Felix Austria

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With the phrase Felix Austria or Tu felix Austria , Austrians are said to have a particularly happy disposition or way of life. The phrase was first used in 1364 by Duke Rudolf IV. In his seals - as Franz Kürschner suspected, to honor the incorporation of Tyrol.

The phrase appears again in a Latin distich that characterized the successful marriage policy of the centuries-old Austrian ruling house, the Habsburgs :

Bélla geránt aliī, tu félix Áustria nūbe.
Nám quae Márs aliīs, dát tibi díva Venūs. 		Let others wage wars, you, happy Austria, get married!
Because what the other Mars , Venus , the goddess, gives you.

For the origins and models of the distich from the Baroque period, see the Habsburgs' marriage policy .

During the time of the Austrian Empire , the phrase, shortened to "felix Austria" and partly based on the National Allegory Austria , found its way into everyday language. According to Claudio Magris , the idea arose after the Napoleonic Wars in the restorative Biedermeier period as part of the "Habsburg myth" in order to "find reasons for existence for an increasingly problematic state structure and in this way divert energies from the concrete perception of reality." Clear contours the “myth of the supranational, eternally universal and fairytale Danube Monarchy ” received literary-aesthetic after its end in 1918, namely with Joseph Roth , Franz Werfel , Stefan Zweig and Robert Musil - and after 1945 with Heimito von Doderer and Alexander Lernet-Holenia . Austrian literature and the understanding of the state were shaped by the “ categorical imperative of inaction” and were characterized by three motifs, namely “supranationalism”, “bureaucracy” and “sensual hedonism”. The phrase has recently been used for different fields, for example for the way of life of the Austrian population, the (supposedly) happy state of the state, for example its legal system and cultural operations, or the luxury of the public sphere to be able to deal with "frivolous incidental matters". The British German scholar Anthony Bushell took up the term in 2013 for the dominant historical narrative of the victim thesis, namely to keep successful post-war Austria free from any reference to the Nazi past until 1945 .

literature

  • Stephan Vajda : Felix Austria. A history of Austria. Ueberreuter, Vienna 1980, ISBN 3-8000-3168-X , chapter “Felix Austria. The Austrian Way after 1945 ”, pp. 593–601.
  • Claudio Magris : The Habsburg Myth in Austrian Literature. 2nd Edition. Müller, Salzburg 1988, ISBN 3-7013-0751-2 .
  • Anthony Bushell : Polemical Austria. The Rhetorics of National Identity from Empire to the Second Republic. University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2013, ISBN 978-0-7083-2604-6 , chapter "Felix Austria?", Pp. 15-25.

supporting documents

  1. ^ Franz Kürschner: The documents of Duke Rudolf IV. Of Austria. In: Archives for Austrian History . Vol. 49, 1872, pp. 1-88, here p. 30 f.
  2. ↑ Claudio Magris : The Habsburg myth in Austrian literature. 2nd Edition. Müller, Salzburg 1988, p. 10. See Birthe Hoffmann: Sacrifice of Humanity. On the anthropology of Franz Grillparzer (= literary studies / cultural studies. ). Deutscher Universitätsverlag, Wiesbaden 1999 (also dissertation, University of Copenhagen, 1997), p. 39.
  3. ↑ Dana Pfeiferová: Christoph Ransmayr read with Claudio Magris: The Habsburg myth in "The horrors of ice and darkness" and the aestheticism in "The Last World". In: Manfred Müller, Luigi Reitani (ed.): From the cultural landscape to the place of critical self-confidence: Italy in Austrian literature (= transcultural research at the Austrian libraries abroad. Vol. 6). Lit, Vienna, Berlin 2011, pp. 187–194, here p. 187 f.
  4. ↑ Claudio Magris : The Habsburg myth in Austrian literature. 2nd Edition. Müller, Salzburg 1988, p. 79.
  5. ↑ Irmgard Wirtz: Joseph Roth's fictions of the factual: The feature section of the twenties and the story of the 1002nd night in a historical context (= Philological studies and sources. Vol. 144). Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1997 (also dissertation, University of Bern, 1995), p. 9.
  6. ^ Eg Birgit Weitemeyer: Foundation country Austria - Felix Austria? Current developments and tendencies in civil and tax law. In: npoR . Journal for the Law of Non-Profit Organizations ISSN  1868-3770 , Vol. 1, 2009, No. 4, p. 109 f .; Wolfgang Kessler : Tu felix Austria? Lessons from Austrian group taxation. In: The company . ISSN  0005-9935 , Vol. 62, 2009, No. 51/52, pp. 2737-2741; Axel Reidlinger, Franz Stenitzer: Competition law enforcement in Austria. Tu felix Austria? In: Journal for Comparative Law. ISSN  0044-3638 , Vol. 113, 2014, No. 3, pp. 425-443.
  7. ↑ Małgorzata Leyko, Artur Pełka, Karolina Prykowska-Michalak: Felix Austria, Deconstruction of a Myth? Austrian drama and theater since the beginning of the 20th century. Litblockin, Fernwald 2009, ISBN 978-3-932289-07-1 .
  8. ^ Charles E. Ritterband : On the trail of the Austrian. Expeditions by an NZZ correspondent. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78399-2 , article "Tu felix Austria (February 2008)", p. 112.
  9. ↑ Geoffrey C. Howes: Review of Bushell. In: Journal of Austrian Studies. Vol. 47, 2014, No. 4, doi : 10.1353 / oas.2014.0060 , pp. 145–147.