Austria as a cinematic place of longing

This web exhibition was on display from 1 January to 20 May 2021. Due to time-limited usage licences for the film excerpts shown, this web exhibition had to be taken offline afterwards. We are still making the texts of the exhibition available here and ask for your understanding that we can no longer show the films. Cinema played a key role in the construction of an Austrian national identity. Many Austrians took a critical stance vis á vis the building of an indepedent Austrian state after 1945. Before the "Anschluss" to Nazi Germany in 1938, Austria was an irrelevant country shaped by crisis and political division. Most Austrians supported becoming part of the German Reich and enjoying new power, that led to what was experienced as the greatest defeat at the end of World War II. Then, not only the future, but also the own national belonging seemed unstable. Was one to be German or Austrian? And what should "Austrian" mean? Austrian cinema responded to this lack of stability by presenting specificities and advantages of being Austrian in an entertaining way. The immediate past was hardly ever touched. Instead, movies offered distraction and invented a glorious past of the Habsburg monarchy as a source of new – old – glamour. Cinema reached hundreds of thousands of people and had a much larger impact on Austrian identity forming than any government action. The domestic film industry was a willing accomplice. Due to allied restrictions of export the biggest market – Germany – was out of reach. Also, there was a need to distract from the involvement of the film industry from Austria in National Socialist propaganda. In propagating Austria, political interests met perfectly with the interests of the film industry and viewers' longing. Find all active web exhibitions by the House of Austrian History here.