiserreich.48 Bismarck remained a national hero; it was commonly stressed that the Iron Chancellor – given the circumstances of his time – had been right to exclude Austria but that he would now pursue a different, a Greater German policy. After 1918, several historians were keen to judge Austria’s role in German history more evenhandedly than before. However, in contrast to their Austrian colleagues, only a very few, amongst them Hermann Oncken and Willy Andreas, both with liberal backgrounds, paid more thorough attention to GermanAustrian relations or contributed to the Anschluss debate.49 The relative insignificance of the Greater German question and the persistence of Prusso-Protestant notions in German historical and political discourse was condemned by Austro-German intellectuals such as Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, who claimed that Austria’s elimination from German affairs had been the beginning of Germany’s catastrophe and inevitably led to defeat and humiliation in 1918.50 In Germany, this anti-Prussian line and emphasis on German diversity was supported by a small group of federalists and Catholics, who partly continued tendencies already prevalent during the war.51 Some völkisch intellectuals criticized Bismarck, too, for having acted against the real interests of the German nation. As Richard Bahr insisted, it was time to ‘finally put the Volk above the 48

49

50

51

On Weimar historiography, see B. Faulenbach, Ideologie des deutschen Weges. Die deutsche Geschichte in der Historiographie zwischen Kaiserreich und Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1980); R. Gerwarth, ‘The Past in Weimar History’, CEH, 15 (2006), 1–22; Fellner, ‘Die Historiographie’; Brechenmacher, ‘“Österreich steht außer Deutschland”’. Also see Gerwarth, Bismarck Myth, and other Bismarck material referenced in Chapter 4. H. Oncken, ‘Die Wiedergeburt der großdeutschen Idee’ (1921), in H. Oncken, Nation und Geschichte. Reden und Aufsätze 1919–1935 (Berlin, 1935), pp. 45–70; W. Andreas, Die Wandlungen des großdeutschen Gedankens (Stuttgart, 1924); W. Andreas, Österreich und der Anschluss (Berlin, 1927); A. Rapp (ed.), Großdeutsch – kleindeutsch. Stimmen aus der Zeit von 1815 bis 1914 (Munich, 1922). On Austrian historiography, see H. Dachs, Österreichische Geschichtswissenschaft und der Anschluß 1918–1930 (Vienna, 1974), and G. Fellner, ‘Die österreichische Geschichtswissenschaft vom “Anschluss” zum Wiederaufbau’, in F. Stadler (ed.), Kontinuität und Bruch. 1938 – 1945 – 1955. Beiträge zur österreichischen Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Münster, 2004), pp. 135–56. See his 1848/49 – 1866 – 1918/19. Des deutschen Volkes Weg zur Katastrophe und seine Rettung (Munich, 1920) and Oesterreich, Preußen, Deutschland. Deutsche Geschichte in großdeutscher Beleuchtung (Vienna, 1926). See, for example, F.X. Hoermann, Großdeutschlands vierhundertjähriger Niedergang zum Kleindeutschland. Die erste Ursache des heutigen politischen Zusammenbruches (Regensburg, 1924); R. Henle, Der Gegensatz zwischen Großdeutsch und Kleindeutsch. Eine Betrachtung zu Wilhelm Mommsens Vortrag auf dem Grazer Historikertag (Rostock, 1929); R. Henle, Die Aufgaben deutscher Zukunft und die Revision der deutschen Geschichtsauffassung. Eine großdeutsche Antwort (Hanover, 1929).

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state’.52 However, most members of the historical profession were not willing to accept a denigration of Prussia’s role in German history and Bismarck’s unification policy.53 Facing liberal-democratic glorifications of 1848, Bavarian attacks on Prusso-Protestant hegemony, and AustroGerman condemnations of 1866, the conservative right in fact maintained that division had been necessary and right, and that the Kaiserreich had been a unique political and economic success story, ‘a highpoint in the history of humanity’, to quote Adalbert Wahl.54 Even more balanced attempts by the Austrian historians Heinrich Ritter von Srbik and Harold Steinacker to promote a gesamtdeutsche Volksgeschichte, to reassess Austria’s history, and to highlight the legacy of Habsburg multinationalism without questioning Bismarck never obtained ubiquitous approval in Weimar (or Nazi) Germany.55 On the face of it, the revaluation of the Holy Roman Empire was consistent with ideas of Germany’s new right. Despite great ideological and political differences, the pervasive thought was that the Reich as the ostensible embodiment of genuine Germanness represented everything the Weimar Republic was not. Reich advocates were united in their rejection of the new liberal-democratic regime which they despised for its lack of metaphysical depth and historical rootedness, incapable of promoting the ‘world-political mission’ of Germandom. The Catholic writer Josef Magnus Wehner, for instance, propagated the Reich as an alternative to the sober reality of the bourgeois nation-state: ‘Against the world order of technical rationality we proclaim the world order of the Reich!’56 Only the 52

53

54 55

56

R. Bahr, ‘Deutschösterreich und das Reich’, Türmer, February 1919, pp. 414–17; R. Bahr, ‘Großdeutsche Realpolitik’, BBZ, 2 June 1923; R. Bahr, ‘Großdeutsche Problematik’, DAZ, 4 and 5 December 1924. Less radical, but similarly criticizing German statism and commitment to the Dual Alliance: R. Fester, Die Politik Kaiser Karls und der Wendepunkt des Weltkrieges (Munich, 1925); R. Fester, Die politischen Kämpfe um den Frieden (1916–1918) und das Deutschtum (Munich, 1938). D. Schäfer, ‘Österreich, Preußen, Deutschland. Deutsche Geschichte in großdeutscher Beleuchtung’, DE, September 1926, pp. 389–400; W. Mommsen, ‘Zur Beurteilung der deutschen Einheitsbewegung’, HZ, 138 (1928), 523–43; G. Ritter, Bismarcks Reichsgründung und die Aufgaben deutscher Zukunft. Ein Wort an Bismarcks ‘großdeutsche’ Kritiker (Freiburg, 1928). A. Wahl, Deutsche Geschichte. Von der Reichsgründung bis zum Ausbruch des Weltkrieges (1871–1914), 4 vols. (Stuttgart, 1926–36), I (1926), p. XI. See in particular H. v. Srbik, Deutsche Einheit. Idee und Wirklichkeit vom Heiligen Reich bis Königgrätz, 4 vols. (Munich, 1935–42); H. v. Srbik, Österreich in der deutschen Geschichte (Munich, 1936); H. Steinacker, Volk und Geschichte. Ausgewählte Reden und Aufsätze (Brünn, 1943). For useful summaries, see A. Wandruszka, ‘Nationalsozialistische und “gesamtdeutsche” Geschichtsauffassung’, in K.D. Bracher and L. Valiani (eds.), Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus (Berlin, 1991), pp. 137–50, and M. Glettler, ‘Die Bewertung des Faktors Deutschland in der österreichischen Historiographie’, in Gehler et al. (eds.), Ungleiche Partner?, pp. 55–72. J.M. Wehner, Das unsterbliche Reich (Munich, 1933), p. 15.

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Germans, the lawyer and publicist Edgar Julius Jung declared in a similar sense, could put an end to the ‘rule of the inferior’ and save the Occident from decadence and complete dissolution, replacing the current ‘artificial’ societal and political order in Germany and the whole of Europe, the legacy of the French Revolution, by a more authentic and organic scheme, the Christian Reich.57 Apart from these mythical qualities, the Reich also differed from Weimar insofar as it was envisaged as a Greater German or PanGerman entity. In his seminal book on the ‘Third Reich’, first published in 1923, Moeller van den Bruck emphasized that ‘all Germans are nowadays, beyond borders and tariffs and barriers, somehow Greater Germans’. To him, the ‘second Reich’, that is the (incomplete) nationstate of 1871, had been a ‘transitional state [Zwischenreich]’, a necessary diversion to reach a Greater German Reich: ‘We believe that this second Reich represented merely the passage to a Third Reich, to a new and final Reich which is promised to us, and for which we have to live, if we want to live.’58 In contrast to the World War period, when the Reich had been promoted by federalists and Catholics as a counter-model to the PrussoProtestant nation-state, or by liberal imperialists as sort of a prototype of an economically conceived Mitteleuropa, by the late 1920s it was fully seized by right-wing intellectuals and reinterpreted in a völkisch sense as a framework for the unification of Central European Germandom. As the publicist Wilhelm Stapel put it: ‘The existence of the whole nation is closely linked to the existence of Germandom abroad [Grenzlanddeutschtums] . . . That is why we Germans like no other nation have an interest in a supranational order of the European nations.’ Germanic hegemony would finally bring peace and stability to the fragmented continent: ‘Only a Europe led by the Germans can be a peaceful Europe . . . Where the Imperium is not granted to us, we have to fight for it. Because we are not “equal” to the others, we are “Germans”.’59 The new or Third Reich (which was sometimes also called Mitteleuropa or Zwischeneuropa) evoked memories of German glory and offered the vision of a better future, of national renewal. By establishing the Reich as a forceful contrast to Weimar’s parliamentary regime and by linking it to revisionist discourse, conservative revolutionaries provided common ideological ground with traditional nationalists. However, we should be careful not to overestimate the appeal of the Reich myth. Quite a few 57 58 59

E.J. Jung, Die Herrschaft der Minderwertigen. Ihr Zerfall und ihre Ablösung durch ein Neues Reich (Berlin, 1927). Moeller van den Bruck, Das dritte Reich, pp. 238, 242–3. W. Stapel, Der christliche Staatsmann. Eine Theologie des Nationalismus (Hamburg, 1932), pp. 254–5.

Conclusion

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right-wing politicians and intellectuals supported the idea of a new Central European order, but instead of a new Reich as völkischer Großraum they envisioned a self-sufficient economic union offering access to new raw materials and markets in compensation for the lost colonies: a German-dominated, continental super-region able to compete with other world powers in the struggle for resources and influence. As before and during the World War, there were considerable differences concerning means and ends, the actual organization, geographical boundaries, and extent of German hegemony, but altogether this stateimperialist Mitteleuropa in the tradition of List and Naumann remained a prominent conception in post-war Germany.60 Furthermore, as before 1918, many national-conservative historians, amongst them Erich Brandenburg, Johannes Haller, and Gerhard Ritter, remained sceptical regarding the revaluation of the Holy Roman Empire and schemes of a federal, supranational order in Europe. To them, the Reich was reminiscent of Catholic universalism, Habsburg dynasticism, as well as German discord and powerlessness. Only a very few established historians in Weimar Germany, such as Martin Spahn, now a Reichstag deputy for the DNVP, and Wilhelm Schüßler, a member of a younger, völkisch-oriented generation, advocated a Pan-German Mitteleuropa, a Germanic Reich in Central Europe. However, they promoted the Reich not as a counter-model to the Prusso-Protestant nation-state but as a synthesis of the first and the second German Empire, of medieval supranationalism and the nation-state principle. For them, as for most conservative revolutionaries, Prussia had played a pivotal role in German history and rightly occupied a position of political hegemony. Schüßler accordingly attacked Kaindl’s anti-Prussian one-sidedness and condemnation of 1866–71 as ‘reactionary fatalism’.61 In its famous Bamberg Declaration of February 1919, the Pan-German League – the main representative of extreme nationalism in the imperial period but soon overtaken by more radical and more broadly based nationalist groups – had similarly defended Bismarck against those who called the solution of 60

61

On the Reich myth and the post-war German idea of Europe: H.-G. Meier-Stein, Die Reichsidee 1918–1945. Das mittelalterliche Reich als Idee nationaler Erneuerung (Aschau, 1998); J. Elvert, Mitteleuropa! Deutsche Pläne zur europäischen Neuordnung (1918–1945) (Stuttgart, 1999); V. Conze, Das Europa der Deutschen. Ideen von Europa in Deutschland zwischen Reichstradition und Westorientierung (1920–1970) (Munich, 2005); C. Sachse (ed.), ‘Mitteleuropa’ und ‘Südosteuropa’ als Planungsraum. Wirtschafts- und kulturpolitische Expertisen im Zeitalter der Weltkriege (Göttingen, 2010); C. Bailey, Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: German Visions of Europe, 1926–1950 (New York, 2013). W. Schüßler, ‘Review of: Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, 1848/49 – 1866 – 1918/19’, HZ, 128 (1923), 546–7 (p. 546). Also see his Mitteleuropas Untergang und Wiedergeburt (Stuttgart, 1919) and Österreich und das deutsche Schicksal; M. Spahn, Für den Reichsgedanken. Historisch-politische Aufsätze 1915–1934 (Berlin, 1936).

