On the surface the Austrian problem appears to be quite complicated,
yet with the assistance of a few facts and figures much that is
puzzling to casual observers becomes intelligible, if not perfectly
clear.
Like most industrial countries, Austria is plagued with issues which
follow in the wake of modernism--whatever that term may imply.
Modernism there pounds with ever-increasing violence at the doors of
the palaces of the opulent captains of industry. The small farmer
is land-hungry. Industrialism has everywhere created new sources of
wealth, yet with every factory erected or a mine opened the socialists
have added so much to their disaffected ranks. A bitter war is being
waged in certain sections of the monarchy between the clericals and
the modernists, for it must not be forgotten that Austria is still a
faithful daughter of Rome. If there are those who favor the “Los von
Rom”--“Away from Rome”--movement, there are others who firmly believe
that a steadfast loyalty to a faith different from that professed by
the Prussian neighbor, really constitutes one of the most effective
barriers against the ever-threatening absorption of Austria by Prussia.
Most important of all the problems, however, which confront Austria is
that of nationalism. Nationalism was unknown to Austria in the days of
Napoleon. Prior to 1848 Hapsburgs knew and recognized Austrian-Germans
only. After that revolutionary year they were compelled to take notice,
unwillingly enough, we may be sure, of other races. Bohemians, Magyars,
Croatians, and others forced themselves to the front; and, resenting
the broad and ethnically meaningless term “Austrian,” demanded to be
called by their proper racial names.
The voice that extolled racial patriotism had first been heard
across the Austrian frontier from Frankfort, Germany, in 1848, when
a parliament that had been summoned to that city called on Germans
to unite. Promptly the Slavs took up the idea of unity and as a
retaliatory measure summoned a Pan-Slavic Congress to meet in Prague.
It was on the occasion of the Prague Congress that Francis Palacký
addressed his famous letter to the Frankfortists, explaining why the
Bohemians and other Slavs were opposed to the incorporation of Austria
in the future Germany. “The aim which you propose to yourselves,” wrote
Palacký, among other things, to Frankfort, “is the substitution of a
federation of peoples for the old federation of princes, to unite the
German nation in a real union, to strengthen the sentiment of German
nationality, to secure the greatness of Germans without and within. I
honor your resolve and the motives by which you are impelled, but at
the same time I cannot share in your work. I am not a German, or at
least I do not feel as if I were one. Assuredly you cannot wish that
I should join you merely as a supernumerary with neither opinion nor
will of my own. I am a Bohemian of Slavic origin, and all I possess and
command I place wholly and forever at the service of my own country.
It is true that my nation is small, but from the very beginning it has
possessed its own historical individuality. Its princes on occasions
have acted in common with German princes, but the people have never
regarded themselves as Germans, nor have others, during all these
centuries, included them amongst them.”
It, therefore, sounds very much like irony to hear Germans from the
Fatherland censuring the Austrian Government for allowing the national
movement among its Slavs to spread as it did. What the Austrian
nations really did was to follow the advice of their Germanic tutors
and awaken racially.
The population of Austria in 1910 was 28,571,934. Of this number the
Slavs constituted 60.65 percentage, the Germans 35.58. It is in these
figures that we must seek--and will find--the real problem of the
country. “Austria,” once declared a noted statesman in the Austrian
Parliament, “should be a German state in language and education.
German should be spoken by all persons and serve as a political bond
to all races and nationalities. All the citizens, whatever may be
their mother tongue, Bohemians, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Slovenes,
Rumuns, and Italians, should submit to the baptism of the German
school, if they desire to participate in the public affairs of the
state.” Someone answering von Kaiserfeld, for that was the name of the
distinguished statesman, “You desire to Germanize the empire; you are
not Austrians, you are Germans,” von Kaiserfeld replied angrily, “There
are no Austrians in Austria, only Germans.” Von Kaiserfeld was not the
only statesman who believed that Austria should be a German state.
That is the obsession practically of every German in the country,
from the emperor down to the meanest postman. Yet Austria is to-day
further from the realization of this dream than it ever was. The
feeling of nationalism has grown too strong among the non-Germans to be
suppressed. And this nationalism demands that people shall be allowed
to live their individual lives, to cultivate their language and racial
ideals, and to pursue both without the interference of any other people.
Much of the difficulty in the past has been directly due to the fact
that the 35 per cent. not only thought and acted for themselves,
but they also insisted on doing the thinking for the 60 per cent.,
regardless of the latter’s feelings. The result was jealousy, discord,
opposition. Even the Great War which has caused Austria to rock like a
rudderless ship, was engineered and premeditated by the 35 per cent.,
in face of the bitter, though of course futile, opposition of the 60
per cent. As a result, there is only 30 per cent. of enthusiasm and
efficiency; and in juxtaposition, 60 per cent. in disaster, defeats,
and discouragements.
