THE LOST DREAM OF CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE ANTI-RACIST MOVEMENT SOSMITMENSCH IN AUSTRIA
Austria: The heart of a cosmopolitan Central European identity born anew or the walled off eastern frontier of 'Fortress Europe'? In the following contribution the writer Josef Haslinger describes Austria's search for a new role after the fall of the Iron Curtain. With the recent Austrian referendum vote in favour of EU membership the article has become even more topical. Josef Haslinger was born in 1955 in Zwettl, Austria. He studied Philosophy, Theatre Sciences and German Literature at the University of Vienna, was coeditor of a literary magazine and Writer-in-Residence and Visiting Professor at Oberlin College and Bowling Green State University, Ohio. In 1992 he was co-founder of the Austrian anti-racist movement SOS-Mitmensch. Haslinger has become known beyond Austria as an author of short stories, novellas and Essays.According to UN statistics, 15 million of immigrants settled in Western Europe between 1980 and 1992. Most of them were encouraged to leave their native country by the governments of Western Europe. Many were refugees from Eastern Europe and many who managed to escape one of the Warsaw Pact states were hailed as political heroes. In the relationship between East and West, trafficking in human beings was an affair of basic humanitarian involvement. There was a great demand for dissidents. For example, it seemed that West Germany was trying step by step to buy up the entire population of Eastern Germany.
From time to time in Austria there was a sudden increase of refugees. In 1956, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians arrived, of whom 180,000 asked for political asylum. In 1968/69, 162,000 Czechs and Slovaks crossed the Austrian border. Most of them left Austria for other western countries. Only 12,000 asked for asylum. In 1981 at least 100,000 Poles came to Austria. 29,000 asked for political asylum.
Until now the Austrian government has taken every occasion to congratulate itself for having been prepared to deal with these extraordinary situations and for its willingness to absorb and integrate large numbers of eastern European refugees. Even in the years of failed revolts and suppressed democratic experiments, when considerable numbers of people were seeking asylum in Austria, fifty per cent of them were eligible to be accepted as political refugees according to the Geneva Convention. The rest had to turn to the immigration authorities of other countries, but they did not have to fear being deported to their native lands.
Normally, however, refugees from east were rare. Some of them came in bizarre, selfconstructed planes, others glided along powerlines, others arrived in Warsaw Pact air force fighters. Some dug tunnels underneath the Iron Curtain, others crashed through the frontier barriers in heavy trucks, still others mailed themselves to the Golden West in special freight loads. All these refugees could be sure of getting asylum in Austria.
During this time, the acceptance rate for asylum seekers was as high as 70-80 per cent, sometimes even higher. But suddenly, the situation changed. In 1990, when more than 12,000 Rumanians were seeking asylum in Austria, the acceptance rate went down to 6.8 per cent, although in the past two decades there was no country in Eastern Europe where human life was valued less than in Rumania. To prevent more Rumanians from entering Austria, it was decreed that every Rumanian refugee had to present a cash sum worth 5,000 Austrian shillings at the Austrian border.
What had happened? The reality that people were trying to escape had not become less dreadful, but our view of this reality had changed profoundly. The demise of the communist world had a profound impact on our ideo-logy and on our political interests. To an alarming extent we lost our concern for the states from which, since 1990, increasing numbers of refugees were fleeing in order to seek haven from poverty, discrimination and persecution.
In 1983 I returned by train from Prague to Vienna. I shared the compartment with some elderly people from Eastern Germany , who, out of excitement, were unable to sit still. After running the gauntlet in the emigration offices of German Democratic Republic, retired persons were aloud to spend a few days in western countries, if they could present a personal invitation. Here, in the train, they were standing at the window, wondering if the Austria border guard would welcome them with our traditional greeting "Grüss Gott". Suddenly the door opened to reveal the Austrian immigration officer, who barked: Passport check! Nervously the old people began fishing in their bags, to which the officer remarked: "As soon as they reach freedom, they all get nervous."
Was that not the essence of the Western experience? People from the East got a lecture about their inferiority, the political and economical inferiority of their system, that is. But the lecturer's choice of words was not always appropriate. Meanwhile, the system has vanished, but the inferiority remains.
