CNN and Final Thoughts

I have chosen to combine my blog on the CNN International television station with some final thoughts on my month in Austria because I believe there are important overlapping themes. CNN International, an American based cable television news station, presents itself much like the CNN I know from America, but with subtle yet important differences. Obviously the content is more globally based rather than just United States news (there is still a lot of emphasis but on American news), but the attitudes of the anchors and reporters on both American and international news is what I find most interesting. A very large portion of the anchors and reporters appear to be of British origin judging by the accents, which generates some interesting biases in the reporting and delivery of the news. For instance, David Beckham, one of the most beloved English footballers in history is currently playing for the American soccer team, the Los Angeles Galaxy. When I was watching an analysis of one of his games where the Galaxy ultimately lost I noticed that not only were all of the highlights on Beckham’s play during the game, but the analyst was extremely critical of the Galaxy’s play while making it seem that Beckham could do no wrong. This seemed to be an extremely harsh bias in favor of Beckham and accompanying harsh criticism of the U.S. team. While U.S. soccer is not on the same level of competition as the English league I feel that there was an unfair bias in both over criticizing the U.S. team and a lack of criticism on Beckham’s play.

While this analysis of soccer commentary may seem completely unrelated to my final thoughts on my time in Austria I believe there is a valuable crossover on the topic of biases. As an American coming to Europe for the first time I was unavoidably influenced by the many biases and stereotypes about Austria and Europe as a whole coming from the media, friends opinions, and history classes. Initially it was difficult to move beyond constantly comparing different aspects of Viennese culture and society to the corresponding elements of American culture and society that I am familiar with. This is much like what the analyst did with David Beckham and the L.A. Galaxy, he compared a team in the U.S. league to the level of competition he knew in England which is simply not a fair comparison because the two leagues have a completely different history and composition. I realized that I couldn’t try and like certain aspects of Vienna because of how well they related to what I know and like about American culture because there are really no two places in the world that are exactly alike. While I really like the United States just as that analyst undoubtedly liked David Beckham I had to branch out and appreciate Vienna and Austria as a whole for what it was, not for what it wasn’t. Once I embraced Vienna and its culture for the ways in which it was different from American culture rather than how it compared to America I realized just what a culturally rich and interesting place it was all on its own. Central and Eastern Europe unequivocally proved not to be the backwards places that negative stereotypes try to brand them, but simply a place that is a product of its history and influences, just like the United States. In the end I feel like I got exactly what I wanted out of the program in Vienna. I was able to expand my horizons in a way that I never could have if I hadn’t come to Europe; it definitely did not happen in the manner I was expecting, but I’m genuinely happy about that.

Adventures with Jan, Part 2: The Belvedere

We began our tour of the Belvedere by examining the altarpiece that depicted the story of the passion and crucifixion. While the altar was very beautiful and a great spectacle of 15^th century artwork, I believe the piece really exemplified a much more important message concerning the artwork of the Middle Ages. This altarpiece, and nearly all artwork of the era was not about creating new artistic styles or capturing certain elements of beautiful scenery, but rather simply about glorifying God. I think this principle is exemplified best in how in the Belvedere Museum, committed to art and its preservation, the artist is unknown. If the emphasis on the glorification of God wasn’t apparent enough already, the fact that the artist did not even recognize himself shows just how little importance there was in the painter.

After our introduction to the museum we progressed upstairs and saw how exactly how the Reformation and Counter Reformation impact both artistic style and the position of the artist in society. Since the Catholic Church acted as the major employer of artists leading up to the Reformation (such as the artist who crafted the altarpiece on the first floor of the museum), there was a huge loss of income for the painters who elected to leave the church to convert to Protestantism. This was largely attributed to the belief set of Protestantism in that they did not share the Catholic Church’s love of lavish and decorative churches. The simplistic and relatively undecorated churches of the Protestant faith did not call for the services of painters as the Catholic Church had before the Reformation. This prompted the formation of a whole new hierarchy of painting now that everything could not simply be of the religious genre. The new hierarchy formed as follows from most acclaimed to least: history, genre, portraits, landscapes, and still life. Portraits began to come into style during this period both because of the absence of the need for church artwork for the Protestants and the growing ambition to look more like the nobility in the 16^th century. Before this time period, hiring painters for personal portraits was reserved for the very wealthy, but now with the excess of painters alienated by the Reformation there was a greater ability for lower classes to have portraits painted. Having portraits painted thus became a way for both people to try and attain a greater feeling of nobility and an employment opportunity to painters.

