example for a vibrant patriotism based on a militaryndemocracy, a Mdnnerbund (male league), an Eidgenossenschdftn(its ofEcial title referring to binding oaths), thenmonarchical form of government, is a much more suitablencoordinator of patriotic fervor. The old order, we have tonbear in mind, was vertical; as God the Father in Heaven,nthe Holy Father in Rome, the monarch (the Father of thenFatherland), and finally, the father—a king in his family.nThe monarch and his wife were “parents,” and thus anfemale sovereign (a “mother image”) was not inconceivable,nas attested by the career of Maria Theresa, wife ofnFrancis I, Holy Roman Emperor, and a real sovereign innher “hereditary countries.”nAustria, not Germany, had inherited the symbolism andnthe privileges of the Holy Roman Empire: the doubleheadedneagle, the black-golden flag, the hymn composed bynHaydn, the veto-right at the papal election (last exercised inn1903), and, above all, the Hapsburg dynasty, which becamenthe focus of all loyalties of the specific Austrian ornAustro-Hungarian patriotism. This made the “Dual Monarchy”n(two parliaments, two sets of laws, one economy,ncoordinated armed forces, and one foreign policy) a goingnconcern for over a century.nNo doubt, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy had itsnweaknesses and troubles, but the great Czech leader FrantiseknPalacky declared in the last century that if it did notnexist, it would have to be invented. Its main problem lay innbeing a multinational empire which had drifted into an agenof ethnic nationalism. Thanks, above all, to Americannintervention in World War I, it was willfully destroyed. Nonfewer than 13 languages were spoken in the Dual Monarchy;nthere were five major religions (including the CatholicnChurch with its three different rites), and the Austrian partnconsisted of 17 “Kingdoms and Countries Represented innthe Imperial Diet” (the official name of Austria). In Austria,nthe Germans formed the largest group and were presentneverywhere in varying degrees and with different socialnstatus. Since Vienna had been the residential center of thenold “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation,” Germannsentiments were fairly strong. Significantly, Austria-nHungary’s last crown-prince. Otto (with a dual citizenship),nrepresents Bavaria in Strassburg’s European Parliament. (Ifnthe German League had won the German-Prussian War ofn1866, the Germanics would have been united by Viennanand not by Berlin.) Austrian Germans (or Austrians, in thennarrow, present-day sense of the term) represent the southernmostnNorth Europeans and the easternmost West Europeans.nThese overlapping marginalities engendered sophisticationnand a fertility of ideas. Only recently havenAmerican scholars discovered that Vienna and its gravitatingnareas were intellectually and artistically a real pivot ofnthe Old World. There, the Teutons, Latins, Slavs, Finno-nUgrians, and Semites met, exchanging thoughts, visions,nand notions. The old Monarchy could have become thenvery center of the United States of Europe (now aimed atnwith very insufficient measures), but the Hapsburg Empirenwas killed by default. It first became a victim of nationalndemocracy and then of National Socialism.nWith the rise of “horizontalism,” the ethnicism-racialismnof the 19th and 20th centuries, the nationalities awoke to andynamic egocentrism which led to fatal local animosities.nThis happened especially when the agrarian element of onenethnic group was pitted against the urban element ofnanother or when the farmers of one Nationalitdt feltnoppressed by the landowners of a different origin. Thenantagonisms were also frequently regional, and, to makenmatters even worse, they finally found their concretenexpression in the Diet, the Reichsrat. In addition, outsideninfluences of varying degree were trying to destroy thenmonarchy: St. Petersburg declared the Western Ukrainiansnof Austria to be “in reality Russians,” denying their separatencharacter and demanding their “liberation”; a number ofnCzechs developed “Pan-Slav” tendencies (of which they arennow cured for all times); the Rumanians clamored fornTransylvania (where they now suppress the Magyars in thenmost brutal manner); the Serbs propagated a “Pan-nYugoslavism” and used assassinartion to achieve it; andnmany German Austrians cast longing glances in the directionnof Berlin. The Poles, however, were utterly loyal,nexpecting from Vienna the eventual end of their partition.nEven the majority of Italians were good Austrians, and anSocialist Italian journalist wrote in a book published inn1911 that Italian irredentism in the Trent region wasnhopeless since, except for a few “bourgeois,” the peoplenthere were all austriacanti, friends of Austria. The reasonnfor this, claimed the journalist, was because the Austriannadministration was vasfly superior to that of Italy. Thenjournalist’s name? Benito Mussolini.nHis observation was not without substance. Ethnicismracismnis a middle-class disease. The aristocracy, likenroyalty, is strongly internationalized as is the Catholicnclergy with its head in Rome. The old Monarchy, indeed,nappealed to the farmers, the military, and the civil servantsnbecause of their hierarchic outlook. (The working class? Ifnpoliticized, it was also “international.”) The Austro-nHungarian Army fought in World War I bravely to thenbitter end. In July 1918 the Generalissimo, Baron Arz (anLutheran Transylvanian), said to my mother, who spoke ofnour “heroic soldiers”: “Madam, these are no longer soldiers,nbut desperate, hungry beasts in rags.” Still, the middlenclass, because of its urban character (politics comes fromnpolis), always plays a key role. And the Old Monarchy wasnpolitically by no means feudal but middle-class. EdwardnCrankshaw pointed this out in his The Fall of the House ofnHapsburg and added that society in the Monarchy wasn”much more democratic than in England” and that “governmentnwas very largely a middle class affair.” “ThenAustrian half of the Empire,” he wrote, “enjoyed a verynhigh level of freedom for the individual and a much highernlevel of social welfare than, for example, England. Politicsnand administration were open to all talents.” (C.A. McCartney,non the other hand, insisted that the poor Hungariannpeasants were better off than their counterparts in Britain.)nin 1835, according to the American author Nathaniel P.nWillis, the Austrian administration buildings, schools, andnhospitals were the best he had seen in Europe. And innAustria there was also that nice fickle, anarchical joie denvivre with occasional violence which characterizes nationsnnot affected by the discipline and community sense of thenReformation. “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion,” a historicallynminded American would say. Indeed, nobody couldnimagine a Francis Joseph countersigning the Volstead Act ornnnNOVEMBER 1987 113n