In 1984, during an East-West meeting of artists and intellectuals in Dubrovnik, a Hungarian philosopher fell into raptures about the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The only buildings in Hungary, he asserted, which are still worth something, are painted in the fading yellow of the Austrian Schönbrunn palace. Despite the division of Central Europe into two separate worlds, the yellow paint of Schönbrunn became something of a magic bond. The cultural unity of central Europe was preached at conferences from Berlin to Trieste. The restoration of a common European culture was thought to be an appropriate strategy for surmounting the actual split of the region, i.e. for overcoming communism. Such East-West meetings took place increasingly in private apartments in Budapest, even in Bratislava and Prague. At one of these meetings Egon Schwarz, a distinguished Professor of German Literature at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, who in 1938 was expelled from Austria, said with his unerring sense of irony: "Central Europe does exist, except that it is reduced to a border."
But a dream does not recognise borders. Neither did the Hungarian writer and long-term PEN president György Konrad, who hastened from conference to conference to declare his Central European message: "A Central European claims the division of Europe to be an artificial construction. (...) To be a Central European means to regard diversity as a value. This could be a new world view. (...) The idea of central Europe means the flourishing variety of its constituent parts, the self-confidence of diversity." And in 1985, Konrad said: "What we need is a city that is capable of carrying out for central Europe the role of a simultaneous interpreter, the task of mediation and arbitration, the job of a moderator."
The Vice-Mayor of Vienna at the time, Erhard Busek, who is now the Vice-Chancellor of Austria, embraced Konrad's dream. He knew the name of the future capital of central Europe and he shouted it from the rooftops of the Central European dream factory: VIENNA. "It's exciting, he cheered, "to be a Viennese, it's exciting to become a citizen of the Central European metropolis."
Ursula Paterk, the Social-Democratic City Councillor for Cultural Affairs may have thought: We should not leave the idea of central Europe to the conservatives. Therefore, she felt obliged to promote the biggest conference yet on this subject. All of her comrades were not happy about that. Central Europe was never an idea of the Austria Social-Democrats. They had always been oriented toward Germany. After the Second World War it was inopportune to uphold this attitude because of the collective attitude to deny the complicity of Austria in the crimes of the Nazi regime and because of the neutrality the Austrians had achieved in the meantime. Today, the orientation toward Germany has reappeared in the guise of a passion for the European Community.
In February 1991 the French periodical Autrement surveyed the remains of the Central European dream. It found them in Budapest, Bratislava, and Prague. But Vienna had already sent a letter to Brussels requesting admission to the European Community. Neutrality, which was intended by European intellectuals to be a goal for the entire Central European region, was no longer on the agenda. Only spoilsports were still talking about neutrality. The contribution of Vienna to Central Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain could symbolically be reduced to the proposal of a conservative politician, who suggested that Vienna supply Bratislava with surplus bananas.
In the face of the rotten state economies we encouraged people from the East to be inventive in taking initiatives toward private business. In the late eighties, when the Iron Curtain became permeable, there suddenly was the chance to realise our advice and to make modest amounts of private capital. A strip of the Prater park in Vienna was about to be transformed in a Central European bazaar. But the police quickly got this development under control. In a changed world Austrian xenophobia recalled one of its most significant historical battle-lines: hatred of the Slavonian people. The dream of Central Europe had foundered on Austrian history.
After the decline of communism, we did not offer anything substantial to the Central European states, including Yugoslavia. On the contrary, we did not want to become involved in their political affairs and were fully occupied with fleeing from them. In 1989 we cheered them on; now we prefer to leave them to their misfortunes. Where is our flourishing trade with Eastern Europe? We have rerouted it to Western Europe.
Nowadays soldiers of the Austrian army are patrolling the eastern borders of our country in order to reinforce the usual customs officers and the newly installed border gendarmerie. Whoever crosses the border illegally will be sent back, no matter what may have caused their flight. Yes, it is exciting to be a Viennese, it is exciting to be a citizen of the metropolis of Central Europe. The reality of Central Europe has again been reduced to a borderline. And its capital is Vienna - where nameless Central Europeans sit in prison, waiting for deportation to their native countries.
For a brief moment, at the beginning of the eighties, today's situation was already foreseeable. When Polish refugees began flocking to Austria, the acceptance rate for asylum seekers sank from 72 per cent in 1980 to 46 per cent in 1981. After rigorous border controls were put in place and Poles were required to obtain a visa, the rate rose again to 85 per cent. For a moment we could picture what would happen in Austria if the western world were to win the Cold War.