This concept of using portraits to emulate a greater social status is exemplified in one of the portraits we saw done by Marguerite Gerard. It appears here that the family is trying to convey multiple messages in the style they had their portrait done in. The family, judging by the dress and interior of the house, does not seem to be of the highest social class so it would appear they are trying to emulate a higher class through the commissioning of a portrait. The portrait also seems to convey a religious message. The mother, father, and infant baby are arranged in a way that mirrors the Holy Family with the baby as Christ. This is somewhat of a stretch to compare the two, but it shows how even in portraits that are supposed to be completely secular, religion still has an influence on how people want to be portrayed.

Landscapes became very popular during the Renaissance as a secular subject matter for painting and this style is still popular today, although painting during the Renaissance was considered the lowest form of art and music the highest. This was attributed to the lack of material and substance associated with music, thus making it a rarity and of great desire. I find this particularly interesting because of the fame that artists once had in figures like Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci when the Catholic Church controlled art, but now with the secularization of artistic expression, musicians gain the most fame.

I found the collection of Casper David Friedrich particularly interesting for how he depicts the power of God in nature. His romantic style exemplified his call to essentially “get back to nature”. He was originally a Catholic, then converted to Protestantism, but ended up converting back to Catholicism out of his desire to return to the prominence of art and culture associated with the middle ages. The specific painting that we observed evoked Christ on the cross, but strictly as elements of nature. I think this really symbolizes the departure of reason and logic that dominated the Enlightenment and the move towards emotional artwork during the Romantic period. This desire of Friedrich to evoke elements of the middle ages is displayed here in the religious overtone of his landscape while abandoning the principles of human dominance over nature that consumed artistic expression in the Enlightenment.

I found the art of the Biedermeier period particularly interesting and supplemental to our observation of the Ringstasse architecture. The Biedermeier is one of the few artistic periods that has a definitive beginning and end (1815-1848). The style was essentially a retreat into family and centered on a middle class life that closely mirrored the artistic style of the 1950s in the United States. Both styles were attempting to counteract societal tensions following the age of Napoleon and in response to the Cold War, respectively. The Biedermeier attempted to exhibit traditional family values with the father being the head of the family and taking care of his wife and children. This marks a departure from the Romantic style of Friedrich where nature is a powerful and uncontrollable act of God where in the Biedermeier it is a retreat to be enjoyed by the family.

The Jacques Louis David painting of Napoleon served as an interesting contrast to the previous styles we had seen and also served to exhibit the impact politics can have on art. David became famous both as a huge proponent of the French Revolution and as Napoleon’s private painter. David tied himself so closely to both the revolution and Napoleon that much of his fame died out with Napoleon after his fall at Waterloo. I see David as an extremely important figure because he himself was an exposition of the impact of politics can have art, much like the impact that religion had on artists previously discussed in association with the Reformation and Counter Reformation.

The section on Impressionism in the Belvedere was one of the most interesting because of their extensive collection and individually famous pieces. Monet was clearly the father of impressionism, which revolved around communicating a certain type of impression upon a viewer rather than simply a certain subject matter or message. In this style brush stokes and the paint itself became more important that it ever had before. These paintings were essentially supposed to be blurry and then come into focus after moving far away.

The Klimt section is extremely impressive and is of course headlined by his masterpiece, The Kiss. Klimt became consumed with Impressionism after the university scandal where he stopped producing artwork for the Ringstrasse and its style. His impressionistic style definitively worked to bring back the two dimensional style of art that had been previously dominated by a three dimensional style in the previous eras. The Kiss is one of the most important and famous paintings in the western world. It is intended to be a celebration of love where the bodies of the man woman are merging into one with little ability to discern their respective figures. This painting is true exhibition of the Secession as dimensionalism is completely negated to counteract the strict adherence to it in the Biedermeier. The messages here are conveyed through symbolism where the man appears to have large cubic and block like figures on clothes that are contrasted by soft, luscious, and round figured on hers. Personally, I like The Kiss. At first I did not really understand it because there is such an absence of direction and boundary in the painting, but I think that On the surface, the painting seems to just be a man kissing a woman, but the deeply impressionistic style conveys a feeling of emotion unlike most paintings. The impressionistic style is perfect for the communication of such a deep feeling of love. I feel like the basis for impressionism, in which a person is supposed to observe it close up and then step away and see how the colors and paint materialize for them individually, caters perfectly for this painting. Klimt’s ability to yield the foundations of impressionism and combine them with such a subjective element as love effectively makes The Kiss the timeless piece of artwork it has become and always shall be.

