Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T05:59:40.627Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Two post-war paths: Popular violence in the Bohemian lands and in Austria in the aftermath of World War I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2019

Ota Konrád
Ota Konrád*
Affiliation:
Department of German and Austrian Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
*
*Email: ota.konrad@fsv.cuni.cz
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The study explores the phenomenon of popular violence in the first months and years after the end of World War I on the basis of a comparison between the Bohemian lands, forming the central part of the newly established Czechoslovakia, and Austria, as another successor state to the former Habsburg monarchy. Aside from the continuities, new forms of violence increasingly emerged in the first years after the end of the war, and also the “language” of violence was transformed. While in Czechoslovakia, the framework within which people were learning to understand the new world was shaped by the national and republican discourse oriented to the future, in Austria the collective identities and mentalities were being formed along the lines of particular party political blocks. In both cases, the nationalization and politicization of violence respectively contributed to the emergence of new forms of popular violence; but at the same time they could also be used for its de-escalation, necessary for the re-integration of society disrupted by the wartime experience. However, even if both countries went out from the war on different paths, the violence stayed part of their political culture and it could be mobilized again.

Keywords

popular violenceWorld War Ipost-war periodCzechoslovakiaAustria
Type
Research Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 46 , Issue 5: Special Section: Between the wars , September 2018 , pp. 759 - 775
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Adam, Alfons. 2013. Unsichtbare Mauern: Die Deutschen in der Prager Gesellschaft zwischen Abkapselung und Interaktion (1918–1938/39) [Invisible Walls: Germans in Prague Society Between Encapsulation and Interaction]. Essen: Klartext.Google Scholar
Baberowski, Jörg. 2015. Räume der Gewalt [Spaces of Violence]. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.Google Scholar
Bartov, Omer, and Weitz, Erich D., eds. 2013. Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Bodó, Béla. 2011. “The White Terror in Hungary, 1919–1921: The Social Worlds of Paramilitary Groups.” Austrian History Yearbook 42:133–163.Google Scholar
Böhler, Jochen. 2014. “Generals and Warlords, Revolutionaries and Nation-State Builders: The First World War and Its Aftermath in Central and Eastern Europe.” In Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe's First World War, edited by Böhler, Jochen, Borodziej, Wlodzimierz, and von Puttkamer, Joachim, 51–66. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Botz, Gerhard. 1983. Gewalt in der Politik: Attentate, Zusammenstöße, Putschversuche, Unruhen in Österreich 1918 bis 1938 [Political Violence: Assassinations, Clashes, Putsches, Turmoil in Austria, 1918–1938]. München: Fink.Google Scholar
Botz, Gerhard. 1987. Krisenzonen einer Demokratie, Gewalt, Streik und Konfliktunterdrückung in Österreich seit 1918 [Crisis Zones of a Democracy. Violence, Strikes and Conflict Reduction in Austria after 1918]. Frankfurt am Main: Campus.Google Scholar
Boyer, John W. 2010. Karl Lueger (1844–1910): Christlichsoziale Politik als Beruf. Eine Biografie [Karl Lueger (1844–1910): Christian Social Politics as a Profession]. Wien: Böhlau Verlag.Google Scholar
Bugge, Peter. 2006. “Czech Democracy 1918–1938 — Paragon or Parody?” Bohemia 47:3–28.Google Scholar
Collins, Randall. 2008. Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cornwall, Mark. 2012. The Devil's Wall. The Nationalist Youth Mission of Heinz Rutha. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Edgecombe, Catherine, and Healy, Maureen. 2016. “Competing Interpretations of Sacrifice in the Postwar Austrian Republic.” In Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, edited by Cornwall, Mark and Newman, John Paul, 15–34. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Eichenberg, Julia, and Newman, John Paul. 2010. “Introduction: Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War.” Contemporary European History 19:183–194.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2000. “The Subject and Power.” In Power, edited by Faubion, James D., 326–348. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Frankl, Michal. 2011. “Prag ist nunmehr antisemitisch”: Tschechischer Antisemitismus am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts [Prague Is Now Anti-Semitic: The Czech Anti-Semitism at the End of the 19th Century]. Berlin: Metropol.Google Scholar
Frankl, Michal, and Szabó, Miloslav. 2016. Budování státu bez antisemitismu? Násilí, diskurz loajality a vznik Československa [Building the State Without Antisemitism? Violence, Discourse of Loyalty and the Founding of Czechoslovakia]. Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny.Google Scholar
