Austria

on the World Today

THE exuberant cheer from the government benches which greeted the Austrian State Treaty produced only a soft echo among the masses, even in the beginning. But by now the administration leaders, too, have adopted a more sober attitude, acknowledging that Austria’s newly found freedom has raised new responsibilities.

The situation can be illustrated by a little episode that occurred in Moscow as the Soviet and Austrian delegations were completing the drafting of the new State Treaty. Nikita Khrushchev turned to the Austrian Chancellor, Julius Raab, and said: “During the past few days, we have come to know you, Mr. Raab, as an honest, forthright man. I shall give you a good advice: follow my example and become a Communist. . . . But if I am absolutely unable to persuade you, for God’s sake, stay what you are. We shall not interfere. Me know conditions in Austria. We shall let the Austrian people live the way they want.”

The bargain — officially admitted in Party publications— is to buy Austrian neutrality with Russian noninterference. Rut no one can tell how long the deal will satisfy Moscow; nor can anyone deny that such neutrality is a path as difficult to walk as a tightrope.

What the Austrians want is to be another Switzerland. Unfortunately, big-power acceptance of Switzerland as a neutral is not the only reason that she has built up her proverbial wealth and stayed out of war. Hitler might have invaded Switzerland had it not been for her protective mountains and the ancient tradition that every Swiss man keeps his rifle and uniform at home, and is trained and ready to defend his country as a citizen-in-arms. Rut Austria has no such tradition. Neither does she have the economic position which the Swiss have acquired over a period of six hundred years. Nor are Austria s mountains a bulwark; they happen to be on the wrong side, in the west and south facing Italy and Switzerland, while her borders with Czechoslovakia and Hungary are wide open.

Thus Austria can remain “neutral against Russia,” so to speak. But she cannot help leaning toward the non-Communist world of the West on which she depends politically, culturally, scientifically, and economically — especially in the tourist business, her biggest, industry.

Coalition government

If there were any doubts about Austria’s attitude, they would have been dispelled quickly when, one woek after the Moscow conference and the speeches about gratitude for Russia’s concessions in the State Treaty, the Communists lost nearly a third of their votes in the Austrian communal elections.

For the past decade Austria has had a coalition government of the two dominant parties, the Austrian People’s Party (mostly Catholic, center to right) and the Socialists. Respectively, they hold 74 and 73 of the seats in Parliament. The Communists have four deputies; the dwindling League of Independents, a disunited, drifting group with fuzzy pro-Nazi tendencies, has fourteen. Conceivably they could form a Cabinet with either of the large parties and wield much more influence than their numbers would justify. But they have not yet done so. This is the more noteworthy since Catholics and Socialists have always bitterly opposed each other.

It took a lot of prodding to make the two parties form the present coalition under Allied occupation. But they have never stopped attacking their coalition partners in speeches and newspaper editorials.

One major force holding this strange coalition together was the necessity of a national front against the occupying powers. The State Treaty has removed this motive. Some people think that a definite break is only a matter of months and will come after the next election in 1057 at the latest. Others believe that the leaders will be willing to coöperate and that occasional outbursts in the press or on the platform are merely part of the show that is needed to keep the lower ranks in line.

But regardless of whether the coalition stays together or falls apart, regardless of whether Austria should veer a little more toward the right or left in a new election, two problems can be discarded for all practical purposes: Nazism and the traditional longing for a merger with Germany.

Anti-German Austrians

For centuries, under the AustroHungarian monarchy, German-speaking Austrians were outnumbered several limes over by the other nationalities of the empire: Czechs, Italians, Slovenes, Hungarians, Poles, and others. In 1918, the monarchy collapsed and the 6 million Austrians were wedged in among newly formed non-German states. Economic, political, and cultural interests gave (he union-with-Germany idea a tremendous boost. Hitler capitalized on it, but the magic of the slogan was by no means confined to the right: it was also quite strong among Socialists.

After the Anschluss of 1988 the awakening was rude. Austrians and many fanatic Nazis among them

discovered that they and the Germans were two nations divided by a common language. They did not like the idea of being ruled from Berlin any more than the British would like to be ruled from Washington or the Americans from London.

There was no way of revolting against the totalitarian regime, and the protest took odd forms. Austrians who fit first had worn leather shorts and white stockings as a symbol of the Nazi back-to-the-soil policy began to wear those Alpine garments and the Tyrolean felt hat with three green cords as badges of Austrian patriotism. Though the Nazi regime vanished in 1945, this rustic form of dress has survived, and is no longer a form of affectation.

Language is another example of Austrian provincialism. The difference between the German spoken in Austria and in Germany used to be similar to the difference between the English of London and New York. As a protest against the Berlin regime, Viennese turned into a very heavy slang. Today, it is rare indeed to hear anything else.

