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  • The Study of European Ethnology in Austria
  • Hande A. Birkalan-Gedik
The Study of European Ethnology in Austria. By James R. DowOlaf Bockhorn. (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2004. Pp. xiv + 287, foreword, series editor’s preface, notes, bibliography, index.)

This volume is an important addition to the folklorist’s library on folklore and nationalism and should be read along with both authors’ previous writings. James R. Dow has worked on transmitting the theoretical and historical developments in German folklore to the English- speaking world and has previously collaborated with Hannjost Lixfeld on titles such as The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich (Indiana University Press, 1994) and Folklore and Fascism: The Reich Institute for German Volkskunde (Indiana University Press, 1994). Austrian folklore scholar Olaf Bockhorn also collaborated with Lixfeld, Wolfgang Jacobeit, and Dow on a thick volume in German, titled Völkische Wissenschaft: Gestalten und Tendenzen der deutschen und österreichischen Volkskunde in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Böhlau Verlag, 1994), which showed the impact of National Socialism in German and Austrian folkloristics.

While German scholars declared a clean break with their Nazi past, Austrian scholars were hesitant to do so until recently. The Study of European Ethnology in Austria derives from a series of discussions in the 1980s about reconsidering folklore’s relation to the Third Reich, and it powerfully suggests that the tendencies of Austrian folklorists were not freed from Nazi inclinations. In six engaging chapters, the book brings to light the histories of the important folklore and ethnology centers in Vienna, Graz, and Innsbruck that were tainted with Nazification and also discusses museums that were affected by it.

A great deal of the first chapter is devoted to clarifying the terms Volkskunde (folklore) and Völkerkunde (ethnology), which pointed to the folk “near” and “afar” respectively, and Ethnologie, which was used for both until the early twentieth century. This distinction is crucial for [End Page 233] understanding the nascent development of nationalist folkloristics in other countries, such as the work of Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobienau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Franz Bopp, which influenced the study of folklore in Austria and emphasized the superiority of Aryans as more rational than other groups. Dow and Bockhorn also eloquently illustrate the influence of German scholars, who used fairy tales to promote their arguments about the behavior of Aryans, and they especially discuss Jakob Grimm, whose visit to Austria had stimulated collecting and research activity in the Kaisserreich.

Starting with the second chapter, the authors describe the scholarly development of Austrian folklore, including the split of “ritualists” vis à vis the “mythologists,” which predominantly sprang from personal conflicts and academic covetousness. Here, the emphasis is laid on the Viennese school, especially Elisabeth Wieser, Otto Höfler, and Richard Wolfram, and on other scholars, such as Otto Spieß, who focused on secret societies, which were particularly influential in promoting the notion of Aryanness in Germany. In the Viennese school, folk poetry and song was the primary medium researched. Anthropological in its nature, this approach was also brought to bear on the question of the geographical distribution of the Austrian peoples. Linguistics played an important role in defining ethnic groups, particularly in the works and teachings of Friedrich Müller.

Work done at Karl-Franzes Universität in Graz was influential on material culture studies, while the research at the University of Innsbruck was focused on Tyrolean myths. Here, scholars argued that the Tyrolean peasants were “living in a relict [sic] area and were thus a primary source of ancient traditions” (p. 16). The University of Innsbruck’s emphasis on the Sonderweg (special path) of the Tyrolian peoples was also used to emphasize their “true” Germanness (p. 31). An important concept discussed in the study is völkische Wissenschaft, which refers to a particular approach during the period when Austria officially had become a part of the Third Reich and folklore was used to promote the “scientific aspects” of the study of particular ethnic groups, specifically the work done at Graz by Viktor von Geramb. Völkische Wissenschaft was also taught at the University of Innsbruck, and it became more and more irrational, there resulting...

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