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1866 an ‘injustice and a political mistake’, although it did of course welcome the opportunity to unite Central European Germandom as ‘one of the few positive consequences of the November events’.62 Unwilling to break completely with the German past, even völkisch activists maintained Prusso-centric notions. Another point deserves special emphasis. Austria did not figure prominently in most of these schemes, no matter whether they stemmed from traditional conservatives or the new right. To some, German-Austrian unification was merely one amongst a range of revisionist objectives to restore Germany’s international position of power; to others, a Greater German nation-state represented a simple building bloc in the formation of a Germanic empire in Central and Eastern Europe. In either case, Anschluss was not envisaged as a union of equal partners. Right-wing champions of Großdeutschland imagined Austria’s incorporation or annexation rather than a merger into a novel German entity. When Adolf Hitler in March 1938 finally implemented German-Austrian unification by the use of political pressure and military force, he essentially followed this approach. Born an Austro-Hungarian citizen (he did not acquire German citizenship until 1932), Hitler had lived in Munich since 1913 and later served as a war volunteer in a Bavarian regiment. He coauthored the NSDAP party programme of 1920, which in its very first article demanded the ‘union of all Germans in a Greater Germany’.63 In contrast to Austrian intellectuals such as Kralik, Kaindl, or Srbik, who also promoted a Greater Germany but accentuated Austrian contributions to German history and culture, Hitler followed Georg Ritter von Schönerer’s Pan-Germanism and demonstrated a notorious antiHabsburg and anti-Catholic stance. In Mein Kampf (1925), he declared the Dual Alliance ‘an absurdity’ which had solely served the interests of the Austrian dynasty.64 As he explained elsewhere: ‘Germany’s unconditional commitment to this ragged Habsburg entity was a crime for which the former German decision-makers still nowadays deserve to be hanged . . . Nibelungentreue should only be applied towards the own race.’ After 1871, Berlin should have carried out ‘one single task’: ‘Immediate incorporation of the ten million Austro-Germans into the Reich and deposition of the Habsburgs, the most miserable dynasty that 62

63 64

‘Bamberger Erklärung des Alldeutschen Verbandes’, 16 February 1919, in UF, III, pp. 216–20 (p. 219). On the Pan-German League after 1918, see B.A. Jackisch, The PanGerman League and Radical Nationalist Politics in Interwar Germany, 1918–39 (Farnham, 2012), and B. Hofmeister, ‘Realms of Leadership and Residues of Social Mobilization: The Pan-German League, 1918–1933’, in Jones (ed.), The German Right, pp. 136–69. ‘Programm der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei’, 24 February 1920, in UF, III, pp. 214–16 (p. 214). A. Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. by R. Manheim (London, 1992 [orig. 1925]), p. 130.

Conclusion

353

ever ruled over German territory.’65 Even though Hitler criticized the Kaiserreich’s foreign policy from a völkisch point of view and thus clearly expressed a marginalized standpoint in Weimar Germany’s public debate, his Prussophilism and disparagement of Austria fitted well into mainstream right-wing tendencies. After 1933, the ‘Führer’ – a term also borrowed from Schönerer – correspondingly presented himself as the heir and successor to Frederick the Great and Bismarck rather than to Prince Eugene, Maria Theresia, and Metternich. The German-Austrian customs union project of 1931, part of a more revisionist and assertive German foreign policy course since Gustav Stresemann’s death in 1929, had temporarily revived the Austrian Anschluss movement, but many unification supporters became demoralized by Hitler’s rise to power in January 1933. The Social Democrats, for example, amended their party programme, cancelling the demand for the establishment of Greater Germany. Under Chancellors Engelbert Dollfuß, assassinated by Austrian Nazis in a failed coup d’état in 1934, and Kurt Schuschnigg, his successor, the Austrofascist regime promoted a distinct identity by highlighting the Habsburg legacy, Catholic conservatism, and the Austrian Kulturmission in the European East.66 Ultimately, however, this attempt at nation-building failed, and in 1938 broad sections of the Austrian public reacted enthusiastically to the country’s ostensible return to its original home, despite the apparent lack of political freedom and civil rights in Nazi Germany (which was, however, doing well economically).67 Following Anschluss, Austria was part of a great power again, but it quickly became clear that it was not to play any significant, self-governing role in the centralized Greater German Reich. Incorporated in the same way as the Saar (1935), it was subject to a thoroughgoing Gleichschaltung of its political, economic, and 65 66

67

A. Hitler, ‘Deutschlands letzte Hoffnung?!’ (1921), in A. Hitler, Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, ed. by E. Jäckel and A. Kuhn (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 329–33 (p. 330). W. Suppanz, Österreichische Geschichtsbilder. Historische Legitimationen in Ständestaat und Zweiter Republik (Cologne, 1998); J.T. Lauridsen, Nazism and the Radical Right in Austria, 1918–1934 (Copenhagen, 2007); J. Thorpe, Pan-Germanism and the Austrofascist State, 1933–38 (Manchester, 2011); E. Tálos and W. Neugebauer (eds.), Austrofaschismus. Politik – Ökonomie – Ideologie, 6th ed. (Vienna, 2012); I. ReiterZatloukal et al. (eds.), Österreich 1933–1938. Interdisziplinäre Annäherungen an das Dollfuß-Schuschnigg-Regime (Vienna, 2012); F. Wenninger and L. Dreidemy (eds.), Das Dollfuß/Schuschnigg-Regime 1933–1938. Vermessung eines Forschungsfeldes (Vienna, 2013). For a characteristic contemporary voice, see K. Schuschnigg, Dreimal Österreich, 4th ed. (Vienna, 1938), in particular pp. 9–23, 270–2, 329–35. F. Müller, ‘Gemeinsam oder getrennt zum “Neubau in Mitteleuropa”? Das “Dritte Reich” im Kampf gegen den “Ständestaat” 1933–1938’, in Gehler et al. (eds.), Ungleiche Partner?, pp. 481–96; D.A. Binder, ‘Alte Träume und neue Methoden. Das deutsch-österreichische Verhältnis als Produkt aggressiven Revisionismus von 1933 bis 1938’, in Gehler et al. (eds.), Ungleiche Partner?, pp. 497–512.

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cultural life. Austria was soon renamed Ostmark and from 1942 officially called Donau- und Alpenreichsgaue to eliminate all historical reminiscences of former independence.68 In Germany, Anschluss was a great prestige victory for Hitler and boosted the Nazi regime’s standing. It was celebrated as the end point of a thousand-year-old struggle for German unity, a ‘festival of common blood’, as Spahn put it.69 However, the Greater Germany of 1938 differed considerably from the ideas and hopes of many former großdeutsch enthusiasts. It did not realize the national vision of some of the 1848 revolutionaries and of Weimar’s liberal democrats, or lead to spiritual renewal and a greater appreciation of Catholic and Austrian life. Nor did it end Berlin’s predominance in politics and society, as many West and South German activists had desired. In fact, Anschluss, which offered Germany access to Austria’s human and material resources, was a mere step towards German hegemony over the continent, the starting point for a policy of aggressive territorial expansionism to gain Lebensraum in the European East. It was soon followed by the incorporation of the Sudetenland, the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and the annexation of the Memel territory, before Nazi Germany attacked Poland in September 1939, thus starting a war of annihilation and total destruction with the aim to establish a new European order based on the idea of German racial superiority. With its eliminationist anti-Semitism and large-scale resettlement operations, which were legitimized by a younger generation of historians and social scientists, Nazi imperialism also differed from many neo-conservative schemes of a new Reich, which had provided and popularized central ideas and slogans but altogether kept notions of multinationalism and federalism.70 The terror and 68

69 70

E.B. Bukey, Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000); E. Tálos et al. (eds.), NS-Herrschaft in Österreich. Ein Handbuch (Vienna, 2002); G. Botz, Nationalsozialismus in Wien. Machtübernahme, Herrschaftssicherung, Radikalisierung 1938/39 (Vienna, 2008). M. Spahn, ‘Österreich im Ringen des deutschen Volkes um seine Einheit’, KVZ, 29 April 1938. M. Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1988); K. Schönwälder, Historiker und Politik. Geschichtswissenschaft im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt/M., 1992); I. Haar, Historiker im Nationalsozialismus. Die deutsche Geschichte und der ‘Volkstumskampf’ im Osten (Göttingen, 2000); I. Haar and M. Fahlbusch (eds.), German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1919–1945 (New York, 2006); I. Haar and M. Fahlbusch (eds.), Handbuch der völkischen Wissenschaften. Personen, Institutionen, Forschungsprogramme, Stiftungen (Munich, 2008); B. Kletzin, Europa aus Rasse und Raum. Die nationalsozialistische Idee der Neuen Ordnung (Münster, 2000); A. Pinwinkler, Historische Bevölkerungsforschungen. Deutschland und Österreich im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2014). For a recent discussion (and contextualization) of Nazi imperialism, see B. Kundrus, ‘Colonialism, Imperialism, National Socialism: How Imperial Was the Third Reich?’, in Naranch and Eley (eds.), German Colonialism, pp. 330–46.

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violence caused by National Socialism, the experience of total war, genocide, and Holocaust (but also the subsequent mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe), put a definite end to the Greater German idea. Presenting itself as Hitler’s first victim, post-war Austria became irreversibly dissociated from German affairs and successfully constructed a distinct state-national identity. While this particular German question was thus consigned to history, another German question emerged as part of the ideological and geopolitical divide between East and West. Against all odds, it was brought to a fortunate end, and in contrast to the unifications of 1871 and 1938, the events of 1989–90 attained the liberal-democratic goal of a unified Germany as a factor of peace, prosperity, and stability in Europe.71

71

For an interesting comparison between 1870–71 and 1989–90, see R. Speirs and J. Breuilly (eds.), Germany’s Two Unifications: Anticipations, Experiences, Responses (Basingstoke, 2005).