The German word of the day is fussball and it means ‘soccer’

Adventures with Jan, Part 1: Central Cemetery and The Kunsthistorisches Museum

This blog is dedicated to the places I went and adventures I had with Jan leading the group. The first of these adventures was to the Central Cemetery in Vienna. The cemetery was opened in response to Vienna growing to over one million inhabitants in the late nineteenth century and was opened in 1874 to accommodate the other scattered cemeteries that had become too small. The cemetery houses many high profile Austrians such as Beethoven, Schonberg, and of course Falco (who we unfortunately could not find L). Personally what I found most interesting was the old Jewish section. This section was reserved specifically for Jews until 1938 when the mass deportations began during the German occupation of Vienna. The cemetery, grounds, and tombstones are extremely well groomed and maintained for the most part. However, the old Jewish section is strangely not kept up. Outside of a small walkway that looks like it is cut back about once a month, the grass is anywhere between knee and head high with the tombstones in a state of great disrepair. It’s interesting that the cemetery pays for people to dig up everyone’s coffin to be reburied in order to make room for more corpses, yet they don’t maintain the grass or tombstones in the old Jewish section. This section was in large part destroyed during the Kristallnacht during the Nazi invasion, although roughly 60,000 were left unharmed. The overgrown graves symbolize the old Jewish population in Vienna, represent the significant gap in their history in Vienna, and of course commemorate the circumstances by which the Jewish presence in Vienna ended in 1938.

Revisiting the Kunsthistorisches Museum with Jan was an extremely valuable experience because the first tour with the red haired, green clothed guide was less than effective for understanding the cultural and historical value of the museum. Jan catered her tour specifically to our understanding of the foundations and differences between Reformation and Counter Reformation artists. The first artist we examined was Caravagio. He served as a prime example of one sect of the Counter Reformation artists in his depiction of the crucifixion. This painting is extremely stripped down and simplistic and seems to really focus on the scene at hand, not over exaggeration or lavish detail. I think this speaks a lot to the purpose of the Counter Reformation and its art as a whole. These artists, and more importantly the clergymen who hired these artists, are trying to educate the masses with these paintings about important biblical and religious scenes as a whole.

Pieter Aertsen’s Vanitas-Stilleben is another manifestation of Counter Reformation art only this time as a Catholic living in the Protestant Netherlands. Aertsen specialized in still life paintings, but with Catholic elements or overtones. During the period Catholics were tolerated, but controlled in the Netherlands, so Aertsen had to be almost subtle about his religious expression in his art. In Vanitas-Stilleben, Aersten puts the religious scene in the background of his painting, like in many of his other works, to display what he wants to show as most important. The still life of various foods, especially featuring the slab of meat, acts as a veil for his deeper message and overall religious beliefs. I think this work and Aertsen’s style as a whole is extremely important for not only understanding this sect of Counter Reformation art, but also how the treatment of Catholics in the Netherlands manifested in the art of the region. While Aertsen’s Catholic beliefs were tolerated they were not widely accepted like Protestantism, just as Catholic elements are present in this painting, but not the subject of the work as a whole.

