On the Genesis of Veteran Organisations in Austria in the First Half of the 1920s in the Context of the Official "Politics of Memory"

The veteran movement in the Habsburg monarchy, which was, in the last third of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the most important pillar of the political system, faced serious difficulties after the 1918 Revolution in Austria. Until the collapse of the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Socials in 1920, there were insurmountable obstacles to the revival of the “old Austrian” military traditions. Officers’ and veterans’ organizations were firmly associated in the eyes of leftist political forces with the legacy of the “old regime”. The gradual “rehabilitation” of the “old Austrian” military traditions was closely connected with the tenure of the Minister of War of Austria Carl Vaugoin, who sought to get rid of the influence of the Social Democrats on the armed forces. As a result, in 1921and 1922 the formation of new veteran organisations began, developing their activities against the background of competition between Social-Democratic, Christian-Social and pan-German narratives about the First World War in the public consciousness of the First Republic. Considering the typology of veteran associations, one should single out organisations that united veterans at the national (local) level, regardless of their place of service during the war, and veterans’ unions based on specific military units of Austria-Hungary. The latter, as contemporary research proves, played a leading role in the formation of the historical memory of the war. The main means of group self-identification was the feeling of “front-line comradeship”cultivated in the veteran unions, which was the highest value orientation of the former front-line soldiers who shared right-wing political views. The veteran supporters of Social Democrats resisted the constant appeal of the right to the “front-line comradeship”, allegedly smoothing out social contradictions within the army collective during the war. In veteran organisations, both “pure” and “mixed” forms of memory of the First World War were “confessed”. The latter were typical of the veterans of those regions of Austria that were affected by the territorial reorganisation in accordance with the Saint-Germain Peace Treaty of 1919.