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2 Periodicals Newspapers Imperial Germany Augsburger Postzeitung, Bayerische Staatszeitung, Berliner BörsenCourier, Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, Berliner Lokalanzeiger, Berliner Morgenpost, Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, Berliner Tageblatt, Deutsche Nachrichten, Deutsche Tageszeitung, Deutsche Volkszeitung, Deutsche Zeitung, Deutscher Kurier, Dresdner Anzeiger, Dresdner Nachrichten, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, Düsseldorfer Zeitung, Der Fränkische Bauer, Fränkischer Kurier, Frankfurter Zeitung, Freisinnige Zeitung, Germania, Goslarsche Zeitung, Hamburger Echo, Hamburger Nachrichten, Hannoverscher Kurier, Kieler Neueste Nachrichten, Kölnische Volkszeitung, Kölnische Zeitung, Königsberger Hartungsche Zeitung, Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, Magdeburgische Zeitung, MünchenAugsburger Abendzeitung, Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, Münchener Post, National-Zeitung (8-Uhr-Abendblatt), Neue Preußische Zeitung (Kreuz-Zeitung), Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Pfälzische Post, Pfälzischer Kurier, Posener Tageblatt, Die Post, Reichsbote, Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung, Schwäbisches Tagblatt, Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tägliche Rundschau, Der Tag, Vorwärts, Vossische Zeitung, Welt am Montag, Weser-Zeitung, Württemberger Zeitung

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Switzerland Neue Zürcher Zeitung

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Switzerland Die Friedens-Warte, Die Weißen Blätter

3 Source collections, diaries, memoirs, letters Afflerbach, H., Kaiser Wilhelm II. als Oberster Kriegsherr im Ersten Weltkrieg. Quellen aus der militärischen Umgebung des Kaisers 1914–1918 (Munich, 2005).

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Zechlin, E., ‘Das Bismarck-Bild 1915. Eine Mischung von Sage und Mythos’, in E. Zechlin, Krieg und Kriegsrisiko. Zur deutschen Politik im 1. Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1979), pp. 227–33. Zeman, Z.A.B., The Break-Up of the Habsburg Empire 1914–1918: A Study in National and Social Revolution (London, 1961). Zimmer, O., Remaking the Rhythms of Life: German Communities in the Age of the Nation-State (Oxford, 2013). Zsuppán, F.T., ‘The Hungarian Political Scene’, in Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years, pp. 97–118. Županicˇ , J., ‘Die polnische Frage in der Politik der Mittelmächte am Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs’, PPHIR, 2 (1998), 298–312.

Index

Adriatic Sea, 66, 95, 100, 139, 146, 154, 181, 206, 254, 275, 312, 313, 323 Afflerbach, Holger, 33 Africa, 164 Akademischer Turnverein (Graz), 61 Albania, 33, 101, 246, 253, 275 Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg, 309 Alemannia (Leipzig), 61 Alldeutsche Blätter, 95, 159, 281, 308 Alldeutscher Verband (ADV), 13, 46 and Anschluss, 319, 351–2 and German citizenship, 42 and the Hungarian Germans, 14, 209–10 and the July Crisis, 60 and the Polish question, 42, 225, 263–6 and the Reich myth, 139–40 and the Trentino (Italian neutrality), 221–2 disputes over Austria-Hungary, 40, 60, 264 members and supporters, 33, 39, 42, 139, 178, 220–1 on Austro-Hungarian reforms, 40, 285–7 Allenstein (Olsztyn), 121 Allgemeine Zeitung, 287 Alpers, Ludwig, 156–7 Alpine Club, 21 Alps, 94, 178, 337 Alsace-Lorraine, 20, 42, 131, 224, 250, 297, 299, 301, 302, 304, 321, 336 Andrássy, Gyula (Elder), 318 Andrássy, Gyula (Younger), 292 and domestic reforms, 317 and Mitteleuropa, 200 and the end of the Dual Alliance, 318, 324 and the Polish question, 223 and trialism, 239 on Hindenburg, 191 Andreas, Willy, 348 Angelow, Jürgen, 33

424

anti-Catholicism, 30, 60, 133, 147, 313, 329, 345, 351, 352 anti-Prussianism, 18, 22, 28, 47–8, 49, 86, 98–9, 115, 136–7, 138, 144, 155–7, 166, 179, 300, 301, 324, 339, 341, 348, 349, 351 anti-Semitism, 2, 24, 39, 40, 46, 66, 219, 354 Antwerp, 302 Apponyi, Albert, 164, 200, 239, 317 Arbeiter-Zeitung, 77, 131, 318, 335 Arbeitsausschuß für Mitteleuropa (AfM), 163–4, 254 Arctic Ocean, 159 Armeeoberkommando (AOK), 73–6, 107, 108, 347 Arminius, 121 Army League, 181, 204, 287 Arz von Straußenburg, Arthur, 76 Asia, 175 Association for Germandom Abroad. See Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA) Association of German Historians, 21 Auffenberg von Komarów, Moritz, 113 Augustin, Wilhelm, 139–40 Auslandsdeutsche. See Germandom abroad Aussig (Ústí nad Labem), 308 Austerlitz, Friedrich, 77 Austrian Republic (1918–33), 176, 335–41 Austro-Prussian dualism, 16, 19, 26, 39, 106, 124 Auxiliary Service Law (1916), 253 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 128 Bachem, Julius, 230 Bad Kreuznach, 250, 253, 254 Baden (Austria), 306 Baden (Germany), 21, 100 Badeni Crisis (1897), 33, 35, 37 Badeni, Kazimierz, 226

Index Baernreither, Joseph Maria, 112, 163, 173–4, 308–9 Baghdad, 166, 183, 197, 288, 302 Bahr, Hermann, 21, 28, 77, 79, 80, 86, 87, 94, 98 Bahr, Richard, 179, 215, 217, 268, 288, 313, 348 Balkan Wars (1912–13), 183 Balkans, 94, 184, 185, 191, 217, 246, 316 and Hungary, 200, 202, 203, 240 as German sphere of interest, 33, 38, 84, 89, 152, 154, 165, 167, 179, 180, 183, 246, 275 Austro-Hungarian policy toward, 27, 55, 57, 58, 146, 173, 248, 264, 331, 345 German-Austrian disagreements and conflicts of interests, 32, 165, 187 political situation in, 50, 56 Russian ambitions in, 53 Ballin, Albert, 163 Baltic region, 92, 121, 179, 182, 219, 221, 268, 334, 342 Baltic Sea, 160, 264 Bamberg, 351 Banat, 197, 218 Bardolff, Carl v., 75, 285, 292, 293 Bartels, Adolf, 157, 219 Batthyány, Tivadar, 201 Bauch, Bruno, 219 Bauer, Otto, 35, 318, 338 Bauer, Wilhelm, 124 Bavaria, 20, 61, 114, 117, 118, 137, 142, 154, 265, 290, 339, 352 and Austria, 118, 166–8, 300, 301, 314, 324, 339 and Bohemia, 320 and Prussia, 17, 47, 132, 141, 179, 349 Bayerische Staatszeitung, 167 Bayerische Volkspartei (BVP), 339 Bayreuth, 51 Bebel, August, 36 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 68 Belfort, 38 Belgium, 57, 62, 69, 76, 110, 114, 121, 164, 166, 181, 206, 219, 221, 243, 286, 297, 299, 302, 334 Flanders, 180, 220, 221, 229 Belgrade, 112 Bell, Johannes, 69, 154 Below, Georg v., 122, 158, 159 Belt, 66, 337 Benelux countries, 38, 168 Berchtold von und zu Ungarschitz, Fratting und Pullitz, Leopold, 54, 114 Berger, Stefan, 6

425 Berlin, 21, 23, 47, 49, 61, 110, 111, 115, 166, 189, 194, 235, 260, 309 compared with Vienna, 24–5, 27–8 meetings, 54, 109, 112, 177, 199, 247, 257, 341 university, 44, 64, 69, 91, 93, 95, 160, 189, 206, 219, 336 Berliner Moderne, 77 Berliner Tageblatt, 23, 61, 71, 165, 195, 279, 311 Bermann, Richard Arnold. See Höllriegel, Arnold Bern, 305 Bernhard, Georg, 237 Bernstein, Eduard, 63, 153, 278 Berzeviczy, Albert, 196 Beseler, Hans Hartwig v., 255 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald v., 52, 116, 170, 200, 213, 240, 251, 253, 254, 260, 289, 292, 295 and Mitteleuropa, 168–9, 243, 244 and the July Crisis, 55, 57 and the peace question, 298 and the Polish problem, 236, 242, 244–5, 247, 248, 258, 266, 291 intervention in Austrian domestic politics, 291–2, 293 pro-Slav rhetoric, 92 Beukenberg, Wilhelm, 178 Beust, Friedrich Ferdinand v., 22 Bewer, Max, 66 Biedermann, Erich v., 55 Bilin´ ski, Leon v., 163, 226 Bismarck, Herbert v., 21 Bismarck, Otto v., 20, 23, 78, 121, 138, 140, 142, 144, 318 alliance system, 32 and Germandom abroad, 34 and Mitteleuropa, 158, 159, 160, 162 and the German war aims debate, 130–2 Austrian views of, 28, 127–8, 137, 336 centenary, 126–7 criticism in Germany, 37, 136, 137, 139, 143 post-1918 debate (Germany), 343, 345, 348, 349, 353 relations with Austria, 31, 128–30, 146, 267, 320, 330, 346, 348, 349 relations with Hungary, 208, 210, 214 Black Sea, 38, 218, 251, 252 Bley, Fritz, 140, 267 Bleyer, Jakob, 210, Bodenbach (Podmokly), 308 Bodenhausen, Eberhard v., 261 Boehm, Max Hildebert, 3

426

Index

Bohemia, 34, 106, 135, 242, 274, 308, 354 administrative reforms in, 35, 239, 282, 286, 289, 326 German Bohemians, 24, 30, 35, 78, 82, 83, 115, 118, 174, 178, 213, 274, 285, 308, 310, 319–20, 321–3, 327, 337, 339 Bolesta-Koziebrodzky, Jaroslaus v., 100 Bolshevism, 323, 325, 339 Bonn, 164 Bornhak, Conrad, 219 Borussianism, 16–17, 26, 47, 72, 107, 119, 122, 126, 132, 135, 140–2, 161–2, 254, 264, 266–7, 329, 335, 336, 348–9, 351–2 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 109, 239, 275 Bosnian Annexation Crisis (1908–09), 32, 33, 53, 57, 183 Bosphorus, 96, 185 Bothmer, Karl v., 302 Bozen (Bolzano), 64 Brahms, Johannes, 22, 187 Brandenburg, Erich, 158, 345–6, 351 Brandenburg, margraves of, 140 Brandenburg-Prussia, 140 Brandsch, Rudolf, 211, 214 Brandt, Harm-Hinrich, 161 Braun, Otto, 312 Brazil, 23 Bredt, Johann Viktor, 222 Brenner (Brennero), 337 Brentano, Franz Clemens, 22 Breslau (Wrocław), 117, 154, 262, 288 Brest-Litovsk negotiations (1917–18), 106, 131, 234, 255, 302, 303, 304–5 treaty with Russia (1918), 305 treaty with Ukraine (1918), 256 Breysig, Kurt, 122, 219 Briefs, Goetz, 154 Britain, 114, 141, 309 and Germany, 93, 166, 345 and Hungary, 204 and Mitteleuropa, 134, 181 and the ideas of 1914, 72, 155 and the peace question, 132 British Empire, 43, 44, 154, 168, 184 July Crisis and outbreak of war, 56, 57, 62, 64 national identity, 18, 121 relations with France and Russia, 32, 67 views of Austria-Hungary, 23 Brockdorff-Rantzau, Ulrich v., 188 Brünn (Brno), 176, 290 Brunswick, 47

