TEUTONIC AUSTRIANS
Peter Millar on why the Peter Millar on why the
Waldheim affair throws light on this week's anniversary of the Anschluss
IT WAS a tour guide overlooking Salzburg from the heights of its rocky fortress, the Burg itself, who accidentally encapsulated Austria's dilemma when he explained to a group of naïve Americans: 'Actually, we speak German.'
The happy coincidence of the Waldheim affair reaching its climax alongside this month's 50th anniversary of the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi Germany has served to distil the essence of the country's real angst, a creeping identity crisis after four decades of pretending not to be German.
Boil it down to basics: what's in a name? It is not irrelevant that Waldheim (literally 'Forest Home') is as Teutonic a moniker as any Aryan could desire, while Vranitzky and Kreisky display more than a touch of the Slavonic tar-brush. The present Social- ist Chancellor and his predecessor made much of Austria's role as a neutral Central European state, its leftover links with empire offering unique partnership possi- bilities that made Vienna the gateway to the East. When Bruno Kreisky played host to Gaddafi in the Habsburgs' Hofburg, he was playing out the role hoped for by the Russians when they withdrew in 1955, the maverick card in the capitalist pack. Au- stria was intended and allowed to be a sort of democratic Yugoslavia, rather than a mountainous rump of Grossdeutschland.
The trouble with Waldheim is that he has brought back into view the uncomfort- able link between pan-German identity and the overt racism of the Nazi creed. Although the argument purports to be about minor details of his competence while serving in Yuogoslavia, the real underlying issue is whether Austrians wil- lingly serving the Third Reich are best described as patriots or collaborators. The answer depends on the definition of Vater- land.
Although there was much resentment and indeed opposition to the Nazi entry into Vienna 50 years ago, the bulk of resistance was against the political system and only a minimal amount was directed against a union with a country that spoke the same language and was, after all, led by an Austrian. The resentment that had lingered since Prussia won the toss for dominance of the collection of German states at the battle of Koenigsgratz in 1866, had largelyl evaporated after joint defeat in 1918 and a disillusionment with the powerlessness of the tiny mountain repub- lic to which Austria was reduced. Many Austrians saw union with Germany in 1938 in the same way as many Britons saw entry into the EEC in 1971, as an inevitable post-imperial reorientation.
After 1945, of course, things were diffe- rent. Separation from Germany meant separation from guilt, from reparations and eventually from further partition. There was one national emotion: 'Whew!'
When Dr Waldheim, draped in his red and white sash, uses the word .Vaterland today, he certainly means Austria alone, playing on the Sound of Music sort Of edelweiss patriotism that many old aristoc- rats and some of the new socialists can sympathise with. We are meant to under- stand he is protecting something higher and grander: it is in this sort of elevated sphere that Viennese tend to use the word 'Austria', the country's Latin name, invok- ing a classical personification of the nation rather than the vernacular German 'Oes- terreich'. But there is about Dr Waldheim an unmistakable, and uncomfortable, whiff of Grossdeutschland.
Sitting by the Danube, perhaps in a Hungarian bar with a Polish waiter and a Russian emigre playing the piano, it is easy for the elegant Wiener to see himself again as some figure from bygone grander days when the German he speaks was merely the language of officialdom in a inulti- racial empire. There is a lot of self-delusion in Vienna and it can be contagious: not long ago a former Reuters news agency bureau chief argued fiercely with me that 'these people' — in their bottle-green greatcoats and feathered hats identical to the burghers of Munich — were not • 'You slept right through your day.' German. It is not an argument that holds much water up country with the hicks in their lederhosen.
Recently however, the 40-year-old smirk began to fade, as Austria's economy fell further behind the Wirtschaftswunder north of the border, and the EEC began to look less of a regional club and more of a continental union with trade advantages real enough to make sworn neutrals won- der about special association arrange- ments. The last two straws were when France, worried about terrorists, deman- ded visas from non-EEC nationals, and When Bavaria's Franz Josef Strauss (a man who looks, talks and yodels like a Tiroler), worried about Aids, began to call for blood tests on non-EEC nationals and carry out spot checks on cars crossing the frontier — no joke when Austria's main autobahn from Vienna to Innsbruck runs through Bavaria.
Motorists used to greeting Bavarian frontier guards with the universal South German `Servus' and getting the same response in a similar accent, suddenly found themselves treated like undesirable aliens. It was not a pleasant experience. Then, in the course of the last 18 months, the European drift to the right finally reached Vienna. Alois Mock's Peo- ple's Party only narrowly missed the chance of winning a Majority and dominat- ing government for the first time, but in the elections for the ceremonial Presidency they won, with Dr Waldheim.
At the same time the small, ostensibly liberal but actually radical right, Freedom Party of Joerg Haider doubled its vote. In Vienna Herr Haider dons a trench-coat and talks about tax cuts; at home in Kaernten (Carinthia) he prefers the tradi- tional Trachten short jacket, leads tor- chlight marches and has been accused of fostering discrimination against the re- gion's Slovenian minority. When the Vienna news magazine Profil ran a poll about the impending Anschluss anniversary, a majority of Austrian's were not aware of the date and barely a third thought it worth commemorating. If, as the old joke has it, Hitler was Austria's revenge for Koenigsgratz, then Waldheim is history's revenge for Austria getting off light. It was unthinkable in 1945 that a German, let alone one named Messerschmidt, would be casting doubt on the past of the President of Austria. But denazification had its advantages in wiping the West German slate. The long-term importance of the Waldheim affair lies not so much in the damage that may be done to Austria's image abroad as in the explosion of a myth that had begun to be believed at home. There is an apt German word Selbstbewusstsein; it means self-confidence but also knowledge of oneself. Austria's dilemma is to reconcile the two.
Peter Millar is European correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph.
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