2 Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts after Communism (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), xiii.

3 Stuart E. Eizenstat, an Undersecretary of the Treasury and President Bill Clinton’s, special mediator in negotiations about Holocaust-era assets, attest Schüssel had a deep knowledge of the restitution agenda and an unusual willingness for a government leader to enter substantive negotiations on the matter; see Stuart E. Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 298. Schüssel gathered historians and philosophers to consult about ideas for the agenda of the memory year 2005; see Stefan Karner, “Replik: Österreich verloren,” in Was bleibt: Schreiben im Gedenkjahr, ed. Helene Maimann (Vienna: Czernin Verlag, 2005), 47. Graz historian Karner’s personal friendship with Schüssel involved him deeply in the Chancellor’s politics of history; after being on the team of historians that was supposed to design the main anniversary exhibit in the Belevedere Palace — a team effort that failed but was resurrected by another group of prominent Austrians — Karner received the commission to conceptualize the exhibit Österreich ist frei in the Schallaburg and thus contributed to the writing of the master narrative of the memory year 2005. See Ljubomir Bratic, “Die Ausstellung als Ort der Macht,” in Rebranding Images: Ein streitbares Lesebuch zur Geschichtspolitik und Erinnerungskultur in Österreich, ed. Martin Wassermair and Katharina Wegan (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2006), 31. For another critical view of the discursive construction of Austrian identities in the memory year 2005, see Rudolf de Cillia and Ruth Wodak, eds., Gedenken im “Gedankenjahr”: Zur diskursiven Konstruktion österreichischer Identitäten im Jubiläumsjahr 2005 (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2009).

4 For a first effort to summarize and analyze Schüssel’s restitution policies, see Günter Bischof, “‘ Watschenmann der europäischen Erinnerung?’ Internationales Image und Vergangenheitspolitik der Schüssel/Riess-Passer-ÖVP/FPÖ-Koalitionsregierung,” in Austria in the European Union: Assessment of her Membership, ed. Michael Gehler et al., vol. 7, Schriftenreihe des Herbert-Batliner-Europainstitutes (Vienna: Böhlau, 2003), 445-78.

5 Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000).

6 Ibid.

7 Andreas Khol et al., eds., zukunft denken: Festschrift für Wolfgang Schüssel (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 2005).

8 Matthew P. Berg calls it a “paradigm shift” of Austrian cultural memory; see his “Commemoration versus Vergangenheitsbewältigung: Contextualizing Austria’s Gedenkjahr 2005,” German History 26.1 (2008): 53-55.

9 The literature on Austria’s postwar historical memory production is huge. The best guide to the complex trajectory of postwar memory is Heidemarie Uhl; see “The Politics of Memory: Austria’s Perception of the Second World War and the National Socialist Period,” in Austrian Historical Memory & National Identity, ed. Günter Bischof and Anton Pelinka, vol. 5, Contemporary Austrian Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997), 64-94. Uhl’s documentation and analysis of the 1988 “memory year” discourses is a good starting point; see Zwischen Versöhnung und Verstörung: Eine Kontroverse um Österreichs historische Identität 50 Jahre nach dem “Anschluß” (Vienna: Böhlau, 1992). The clarion call for the scholarly paradigm shift of Austrian postwar memory in the 1980s may well have been the essays in Anton Pelinka and Erika Weinzierl, eds., Das grosse Tabu: Österreichs Umgang mit seiner Vergangenheit (Vienna: Edition S, 1987); Uhl has penned many essays on postwar memory. For the 2005 discourses in the context of the changes since the mid-1980s, see her “Europäische Tendenzen, regionale Verwerfungen: Österreichs Gedächtnis und das Jubiläumsjahr 2005,” in “Heiss Umfehdet, Wild Umstritten…”: Geschichtsmythen in Rot-Weiss-Rot, ed. Werner Koroschitz and Lisa Rettl (Klagenfurt: Drava, 2005), 21-26; on the postwar “Opferdoktrin ” and its erosion, see Thomas Albrich, “‘ Es gibt keine jüdische Frage’: Zur Aufrechterhaltung des österreichischen Opfermythos,” in ibid., 51-73; see also Günter Bischof, “Founding Myths and Compartmentalized Past: New Literature on the Construction, Hibernation, and Deconstruction of World War II Memory in Postwar Austria,” in Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity, ed. Günter Bischof and Anton Pelinka, vol. 5, Contemporary Austrian Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997), 302-41; idem, “Victims? Perpetrators? ‘ Punching Bags’ of European Historical Memory? The Austrians and Their World War II Legacies,” in German Studies Review 27 (February 2004): 17-32; for recent analyses, see David Art’s chapter on “victim culture” in The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006), 101-44; and Alexander Pollak, “Vergangenheit und Reflexion: Konsens- und Streitlinien im Umgang mit der NS-Vergangenheit in Österreich,” in Zeitgeschichte als Streitgeschichte: Grosse Kontroversen seit 1945 (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2003), 326-46.

