History Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2778
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Item Anywhere but the Reich: The Jews of Nazi Vienna's Applications for Emigration Aid, 1938-1940(2021) Wachtel, Jennifer LeeAnne; Rozenblit, Marsha; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss in 1938, an immediate outpouring of antisemitic violence and legislation horrified the Jews of Vienna. Between 1938 and 1940, Viennese Jews applied to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish Community of Vienna or IKG) for financial aid to emigrate. Through a close examination of emigration questionnaires Viennese Jews submitted to the IKG, I demonstrate the harrowing effect of the Anschluss and Kristallnacht (November 1938 pogrom) on Jews from all social classes. By centering how individual families engaged with the emigration process, I argue that Viennese Jews immediately recognized the need to flee and exercised enormous creativity to escape. Desperate Viennese Jews were willing to emigrate anywhere and obtain any job outside the Reich. Viennese Jews also demonstrated resilience in the face of Nazi terror by applying for financial aid to flee the Reich even as potential havens shut their doors to Jewish refugees.Item Teaching the Empire: Education and State Loyalty in Late Habsburg Austria(2015) Moore, Scott Olen; Rozenblit, Marsha L.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how Austria utilized its system of public education to develop loyalty to the multinational Habsburg Monarchy from 1867-1918. It draws from a range of sources, including textbooks, pedagogical journals, curricula, school chronicles, school year-end-reports, school inspection reports, and other records related to school administration to show that Austria developed a strong system of civic education which attempted to build a supranational, Austrian identity among its citizens. Its first chapter provides an overview of the Austrian educational system from the eighteenth century to 1914. It also discusses the development of the history curriculum in these schools and illustrates that it possessed a unique ability to serve as a conduit for civic education. The second chapter examines how textbooks and history classes presented Habsburg rulers in a way that portrayed the dynasty as the embodiment of good governance. It shows that such presentations sought to create an interpretation of the Habsburg past that served future rulers while teaching about Austria's history. This chapter is followed by an analysis of how these textbooks and classes used the Monarchy's history to support a supranational, Austrian identity in which its citizens were bound by common struggle and a shared past. Most importantly, this chapter shows that officials sought to create this identity in a way that supported existing local and national identities. The fourth chapter explores how school celebrations and patriotic events reinforced civic education efforts. It proves that there was a strong collaboration between schools and other agencies to create a consistent message about the Habsburg past which strengthened the supranational identity asserted by Austrian civic education. The final chapter discusses the efforts by the Austrian educational bureaucracy to ensure that teachers remained supporters of civic education efforts. Ultimately, this study shows that Austria possessed a nuanced, assertive system of civic education within its schools. This system of civic education attempted to create a layered identity among Austrians which blended loyalty to the imperial, dynastic state while also allowing for regional, and national identities to remain strong.Item Christian Social Anti-Semitism in Vienna: A Textual Analysis of "Die Reichspost," 1894-1897(2013) Cohen, Adam Joshua; Rozenblit, Marsha; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This Master's Thesis is a close textual analysis of the anti-Semitic argumentation of the Reichspost, a Catholic and anti-Semitic newspaper associated with the Christian Social Party and published in Vienna between 1894 and 1938. This micro study examines the newspaper from January 1894 through April 1897. During its early years, the Reichspost used economic, social, and political anti-Semitism, religiously motivated Jew-hatred, and historical misrepresentations against Jews and Judaism. In addition, the newspaper justified (but did not call for) anti-Semitic violence. The Reichspost moderated itself by rejecting racial anti-Semitism and leaving the possibility of baptism and conversion open to Jews. Moreover, the newspaper demonstrated state patriotism, dynastic loyalty, and some aspects of "positive" Christianity. The Reichspost molded these seemingly discordant views into consistent ideology with demands for the "re-Christianization" and "de-Jewification" of public life, and doing so differentiated it from racial and radical anti-Semites of its time and of later decades.Item Culture Wars and Contested Identities: Social Policy and German Nationalisms in Interwar Slovenia, 1918-1941(2013) Reul, Nathaniel; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis analyzes the nature of ethnic Germans' self-identities and nationalisms in interwar Slovenia. Slovenia's German minorities' reactions to domestic social policies and world events that impacted them are examined primarily through locally-based German-language newspapers. Germans in Slovenia had had multiple identities and nationalisms, and these were shaped by social policies and domestic and foreign events, especially after the National Socialists' seizure of power in Germany in 1933. Pan-German nationalism was strong and widespread, and viewed Slovene minority policies as being purposeful attempts to eradicate the very existence of Germandom. This type of nationalism competed with other types of German nationalisms and identities which sought to integrate into and contribute to Slovene society without compromising their uniquely Germanic culture. National Socialism's appeal was so strong because it promised a reunion of Slovenia's Germandom with the wider Volk and a restoration of the minorities' societal dominance in the region.Item The Shadow of the Habsburgs: Memory and National Identity in Austrian Politics and Education, 1918-1955(2006-06-01) Campbell, Douglas Patrick; Rozenblit, Marsha; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how the people of Austria portrayed their past as part of the centuries-old, multinational Habsburg Monarchy in order to conduct a public debate about what it meant to be an "Austrian" during a tumultuous era in Europe's history. As its main sources, It draws upon the public writings of Austrian politicians and intellectuals, as well as on educational laws, curricula and history textbooks used by the different Austrian governments of the era in order to describe how Austrian leaders portrayed Austria's past in an attempt to define its national future, even as Austrian schools tried to disseminate those national and historical ideals to the next generation of Austrian citizens in a practical sense. The first section describes how the leaders of the Austrian First Republic saw Austria's newfound independence after 1918 as a clean break with its Habsburg past, and consequently pursued a union with Germany which was frustrated by the political interests of the victors of World War I. The second section details the rise of an "Austro-fascist" dictatorship in Austria during the mid-1930s which promoted an Austrian patriotism grounded in a positive portrayal of the Habsburg Monarchy in order to remain independent from Nazi Germany. The third section examines Austria's forcible incorporation into the Nazi German state, and the effort by the Third Reich to completely eradicate the existence of a distinctive Austrian identity by casting the Habsburg era in a negative light. The final section describes the rebirth of an independent Austrian state at the insistence of the Allied powers after World War II, and the manner in which the leaders of the Austrian Second Republic used memories of the Habsburg Past in order to portray Austrians as the victims of foreign German aggression who bore no responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich. This study ultimately shows that national identity was variable in post-Habsburg Austria, and that Austrian leaders and educators were able to construct narratives regarding their past which at times argued both for and against Austrian Germanness in response to the changing demands of the European balance of power.