The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary: The Image of the Habsburg Monarchy in Interwar Europe

Adam Kozuchowski

thg 11 2013 · University of Pittsburgh Press

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The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was just one link
in a chain of events leading to World War I and the downfall of the
Austro-Hungarian empire. By 1918, after nearly four hundred years of
rule, the Habsburg monarchy was expunged in an instant of history.
Remarkably, despite tales of decadence, ethnic indifference, and a
failure to modernize, the empire enjoyed a renewed popularity in
interwar narratives. Today, it remains a crucial point of reference for
Central European identity, evoking nostalgia among the nations that once
dismembered it.

The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary examines
histories, journalism, and literature in the period between world wars
to expose both the positive and the negative treatment of the Habsburg
monarchy following its dissolution and the powerful influence of fiction
and memory over history. Originally published in Polish, Adam
Kozuchowski’s study analyzes the myriad factors that contributed to this
phenomenon. Chief among these were economic depression, widespread
authoritarianism on the continent, and the painful rise of aggressive
nationalism. Many authors of these narratives were well-known
intellectuals who yearned for the high culture and peaceable kingdom of
their personal memory.

Kozuchowski contrasts these imaginaries
with the causal realities of the empire’s failure. He considers the
aspirations of Czechs, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, and Austrians, and
their quest for autonomy or domination over their neighbors, coupled
with the wave of nationalism spreading across Europe. Kozuchowski then
dissects the reign of the legendary Habsburg monarch, Franz Joseph, and
the lasting perceptions that he inspired.

To Kozuchowski, the
interwar discourse was a reaction to the monumental change wrought by
the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and the fear of a history lost. Those
displaced at the empire’s end attempted, through collective (and
selective) memory, to reconstruct the vision of a once great
multinational power. It was an imaginary that would influence future
histories of the empire and even became a model for the European Union.

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Adam Kozuchowski is assistant professor at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, in Warsaw.