Peter Paul Rubens represented a much different style of Catholic sensibility in his paintings during the Counter Reformation. Rubens was a very devout Catholic living in Antwerp, Belgium during the period and was actually a diplomat and ambassador to Spain and England. Rubens really admired Caravagio’s style yet had adhered much more to the lavish and baroque style of traditional Catholic art. For example, his painting Glory of St. Ignatius of Loyola (1616), does not exhibit the stripped down simplicity of Caravagio’s work in his depiction of the scene. Rubens style is a manifestation of the adherence to the magical and mythological foundations of Catholic teachings in traditional Catholicism that held over during the changes of the Counter Reformation. While many Counter Reformation artists like Caravagio simplified their paintings in order to simply educate the illiterate masses and counteract the attacks mysticism brought by the Protestant reformation, Rubens in essence adhered to traditional Catholic sensibility. I feel like this split in artistic style was a cultural manifestation of the internal conflict going on within the church. While the Catholic Church was an entity of great tradition and adherence to their magical and miraculous aspects of their teachings, they were forced to reform under the attacks of the Protestant Reformation. Significant changes were made, but its clear that traditionally Catholicism and the art that represented it was not completely abandoned in the seventeenth century.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn represents the clear opposite end of the artistic and belief spectrum from Rubens and other Counter Reformation artists. Rembrandt was a Dutch Protestant whose art exemplified many the cultural impact of the Reformation on European culture. Rembrandt was most famous for his portraits and more specifically, his depiction of the human condition. This artistic style reflects many of the foundations of Protestantism and the departure from Catholic ritual. Catholicism rests upon the need for the clergy to aid the individual in findings salvation while Protestantism puts much more emphasis on the individual’s ability to find salvation through scripture. Rembrandt’s Portrait of Titus Reading exhibits these major foundations of Protestantism. Rembrandt depicts Titus as a very ordinary individual doing nothing more than reading a book, but the greater symbolism here is what makes the painting an essential piece of Reformation artwork. The emphasis on the individual and that individual’s ability to read were the foundation of Protestant worship. While it’s not clear if Titus is reading the Bible here it does serve as a powerful symbol of both the power of the individual to read and learn and the overall emphasis on the common man, rather than the clergy.

Hans Baldung Grien, a disciple of Albert Durer, was a German Protestant painter who exemplified a different sect of Protestant sensibility than Rembrandt. While Hans Baldung Grien never officially converted to Protestantism, his artwork definitely symbolizes the values and sensibility of the Reformation. His adherence to Catholicism can probably be attributed to his influences. Being a disciple of Durer and living in different many different parts of Germany might have made his conversion difficult in a social sense, but Protestant values still manifest in his artwork. The painting that I feel really exemplifies this sensibility in the Kunsthistorisches Museum is his Three Ages of Woman and Death (1510). While this painting does have specific Protestant elements depicted here, it subtly communicates a powerful message about the depiction of life and death. The painting shows a skeleton holding an hourglass over a young woman and baby, symbolizing the ominous nature of death. The important thing about this painting is that it is not religious in any way while still depicting elements of life and death. These two issues were previously, in large part, before this era, depicted only in a religious context because the Catholic Church held virtual complete control over the issue of life and death in its teachings. While the Protestant Church still obviously had a huge impact on the perception of life and death in everyday life, their ideology did monopolize the issues within the church as the Catholics did. On the whole, this painting shows yet another Protestant emphasis on the individual and functions to imply the relationship between the person and life and death without the intervention of the clergy, as in the Catholic faith.

The Third Man

The Third Man was not only an extremely entertaining film, but was able to provide me with a portrayal of Vienna following the Second World War. The 1949 British film may have little do with Vienna in substance, but the entire film takes place in the city as it was being rebuilt in the years following WWII. The film revolves around the investigation of the death of Harry Lime by his American friend Holly Martins. Throughout the course of the film the audience learns that Lime has faked his own death to escape investigation of his role in a penicillin scandal. While the penicillin scandal serves primarily as a vehicle to further the plot, it says a lot about the state of Vienna after the Second World War. As seen in the film, Vienna had come under heavy bombing in WWII (up to 30% of the city was hit according to the Ringstrabe tour) and there would have been many accompanying injuries. The film therefore serves as an exposition for the toll that civilian bombing had not only the appearance of the city, but on the health and well being of Vienna’s civilians. In seeing this impact on Vienna it gives me a much greater understanding of the devastation that befell the city and probably very similar to the impact on other major cities that served as battleground areas in Europe during WWII. The siege by the Russians in 1945 against the Nazi occupation probably caused a great portion of this damage, but I found the issue of Russian influence an interesting topic in the movie.

The film takes place during the period following WWII when Vienna was divided and occupied by each of the four victorious allies with one international zone in the middle. The divisions of cities like in Vienna and Berlin proved to be the beginning of hostilities between the Soviet Union and the West. Not only is this theme exposed in the film, but there are also subtle anti-Soviet messages in various parts of the film. Holly works with the police that appear to be from English background for most of the film, but hostilities with the Soviets are evident in his attempt to find Harry. They often speak of the Soviet zone as being a place for Harry to be able to easily escape to or that the Soviets would not help with the investigation to find him. This lack of cooperation seems to mirror the start of the Cold War where the cooperative occupation and reconstruction of formerly occupied countries turned into a power struggle and ultimately bitter feuds over division of cities like Berlin.

