ABSTRACT
The reconstitution of an Austrian state in 1945 took place under a number of shadows – not only that of Allied military occupation, although that was the most threatening, but the many shadows of Austria’s many pasts. The history of Austrian state formation had been one of failure over the centuries. The great paradox of this epoch is that Austria did not lack an urban civil society or modern schools of thought of great intellectual vibrancy. While the grandfathers of European liberal thought came predominantly from England, Scotland and France, many of the dominant liberal ideas of the twentieth century, especially in economics, have their origins in Vienna. Although many of the great minds of Austrian liberalism developed their theories in the inter-war years, neither the politics nor the economics of Austria in those years could be said to be liberal. The Constitution of the First Austrian Republic was certainly a model of liberal orthodoxy.
