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“Not Another Square Foot!” German Liberalism and the Rhetoric of National Ownership in Nineteenth-Century Austria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Pieter M. Judson
Pieter M. Judson
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081.
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Extract

Early on in volume 3 of his massive political memoirs, German Liberal party leader Ernst von Plener offhandedly introduces the reader to a I new word that had entered Austrian political discourse in the 1880s. The word is Nationalbesitzstand, or “national property,” and Plener calls it “ a word taken from our party's rhetoric.” Most historians remember Plener as the quintessential Austrian centralist, a Liberal party leader of the bureaucratic mold whose annoyance with German nationalist agitation was equaled only by his discomfort with the public demands forced on him by constituent politics. And yet in the late 1880s and early 1890s we find the sober Plener increasingly resorting to an aggressively nationalist rhetoric organized around this concept of Nationalbesitzstand, a rhetoric often invoked by the very radical nationalists, populists, and anti-Semites he scorned. In this article I explore the growing use of such rhetoric by Liberals like Plener in the 1880s as a way to suggest some new approaches to understanding the development of German nationalism among nineteenth-century Austrians. In particular I consider how the concept of Nationalbesitzstand mediated a transformation in the rhetoric employed by self-identified Germans in the monarchy to justify their privileged position vis-à-vis other national groups. Where formerly German nationalists had rejected arguments based on empirical data like population or land ownership statistics to legitimize their political claims, in the 1880s and 1890s they began to embrace such arguments.

Type
Articles
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 26 , January 1995 , pp. 83 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1995

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References

1 von Plener, Ernst, Erinnerungen, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1911–1921), 3:65Google Scholar. The term Liberal or German Liberal party refers to the United German Left party in the Reichsrat during the years 1887–95 and to its antecedents, the German Austrian party, the United Left party, and the Progressive party of the 1870s.

2 In its simplest form, Nationalbesitzstand referred to the territory inhabited by German speakers and to their property. However, it frequently connoted the cultural and intellectual capital of an imaginary German nation as well, to include not only the achievements of German speakers and their cultural institutions, but also the degree of cultivation and the moral capacity of the larger German community. This latter, expanded definition frequently underlay the demands of German nationalists in regions where they were a numerical minority but constituted a larger percentage of the tax base.

3 See Judson, Pieter M., “Inventing Germans: Class, Nationality and Colonial Fantasy at the Margins of the Habsburg Monarchy,” in Nations, Colonies and Metropoles, ed. Segal, Daniel A. and Handler, Richard, special edition of Social Analysis 33 (1993): 47–67Google Scholar.

4 See accounts in Plener, Erinnerungen 3:98–116, and Jenks, William, Austria under the Iron Ring, 1879–1893 (Charlottesville, Va., 1965)Google Scholar. An excellent recent account of these events from the point of view of German liberal and nationalist political party history may be found in Höbelt's, LotharKomblume und Kaiseradler. Die deutschfreiheitliche Parteien Altösterreichs 1882–1918 (Vienna, 1993)Google Scholar. In gaining appointment to the cabinet, Plener equaled the achievement of his father, Ignaz Plener, who had served as minister for both finance and commerce in the 1860s. Plener's ambition to equal his father's achievements may have played a role in feeding his single-minded determination to bring down the Taaffe regime.

5 The Taaffe cabinet had promised the Gymnasium to the Slovene deputies who made up one block in Hohenwart's Conservative party. In 1893 the Slovene deputies threatened to quit the Conservative party if the cabinet did not carry through on its promise. This incident illustrates the fact that the Liberals were not the only large coalition party falling apart at the seams in the 1890s. Plener, Erinnerungen 3:144–45; and Höbelt, Komblume und Kaiseradler, 106–15.

