The Memory of the Habsburg Empire in German, Austrian, and Hungarian Right-Wing Historiography and Political Thinking, 1918-1941

By reproducing the political and historiographical debates surrounding the legacy of the Habsburg Empire, this book follows the transformation of historico-political thinking during the two world wars. This transformation began in Germany, where volkish streams of the Conservative Revolution offered a radical new interpretation of history. These reading focused on the unchanging essence of the Volk and treated a certain idea of the Habsburg past as inorganic, "derailing" history and conflicting with the true calling of the German people. The volkish movement and its historiography both inspired and challenged Austrian and Hungarian intellectuals, asking them to either adopt or resist this new philosophy and the politics it represented. Building a history out of the realignment of German thought and its affect on small states within Germany's cultural orbit, this volume richly recounts the clash between domestic tradition and imported "innovations."