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Paper Party: Propaganda Files from the Austrian Fatherland Front

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2025

Britta McEwen
Britta McEwen*
Affiliation:
History, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA
*
Email: BrittaMcEwen@creighton.edu
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Abstract

The Publicity Department of the Austrian Fatherland Front served the Ständestaat regime (1933–38). An elaborate organization on paper, the Fatherland Front's actual work was bound up in the performance of para-fascism and the surveillance of opposing parties. Each of these modes of being mutually reinforced the need for the other and created a unique self-awareness of failure within the movement. As such, the Publicity Department offers a microcosm of the larger challenges of the Ständestaat, which faltered in the face of economic collapse, political violence, and a population largely indifferent to its attempt to secure Austrian sovereignty in the 1930s.

Keywords

Austriacultural historyStändestaatpropagandacorporatism
Type
Article
Information
Central European History , First View , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Central European History Society.

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References

1 “Herstellung einheitlicher Richtlinien inerhalb der Staats- und Bewegungswerbung,” undated. OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275.

2 The most thorough account of the Ständestaat’s incomplete organization and expression of power is Emmerich Tálos, Das Austrofaschistische Herrschaftssystem: Österreich 1933-1938 (Vienna: LIT, 2013). Excellent essays in Carlo Moos, ed. (K)ein Austrofaschismus? Studiein zum Herrschaftssystem 1933-1938 (Vienna: LIT, 2021) also document this malfunction. Particularly helpful on the Fatherland Front’s failed quest for an Austrian identity is Anton Staudinger, “Austrofaschistische ‘Österreich’-Ideology,” in Emmerich Tálos and Wolfgang Neugebauer, eds. Austrofaschismus: Politik – Ökonomie – Kultur 1933-1938 (Vienna: LIT, 2014), 28–53. See also Thomas Hellmuth, Austrofaschismus: Eine Identitätsgeschichte (Vienna: Böhlau, 2024).

3 Becker ran what was officially called Dienstgruppe III Generalsekretariat: Aufklärungs- und Werbedienst, although most of the paperwork I draw from refers to his office simply as Werbeabteilung. I translate this throughout as “Publicity Department,” although another way of thinking about it might be “Office of Propaganda and Promotion.”

4 For the ubiquity of this term, see essays in both Florian Wenninger and Lucile Dreidemy, eds. Das Dollfuß/Schuschnigg-Regime 1933–1938: Vermessung eines Forschungsfeld (Vienna: Böhlau, 2013) and Ilse Reiter-Zatloukal, Christiane Rothländer, and Pia Schölnberger, eds, Österreich 1933–1938: Interdiziplinäre Ahnährung an das Dollfuß-Schuschnigg Regime (Vienna: Böhlau, 2012).

5 Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London: Routledge, 1993), 121.

6 The “New Austria” was an appellation developed in 1934 to differentiate the Ständestaat from the Austrian First Republic. State materials used this title extensively to signal the regime's break with democracy.

7 The preeminent Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka refers to both Austria and Spain as “Catholic dictatorships” and thus “less fascist” (than Italy or Germany). See Faschismus? Zur Beliebigkeit eines politischen Begriffs (Vienna: Böhlau, 2022), 28 and 15. Conversely, on crucial differences between Austrian and Spanish para-fascism, see Mercedes Peñalba-Sotorrío, “From the Fringes to the State: The Transformation of the Falange into a State Party,” in Beyond the Fascist Century: Essays in Honour of Roger Griffin, ed. Constantin Iordichi and Aristotle Kallis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 213–34.

8 See especially Roland Clark and Tim Grady, “European Fascist Movements: An Introduction,” in European Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook, ed. Roland Clark and Tim Grady (London: Routledge, 2023), 1–24.

9 Evan Burr Bukey, Hitler's Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era, 1938–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press: 2000), 9.

10 See Britta McEwen, “Religion and Reaction in the ‘New Austria,’ 1933–1938,” Journal of Religion & Society, 26 (forthcoming).

