The memory of the First World War in the former lands of Austria-Hungary

Abstract

In Austria-Hungary a collective experience of the Great War inevitably emerged. However, the sudden break-up of the Habsburg Empire and the immediate hostility between its successor states meant that no collective memory was ever established and cultivated. For each country, the war and its outcome took on their own distinct meanings: independence in the case of Poland and Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia); union with fellow South Slavs and ultimate independence for Slovenia; bitterness and resentment for Hungary; and betrayal and confusion for Austria. Most of these countries have now come to terms with the war and its consequences (and some with their role in the Habsburg Empire) but others, most notably Hungary, still harbour grudges as fresh as they were when their millennial kingdom was broken up (now ninety-five years ago). The vicissitudes of the twentieth century (not least the apocalyptic Second World War and the decades of Communism) long held back sober and critical analyses of the First World War. But although there will never be a collective consciousness of the conflict among the peoples who made up the Habsburg Empire, the increasing quality of the recent historiography on the conflict, together with the fading away of territorial feuds and national tensions, will eventually help to reconstitute the collective experience of a remarkably tenacious Austro-Hungarian war effort, the imperial forces of which displayed their unity and determination on many a gruesome wartime battlefield.