Even as recently as 2011, in the wake of Otto Habsburg's death, Austrians have contested the place of the monarchy in Austrian identity.Footnote ¹ For many, the Habsburg monarchy represents a defining feature of Austria's past glory. Dating from late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the earliest examples of an “Austrian myth” stressed the unifying function of the Habsburgs in Mitteleuropa and the importance of German and Catholic traditions for the advancement of European culture.Footnote ² This nostalgic view tended to overlook the myriad problems of the late imperial period—ethnonationalist tensions, declining imperial might, undemocratic government, social unrest. Not surprisingly, many of the earliest proponents of a distinct, pro-Habsburg and non-German Austrian identity—which emerged after the Great War—were Catholic conservatives who wished to create an animating myth for Austrian Germans that would distinguish them from Prussians.Footnote ³ This became increasingly important after the establishment of the Austrian Republic, when many of these individuals pressed for a restoration of the Habsburg Kaiser and a return to the prewar status quo.

This paper examines the most important group of Austrian monarchists from the interwar era, die Österreichische Aktion, arguing that monarchism—even in its most moderate variations—contributed significantly to the radicalization of First Republic politics and the rise of Austrian authoritarianism in the 1930s.Footnote ⁴ The analysis situates die Aktion in multiple contexts. First, it locates the movement in the economic, social and political developments of the immediate postwar era. For conservative intellectuals, the First Republic – with its secular constitution, high middle-class unemployment, divided politics and diminished geopolitical importance – became a ready target for their dissatisfaction. This led to various restorationist and revanchist proposals. Second, it places monarchism within Austrian and European intellectual trends. Although they presented themselves as political outsiders and intellectual innovators, die Aktion did not occupy a fringe position in the ideological field of interwar Austria. In academic societies like the Leo-Gesellschaft (LG), in fraternities like the Deutsche Studentenschaft, and in journals like Das neue Reich and Die schönere Zukunft, they built bridges with other radical conservatives, both within Catholic and German nationalist circles. Common ground existed based on their authoritarian, anti-Republican, anti-socialist, and anti-Semitic worldview. Most interestingly, the commitment to a “non-nationalist” Austrian nationalism, centered on the Habsburg Reich, allowed them to meet many Austrian German nationalists halfway on the “German question.” Their idea of the Reich differed little from those of conservatives across central Europe and offered a new, unifying “Austrian myth” that prevented reconciliation with the new state of affairs in Europe.Footnote ⁵ This emphasis on a particular interpretation of Habsburg and German history showed the monarchists’ attempt at a palingenetic nationalist tradition of their own, one in line with efforts by other fascist movements of the era.Footnote ⁶ Internationally, die Österreichische Aktion's objection to political parties and liberal democracy and its calls for a restoration of past Austrian greatness drew directly from the Action Française's. Their frequent, favorable references to Mussolini's revolution in Italy likewise signaled their political allegiance. Within the Catholic context, their interpretation of recent papal encyclicals on political and social reform placed them on the radical end of the religious community. The stridency of their demands therefore reflected the general radicalization of Catholic politics in the first decades of the twentieth century across Europe.Footnote ⁷

This reading of die Österreichische Aktion challenges prevailing interpretations of the movement, which have centered on the monarchists' embrace of an illiberal “Catholic internationalism”,Footnote ⁸ their idiosyncratic and inconsistent Romanticism,Footnote ⁹ and their “modernism”,Footnote ¹⁰ as demonstrated by their staunch anti-Nazism.Footnote ¹¹ Despite post-Anschluss assertions about their ideological moderation, the writings and actions of these monarchists during the First Republic attest to their anti-republican, anti-Semitic, and authoritarian worldview. Moreover, this presentation of the close affinity between the nationalists and Catholics upsets the standard historiography of First Republic Austria. Dating to Adam Wandruszka's seminal essay, historians have represented interwar Austrian politics, society and culture using a three Lager model: a Christian Social-conservative,Footnote ¹² socialist, and (German) nationalist. Wandruszka characterized this division as stable throughout the First Republic; it was the “natur- oder gottgewollten Dreiteilung Österreichs.”Footnote ¹³ Despite clear divisions within each camp, this model has gone relatively unchallenged.Footnote ¹⁴ Subsequent Austrian scholarship has stressed division over similarity: “Red Vienna” against a “black” countryside; “brown” Nazis against the Austrian state.Footnote ¹⁵ This emphasis on difference over similarity largely derives from a post-Anschluss historical understanding, with the 1938 union overshadowing interwar Austrian history.Footnote ¹⁶ The subsequent analysis shows that Austrian conservative intellectuals of the First Republic formed a coherent oppositional ideological space, designed to crush the socialists and subvert the political and cultural order.Footnote ¹⁷ Catholic conservatives like die Aktion and German nationalists like Othmar Spann, Heinrich von Srbik, and Hans Eibl belonged to the same societies, published in the same weeklies, and attended the same events, forming a unified “Black Viennese” field, countering the socialist “reds”.Footnote ¹⁸ While hardly monolithic, this cultural field was more integrated than has been assumed, especially before 1933.

Die Aktion serves as a pivot for understanding Black Vienna. While not wholly comfortable in any “camp”, members of die Aktion moved fluidly across a larger ideological space. Claiming political neutrality as long as the Republic existed, the monarchists stood aside and rejoiced as the First Republic collapsed and accepted positions in the Austro-Fascist state. Their famous “split” from the national Lager only occurred after the Austrians had developed an authoritarian movement of their own.Footnote ¹⁹ A closer look at the ideology and activities of Austrian monarchists demonstrates the need for a careful reconsideration of the role of politics and religion for conservative intellectuals in Austria, as scholars of Germany, Spain, Hungary, France, and Italy have done. In conjunction with other ideological and political developments elsewhere, Austria's “new Right”Footnote ²⁰ figured prominently in the Europe-wide authoritarian turn of the interwar era.Footnote ²¹

***

Consisting of five main activists – August Maria Knoll, Alfred Missong, Wilhelm Schmid, Ernst Karl Winter, and Hans Karl Zessner-Spitzenberg – die Österreichische Aktion coalesced as a movement in 1926 and 1927. Envisioned as a complement to the Church's Catholic Action programs for social reform and as an Austrian analogue to the Action Française, the members advocated for the restoration of the Habsburg monarchy under Emperor Otto and the establishment of a cultural and political union of the traditional crown lands of Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, and Poland. The popularity of this movement derived from the political and cultural landscape of the early Republic, which encouraged new thinking about traditional concepts like legitimacy, monarchy, and authority. The “new” conservatism of die Aktion developed as much as a response to the Great War and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire, as it was a restatement of traditional values. Die Aktion sought stability in a time where a wholesale return to the status quo was not a possibility. As Winter put it, die Aktion's new conservatism rested on a realist's understanding of the present and an active concern for the future: “The future belongs to historically and sociologically consequential Conservatism, which knows what it wants and what the present needs, a Conservatism which…has the courage ‘to stand with the right and think with the left,’ that is, to be rooted in Tradition and yet to accommodate the demands and needs of the times, as leftist as they may seem, in the name of Tradition.”Footnote ²² Interpreting this radical, new form of conservatism, dedicated to a “European idea” of international peace and a “social idea” of rights and justice requires a close examination of the historical and ideological circumstances of die Aktion's emergence in postwar Austria.