The subtle anti-Soviet messages also come out in Anna’s attempt to forge her passport. It’s revealed that Anna was romantically involved with Harry and he had helped her forge a passport to appear as an Austrian rather than a Czechoslovakian. This brings an interesting side story because the whole purpose of her trying to be an Austrian was to avoid being under control of the Soviets who were trying to identify Czechoslovakians. While it is never really explored why it is an important issue to be under Russian control, it is clearly a negative message about Soviet control and influence. This subtle message is furthered by the portrayal of the Russian officer as a mean, unhelpful person wearing a black uniform. This distaste for Soviet influence manifests in present day Vienna with the public opposition to the huge monument honoring the Russian soldiers who fought to free the Viennese. While the issue of hostilities between the Viennese and Soviets is not a major part of the film, it is definitely addressed throughout various parts of the film and is in a sense confirmed historically today by the social opposition to the memorial to the Soviet soldier. Seeing The Third Man was both a great opportunity to experience Viennese style cinema while getting to view some great shots of post War Vienna and experience an interesting commentary on relations between the Soviets and other Allies.

Leopold Museum

I was ecstatic to have Dr. O back for our tour of the Leopold Museum. This excitement can be attributed to the fact that she is both an excellent tour guide and perhaps more importantly, she does not have red hair or wear copious amount of green. The Leopold Museum has without a doubt the most expensive entrance fee of any museum I have been to so far here in Vienna and perhaps that is a major contributing factor to the decreased attendance the museum has been facing, according to Dr. O. The museum opened roughly a decade ago and its collection comes entirely from the Leopold family who has been collecting paintings and some sculptures since the 1950s. It’s an extremely vast collection of all different styles of paintings that was financed, according to Dr. O, by the sale of a rare stamp collection. Perhaps my favorite part of the museum’s history would be the naked exhibit where people would come in trench coats and bathrobes and then remove them to see the exhibit free of charge. If that’s not getting into the artwork I don’t know what is!

The first artist we investigated was the Viennese master Gustav Klimt. Klimt lived from 1862 until 1918. Although he was never married, he apparently produced 18 illegitimate children, and it's clear he was a fan of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Klimt was born into the Ringstasse culture and studied at the applied arts academy after leaving his goldsmith trade. He would consider himself not just a painter, but more a “decorator”. Following the University Scandal where his paintings were refused, he joined the Secession and was its first President. I feel like this was a major break in Klimt’s life’s work and fueled his departure from a solely Ringstrasse artist into a period of art nouveau. One can only imagine how Viennese art would have been forever changed if he had never departed from solely working on the Ringstrasse.

I find his Death & Life painting is intriguing for both its substantive and cultural elements and influences. There was a five-year hiatus in between the beginning portion and final product of this painting where Klimt would add or change crucial elements. In changing the painting Klimt essentially brought the death elements closer to the life elements and made them fit together perfectly if moved together.

Josef Hofer was an architect of the period and also designed both furniture and upholstery. I was happy to learn more about the architect of the Secession building that I had passed so many times while walking from one area of the city to the other.

Otto Wagner was another architect, but also a engineer and contributed to the formation of many cultural elements of the Secession. His motto: “something that is not practical can not be beautiful” was essentially the foundation for the ideals of the Secession movement and resentment of the Ringstrasse architecture that was essentially essentially duplicating other styles. His designs of Stadtpark and the Karlsplatz Pavilion exhibit a style seen nowhere else that serves to exhibit his ideas about the direction of the country’s architecture.

Hofer, Moser, and Waernerdorfer founded the Vienna Workshop that aimed to lift the applied arts and crafting to the level of distinction afforded to the fine arts. The idea that “just because it’s useful doesn’t mean it can’t be art” served to drive their cause and mission. Both this workshop and the mindset of Wagner served as an exhibition of the growing artistic counter-culture to the Ringstrasse that had dominated Viennese artistic culture in the last half of the nineteenth century.