Brusilov Offensive (1916), 73, 75, 108, 114, 248 Brusilov, Aleksei, 75, 105 Brussels, 62 Bucharest, 257 Buchheim, Karl, 94, 136, 179, 202 Budapest, 188, 290 as capital of Mitteleuropa, 197 German visits, 194, 195, 198, 206 pro-German manifestations, 189, 191, 192 Bukovina, 73, 197, 218, 256 Bulgaria and Mitteleuropa, 164 and the July Crisis, 54 as ally, 67, 72, 74, 75, 76, 148, 316 German views of, 12, 96, 106, 141, 183–5, 232, 329 Bülow, Bernhard v., 31, 33–4, 53, 56–7, 208–9, 230–1 Bundesrat Committee for Foreign Affairs, 106 Burián von Rajecz, Stephan (István), 291, 294 and Mitteleuropa, 244 and peace efforts, 297, 315 and the Austro-Germans, 248, 326 and the Polish problem, 239, 244, 245, 247–8, 257–8, 306 and the Romanian question, 198 attempts to influence German public opinion, 96, 115 German criticism of, 292, 293 Karl’s views of, 294 Caporetto, Battle of (1917), 73, 300 Carinthia, 30, 111, 213 Carpathian Mountains, 74, 75, 94, 116, 139, 146, 191 Cassel, Oskar, 234 Catholics (Austria-Hungary), 27, 28, 34, 154, 171 as pillar of state and society, 80, 92, 96, 283, 353 Catholics (Germany), 118, 309 and Anschluss, 318, 324, 337, 339, 340, 354 and Hungary, 194, 203 and Mitteleuropa, 154–5, 156, 163, 170, 179 and the course of German history, 14, 72, 122–3, 129, 132–3, 142–4, 348 and the idea of the German nation, 8, 13, 18, 42, 47, 64, 99, 182 and the July Crisis, 51, 59 and the peace question, 302

Index and the Reich myth, 134, 135–6, 149, 154–5, 349, 350 Austrophilism, 26, 31, 69, 117, 179, 332 Kulturkampf, 20, 47, 129 on Austro-Hungarian domestic politics and the nationality question, 93, 95, 96, 151, 270, 272, 274, 275–6, 288, 311, 327 on Ostmarkenpolitik and the Polish question, 225, 227, 230, 232, 244, 259 status in politics and society, 20, 46–7, 140, 142–3, 311, 332 Cattaro (Kotor), 303 censorship in Austria-Hungary, 80, 114 in Germany, 11, 12, 62, 112, 195, 288 Centralverband Deutscher Industrieller (CDI), 165 Centre Party. See Deutsche Zentrumspartei Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 45, 141, 142, 158–9 Chambord, Treaty of (1552), 139 Charleville-Mézières, 74, 75 Charmatz, Richard, 79, 80, 90, 190, 273, 310 Chełm, 235, 256 Chemnitz, 287 Chéradame, André, 23 Chile, 141 China, 23, 315 Christian Socials (Austria) and Mitteleuropa, 85, 171, 173 and Nibelungentreue, 78 and the Hungarian Germans, 215 and the nationality question, 90 relations with other parties, 173, 289 views of Germany, 28, 85, 306, 308, 334, 341 citizenship, 39, 42–3, 45, 342 Clam-Martinic, Heinrich v., 111, 274, 326 Claß, Heinrich, 40, 41, 60, 181, 220, 222, 263–6, 286–7, 319 Cleinow, Georg, 228 Cohen-Reuß, Max, 237 Cold War, 355 Cologne, 61, 281, 339 Conrad von Hötzendorf, Franz and Mitteleuropa, 163 and the OHL, 74, 75–6, 108–9 Austro-Hungarian criticism of, 108, 115 German views of, 66, 346–7 Conrad von Hötzendorf, Virginia Laura Antonia (née Agujari), 116 conservatives and Anschluss, 337, 344, 345, 352

427 and Mitteleuropa, 157, 159, 160, 163, 170, 180, 332 and Russia, 27, 237 and the course of German history, 349, 351 and the Hungarian Germans, 222 and the idea of the nation, 20, 42, 121, 344 and the July Crisis, 59 and the nationality question in AustriaHungary, 8, 93, 96, 272, 280, 282–3 and the Reich myth, 133, 350, 351, 354 Conservative Revolution, 3, 344, 350, 351, 354 in Prussia, 27, 31, 133, 141, 159, 180, 233, 267 on Bismarck and war aims, 130 Ostmarkenpolitik and the Polish question, 42, 222, 233, 236, 266 views of Austria-Hungary, 24, 31, 267, 274, 312, 326, 331, 344 Constantinople, 184 Conze, Werner, 226, 247 Cornwall, Mark, 7 Counter-Reformation, 16 Courland, 74, 110, 237, 248 Cramon, August v., 106–7, 304, 320, 346, 347 Croats, 91, 101, 150, 175, 188, 263, 274, 275, 288 Cserny, Károly, 193, 211 Cunow, Heinrich, 152, 277 Czartorysk (Staryi Chortoryisk), 109 Czecho-Slovakia, 279, 308, 312, 317, 320, 322–3, 336 Czechs, 97 and Mitteleuropa, 161 and the outbreak of war, 80 Austro-Hungarian views of, 79, 285, 326 German criticism and demands for intervention, 24, 35, 39, 95, 101, 185, 263, 265, 283, 288, 290, 291, 296, 302, 310, 319–20, 321–3 in the Austro-Hungarian army, 107, 110, 280 party-political cooperation, 289 political demands of, 274, 283, 301, 307, 317, 320 politicians and intellectuals, 98, 226, 279 pro-Czech views in Germany, 92, 97, 98, 150, 227, 311, 313, 324, 329 Social Democracy, 97 Czernin von und zu Chudenitz, Ottokar, 257, 300, 326 and the peace question, 206, 297, 298, 302, 304, 309, 331

428

Index

Czernin von und (cont.) and the Polish problem, 250, 251, 252, 254, 255 relationship with Kühlmann, 294 d’Annunzio, Gabriele, 301 Dalmatia, 239 Danes, 219 in Germany, 42, 224, 230 Danube, 78, 82, 100, 166–7, 194 Dardanelles, 181 Dardanelles Campaign (1915–16), 148 Das Größere Deutschland, 90 Das junge Europa, 193 Das neue Deutschland, 96 David, Eduard, 61, 112, 113, 131 Defregger, Franz, 21 Dehmel, Richard, 65 Delbrück, Clemens v., 169–70, 244, 247, 260 Delbrück, Hans, 122, 160, 232, 259 Denkschrift aus Deutsch-Österreich, 174, 176, 240 Dernburg, Bernhard, 194 Deutschbund, 40 Deutsche Arbeit, 82, 215 Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP), 337, 343 Deutsche Mittelstelle für ÖsterreichUngarn, 312–13 Deutsche Rechtspartei, 47 Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (DVLP), 141–2, 182, 233, 301, 302, 304 Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP), 337, 339 Deutsche Zentrumspartei, 20, 34, 69, 103, 142, 143, 147, 154, 156, 163, 225, 301, 302, 337, 339 Bayerische Zentrumspartei, 324 Deutscher Nationalverband (DNV), 156, 163, 173, 289 Deutscher Ostmarkenverein (DOV), 42, 225, 229, 233 Deutscher Volksrat für Österreich, 308 Deutsches Auslands-Institut, 218 Deutsch-Hannoversche Partei, 156 Deutschlands Erneuerung, 286 Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP), 337, 351 Deutschnationalismus and Austro-German identity, 83–5, 90, 94 and Bismarck, 127 and coalition warfare, 75

and Mitteleuropa, 156, 172–5, 177 and the course of German history, 123, 124 and the Hungarian Germans, 214 contacts with Reich Germans, 41, 163, 302 German views of, 33, 36, 276, 282 political demands, 37, 239, 282, 287 relations with other parties, 173, 289 Deutsch-Österreichischer Volksbund, 337, 341 Deutsch-Österreichisch-Ungarischer Wirtschaftsverband (DÖUWV), 163, 199 Deutschvölkische Partei, 312 Diehl, Karl, 165, 177 Diner-Dénes, József, 191 division, German (post-1945), 2, 355 Dollfuß, Engelbert, 353 Dortmund, 118 Drave, 146 Dresden, 21, 117, 118, 156, 298 university, 24 Dresdner Nachrichten, 288 Drews, Wilhelm Arnold (Bill), 231 Drile, Fritzi, 113–14 Easter Programme (1916), 173 Ebert, Friedrich, 338 economic blockade, 3, 134, 145, 167, 178 Einem, Karl v., 347 Elisabeth, Empress, 29 Endres, Fritz, 118 Engels, Friedrich, 36, 277 England. See Britain Entente, 75 and Anschluss, 321, 323, 340 and German residents, 217 and Hungary, 205 and Mitteleuropa, 243 and the Czechs, 320, 322 and the nationality question in AustriaHungary, 271, 286, 307 and the peace question, 132, 298, 314, 316 and the Polish problem, 236, 252 compared with Central Powers, 4, 67, 71, 184 formation, 32 July Crisis and war diplomacy, 56, 198, 330 Erzberger, Matthias, 116 and Anschluss, 324 and Hungary, 193, 194 and Mitteleuropa, 154, 163, 169

Index and the Reichstag Peace Resolution (1917), 302–3 and the Romanian question, 198 on German perceptions of Austria, 103 Ettlinger, Karl, 65, 66, 69 Eucken, Rudolf, 197, 228 Eugen, Archduke, 292 Eugene, Prince of Savoy, 66, 124, 353 Eulenburg, Franz, 164, 165 Eulenburg und Hertefeld, Philipp zu, 187, 267 Fackel, 86 Falkenhayn, Erich v., 75, 192, 253 and the Polish question, 242, 246, 249 Mitteleuropa (and military convention), 75, 242–3, 292 relations with the AOK, 75, 108, 347 Fatherland Party. See Deutsche Vaterlandspartei (DVLP) Feine, Paul, 67–8 Feldman, Wilhelm, 227 Fenske, Hans, 134 Ficker, Julius v., 22 Fischer, Fritz, 54, 169 Fischer, Samuel, 21 Fittbogen, Gottfried, 210 Flensburg, 64 Foerster, Friedrich Wilhelm, 98, 99, 136–8, 157, 279, 340 food supply and shortages in Austria-Hungary, 12, 172, 202, 204, 276, 296–7, 298, 303, 308, 309, 310, 312, 314–15, 317, 320, 327 in Germany, 145, 272, 312, 321 in the Austrian Republic, 323, 340 Fortschrittliche Volkspartei (FVP), 69, 150, 151, 195, 201, 234, 237 France, 75, 309 and Austria-Hungary, 23, 28 and German war aims, 181 and Hungary, 191, 204 and Mitteleuropa, 134, 166, 168 and the Czechs, 307 and the ideas of 1914, 138 and the peace question, 132, 261, 297, 298, 302 and the war on the western front, 76, 78, 103, 114, 206 French Empire, 184 July Crisis and outbreak of war, 60, 62, 64 national identity, 18, 121 peace with Germany (1871), 131 relations with Britain and Russia, 32, 67, 71