6 Plener, Erinnerungen 3:284.

7 The Liberals' allies included the Constitutional Landowners in Bohemia, those in the Large Landowner curia who counted themselves either allies or members of the United German Left. See Wank, Solomon, “Some Reflections on Aristocrats and Nationalism in Bohemia, 1861–1899,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 20 (1993): 21–33Google Scholar; and Rutkowski, Ernst, ed., Briefe und Dokumente zur Geschichte der östeneichisch-ungarischen Monarchie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des böhmisch-mährischen Raumes, part 1: Der verfassungstreue Grossgrundbesitz 1880–1899 (Munich, 1983)Google Scholar. On the compromise and the negotiations surrounding it, see Garver, Bruce M., The Young Czech Party, 1874–1910, and the Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven, Conn., 1978), 147–53Google Scholar; Jenks, Austria under the Iron Ring, 239–74; and Menger, Max, Der böhmische Ausgleich (Vienna, 1891)Google Scholar. Plener's own reminiscences (Erinnerungen 2:391–444) provide insight on the compromise negotiations, as do documents in HHStA, Nachlaβ Plener, cartons 17–19.

8 Leitmeritzer Zeitung, Feb. 15, 1890. I found this singular account of Plener's personal popularity carefully preserved in HHStA, Nachlaβ Plener, carton 33.

9 Höbelt, Lothar, “Die Linke und die Wahlen von 1891,” Mitteilungen des österreichischen Staatsarchiv 40 (1987): 271–301Google Scholar. Altogether the United German Left party made a net gain of two seats each in Bohemia and the Tyrol, while losing five in Lower Austria and two each in Styria and Carinthia.

10 See Ritter, Harry, “Autobiography as Zeitgeschichte: The Memoirs of Ernst von Plener (1841–1923),” unpublished manuscript presented at the German Studies Association, 1987Google Scholar. The paper provides insightful analysis, both of Plener's personality and of his personal views, particularly as the latter relate to the Taaffe regime.

11 Statistics cited in Plener, Erinnerungen 3:144.

12 Foregger reported to Liberal party leader Johann Chlumecky that the local mood demanded that “if we [the Styrian Germans] are to be the sacrifice, then may the Cilli question at least destroy the [entire] United German Left.” Quoted in Höbelt, Komblume und Kaiseradler, 111.

13 For a discussion of the origins of this ideological legacy in its English liberal context, see Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962, 1985)Google Scholar.

14 This distinction between a purely public and a private sphere of existence was largely a liberal ideological invention that shaped liberal attitudes toward other components of identity, such as gender. See Judson, Pieter M., “Deutschnationale Politik und Geschlecht in Österreich 1880–1890,” in Frauenin Österreich. Beiträge zu ihrer Situation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Good, David F., Grandner, Margarete, and Jo Maynes, Mary (Vienna, 1994), 32–47Google Scholar.

15 See, for example, Ernst von Plener's comments in a Reichsrat debate on workers' suffrage of December 17, 1874. Stenographische Protokolle des Houses der Abgeordneten, Dec. 17, 1874; also quoted in Wadl, Wilhelm, Liberalismus und soziale Frage in Österreich (Vienna, 1987), 233Google Scholar.

16 As one anonymous nationalist writer claimed, of all the languages spoken in the monarchy, only Italian approached German in its cultural significance. Die Deutschen im Nationalstaat Österreich (Meran, 1887), 21.

17 Das Deutschtum in Krain. Ein Wort zur Aufklärung (Graz, 1862).

18 Das Deutschtum in Krain, 9–11.

19 Das Deutschtum in Krain, 15.

20 See Judson, Pieter M., “‘Whether Race or Conviction Should Be the Standard’: National Identity and Liberal Politics in Nineteenth-Century Austria,” Austrian History Yearbook 22 (1991): 76–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 For an excellent discussion of the history of the census that relies mostly on examples from Italian- and Slovene-speaking regions, see Brix, Emil, “Die Erhebung der Umgangssprache im zisleithanischen Österreich (1880–1910). Nationale und sozio-ökonomische Ursachen der Sprachenkonflikte,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für ö;sterreichische Geschichte 87 (1979): 363–439Google Scholar.