I found the Schiele paintings particularly interesting because they were bought by the Leopold family primarily when he had not yet gained popularity and also for the strange and almost shocking elements of his artwork. Schiele was a great expressionist as seen in his Dead Mother painting which turned out to be one of his most shocking pieces. It shows a pregnant woman dying and strangely enough foreshadows the same fate that would befall his own wife eight years later. I also found his portrayal of a Cardinal and Nun particularly interesting. It offers an interesting religious and social commentary showing two members of the church who have taken vows of celibacy embracing each other. I believe the greater message here is that despite whatever vows are taken, pure animal instincts of attraction cannot be stopped. Finally, his portraits are both stunning and somewhat upsetting, as they seem to be influenced by a large degree of personal narcissm while also being almost pornographic.

I enjoyed the tour of the Leopold museum not only for the large and exceptional collection of Viennese artwork, but also for the supplemental value to the class as a whole. Observing these works, both in substance and style, functioned as an exhibition of the departure from Ringstrasse culture of the late nineteenth century and the emergence of the Secession in the early twentieth century that I had read about in the Cultural History of Vienna text. On the surface, what the class saw today was some very well done paintings and design styles, but the true value of our tour lies in the ability of the artwork to contextualize and symbolize the elements of Viennese culture that we have been learning about through both lecture and reading to give us the greatest possible understanding of Viennese culture.

Jewish Museum and Mauthausen

The Jewish Museum proved to be a great supplemental experience to our study of the Jewish community in Austria and our experience at Mauthausen. The Jewish Museum is divided into three parts and focuses on many different aspects of the history of the Jews in Vienna throughout the centuries. The content of the museum did not focus on World War II and the Holocaust as much as I expected, considering that was without a doubt the most notable event concerning the Jews in modern history. Although I have to say I was pleased with the variety of information, especially that on the Jewish community in medieval Europe. Often times, Jewish history is so dramatically biased by the memory of the Holocaust that there is little investigation of the anti-Semitism that existed in other points of European history. Perhaps the part of the museum I found most interesting was the archeological site at the Judenplatz for the remains of the synagogue that was constructed in 1401 . This exhibit combined with the section on the medieval ghetto surrounding the synagogue provided excellent information on Jewish life and anti-Semitism from many centuries ago. The Jewish community in Vienna during this time was both extremely large and extremely important, as it was a center of learning. The anti-Semitic ruler, Albert V, who expelled the Jews from Austria in 1420, victimized this rich cultural center. All Jews were ordered to leave the city without any of their possessions and 200 were publicly burnt alive. The event coincided with the destruction of the synagogue that would not be uncovered until 1995. The remains now allow the public to be exposed to valuable information on how the Jews lived in Vienna leading up to their expulsion.

The memory of the Jewish population and culture within Vienna is actually much more extensive than just a set of artifacts or information about Jewish history. The museum actually has three greater parts containing the Judenplatz, the Palais Eskeles, and the Dempfingerhof. The synagogue, or Dempfingerhof, offered a good scope for the evolution of the Jewish community in Vienna as this synagogue was very similar in function and value to the medieval synagogue, but this one operated in the nineteenth century. The Palais Eskeles was particularly interesting for how it corresponded to Ruth Kluger’s Still Alive and our trip to Mathausen as it pertained to the religion and memory of Judaism in Austria. The Torah crowns, Kiddish cups, and Esther scrolls in this exhibit that date back to the Habsburg rule are some of the most important and valuable collection of Judacia in the world. The greater issue of the memory of Jewish culture is one that pertains directly to our visit to Mathausen as it is one of the concentration camps from World War II that insights much of the memory of the atrocities of the Holocaust while Kluger attempts to critique the method in which the events are remembered.

Mauthausen was unequivocally the most powerful and moving experience of my time in Austria. Mathausen was a concentration camp designed for hard labor rather than a death camp where prisoners were brought simply for extermination. The hard labor at the camp revolved around the quarry where the prisoners had to bring gigantic stones, weighing approximately 160 lbs according to our tour guide, up nearly 200 uneven steps for either the initial construction of the camp or other tasks for the Nazis. The camp had mostly political prisoners, but also homosexuals, gypsies, and Jews. My term paper for the class will focus on this topic of the memory preserved at Mauthausen and in concentration camps in general so I will leave most of the details out of this blog entry. One of topic of the tour that I do want to investigate here is the message or warning at the entry of the camp, which translates, “Be Vigilant”. Here this message obviously applies to being vigilant in the prevention of genocide, but I think it also can have much broader implications than just for this instance. Central and Eastern European countries have often been victimized by government corruption and authoritarian regimes that have oppressed their people. While Hitler and the Nazi regime is probably the most prominent example, the oppression of the Soviet Union on the many countries is a similar circumstance. This message applies because it charges people to not just sit back and allow corruption to prevail and victimize people, but rather to always be actively checking government to make sure power is not being abused. This mindset and philosophy will not only ensure the prevention of genocide to take place as seen in the Second World War, but also discourage oppression in general whether it is political, social, or economic.

