Under Observation

Every time that something happened in Austria after 1918, the country was under observation: as German-Austria, the First Republic, the Corporative State, the Alpine and Danubian Gaue of the Greater German Reich, the Second Republic – right up to the present day. People looked, heard and generally did not keep silent, and this has not changed. As though Austria were still the same testing ground for the end of the world that Karl Kraus described it as. A gripping and varied overview of Austrian history over the last 100 years.



Manfried Rauchensteiner ist Historiker, Universitätsprofessor und Autor zahlreicher Bücher, darunter das Standardwerk "Der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Habsburgermonarchie 1914–1918". Er lebt und arbeitet in Wien.



Every time that something happened in Austria after 1918, the country was under observation. Actually when nothing happend as well. People looked, heard and generally did not keep silent, and this has not changed. As though Austria were still the same testing ground for the end of the world that Karl Kraus described it as. What has startet as an experiment in 1918, failed no later than 1938. In 1945, the occupation powers did not take any risks and made Austria be on ward. It did not matter, what happend after that: Austria was kept under observation. Again and again is was referred to as a problem area, then as a exceptional case, as a model student and more than once as the bad one, over whom's shoulder one should look closely.