1 Otto Hwaletz, Der große Bruch (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2008), 9.
2 See Douglass C. North’s contribution to Claude Ménard and Mary M. Shirley, eds., Handbook of New Institutional Economics (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), 21-30. Peer Vries uses a broader definition of institutions, regarding players, too, as belonging to the institutional realm, and emphasizing the role of the state as “super-and supra-institution.” Peer Vries, The Role of Culture and Institutions in Economic History: Can Economics be of any Help?, <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/GEHN/GEHN-Workshops.htm>, see Konstanz 2004, 29.
3 This is not to belittle the achievement of a whole generation of Habsburg and East Central European historians who greatly contributed to our understanding of the region’s interwar difficulties. One example of highly informative scholarship is Hugh Seton-Watson, “The Political System of Eastern Europe between the Wars,” in Man, State, and Society in East European History, ed. Stephen Fischer-Galati (London: Pall Mall Press, 1970), 249-74.
4 Seton-Watson, “The Political System of Eastern Europe between the Wars,” 273ff.
5 David F. Good, “The state and economic development in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Nation, State, and the Economy in History, ed. Alice Teichova and Herbert Matis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 152.
6 Joseph Held,“Notes to the Collapse of Hungarian Society between the Wars,” in Man, State, and Society in East European History, 275-86.
7 52 percent of the entire population, if Croatia-Slavonia is included in the Hungarian total. See Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 271ff.
8 Good, “The state and economic development in Central and Eastern Europe,” 138, 143.
9 On Károlyi’s controversial personality see George Barany, “From Fidelity to the Habsburgs to Loyalty to the Nation: The Changing Role of the Hungarian Aristocracy before 1848,” Austrian History Yearbook 23 (1992): 49.
10 Andrew C. Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 197.
11 Two attempts by King Charles IV to reclaim his throne by force, one early in 1921, the other in November of that year, were skillfully repelled by Horthy who feared international repercussions harmful to Hungary should Habsburg rule be restored.
12 Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 210.
13 Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), 161-62.
14 Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 229.
15 Iván T. Berend and György Ránki, Underdevelopment and Economic Growth: Studies in Hungarian Social and Economic History (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1979), 202.
16 Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 227.
17 Ibid., 235.
18 Peter F. Sugar, “The More It Changes, the More Hungarian Nationalism Remains the Same,” Austrian History Yearbook 31 (2000): 146.
19 Berend and Ránki, Underdevelopment and Economic Growth, 216.
20 Following defeat in World War I, Hungary opened new universities in Pécs and Szeged (to compensate for the loss of those of Bratislava and Cluj). Besides, there were universities at Budapest and Debrecen.
21 Berend and Ránki, Underdevelopment and Economic Growth, 217.
22 George Barany, “Political Culture in the Lands of the Former Habsburg Empire: Authoritarian and Parliamentary Traditions,” Austrian History Yearbook 29 (1998): pt. 1, 203.
23 See Waltraud Heindl, “Bureaucracy, Officials, and the State in the Austrian Monarchy: Stages of Change since the Eighteenth Century,” Austrian History Yearbook 37 (2006): 35-57.
24 Hermann J. W. Kuprian, “On the Threshold of the Twentieth Century: State and Society in Austria Before World War I,” in Austria in the Twentieth Century, ed. Rolf Steininger et al. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), 11-35.
25 Anton Pelinka, “Parlament,” in Handbuch des politischen Systems Österreichs: Erste Republik 1918-1933, ed. Emmerich Tálos et al. (Vienna: Manz, 1995), 59-71.
26 Failure of the peace conference to reward Austria with German-populated territories she claimed (South Tyrol, Southern Bohemia, parts of Moravia, the Sudetenland, Carniola, and Southern Styria) aroused some revisionist sentiment. More important, the Anschluss movement was able to bank on the peacemakers’obvious infringement of the Wilsonian principles of ethnic self-determination.
27 A bipartite government of Socialists and Christian Socials, led by the Socialist Karl Renner, stepped down in June 1920 following a relatively minor dispute over defence issues. Michael Mayr of the Christian Socials was then chosen to head Austria’s last (all-party) “government of concordance,” in office until elections could, for the first time, be held under the constitutional law of October 1920. Peter Berger, Kurze Geschichte Österreichs im 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Facultas, 2007), 75.
