12 November 1918 as a Site of Memory

Commemorative events held by the Social Democrats in the form of mass demonstrations, such as that marking the opening of the monument to the republic in 1928, led to violent confrontations between the conservative Heimwehr and the socialist Schutzbund militias. On the other hand the regime of the corporate state, which saw the years between 1918 and 1934 as an ‘unfortunate, un-Austrian interregnum’, resorted to political narratives and symbols of state which aimed to idealize the monarchy. For example, in 1933 Engelbert Dollfuss spoke about it being a matter of urgency ‘to dispose of the rubble of revolution and to establish links once more with the finest periods of history’. In 1934 the ceremonies marking the founding of the republic on 12 November 1918 were banned, and in 1935 the Habsburg law of 1919 was repealed.

In the period of reconstruction in Austria after the end of the Second World War the function of 12 November 1918 (the date of the proclamation of the Republic of Austria) as a site of political memory directed against the Austrian bourgeoisie became less and less important. This was above all the result of the ‘coalition peace’ between the two ruling parties, the socialist SPÖ and the conservative ÖVP. The pursuit of shared interests above those of the individual parties was intended to prevent the resurgence of the deep political conflicts of the First Republic. The two coalition parties now came to see the First Republic more and more as a negative counterpart to the political and economic development of the Second Republic. While the First Republic was represented as a story of failure, the Second Republic was regarded as a success story. Symptomatic of this approach was a statement by Bruno Kreisky, who while Chancellor, speaking at a party event held in 1978, expressed the opinion that the ‘state that nobody wanted has turned into the state that everyone wants’.

After 1945 there was no question of making 12 November 1945 the national holiday. Karl Renner argued that in any case November was not a good time for celebrations because it was likely that the weather would be bad. In 1965 it was agreed that 26 October, the day when in 1955 the federal constitutional law on Austria’s permanent neutrality was passed, should become the national holiday. From 1948 the proclamation of the First Republic was remembered every ten years in official ceremonies organised by the government, but the commemoration day became less and less important for the two major parties.

Picture caption: ‘Mass procession with flags and banners on the Ringstrasse near the Parliament building’. (NB: Flags and banners can hardly be made out.)

Translation: Leigh Bailey