Defeated on the battlefield in October 1918, the leaders of the Austro-Hungarian state struggled to hold together the dozen or so nationalities of the EMPIRE. As the empire's fortunes diminished, politicians across the spectrum explored a variety of state forms to stave off revolution.Footnote ²³ Emperor Karl issued a manifesto on October 16, reshaping the Empire into a federation of autonomous nation-states. By the end of the month, however, Czechoslovakia, Galicia, and several southern Slavic territories withdrew from the union. On November 11 Karl renounced his political claims and the following day the Republik Deutschösterreich was declared. A year later, the Treaty of Saint-Germain rendered Austria a rump state, severed from its former industrial holdings in Bohemia and Moravia, its agricultural wealth in Hungary and its natural resources in Galicia. From its inception, many doubted the viability of the new state.

More than merely questioning the Lebensfähigkeit of the fledging republic, Austrian conservatives rallied to the aid of the Habsburg dynasty, while simultaneously decrying the new state. On 1 October 1918 the publicist Joseph Eberle introduced a new intellectual journal, die Monarchie.Footnote ²⁴ In the journal's first edition, the editors stated the paper's mission as Catholic and monarchist: “This periodical sees its main mission as: intensive discussion of general cultural questions from the Christian [i.e. Catholic] standpoint; discussion of current questions of religion and church, science, literature and art…which serve to strengthen the Christian position. …Die Monarchie advocates an internally secure and outwardly strong Austria-Hungary.”Footnote ²⁵ The editors crafted a diffuse program, accounting for the shifting political landscape. This mission included a clear restorationist impulse. With the chances of a renewed monarchy remote, the paper changed names to one that reinforced the irredentist mission of its contributors: Das neue Reich. Eberle argued “for a Christian monarchy, against a Jewish republic” in the first edition after the November Revolution. The paper advanced the idea of a “United States of Austria” under Habsburg leadership.Footnote ²⁶ The editors clarified that they remained committed to their “ideal of state administration and state leadership,” i.e. monarchy.Footnote ²⁷ The paper served as the fulcrum for conservative intellectual discussions in early postwar Austria, attracting an eclectic mix of monarchists, conservatives and German nationalists. The founders of die Aktion emerged from this cultural milieu.

Ernst Karl Winter and Hans Karl Zessner-Spitzenberg contributed to the earliest editions of Das neue Reich, advocating the restoration of Emperor Karl and denouncing the influence of Jews on the new, illegitimate Austrian state. Winter, born in 1895 in Vienna, was raised in the German nationalist and Catholic social reform movement associated with the rabid anti-Semite Anton Orel. While at the University of Vienna, he joined the Catholic fraternity Nibelungia, founded by the archaeologist and race theorist Oswald Menghin. Winter studied under Othmar Spann, the noted universalist philosopher. In these contexts, he developed a radical social critique that centered on anti-Semitism and central European unity. Winter's essays reflected his love of the Romantic era and his fear of the decline of modern civilization. He wrote about the significance of a unified Mitteleuropa – one including Germany and France – that could stave off the Asiatic Russian “barbarian” and materialistic British shopkeeper (Händler).Footnote ²⁸ He rejected modern capitalism as a product of Renaissance humanism and Enlightenment individualism, both the work of the Jewish people.Footnote ²⁹ Invoking a litany of Catholics, nationalists, and anti-Semites, from the Austrian dramatist Richard Kralik and the German sociologist Werner Sombart to the French historian Ernst Renan and the British author Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Winter presented a distinctive worldview. Opposed to the crass nationalism and “Prussianism” of the nineteenth century, he maintained that only a Mitteleuropa based on a pre-Enlightenment Habsburg model could unify Europa. Despite this argument for toleration and international understanding, he nevertheless espoused pernicious anti-Semitic ideals, lamenting the deleterious effect of “racial Jews” (Rassenjude), Jüdlinge, and Mischlinge on the infested Aryan population.Footnote ³⁰ Though these views hardly distinguished Winter from many other intellectuals of the period, their stridency attest to the immoderation of his ideas.Footnote ³¹

In his first essays, Zessner-Spitzenberg presented a more reasoned assessment of contemporary developments, arguing the case for a “democratic people's state (Volksstaat) with a monarch at its head.” Ten years Winter's senior, the Bohemian-born Zessner-Spitzenberg studied jurisprudence at Charles University and was a member of the Catholic umbrella organization, the Cartellverband (CV). He served in three governmental positions under the old monarchy and would become a constitutional adviser during the Republic. He drew on these experiences in preaching moderation. Nevertheless he expressed strong reservations about the new state. He lamented that the Austrian people had not had the opportunity to vote via referendum on their desired state form. Like Winter, he asserted the Habsburg's unifying and civilizing mission in Mitteleuropa. Contrary to his later anti-Anschluss views, he viewed a federated union with Germany as a potential positive development. After nearly a century of Prussian domination of German affairs, “the time has come, where the more adaptable southern Germans…must bring their true German ideas of peaceful cultural exchange and combination (Kulturdurchdringung, Kulturverknüpfung) to the people of the east.”Footnote ³² Austria, as the Ostmark, was a vital part of the greater German nation, fully prepared to assume its pride of place through a process of cultural imperialism.

Despite invocations of Christian democratic values, Zessner-Spitzenberg fundamentally rejected the liberal democratic state. The product of the “victory of freemasonry” and “materialistic-plutocratic republicans,” the new republic affronted Christian values. “Social monarchy” was the best alternative to the atheistic “rule of the streets” and the “rule of the greedy.” This entailed the re-installation of the Kaiser as a people's tribune (Volkstribun), who would stand above classes and interests and rule autocratically. Only social monarchy could overcome the unruly, terroristic masses of modern democracy and represent the “true Christian majority” of a Catholic monarchist state by authoritarian means. While Zessner-Spitzenberg's ideas tended toward older pro-monarchist, Christian Social views, he recognized that a simple return was no longer possible. A direct confrontation with the new political order was necessary.Footnote ³³

Winter and Zessner-Spitzenberg sharpened their respective critiques of the Austrian state and intensified their call for a restored monarchy in the coming years. They responded directly to the disappointment, shared by most Austrian conservatives, with the republic, the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919, and the prohibition of an Anschluss with Germany. The disavowal of monarchy and the commitment to a secular form of popular sovereignty in the Austrian constitution exacerbated their anger.Footnote ³⁴ They questioned the legitimacy of the new state while examining the permissible grounds for resistance against its legal authority. Winter posited two forms of opposition: passive, which constituted non-conformism and civil disobedience (Nichtbefolgen), and active, consisting of willful actions directed against the state (Widerstreben). Citing Thomas Aquinas, Winter argued that “a defensive or active resistance of this sort is no revolt, no revolution, but the emergency defense of the collective…A tyrannical regime is not right because it is not oriented to the common good but to the private well-being of those with power.”Footnote ³⁵ Winter alluded to the tyrannical potential inherent in mass democracy and asserted that only authoritarian rulers go beyond the egotistic self-interest of a nation's population to tend to the commonweal.Footnote ³⁶

