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IMMIGRATION POLITICS, AUSTRIAN MILLENIAL FESTIVALS, AND THE ROLE OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Andre Gingrich Institute for Social Anthropology University of Vienna Universitsstrasse 7 A - 1010 Vienna / Austria Email: andre.gingrich@univie.ac.at Paper presented at the Session "Anthropology and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Germany, Switzerland, and Austria" Twentieth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Seattle Wa., 10th - 13th october 1996) During the last few years, a seeming paradox increasingly pervaded much of public culture and political life in Austrian society. The paradox consists in a growing support for xenophobic political propaganda on the one hand, and simultaneously, in an unprecedented wave of support for foreign refugees on the other. This paper explores the paradox, which leads to identifying certain, mythologically constructed continuities inherent to the Austrian "Zeitgeist." Current Austrian, official millenial festivals, on the other hand, relate the present republic to the medieval political entity Ostarrichi. It will be shown that the idea of such an official millenial continuity sometimes is not too far away from the mythological continuities of folk culture that inform the paradox.

OUTLINING A PARADOX
One side of this paradox manifestly is visible in the rise of the rightist and populist "Freedom Party" (FP), now holding about 20- 25% of the electorate. In many respects and at various levels except for federal elections, the FP thus has gained the status of Austria's second largest party. This success of the last decade was to a certain extent accompanied by the FP's constant usage of xenophobic, racist and anti-semitic allusions, imagery, and slogans. The other side of the paradox is manifest in the huge support extended by institutions as well as by large parts of the population of Austria towards the victims and refugees of civil war in ex-Yugoslavia after 1991. In 1993 and 1994 for instance, Austria sheltered an estimated 80.000 refugees primarily from Bosnia, and additionally sent masses of aid materials through the relief organization "Nachbar in Not" (neighbor in need) to ex-Yugoslavia, primarily again to Bosnia. It cannot be denied that major sections of the FP's voters belonged to the very people who helped Bosnian refugees. How is it possible that one and the same society produces one of the strongest parties with xenophobic tendencies in Europe, and at the same time hosts - in terms of percentage of the population - by far the largest refugee group inside the European Union? If this concerned two different social groups inside Austrian society, the answer could explain the contradiction in terms of a causal relation, or of a model explaining movement by counter-movement. Yet such explanations apply to this case to a very limited extent only. It is an empirical fact that a significant number of Austrians have not chosen one alternative because of, and in opposition, to the other. A major group of Austrians has not decided "either" for the FP "or" for refugee support, but in fact is doing "both" at the same time. Why?

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There are several ways to investigate and try to answer this question. Some of the possible answers obviously are to be provided by sociology, and by the economic and political sciences. They will be dealing with some of the major underlying issues - such as the long-standing traditions of Pangermanism in Austria, the dominant role of Social Democracy in the Federal Government during the past quarter of a century, rising unemployment rate and fears connected to the process of European integration, and the like. I shall not discuss these disciplines' contributions for an understanding of the paradox here, but shall simply state that these answers stand in their own right as valid, partial explanations. As an anthropologist, I shall attempt to provide an additional explanation, partial in itself and complimentary to those of other researchers. My explanation is based on a much more detailed study in progress, and is given from the perspective of my own discipline of course. In my opinion, the results of recent anthropological research on ethnicity and nationalism indeed are capable of providing key conceptual tools to critically assess some basic ideological dimensions of the paradox- the paradox between unprecedented, popular support for Bosnian refugees, and unprecedented, popular support for a xenophobic party by one and the same group of people. My arguments are built on the works of British and Scandinavian anthropoologists, primarily on those of T. Hylland Eriksen (1993) and M. Banks (1996). In a nutshell, my partial anthropological explanation is focussing on the hegemony of a politically and historically constructed meta-narrative in Austrian society. That master narrative is rooted in the late 19th century, has changed some of its contents and imagery since, but continues to play a decisive role in contemporary Austria and beyond. Let me give you two examples of what we are talking about. One of FP leader Jrg Haider's most popular arguments runs: "What for did our ancestors defend our country against the Turks, if we now let them in again, to take away our jobs and our security?" An elementary aspect of this standard argument is a retrospective reference to history, i.e. to Austria's Turkish wars of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. On the other hand, a standard argument of mobilization for fund raising, in support of refugees from exYugoslavia, was communicated in the media and in public rhetorics and ran somewhat like: "These refugees come from a region that has close links to Austria. They are "our Bosnians", belonging to the same people that defended the empire in the last decades of Habsburg rule." This second reference therefore constantly alluded to the decay period of the empire, when Bosnia during four decades had the de facto status of Austria's colony. On closer examination, both sides of the apparent paradox and contradiction do in fact display a striking first parallel. The present is defined in terms of a mytho-historical past, more specifically: in terms of Austria's mytho-historical past relations with the Muslim world. My first point is this: mobilizing popular support for the FP against "the Turks" - as a metaphor for migrants from all kinds of "Oriental" countries - and mobilizing support for Bosnian refugees in two ways made use of one and the same meta-narrative. In this narrative, the Bosnian serves as a paradigm for the "good Muslim (Oriental)," whereas the Turk is the "bad Muslim" and prototype of the bad Oriental.