11 The formulation here comes from a popular right-radical newspaper report on national progress. See Albrecht Exelberger, “Die Arbeit der Regierung Schuschnigg,” Schönere Zukunft (1935): 191.

12 Fred Parkinson claims that this reading of “nation” as German continued well into the Second Austrian Republic. See Parkinson, Conquering the Past. Austrian Nazism Yesterday and Today (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989): 314–15. Recent assessments of the failure of interwar Austria to engender a sense of nationalism include Lothar Höbelt, Die Erste Republik Österreich (1918–1938): Das Provisorium (Vienna: Böhlau, 2018) and Anton Pelinka, Die gescheiterte Republik: Kultur und Politik in Österreich 1918–1938 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2017).

13 This iteration of the Germanness of Austria, and the superiority of Austrian Germanness, is taken from the memoir of a rural man who re-narrates the Ständestaat in largely positive terms. Fatherland Front propagandists and contemporary supporters of the regime alike found this kind of wordplay irresistible. See Josef Berkman, Die Fesseln der frühen Jahre, manuscript in the collection of Dokumentation lebensgeschichtlicher Aufzeichnungen, University of Vienna Institute for Social History, 161.

14 Although the Fatherland Front used radio, newsreels, and mass performances to communicate with Austrians, these media were housed in separate propaganda units. For information on film propaganda, see Michael Achenbach and Karin Moser, eds., Österreich in Bild und Ton: Die Filmwochenschau des austrofaschisisten Ständestaates (Vienna: Filmarchiv Austria, 2002) and Robert Dassanovsky, Screening Transcendence: Film under Austrofascism and the Hollywood Hope, 1933–1938 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018). On propaganda in the form of mass rallies, see Béla Rásky, “Masterminded Choreographies: Stadium Mass Performances in Interwar Austria,” Central European Cultures (2024): 15–34, especially 26–29.

15 Becker's colorful life and early commitment to combating Nazism is detailed in Christian F. Feest, “Hans Becker: Ethnologie und Widerstand,” in Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945), ed. Andre Gingrich and Peter Rohrbacher (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2021), Vol. 3: 1369–91, esp. 1372–74.

16 “Cosplay” (costume + playacting) was coined in 1983 by Nobuyuki Takahashi in his reportage for Japanese magazines on Americans attending the World Science Fiction Convention. See Garry Crawford and David Hancock, Cosplay and the Art of Play: Exploring Sub-Culture Through Art (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 7. See also Theresa Winge, “Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay,” Mechademia: Second Arc, Vol. 1 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 65–76.

17 Crawford and Hancock, Cosplay and the Art of Play, 16.

18 Frenchy Lunning, Cosplay: The Fictional Mode of Existence (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022), 63.

19 Craig Norris and Jason Bainbridge, “Selling Otaku? Mapping the Relationship between Industry and Fandom in the Australian Cosplay Scene,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific (2009): 1. A recent history of the Ständestaat explores this “habitus”: Alfred Pfoser, Béla Rásky, and Hermann Schlösser, Maskeraden: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Austrofaschismus (Vienna: Residenz, 2024).

20 Cynthia Weber, “Performative States,” Millennium Journal of International Studies (1998): 77–95, here 90.

21 Staudinger, “Austrofaschistische ‘Österreich’—Ideologie,” 49.

22 Complicating this constellation of rejected (modern) ideologies was the Ständestaat's aesthetic of and political investment in feudalism as a visual marker of difference from banned parties. See Ernst Hainisch, “Auf der Suche nach der österreichischen Identität,” in Bewältigte Vergangenheit? Die nationale und internationale Historiographie zum Untergang der Habsburger-monarchie als Ideelle Grundlage für die Neuordnung Europas, ed. Helmut Rumpler and Ulrike Harmat (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2018), 147–62, here 158.

23 Clark and Grady, “European Fascist Movements: An Introduction” 17.

24 See for example the 1926 Joesph Goebbels's message “10 Commandments for Every SA Man” or the 1931 letter from Gausturm Nordmark in Hamburg, both reprinted in Clark and Grady, European Fascist Movements, 48–50 and 58, respectively.

