Ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Republik: Grossdeutsch Nationalism and Democratic Politics in the Weimar and First Austrian Republics
With the establishment of republics in Germany and Austria after the First World War, many conservatives and those on the radical Right challenged this new form of government on the grounds that it was un-German. This article explores the attempts made by the defenders of the Weimar and Austrian Republics, or republicans, to legitimize parliamentary democracy. It argues that the großdeutsch idea (the historical idea that a German nation state should include Austria) and support for an Anschluss (an Austro-German political union) were central to republicans’ energetic efforts to win over sceptics and attack the claims of their political opponents. Members of the Weimar Coalition parties and the Social Democratic Party of Austria drew a distinction between großdeutsch (greater German) and alldeutsch (pan-German) conceptions of nationhood, and thereby attempted to articulate a form of German nationalism that was compatible with a democratic body politic, a pluralistic society and peaceful international relations. They aimed at nothing less than fashioning their own version of German nationalism, one that stood in direct opposition to the exclusionary and violent nationalisms of the political Right. In revealing the pervasiveness of the großdeutsch idea at this time, this article points to the necessity of looking at developments on both sides of the Austro-German border when considering topics such as the redefinition of Germanness and the creation of democracy in interwar central Europe. Additionally, it demonstrates that support for transborder German nationalism was not simply the prerogative of the radical right after 1918.
Quelle: http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/32/1/29?rss=1