10 The fact that Clinton appointed Stuart Eizenstat as a high level Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and Special Representative of the president and Secretary for Holocaust Issues indicated how seriously he took this agenda. See Jan Surman, “‘ Unfinished Business’ und Holocaust-Erinnerung: Die US-Geschichtspolitik der 90er-Jahre zwischen ‘ Holocaust-era assets’ und Menschenrechtsdiskurs,” in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 53.4 (2005): 345-55; see also Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice.

11 Benno Nietzel, “‘ Business Finished’: Transnationale Wiedergutmachung historischen Unrechts in Europa seit 1989,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 57.1 (2009): 26-50; Oliver Rathkolb, ed., Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy: Coming to Terms with Forced Labor, Expropriation, Compensation, and Restitution (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2002).

12 Barkan, Guilt of Nations, xv-xli. For the Austrian context of commissioned history as the basis for restitution, see the essays by Günter Bischof, Brigitte Bailer-Galanda/Eva Blimlinger, Martin Eichtinger, Dieter Stiefel, Oliver Rathkolb, and Margit Reiter in the Forum, “Commissioning History: Austria and World War II Restitution and Reconciliation,” in The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria: A Reassessment, ed. Günter Bischof et al., vol. 11, Contemporary Austrian Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2003), 212-66.

13 For the summary report, see Clemens Jabloner et al., Schlussbericht der Historikerkommission der Republik Österreich: Vermögensentzug während der NS-Zeit sowie Rückstellungen und Entschädigungen seit 1945 in Österreich. Zusammenfassung und Einschätzungen (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2003), and the thirty-two volumes of special reports on specific issues. For a first review summarizing this vast and complex material in English, see Timothy Kirk, Austrian History Yearbook [forthcoming 2009]. Kirk concludes that the Austrian Jews were “subjected to one of the most vicious pogroms in modern European history.”

14 A balance sheet about Austrians’ roles in World War II is attempted in Günter Bischof et al., eds., New Perspectives on Austrians and World War II, vol. 17, Contemporary Austrian Studies (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2009). David Art has shaped a “contrition index,” showing that Austrian parties show considerably less contrition about Nazi war crimes than German parties, the ÖVP and FPÖ being the least contrite; see Art, Politics of the Nazi Past, 135-39.

15 Make no mistake about it, scholars of comparative European authoritarianism/fascism in the interwar period clearly place the Dollfuss/Schuschnigg dictatorships in the fascist continuum; see Tim Kirk, “Fascism and Austrofascism,’ in The Dollfuss/Schuschnigg Era in Austria, 10-31; Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 2004), 97f; see also Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Knopf, 1999)

16 The published critical self-studies are Wolfgang Neugebauer and Peter Schwarz, Der Wille zum aufrechten Gang: Offenlegung der Rolle des BSA bei der gesellschaftlichen Reintegration ehemaliger Nationalsozialisten (Vienna: Czernin, 2005); and Maria Mesner et al., eds., Enteignung und Rückgabe: Das sozialdemokratische Parteivermögen in Österreich 1934 und nach 1945 (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2007); Maria Mesner, ed., Entnazifizierung zwischen politischem Anspruch, Parteienkonkurrenz und Kaltem Krieg (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 2005). For Berg’s shrewd analysis, see “Commemoration versus Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” 58-65, especially 64f.

