ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. The book demonstrates how ideological polarities in interwar Austrian politics were blurred by calls to make theatre a conscious representation of an 'Austrian' culture. Overlaps in the cultural policies of Left and Right encouraged this process up to 1934. The ambiguity of particular cultural forms allowed the Left to promote forms more readily associated with agendas on the Right, for instance drama in which Catholicism, broadly defined, is present. An examination of institutional politics at the Burgtheater in particular has revealed that the agendas of the Christian Socials increasingly determined the direction of the repertoire during the late 1920s, informed by a particular understanding of that theatre as the symbol of a separate Austrian identity. In the early 1930s, the trend of historical drama on the main Viennese stages reinforced the ideological drift towards Catholic conceptions of the theatre and Austrian identity in official culture.