Zessner-Spitzenberg's distaste for democracy was even more evident. He claimed his objection to the republic derived more from historical grounds than religious and philosophical ones. On the first anniversary of the November Revolution, he attacked the Republic as an “empty void” (ein leeres Nichts). Referencing the Treaty of St. Germain and the League of Nations, Zessner-Spitzenberg castigated the Entente and the world conspiracies of Jews and Masons: “With hate-filled consequences the Jewish-Masonic world league has slandered, undermined, and deformed the hated Christian Austria with its mission of unifying and reconciling peoples.”Footnote ³⁷ How such vitriol could unify and reconcile remains an open question. This revanchist commentary bears strong resemblances to the work of the Viennese philosopher and German nationalist Hans Eibl, with whom Zessner-Spitzenberg interacted in the Social Science branch of the LG. Both men believed that once the peoples of the former Empire realized what they had lost, “a new Austria would be created by the people, out of a consciously turbulent will, through strenuous effort and experience.”Footnote ³⁸ Alternately vengeful and nostalgic, Zessner-Spitzenberg only grudgingly accepted the new state. Ironically, he invoked the liberal right to free speech to defend his illiberal position: he was not necessarily advocating for a “putsch, rebellion, or counter-revolution”; he merely wanted to “persuade” Austrians of an authoritarian course.Footnote ³⁹

The appeal to public opinion and procedural democracy did not satisfy Zessner-Spitzenberg; to maintain conservative support for the republic, he demanded authoritarian reforms to the constitution. Contrary to later contentions, these demands were not calls for decentralization or local autonomy, but for centralized authority. Shortly after the grand coalition of the Social Democrats and the Christian Socials collapsed in August 1920, Zessner-Spitzenberg argued that a new government would never succeed without a strong president, elected independently by the people, who would preside over legislative affairs and break parliamentary impasses. He likely had in mind a provision similar to Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. Although his rhetoric hearkened back to the Middle Ages and the decentralized rule of the Holy Roman Emperors, in praxis a strong Caesarist executive was required, one who could flout democracy in the name of the people's will. This new ruler could furthermore undertake a comprehensive corporative transformation of state and society:

These views situated Zessner-Spitzenberg squarely within the corporatist discourse of the period, which enjoyed particular appeal in central and Eastern Europe.Footnote ⁴¹ As political and economic conditions deteriorated in the early 1920s, Zessner-Spitzenberg grew more impatient: “The Austrian republic is no legitimate state! If we Catholics nevertheless respect and observe its organization, in no way do we accept its legitimacy.”Footnote ⁴² Catholics should openly declare themselves as “Legitimists” and act in ways that facilitated the correction of the break in legitimacy by aiding the return of the Kaiser.Footnote ⁴³ Zessner-Spitzenberg and the Legitimists consequently rejected Catholic involvement in the political parties of the First Republic. This rejection of parliamentarianism placed the future members of die Aktion and the legitimists closer to other radical rightists – especially those in the nationalist Lager – than the supporters of the democratic Christian Social party.Footnote ⁴⁴

These early political statements, which had an overtly radical intent, repeatedly invoked the criticisms used by the Viennese law professor Othmar Spann, situating these monarchists at the border between Catholic conservatives and German nationalists. Through the massive success of his book Der wahre Staat, Spann became arguably the most influential intellectual in interwar Austria, reaching into Catholic organizations and nationalist ones.Footnote ⁴⁵ His philosophy of totality (Ganzheitsphilosophie) stressed the need for hierarchical social and political organization. He condemned the ideas of liberalism, socialism, democracy and individualism as the fruits of the French Revolution and demanded an immediate return to corporate society under the leadership of a Führer. His intransigence regarding the new republic likewise steeled his fellow conservatives in their beliefs. Identified as a quintessential figure in the German national Lager, Spann attracted widespread support from Catholic conservatives and nationalists alike. At both the LG and the Deutsche Studentenschaft, Spann's lectures drew hundreds of people. As a matter of fact, Winter, August Maria Knoll and Alfred Missong studied under Spann and participated in his weekly seminar. Although Spann and the members of the Österreichische Aktion eventually opposed one another on National Socialism, they traveled a similar path of political and ideological engagement in the 1920s.Footnote ⁴⁶ They actively took up his concerns, modifying them to suit their monarchist needs.

Two major obstacles confronted the inchoate legitimist movement in 1922: the death of Kaiser Karl in April and Chancellor Ignaz Seipel's successful negotiation of a loan from the Entente in October. The latter stabilized the Austrian economy after a period of hyperinflation and lent credibility to the Christian Social-led government. The death of Karl cut more deeply, for the legitimists viewed him as the key to maintaining continuity with the former Empire. At the time of Karl's death, the rightful heir, Otto, was nine years old. While the idea of a child emperor would not have been problematic if the monarchists espoused a divine right model of legitimacy, their new model of “social monarchy” did not easily permit such an eventuality. The legitimate Kaiser was supposed to be the “people's tribune” in a complex modern state, who must conscientiously address the needs of a modern citizenry in a rationalized social order. Advocating for the installation of a nine year old smacked of absurdity.

In response to these developments, the discourse about the Reich fundamentally changed. Conservatives had invoked the Reich as much as a practical program as a Romantic one. The restoration of the Habsburgs did not necessarily entail a utopian return to the Holy Roman Empire. The Reich simply was not the Republic. After Karl's death, the Reich was re-imagined as an ideal, prelapsarian space free from the evils of the modern world. This retreat into the abstract profoundly altered the aspirations of the monarchists, allowing them to ignore current conditions and advocate radical social and political programs. This conceptual shift transformed the landscape of conservative Austria in the mid-1920s, driving a wedge between supporters of democracy and those with authoritarian and utopian predilections. The authoritarians, whether nationalist or Catholic, formed a unified cultural force and attracted the majority of Austrian intellectuals to their cause. Die Aktion was at the center of these developments.

Despite some difficulties, the field of conservative cultural production continued to increase its influence, as evident from its publications and associations. The LG had 2,500 members and included every Austrian chancellor of the First Republic (after Karl Renner) and Ständestaat, every rector of the University of Vienna, and the leaders of the CV and the Deutsche Studentenschaft. These numbers outstripped those of the leading socialist publications and societies, the membership of Freemason lodges and freethinking organizations, and even popular journals like Karl Kraus’ Die Fackel.Footnote ⁴⁷ Again, the LG was not solely a Christian Social organization, even though its origins largely coincided with the emergence of that movement. Prominent German nationalist scholars, including Spann and his Kreis, Menghin, the philosopher Hans Eibl and the historian Heinrich von Srbik regularly took part in the society's proceedings. Das neue Reich, where Winter, Zessner-Spitzenberg and Schmid published regularly, became the most read intellectual weekly in central Europe by the mid-1920s, attracting over 15,000 subscribers.Footnote ⁴⁸ Its contributors consisted of Austrian and German politicians and ministers, future Popes, and leading intellectuals from across the continent.

A tectonic shift shook the Austrian conservative cultural field in September 1925 when Eberle left Das neue Reich to begin a new paper, Die schönere Zukunft. This schism confronted intellectuals with a fateful choice about the direction of Austrian conservatism: should it be tied to political parties, working primarily within the system for incremental change or should it espouse radical transformations to state and society. These stakes became clear in the ensuing months, as tensions between Eberle and his publisher, the former Christian Social politician Aemilian Schoepfer, intensified.Footnote ⁴⁹ Eberle stated a desire to pursue a “greater mission” as the reason for his departure.Footnote ⁵⁰Die schönere Zukunft embraced a full break with democracy, abandoning the politics of the Christian Socials and distancing itself from the social activism of the Catholic Action for authoritarian and nationalist positions. Das neue Reich, behind Schoepfer and the Viennese theologian Johannes Messner, turned to the reformist tendencies of the Christian Socials and Catholic Action for a new base of intellectual support.

