ABSTRACT
Austria was never exempt from the political upheavals and uncertainties of World War I, nor the war’s virtually incalculable impact on European society and governments. But unlike other countries, postwar Austria assumed an entirely new state and civic identity. The war not only shook the liberal worldview of the nineteenth century, it also profoundly changed the identity of the survivors.” For Austria, World War I ended the Habsburg monarchy while the proclamation of the Republic of German Austria created a new geographical and political state. In the cultural sphere, productions of international significance were staged despite the city’s financial constraints. The National Socialist students and professors enacted a particularly violent enmity against Jews and Social Democrats at the medical faculty. With paramilitary groups like the Heimwehren on the Right, and the Republican Defense Alliance led by Julius Deutsch on the Left, both parties were primed for combat.
