When a highly respected Austrian historian condenses decades of research into a voluminous study that defines itself as a history of Austria from prehistoric times to the present, interest runs high. Indeed, the book was presented to the public in the Austrian parliament by the country's speaker of the house. The preface already alerts to the challenges of the project by tracing the complex history of the designation Austria, or Österreich. The territory covered by the term has varied substantially during the many centuries since it first surfaced in the now iconic Ostarrîchi document of 996. A designation that originally referred to a tiny Bavarian border district eventually denoted one of Europe's largest multilingual empires, only to contract again to its current association with a small, Alpine, German-speaking but self-contained republic.
The author came well prepared for his daunting task. In his Sozialgeschichte Österreichs (1985 and 2001), he had investigated this important segment of Austrian history. His numerous publications on Austrian nation formation covered another pivotal field of investigation. Even though the new study is primarily a political and social history, economic and cultural developments are addressed as well, the latter with a special focus on architecture, art, and literature. The reliance on sporadic in-text references rather than regular notes suggests a general rather than scholarly audience. The closer we get to current affairs, the more the author engages in stimulating asides, which also would have profited from formal documentation. Interspersed recollections from a lifetime of experience within the society examined add a personal touch.
The study presents itself as a comprehensive history of the area covered by the modern republic in the longue durée. Its focus lies on the newer periods, however. The combined space devoted to antiquity and the Middle Ages amounts to approximately 130 pages and consequently only exceeds the more than one hundred pages allotted to the—admittedly long—reign of Emperor Francis Joseph by around a quarter. It is informative to follow the author's choice of banner illustrations for individual sections of the book. The late Middle Ages are introduced by a portrait of Duke Rudolph IV of Habsburg, the originator of the fanciful privilegium maius that used to be cited as evidence of Austria's early separation from the Holy Roman Empire. The early modern period is personified by Emperor Ferdinand II, who completed the Habsburg Counter Reformation. The eighteenth century is embodied by Maria Theresa and the nineteenth by Chancellor Metternich and Emperor Francis Joseph; the interwar First Republic by the prelate and politician Ignaz Seipel. In combination, these personalities merge into a coherent image of Austria's Catholic-Conservative tradition; only the introductory and concluding chapters employ a more diverse pictorial expression.
Bruckmüller assigns the origins of a self-aware Austrian nation, for which he in some respect also wanted to compose a national history, to the decades following World War II. Consequently, he struggles to find a name for the German-speaking Austrians in their long history prior to the small Austrian republic and the subsequent formation of a distinct Austro-nationalism. He is cognizant of the fact that they, and especially their neighbors, simply used the term “German.” At times, Bruckmüller accepts and adopts this terminology (401, 436). Often, he feels most comfortable putting the designation in quotation marks (476, 519), and yet other times he resorts to late twentieth-century formulations such as “Germans and Austrians” to describe historic German commonalities (299). In the end, he remains ambivalent about projecting Austro-nationalism back into an era that did not know it. This theoretical ambiguity is regrettable because Bruckmüller makes highly elucidating observations on this very topic, not least of all the seemingly paradoxical but astute observation that there arose two distinct German nations in the late 1800s: one in the German empire and one in the Habsburg monarchy.
Bruckmüller easily confirms his status as one of the most knowledgeable experts on Austrian history. Even if his own ideological orientation remains visible, he soberly acknowledges historical developments that challenge its core tenets. Minor oversights such as the listing of Tirol among the few monolingual crownlands of the monarchy are easily forgiven in such a voluminous work (326). When the author moves beyond specifically Habsburg history, he sometimes become less sure-footed, resulting in such imprecisions as the assumption that the conflict in Schleswig-Holstein in 1863–64 was primarily caused by a transfer of the duchies to Denmark following the extinction of the ruling family (378). In view of the author's well-established expertise on this subject, his concluding section on Austrian nation building slightly disappoints with a rather narrow focus on select incidents from the middle of the twentieth century.
On the whole, Bruckmüller's new history of Austria leaves an equivocal impression. The volume is full of information, most of it pertinent and reliable, some of it also thought-provoking and original. Yet it is also a work in search of a clear identity. The desire to include as much information as possible prevents factual abundance from developing into a seamless narrative. However, this limitation as a unified grand synthesis may simultaneously reinforce the study's value as a textbook and reference guide.