The Iron Curtain shielded Austria from the Central European world. And if holes appeared we did our best to plug them through bureaucratic harassment. All in all, for the Austrian Social Democratic, government being a Central European meant nothing more than the reasonable obligation to cut a small door in the Iron Curtain for diplomatic traffic.
When the Iron Curtain unexpectedly fell, you could witness the same scene throughout the northern and eastern parts of Austria. For several months, Vienna and other cities were crowded with Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians. Along the transit routes, in the middle of fields and meadows, refrigerators and hifi sets were displayed for sale. The new customers were able to gape at the wares of affluent society but were too poor to buy them. On weekends, the roads to Hungary and Czechoslovakia were hopelessly jammed, not only by foul-smelling vehicles with two-stroke engines, but also by the latest western models fitted with catalytic converters. When they came backed they were crammed full with pigs, calves, sausages, cigarettes and alcohol. Taking advantage of the significantly lower prices for many goods - food stuffs, for example - the Austrians caused a serious shortage of supplies in the southern parts of Czechoslovakia.
In Budweis and elsewhere one could observe how hordes of Austrians showed the locals how the master race behaves by lighting their cigarettes with Czech crown notes. Recalling unpleasant encounters with the same Austrian neighbours 50 years earlier, some Czechs had no wish to conceal their disappointment with the new world order. It did not exactly accord with their expectations of a free central Europe.
On the other hand, it had suddenly become possible to actualise what was once stressed as the foundation of central Europe: a common cultural background. But in reality interest in the culture of Central Europe was shamefully slight. At the very beginning, in 1989, Easter European artists were invited to present their works in Vienna, but soon we had fulfilled our duty and got back to business as usual. If there is a lack of fresh blood in the theatre, in music and art, we look to Germany and the U.S.A., then to Great Britain and France.
In a very short time, the euphoria about the event of the century turned into a more and more clearly recognisable yearning for the old Iron Curtain. In the midst of social change, one is not prepared for problems as they arise. Resourceful fellows from the East tried to compensate for their lack of money with skilful shoplifting. In two or three business streets of Vienna it was advisable to hold on tight to your handbag or your purse. But in the popular press reports about such matters were no longer inspired by the endeavour to find new solutions for new problems, but by the more or less outspoken wish to reestablish the old status quo. And exactly the same politicians who most loudly condemned a system that did not allow people to leave their country now became the loudest in demanding that the eastern borders be closed. In the first place I have to mention the head of the so-called Liberal Party, which is in fact a national party, Jörg Haider. Haider spurred on the change in mood and turned the results into personal political success.
One example may illustrate this turn of mood. After 1945, many roads on the Czecho-slovakian border that had once connected Austrian villages with the neighbouring villages of Czechoslovakia now ended at a fortified frontier. Amid the first euphoria, many of these roads were reconstructed and new crossing points were installed. The small community of Angern, for example, is separated only by the March river from Záhorská Ves in Slovakia. Before rebuilding the old bridge, a temporary crossing was constructed by the Austrian army. But one day some bicycles were stolen in Angern. Immediately a protest against the new bridge arose that became louder and louder. Soon the mayor saw no other solution than to submit the issue to a plebiscite. Two-thirds of the citizens voted against the bridge.
Something similar occurred in Vienna. The city was planning to stage a world fair together with Budapest. They had already spent a lot of money preparing for it. But the citizens of Vienna voted against the project.
When I went to America in 1990, depressed about the new Austrian racism, most of my friends were against Austria's joining the European Community. When I came back in 1991, most of my friends favoured it. And the government was set to ratify the European Trade Agreements without any serious public discussion, let alone a plebiscite. An officially sponsored report that deemed the matter unconstitutional was dismissed. The new political orientation was put into effect as if this was the most natural step for a neutral state.
But there was a small problem. What to do with all these Central Europeans still flocking into our country looking for work and shelter? It was hardly appropriate to lower the Iron Curtain again. The Secretary-General of the SocialDemocratic Party, Josef Cap, implored: Laws not rabble-rousing! It was a marvellous idea. Thus, the government began to formulate laws on foreigners that, in fact, were publicly dictated by Jörg Haider. So there it was again, the Iron Curtain. This time around, those on its western side find it quite tolerable and their grim smiles express a honest predisposition to law and order.
In terms of the new law on foreigners, the citizens of such remote places as the Shetland Islands, Reykjavik or Hammerfest are not foreigners in Austria, yet people who live just 50 kilometres east of Vienna are. One could also put it this way: According to statistics on European wealth, which show the prosperity of nations based on gross national product (GNP) per capita, foreigners are people of nations below twentieth place, beginning with the Czech Republic in place 21. People from the 20 richest nations enjoy the privileged status of EEA citizens.