429 Frankfurter Zeitung, 63, 97, 100, 150–1, 279, 325 Frantz, Constantin, 37–8, 39, 43, 137, 146, 156, 159 Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 22, 50–2, 53, 56, 58, 285, 309 Franz Joseph, Emperor, 28, 66, 191, 317 and Mitteleuropa, 171 and the Dual Alliance, 75, 102, 103, 109 and the July Crisis, 54 and the nationality problem, 285, 291, 293 and the Polish question, 292 birthday celebrations, 102, 189 demise, 270, 283 dynastic links, 119 Free Corps, 344 Freemasons, 138 Freiburg, 165 Freikonservative Partei, 96, 222, 282 Freißler, Robert, 177 Fremdenblatt, 103, 171 Freytag-Loringhoven, Hugo v., 347 Fried, Alfred Hermann, 27 Friedberg, Robert, 230 Friedjung, Heinrich, 173–4, 240, 244 Friedrich II, King of Prussia, 16, 121, 149, 159, 267, 353 Friedrich August III, King of Saxony, 119 Friedrich Wilhelm I, King in Prussia, 140 Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg, 140, 283 Frisians, 224 Fritzsche, Peter, 2 Fulda, Ludwig, 68, 69, 116 Fürstenberg, Egon v., 203, 205, 206–7, 213, Fürstenberg, Maximilian Egon II. zu, 21, 285 Fürstenbund (1785), 135 Gablonz (Jablonec nad Nisou), 115 Galicia, 218, 238, 241, 250, 252, 264, 299, 313 as battlefield, 73, 74, 75, 82, 112, 116 constitutional status, 36, 239, 249, 250, 251, 256, 262, 265, 282, 289, 292, 293 economic significance, 240, 295 irredentism, 247, 251, 263 Gallwitz, Max v., 92 Ganz, Hugo, 100–1, 118 Gebsattel, Friedrich v., 97, 290, 321–2 Geneva Protocols (1922), 341 Georgi, Friedrich v., 102 Gerlach, Hellmut v., 130, 230, 279 German Club, 173 German Confederation, 7, 17, 45, 137, 158

430

Index

German Eastern Marches Society. See Deutscher Ostmarkenverein (DOV) German Institute for Border and Foreign Germandom, 218 German School Association. See Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA) German-Bulgarian Society, 185 Germandom abroad, 3, 14, 33, 38, 41, 182, 217–22, 319, 342 Baltic Germans, 4, 218, 219, 221, 232 Central and Eastern European, 3, 19, 42, 43, 44, 46, 60, 179, 218, 342 overseas, 43 Swiss Germans, 219, 220 Volga Germans, 4 Germania, 51, 69, 91 German-Polish Society, 228 German-Turkish Association, 185 Gerok, Friedrich v., 110, 111 Gessmann, Albert, 308 Gierke, Otto v., 95 Gießen, 117 Gisela, Archduchess, 119 Glaise von Horstenau, Edmund, 75 Goetz, Walter, 149 Goldmann, Paul, 287 Gołuchowski, Agenor Maria, 226 Gorlice-Tarnów Campaign (1915), 74 Goschen, William Edward, 245 Gothein, Georg, 165, 237 Grabowsky, Adolf, 130, 159, 228, 237 Graevenitz, Friedrich v., 56 Gratz, Gustav (Gusztáv), 199 Grauert, Hermann v., 275 Graz, 61, 64, 80 Greece, 243 Grenzboten, 326 Grey, Edward, 62 Grillparzer, Franz, 68, 86, 124 Grimm, Jacob, 128 Grimm, Wilhelm, 128 Groß, Gustav, 156 Gruber, Max v., 21 Grün, Anastasius, 68 Gustav-Adolf-Verein, 37, 209 Guttmann, Bernhard, 301 Gwinner, Arthur v., 169 Haase, Hugo, 338 Habsburg, House of, 16, 17, 25, 27, 28, 29, 34, 40, 61, 64, 76, 80, 82, 101, 106, 133, 166, 223, 253, 257, 265, 266, 286, 304, 326, 335, 351 Hadersleben, 64

Hadina, Emil, 78 Haenisch, Konrad, 131, 194, 336 Hainisch, Michael, 176 Halle (Saale), 68 university, 282 Haller, Johannes, 131, 267, 351 Hamburg, 61, 118, 147, 166, 197, 288 Hamburg-Amerika-Linie, 300 Hamburger Echo, 63 Hamburger Nachrichten, 33 Hampe, Karl, 112 Hanover, 22, 47, 179 Hansa-Bund, 116 Hänsch, Felix, 95, 146 Hanseatic League, 121 Harden, Maximilian, 28, 228, 345 Hardenberg-Stein reforms, 16 Harnack, Adolf v., 37, 91, 116 Hartmann, Ludo Moritz, 338 Hartung, Fritz, 282–3 Hasse, Ernst, 33, 39, 208 Hauptmann, Gerhart, 28, 51, 71, 194 Haußmann, Conrad, 91 Havenstein, Rudolf, 169 Haydn, Joseph, 68 Heidelberg, 94, 112 Heile, Wilhelm, 310 Heim, Georg, 166, 339 Heineken, Philipp, 116 Heinold von Udynski, Karl, 102 Held, Heinrich, 324, 339 Helfferich, Karl, 169 Hellpach, Willy, 100, 196 Herkner, Heinrich, 170 Herre, Paul, 95 Hertling, Georg v., 142, 198, 255, 257, 301, 303, 304, 313 Herwig, Holger, 5 Hesse, 179 Hesse-Nassau, 47 Heuss, Theodor, 125, 130 Hewitson, Mark, 58 Heydebrand und der Lasa, Ernst v., 116 Hilfe, 90, 135, 310 Hilferding, Rudolf, 152 Hindenburg, Paul von Beneckendorff und v., 75, 76, 105, 115, 118, 126, 182, 291, 293, 315 and the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, 304 and the Polish problem, 253–5, 257, 266, 292–3 Austrian views of, 78 on Austria-Hungary, 105–6, 193, 267, 293, 294, 346 popularity, 2, 66, 115, 310

Index Hintze, Otto, 122, 129, 195, 196 Hintze, Paul v., 258, 315, 316, 317 Historisch-politische Blätter, 91, 270, 276 Hitler, Adolf, 352–3, 355 Hoetzsch, Otto, 93, 125, 131, 158, 194, 216, 228, 237, 345 Hofer, Andreas, 82 Hoffmann, Cornelia Irene, 105 Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Amadeus, 128 Hoffmann, Max, 105, 347 Hofmannsthal, Hugo v., 81, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 98, 99, 124, 128, 295 Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Chlodwig zu, 21 Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Gottfried zu, 21, 114, 115, 126, 294 Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Konrad zu, 294 Hohenstaufen, House of, 166 Hohenzollern, House of, 16, 29, 34, 61, 82, 106, 140, 142, 201, 223, 253, 257, 268, 335 Höllriegel, Arnold, 21 Holocaust, 2, 355 Holy Roman Empire, 7, 16, 17, 37, 96, 121, 146, 157, 158, 165, 166 Reich myth, 5, 14, 15, 72, 119, 133–40, 149, 154, 155, 156, 160, 233, 332, 349–51 Hoyos, Alexander v., 21, 54 Hugenberg, Alfred, 177 Hungary, 13, 75, 91, 97, 101, 102, 109, 150, 185–217, 275, 281, 288, 306, 316, 317 and the Polish question, 238–9, 240, 245, 246, 263, 266, 268 dislike of Franz Ferdinand, 51 German views of, 14, 26, 39, 93, 96, 107, 118, 135, 149, 182, 232, 251, 268, 272, 273, 275, 283, 284, 286, 291, 313, 314, 327, 329, 330, 333 Hungarian Germans, 14, 41, 185, 187, 194, 197, 207–17, 220, 222, 268, 333 Independence Party, 201, 202 nationality policy, 36, 222, 280, 283, 291, 317, 333 post-1918 developments, 323, 340 relations with Austria, 23, 30, 79, 129, 165, 174, 176, 186, 191, 194, 202–4, 205, 216, 271, 285, 293, 318, 347 Social Democracy, 200 Hunkel, Ernst, 229 Hussarek von Heinlein, Max, 310 Husserl, Edmund, 21

431 idealism (philosophy), 18 ideas of 1914 in Austria, 77–80, 87–9 in Germany, 1–2, 72, 121 Iglau (Jihlava), 115 Imendörffer, Benno, 138, 215 imperialism (German Weltpolitik), 7, 19, 23, 26, 29, 32, 38, 43–4, 45, 76, 100, 130, 134, 145, 150, 154, 170, 175, 180–1, 225, 331, 332, 351 Insel Verlag, 23 Iro, Karl, 288 Islam, 183, 184, 185 Isonzo River, 73 Italians (Austria-Hungary), 271 Italy and Catholicism, 47 and Mitteleuropa, 168, 181, 301 and the ideas of 1914, 138 as enemy, 74, 192, 301, 309, 316, 336 as German ally, 53 national identity, 18 question of neutrality, 110, 221, 222, 223 relations with Austria-Hungary, 112 Jaffé, Edgar, 170 Jagow, Gottlieb v., 52, 62, 288, 294 and Mitteleuropa, 171 and the July Crisis, 57 and the Polish question, 242, 245–6, 248, 266, 291 anti-Slavism, 92 James, Harold, 44 Japan, 141 Jastrow, Ignaz, 231 Jászi, Oszkár, 200, 270 Jean Paul. See Richter, Johann Friedrich Paul Jena, 177 Jesser, Franz, 82, 83, 84, 90, 123, 179, 217, 280, 285 Jesuitism, 16 Jews in Austria-Hungary, 106 in Eastern Europe, 42, 226, 228, 236, 242, 247, 258, 267 in Germany, 24, 25, 68, 135 Johannes, Hermann, 169 Joll, James, 31 July Crisis (1914), 13, 21, 50–62, 189, 345 Jung, Edgar Julius, 133, 349–50 Jung, Erich, 68

432

Index

Kaindl, Raimund Friedrich, 82, 123, 211, 348, 351, 352 Kainz, Josef, 21 Kant, Immanuel, 25, 128 Kant-Gesellschaft, 219 Karl Stephan, Archduke, 258 Karl, Emperor, 189, 273, 291, 297, 335 and domestic politics, 98, 294, 298, 306, 308, 310, 316, 317, 326 and Mitteleuropa, 171 and Romania, 257 and the Polish problem, 257, 258 as military leader, 75 family relations, 119 German views of, 107, 270, 274, 286, 292, 298, 302, 303, 347 peace efforts, 298, 302, 304, 305, 316, 317, 331 Karlsruhe, 21 Károlyi, Mihály, 200–1, 205, 216, 294 Kattowitz (Katowice), 117 Katzenstein, Peter J., 6 Kautsky, Karl, 36, 153, 278 Kedourie, Elie, 120, 122 Kelet Népe, 193 Keppler, Paul Wilhelm v., 155 Kerensky Offensive (1917), 73 Kessler, Harry v., 109–11, 191–2, 196, 260–1, 295, 305–6 Kieler Neueste Nachrichten, 231 Kielmansegg, Eduard v., 22 Kielmansegg, Erich v., 22 Kienzl, Hermann, 78, 83, 84, 90, 175 Kirdorf, Emil, 177 Kleist, Heinrich v., 128 Klemperer, Eva, 51 Klemperer, Felix, 113 Klemperer, Henriette, 113 Klemperer, Victor, 24, 47, 51, 52, 61, 112, 113, 228 Klemperer, Wilhelm, 24 Klingemann, Karl, 220 Klopp, Onno, 22 Knilling, Eugen v., 137 Koerber, Ernest v., 273, 295 Kohn, Hans, 18 Kokoschka, Oskar, 21 Kölnische Volkszeitung, 151, 276 Kölnische Zeitung, 59, 64 Königgrätz, Battle of (1866), 122, 125, 126 Königsberg (Kaliningrad), 117 Korinman, Michel, 7 Korodi, Lutz, 211–12, 213, 214 Koschentin (Kosze˛ cin), 109