25 For a helpful diagram of the many arms of propaganda work in the Ständestaat, see Gerhard Urbanek, “Realitätsverweigerung oder Panikreaktion? ‘Vaterländische’ Kommunikationspolitik in Österreich zwischen Juliabkommen 1936, Berchtesgadener Protokoll und ‘Anschluss’ 1938” (Master's Thesis, University of Vienna, 2011), 10.

26 Becker himself used this phrase to describe propaganda work. See Erhard Stackl, Hans Becker 05: Widerstand gegen Hitler (Vienna: Czernin, 2022), 112.

27 Stackl, Hans Becker 05, 111.

28 Tálos, Das austrofaschistische Herrschaftssystem, 62 and 597.

29 See for example the front-page editorial article by Joseph Eberle, “Helfen wir ein Ende machen dem Bruderstreit! Zum Konflikt Deustchland-Österreich,” Schönere Zukunft (1933): 903–05. On street-fighting between the Austrian militias and German National Socialism, see Eric Grube, “Borderland Brothers: Austrofascist Competition and Cooperation with National Socialists, 1936–1938,” Journal of Austrian Studies (2023); 1–24.

30 Becker's recent biographer leaves open the question of Becker's monarchist allegiances. See Stackl, Hans Becker 05, 102.

31 Hellmuth, Austrofaschismus, 61–62.

32 On the delicate relationship between Schuschnigg and the Restoration question, see Staudinger, “Austrofaschistische ‘Österreich’-Ideologie,” 41.

33 On Spann and the context of his work, see Janek Wasserman, Black Vienna: Black Vienna: The Radical Right in the Red City, 1918–1938 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), especially Chapter 7. The interwar Christian Social politician Ignaz Seipel similarly called for a “true democracy” that would purge the nation of party rule. Both concepts emphasized that “truth” lay in a rejection of parliamentary democracy.

34 To such young people's frustration, Spann's vehement anti-Marxism and anti-individualism shaped the language of the Ständestaat but did not order the regime itself.

35 This was true for not only German Nationalists but also Social Democrats in both Germany and Austria prior to 1933. See Erin R. Hochman, Imagining a Greater Germany: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016).

36 Anonymous (“Von einem österreichischen Universitätsprofessor”), “Österreich als zweiter deutscher Staat,” Schönere Zukunft (1936): 1219–20.

37 Bund der Jungtiroler an das Generalsekretariat des Vaterl. Front, Propaganda-Abteilung, July 16, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275. Finding musical lyrics and notations in the Publicity Department files was not unusual. See also a patriotic song tucked amidst propaganda correspondence from 1937 in OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2250-514/1/2253, Karton 288.

38 Dank den Bundeskanzlers an das Kinderferienwerk in Tirol, January 7, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275.

39 VF Kirchbichl an der Werbedienst der Vaterl. Front, July 5, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275.

40 Betreff: Werbebericht, June 21, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275.

41 Betreff: Werbebericht, February 13, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275. There is a stark contrast here with National Socialist propaganda, which was successfully tailored to different localities.

42 Betreff: Volksdeutscher Gruß, June 22, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275.

43 A particularly dense set of such invitations and party reservations can be found in OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2223-514/1/2231, Karton 283.

44 See especially the files from 1936, dominated by balls, garden parties, guest lectures, and commemorative events surrounding Dollfuß's death two years earlier. OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2236-514/1/2240, Karton 285.

45 See for example a 1937 glossy brochure, most likely created by Becker's office, created for French, Italian, and English audiences. Here La nuova Austria (Bundeskanzlerei, 1937), 69–70.

46 Notice the special attention paid to uniforms for a newly created youth group in a separate set of Fatherland Front files: Satzungen des Werbebandes “Oesterreichisches Jungvolk,” OeSTa (AdR) Parteiarchiv VF Gruppe 09, Karton 6.

47 See for example a memo originating from Landskrone with detailed requests from 1936: Betreff: Propagandamaterial, Informations-Blätter, Aufklärungsschriften, April 1, 1936, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2232-514/1/2235, Karton 284.

