Conclusion: Austro-German Liberalism at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

In a speech given on 26 February 1886 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the February Patent, amidst the increasingly acrimonious national struggle in Bohemia, Ernst Plener reflected on the liberals’ achievements. He characterised the liberals’ goal as ‘a free, integrated Austria under German leadership’.¹ In this book, I have tried to give due weight to these three aspects of Austro-German liberalism — liberal values, a unified state and the assumption of German leadership — as political and social circumstances changed over a thirty-year period and German nationalism gained ascendancy over the other aspects of liberal thinking. For Plener and other moderate liberals, the key to modernising Austria was to unify the Monarchy on a constitutional basis and under German leadership. But could this great liberal project have succeeded? Could a uni- fied Austrian identity have been created from above by state standardisation, widespread schooling and assimilation into a hegemonic German culture and language? Or was Austria destined to remain ‘an aggregate of many political organisations ... [u]nimproved by education or religion’, as Hegel described it?² From their social position and historical traditions, the Austro-German liberals looked to the integrative power of the Austrian state to realise their project. According to liberal ideology, a modern state with liberal institutions — a constitu- tion, legal framework, working parliament and open public sphere — would create a society of independent, patriotic Austrian citizens.³ The liberals consciously placed themselves in the Western European tradition of state-building, the recent unifications of Germany and Italy seemed to prove that world history was mov- ing towards consolidation of large, powerful states.