Demographic research in Austria 1918-1938

Research project P 14567 Demographic research in Austria 1918-1938 Josef KYTIR 09.10.2000 In German-speaking countries population science as an academic discipline carries a heavy historical burden as a result of National Socialism. Under the existing institutional conditions, (there has never been a chair of demography in Austrian universities and the Institute for Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences was only set up in the mid- I 970s) no work has yet dealt with the persons, institutions and issues involved in population research. This is particularly true of the 1920s and 1930s, during which population science helped to develop and disseminate the concepts and ideologies which were then practised in the Third Reich`s racial policies and in the destruction of lives considered "undeserving of life". The planned research project, however, not only intends to deal for the first time with the people, institutions and arguments that were of importance for population science in Austria in the inter-war period. It will also reveal the historical continuities and ideological roots of many concepts, including current demographic issues (ageing, immigration, imminent falls in population), which are still discussed publicly in terms of "Überalterung" ("over" - ageing, "Überfremdung" (excessive numbers of foreigners) and "Geburtenschwund" ("vanishing" birthrates), even though demography has in the last 40 years developed both substantively and methodologically into a modem social science.

The main ambition of the final report was to take stock, describe and analyse all the elements that made up population science in Austria in the inter-war period, in view of the lack of any comparable preceding studies. At the time, demography was a subject which still had to develop its place within the scientific world, belonging as it did to the fields of population statistics and to population policy. After a short introduction, dealing with the theoretical backgrounds, the report starts with a survey about the most pregnant and representative persons who built up demography at that time: Julius Tandler, a medical man, social reformer in "Red Vienna" and population politician, the two fully fledged population statisticians Wilhelm Hecke and Wilhelm Winkler, the sociologist and author of the "economy of human beings" Rudolf Goldscheid and the two eugenicists Heinrich Reichel and Oda Olberg. In a second part of the report the most important institutions were investigated: the federal office for statistics, its organisation and presidents, the carrying out of the national censuses in 1920, 1923 and 1934 and its discussion in the press, Winkler`s institute for the statistics of minorities, the courses in statistics and population statistics at the Austrian universities, the Austrian society for population policy and other scientific societies which were interested in social and health policy and also eugenic issues. Last but not least the most relevant scientific journals were analysed. In its last part, the report deals with the demographic discourse in the inter-war period. Firstly, the dominating issues like the dropping birth-rate, the still high infant-mortality, internal migration and illegitimacy are described. Furthermore, migration as well as ethnic and national minorities are investigated, because they actually stand in the centre of scientific attention, though at the time they were only of marginal interest. Regarding the discourse at the time, we notice that women, e.g. female scientists or officials, scarcely took part in it, that discussions or criticism can hardly be discovered, and that eugenic thoughts, coming from medical science, were included in the demographic discourse without critical reflection. On the other hand, no signs of anti- Semitic or racist attitudes were found. Last but not least, the contributions of the Austrian population statisticians on international congresses were analysed.