In short order, the more radical Schönere Zukunft displaced Das neue Reich as central Europe's conservative journal of choice – contributors, advertisers and readers all flocked to the journal. While Christian Social politicians wrote increasingly for Das neue Reich, intellectuals went with Eberle. Friedrich Funder, Eberle's former mentor, endorsed Die schönere Zukunft in Die Reichpost, the influential conservative daily that likewise built bridges between Catholic conservatives and German nationalists.Footnote ⁵¹ The exodus included the monarchists around Zessner-Spitzenberg and Winter, none of whom wrote for Das neue Reich again. Additionally, Die schönere Zukunft picked up radical nationalists – previous – from Austria and beyond. Béla Bangha, the rabid Hungarian prelate, and Ottakar Prohaszka, the bishop of Székesfehervár, wrote on the advances of the Horthy government over democracy. Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton had their anti-Semitic and illiberal books serialized. The German nationalist priest Alois Hudal began writing on race and religion. Austrian nationalists like Srbik, Eibl, and even the head of the Heimwehr, Ernst Starhemberg, figured prominently. Spann's school likewise contributed regularly.Footnote ⁵² These personalities complemented the old core of Eberle, the authors Richard Kralik and Hermann Bahr, and the politician Max Hussarek. This shifting of ideological boundaries demonstrated that ostensible borders between radical nationalists and conservatives were more porous than those between democrats and authoritarians. Both groups of intellectuals converged on a new, radical conservatism.

The radicalization of rhetoric was not restricted to these two papers, either: the largest academic societies likewise devoted themselves increasingly to radical goals. The Deutsche Studentenschaft advertised first with Das neue Reich but quickly switched allegiances to Die schönere Zukunft by 1927. Both the LG and the CV turned from discussions of Catholic doctrinal matters to political matters.Footnote ⁵³ After barely surviving the war, the LG regrouped by turning to Catholic scholars with German nationalist convictions, like Spann, Eibl, and the Germanist Josef Nadler.Footnote ⁵⁴ Eibl in particular provides a fascinating example of the interpenetration of the Catholic conservative and German nationalist rhetoric.Footnote ⁵⁵ In an article for the flagship journal of the LG, Eibl eviscerated the Paris Peace Accords, calling them “the greatest violation of human rights in history” from whose memory “future men will turn away with horror (Entsetzen) like one does from a torture chamber.”Footnote ⁵⁶ He argued for the Central Powers’ innocence in starting the Great War and for the humanitarian efforts of their armies in liberating Eastern Europe. In a sadly unironic statement of revisionist history, Eibl suggested that one group in particular owed Germans a debt of gratitude for its freedom: the Jews. “Jews from around the world should thank the German people, since they led eastern Jews out of the ghetto through their victory over the armies of the Czar…. the German people were the greatest liberators in this war.”Footnote ⁵⁷ In lectures at the LG, Eibl developed these ideas into a program for the creation of a “Third Reich.” Eibl has typically been characterized as a Brückenbauer between the German nationalists and the Nazis.Footnote ⁵⁸ He should also be considered a bridge builder between nationalist and Catholic intellectuals in Austria.

In examining Eibl's rhetoric, we see the strong affinities between his language and that of Zessner-Spitzenberg in his revisionist, anti-republican writings. Like many of their radical brethren, the monarchists of die Österreichische Aktion pursued their ideological program in these radicalized forums. Their ideas formed an integral part of Eberle's program for the creation of a “more beautiful future” and they eagerly participated in discussions with Spann and Eibl on the re-creation of a true German and Catholic Reich. Given their reputation for moderation or even “leftism”, what surprises is that die Aktion chose to ally with the radical intellectuals around Spann and Eberle rather than with Das neue Reich. After all, both Das neue Reich and die Aktion claimed to support the teachings of the Church. Winter asserted die Aktion's “parallelism to the Catholic Action,” invoking Pope Pius XI's call to lay Catholics to advance Catholic teachings in social matters. He also hearkened back to Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum and referenced the Catholic imperative to transform society and help the working classes.Footnote ⁵⁹ However, as the theologian Oswald Nell-Breuning noted, many Austrians misinterpreted these encyclicals, viewing them as calls for radical transformation and not gradual reform. Die Österreichische Aktion was guilty of this, too.Footnote ⁶⁰

These two competing interpretations of Catholic social theory derived from distinct traditions: Sozialpolitik and Sozialreform, with die Österreichische Aktion and Die schönere Zukunft representing the latter trend. Representatives of Sozialpolitik advocated for gradual change within the existing social and political order. They viewed the state form and the economic system as matters of indifference; their mission entailed spiritual reform in the direction of the Church. They permitted the formation of sectarian political parties and collaboration with non-Catholic organizations. An early exemplar was Bishop Wilhelm Ketteler, who participated in the Revolution of 1848 and pressed for reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants. His teachings shaped Leo XIII's pronouncements in Rerum Novarum.Footnote ⁶¹Sozialreform demanded a restoration of the organic order of the middle ages. The cornerstone of this approach was a return to corporate guilds and the end of modern capitalism. Sozialreform required a hierarchical social and political structure – in other words, no liberal democracy. The leading representative of Sozialreform (and one of the heroes of die Aktion) was Karl Vogelsang, the Catholic publicist and politician.Footnote ⁶² A neo-Romantic theorist and staunch anti-Semite, the Prussian-born Vogelsang provided Viennese anti-Semitism with cultural legitimacy. He aided significantly in the foundation of the Christian Social movement. By the end of his life, Vogelsang was an ideological mainstay in the Austrian capital, bringing together an eclectic assortment of reactionary Catholics and anti-Semitic nationalists.Footnote ⁶³

The decision by the members of die Österreichische Aktion to distance themselves from the Christian Social party and Das neue Reich makes more sense when viewed through the lens of Sozialreform. It also helps explain their idiosyncratic interpretation of the Catholic Action movement. For them, the Christian Social party had taken a wrong turn when it departed from Vogelsang's ideology and adopted Karl Lueger's more pragmatic program. “Above all Vogelsang was the creator of a social program, which most fully realized the Catholic-sociological tradition of the 19^th century…. In this sense one must work against the Lueger myth.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Lueger, generally credited as the mastermind behind the Christian Social movement, merely produced a reformist political party that lost sight of true Catholicism's social goals. As an homage to Vogelsang, Wilhelm Schmid named his monarchist journal, Das Vaterland, after Vogelsang's conservative newspaper, when he began publishing his journal in conjunction with the formation of die Aktion in 1927. Also because of Sozialreform tendencies, Winter and Zessner-Spitzenberg preferred to ally with “apolitical” (read, anti-democratic) thinkers than with Catholics of more moderate convictions.Footnote ⁶⁵ Given their ideological allegiance with Die schönere Zukunft and Sozialreform, it is best to assume a radical intent when considering their proposals.

