FROM RATIONALITY TO SUBJECTIVITY
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fact that a president who was elected by the majority had to spend the rest
of his life on the American watch-list was a gigantic insult to the nation–
al vanity. The informal international sanctions, especially in the field of
culture, clid not hit the "typical" Waldheim voter but rather the intellec–
tual and morally sensible sectors of the population. Mistrust by the postwar
generation, which had many sources, now had international confirmation.
This mistrust was transformed into anger, which remains one of the cen–
tral topics of Austria's political life.
The international reception of the Waldheim case was concentrated on
what Waldheim really did. The internal political dimension of the affair
was neglected, especially the fact that Waldheim was the ideal focus with
which to settle the latent generational conflict, comparable to the genera–
tional conflict after 1873. The enormous self-cri ticism of Austrian society
in the years after the Waldheim case was neglected as well. Hundreds of
books on every aspect of Austrian behavior during the Nazi period were
published, shocking the foundations of the society. Cri tical positions,
which for forty years had existed at the margins of public interest, now
moved to the center. Historians became the exclusive arbiters of moral
authority. This process is as yet unfinished: Austria still is confronting itself
with self-indictments.
The complicated consequences of this self-criticism are central to my
thesis. Paradoxically, measures which should have been taken in 1945 are
being taken fifty years later. There is an element of "ending" in this self–
criticism, which says nothing about the future: it is the "end" of the
postwar-period, comparable to 1989. But I believe that this self-criticism
is the central moral event of the second republic, and may be the basis for
creating an as-yet unarticulated future. None of the other peoples of the
Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis have made comparable efforts to clear their past
during the last ten years.
Nevertheless, we should not overlook the intellectual sterility of
Austria's public life which results from the fact that so much energy was
bound up in reflections on the past. Mourning the guilt of the beloved or
hated father has become a business-part of the routine of marketing strate–
gies. Many of these utterances have been accepted as authentic. Even the best
representatives of Austria's prolonged self-criticism employ Austria's tradi–
tional means of expression. This is not helpful in matters such as
exaggeration as art, self-hate-which has been named "morbus austriacus"
(the Austrian disease) by Friedrich Heer-and the tendency towards apoca–
lyptic thinking. The characteristic fantasy of collapse is connected to the idea
of a repeti tion of the pas t: the analogy
wi
th the 1930s plays an important rol e
in Austria's political discourse. This idea seems to deliver the outer form for
other, unspoken anxieties about the future. In any case, it is an unrealistic
idea which ignores the dynamics of history. An influential part of the moral
