The radical German nationalists and their attitude to the Habsburg Monarchy

For many people Germany seemed to be a model country in comparison with an Austria incapacitated by conflicts between the nationalities. In the German Reich an increasingly aggressive vein of German nationalism – fired by the myth of its foundation in 1871 ‘through iron and blood’ in the confrontation with France – was accompanied by rapid economic expansion. Now developing into Europe’s leading industrial power, Germany was the epitome of vigour and growth.

Amongst the German-speakers in Austria this naturally led to a change of general attitude to the Habsburg Monarchy. The old-established German Liberals, whose brand of German national consciousness had been marked by loyalty to Austria and a great sense of responsibility for the state as a whole, were now superseded by a younger generation of German nationalists with quite a different outlook.

The demands of the German nationalist camp now became more radical, with the highest priority being given to the purely nationalist agenda. Among other things, this meant the end of the idea of a centralized state, which had been upheld principally by the German Liberals and was now rejected by the political representatives of all the nationalist movements as an obstacle to their national development.

The ultimate goal of German nationalist agitation was the secession of the German-speaking areas and their incorporation into the German Reich, even if this meant the downfall of the Habsburg Monarchy. In this sense they followed the ideal of Pan-Germanism, that is to say, they called for the bringing together of all Germans into one state, which posed an incalculable threat to the traditional Central European system of states.

From the 1880s onwards the extreme right wing of the German nationalist movement developed a markedly ‘Volk’-based philosophy that postulated the intrinsic superiority of the ‘German race’. This tendency was particularly radical in Austria, where many people were frustrated at having been cut off from the ‘German Fatherland’ through the implementation of the ‘smaller-German solution’. In addition, it was a reaction to the success that the Hungarians and Slavs had had in liberating themselves from German domination. The movement was joined by an astoundingly large number of former Liberals and intellectuals, with the universities playing a notorious role that should not be forgotten.

The leader of the radical wing of the German nationalists in the Habsburg Monarchy was the out-and-out demagogue Georg von Schönerer (1842–1921). He was not only anti-clerical and anti-Slav but also highly anti-Semitic, which set him apart from the old-established form of German Liberalism that had been the classic political home of the prosperous class of assimilated bourgeois Jews. Schönerer’s political ‘style’ did not go any further than rabidly inflammatory speeches and polemicizing in and for the media; nor did he shy away from publicly condoning the use of violent means.

Translation: Peter John Nicholson