48 Dr. Alexander Globocnik-Vojka to (Hans) Becker, January 10, 1936, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2236-514/1/2240, Karton 285. The author of the letter was obviously a friend; he addressed the letter with a highly unusual “Lieber Becker!”

49 Betreff: Illegales Flugblatt, October 29, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275.

50 Geschäftszahl: 3361-pr./36, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

51 Resolution der Bezirksleitung der v.F. im Ried i./I., OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

52 Betreff: [Blank], March 21, 1936, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

53 Betreff: Verschiedenes, September 25, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275.

54 See for example an extensive set of reports on a Home Guards unit in Villach: Geschäftszahl 6006-Pr./36, May 8, 1936, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

55 Propagandaaktionen jeder Art vom 1. Bis 31. August 1936, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

56 Emmerich Tálos, “Das austrofaschistische Herrschaftssystem,” in Austrofaschismus: Politik—Ökonomie—Kultur, ed. Emmerich Tálos and Wolfgang Neugebauer (Vienna: LIT, 2014), 412.

57 Zum Jahrestag der Kriegserklärung, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275. Ständestaat leadership depended on fascist Italy's defense of Austrian sovereignty, which continued until Mussolini's attention shifted to the invasion of Abyssinia in 1935.

58 Betreff: Nationalsozialistische Tätigkeit, March 25, 1936, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

59 Geschäftszahl 5209-Pr./36, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

60 Nationalsozialisten! Oesterreicher!, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

61 Nationalsozialisten! Deutsche Volksgenossen!, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

62 Lagerbericht über den Monat Juni 1936, 4–5, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

63 Lagerbericht über den Monat Juni 1936, 4.

64 Politischer Frageboden, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2250-514/1/2253, Karton 288.

65 Neues Leben was a Fatherland Front imitation of the National Socialist program Kraft durch Freude.

66 Politischer Frageboden, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2250-514/1/2253, Karton 288.

67 Early formulations of the Fatherland Front's mission featured values that were consonant with monarchism, suggesting a proximity of principals between para-fascism and those who would return the Habsburgs to power. See James Shedel, “The Legacy of Empire: History and Austrian Identity in the Ständestaat,” in Auf der Suche nach Identität, ed. Georg Kastner et al. (Vienna: LIT, 2015), 93–108, here 100.

68 Betreff: Legitimistische Versammlungen, October 22, 1935. OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275. Emphasis in original. Here the suggestion seems to be that a true monarchist would prioritize the immediate needs of Austria.

69 Betreff: Legitimistische Versammlungen.

70 Betreff: Legitimistische Versammlungen.

71 Bericht über das Soldatentreffen “Schulter an Schulter” am 17. und 18. Juli 1937 in Wels, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2250-514/1/2253, Karton 288.

72 Betreff: Wichtiger Situationsbericht! May 27, 1935, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275. Emphasis in the original.

73 Betreff: Wichtiger Situationsbericht! Emphasis in the original; the italicized words were originally typed out with spaces between each letter.

74 Bezirks-Werbebericht OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2179-514/1/2183, Karton 275.

75 See for example the Übersicht über die national-sozialisten Tätigkeit in der Zeit vom 1. Bis 31. August 1938, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

76 Betreff: Wunchversammlungen in Osttirol, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2250-514/1/2253, Karton 288.

77 Betreff: Wunchversammlungen in Osttirol, 4.

78 Lagerbericht über den Monat Juni 1936, 10, OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/377-514/1/388, Karton 80.

79 For a pan-European approach to fascism, see Aristotle Kallis, “Working Across Bounded Entities: Fascism, ‘Para-Fascism’, and Ideational Mobilities in Interwar Europe,” in Beyond the Fascist Century: Essays in Honour of Roger Griffin, ed. Constantin Iordichi and Aristotle Kallis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 73–100.

