NPD-NDP: Europe's New Nationalism in Germany and Austria

Abstract

Part of the Heritage bequeathed by the Habsburg Empire to the First and Second Austrian Republics was German ethnic nationalism. The movement was a response to what its adherents considered the difficulty of preserving German cultural practices and institutional patterns within a state composed of diverse nationalities. Challenged by the growth of nationalism among the other linguistic and ethnic groups of the Habsburg lands during the latter half of the nineteenth century and stimulated by the appearance of a German national state after 1871, Austro-Germanism grew in size and diversity until 1914. In its more moderate form, the persuasion went no further than stubborn resistance of German Austrians to any cultural or political concessions to non-Germans in the Empire. In the hands of the rabid Pan-Germanist Georg von Schonerer, it was a frankly subversive ideology dedicated to the detachment of the German sections of Austria from the Danubian monarchy and their fusion with imperial Germany.