1848: Ereignis und Erinnerung in den politischen Kulturen

This volume contains the results of an international conference, held in Vienna in March 1998. In their contributions authors from Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Austria deal with the impact the memory of the revolution of 1848/49 had on the development of the political culture in their respective countries. Although the Central European events of 1848 were imbedded in a concatenation of international causes, their consequences made themselves felt in a national manner: the traditions of history in Central and Eastern Europe were split and separated from each other by educational systems, ignorance of neighbouring cultures, and appeal to a restricted public. The memory of 1848 did however not only favour the partition of political cultures with regard to content. It contributed to the development of long-standing images of oneself and of the others, which in turn substantially influenced modes and forms of interactions in Central and Eastern Europe. Thus the events of "1848" split into a multitude of "realms of memory" (Pierre Nora), and it did so not only in regard to nations. At first the year of 1848 was brought into connection with constitutionalisation. Later, aspects of social emancipation were put into the foreground of memory. Thus in many cases the events of 1848 served domestical propaganda and mobilisation. Some contributions examine the way 1848 found its expression in Central and Eastern European historiographies and which lines of tradition emerged from it. Others trace its literary aftermath or deal with the way jubilees (1873, 1898, 1923, 1938, 1948) were celebrated. These occasions clearly showed the influence on memory of more recent events, e.g. the foundation of the German Kaiserreich, the victory of republican and nation-state principles after World War I, the annexation of Austria and the German Parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitlers Reich, or the fall of the Iron Curtain. According to the ideas then prevailing especially in Eastern Europe collective memory of 1848 should safeguard "proletarian revolutionary achievements" as an anti-imperialistic protective barrier which thus traced some of their roots to 1848. Sure enough - if one disregards Hungary, where a special, popular and long lasting tradition surrounding 1848 had developed - the collective memory of 1848 waned on both sides of the Iron Curtain already in the decades before 1989. On the one hand this may be connected to some kind of "de-historisation" of everyday life. On the other hand there is a causal connection with the fact that the incidents of 1848 and their interpretations did not fit easily into the ideological corset of "real socialism". Finally it became difficult during recent years to deduce obligations to the future from sacrifices by the participants of the 1848 revolution which is frequently referred to as having failed. Today the research interests are mainly focused on structural modernisation in consequence of 1848, a modernisation which has to be seen against the background of the dynamics of European integration.