Gerwarth, Robert. 2016. The Vanquished. Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Gerwarth, Robert, and Home, John, eds. 2012. War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Girtler, Roland. 1998. Wilderer. Rebellen in den Bergen [Poachers. The Rebels in Mountains]. Wien: Böhlau.Google Scholar
Hanisch, Ernst. 2005. Der lange Schatten des Staates. Österreichische Gesellschaftsgeschichte im 20. Jahrhundert [The Long Shadow of State. Austrian Social History in the 20th Century]. Wien: Carl Ueberreuter.Google Scholar
Healy, Maureen. 2004. Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hoffmann-Holter, Beatrix. 1995. “Abreisendmachung”: Jüdische Kriegsflüchtlinge in Wien 1914 bis 1923 [“Abreisendmachung”: Jewish War Refugees in Vienna from 1914 to 1923]. Wien: Böhlau.Google Scholar
Judson, Pieter M. 2016. The Habsburg Empire: A New History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kárník, Zdeněk. 2000. České země v éře První republiky (1918–1938) [The Bohemian Lands in the Era of the First Republic (1918–1938)]. Vol. 1. Praha: Libri.Google Scholar
Koeltzsch, Ines. 2012. Geteilte Kulturen: Eine Geschichte der tschechisch-jüdisch-deutschen Beziehungen in Prag (1918–1938) [Shared Cultures. A History of the Czech-Jewish-German Relations in Prague (1918–1938)]. München: Oldenbourg.Google Scholar
Konrád, Ota. 2016. “Jenseits der Nation? Kollektive Gewalt in den Böhmischen Ländern 1914–1918” [Beyond the Nation? Collective Violence in the Bohemian Lands, 1914–1918].” Bohemia 56:328–361.Google Scholar
Kučera, Rudolf. 2016a. Rationated Life: Science, Everyday Life, and Working-Class Politics in the Bohemian Lands, 1914–1918. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Kučera, Rudolf. 2016b. “Exploiting Victory, Sinking into Defeat: Uniformed Violence in the Creation of the New Order in Czechoslovakia and Austria, 1918–1922.” The Journal of Modern History 88:827–855.Google Scholar
Maderthaner, Wolfgang, and Musner, Lutz. 2008. Unruly Masses — The Other Side of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue. 1918. The New Europe. London: The Slav Standpoint.Google Scholar
Newman, John Paul. 2010. “Post-imperial and Post-war Violence in the South Slav Lands, 1917–1923.” Contemporary European History 19:249–265.Google Scholar
Pauley, Bruce. 1992. From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Reemtsma, Jan Philipp. 2008. Vertrauen und Gewalt: Versuch über eine besondere Konstellation der Moderne [Trust and Violence: An Attempt to Understand a Unique Constellation in Modernity]. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition.Google Scholar
Řeháček, Karel. 2008. Němci proti Československu na západě Čech (1918–1920) [Germans against Czechoslovakia in West Bohemia (1918–1920)]. Plzeň: Karel Řeháček.Google Scholar
Reichardt, Sven. 2002. Faschistische Kampfbünde: Gewalt und Gemeinschaft im italienischen Squadrismus und in der deutschen SA [Fascist Combat Leagues: Violence and Community in Italian Squadrism and in the German SA]. Köln: Böhlau.Google Scholar
Sanborn, Joshua. 2010. “The Genesis of Russian Warlordism: Violence and Governance during the First World War and the Civil War.” Contemporary European History 19:195–213.Google Scholar
Sandgruber, Roman. 1995. Ökonomie und Politik [History and Politics]. Wien: Ueberreuter.Google Scholar
Schievelbusch, Wolfgang. 2003. The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery. New York: Metropolitan books.Google Scholar
Sofsky, Wolfgang. 1996. Traktat über die Gewalt [Treatise on Violence]. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.Google Scholar
Taschwer, Klaus. 2015. Hochburg des Antisemitismus: Der Niedergang der Universität Wien im 20. Jahrhundert [The Citadel of Anti-Semitism: The Decline of the University of Vienna in the 20th Century]. Wien: Czernin.Google Scholar
Theweleit, Klaus. 1987. Male Fantasies 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History. Translated by Stephen Conway, Erica Carter, and Chris Turner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Theweleit, Klaus. 1989. Male Fantasies 2. Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror. Translated by Erica Carter and Chris Turner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 2003. Politics of Collective Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Trotha, Trutz von. 1997. “Zur Soziologie der Gewalt [About the Sociology of Violence].” In Soziologie der Gewalt, edited by von Trotha, Trutz, 9–58. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.Google Scholar

Archival sources:

Archiv der Landespolizeidirektion Wien (Archives of the Provincial Police Directorate, Vienna), the archival fond: Jahreskartons.Google Scholar
NAČR (National Archives of the Czech Republic), the archival fonds: Ministerstvo vnitra I-Prezidium (Ministry of Interior I-Presidium); PMV-oddělení N (PMV-Department N); Pražské místodržitelství (Stadtholder of Prague); Prezidium ministerstva Vídeň (Presidium of the Ministry of Interior, Vienna); Presidium policejního ředitelství Praha I (Presidium of the Police Directorate, Prague I); Zemské četnické velitelství (Provincial Gendarmerie Headquarters).Google Scholar
NÖLA (Archives of Lower Austria), the archival fond: NÖLA-P.Google Scholar
ÖStA (Austrian State Archives), the archival fonds: ÖStA, AdR, BKA-Inneres; ÖStA, AdR, BKA-KRP.Google Scholar