Kövess von Kövessháza, Hermann, 108, 111–12 Kralik, Richard v., 78, 80, 98, 124, 137, 151, 156, 352 Kramárˇ , Karel, 273, 274 Kraus, Karl, 28, 37, 49, 50, 86 Kreuzzeitung, 31 Kriegspresseamt, 11, 321 Kristóffy, József, 285 Krobatin, Alexander v., 102 Kronstadt (Braș ov), 206 Krueckemeyer, Heinrich Maria, 123 Kucharzewski, Jan, 256 Kühlmann, Richard v., 258, 301, 304 and peace efforts, 256, 299, 303 and the Polish question, 251, 252, 255, 257 relationship with Czernin, 294 Kühn, Erich, 286 Künßberg, Eberhard v., 112 Kunstwart, 90 Kurz, Isolde, 65–6 Laband, Paul, 116 Lagarde, Paul de, 38–9, 43, 44, 45, 158, 188 Lake Constance, 96 Lammasch, Heinrich, 85, 172, 299, 303–4, 318 Lamprecht, Karl, 37, 94, 122, 135, 218 Landwehr von Pragenau, Ottokar, 314 Langbehn, Julius, 24, 45 Lange, Friedrich, 40 Lautenschlager, Karl, 100 League of Nations, 340, 341 Lebensraum, 139, 180, 181, 235, 344, 354 Ledebour, Georg, 153 left liberals, 97 and Anschluss, 324, 325 and German national identity, 42, 47, 151, 182 and Hungary, 188, 189, 203 and Mitteleuropa, 8, 165, 178, 332 and Russia, 237 and the July Crisis, 59 and the peace question, 302 on Austro-Hungarian domestic politics and the nationality question, 27, 36, 93, 94, 272, 273, 275, 279, 280, 288, 310, 327, 331 on Bismarck, 127 on Ostmarkenpolitik and the Polish question, 36, 225, 227, 230, 232, 234, 237, 256, 259, 260

433

Index on the Reich myth and the course of German history, 72, 134 politicians and intellectuals, 96, 100, 125 Lehmann, Emil, 84, 175, 215 Lehmann, Julius Friedrich, 222 Leipzig, 23, 61, 95, 158, 164 university, 149 Lemberg (Lviv), 102, 290 Lemke, Heinz, 241 Lenard, Philipp, 21 Lenau, Nikolaus, 68 Lensch, Paul, 194 Lenz, Max, 122 Leopold, Prince of Bavaria, 118 Lerchen, Count, 206–7, 212–13 Leuthner, Karl, 29, 241, 325, 326 Leyen, Friedrich v.d., 139 Lichnowsky, Karl Max v., 57, 62, 165–6, 237 Liebermann, Max, 116 Liebesgaben aus dem Deutschen Reiche, 116 Liebknecht, Karl, 277 Lienhard, Friedrich, 25 Liliencron, Detlev v., 28 Linz, 115 Linz Programme (1882), 172, 239 Lischka, Viktor, 40 List, Friedrich, 37, 38, 146, 158, 351 List, Heinrich Theodor, 197 Liszt, Franz, 187 Liszt, Franz v., 69–70, 150 Lithuania, 74, 237, 248, 253, 255 Löbe, Paul, 341 Łódz´ , 113 Loebell, Friedrich Wilhelm v., 169, 247 London, 23, 57 Lorentzen, Theodor, 147 Los-von-Rom Movement, 37 Lovc´en, 102 Lower Austria, 22 Lublin, 236 Lublinitz (Lubliniec), 109 Ludendorff, Erich, 75, 126, 182, 251, 315, 321 and Anschluss, 320 and the Polish question, 247, 249, 253–5, 266 dislike in Austria-Hungary, 304 on Conrad, 346 popularity in Germany, 2 views of Austria-Hungary, 73, 105–6, 294, 304 Ludwig III, King of Bavaria, 118, 167 Lusatia, 296 Luther, Martin, 121, 140, 142

Lützow, House of, 21 Lux, Joseph August, 81, 84 Luxembourg, 38, 164, 229 Lyncker, Moriz v., 105 Mackensen, August v., 74, 107, 111, 115, 116, 192 Magdeburg, 261 Mahler, Gustav, 21 Main, 254 Mann, Thomas, 1, 50, 138 Máramarossziget (Sighetu Marmaț iei), 191 Marburg university, 218, 222 Marchtaler, Otto v., 100 Marcks, Erich, 122, 129, 131, 158 Margarete Sophie, Archduchess, 309 Maria Josepha, Princess of Saxony, 119 Maria Theresa, Archduchess, 309 Maria Theresia, Empress, 353 Marie Valerie, Archduchess, 29 Marx, Karl, 36, 277 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 279 Max, Prince of Baden, 315, 321, 324 Mayer, Gustav, 154 Mecklenburg, 48, 179 Medinger, Wilhelm v., 174 Mediterranean Sea, 177, 295 Meinecke, Friedrich, 18, 91, 122, 151, 278–9 Meinl, Julius, 85, 172, 299 Memel, 38, 354 Mensdorff-Pouilly, Alfons v., 87 Metternich, Klemens v., 82, 353 Mexico, 315 Meyer, Henry Cord, 3, 12, 145 Michaelis, Georg, 251, 254, 299 Mickiewicz, Adam, 228 Middle Ages, 16, 121, 133–40, 149, 154, 156, 158, 166, 178, 207, 351 Middle East, 38, 44, 84, 89, 95, 147, 164, 177, 179, 180, 183, 193, 197, 209, 212 migration, 22 Mitteleuropa, 3, 5, 7, 8, 14, 72, 96, 117, 145–82, 324, 327, 350 after 1918, 96, 350–1 and Hungary, 161, 175, 197, 198–202, 204, 207 and Poland, 38, 161, 166, 174, 175, 223, 228–9, 232–3, 239–40, 241, 242–4, 251, 252, 253, 254, 257, 259–60, 266 and the Austro-Hungarian government, 244, 268, 305 and the Reich myth, 134–7, 144, 350

434

Index

Mitteleuropa (cont.) discussion in Austria, 171–8, 239–40, 241, 285, 289, 310, 333 governmental views, 168–71, 242–4, 292, 307 Greater Mitteleuropa, 164, 184–5 in the press and public debate, 117, 145–68, 175–82, 283, 287, 290, 332, 333 official negotiations, 244, 252, 255, 299, 314–15, 331 perceptions abroad, 301 pre-1914 conceptions, 17, 37–9, 40, 43–4, 45 Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftsverein (MEWV), 163 Mittwochsgesellschaft, 304 Moeller van den Bruck, Arthur, 93, 133, 184, 344, 350 Molo, Walter v., 89 Moltke, Helmuth v. (Younger), 78, 92, 104 Mommsen, Theodor, 35 Mongols, 187 Montenegro, 75, 246, 253, 264, 275 Monts, Anton v., 188 Moravia, 30, 34, 35, 82, 354 Mörike, Eduard, 128 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 68, 82 Müller, Karl Alexander v., 146 Müller, Robert, 86 Müller-Meiningen, Ernst, 193 Mumbauer, Johannes, 142–3 Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, 66, 118 Munich, 21, 23, 47, 52, 61, 98, 99, 113, 117, 118, 137, 167, 275, 290, 298, 352 university, 167 Mutius, Gerhard v., 110 Napoleon Bonaparte, 17, 133 national liberals and Mitteleuropa, 163, 170 and the idea of the German nation, 20 and the ideas of 1914, 121 and the July Crisis, 59 and the peace question, 304–5 and the Reich myth, 133 in Prussia, 230, 233 on Austro-Hungarian domestic politics and the nationality question, 8, 272, 280, 312, 331 on Ostmarkenpolitik and the Polish question, 233, 236, 266 reactions to Dual Alliance (1879), 31 National Socialism, 2, 24, 42

nationalism and national identity, theories of, 4, 8–10, 18, 120–2 Nationalliberale Partei (NLP), 33, 132, 163, 305 Nationalsozialistische Partei Deutschlands (NSDAP), 352 Natorp, Paul, 156 Naumann, Friedrich, 117, 135, 165, 174, 185, 194, 195, 310 and the course of German history, 128, 146, 148–9 and the Czechs, 96–7 and the nationality question in AustriaHungary, 231, 279, 288 and the Polish problem, 227, 228, 229, 232 Austrophilism, 117, 148 Greater German rhetoric, 68, 69, 147 Mitteleuropa, 146, 148–50, 154, 155–6, 158–9, 163, 165, 170, 171, 178, 199, 200, 351 on Hungary and the Hungarian Germans, 185, 200, 201–2, 214 on the Austro-Germans, 161–2 Naumann, Viktor, 198, 259, 298, 304, 316–17 Navy General Staff (Germany), 298 Nazi Germany, 349, 352–5 Nemes von Hidvég und Oltszem, Albert, 325 neo-Rankean historiography, 19, 122, 140 Netherlands, 22, 45, 181, 219, 220, 229, 243 Neue Freie Presse, 22, 287, 304 Neue Rundschau, 23, 273, 279, 310 Neue Zeit, 58 Neugeboren, Emil, 210, 216 neutral countries, 12, 219, 243, 316, 330 Nibelungenstraße, 100 Nibelungentreue, 4, 31–2, 69–71, 78, 105, 121, 283, 319, 326, 352 Nikolsburg, peace of (1866), 126, 128, 130, 131, 132 Nord und Süd, 197 Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 91, 195 Norddeutscher Lloyd, 117, 300 Nördlingen, 51 Nordmark, 178 Norikus, Friedrich, 132–3, 136 North Sea, 100, 139, 160 Norway, 219, 315 Noske, Gustav, 163, 261, 323 Nostitz, House of, 21 Nostitz-Wallwitz, Alfred v., 295–6, 297, 298, 307, 320

Index Nostitz-Wallwitz, Helene v. (née v. Beneckendorff und Hindenburg), 295 Ober Ost, 92 Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL), 107, 294 and Austro-Hungarian domestic politics, 292–3, 294, 319–20, 327, 347 and coalition warfare, 73–6, 103–8, 204–5, 206, 242–3, 292, 346–7 and Romania, 257 and the armistice of 1918, 321 and the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, 256, 304–5 and the Ostimperium, 182, 268 and the peace question, 298, 299, 303, 327 and the Polish problem, 242, 246–7, 249, 251, 252, 253–5, 257, 258, 261, 266, 292–3 war aims, 303 Oncken, Hermann, 11, 23, 31, 159, 162, 178, 259, 348 Österreich. Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 124 Österreichische Aktion, 341 Österreichische Bibliothek, 124, 128 Österreichische Rundschau, 65, 90, 116 Österreichische Waffenbrüderliche Vereinigung, 117 Otte, Thomas, 54 Ottoman Empire and Mitteleuropa, 164, 165 as ally, 72, 74, 75, 76, 198, 246 German views of, 96, 106, 141, 176, 183–5, 232, 329, 346 wars with Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy, 29, 82, 187, 196, 283 Oxford university, 167 Pályi, Ede, 192, 193, 214 Pan-German League. See Alldeutscher Verband (ADV) Pannwitz, Rudolf, 98–9, 155–6, 311 Pan-Slavism, 29, 40, 115, 196, 280 Panther, 211 papacy, 137, 138, 142 peace initiative (1917), 299 Paquet, Alfons, 134, 135 patriotic parades, 61–2 Payer, Friedrich v., 201, 266 Penck, Albrecht, 22 Pernerstorfer, Engelbert, 29, 79 Persian Gulf, 159, 160 Pester Lloyd, 192, 207 Pierstorff, Julius, 177