FRONTIER ORIENTALISM
I classify the master narrative as "frontier orientalism." The term of course refers to E. Said's (1980) work, but also reflects some recent criticism of it, pointing out that his notion of orientalism is to wide and too unspecific. The mytho-historical meta-narrative basically claims: the bad Muslim and Oriental attacked and seriously endangered our frontier, such as in the Turkish wars at the dawn of modernity, to which Haider refers. The good Muslim, however, defended our frontier, such as the Bosnians before and during the First World War. The good and the bad Muslim thus constitute key metaphors in a dual register, inherent to one and the same narrative. At the beginning of modernity, the bad Muslim was a serious rival and
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threat to "our" existence. Crushing that rival is portrayed as the decisive precondition for the subsequent rise of Habsburg colonial expansion. At the end of the colonial period, and as a result of that roll-back strategy against the Ottomans on the Balkans, Vienna's rule over Bosnia serves as the ideological raw material to construct the good Muslim, "our" unwavering ally in difficult times. A second parallel in the paradox therefore displays images of the Muslim as a contrasting device for the ideological construction of an armed border, a frontier. Along that frontier, the Muslim is constructed either as a blood thirsty rival, or as a loyal servant. The construction of such a dual register of "Orientals" along a frontier is part of popular culture in Eastern and south-eastern Austria. It exists in popular culture, whether Haider refers to it or not in his specific ways, (but of course his activation of the register certainly strengthens it.) Frontier Orientalism is silently ubiquituous in Eastern Austrian poular culture- in architecture, in music, in urban geography, and in school books. The frontier notion, and the related dual register, are inherent to East Austrian toponyms (such as "Pagans Shooting", Heidenschu, or "Turkish Trench Park," Trkenschanzpark,) to the country's rich musical heritage, such as Prince Eugene of Savoye's victory song in Belgrade ("Prinz Eugen der edle Ritter"), folk tales of Ottoman soldiers raping East Austrian women or burning churches, etc., etc. All these elements of popular culture indicate that the frontier is territorial, military, and nearby. In Frontier Orientalism, the "Oriental" is present in the same area that "we" inhabit today. This is a metanarrative that has little to do with the constructions of classical colonialism as depicted by Said for British and French elite cultures, such as in Rudyard Kipling's or Gustave Flaubert's references to distant colonies overseas. Frontier Orientalism refers to nearby and not to distant territories, it primarily reflects shorter military encounters between rivals instead of long lasting hierarchical administration, and it is part of pre-electronic popular culture, rather than being the result of elite authors' lifestyles. At the same time, the "Oriental" in Frontier Orientalism is more specific than in classical Orientalism. He is less frequently a Japanese, an East Indian, or a Chinese; usually he is a Muslim. I identify the most explicit variants of Frontier Orientalism in Spanish-Francist and in AustrianPangermanic nationalism. The bad Muslim at the beginning of modernity almost destroyed "us" - in Andalusia and before the city walls of Vienna. His crushing defeat triggered off "our" rise to imperial greatness, expanding across the whole globe under Habsburg leadership in Madrid and Vienna. The good Muslim in the late colonial era stood by "us" when in difficult times, we were junior partners of larger powers (Germany.) The Bosnian defended "us" during the first world war in the south and south-east, Franco's moorish troops were celebrated as the Rambos of fascism from the late 1930's on.

