The Austrian Soul and its Political Self: History of a Difference

Abstract

Based on the slogan Vienna is different Austria shall be identified in the sense of process perspectives of self-image creation and identity finding and therefore guided through – from the Roman province Pannonia, along the rule of the Babenberger and Habsburgs up to the present Second Republic. Thereby it becomes clear that every self – as an individual, a nation, a culture, etc. – presents no closed totality but a self-difference. It turns out that all attempts to place diversity under a homogeneous predominant ideology (founding myth) fail, because ultimately again a difference is produced. The Central Europe Myth (Austria as a mediator between the Latin-Germanic and Slavic culture) proves that as well as topical attempts to establish Austria as vanguard of central Europe (Centrope) or multiculturalism as today’s political leading idea. All efforts to create such a self-structure produce outsider figures (shadows) such as the Jew, the migrant, the Muslim or also the dissenting citizen. They deny the self-difference in their own identity and project it on to the threatening or dissenting other. Instead of universalizing separatist concepts like national identity, cultural essence, etc., it is advisable to realise the never closing self-difference of one’s own self-finding process, to offer new possibilities for integration, tolerance, participation, solidarity, and democratizing.