80 On the concept of power flowing downwards, from God, through state leadership, and finally to be appreciated by the people, see Emmerich Tálos and Walter Manoschek, “Aspekte der politischen Struktur des Austrofaschismus,” in Tálos and Neugebauer, eds., Austrofaschismus, 125. The preamble to the May 1934 Constitution boldly invoked the “name of God, the Almighty, from whom all rights stem” to explain its foundations in corporatism and its “Christian, German nature.” “Verfassung 1934,” reprinted in O. Ender, Die Neue Österreichische Verfassung mit dem Text des Konkordates Eingeleitet und erläutert von Bundesminister Dr. O. Ender (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag für Unterricht, Wissenschaft und Kunst, 1934), 33.

81 Tálos, Das austrofaschischistische Herrschaftssystem, 124.

82 Dollfuß's speech on 11 September 1933 used the word Bewegung to introduce the Fatherland Front. See excerpts reprinted in “Die überparteiliche Vaterländische Front,” Reichspost (September 1933), 3.

83 G. Moth, Neu-Österreich und seine Baumeister: Ziele und Aufbau der berufsständischen Ordnung und der Vaterländischen Front (Vienna: Steyrermühl, 1935), 42.

84 Charles Gulick, the American historian who documented the First Republic and the Ständestaat during the 1920s and 1930s, was told by his Austrian friends that the Fatherland Front membership cards and lapel pins were called “meal tickets” and “conscience worms,” meaning that membership in the Front was purely perfunctory and sometimes forced. See Gulick, Austria from Habsburg to Hitler Volume II: Fascism's Subversion of Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), 1485.

85 For an analysis of Dollfuß's continued presence in the political imaginary, including his uses for the current Austrian People's Party, see Lucile Dreidemy, Der Dollfuß-Mythos: Eine Biographie des Posthumen (Vienna: Böhlau, 2014).

86 Julie Thorpe, Pan-Germanism and the Austrofascist State, 1933–1938 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 5.

87 The oath was designed by the Tyrolean Home Guards leader Richard Steidle and claimed that “every [battle] comrade feels and understands himself as a bearer of the new German sense of the State: he is ready to dedicate possessions and blood, he recognizes the three mighty powers: belief in God, his own hard will, and the word of the Führer.” Reprinted in Bertrand Buchmann, Insel der Unseligen: Das autoritäre Österreich, 1933–1938 (Vienna: Molden, 2019), 41.

88 On the development of the OSS, see Florian Wenninger, “Dimensionen organisierter Gewalt. Zum militärhistorischen Forschungsstand über die österreichische Zwischenkriegszeit,” in Wenninger and Dreidemy, eds., Das Dollfuß/Schuschnigg Regime, 493–576.

89 English chronicler of the First Republic's demise G. E. R. Gedye wryly reported on the array of militia uniforms on display in Ständestaat celebrations. See Fallen Bastions: The Central European Tragedy (London: Victor Gollancz, 1939), 89. I am grateful to Béla Rásky for calling this source to my attention.

90 The Christmas 1935 Wiener Zeitung edition enumerated these figures in a rapturous report enumerating posters, brochures, radio addresses, and newsreels shown in movie theatres. See Stackl, Hans Becker 05, 131.

91 See for example the organizational maps, duty lists, and hierarchy explanations in OeSTa (AdR) Sonderarchiv Moskau Serie 514/1/2189-514/1/2197, Karton 277.

92 The Ständestaat was weakened by the July Accords with Germany in 1936, which amnestied some Austrian National Socialists and carved out space for others to serve in the administration in return for Hitler's recognition of Austrian sovereignty. When Hitler broke this agreement in a meeting with Schuschnigg in February 1938, Schuschnigg initially capitulated but then organized a plebiscite designed to maintain independence. Hitler invaded Austria the day before it was scheduled to take place. A journalistic narration of the collapse can be found in Eugene Lennhoff, The Last Five Hours of Austria (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1938). I am grateful to Alys X. George for introducing me to this text.

93 For Second Republic continuities with para-fascist identity-building and the important and often economically-inflected differences, see Peter Thaler, The Ambivalence of Identity: The Austrian Experience of Nation-Building in a Modern Society (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2001).