The Hapsburgs have never learned, it seems, how to rule their many
nationalities successfully. There are two races in Canada, the English
and the French. If the Canadian Government had treated its citizens of
French origin in the same rough-shod manner as Vienna has treated the
Bohemians, or Budapest the Slovaks, Serbs, or Rumuns, she would have
made rebels of every one of them, instead of loyal citizens. The Swiss
Republic is the home of three races, French, German, and Italian, and
yet we hear of no racial friction among them. And when and where did
the national, state, or city government in the United States interfere
when this or that people of foreign origin desired to build a school or
establish a clubhouse?
Years ago T. G. Masaryk, a prominent Bohemian deputy, delivered a
scathing denunciation in parliament, in which he took the government
to task for its anti-Slavic policy. “Extirpate, Germanize, that is
and has been the favorite policy of the government for decades,”
said Masaryk. “Extirpate whom? The Slavs, of course, and first among
them the Bohemians. A nation as vigorous and virile as our Bohemian
nation is bound, if persecuted, to seek and find new outlets for its
surplus energy. And if, while this process is going on, we succeed
in reclaiming some of the ground that had been wrested from our
forefathers, it is but a law of compensation and the Germans should
not claim that we are encroaching on their domain, which they claim
belongs to them. We shall never rest content if we are only tolerated
in Austria; we demand the right to be treated as equals with the rest
of the citizens of the state and we insist on being permitted to work
out our destiny as Bohemians without restrictions or limitations. We
entertain no hatred toward the Germans. We are distrustful, not so
much of Germany, as of Prussia. Recently a speaker in this parliament
has declared that the Germans were not antagonistic to the Slavs, and
that, therefore, they could not be hostile to the Bohemians. This,
I regret to say, is untrue. It is a matter of common knowledge that
not only they, but the government as well, are in opposition to us.
I shall not repeat what Mr. Dumreicher has lately said about the
Germanization of the Slovenes and of the Bohemians; permit me to allude
to a pamphlet which came out some time ago and which is causing a great
deal of comment, ‘On the right and the duty of the Germanization of
the Bohemians and the Slovenes,’ by Mathias Ratkovsky. Yes, gentlemen,
it will be a sin if the Bohemians and Slovenes are not Germanized, is
the opinion of Mr. Ratkovsky of the Vienna Theresianum. The government
should use force to attain this object, if necessary. Equality of
languages, what nonsense, argues Mr. Ratkovsky! The government owes it
to the people to make Bohemia German. Extirpate! Remember, gentlemen,
Ratkovsky is not an isolated case; this agitation is being conducted
systematically both in Austria and in Germany. F. Löher, a Bavarian
historian, who studied conditions in Austria-Hungary in the seventies,
declared that there was only one conclusion possible: to make Germans
of Bohemians and Magyars. This same idea was advanced by Professor
Walcker of the University of Leipzig. Yet, gentlemen, I should not
attribute so great a weight to the opinions here cited were it not for
the circumstance that bigger men in Germany were behind this scheme.
One can often hear mentioned the name of Lagarde in this connection and
you, gentlemen of the German national party, know Lagarde’s name full
well. What has this great thinker taught the German youth for decades?
‘Austria must be regarded in the light of a colony of Germany. Apart
from this Austria has no claim to a separate existence. Austria is
confronted with one task only and that task is to Germanize all its
Slavs.’ To the South Slavs Lagarde gave pardon. All the other people of
the Danube Monarchy, including the Magyars, were obstacles in Germany’s
way and the sooner they were extirpated the better for Germany, the
better for themselves. Slavs, according to Lagarde, resembled a
commercial enterprise which was working with an insufficient capital.
And just as there could be no Reuss-Schleiz-Greiz-Lobenstein policy, so
there could not exist a state called Wenzelland (an opprobrious term
given to Bohemia by Germans and meaning much the same as Patrickland
as applied to Ireland). Istria, contended Lagarde, should be German
to form an outlet for German commerce to the Adriatic Sea and to the
African coast, Jablunkov (a town in Austrian Silesia situated on a
direct route to Hungary) should hear nothing but German, and from there
let the wave roll southwardly, submerging the wretched little states
and people that now bar the way thither. ‘No empire, save Germany,
is capable of upholding peace in Central Europe, a Germany, which
should reach out from the Ems to the delta of the Danube, from Memel
to Trieste, from Metz to the river Bug. Only such a Germany could be
self-sustaining, only such a Germany, with its huge standing army,
would be powerful enough to defeat both France and Russia. Bohemians
and all the other small races must not be coddled by us. On the
contrary, they are our enemies, and we should deal with them as such.