This development during recent years did not occur without public reaction. First of all I must mention the anti-racist movement SOSMitmensch (SOS-Fellow Human Being). On a cold November evening in 1992, ten people met in the villa of the artist André Heller. Among them were two prominent politicians, Peter Pilz, the spokesman of the Green Party, and Rudolf Scholten, the Social-Democratic Minister for Cultural Affairs. Also Peter Huemer, a popular journalist, Daniel Charim, a well-known lawyer, Ostbahn Kurti, the most popular Austria rock singer, Helmut Schüller, the director of Caritas (Catholic charities), and I participated in this meeting. We all were unhappy with the political situation and outraged at the new racist tones we were hearing throughout the country. We felt as though Austria's critical voices were being choked as in a stranglehold. We spent hours in discussion, trying to find a common idea for a large anti-racist movement. Eventually we found it.
At that time, a new asylum law had been in force for half a year, and a special law on foreigners was about to be passed in the parliament. Furthermore, Jörg Haider had announced a "foreigner petition". The text had not yet been released, but it was already clear that it would be a petition against foreigners in Austria. A popular daily came out against the integration of foreigners in Austrian school classes.
More and more, we were hearing about the criminal activities of members of extreme right parties. There were desecrations of Jewish cemeteries, swastika daubings, and even physical attacks against foreigners. In 1992, three arson attacks against quarters inhabited by foreigners were committed, fortunately without serious injuries. And day by day there were the pictures from Germany, from Rostock and Hoyerswerda, where people were cheering the neo-Nazi excesses. In 1992 alone, 338 arson crimes against facilities for foreigners were committed in Germany. We feared that the Austrian neo-nazi movement could be encouraged by the German activists.
A part of the Austrian press constantly charged that the asylum law was being abused by so-called economic refugees for the purpose of illegal immigration. Once they are here, it was claimed, we will never get rid of them. The new asylum law was a political reaction to these charges. Instead of examining more carefully the facts of persecution in the refugees' home countries, a formula was invented that allowed us to send the overwhelming majority of refugees back to the country they had come from. Whoever passes through a safe country before reaching the Austrian border, and even if it is only the transit hall of an airport, will be sent back to that country by the Austrian immigration officials. All neighbouring states, even Croatia, were regarded as safe countries. Therefore, only people coming directly by plane from their native country to Austria had the chance for a fair asylum hearing. From one day to the next, applications for asylum in Austria declined to one-fifth of the number before the law went into effect.
The Slovenians, Hungarians, Slovaks and Czechs were expected to take all the refugees from East European and Asian states who did not have enough money to buy an airplane ticket. Surely everyone, including the Austrian government, knew that they were not able to meet this demand. But this was in 1992. At that time no one was still speaking of Central Europe. The Social-Democratic Minister for Internal Affairs, Franz Löschnak, praised the new asylum law as an exemplary step for the whole of Western Europe. And indeed, it was.
When I asked more sophisticated members of the Social-Democratic Party, why the devil are you going along with such inhuman policies, they themselves called it regrettable, but they were forced to do it, they claimed, otherwise Jörg Haider would become Federal Chancellor of Austria. His foreigner petition, they said, is nothing other than the attempt to bring down the Austrian government. These critics were spreading frightening figures about the level of public sympathy for the petition.
What was completely lacking in the Austrian government in those days was a courageous defence of liberal policies in tune with open borders in Central Europe. In our citizens movement SOS-Mitmensch we never spoke about Central Europe. But we all agreed that we had to defend a civilised cosmopolitan spirit that was disappearing. We also agreed that this spirit was to embrace the peoples of Eastern Europe.
On the principal question of what kinds of political changes must take place, there was full agreement at our November meeting. It should be possible to neutralise the xenophobia created by Haider's petition and thereby defeat the government's argument that the nation required anti-foreigner laws. Through a grassroots movement we wanted to provide evidence for our basic convictions, our opposing point of view. We wanted to stand up confidently for another Austria and we wanted to invite as many Austrian personalities as possible to join us. We were really speaking about introducing a new fashion. The anti-racist cosmopolitan spirit was to become fashionable for the majority of Austrians. We were inspired by the utopian idea of creating a non-partisan civic forum that would even involve members of the government, but nevertheless would be able to criticize governmental policy towards foreigners. We should have known that this is impossible in a country where directives of the political parties matter more to the deputies than their own consciences.
