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Grasping Toward Austria: The Anschluss - Book Review, Harry Ritter

History Faculty and Staff Publications

The 1970s were an interesting and significant decade for the historiography of contemporary Austria. Among Austrian scholars, the tradition of Koalitionsgeschichtsschreihung, a reflection of the political and bureaucratic system Proporz which reigned in the 1950s and 1960s, began to break down. With the triumph of Social Democracy under Bruno Kreisky, fewer historians especially those of the "left" were willing to continue sharing in the orderly division of responsibility for the recent past. Moreover, some of the controversy aroused in Germany by Fritz Fischer's work began to invigorate Austrian historical studies. Both in Austria and abroad, historians became less inclined to …