This radical impulse accounts for the monarchists’ controversial name choice, for die Österreichische Aktion referenced the Catholic Action and, more significantly, Charles Maurras’ recently condemned Action Française. Declaring themselves a parallel movement to the Catholic Action – though explicitly not a subsidiary or an affiliate – allowed the Österreichische Aktion to maintain their Catholic bona fides even as their calls for an end to the republic ran counter to the pronouncements of the Church. Leo XIII's agnostic stance on the proper state form in Rerum Novarum Footnote ⁶⁶ and Pius XI's statements about the Catholic Action as a movement for social and educational reform in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio Footnote ⁶⁷ in no way conformed with the radicalism of the Aktion. By appealing to the integral nationalism and antidemocratic values of the Action Française, the Austrian monarchists found ideological support for their grander social and political aims from conservatives beyond strictly Catholic circles. Arguably Europe's first fascist movement,Footnote ⁶⁸ the Action Française wedded traditional monarchist ideas and contemporary integral nationalism into a novel political program. Under the leadership of Charles Maurras, the Action Française generated widespread support in France and other Catholic countries.Footnote ⁶⁹Die Österreichische Aktion saw itself as part of these developments.

Die Aktion chose an inopportune time to show their commitment to the Action Française program, for the Pope condemned Maurras and the Action Française for its instrumental Catholicism and its dangerous effect on Catholic youth. The Austrians’ decision to stick with their new name indicated that their political commitment to authoritarian monarchism and exclusionary nationalism at least equaled their allegiance to Catholic social theory. Moreover, in the wake of the tumultuous events of 1927 – the contentious April elections, the Palace of Justice fire in July, the rise of the authoritarian Heimwehr – the monarchists believed the timing propitious for a radical statement of aims. Nevertheless, Winter attempted to sidestep criticism from Catholics over their name choice by differentiating between the means and ends of the Action Française: the Church “has judged the theories of the Action Française in the here and now, not, however, the concept of French authoritarianism or legitimism.”Footnote ⁷⁰ Winter believed the Pope had condemned Maurras for his lack of Catholic conviction, not for his political or social goals. He did not elaborate on the problematic elements in the Action Française ideology; he simply maintained that those were not part of his movement's beliefs. This allowed the Österreichische Aktion to have its cake and eat it, too: it could appeal to Catholic conservatives while also reaching out to nationalists desirous of a new Reich in central Europe. This affiliation also suggests how the monarchists’ anti-nationalism and Europeanism must be read. When they rejected “nationalism”, they meant Prussian militarist and French liberal brands. Austrian imperialism did not fit that mold, squaring nicely with Maurras’ own historical and cultural understanding of the term.Footnote ⁷¹ In fact, die Aktion doubled down on French monarchism: Schmid, through Das Vaterland, forged connections with various Austrian youth movements that he hoped to form into a Vaterländische Aktion, channeling Maurice Barrès and the Ligue de la Patrie Française.Footnote ⁷²

The 1927 programmatic statement of the group demonstrates that their ideology aligned them with radical conservatives elsewhere in Europe and those in the Catholic and nationalist Lager in Austria. Their ecumenism allowed them to find continued support from the decidedly nationalist Eberle and Die schönere Zukunft, the Catholic CV and LG, and even Spann's circle. Given that all five members of die Aktion worked with Eberle through the end of the decade and three of them studied under Spann,Footnote ⁷³ it should come as no surprise that their ideas fit within this field. Their manifesto consisted of 14 essays – five by Winter, four by Zessner-Spitzenberg, three by Alfred Missong, and one each by Wilhelm Schmid and August Maria Knoll – and distilled their views on Austrian and European history and social and political theory. They called for the restoration of Austria to a position of prominence in the European community as a cultural and political bridge between east and west, Roman and Greek traditions, and German and Catholic heritages. In this manner, Austria would help Europe overcome the “barbarism of the Northeast,” i.e. Bolshevism, and the chauvinistic militarism and industrialism of Prussia.Footnote ⁷⁴ Despite their arguments against Prussian ethno-nationalism, the monarchists hardly relinquished their own brand of German nationalism for cosmopolitanism.Footnote ⁷⁵

Die Aktion's program rested on a particular understanding of German and Austrian history that chronicled the glories of the Holy Roman Empire and the gradual decline of Western Civilization since the Reformation. This effort walked a fine line between traditional anti-Jewish and xenophobic rhetoric and modern racial theory. The ethnographic work of Wilhelm Schmid and the anthropological studies of Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and Hermann Muckermann served as the foundations for their anthropology. Schmid and Muckermann, two noted Catholic race theorists, stressed that the northern race of Germans had inherited Greek culture and drove world history.Footnote ⁷⁶ Foerster emphasized the prehistoric unity of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary. Winter, Missong, and Schmid all employed racial categories in defending the superiority of Germans over others and in recognizing the importance of racial difference in creating a new organic European order. For die Aktion, the invasion of “Asiatic and African elements” set off an era of militarism and industrialism that destroyed the peaceful world of central Europe. These elements had a particular impact on northern Germanic culture, characterized by Armin of Westphalen's defeat of Marbod of Bohemia in 17 AD. Ever since, German history had been dominated by the militarism, nationalism and thoughts of Aryanism.Footnote ⁷⁷ On the other hand, the Habsburgs remained true to the pacifist, federalist and Roman traditions of Europe. They were the rulers who could unite the Romance west (France, Italy, and Spain) with the Habsburg center (Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia) and the Slavic East (Poland and Croatia).Footnote ⁷⁸ These thinkers emphasized the impossibility of reconciling Prussianism and Austrianism; Austria therefore carried the responsibility of uniting Europe under its cultural authority.Footnote ⁷⁹

The restoration of Habsburg greatness meant more than a restoration of the Habsburgs but also a return to the Counterreformation. Winter had been engaged in this “revision of the German historical concept” (Revision der deutschen Geschichtsauffassung) since the beginning of Republic, arguing (along with Richard Kralik) that Austrian history deserved priority in narratives of German history rather than Prussian events. It was the distinctively Catholic and conservative events of Austrian history that accounted for German greatness. This revisionist project received regular attention in the LG and Die schönere Zukunft in debates between Winter and the nationalist historians Eibl, Srbik, and the Graz Professor Raimund Kaindl, which transcended the ideological categories of the Lager.Footnote ⁸⁰ While these scholars differed greatly in their chosen points of emphasis, they all steered a course away from Prussian history and played up the importance of religion – particularly Catholicism – in German history. Even Srbik, undoubtedly the most nationalist of these historians, fully recognized that only an autonomous and fully integrated Austria could produce the renaissance of German culture he desired.Footnote ⁸¹ For die Aktion, the previous centuries represented a fall from grace, when Prussian ideas increasingly corrupted the purity of the Austrian idea. The Empire collapsed because the taint of Prussian nationalism had destroyed the unity of the Habsburg peoples by encouraging separatism. The Compromise of 1867, for example, had been a failure of liberal diplomacy, granting rights solely to Magyars and not to the other ethnic groups within the realm.Footnote ⁸² Only a return to the the Counterreformation and the Baroque could salvage central Europe. Die Aktion crafted a powerful palingenetic myth of Austrian greatness from Clovis through Charlemagne to the early Habsburgs in forming their program.

These historical and philosophical positions suggest a tolerant and internationalist approach to central European politics; however, tensions and ambiguities lurked close to the surface of this ideology. In discussing the unity of the Habsburg crownlands, the monarchists turned a blind eye to the experiences of non-German subjects, neglecting Mohács and White Mountain entirely. They disregarded the Hussite rebellion and Thirty Years’ War, instead portraying the Habsburg lands as eternally unified. Theirs was a distinctively German interpretation of central European unity, which left no room for pluralist views on national belonging. Rejecting the liberal rights tradition, they refused minority groups or individuals any protection under the law: “The transnational (übernationale) state knows no minorities and therefore no mere minority protections since it bestows or at least strives for equality for all participating minorities.”Footnote ⁸³ They did not recognize equality before the law, so guaranteed protections made little sense. Local autonomy, guaranteed by a strong emperor, sufficed to forestall minority issues.