435 Piłsudski, Józef, 234, 249, 261 Platz, Hermann, 155 Pless (Pszczyna), 74 Plessen, Hans Georg v., 104 Poland, 14, 15, 204, 219, 223–4, 274, 288, 289, 291, 293, 294, 299, 306, 330 as part of the ‘West’, 227 Austro-Polish solution, 14, 238–49, 250–68, 289–90, 306, 307, 314, 317, 326, 327, 333 border strip question, 92, 181, 223, 234, 235–6, 238, 247, 253, 255, 256, 259, 264, 268 disputes between Berlin and Vienna (pre1914), 32 Entente views, 307 German Polonophilism, 15, 92, 226–8 Kandidatenlösung, 247, 256, 257 military campaigns and occupation of Russian Poland, 4, 74, 109, 110, 113, 116, 224, 227–8, 236, 250, 262, 266 Polish legions, 101, 234, 249, 256 post-1918, 261, 354 proclamation of the Kingdom of Poland (1916), 152, 231–3, 237, 249, 283 Provisional Council of State, 249 Regency Council, 250, 251, 256 Russo-Polish solution, 227–8, 238, 242, 253, 261 sub-dualism, 239, 240, 242, 245, 248, 263, 268, 284 trialism, 238–9, 240, 245, 259, 263 Polen. Wochenschrift für polnische Interessen, 227 Poles, 42, 97, 223–68 in Austria-Hungary, 79, 91, 109, 135, 185, 225–6, 234, 238, 247, 252, 256, 260, 262, 271, 274, 289, 292, 307, 317, 329 in Prussia, 20, 36, 42, 222, 224–6, 229, 230–6, 240, 249, 256, 260, 261, 262, 265, 293, 321 in Russia (Congress Poland), 225, 226, 227–8, 235, 292 Polnische Blätter, 227 Polzer-Hoditz und Wolframitz, Arthur v., 272, 307, 326 Popovici, Aurel, 198 Posen (Province), 224, 261 Posen (Poznan´ ), 235, 263 Post, 60 Potthoff, Heinz, 151 Prague, 153, 290, 321 German university, 177 Pan-Slav manifestations, 280

436

Index

Prague (cont.) Peace of (1866), 126, 128 pro-German demonstrations, 80 visits, 97, 98, 311 Preuß, Hugo, 49–50, 130, 147, 329 Preußenbund, 141 Preußische Jahrbücher, 160 Princig von Herwalt, Walter, 113 prisoners of war, 109 propaganda Austro-Hungarian, 12, 112, 114–15 German, 11–12, 34, 63, 112, 185, 207, 226–7 Hungarian, 190, 192, 193–4 Italian, 301 Polish, 227 Protestant League, 37 Protestantism in Austria, 37 in Germany, 13, 24, 28, 34, 47, 72, 118, 119, 132, 134, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 155, 313, 332, 335, 340, 345, 348, 349, 350, 351 Prussia, 16, 24, 38, 47, 69, 98, 99–100, 140–2, 160, 166, 237, 242, 247, 253, 254, 258, 262, 263, 264, 267, 283, 289, 313, 335, 345 Abgeordnetenhaus, 117, 131, 152, 189, 222, 230, 233, 234, 277, 311 annexations in 1866 and 1871, 131 army, 126, 205 East Prussia, 101, 121, 178, 235 Herrenhaus, 21, 57, 140 reform absolutism, 18 state ministries and officials, 76, 104, 169, 231, 236, 243, 247, 252, 309, 314, 336, 347 West Prussia, 224, 261 Przemys´ l, 111, 113 Puszta, 187 Raabe, Paul, 287 Radetzky von Radetz, Josef, 124 Rapp, Adolf, 64, 99, 145 Rathenau, Walther, 25, 168, 238 Ratzel, Friedrich, 44 Rechenberg, Albrecht v., 154, 156, 163, 194, 242, 244 Red Sea, 160 Redlich, Alexander, 115, 324–5 Redlich, Josef, 23, 50–1, 156, 172, 174, 191 Redlich, Oswald, 270 Reformation, 138, 140, 142, 143 Reichenau, Franz v., 217, 312 Reichsbank, 169

Reichsdeutsche Waffenbrüderliche Vereinigung (RWV), 116–17, 185, 194 Reichspost, 78, 90, 324 Reichsrat, 82, 87, 177, 238, 299, 317 and rule by octroi, 271, 274 Herrenhaus, 21, 87, 303, 304 national composition, 239, 244, 252, 262, 264, 265, 266, 268, 289, 326 standing orders, 282 suspension and re-opening, 206, 234, 273, 276, 286, 295, 326 Reichstag Hauptausschuß, 131 joint declarations and resolutions, 189, 218, 234, 305 members, 61, 69, 91, 154, 163, 165, 195, 198, 237, 275, 305, 312, 319, 323, 341, 351 Ostmarkenpolitik and the Polish question, 234, 255 party strengths, 20, 130, 147 Peace Resolution (1917), 15, 142, 303, 305 speeches and debates, 33, 64, 96, 132, 180, 208, 227, 234, 311, 312, 319 Reinhardt, Max, 21 Reismann-Grone, Theodor, 40, 60, 264, 267 Renner, Karl, 35, 87–8, 152, 163, 278 Reventlow, Ernst v., 221 revolution of 1848–49, 17, 27, 135, 146, 187, 343, 349, 354 Frankfurt National Assembly, 17, 46, 343 revolution of 1918, 261, 323, 335, 352 Rex, Rudolf v., 290, 295, 296 Reymont, Władysław, 228 Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung, 60, 262 Rhine, 65, 78, 82, 111, 116, 167, 191, 321 Rhineland, 20, 22, 177, 304, 339, 345 Richter, Gustav, 261 Richter, Johann Friedrich Paul, 128 Riedl, Richard, 173, 305 Riehl, Alois, 21 Riesser, Jakob, 116 Riezler, Kurt, 55, 160, 168, 232–3, 259 Riga, 75 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 21 Ripke, Axel, 127 Rippler, Heinrich, 222 Ritter, Albert, 40 Ritter, Gerhard, 351 Roedern, Siegfried v., 307 Roesicke, Gustav, 163 Roethe, Gustav, 64, 69, 70, 128, 129

Index Rohrbach, Paul, 59, 125, 159, 232 Roman Empire, 137, 156 Romania, 167, 191, 314 and the July Crisis, 54 as enemy, 75, 132, 192, 248, 253, 300 as German ally, 32, 53 as German and Austro-Hungarian war aim, 5, 243, 250–1, 252, 253, 255, 257, 268, 304, 309 question of neutrality, 54, 197–8, 207 relations with Austria-Hungary, 112, 188, 283 Romanians (Austria-Hungary), 91, 197–8, 204, 214, 216, 232, 271, 330 Rome, 47 Congress of Oppressed Nationalities, 307 Rosenstock(-Huessy), Eugen, 135 Rosner, Karl, 78 Rothkirch und Trach, Marie v. (née v. Seeckt), 141 Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, 28, 29 Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, 298 Russia, 4, 19, 22, 44, 109, 184, 218, 221, 235, 264, 309 and German war aims, 92, 130, 277 and the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, 106, 131, 132, 256, 304, 305 and the Polish question, 223, 224, 226, 228, 232, 247, 249, 250, 261, 262, 263 and the war on the eastern front, 101, 103, 109, 110, 114, 148, 150, 182, 187, 191, 204, 248, 283 expansionism, 27, 40, 53, 63, 196, 212 in German war ideology, 93, 139, 146, 155, 277 July Crisis and outbreak of war, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 63, 64, 115 pro-Russian tendencies in AustriaHungary, 273, 280, 290, 297 pro-Russian tendencies in Germany, 40, 92, 131, 237, 264 relations with Austria-Hungary (pre1914), 28, 32, 33, 34 relations with Britain and France, 32, 67, 71 relations with Germany (pre-1914), 27, 32, 33, 228, 345 revolutions (1917), 206, 237, 261, 271, 283, 298, 303, 325 Ruthenians, 92, 110, 238, 242, 274 Saar, 321, 353 Saenger, Samuel, 279, 310 Salzburg, 23, 167, 308, 314–15, 336, 340

437 university, 167 Samassa, Paul, 40, 222, 240 Sammartino, Annemarie, 3 Sarajevo, 53 Sava, 146 Saxony, 22 and Austria, 38, 94, 95, 118 and Bohemia, 168, 288, 296, 308, 320, 321 and Prussia, 17, 132 and the July Crisis, 55 views on the Austro-Hungarian nationality question and reforms, 290, 295–6 Scandinavia, 38, 164, 168, 181, 217, 243 Schäfer, Dietrich, 42, 122, 220, 237, 238, 262 Schaukal, Richard v., 77–8, 86, 127 Scheffler, Karl, 25, 68, 145 Scheler, Max, 96, 135–6, 155 Schieder, Theodor, 19 Schiemann, Theodor, 232 Schiffer, Eugen, 163, 195 Schlenther, Paul, 22 Schleswig, 178 Schlieffen Plan, 103 Schmied-Kowarzik, Walther, 175 Schmitt, Carl, 51 Schmitz, Oscar A.H., 99, 340 Schmoller, Gustav v., 32, 46, 176–7, 178, 231 Schneller, Karl v., 108 Schnitzler, Arthur, 101, 300 Schoen, Hans v., 61, 62 Schönberg, Arnold, 21 Schönburg, House of, 21 Schönerer, Georg v., 30, 40, 352, 353 Schubert, Franz, 68 Schuchardt, Ottomar, 38, 156–7 Schücking, Walther, 36, 157 Schumacher, Hermann, 164 Schuschnigg, Kurt, 353 Schüßler, Wilhelm, 3, 26, 95–6, 179–80, 217, 282, 283–4, 351 Schwaner, Wilhelm, 146 Scutari (Shkodër), 101 Seckendorff, Edwin v., 309 Seeberg-Adresse (Intellektuelleneingabe), 180, 232 Seeckt, Hans v., 75, 107, 141, 163, 216, 237, 243, 292–3 Seidler von Feuchtenegg, Ernst, 274, 310, 326 Seipel, Ignaz, 341 Semper, Gottfried, 21 September Programme, 168

438

Index

Serbia, 275 and Mitteleuropa, 166 as Austro-Hungarian war aim, 246, 250, 253, 264, 288 German pleas for its independence, 316 its war aims, 206 July Crisis and outbreak of war, 53–63, 129 military campaigns against, 73, 74, 75, 101, 103, 112, 116, 148, 150 relations with Austria-Hungary (pre1914), 33, 112, 188, 283 Serbs (Austria-Hungary), 150, 216, 274 Servaes, Franz, 22, 25 Seton-Watson, Robert W., 23 Seven Years’ War (1756–63), 118, 121 Shanafelt, Gary W., 4, 53, 252, 306 Sieger, Robert, 80, 175, 179, 280 Sienkiewicz, Henryk, 228 Silesia Austrian, 34, 242, 254 Prussian, 22, 109, 224, 235, 260, 261 Simmel, Georg, 1, 50 Singer, Isidor, 50 Sixtus Affair, 257, 305–6, 308, 313 Sixtus, Prince of Bourbon-Parma, 297, 305 Slovaks, 92, 109, 216, 274, 283, 307 Slovenia, Slovenes, 135, 274, 275, 312, 313 Šmeral, Bohumir, 97 Social Darwinism, 29, 36, 55, 60, 92, 95, 101, 149, 225, 234, 327, 330 Social Democracy (Austria), 216 and Anschluss, 318, 323, 335–6, 353 and Mitteleuropa, 152–3 and the break-up of Austria-Hungary, 317, 325–6 and the nationality question, 79, 90 and the peace question, 131, 298 and the Polish problem, 240–1 German-Austrian party congress (1916), 163 relations with other parties, 289 views of Germany, 29, 85, 301 Social Democracy (Germany) and Anschluss, 323–4, 337, 338, 341 and Hungary, 194, 203 and Mitteleuropa, 151–3, 157, 163, 170 and Russia, 63, 237, 262 and the South Slav question, 275 anti-Socialist laws, 20, 130 Austrophilism, 118 German-Austrian party congress (1916), 163 July Crisis and the outbreak of war, 58–9, 60, 61, 63 national identity, 42, 47, 182