Return to the Heeresgeschichtliche Museum

Today I returned to the Heeresgeschichtliche Museum to further investigate the exhibits on Austria’s history from World War I through World War II. Austria’s entry into and participation in World War I was extremely different on all levels than their entry and participation in World War II. Austria essentially started the First World War by igniting the “Powder Keg” of alliances that had built up in the early twentieth century between the Allied and Central Powers. The assassination of the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand sparked the declaration of war against Serbia, which caused the many alliances between the two countries to join the war that immediately encompassed nearly all of the major European countries. It’s clear by the emphasis on this incident by the Heeresgeschichtliche Museum that this event is still clung to as a major event in Austrian history. This was essentially the last major war of significant military involvement by the Austrian state in a long history of military victories and conquests during the Holy Roman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Since the fall of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, Austria had been slowly declining as a European power to the more centralized powers of Great Britain, France, and newly emerging Germany. I feel like the Austrians hold on to the assassination of Ferdinand almost in excess, not for the loss of an Arch Duke, but rather because it was essentially the last time they had a significant impact in European, or rather, world affairs. This remembrance manifests in the huge exhibit dedicated to Ferdinand’s uniform, couch he died on, and car he was riding in on the day of his death. These three artifacts essentially have their own room at the museum and it really drives home the impression that this is a part of Austrian history that today remains one of their pivotal points of the twentieth century. It seems almost ironic being that they would remember this event with such emphasis as Austria did not only lose the war, but most of their territorial possessions and had to transform their government. I guess when you are reduced to a status of virtually a non-actor on the international stage a country must cling to the “good old days”.

The period between the World Wars was one marked by a new government and internal strife within the country as an effect of the Great Depression. There was little loyalty to the new government under Dr. Karl Rener and a large push to restore the Habsburgs to power. The empire was reduced from 52 million people to 6 million under the treaty of St. Germain that ended World War I for Austria. Vienna was essentially a welfare state leading up to the Great Depression until the election of Dollfuss in 1933 whose conservative and authoritarian policies sparked Civil War in 1934. This political and social unrest would last until the end of the decade and fuel much of the controversy I saw in the exhibits at the Heeresgeschichtliche Museum over the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

Nazi Germany, under the rule of Adolf Hitler, threatened invasion of Austria in the last half of the 1930s if the Austrian government did not agree to annexation. Germany invaded in 1938 to overwhelming support from the Austrian people with a reported 99.7% of the population being in favor of annexation. While Hitler obviously went on to commit horrible atrocities while in control of Austria beginning with initially arresting and deporting 20,000 Viennese and ultimately removing all Jews from the city by 1942. While the evils of the Nazi occupation of Austria are undisputed in the exhibits of the museums, there is little investigation of the initial support for Hitler. The Nazi soldiers depicted with savage animal heads gives the impression of an evil nature of their doctrine and army. This is a constant theme throughout the World War II exhibit that Nazi Germany was a horrible evil power that victimized the Austrians through forced annexation, but it does not seem to be entirely accurate. The Viennese seem to use the fact they were invaded as a veil for their overwhelming support for Hitler’s regime and the annexation. I can understand why the Viennese would want to hide or forget that they were in favor of an alliance with the worst mass murderer in modern history, but it is understandable at the time. Austria was a country hurting from a recent Civil War, political divisions and social unrest, and Hitler came offering a return to a glorious empire that Austria undoubtedly missed the power of from the period leading up to the First World War. The historical denial is both interesting and understandable by the Viennese concerning World War II, but the implications on the memory and history of World War II in Austria are catastrophic if the country’s history is not properly communicated to future generations.

The German world of the day is Gesund and it means ‘healthy’