Austria cannot be preserved except as a Germanic Empire.’ Gentlemen,
note what is going on in Germany at the present time and you cannot but
see that this plan to unite Austria with Germany, to Germanize Austria,
has become a recognized policy in both of these monarchies. I am not
quoting from newspaper clippings. I could refer you to the books of
several prominent writers in support of this contention. Can you blame
us then that we are on guard and that we watch with jealous look what
is going on both in Germany and among our Austrian Germans? Do not tell
us that we should not take seriously theories of professors lecturing
at Göttingen, Münich, and so forth. No, these theories so-called are
assuming practical forms. Behold, for instance, the teaching of a
philosopher like Edward Hartmann. A few years ago this noted scholar
defined the program of Germany very clearly: Ausrotten! (extirpate).
Ausrotten whom? The Poles, of course, and with them all those who are
not of German blood. You cannot convince us that this is a theory
advanced by professorial dreamers only; no, it is a theory which the
chancellor of iron and blood (Bismarck) put to practice with the
backing and money of the Prussian Government in the case of the Poles
in Posen. I allude to this not as an isolated case, but as part of a
well-recognized system that is at work throughout our monarchy and that
not alone threatens to undermine its very existence as a state, but
which aims a death-blow at our nation, just as it menaces the life of
the Poles, of the Slovenes, and of all the Slavs.”
The constitution of 1867 proclaimed the equality of languages in
schools, courts, and in administration of public affairs. However,
the operation of this constitutional guarantee is unique and its
interpretation a legal puzzle. For example, in Carinthia there are
30,000 Germans and 500,000 Slovenes; the latter are autochthons, yet
the Germans there demand equality but they vehemently deny equality to
the Slovene minority in Styria. In the same breath, they insist that
German schools be maintained in Italian Tyrol, while they urge the
authorities to close Italian schools in northern Tyrol. In Prague the
courts try cases in either Bohemian or German, but should a Bohemian
come into contact with the courts in Vienna, the capital of the empire,
the law forgets equality and treats him there as a foreigner who
must plead his case in German only. In Prague there are numerous and
palatial German schools maintained by the state or the municipality,
as the case may be; but in Vienna Bohemians, though numbering not
less than 300,000 (in Prague Germans are 17,000 strong), have not one
public school and the school authorities at the capital have fought for
years in the courts every attempt of the Bohemians in that direction.
A very striking illustration of the chaos in this respect is found in
Bohemia. There, in the so-called German-Bohemia, Germans insist that
their language shall be paramount and exclusive in the judiciary,
schools, and administration. Having long enjoyed ascendency they will
not content themselves with equality; yet in the rest of the country,
in the mixed and in the pure Bohemian districts, they demand that
both tongues shall have equal rights. By stamping their tongues as
“minderwertig,” inferior, the government provokes to opposition the
non-German element.
Observe how the idea of equality works out in practice the matter of
the distribution of schools. For 9,950,266 Germans Austria maintains 5
universities (at Vienna, Prague, Graz, Innsbruck, Czernovitz), and for
6,435,983 Bohemians one university at Prague. And this one university
the Bohemians were able to get in 1882 only after a great deal of
political haggling and bargaining. Opponents of the Bohemian seat of
learning predicted that it would soon fail for lack of professors and
of students. Yet, contrary to their expectation, when the Prague school
was divided in 1882 into two parts, Bohemian and German, 1,055 students
matriculated the first year in the Bohemian section as against 1,695
Germans. Eventually the Bohemian university--by the way, one of the
oldest universities in Central Europe, having been founded by Emperor
Charles IV. in 1348--far outstripped its old partner in point of
attendance. At present the number of students in the Bohemian faculties
is 4,713; in the German 2,282. Of late years a demand has been made
for a second university to be located at Brno (Brünn), the capital
of Moravia. The University of Prague is scandalously overcrowded
and students from the sister state of Moravia are compelled, in
consequence, to go to Vienna in search of education, where, under
Teutonic influences, many are estranged from their nation. Numerous
petitions have been addressed to the government on the subject of
a second university, but to no purpose. In the matter of secondary
schools (gymnasia and real schools) the discrimination against
non-Germans is very striking. For 4,241,918 Bohemians in Bohemia the
government maintains 39 schools of this type for secondary education,
and they are unable to get more, while 2,467,724 Germans boast 34 of
these schools. In Moravia the disproportion is still greater and in
Silesia it is relatively worse than in Moravia. The condition of the
Bohemian elementary schools in the mixed districts near the border is
most deplorable. It was the blind and unreasoning hostility of the
authorities in the German-Bohemian districts against Bohemian schools
which led the patriots, in 1880, to found a school society called the
Ústřední Matice Školská. This vernacular school society had spent,
up to 1912, a total of more than $3,000,000 in the establishment and
support of such schools in districts inhabited by both races. Every
cent of this money has been donated by the Bohemian people in order to
give their children an education in the mother tongue.