A not so gay Vienna

One serious consequence of war and post-war difficulties has been Vienna’s isolation. In the days of the monarchy and even of the republic the city used to attract many intellectuals from neighboring countries. Some came for frequent visits; many more settled down. First Nazism, then war, and finally the Iron Curtain have stemmed the flow. Instead of the elite from a half dozen nations, Vienna now attracts only what her own provinces can contribute to the cultural life of t he capital. Music still flourishes, and the theaters, too, have suffered comparatively little, but the universities are only now regaining inch by inch the miles they lost during the war.

Two typical Viennese “institutions are among the casualties of the upheavals which have shaken this country in the past twenty years. Every Sunday before the war, the streetcars carried hundreds of youngsters with rucksacks to the outskirts for a hike in the Vienna woods. Today, only a small band of diehards, most of whom are in their forties and fifties, still hike. Hiking has completely lost its attraction for the younger generation. Those who can afford it race their motorcycles over dusty country roads; the rest stay in the city.

The other casualty of the new social pattern is the age-old Viennese coffeehouse. One used to go there morning or aflernoon, order a cup of coffee and a roll, consume gallons of water, and sil for hours reading local and out-of-town newspapers. It was hard to find a vacant table. Today, many coffeehouses have disappeared; those that still survive are practically empty. Instead there are now dozens of socalled “espresso,” small modern coffeeshops, with no papers to read. People drop in, have a quick coffee or tonic, and hurry on.

People in Vienna now have no time to idle. They are busy. Everybody works men, women, and many youngsters from the age of 15 up. Prices are high and wages are low. Therefore in most households husband and wife both have jobs, and the birth rate has taken a nose dive, but living standards have gone up. The improvement, however, is only relative; the standard of living in Austria is still the third lowest in Western Europe, ahead only of Spain and Italy.

High prices and low wages

Window-shopping through Vienna, one will hardly see a ready-made man’s suit for less than 1000 schillings or $40. But the tailor who makes it receives 6½ schillings, or 26 cents an hour. In a 48-hour week, he earns one third of the price of that suit, a little over $12.

Other prices are equally high when compared with wages. Shoes, shirts, hats, socks, radios, and furniture cost roughly the same as in the United States; some are even higher. To mention one: a refrigerator of anything but outstanding quality sells for about $600, That tailor or any other skilled worker or employee of the middle bracket would have to put down his total wages for an entire year to buy the refrigerator.

This problem of the wide gap between wages and prices is not exclusively an Austrian headache. It is one of the burning questions to which most European nations will have to find an answer. For one thing, European businessmen in general and Austrian employers in particular don’t think of their employees as consumers. The producer adds a considerable profit before selling his product to the retailer who in turn will not be satisfied with less than 60 to 80 per cent profit. Very often there is also a middleman who buys from the manufacturer and sells to the retailer. Naturally he too adds a sizable amount to the price.

But excessive profits alone arc not the only cause of the wide gap between wages and prices. Another major reason is high production cost explained by low productivity. Many industrialists who have tried mass production and modern machines and techniques have done very well. But the bulk of Austrian manufacturers insist on their traditional expensive ways of production and small shops which make rationalization and assembly lines impossible.

The consumer pays the price for the outdated system of production. But it would be a mistake to say that he objects to it very strongly. The small plants of the craftsmen are also part of the social and cultural pattern. Even the people of the lower middle class consider it a matter of pride to have their suits made to order despite the fact that it may cost a month’s salary. They go without a lot of other things, in order to be able to afford this luxury.

On the other hand, the industrial revolution is slowly but definitely inching ahead in Europe in general, and in Austria particularly. Gentle American pressure has been most important during the decade of occupation, and the patient, persistent work of the FOA mission (now ICA) has made a contribution which will show in Austria’s economic and social life in the next decade or two.

The Russian plants

The end of the occupation brings up the politically as well as economically difficult question of what to do about the plants and stores which the Russians took over in 1945 as war booty. There are 296 such plants, with a total of 63,000 employees. These factories comprise one third of all Austrian steel mills and practically all the oil industry. For the last ten years they have been operated not as part of the Austrian but as part of the Soviet economy. They have paid no duties for exports or imports, nor taxes on profits. Their output has gone either to Russia or to the Russian satellites, being exchanged on a barter principle.

The condition of the plants is poor, and they lack raw material stocks, fuel, and capital. It has been estimated that about half a billion dollars will be needed in new capital to replace worn-out machinery, a colossal amount of money in Austria.

On the other hand, closing these plants would not only eliminate a vital part of Austrian productive capacity; it would throw their employees out of work. As it is, the withdrawal of the Allied Forces will cost some 30,000 people now in Russian, British, French, or American employment their jobs. Austria cannot afford to add to them another 63,000 unemployed. If these and their families were deprived of their livelihood, several hundred thousands out of a total population of less than 7 million would be without means of support.

These are just a few headaches which have come with the country’s new-found freedom. But Austrians in general are merry pessimists. They see a lot of clouds on I he horizon and arc worried. But they have gained much determination in the past seventeen years. They have learned to be content with every gain and to take new hurdles in their stride.