Moreover die Aktion’s fundamental condemnation of all other forms of international cooperation, from the League of Nations to Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi's Paneuropa movement, belied their pacifist claims.Footnote ⁸⁴ The monarchists could not make peace with movements founded on liberal foundations that privileged economic and political factors over cultural, historical and religious ones. Alfred Missong, Othmar Spann's student and the editor of Die schönere Zukunft, argued the goal should not be equality among nations, but an organic grouping of unequal nationalities under the leadership of a Kaiser and the Catholic Church. There was no room for the “Jewish and Masonic” League of Nations: “The League should be rejected on fundamental sociological grounds as one rejects the modern parliamentary-democratic state. The same considerations however recognize it as a necessary evil to tolerate as one tolerates the democratic Republic of Austria.”Footnote ⁸⁵Die Aktion only abided international solutions (and their own Republic) until a time came when their “true state” could emerge.

To achieve their ends, die Aktion advanced a new form of conservatism “that has the courage to stand with the right and think with the left.”Footnote ⁸⁶ This clever formulation, which implied a commitment to Austrian tradition and a concern for modern social and ethnic issues, in fact masked the radical character of this movement. In contradistinction to Catholic social reformers who seriously addressed the problems of industrial society and negotiated the complex landscape of workers’ activities and ideology,Footnote ⁸⁷ these thinkers approached social problems with anachronistic, neo-Romantic conceptions of the economy. Their attempt to transcend the right-left divide of politics loosely resembled the “neither right nor left” quality of French and Italian Fascism, though it lacked the more overtly Marxist undercurrents of those developments.Footnote ⁸⁸ In fact, most members of die Aktion wrote enthusiastically about Mussolini and the Fascists, especially in Schmid's Vaterland. This support for “new conservative” movements eventually extended beyond the Fascists to the radical, antidemocratic branch of the Austrian Heimwehr, too.Footnote ⁸⁹

Die Aktion's idiosyncratic and fanciful concept of Entproletarisierung most clearly demonstrates their radical, quasi-fascist conservatism and their unwillingness to “think with the left.” Their proposals reveal a deficient understanding of modern industrial society and the possibility for creating a larger middle class within a corporate social structure. Zessner-Spitzenberg argued that the restoration of the Kaiser as the head of a “social monarchy” would correct the problems of modern society. He maintained that only autocrats could serve social justice since they stand above parties and interests. Zessner-Spitzenberg's concrete reform proposals indicated his lack of understanding of the actual conditions plaguing the working classes, i.e. unemployment, low wages, inflation, and a lack of protections from employers. His reforms centered on traditional family policies: every family should have a house; fathers should receive a family wage; women should not work outside the home; and small firms and artisans should receive favorable treatment. All of these aims, he asserted, were incompatible with democracy, requiring instead a strong authority figure. Overall he displayed a disdain for proletarian workers, accusing them of libertinism and contempt for tradition.Footnote ⁹⁰

Missong and Winter ventured similar proposals, which demonstrated a greater concern for restoring authority than aiding workers. For Missong, protecting people from falling into the industrial working class was the priority, not helping those already “lost” to that class.Footnote ⁹¹ To disarm the revolutionary, atheistic proletariat, a new kind of social politics was needed. Missong's program combined reactionary and fascistic elements into an expressly Austrian solution: saving and promoting small shopkeepers and artisans; building a “new middle class”; and requiring large industries to serve the public interest. Though he described this as a “kind of socialism,” his program reflected more closely the ideology of European national socialists, fascists, and syndicalists. Missong's friendly comments about fascism – in later years, he lauded the Italian movement in Dietrich Hildebrand's Der christliche Ständestaat – belied his socialist claims.Footnote ⁹² Meanwhile Winter identified the major problems for industrial workers as bound up with the collapse of authority and religion in the Austrian republic. The restoration of authority would solve the social question, the questions of sovereignty, legitimacy and state form.Footnote ⁹³ Winter makes no mention of improving working conditions, or granting protections against exploitation, unemployment or injury. The “leftist” proposals of die Aktion emphasize their authoritarianism more than their commitment to social justice.

Despite emphasizing the “spiritual, social, cultural and historical mission” of their movement, the members of the Aktion did not deny that their work also had a political aspect, encouraging the replacement of liberal nation-states with an authoritarian Reich.Footnote ⁹⁴ Zessner-Spitzenberg even endorsed a non-Habsburg dictator if it meant the restoration of the “Austrian idea”: “In case no royal house is available, then a dictator, provided he honestly strives for de-proletarianization…could be set up in the future.”Footnote ⁹⁵ These thinkers wanted to do away with the independence of the successor states and establish a “true state” under a Führer figure. While this position entailed a theoretical rejection of Anschluss with Germany, it was not as categorical as it was later portrayed. While denying the legitimacy of a unified German realm under Prussian leadership, die Aktion offered an alternative: “an absolute rejection of any Anschluss to Germany, as long as Austria is deprived of its transnational ties.”Footnote ⁹⁶ If Austria were to head the unification of central Europe, then an Anschluss would be permissible. All of these statements reveal that the Aktion desired not so much the end of nationalism or the promulgation of a cosmopolitan league of European nations but conservative hegemony within Austria and Mitteleuropa. These writings evince a will to power that went beyond mere cultural hegemony while also asserting a distinctive brand of nationalist, or imperial, internationalism. Finally, even though they still preferred monarchy to other state forms, die Aktion had opened the door to accommodation with other authoritarian forms, consistent with the work of other Viennese conservatives like Spann or Eibl.

Though die Aktion presented themselves as an isolated group of true conservatives, many Austrian and central European conservatives expressed similar nationalist viewpoints. In fact, their ideology enjoyed ready support from the Eberle and Spann circles and gained a wide hearing at the LG, where their movement originated, and the increasingly nationalist student fraternities of First Republic Austria. The Aktion’s position on Anschluss, often presented as their signature position, found resonance in the work of the nationalists Eibl, Srbik, Kaindl and other Catholic German supporters of Reichsgedanken, both in Austria and Weimar.Footnote ⁹⁷Die Aktion therefore represented a movement at the intersection of Catholic conservatism and German nationalism. Their ideas, combining nationalism, conservatism, and Catholicism, served as a focal point of a unified conservative field in interwar Austria and central Europe.

