ABSTRACT
The common history between Germany and Austria since 1945 has been the subject of numerous studies, but no single volume matches the broad sweep and the intellectual depth of this Festschrift for Rolf Steininger, the dynamic chief of Innsbruck's Institute for Contemporary History who turned sixty-five last year. Michael Gehler was given the slightly easier task of providing a portrait of the first Austrian republic. He ably traces the affinity of its population to "Weimar" Germany, before and after the Nazis came to power in Berlin. Dieter Stiefel, Ingrid Bohler, and Heinz Handler compare the two economies in various ways. Many of those differences and similarities are well known to even the casual traveler and newspaper reader, but from an historian's perspective, they are nevertheless astounding. Gehler carefully retraces the Austrian position on German unification before and after 1989, defending Chancellor Franz Vranitzky who intensified relations with East Berlin.