CONSTRUCTIONS OF CONTINUITY
In such a perspective, Frontier Orientalism is encoded in popular cultures of catholic central and southwestern Europe. I shall not elaborate here how the Austrian variant of Frontier Orientalism relates to Pangermanism, nor is here the place to discuss the specific contributions of Austrian Frontier Orientalism to the anti-semitism that rose in Austria during the late 19th century. Both topics would indeed need careful examination. What I do want to point out in my concluding remarks, however, is the way in which the Austrian variant of Frontier Orientalism denies major discontinuities, and artificially constructs a mytho-historical continuity. This is done by connecting the victories of early modernity against the Turks before Vienna with the medieval installation of the Awarian march, i.e. what later became "Ostarrichi" (Ostarrichi is understood as the etymological root for "sterreich", the indigenous term for the Latin variant, Austria.) By constructing such a historical continuity, the Habsburg expansion of early modernity, across half of the globe in the 17th century, already could be portrayed as the fulfillment of a historical mission by the
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courts in Madrid and Vienna. Muslim defeats in Andalusia and Vienna of the late 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries were thus constructed as the final realization of what Charlemagne had already envisioned, by installing the Spanish March in Catalonia, and the Awarian March along the Danube in medieval times. This Habsburg construction of continuity, between themselves and Charlemagne as a precursor and as another Germanic "ruler of Europe," of course had its own contemporary purposes, rooted in European and world politics of the 16th and 17th centuries. That first construction, however, was re- invented a second time in the late 19th century, with the decaying empires re- orientation towards south- eastern Europe. The empire's Balkan "frontier" thereby became the new referent for a reinvented continuity of an eastern outpost for Catholic Christianity, where "tamed" Muslims now where loyal guardians against the new "Slavic danger." The meta-narrative of Austrian Frontier Orientalism thus connects periods and socio- political systems that have little if anything to do with each other, in order to construct a timeless border mission. Charlemagne's medieval Awarian March as an outpost against the east, the Ottoman defeats before Vienna of 1529 and 1683, and Habsburg antagonisms with Serbia and Russia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries all are superficially and artificially connected through the mytho-historical narrative of Frontier Orientalism, and through ist dual register of the good and the bad Oriental. It is no coincidence that right-wing terrorists in Austria can sign their anonymous bomb threats and letter bombs with the name of "R6uuml;diger von Starhemberg." Everybody in Austria with only some minimal school education knows that this person was leading Vienna's defence in 1683 against the Turks: quite consciously, right-wing terrorism uses the same register of Frontier Orientalism that others exploit for their differing political purposes as well. The dual register is not created by right wing political groups. It is part of popular culture, which is why those groups and parties can refer to it, manipulate and activate it, and compete for it. Pangermanism and Nazism refer to it in one extreme version, as embodied in the official German name "Ostmark" (eastern march) for Austria under the Third Reich occupation. Austrian nationalism, on the other hand, of course had ist best days as an element of anti- Nazi resistance. Yet before and after that, the various brands of Austrian nationalism also were frequently using Frontier Orientalism for their own purposes. In many Austrian school text books after 1945, the Austrian flag red-white-red still was explained in the legendary terms of Frontier Orientalism that had emerged together with a "patriotic" and "royal" Austrian nationalism in the late 19th century. In my own school days, I still learnt that the color red in our flag alluded to the waistband of a duke from the Babenberg dynasty (the predecessors of the Habsburgs). During one of the Crusades, that waistband had become soaked with the blood of Muslims, defending the city of Acre in Palestine. For a certain, conservative variant of Austrian nationalism, as well as for Austrian Pangermanism, Frontier Orientalism delivers essential contrasting devices. They define hard working, German speaking, Catholic "selves" along the Upper Danube and the eastern Alps, by contrasting them against dangerous, nomadic, non-Christian "others" from the east. The deconstruction of this meta-narrative certainly is also a task of anthropology, and so is the warning that some of the celebrations of an "Austrian Millenium" that are presently being carried out might come dangerously close to Frontier Orientalism's supremacist construction of an artificial continuity. I would like to emphasize, however, that in spite of the existing and growing support for the FP, Austria no longer is that deeply racist and xenophobic society as which it is sometimes represented. The bomb terrorists are not ignored, but actively are being persecuted by the state. Thousands of, for instance, Alevite, Assyrian or Somali refugees and migrants from the Middle East have been integrated quite well into Austrian society in recent years, without much publicity. Perhaps it is a major mistake of the democratic and liberal majority in Austria that these successful activities of incorporation and integration into civil society never are talked about too much, out of a fear of attracting xenophobic attention. The
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new Middle Eastern and Muslim minorities inside Austria in fact could serve as ambassadors for all the variety and fascination of their countries of origin, of those cultural and religious spheres which so vividly are depicted, for instance, in the works of the Austrian writer Barbara Frischmuth. In the end, one might wonder whether Austrian support for refugees from ex-Yugoslavia would have been as unanimous and magnificent as it was, if those refugees had not been Bosnians. I doubt it. However moving and generous popular support for Bosnian refugees was: Frontier Orientalism will only lose its influential position in Austrian culture whenever the same kind of massive support also is extended as a matter of routine towards others if necessary. Towards people from countries that never have "defended our borders," such as Serbs, Albanians or Sri Lankans.
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