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defender.
The essence of German policy in Austria had become that of
holding lost positions as long as possible. Here one struggled over
the seats in the administration of a municipality, there over a
chamber of commerce, there again over savings bank or even over
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Nation and State
only a government job. Little questions were puffed up to great
significance. It was bad enough that the Germans thereby put
themselves repeatedly in the wrong when, for example, they
denied the Slavs the establishment of schools or when they sought
with the means of power available to them to make forming clubs
or holding meetings more difficult. But it was still worse that in
these struggles they a]ways suffered and were bound to suffer
defeats and that they thereby became accustomed to being always
in retreat and being always defeated. The history of the German
policy in Austria is a chain of uninterrupted failures.
These conditions had a devastating effect on the German spirit.
People gradually grew accustomed to looking at every measure,
every political matter, exclusively from the viewpoint of its local
significance. Every reform in public life, every economic measure,
every construction of a road, every establishment of a factory,
became a question of national patrimony. To be sure, the Slavs
also looked at everything from this point of view, but the effect on
the political character of the nation was different with them. For
through these ways of thinking the Germans became reactionaries,
enemies of every innovation, opponents of every democratic
arrangement. They left to the Slavs the cheap fame of being
fighters for the modern European spirit in Austria and took it upon
themselves again and again to support and defend what was out of
date. All economic and cultural progress and especially every
democratic reform that was carried through in Austria was bound
to work against the German minorities in the polyglot territories. It
was therefore resisted by the Germans; and if it finally triumphed,
then this victory was a defeat for the Germans.
This policy also deprived the Germans of every freedom
against the Crown. In the revolution of 1848 the Germans of
Austria had risen against the Habsburgs and their absolutism. But
the German Liberal Party, which had written the principles of 1848
on its banner, was not in a position to lead the struggle against the
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Nation, State, and Economy
Dynasty and against the Court with vigor. It had no firm ground
under its feet in the polyglot lands; it was dependent on the favor
and disfavor of the government there. If the Court wanted, it could
annihilate it; and it did so too.
The empire of the Habsburgs was erected by Ferdinand II on
the ruins of the freedoms of the estates and the ruins of
Protestantism. It was not only the Bohemian estates that he had to
fight against, but also the Styrian and Austrian. The Bohemian
rebels fought against the Emperor in alliance with those of Lower
and Upper Austria; and the Battle on the White Mountain
established the absolute rule of the Habsburgs not only over
Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia but also over the Austrian lands.
From the beginning the Habsburg Empire was neither German nor
Czech; and when in 1848 it had to fight for its existence anew,
Czech and German freedom movements alike were against it.
After the establishment of sham constitutionalism in the sixties, the
Court would much rather have relied on the Slavs than on the
Germans. For years the government was carried on with the Slavs
against the Germans; for nothing was more hateful to the Court
than the German element, which could not be forgiven for the loss
of political position in the German Reich. But all the concessions
of the Court could not hold the Czechs and South Slavs firm to the
authoritarian state. Among all other peoples of Austria the
democratic idea triumphed over the authoritarian idea; it was not
possible for the authoritarian state to work with them in the long
run. Only with the Germans was it otherwise. Against their will
they could not get loose from the Austrian state. When the state
called them, they were always at its service. In the Empire's death
hour the Germans stood loyal to the Habsburgs.
A turning point in the history of the German-Austrians was the
Peace of Prague, which drove Austria out of the political structure
of Germany. Now the naive belief was done for that Germanness
and Austrianness could be reconciled. Now it seemed that one had
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to choose between being German and being Austrian. But the
Germans in Austria did not want to see the necessity of this
decision; they wanted, as long as they could, to remain both
Germans and Austrians at the same time.
The pain that the German-Austrians felt in 1866 over the turn
of events went deep; they never were able to recover from the
blow. So quickly had the decision broken over them, so quickly
had the events played themselves out on the battlefield, that they
had scarcely become conscious of what was going on. Only [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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