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57 ◆ The AffirmATion of AusTriA ◆ Thoughts on the Present Moment This essay1 first appeared in the Österreichische Rundschau on November 1, 1914. Here Hofmannsthal emphasizes the political importance of the army, especially in Austria, where parliamentary institutions were less developed than in the West. Parliamentary government was generally weakened in European countries during the war, but Hofmannsthal was in any case concerned here primarily with the significance of the Austrian idea. The essay is also a critique of the way politics had been conducted in Austria before the war. The thought2 of Austria has found its home in these pages for a decade as a real thought and not merely as a phrase.Adistinctive political view defined itself here, which not only knew how to make its talent known but, what is far more rare, has demonstrated character and energy of will. A number of spiritual and intellectual powers were at work here, all of which were striving for the same goal. Here for ten years a cat was called a cat; the unpleasant was not concealed; what was overlooked was pointed out; the desirable and the necessary were proposed; and thereby that measure of notoriety, as well as that measure of occasional animosity , was achieved without which the emergence of a real political point of view is unthinkable in the midst of a world of political appearances and sheer routine, even if it is conservative in a high sense, as well as progressive in a high sense. The mentality that emerged in these pages and was advocated with a tenacious passion, whose tone could seem cold only to an ear corrupted by slogans, has its home today in the deeds of the army. The state, whose misfortune it was to have lost its historic center of gravity without yet having definitively found one, is relieved of this concern for the duration of the world historical crisis; its center of gravity is the Austro-Hungarian army. In this lies the extraordinary spiritual and therefore political fruitfulness of this situation—we forget too often that politics and spirit are identical: AustriaHungary affirms itself in this situation, even if under difficult circumstances. But 58 ◆ Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea only for an unspiritual outlook are difficulties something intrinsically bad, to be avoided. Stagnant, chronic difficulties weigh heavily on all hearts, to be sure, but the great, critical difficulty is nothing but a powerful stimulus to achievements. “Where things were not sufficiently anticipated,” says Goethe to Eckermann, “much greater human efforts and achievements are often called forth.” That is our case, and here, after long concealment, the productive aspect of action becomes visible again. The analogy with 16833 comes to mind and strengthens the heart: the force of such a great act of defense created an artistic blossoming for us that is so decidedly Austrian that one would like to call it national, forgetting the narrower sense of the word, a flowering of prosperity that lasted more than a century, an inner strengthening and rebirth without equal. Sixteen eighty-three was the beginning of a wave that first reached its full height under Maria Theresia , seemingly rising still higher under Joseph II, but already losing strength by then. The hope, unarticulated, never debased to a slogan but inwardly alive with anticipation, that something similar has been granted us a second time, lies at the basis of everything that is accomplished today, yes every thought that is thought, and gives to the general spiritual situation the impetus that comes from the true depths of the people and is far more received and undermined by the intellectual middle stratum than created by it. The affirmation of Austria rises up from the vegetative lower stratum of the people toward the intellectual stratum; the challenge is for this feeling to remain undiminished in the process, for it has to pass through the dangerous middle sphere—no longer the people and hardly yet the individual in the higher sense— where one only thinks, “how one can make oneself noticed and bring it before the world as conspicuously as possible.” In this regard as well the army radiates at the moment not only an exemplary but an utterly transforming energy. The political, and at the same time moral, unity that is present in the army—finding these two concepts combined surprises the contemporaries of a worn-out, routinized political machine—is today not merely a symbol but a reality. Since the first day of mobilization, the army...

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