Austrian Studies

'Hitler's FirstVictim5? ? Memory and Representation in Post-War Austria Introduction JUDITH BENISTON 24 February 2003 saw the publication of the final report of theHistoriker kommission [Historical Commission], an independent body established by the Austrian government in autumn 1998 to carry out a scholarly investigation of6Verm?gensentzug auf dem Gebiet der Republik Osterreich w?hrend der NS-Zeit sowie R?ckstellungen und Entsch?digungen (sowie wirtschaftliche und soziale Leistungen) seit 1945 in?sterreich' [the seizure of property on Austrian territory during the period ofNazi rule, as well as restitution and compensation (and related economic and welfare issues) in Austria since 1945].1 The appointment of the Commission, chaired by eminent lawyer Clemens Jabloner, professor at the University of Vienna and President of the Verwaltungsgerichtshof [Administrative Court], can be seen as a response both to sustained domestic pressure ? from an increasingly assertive Jewish community, from politicians (especially in the ?VP [Austrian People's Party] and Green Party), and from a new generation of historians ? and to developments in the international arena, where since the mid-1990s attention has increasingly focused on the economics of persecution, on bringing to account companies, institutions and individuals who benefited materially from the Nazi policies of confiscation and exploitation.2 In Austria as elsewhere, awkward questions have been asked ofmajor corporations, of banks and insurance companies, several ofwhich have set up their own investigative commissions; protracted disputes over 1 Clemens Jabloner, Brigitte Bailer-Galanda, Eva Blimlinger, Georg Graf, Robert Knight, Lorenz Mikoletzky, Bertrand Perz, Roman Sandgruber, Karl Stuhlpfarrer and Alice Teichova, Schlussbericht derHistorikerkommission derRepublik Osterreich. Verm?gensentzug w?hrend der JVS-^eit sowie R?ckstellungen und Entsch?digungen seit ig4j in ?sterreich. Zusammenfassungen und Einsch?tzungen (Vienna and Munich, 2003). The text was immediately made available online at http:// www.historikerkommission.gv.at. All page references are to the printed version; here p. 15. 2 See Richard Mitten, 'The Price of Historical Responsibility: "Wiedergutmachung" and the Austrian Historians' Commission', Antisemitism Research, 3/1 (1999), 9-15? Recent scholarly interest in the economics of persecution is exemplified by the following: Die politische ?konomie des Holocaust. Zur wirtschaftlichen Logik von Verfolgung und 'Wiedergutmachung', ed. by Dieter Stiefel (Vienna, 2001). 2 Introduction the ownership of looted artworks (for example, paintings by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt) alerted a broad public to the restitution issue. A further catalyst was the threat of legal action in theUnited States ? the so-called 'class actions' demanding compensation for holders of looted bank accounts and for individuals, including civilians from occupied countries and former concentration camp inmates, who had been used during the period ofNazi rule as forced or slave labourers. The report of theHistorical Commission, which focuses attention squarely on how the victims ofNational Socialism inAustria have been treated, both in the period 1938-45 and subsequently, may also be said to constitute a quasi-official reckoning (and not only in the monetary sense of the word) with the thesis of Austria as 'Hitler's first victim' that, until the 1980s, remained the barely questioned master-narrative of the Second Republic.3 As such, it forms an important backdrop to the articles assembled in the present volume, all of which explore representations and memories of the rise ofNazism and ofNazi rule inAustria that stand in complex and often critical relation to the notion of collective and institutional victimhood. As iswell known, the 'victim thesis' originates in theMoscow Declaration of November 1943, inwhich thewartime Allies identified Austria as 'das erste freie Land, das der typischen Angriffspolitik Hitlers zum Opfer fallen sollte' [the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression].4 Declaring the annexation of the country by Nazi Germany on 15March 1938 to be null and void, the signatories announced their intention to reverse it. In the following paragraph, however, theDeclaration warned thatAustria must take responsibility for her subsequent participation in the war on the side of Nazi Germany and that account would be taken of how far the Austrian people liberated themselves. Less than two years later, the Declaration of Austrian Independence (27 April 1945) incorporated the complete text of theMoscow Declaration with only minor changes in wording; but the sense of ambivalence was weakened by detaching the caveats from...