The Hills are alive... [Will Brehm, Week 5, Reflective]

Defining a sovereign “state” requires a shared identity of the individuals living within, often reinforced through norms, history, and socialization. But what happens when a state is created out of an empire? Living in Austria last year, I learned about just that: The sovereign state known as Austria was assembled after WWI. Previously, the idea of “Austria” permeated much of Eastern Europe: from Italy to the Netherlands and from Poland to the Balkans. It wasn’t a “state,” it was rather an empire with many norms, histories, and peoples. Splitting the empire up into multiple countries usually happened through shared identities (national self-determination); but what shared identity did Austria (as we currently know it) have in common? It was a German-speaking region on the border of southern Germany. If states should consist of shared identities, Austria, as we know it today, should have been lumped into Germany. However, the borders of Austria were defined by “what ever was left over” after the other new nations took their share of he empire. Needless to say, because of this a large push occurred within Austria to join Germany. The international system, however, did not allow Austria to join with Germany in fear that Germany would become too powerful.

Fast forward to post WWII Austria, where Austria regained independence for a second time in 40 years (It joined the 3rd Reich in 1938). Austria had serious identity issues: what does it mean to be Austrian? Not allowed to be Germans (again), Austrians had to create a history of their own. Many pushed for what retrospectively become known as “the Sound-of-Music” thinking: Austria was a civil society filled with wonderful music (Austria had a waltz for every occasion) and should be seen as the historic center of the Habsburg empire.

Many thought defining Austria in these terms was wrong; Austria, in this sense, neglects to understand its terrible –yet ever important –past: supporting the two losing sides in both world wars. Ingrid Bachmann, a famous Austrian post-WWII writer, proclaimed: “no new world without a new language.” By this she meant that Austria needed to figure out how to define its past before creating a new identity. For Austria defining it self as a sovereign state has been harder than just recognition by the international community. Austrians still struggle with understanding their past. The people of a state must have these shared identities to make that state legitimate.