ABSTRACT
While much has been said about the centrifugal nationality forces undermining the cohesion of the Dual Monarchy, it also must be remembered that there existed concurrent, opposing centripetal cultural forces. These forces were to be found in that psychic grip fashioned by and out of history: a teleological political perspective, which might have held together the Austrian synthesis (and hence those discordant parts always inherent in any synthesis) if it had been able to inspire the fervor of a single, emotive issue, lik;! nationalism did. But the Austrian idea had its source in a number of wellsprings located throughout Austria's cultural past, and so, its centripetal pull came not from a single idea, party, or agenda. Because Austrians were represented by a number of different, even antagonistic, cultural icons emanating out of a variety of past experience, they possessed a variety of perspectives as to who they were and a variety of game plans for winning state recognition of their self-perceived status. Where there was agreement among these groups and agendas, it was in the desire to keep Austria-Hungary whole. This goal of maintaining social assembly (or, more to the point, not promoting social disassembly) required a certain degree of tolerance by each group for the others, not least a refusal to stereotype and demonize others. That this assembly failed to take place is history; today the Austrian idea is long dead. Nevertheless, the Austrian idea merits examination if for no other reason than to comprehend the dimensions of the civilization lost when old Austria went to the ground in 1918.
