Walter Rauscher

Walter Rauscher (born October 8, 1962 in Vienna ) is an Austrian historian .

Life

Rauscher graduated from the Sigmund-Freud-Gymnasium in 1981 and then enrolled at the University of Vienna . He completed his studies in history in 1986 with a master's degree and in 1988 with a doctorate. After brief activities at the Institute for Eastern European History at the University of Vienna and in the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance , Rauscher worked at the Austrian Institute for East and Southeast Europe from 1992. In 2008 he moved to the Historical Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , from 2013 he was a member of its Institute for Modern and Contemporary History Research.

In his research and books, Rauscher mainly devotes himself to political topics and often fateful figures of the 19th and 20th centuries. He also dealt with Adolf Hitler , Benito Mussolini and Paul von Hindenburg . The double biography about the two dictators of the extreme right also highlights the similarities and differences between Italian fascism and German National Socialism. The depiction about Hindenburg, on the other hand, describes the hype initiated by the right about an old, arch-conservative military who, despite his efforts to always embody the Prussian-German virtues, was unable to evade the ruthless will to power of his closest circle. On the other hand, Rauscher describes the two-time Austrian state founder Karl Renner , who is equally upheld by social democrats and critically assessed by the bourgeoisie , as an extremely agile intellectual pragmatist. With his two-part treatise on the power politics of the dual monarchy , published in 2014, the historian, who lives in Vienna, tied thematically to his debut. Some of Rauscher's monographs have also been translated into other languages.

Together with other historians, Rauscher published the series Foreign Policy Documents of the Republic of Austria 1918–1938 for over two decades . The twelfth and final volume of this scientific edition was published in 2016.

In Das Scheitern Mitteleuropas (2016), Rauscher describes parallels between developments in the period between the two world wars and the present. The Desperate Republic (2017) deals with the founding years of the new Austrian state after the First World War. In Charleston, Jazz und Billionen , published at the beginning of the new decade, political history for the first time takes a back seat to a social and cultural history. Music, art and literature as well as sport and the completely new attitude towards life of the "crazy" twenties are given wide space. The ambivalent decade is portrayed as an era between party and struggle for existence, between modernity and reaction.

Monographs

• Charleston, jazz and trillions. Europe in the crazy twenties. Vienna 2020, ISBN 978-3-99050-146-7
• The desperate republic. Austria 1918-1922. Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-218-01086-3
• The failure of Central Europe. 1918-1939. Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-218-01043-6
• The fragile great power. The Danube Monarchy and the European States 1866–1914. Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-653-04523-9
• Hitler and Mussolini. Power, war and terror. Regensburg 2001, ISBN 3-7917-1777-4
• Hindenburg. Field Marshal and President. Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-8000-3657-6
• Karl Renner. An Austrian myth. Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-8000-3558-8
• Between Berlin and St. Petersburg. The Austro-Hungarian foreign policy under Gustav Graf Kálnoky 1881–1895. Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 1993, ISBN 3-205-98138-3

Web links

• Biography on the website of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary History Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences , accessed on November 18, 2014

Individual evidence

1. ↑ His dissertation topic is entitled Foreign Policy between Austria-Hungary and the German Empire, with special emphasis on the Slavic Reichsrat members (1887–1895). Phil. Diss. Vienna 1988.
2. ↑ Ådö, Vol. 12: Austria between isolation and connection. Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-7001-7870-5 .