On Austria's German Identity

In their response to my essay "Austria and the Struggle for German Identity" (German Studies Review, Special Issue, Winter 1992), Margarete Grandner, Gernot Heiss, and Oliver Rathkolb make several unwarranted claims and one useful reminder. Among the unjustified claims are the suggestion that I consider nationality an "eternal" category of historical understanding (not true - though I do believe that it has proven awfully resilient over the past two centuries) and the assertation that I deny the possible existence of any but a "German" identity for Austria. On the latter point, one should read the original article's entire sentence beginning "Against this backdrop..." (top of page 112) rather than the trimmed and altered version they supply in their footnote 2. Note, as well, that on page 124 1 explicitly state: There are many possible ways to imagine a history of Austria - one of those, in any case, must be as part of German history, otherwise it is unlikely that any serious and neglected comparative regional history will be done

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · German · Identity (music · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History

• The Nation-state, past and present

  Harry Ritter•The European Legacy•1996

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