22 Mittheilungen des deutschen Böhmerwaldbundes 23 (Budweis, 1890), 243Google Scholar.

23 “First they try to win over the Sprachinseln, then they try to shift the border areas in their favor, and then they try to permeate the purely German areas with Slavic elements, starting with the major cities.” von Reinöhl, Rainer, “Der Tschechische Schulverein,” Deutsche Worte 5 (1885): 159Google Scholar.

24 Hainisch, MichaelDie Zukunft der Deutsch-Österrekher. Eine statistische volkswirtschaftliche Studie (Vienna, 1892), 158–59Google Scholar.

25 See, for example, Christian Ritter d'Elvert's travel account of the Moravian town Iglau, where, according to the author in 1850, “the language of the inhabitants is predominantly German… the domestic servants speak mostly Bohemian or Moravian” (d'Elvert, Ritter, Geschichte und Beschreibung der (königlichen Kreis-) und Bergstadt Iglau in Mahren [Brünn, 1850], 459)Google Scholar. Interestingly, the author has no consciousness of Czech as a single national identity but speaks instead of local dialects. Note also the importance of class position rather than national identity in this account.

26 “Der Bund der Deutschen Nordmährens,” in Deutsche Volkskalender für das Jahr 1889 (Olmütz, 1888), 55Google Scholar.

27 On the Südmark, see Pock, Friedrich, Grenzwacht im Südosten. Ein halbes Jahrhundert Südmark (Graz, 1940)Google Scholar. The Südmark failed in its original aim to resettle German farmers on land in south Styria, but it did support many of the kinds of activities promoted by the Böhmerwaldbund and the German School Association. The Südmark was also the only one of the major nationalist organizations founded in the 1880s to exclude Jews from its membership from the start. This created difficulties during the 1890s, when nationalist leaders tried to organize interregional conferences of all the major German nationalist organizations in Austria. Members of the Bund der Deutschen Nordmährens, for example, would have nothing to do with the Südmark, while the latter group criticized the former for accepting Jews as Germans. Most organizations tried to sidestep this controversy by imagining it as a purely party-political conflict that they were officially forbidden to engage in given their officially nonpolitical status.

28 Kummer, L. G., Deutsch-nationale Politik in Österreich (Graz, 1885), 7Google Scholar.

29 See the examples cited by Heumos, Peter in “Interessensolidarität gegen Nationalgemeinschaft. Deutsche und tschechische Bauern in Böhmen 1848–1918,” in Die Chance der Verständigung. Absichten und Ansätze zu übernationaler Zusammenarbeit in den böhmischen Ländern 1848–1918, ed. Seibt, F. (Munich, 1987), 87–100Google Scholar.

30 Cohen, Gary B., The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861–1918 (Princeton, N.J., 1981)Google Scholar.

31 See, for example, the claims made by the Bund der Deutschen Nordmährens, in Deutsche Volkskalender für das Jahr 1889, 55.

32 See, for example, Mittheilungen des deutschen Böhmerwaldbundes 2 (1885): 26, 31–32Google Scholar, which discusses the problems of alcoholism and illegitimacy along with the economic problems of the region forcing German-speaking workers to emigrate. See also examples cited by Wank, including the following journal entry made by Count Oswald Thun-Salm, a leader of the Constitutional Large Landowners in the 1890s. Faced with a shortage of forest workers on one of his estates, Thun-Salm nevertheless “refused to hire Czech workers because ‘It would be a nice affair if it would become known that I am encouraging the influx of Czechs: as long as I can prevent that I certainly will!’”Wank, “Some Reflections on Aristocrats,” 26.

33 For an example of this radical critique of the Liberals' suffocating universalism, see Steinwender, Otto, “Die nationalen Aufgaben der Deutschen in Österreich,” Deutsche Worte 5 (1885): 1–13Google Scholar.

34 Cohen, Politics of Ethnic Survival, 175–83, 196–202.

35 See Mittheilungen des deutschen Bohmerwaldbundes 44 (1901): 5Google Scholar.