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2001/1 Geschichts- und Vergangenheitspolitik in Österreich Politics of History and Politics of the Past in Austria |
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ÖZP 2001/1, 5-18 [INHALT] [German] Günther Sandner (Wien/Salzburg) The article deals with the concepts of the politics of history and the politics of past. It analyzes the societal functions, the media and the agents of the politics of history. In doing so it gives a survey on the general discussion and proposes some notional modifications. Then a conflict-theoretical model of society will be provided and combined with the concept of the politics of history. The political construction of history and memory in pluralistic societies therefore reflects the actual political situation and functions as a dynamic process as well. These political conflicts are open discourses which cannot to be ended by totalizing efforts. The politics of history is part of the societal struggle for cultural hegemony. ÖZP 2001/1, 19-34 [INHALT] [German] [Full Text] Heidemarie Uhl (Wien/Graz) Austria's specific way of dealing with its NS past is marked by the theory whereby the country became the "first victim" of National Socialism in March 1938. On the one hand, this paper investigates the changes that this model of interpretation has undergone from 1945 to the present against the background of political and generational transformation processes and, on the other, the "different accounts" of a popular tradition above all as articulated in commemoration of the fallen. These two opposing portrayals, that have shaped Austrian awareness of history, constituted the basic constellation for the Waldheim debate in 1986, which marked a turning point in terms of political history: the erosion of the victim theory and its modification by Austrian authorities declaring their share of the responsibility for the crimes of the NS regime. The latest statements by Federal Chancellor Schüssel do not suggest any fundamental change of course in this respect; however with the political turning point, the coming into government of the right-wing populist FPÖ, the question of how to deal with the "breach of civilisation" that was Auschwitz has once again turned out to be an indicator of political culture. ÖZP 2001/1, 35-48 [INHALT] [German] Anton Pelinka (Innsbruck/Wien) The article describes and analyzes the connection between the development of Austria's post-1945 political culture and of the political instrumentalization of the past. For Austria's consociational democracy, the difference between the two major "camps" in the perception of history has been very important from its beginning. This has changed significantly since Austrian consociational democracy has started its decline. In this period, National Socialism (Nazism) - after 1945 a topic of lesser importance, because it did not separate socialists and conservatives - has become the most decisive issue of political memory. This change of the politics of memory is also analyzed from the perspective of Peter Loewenberg's concept of "Decoding". ÖZP 2001/1, 49-60 [INHALT] [German] Monika Feigl-Heihs / Christian Kneil
(Wien) The political discussion about the NS past in Austria is characterized by two fundamentally different historical views: the victimization theory established after 1945, and the recognition during the late 1980s of the Austrian complicity in the NS crimes. Within this polarized frame lies the political debate about a monument for the Jewish community of the Lower-Austrian city of Amstetten who were victims of the NS reign. The question of the historical view and the understanding of the political past by the political actors represents the main focus of the reconstruction of this decision-making process based on a political science approach that uses the concept of "information markets". The initially prevailing interpretation based on the victimization theory, dominating the view of the political past, was finally replaced by an interpretation that accepted a changed and broader historical view. ÖZP 2001/1, 61-78 [INHALT] [German] The exhibition has triggered controversies
in Austria in a way which no other material form of the cultivation
of memory of the Nazi period has done. The article sketches the
erosion of the victim thesis, which has underpinned the state,
and reconstructs the establishment of a social practice of remembering
the "clean" Wehrmacht. It also contrasts the image
of the unpolitical and de-ideologised Wehrmacht and its (Austrian)
members with empirically established collective memories of Austrian
soldiers. It puts forward the thesis that the discrepancy between
these two memories was a crucial factor for the emotional violence
of the conflict surrounding the exhibition. ÖZP 2001/1, 79-94 [INHALT] [German] Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann (München) The totalitarian age impresses on the political philosophy of Eric Voegelin. In face of the danger which threatens the western world Eric Voegelin looks for the basis of political order, which he finds in the Christian tradition, not in the liberal tradition. Communism, Fascism and also Liberalism as the predominant ideologies of modern times have their common source in gnosticism, which tries to change the eternal character of man. In spite Voegelin demands a strong state, which does not follow the illusions of the mass media, which rather can still identify the good and the evil. Voegelin tries to escape from the suspicion that this concept could be ideological by means of the occidental tradition of Platonism and Augustinism. In that way an original Christian philosophy does not need an own concept of ethics, because like in the scholastic philosophy it is ethics by itself. ÖZP 2001/1, 95-108 [INHALT] [German] Alexander Siedschlag (Berlin) Institutional change and institutional transfer in an enlarging European Union mean more than the adaptation of the candidate countries' economies and jurisdiction so to fit the requirements of the Acquis Communautaire of the Common Market. An often-neglected question is what adjustments of perceptions, of social norms, of socio-culturally determined standard operating procedures and also of differing ideas and concepts of "Europe" need to take place so to make a wider Union politically work. In the discussions about "governance" in Europe, this is known as the aspect of reflective institutionalization. This article resumes and evaluates the EU's association policy and accession strategy in terms of reflective institutionalization. Following on from this, it underlines specific conflicts emerging from the Union laying too less emphasis on the reflective components of its enlargement. |