Biografische Fragmente, politische Kontexte

Biographical Fragments, Political Contexts

Abstract

Taking the example of the remarkable political career of Emmy Stradal, a political newcomer at the beginning of the First Austrian Republic who became an active and effective member of the Austrian parliament for the Pan-German People’s Party between 1920 and 1923, this article investigates the emerging political culture of the country built out of the remains of the Habsburg Empire after 1918. It suggests that, while the whole interwar period has to be seen from the perspective of the destruction of democracy in the 1930s, the early 1920s can also be analysed as a period of opening up and searching for new political forms, as the existing parties had to adjust to both the altered position of the parliament and women’s suffrage. The first part of the paper looks into Emmy Stradal’s personal development as the middle-class wife of a senior government official and mother of four children and investigates her proto-feminist opinions, which were expressed in unpublished literary works and drew heavily on Nietzschean philosophy. The second part focuses on her political career within the Pan-German People’s Party whose racial ideology of the Volksgemeinschaft combined aggressive anti-Semitism with the demand for Austrian union with Germany. It shows how Emmy Stradal tried to build alliances with women from other parties and sought to legitimise her demands for better funding of girl’s education within the context of her party’s anti-Semitic ideology.