***

Despite increasing tensions, nationalist and Catholic conservatives remained largely unified in their antidemocratic and authoritarian ways through 1930/1931. The success of the Nazis in the 1930 election precipitated a schism within the conservative camp, yet it did not produce a renewed commitment to democratic Austria. Conservative intellectuals, including die Aktion, supported the increasingly authoritarian tenor of Austrian politics, as the government cracked down on socialists, liberals, and minorities, increased the authority of the Chancellor, and eventually suspended Parliament. In fact, die Aktion only engaged directly in politics after the suppression of democracy in March 1933. Subsequent calls by the monarchists for democracy and the reconciliation of classes under Austro-Fascism ring hollow given the ideological and political support the monarchists lent to the new government, which they declared “legitimate” despite the obvious parallels between its assumption of power and the “illegitimate” establishment of the Republic in 1918.Footnote ⁹⁸

Between 1927 and 1930, die Aktion expanded into a full-fledged movement, recruiting followers in periodicals, mobilizing the young, and establishing connections with Austrian and central European political causes. Editor Alfred Missong ensured his comrades appeared regularly in Die schönere Zukunft. This was the height of the popularity of the Eberle paper with a circulation of 25,000 weekly copies. Despite retrospective claims that he and Eberle differed in their orientations to Germany, Missong's output during this period does not confirm this.Footnote ⁹⁹ Missong published a fiery defense of Catholic anti-Semitism in 1928 that disavowed racial anti-Semitism, yet demanded a wholesale Christianization of society to stave off the threats of Judaism, liberalism and capitalism.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Zessner-Spitzenberg engaged in a renewed historical discussion with Eibl and Kaindl, affirming the role of Austria within the German cultural realm. Although he emphasized the religious and cultural contributions of Austria more than the others, his work fell within the mainstream of Austrian nationalist Reichsgedanken.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Wilhelm Schmid not only edited Das Vaterland but he also reached out to youth organizations throughout central Europe, seeking support for die Aktion. He successfully forged ties with Anton Orel's nationalist and anti-Semitic Bundesvereinigung der freien christlichen Jugend Österreichs, der Bund der deutschen katholischen Jugend Österreichs, and der Vaterländische Studentenbund Ostmark. These youth groups stressed the importance of German Catholic tradition in European culture. Das Vaterland provided opportunities to reach out to the monarchist branches of the Heimwehr and likewise propagated a new myth of the Austrian Heimat.Footnote ¹⁰² While nowhere near as popular as Die schönere Zukunft, the close affiliation with the latter paper boosted the prospects of Das Vaterland; the paper served as the mouthpiece of Austrian monarchism until 1938. Given all of these popular activities, their movement met with considerable popular success. They consequently established Die österreichische Aktion as an official association in 1930.Footnote ¹⁰³

The timing of this move proved inauspicious, for Austrian conservatism had reached a crossroads with the emergence of National Socialism. In the throes of the Great Depression, the Nazis made significant gains in Germany and Austria. German President Hindenburg suspended parliament and established the first of a series of authoritarian presidential regimes. The end of democracy in central Europe seemed near at hand. These developments forced Austrian conservatives to decide whether to make peace with National Socialism. The ensuing debates first centered on Othmar Spann.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ While Knoll and Winter attempted to form a common anti-capitalist and antidemocratic league with Spann, Orel and others,Footnote ¹⁰⁵ the Aktion members ran afoul of their Doktorvater. Despite attempts at reconciliation, Spann openly criticized Winter in 1929 and blocked his attempts to habilitate at the increasingly Nazified University of Vienna. A look at the habilitation records reveals that the rector of the university and key members of the law faculty agreed with Spann's position on Winter's political reliability.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Spurning Spann's suggestion that he contribute to an Austrian Nazi newspaper, Winter sealed his academic fate and began his anti-Nazi agitation.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

Relations between Missong and Eberle soured for similar reasons. In 1931 Eberle published a gently critical treatise on Hitler and National Socialism. Although he rejected the pagan and anticlerical elements in Nazi ideology and called for the overcoming of National Socialism, Eberle did not blame the Nazis for their radicalism. He saw them as a product of a degenerate time. Though he hoped that the Brüning government would radicalize its efforts to combat liberalism, socialism, and Judaism, he applauded the Nazis for forcing these issues to the fore.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Missong could not abide these views. Missong's Der Nazispiegel, one of the period's most incisive criticisms of the National Socialist movement,Footnote ¹⁰⁹ appeared pseudonymously, for Missong remained editor of Die schönere Zukunft until 1938. Missong thus began a shadow journalistic career, writing under various noms de plume in anti-Nazi publications.Footnote ¹¹⁰ It was only in this period between 1929 and 1931 when the culture and politics of the First Republic truly hardened into three distinct Lager.

With the exception of Winter, however, the conservative rupture did not lead to a reconciliation with pro-democratic forces. The members of die Aktion kept their distance from the Christian Social party until 1933, preferring to continue their two-front campaign against Marxism and Nazism – with Marxism still drawing the bulk of their attention. They did not side with moderate Catholics on social and economic matters, either. During the debate over the 1931 papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, the monarchists endorsed the radical supporters of Sozialreform in Die schönere Zukunft led by Spann over the Sozialpolitiker of Das neue Reich. In what was called the “moment of truth for German Catholics,” die Aktion preferred authoritarianism to Catholic unity if the latter meant accommodation with the First Republic.Footnote ¹¹¹

When Chancellor Dollfuss dissolved parliament and barred its assembly in March 1933, the monarchists rejoiced. Missong portrayed the collapse of parliamentary democracy with delight, identifying the current situation as “salvation” for Austria. While he recognized that rule by emergency decree could not last indefinitely, he welcomed the moment when the state would overcome the “constraints on the construction of a regime, established by the parliamentary constitution.” Whether these reforms were “legitimate” remained beyond Missong's concern in his advocacy of an authoritarian course. Moreover, he pressed for stringent reforms of the new Ständestaat, ones that would parallel Fascist efforts in Italy.Footnote ¹¹²

Of the monarchists, only Winter recognized the danger of maintaining authoritarian views. He shifted from a position straddling the nationalist and Catholic conservative camps to one between the democratic Christian Socials and the socialists in the 1930s. Several interrelated political and personal developments contributed to this transformation. As Winter struggled to complete his habilitation, he turned to the Marxist philosopher Max Adler and the legal positivist Hans Kelsen for support. These men inculcated esteem for Enlightenment concepts of human dignity and human rights.Footnote ¹¹³ Kelsen in particular instilled a respect for liberal legal norms and structures, challenging Winter's earlier Romantic ideas. Subsequently Winter defended the Austrian constitution for its rationality and fairness against increasingly strident attacks from the right. He believed that only if everyone – from Communists to Fascists – banded together in a Popular Front would Austria survive as an independent nation.Footnote ¹¹⁴ The newly-published writings of the young Karl Marx also shaped Winter's development, convincing him of some of the merits of modern socialism. Instead of viewing Marx as a deterministic, scientistic theorist, Winter now appreciated the socialist for his moral and ethical concern. This fueled a reconsideration of Austro-Marxism, which, through its housing and education policies and its welfare initiatives, embodied much of this humanistic spirit. On the 50^th anniversary of Marx's death in 1933, Winter delivered a lecture on the “new Marx,” extolling the early Marx's virtues.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Winter also began to make overtures to the Austro-Marxists. Winter befriended the leader of the Social Democrats, Otto Bauer, and the philosopher Otto Neurath. These developments precipitated a fracture in die Aktion, for Winter opposed the “coup d'état” (Staatsstrich) of Dollfuss and demanded an immediate return to democracy while the others embraced the new state.Footnote ¹¹⁶

