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    Xenophobe's Guide to the Austrians
    Xenophobe's Guide to the Austrians
    Xenophobe's Guide to the Austrians
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    Xenophobe's Guide to the Austrians

    By Louis James

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    About this ebook

    A guide to understanding the Austrians that delves into the cultural curiosities and peculiar characteristics of this land-locked nation  

    "The Austrian needs lots of persuading to have his traditions tampered with in the name of modernization and efficiency. He is attached to his sausage, his insipid beer, and the young white wine that tastes so remarkably like iron filings. He prefers the familiar, tried, and tested to the novelty, the latter almost certainly being an attempt by persons unknown to make money at his expense."

     

    "Home life for the Austrians is a never-ending quest for Gemütlichkeit or coziness, which is achieved by accumulating objects that run the gamut from the pleasingly aesthetic to the mind-blowingly kitsch."

     

    "In Austria detonating pretension is a national pastime. It has to do with attitudes to power that date back to an absolutist form of government and with the self-irony developed by people who were (or thought they were) more talented than the authority to which they had to defer."

     

    "The paradoxical character of the Austrian mingles profoundly conservative attitudes with a flair for innovation and invention. This creative tension usually takes the form of official obstructionism to good ideas, but sometimes the other way round. For example, the population were outraged by Josef II's attempt to make them adopt reusable coffins with flaps on the underside for dropping out the corpses. (The Emperor was forced to retreat, grumbling as he did so about the people's wasteful attitude.)"
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOval Books
    Release dateMay 1, 2011
    ISBN9781908120069
    Xenophobe's Guide to the Austrians

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      Book preview

      Xenophobe's Guide to the Austrians - Louis James

      Americans.

      Nationalism & Identity

      Forewarned

      A great deal of ink has been spilt in Austria agonizing about Austrian identity. Does it actually exist? Should it exist? Is it expanding or diminishing? Is it drawn from the past only, or will it emerge in the future? Hypochondriacs worry about their ailments; Austrians worry about their identity.

      Hypochondriacs worry about their ailments; Austrians worry about their identity.

      Austrian identity is suspended somewhere between imperial history and parochial loyalties. ‘In other countries,’ writes an English historian, ‘dynasties are episodes in the history of the people; in the Habsburg Empire, peoples are a complication in the history of the dynasty.’ The Republic of Austria only came into being in 1918 after the individual nations of the Habsburgs’ Austro-Hungarian Empire became independent; as Clemenceau rather brusquely put it: ‘L’Autriche, c’est ce qui reste’, i.e. ‘Austria consists of what was left over.’

      How others see them

      A German historian once remarked a trifle ungraciously that Bavarians were the missing link between Austrians and human beings. He obviously forgot that the ancient Austrians actually came from Bavaria, give or take a few Alemanni.

      The German view of Austrians has not mellowed with the passing of time. Hordes of Germans certainly come to beautiful Austria for skiing, hiking and sex; even the huge former German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, used to spend his summer vacation at the Austrian lakes, trying unsuccessfully to lose weight. Unfortunately, this tended to reinforce the image of Austria as a place where you go when you are not being entirely serious, and of the Austrians as a not entirely serious people.

      "The Germans feel that the Austrians have a tendency to Schlamperei (sloppiness or muddle)."

      The Germans feel that the Austrians, especially the Viennese, have a tendency to Schlamperei (sloppiness or muddle), which the locals do not seem to view as a failing. (This characteristic was described by a more tolerant Englishman as ‘a sort of laziness, an easy-going spirit which quickly degenerates into slackness. It is shared by the highest and the lowest, causing the former to lose battles, the latter to forget errands.’)

      The German view of Austrian incompetence is no doubt rooted in history, for the Habsburg armies lost battles to the Prussians with monotonous regularity. The greatest catastrophe was Königgrätz (Sadowa, 1866), when Austrian soldiers rendered every possible assistance to the opposition’s artillery by sporting decorative white uniforms, and the Austrian generals could not comprehend why the enemy consistently refused to adhere to the battle plan which they had patiently worked out in elegant manœuvres at home. As one commander plaintively remarked after the defeat: "It always worked so well on the Schmelz (then the military parade and exercise ground in Vienna)." Germans are mystified by the Austrians’ delight in telling this story against themselves. To a Prussian, self-irony about military defeats is a self-indulgence only too likely to lead to more of them.

      The Austrian generals could not comprehend why the enemy consistently refused to adhere to the battle plan which they had patiently worked out.

      Another German observation concerns the legendary (and largely mythical) Austrian meanness, the implication being that at least one nation is even more careful with money than are the Germans themselves. A man from Münich gives a lift home to a Viennese. The Viennese does not offer to pay for petrol; what is more, he demands that they make an enormous detour to include the suburb of a town where he claims to have business. When they get there, it turns out he has 12 returnable bottles in the boot of the car. An advertisement in a Viennese paper had alerted him to the fact that a shop in this suburb pays 5 cents more for empties than anywhere else in Vienna. Seeing the look on the face of his German friend, he hastily offers to pay for the extra petrol. In the end he pays the equivalent of 36 Euros to save 60 cents.

      The Hungarians have learnt to regard their neighbours with some affection, particularly the proprietors of cut-price computer shops and used car lots. Budapestians live in daily expectation, or at least hope, of a wall of money from Austrian investors. Border villagers put up signs, with inscriptions in German, advertising hairdressers, dentists and more arcane wares.

      An Austrian marrying into the controlled hysteria of a Hungarian family finds it is just like being at home, only more so.

      Whatever the economic situation, Austro-Hungarian liaisons still occur. The substantial areas of common ground between the two usually ensure that they function well. An Austrian marrying into the controlled hysteria of a Hungarian family finds it is just like being at home, only more so, and a Hungarian finds that his Austrian in-laws cook mountains of heavy, calorie-rich food and force him to eat every scrap of it, just like his mother.

      Austrians and Hungarians are not divided by a common language, as are Austrians and Germans, or English and Americans. The Hungarian therefore learns German, which for him is the language of money and career advancement, and charms everybody with his picturesque vowels and quaint Magyar idioms. None of his Austrian in-laws is so foolish as to attempt Hungarian which everyone knows is impossible, and he can thus continue to speak uninhibitedly on the family phone to his dodgy business friends in Budapest.

      How they see others

      One part of the Austrian psyche is ready to assume that a German scholar carries more weight than an Austrian.

      Austrians are deeply ambivalent about the Germans, undecided as to whether they should be portrayed as potential saviours or potential conquerors. It is impossible to ignore entirely the creeping Germanisation of the economy. (Large

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