The Dead Hand of Austria-Hungary
Simon Maass traces the enduring influence of Austria-Hungary on modern intellectual life, arguing that the empire’s admirers have often drawn precisely the wrong lessons from its history.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire may seem like a distant memory, but its intellectual legacy remains with us. There is much in that legacy that deserves gratitude, as the Empire suffered no shortage of brilliant minds, from physicists Ludwig Boltzmann and Erwin Schrödinger to the economist Joseph Schumpeter to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Not all such influence, however, has been benign. In particular, we have inherited from the Habsburg order various sociopolitical ideas which continue to confuse us, fostering opposition to the model of the nation-state, blinding us to national distinctiveness, and promoting an undue aversion to popular rule. As such, the Habsburg Empire survives intellectually as a model invoked by anti-nationalists, Austrian economists, and anti-democratic thinkers—often for the wrong reasons.
Habsburg Austria and the Anti-Nationalists
Critics of nationalism have long been inspired by Austria-Hungary, regarded by these critics as a prime example of a flourishing multinational state. The Modernist paradigm, which contends that nationalism is a recent invention, rather than a millennia-old expression of human nature, may be considered an example of this. Promulgated by thinkers such as Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, and Benedict Anderson, Modernism is currently the dominant outlook in the academic study of nationalism. Significantly, columnist Aris Roussinos has suggested that Modernism is “imperialist”: It looks back nostalgically on the sprawling, diverse empires of yesteryear and understands nationalism as that nefarious, deceitful ideology which destroyed them. The biographies of its proponents offer some confirmation of this idea: “Both Hobsbawm and Gellner were born in the wreckage of the multiethnic Habsburg Empire, and both preferred it to what followed,” Roussinos writes.
Another example is that of the late Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, an Austrian nobleman by birth and longtime contributor to National Review. With his blend of traditionalism and cosmopolitanism, Kuehnelt-Leddihn has been described as “a liberty-minded monarchist; a multilingual anti-nationalist; a free-market aristocrat.” Although the classical liberal firebrand supported kingship as a matter of general principle, he wrote with a special admiration of that monarchy into which he had been born. Libertarian author Jørn K. Baltzersen hits the nail on the head with his admiring characterization of Kuehnelt-Leddihn as “the last knight of the Habsburg Empire.” It is hard not to think of this background when Kuehnelt-Leddihn writes: “The patriot is a ‘diversitarian’; he is pleased, indeed proud of the variety within the borders of his country; he looks for loyalty from all citizens.” Precisely these words could have been addressed to the many groups who once wished to escape Vienna’s rule.
Clearly, Austria-Hungary has been a major inspiration for critiques of nationalism. In truth, however, the Habsburg Empire’s multinational character is anything but a viable model for emulation. As historian Azar Gat argues in his 2013 treatise Nations, human societies are almost universally based on ethnic ties, and the larger ones are no exception. Thus, virtually every empire throughout history has relied on one clearly dominant ethnic group to maintain its integrity, the Habsburg Empire being a singular outlier. He explains that, throughout history, an empire has generally relied on a single “dominant imperial people” preeminent in numbers and/or fighting prowess. The Habsburg Empire, meanwhile, was exceptional in that “the core German lands of Austria and its periphery” enjoyed neither of these advantages.
Timeless reading in a fleeting world.
