Introduction

In 1945 the founding fathers of the Second Republic had to deal with a four-power occupation, next to undoing the traumas of the Anschlu -era. The effects of World War II and the unusually long occupation in a “liberated country” lingered on into the 1950s. The quadripartite occupation lasted until 1955 and ended with the signing of the Austrian State Treaty and the reestablishment of a sovereign and neutral country. Even without American-style suburbanization of Austrian middle class social life, the private home and the big family also came to characterize Austrian households, especially in predominantly rural Austria. Austrian girls may have copied American clothing styles, hair-dos and make up, but they did it mostly at home and less in public. American-style sexual liberation hardly seems to have made inroads among young Austrian girls. Teenage girls were less rebellious than the boys and followed traditional models of “women’s proper sphere” as mothers and housewives.