28 Steven Beller, A Concise History of Austria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 205.
29 Niko Wahl, “Kaffeehäuser zu Bankfilialen: Ein kurzer Abriss der Wiener Spekulation,” in Das Werden der Ersten Republik, Band II, ed. Helmut Konrad and Wolfgang Maderthaner (Vienna: Carl Gerold’s Sohn, 2008), 49-66.
30 Peter Berger, “The League of Nations and Interwar Austria: Critical Assessment of a Partnership in Reconstruction,” in The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria: A Reassessment, ed. Günter Bischof et al., Contemporary Austrian Studies 11 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2003), 73-92.
31 The League-inspired reconstruction scheme called for the dismissal of 85,000 civil servants. Barbara Jelavich, Modern Austria: Empire and Republic, 1815-1986 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 175.
32 Wolfgang C. Müller et al., “Die Regierung,” in Handbuch des politischen Systems Österreichs: Erste Republik 1918-1933, 72-89.
33 Peter Berger, “The Dynamics of Consultative Arrangements in 20th Century Europe: The Case of Austria (1945-2000),” in Changing Liaisons: The Dynamics of Social Partnership in 20th Century West-European Democracies, ed. Karel Davids et al. (Brussels: P. I. E. Lang, 2007), 140-41.
34 Gerhard Senft, Im Vorfeld der Katastrophe: Die Wirtschaftspolitik des Ständestaates: Österreich 1934-1938 (Vienna: Braumüller, 2002), 243ff.
35 Paul Hofmann, The Viennese: Splendor, Twilight, and Exile (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 193ff.
36 Alice Teichová, The Czechoslovak Economy, 1918-1980 (London: Routledge, 1988), 10.
37 Joni Lovenduski and Jean Woodall, Politics and Society in Eastern Europe (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987), 41.
38 This point is stressed by Johannes Koll in his contribution to the present volume.
39 For slightly more than a year an interim constitution written by a Social Democratic deputy of the Provisional Assembly was in force. See Victor S. Mamatey and Radomir Luža, eds., Geschichte der Tschechoslowakischen Republik 1918-1948 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1980), 62.
40 Robert J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1995), 61.
41 Mamatey and Luža, eds., Geschichte der Tschechoslowakischen Republik, 144-45.
42 Lovenduski and Woodall, Politics and Society in Eastern Europe, 42.
43 Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, 120.
44 See Franz Adlgasser, “The Roots of Communist Containment: American Food Aid in Austria and Hungary after World War I,” in Austria in the Nineteen Fifties, ed. Günter Bischof et al., Contemporary Austrian Studies 3 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995), 171-88.
45 In June 1919, Béla Kun sent Hungarian troops into Slovakia to protect a short-lived Slovak Soviet Republic which was proclaimed in the city of Prešov. The Hungarians were forced to retreat within a fortnight. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, 58.
46 Historians agree today that the experience of monetary stability as opposed to inflationary turmoil in Germany and Austria was one of the factors that reconciled Czechoslovakia’s German population, at least temporarily, with Prague’s rule.
47 Vlastislav Lacina, “Kapitalumschichtungen in der Tschechoslowakei im Laufe der Nostrifizierung,” in Der Markt im Mitteleuropa der Zwischenkriegszeit, ed. Alice Teichová et al. (Prague: Karls-University, 1997), 159-68.
48 Teichová, The Czechoslovak Economy, 68.
49 Mamatey and Luža, eds., Geschichte der Tschechoslowakischen Republik, 101.
50 In 1930, 34.7, 34.9, and 30.4 percent of the employed Czechoslovakian population worked in agriculture, industry and trades, and the services, respectively. Teichová, The Czechoslovak Economy, 9.
51 Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, 286.
52 This argument was of particular relevance in the case of Croatia, being under threat of losing its coastal areas to Italy.
53 Holm Sundhaussen, Geschichte Serbiens, 19. – 21. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Böhlau, 2007), 261.
54 Kurt Scharr and Rudolf Gräf, Rumänien: Geschichte und Geographie (Vienna: Böhlau, 2008), 63-64.
55 Iván T. Berend and György Ránki, “Polen, Ungarn, Rumänien, Bulgarien und Albanien 1914-1980,” in Europäische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Wolfram Fischer (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1987), 795.
56 John R. Lampe and Marvin R. Jackson, Balkan Economic History, 1550-1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 432.
57 Sundhaussen, Geschichte Serbiens, 19. – 21. Jahrhundert, 278.
58 Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, 44, 285.
59 Scharr and Gräf, Rumänien: Geschichte und Geographie, 64.
60 Rothschild, East Central Europe between the Two World Wars, 21.