on Austro-Hungarian domestic politics and the nationality question, 12, 27, 35–6, 96, 188, 272, 273, 275, 276–8, 288, 311, 312, 327, 331 on Ostmarkenpolitik and the Polish question, 225, 230, 232, 236, 256, 261–2 on war aims and the peace question, 130–1, 302, 305 Sofia, 184 Solf, Wilhelm, 316, 317, 320–1, 322, 338 Somary, Felix, 163, 254–5 Sombart, Werner, 25, 336 Somme Offensive (1916), 75 Sontheimer, Kurt, 133 Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, 50, 51 Sorbs, 224, 296 South America, 217 South Slavs, 56, 57, 59, 174, 204, 274, 317 in Austria-Hungary, 97, 185, 226, 239, 275, 289, 301, 307, 313, 317, 329 Soutou, Georges-Henri, 169 Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), 20, 36, 61, 118, 130, 131, 152, 153, 163, 275, 277, 305, 312, 337, 338, 341 Spa Agreement (1918), 76, 201, 204, 257, 306–7, 313, 327, 334 Spahn, Martin, 64, 123, 139, 140, 144, 154, 351, 354 Spain, 47 Spann, Othmar, 176 Spartakusbund, 277, 303 Speck von Sternburg, Hermann, 34 Spengler, Oswald, 345 Spiethoff, Arthur, 170, 177, 202 Spitteler, Carl, 219 Spitzmüller-Harmersbach, Alexander v., 274 Srbik, Heinrich v., 349, 352 Stampfer, Friedrich, 36 Stapel, Wilhelm, 350 Stein, Karl vom und zum, 159 Stein, Ludwig, 196 Steinacker, Edmund, 40, 208 Steinacker, Harold, 190, 349 Stier-Somlo, Fritz, 281 Stifter, Adalbert, 82 Stinnes, Hugo, 177 Stolberg-Wernigerode, Wilhelm zu, 289 Stolper, Gustav, 163, 176 Strantz, Kurd v., 139, 140 Strasbourg, 64, 68 Stresemann, Gustav, 185, 323, 353 and Anschluss, 319, 320

Index and Hungary, 216 and the peace question, 132, 304–5 and the Polish problem, 238, 266 on Weltpolitik, 180 strikes and riots in Austria-Hungary, 12, 296, 303, 314–15 in Germany, 303 in Poland, 251, 256 Ströbel, Heinrich, 152 Studnicki, Władysław, 227 Stumm, Wilhelm v., 56 Stürgkh, Josef v., 108 Stürgkh, Karl v., 115, 273, 291, 292, 293, 294, 297 Stuttgart, 21, 100, 117, 218 Styria, 101 submarine warfare, 57, 206, 253, 294, 298, 299, 302, 303 Süddeutsche Monatshefte, 90 Sudermann, Hermann, 65, 69, 196 Sudetenland, 79, 84, 324, 337, 354 suffrage in Austria, 27, 284, 286 in Hungary, 188, 205, 216–17, 316 in Prussia, 234 Sweden, 219 Sweeney, Dennis, 39 Switzerland, 38, 137, 205, 219, 261, 280, 340 Sybel, Heinrich v., 37, 133 Sydow, Reinhold v., 169 Sylvester, Julius, 173 Szabó, Ervin, 200 Szécsen von Temerin, Nikolaus, 292, 294 Szögyény-Marich, László, 54 Szterényi, József, 199 Tägliche Rundschau, 318 Tannenberg, Battles of (1410/1914), 121 Tayenthal, Max v., 177 Teschen (Cieszyn), 74, 108 Tetschen (Deˇ cˇ ín), 308 Teutoburg Forest, Battle of the (AD 9), 138 Teutonic Knights, 121 Thallóczy, Lajos, 191 Thirty Years’ War, 16, 141, 283 Thun und Hohenstein, Franz v., 80, 290 Thyssen, August, 169 Tisza von Borosjeno˝ und Szeged, István and Austro-Hungarian domestic reforms, 317 and Mitteleuropa, 199–200 and the Hungarian Germans, 211 and the July Crisis, 53–4, 189

439 and the Polish problem, 238–9 and the Romanian question, 198 attempts to influence German public opinion, 115, 192 dismissal, 216 German views of, 195, 198, 203, 204, 215 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 156, 176, 229 trade and military supplies, 22, 76 Tra˛mpczyn´ ski, Adalbert (Wojciech), 230, 231 Transylvania, 180, 192, 197, 204, 206, 208, 212, 218, 300 Traub, Gottfried, 195 Treitschke, Heinrich v., 16, 34, 44, 133, 137 Trentino, 114, 198, 221–2, 330 Treutler, Karl Georg v., 242 Trieste, 146, 166, 264, 275, 290, 302 Troeltsch, Ernst, 160 Tschirschky und Bögendorff, Heinrich v., 97, 101, 102, 213, 289, 295 and the Hungarian Germans, 213 and the Romanian question, 197 attempts to influence Austro-Hungarian politics, 290, 291, 293 his support of the Austro-Germans, 52–3, 248, 291, 294, 296–7 pre-war views, 52–3 Tübingen university, 64, 131, 267 Tucher von Simmelsdorf, Heinrich, 298, 316 and Anschluss, 321 and the Bohemian crisis (1918), 320 on the situation in Austria-Hungary, 114, 290, 296, 297 on Tisza, 203 relations between Bavaria and AustriaHungary, 168, 300–1 Turkey. See Ottoman Empire Türmer, 83, 90, 309, 326 Tyrol, 21, 101, 308, 310, 321, 336, 340 South Tyrol, 75, 222 Uhland, Ludwig, 128 Ukraine, 191, 256, 264, 268, 274, 288 Ullmann, Hermann, 82, 89, 90, 118, 174, 179, 313 Ullstein Verlag, 23 Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD), 153, 262, 277, 278, 305, 337, 338 Unabhängiger Ausschuß für einen deutschen Frieden (UA), 262, 301

440

Index

Ungarische Waffenbrüderliche Vereinigung, 117, 194–5 unification of 1871, 6, 7, 13, 16, 17, 21, 30, 38, 39, 44, 45, 68, 123, 129, 135, 139, 140, 142, 143, 146, 158, 160 United States of America, 24, 44, 155, 156, 322, 325 Urban, Karl, 173 Valentin, Veit, 127, 150 Vegesack, Siegfried v., 219 Verdun Offensive (1916), 75 Verein ‘Mitteleuropäischer Staatenbund’, 156–7, 164 Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA) activities, 37, 218, 312 and Mitteleuropa, 181 and the food situation in AustriaHungary, 308, 310 and the Hungarian Germans, 209, 212 demands for intervention in AustriaHungary, 285, 287, 288, 295, 321 members and supporters, 197, 212, 217 Verein für Socialpolitik, 164–5, 170, 175–7 Versailles Declaration (1918), 307 Versailles Treaty (1919), 69, 320, 335, 340, 341, 342, 344 Vészy, József, 192 Vienna, 22, 23, 49, 50, 68, 100, 101, 103, 167, 177, 257, 290, 301, 303, 309, 316, 339 comparison with Berlin, 24–5 meetings and visits, 104, 112, 198, 206, 258, 291, 302, 319 situation in, 51, 291, 296 university, 98, 124, 175 Vienna Congress (1814–15), 135, 139 Villa Giusti, Armistice of (1918), 325 Vilnius, 182, 255 Virchow, Rudolf, 37 Višegrad, 101 Vitzthum von Eckstädt, Christoph Johann Friedrich, 296 Vogt, Ernst, 123 Vojvodina, 218 Volhynia, 218 Vorarlberg, 340 Vormärz, 65, 228 Vorwärts, 12, 58, 153, 262, 278 Vosges, 139 Vossische Zeitung, 60, 90, 196, 237, 279, 311, 318, 324

Wagner, Richard, 51, 128, 141 Wahl, Adalbert, 349 Walkenhorst, Peter, 7 Wallenstein, Albrecht v., 109 Walther von der Vogelweide, 82 Wantoch, Hans, 81, 84, 88 war kitsch, 67 war poetry in Austria, 77–9, 116 in Germany, 64–7, 70, 117 wars of liberation (1813), 121, 138, 139 wars of unification (1864–71), 3, 55, 125 Austro-Prussian war (1866), 16, 17, 21, 30, 38, 39, 68, 78, 105, 118, 122–6, 129, 131, 132, 136, 144, 146, 149, 153, 161, 187, 267, 349, 352 Franco-Prussian war (1870–71), 121, 131, 132, 138, 141, 162 Warsaw, 92, 182, 236, 242, 249, 255, 257, 261 university, 228 Washington, 34 Watson, Alexander, 5, 202, 235 Wawro, Geoffrey, 73 Weber, Alfred, 22, 94 Weber, Max, 170, 260 Wedekind, Frank, 28 Wedel, Botho v., 188, 320 and Austro-Hungarian difficulties and peace requests, 295, 296, 298, 300, 303, 306, 307, 317 and German-Slav relations, 313–14, 327 and Hungary, 204 and the Bohemian problem (1918), 319–20, 322–3 and the Polish question, 251–2, 255 Wedel, Karl v., 116 Wehner, Josef Magnus, 133, 349 Weimar Republic, 3, 15, 68, 133–4, 261, 279, 335–53 National Assembly, 323, 337, 339 Weiskirchner, Richard, 102 Weizsäcker, Karl Hugo v., 100 Wekerle, Sándor, 199, 205 Wendel, Hermann, 275 Wermuth, Adolf, 194 Werner, Ferdinand, 312 Westarp, Kuno v., 163, 193, 236 Westphalia, 22, 114, 177, 264, 304, 339 Wettin, House of, 82, 118 Wiener Moderne, 28, 77 Wiesner, Friedrich v., 108 Wild von Hohenborn, Adolf, 104–5, 243 Wildgans, Anton, 341 Wilhelm I, Emperor, 31, 128, 142

441

Index Wilhelm II, Emperor, 2, 21, 66, 103, 104, 116, 267, 286, 291, 297, 310 and Anschluss, 313, 320 and Austro-Hungarian domestic politics, 285, 291, 293–4, 295 and Mitteleuropa, 243 and the peace question, 298, 304 and the Polish problem, 234, 242, 247, 251, 255, 257 Austrian and Hungarian views of, 28, 78, 108, 115, 189, 191, 192, 300 his anti-Slavism, 91 July Crisis and outbreak of war, 1, 54, 57, 64 military authority and coalition warfare, 75 on Berlin, 25 Wilson, Woodrow, 307, 317 Fourteen Points (1918), 307 Wingfield, Nancy M., 7 Wittelsbach, House of, 265 Wittenberg, 138 Wlassics, Gyula, 193

Wolf, Julius, 156 Wolff, Theodor, 61, 97 World War II, 2, 4, 354–5 Woyrsch, Remus v., 110 Wrisberg, Ernst v., 76 Württemberg, 21, 56, 309, 325 Würzburg, 51 Wyspian´ ski, Stanisław, 228 Yugoslavia, 336 Zahnbrecher, Franz Xaver, 167–8 Zeit, 50 Zenker, Ernst Viktor, 87 Ziegler, Leopold, 2 Zimmermann, Arthur, 55, 105, 170, 294 Zita, Empress, 107, 306 Zorn, Philipp, 140 Zuckerkandl, Berta, 306 Zukunft, 28 Zürich university, 98 Zweig, Stefan, 77 Zwettl, 115 Zweybrück, Franz, 86, 128