Abstract
In June 1937, the Benedictine historian and professor at the University of Graz, Hugo Hantsch, addressed dignitaries of the government and Catholic Church on the occasion of the St Boniface Day celebrations in Vienna. Hantsch was also chairman of the Austrian Association for Germandom Work Abroad (Osterreichischer Verband fur volksdeutsche Auslandsarbeit), which had been founded in 1934 by the Austrofascist state's Fatherland Front to foster relations with German minorities outside of Austria. In his opening remarks, Hantsch noted that this was the second Boniface Day he had organized under the umbrella of the OVVA and he explained why he had chosen to appropriate the legacy of Boniface for the work of "Germandom" abroad. Firstly, the very existence of the Auslandsdeutsche was due to the missionary work of St. Boniface, who had woken the German lands from "a slumbering Christendom"; secondly, because if the OVVA and its supporters did not continue Boniface's mission to the Germanspeakers abroad, if they did not see to it that their coreligionists continued to say German prayers, sing German hymns, and hear German sermons, then these people would be lost to the German nation. The humble pleasure Hantsch took in linking this First Apostle to the Germans to Austria's mission to preserve and advance German Christianity in Europe suited the political and religious climate in Austria during the 1930s. We will see in this chapter how religion and nation were twinned together not only during the years of Austrofascism in the 1930s, but also during the first years of the Austrian republic. Reviving "all-German"themes of belief and action were important ways of commemorating the destruction of the German nation after the First World War. By rebuilding Austria's German Christian heritage through its political and religious institutions, Austrian leaders helped to politicise and popularise the memory of a pan-German identity in the aftermath of empire. Germans abroad and Germans at home were all members of this pan-German community in the political and religious imagination of interwar Austria
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | From Empire to Republic: Post-World War I Austria |
Editors | Gunter Bischof, Fritz Plasser, Peter Berger |
Place of Publication | Austria |
Publisher | UNO Press |
Pages | 254-272 |
Number of pages | 19 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783902719768 |
Publication status | Published - 2010 |