Winter and the other members of die Aktion benefited significantly from the events of 1933/4. After the violent suppression of the socialists during the Civil War of February 1934 and the official establishment of the Austro-Fascist state in May, each individual experienced professional and political success. Dollfuss appointed Winter as the third vice mayor of Vienna, responsible for the reconciliation of the working class to the new state.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Zessner-Spitzenberg became a member of the Federal Council on Culture (Bundeskulturrat). Missong, still an editor at Die schönere Zukunft, also wrote for the state-sponsored Der christliche Ständestaat. August Maria Knoll, the youngest member of Die Aktion, a Spann-Schuler, and an expert on the works of Vogelsang, habilitated in 1934 under Spann and served as the editor-in-chief of the “coordinated” populist paper, Das kleine Blatt. Schmid's Vaterländische Aktion, a group that combined youth and monarchist organizations into a single front, served as an inspiration for Dollfuss’ new Fatherland Front. Each man received an official governmental post or one with an affiliated cultural organ. This revealed the latent politicism that undergirded their ostensibly “neutral” ideology. Previously die Aktion had declared the movement apolitical; it was merely the democratic politics of the First Republic that did not suit its ambitions, however.Footnote ¹¹⁸

During the early years of the Ständestaat, the members of the Aktion made little mention of legitimism or monarchism, reinforcing the claim that their previous political and philosophical logic had been purely instrumental. In setting aside their agitation for legitimism, the monarchists revealed their real priorities: a strong Austrian state with an authoritarian leader that paid lip service to a corporate social and economic order. The monarchists focused their attention on combating Nazism and providing the new state with a solid ideological foundation. This involved a rearguard action against their former friends and colleagues, Joseph Eberle and Othmar Spann, which met with little success. Die schönere Zukunft still commanded a readership of 20,000 subscribers; Der christliche Ständestaat had fewer than 5,000. Only the former paper survived the Anschluss.

Monarchism, on the wane for several years, enjoyed a resurgence after the Schuschnigg-Hitler accommodation of July 1936, since it now stood for Austrian independence. In agreeing to terms with Hitler, Schuschnigg embarked on a German nationalist course that eased the road to Anschluss. The monarchists sensed that the Ständestaat had failed to unify Austrians against the Nazis. Recognizing the failure of their previous ideological strategy, the Akition members retreated from the political sphere and returned to their Romantic preoccupations. Schuschnigg accepted Winter's resignation in late 1936. Schmid's Vaterland limped along, appearing less frequently with lower circulation after 1936. Missong withdrew from daily activities with Die schönere Zukunft and entered into a correspondence with Otto Habsburg.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Zessner-Spitzenberg attempted to reconstitute die Aktion by reaching out to the Austrian Academy, resulting in a new publication and new supporters. Nevertheless, the project made no mention of democratic or liberal reforms, dwelling instead in a realm of Romantic fantasy.Footnote ¹²⁰

Winter alone re-imagined the monarchist project, incorporating the lessons learned during the previous decade. In founding the Volksmonarchische Aktion, Winter acknowledged the mistakes of his past involvements: the complicity of Catholic conservatives with German nationalists, the fundamental significance of a democratic Austria, and the need for the inclusion of all Austrians in shaping the future. In his program, he stated these needs explicitly:

1. 1. For a free, independent Austria. The Austrian state, the Austrian people, Austrian culture can only be assured through the legitimate monarchy … neither politically nor morally annexed to Germany…

2. 2. For cultural success, social freedom and political equality for workers … the re-establishment of constitutional rights…

3. 3. For a new democracy…

4. 10. For the cooperation (Zusammenarbeit) of European peoples…Footnote ¹²¹

Winter understood that the earlier efforts of die Aktion had undermined their own goal of “legitimate monarchy” by privileging authority over all other programmatic points and by confusing authoritarianism with legitimacy. He hoped with his new program to position himself between the two pro-Austrian fronts, the socialists and Catholics. His new “popular front” differed fundamentally from the earlier allegiances that the monarchists had fostered, confirming the shortcomings of those earlier commitments. Although this belated attempt attracted virtually no supporters, Winter's evolution represented a first step toward a potential postwar Austrian reconciliation between socialists and Catholic conservatives.

***

Fueled by staunch anti-Nazism and Austrian nationalism, the conservatives of die Österreichische Aktion waged a courageous ideological and political battle against pan-German nationalists and Nazis. With the arrival of the Nazis in March 1938, they suffered a victim's fate: persecution, exile, imprisonment, and even death. Zessner-Spitzenberg was one of the first Austrians to die in a concentration camp. Winter fled Austria for Switzerland in 1938, continuing his Austrian and monarchist agitation in exile. The Gestapo arrested Schmid and Missong. After their respective releases, they emigrated to Vatican City and Switzerland. Only Knoll remained behind, enduring inner emigration. The memory of their sacrifice is an important one in Austrian history. In recognizing the righteousness of the anti-Nazi Aktion’s stance, one must not forget the obverse side of their commitment to “Austria”, however: the rejection of democracy and the First Republic and the advocacy of dictatorial means. Prior to 1938, and especially before 1934, the conservatives of die Aktion belonged to a larger group of perpetrators who waged war on socialists, Jews, and democrats, advocating ideas aligned with and inspired by radical European conservatism and Fascism.

By analyzing the origins and development of this monarchist movement, an image of the Austrian conservative intellectual field in the 1920s emerges that diverges both from its 1930s incarnation and from retrospective interpretations. Instead of three Lager vying for hegemony within a fragile republic, two blocs existed: a minority socio-liberal oneFootnote ¹²² and a hegemonic Catholic-nationalist one. Austrian conservatives formed a coherent, if not unified, ideological bloc, with the monarchists at one of its crucial pivots. Though rhetorically unique, little distinguished the Catholic monarchists of die Aktion from their German nationalist compatriots in practical matters during the 1920s and early 1930s. They belonged to the same scholarly organizations, wrote in the same journals, and attended the same social events, forming a unified “Black Viennese” field, countering the socialist “reds.” While Catholic conservatives seemed to do most of the “border crossing” between Lager, the cases of Raimund Kaindl, Heinrich von Srbik, and Hans Eibl demonstrate that German nationalists were also willing to conceive of a new conservatism. Ideological disparities regularly arose within the latter camp – between Spann and Winter, or Eberle and Missong, to name two – but their shared hostility to democratic republicanism and liberal capitalism and their espousal of some version of pan-German nationalism assured general harmony. The commitment to authoritarian solutions trumped all others until 1930, when the Nazi threat forced a reevaluation of earlier alignments. By the time they recognized the need for democratic unity and patriotism – Winter in 1933, the others years after – it was too late. The case of the Austrian monarchists reflects the difficulties conservatives had in coming to terms with the post-World War I order and the lack of support the Austrian state engendered among conservatives.

The foregoing analysis also calls into question the validity of the Austrian victimhood myth by demonstrating that, prior to 1933, conservatives en bloc undermined their own state before succumbing to the Nazi threat. The Nazi era has obscured the configuration of the First Republic conservative cultural field, since the rise of Nazism produced a fundamental rupture in Austrian conservatism.Footnote ¹²³ Prior to that, however, the divisions between Austrian conservative intellectuals were virtually nonexistent. When forced to choose between democracy and internationalism on one hand and authoritarianism and Austrian nationalism on the other, most opted to abandon their Lager and seek radical political solutions. Die Aktion and much of the larger Austrian conservative field therefore embarked on a radical political course, which drew on influences from abroad in their attempts to re-fashion the Austrian social landscape. Their palingenetic myths of true Austrian and German culture and their counterrevolutionary demands made compromise nearly impossible. Despite claims of apoliticism and patriotism, Austrian conservatives, including die Aktion, actively contributed to the destruction of the First Republic and reduced Austria's ability to respond to the National Socialist threat. Their views require closer attention since they contribute to a shifting understanding of First Republic culture, politics, and ideas.