The Tragic Death of the Habsburg Empire
James Kurth (MA 49:4, Fall 2007) - 03/26/08
As the twentieth century recedes ever further into the past, we are able to discern its nature and its meaning with a clearer, and a deeper, understanding. And we can see that its length as defined by its meaningful substance was slightly different than its length as defined by calendar years. Historians have often referred to the previous century as “the long nineteenth century,” lasting from 1789 to 1914 or from the French Revolution to the First World War. So too, they are coming to think of the twentieth century as “the short twentieth century,” extending from 1914 to 1989 or from the First World War to the end of the Cold War.1
The Twentieth Century and Central Europe
The short twentieth century was not kind to Europe, and it was especially cruel, even catastrophic, for Central Europe or Mitteleuropa. It has been said of Central Europe that it produced too much history for it all to be consumed locally. Throughout the short twentieth century, conflicts that began in Central Europe had a way of quickly spilling over into the rest of Europe and then into the rest of the world, particularly into the two world wars.2 Moreover, the conflicts in Central Europe did not just spread far; they also burnt deep. The sheer number of violent deaths in the region as a result of its wars and revolutions was greater than in any period there since the catastrophic Thirty Years War (1618–48). And at the burning core of all this death and destruction, this murder and mayhem, was the Holocaust, the greatest genocide in history. Most of the deaths of the Holocaust occurred within the lands of Mitteleuropa.3
At the end of this terrible short twentieth century, of course, a redemption of sorts at last came to this torn and tragic region. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, a certain amount of peace and prosperity at last returned to Mitteleuropa and indeed the region could once again be seen explicitly as Central Europe and a part of all of Europe, and not just as Eastern Europe, dragged to the east after 1945 by an eastern (and in some respects even Asian) empire which ruled over and repressed it.4
But it was on the eve of this terrible short twentieth century, of course, that not just peace and prosperity, but the most spectacular vitality and creativity had come to Mitteleuropa and especially to its capital, the legendary, fin de síècle, Vienna. A very good case can be made that the cultural achievements of Mitteleuropa in the generation before the First World War reached a height of imagination and excellence that has never been surpassed.5
From the perspective of scholars and academics, Central-European innovations in the social sciences—particularly sociology, psychology, and economics—were probably the most important, and even foundational. The great complexity and pressing diversity in the social structure and social conflicts of the Habsburg Empire made it the most fertile setting in the world for the development of social inquiry. Even more importantly, however, the high standards and rigorous discipline of the Habsburg educational system enabled this social inquiry to become excellent social science.