From the very beginning our movement was surprisingly successful. People of all professions and organisations across a remarkably wide spectrum supported us. All over the country local SOS-Mitmensch groups were founded. But we had a serious problem. For a long time we were unable to agree on a common manifesto. Whatever we discussed was reported to the headquarters of the political parties and was published in magazines. In particular, SocialDemocratic politicians in our movement came under enormous pressure from their party. Day by day they arrived with new suggestions for modifying the manifesto in order to make it tamer. They wanted to stress the opposition to Jörg Haider and to take the sting out of the criticism of the Austrian government. There were times when I was convinced that our citizens' initiative failed because it was too successful. After nights of discussion we managed to agree on a manifesto that expressed strong opposition to Haider's foreigner petition and at the same time included passages that also addressed the new governmental laws.
In December 1992 it was already predictable that our first big event, the so-called Lichtermeer (sea of Lights) which we set for the 23rd of January, could become the greatest demonstration of recent decades. The hour of the party officials had arrived, and they took the bull by the horns. It was so paradoxical that we could not believe it when one December morning both the Secretary-General of the Social Democratic Party, Josef Cap, and the Interior Minister, Franz Löschnak, declared their support for SOS-Mitmensch. The very person responsible for the new laws on foreigners now claimed to support a movement opposing these laws. We sent the minister a declaration headlined: "Urgent request from new SOS-Mitmensch activist Franz Löschnak." Essentially the declaration included the demand that the restrictive asylum law be liberalised so that every refugee who reaches the Austrian border receive the opportunity of a fair asylum procedure. Two weeks later we had an appointment with the minister. He was not at all ready to change anything. But publicly he continued supporting SOS-Mitmensch.
At this time I had a private conversation with Joseph Cap, the Secretary-General of the Social Democratic Party. He gave me to understand that they did not want to change the strict political course against foreigners until Haider's petition was over and done with. But should the SOS-Mitmensch demonstration against Haider prove successful, there would be a basis for new negotiations. Was this not exactly what we wanted? To change people's mood and thus nurture more liberal policies?
I again grew confident. I could not believe Löschnak's harsh refusal to compromise. I felt that it was merely a political tactic in order to thwart Haider's petition. After all, who would sign it if its demands were already in practice? Later it turned out that on this point I was completely wrong.
The Lichtermeer became the biggest demonstration in Austria since the end of World War II. Haider's petition was utterly defeated. His party experience was utterly defeated. His party experienced serious difficulties when five deputies withdrew to found a new party named Liberal Forum. But the spirit of Haider's petition still guides Austrian politics. We did not stand a chance of turning the tide of events. The SOSMitmensch movement had set off a chain reaction that culminated in a national political happening. But the real success was gained by those who urged: Laws not rabble-rousing!
After the Lichtermeer we tried to reap the harvest. But there was no harvest. We were cheated. We had seen the Lichtermeer as a kind of public mandate to realise the aims of our manifesto. But the political powers slammed the door in our face. We went from minister to minister in order to discuss the matter. They were friendly, congratulated us on our success, listened attentively to our requests - and did nothing. Even a long, and so it seemed to me, constructive conversation with our Federal Chancellor, Franz Vranitzky, had no consequences. On the contrary, in June a very restrictive law was enacted regulating the residence of foreigners in Austria. It even allows the immigration authorities to expel people who have been legally in Austria for ten years or longer. Only when they were about to deport babies and spouses was there a public outcry that stopped the extreme enforcement of this law.
The debate over amending the law goes on. At the moment, the conservatives are showing more liberal attitudes than the Social Democrats. SOS-Mitmensch is involved in this debate. The movement still exists and is still struggling for better conditions for foreigners in Austria. But after the Lichtermeer demonstration the politically prominent figures as well as others disappeared.
I can not really judge the effect of SOSMitmensch on the present political climate in Austria. However, many people are now standing up against xenophobia and working for the equitable and peaceful coexistence of all people living in Austria, from wherever they may come. Whether these many can constitute a majority is still unclear. But if they prevail, at the moment this would be the most effective contribution Austria could make to the political, economic, and cultural revival of Central Europe.
Josef Haslinger
Contact: Johann Strauszgasse 26, A-1040 Vienna; Tel: 43/1 5044373; Fax: 43/1 5045444.