17 Jabloner et. al., Schlussbericht der Historikerkommission der Republik Österreich, 451-57. For an overview of the Austrian restitution and compensation programs in the first postwar decades, see Brigitte Bailer-Galanda and Eva Blimlinger, Vermögensentzug — Rückstellung — Entschädigung: Österreich 1938/1945-2005 (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2005), 40-69; idem, „ Restitution and Compensation of Property in Austria, 1945-2007,“in New Perspectives on Austrians and World War II, ed. Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser, and Barbara Stelzl-Marx (CAS XVII) (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2009), pp. 306-24; Helmut Wohnout, “Eine ‘ Geste’ gegenüber den Opfern? Der Nationalfonds für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus und der schwierige Umgang Österreichs mit den Überlebenden nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung,” in Geschichte und Recht: Festschrift für Gerald Stourzh zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Thomas Angerer et al. (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999), 250-58; Christian Thonke, Hitlers langer Schatten: Der mühevolle Weg zur Entschädigung der NS-Opfer (Vienna: Böhlau, 2004), 50-82. For a comparison between Austria and the Federal Republic of Germany on the restitution agenda, see David Forster, “Wiedergutmachung” in Österreich und der BRD im Vergleich (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2001).

18 Bundesgesetz über den Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, BGBl. 432/1995. For the genesis of the National Fund and more information, see Wohnout, “Eine ‘Geste’ gegenüber den Opfern?”, 259-68, or the official homepage, National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, http://www.en.nationalfonds.org/, accessed 7 January 2009.

19 Wohnout, “Eine ‘ Geste’ gegenüber den Opfern?”, 262.

20 Hannah M. Lessing et al., “‘Wir können nur anklopfen, wo die Tür offen ist’— Der lange Weg zu Anerkennung und Entschädigung,” in Ausgeschlossen und entrechtet: Raub und Rückgabe — Österreich von 1938 bis heute, ed. Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2006), 241.

21 The restitution discourses also gave individual victims the opportunity for psychological release by voicing their experiences of suffering under National Socialism, thereby making it part of the collective memory. Restitution thus played an important role as “mediator” between family memory and collective memory, argues Nicole L. Immler; see her “Restitution and the Dynamics of Memory: A Neglected Trans-Generational Perspective,” in Mediation, Remediation and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, ed. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney (Berlin: D Gruyter, 2009).

22 According to the National Fund law, the following persons are eligible to receive symbolic payments: “those who were persecuted by the National Socialist regime on political grounds, grounds of origin, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, on grounds of a physical disability or mental handicap or on the basis of accusations of so-called asociality, or who in other ways fell victim to typically National Socialist injustice or left the country to escape such persecution,” found at “Eligibility for Payments and Filing Applications,” National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, http://www.en.nationalfonds.org/cgi-bin/dynamic?id=20060412151016005&temp=, accessed 7 January 2009; see also “Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus” and “Allgemeiner Entschädigungsfonds für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus,” 10 Jahre Nationalfonds: Zahlen. Daten. Fakten, ed. Renate S. Meissner im Auftrag des Nationalfonds (Vienna: Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, 2005), 10-16.

23 “Medieninformationen des Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich und des Allgemeinen Entschädigungsfonds für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Stand: November 2008),” National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, http://www.de.nationalfonds.org/docs/medieninformation_11_2008.pdf, accessed 7 January 2009), 5.

24 For the project database of the National Fund, see “Notes on Projects and Grants,” National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, http://de.nationalfonds.org/sites/dynamic.pl?action=db3, accessed 7 January 2009.

25 See the summary of the international “Holocaust era assets” debate in Thonke, Hitlers langer Schatten, 83-145; the Swiss Nazi gold lawsuit is a main chapter in Barkan, Guilt of Nations, 88-111; see also Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland — Second World War, Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War: Final Report (Zurich: Pendo, 2002).

26 Der Standard, 22 September 2006.

27 This can be loosely translated as “I am in favor of prolonging this thing.” See the classic documentation by Robert Knight, ed., “Ich bin dafür, die Sache in die Länge zu ziehen”: Die Wortprotokolle der österreichischen Bundesregierung von 1945 bis 1952 über die Entschädigung der Juden (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988).

28 Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, 284f.

29 Bundesgesetz über den Fonds für freiwillige Leistungen der Republik Österreich an ehemalige Sklaven-und Zwangsarbeiter des nationalsozialistischen Regimes (Versöhnungsfonds-Gesetz), BGBl. I 74/2000. The most detailed summary of the negotiations on the forced laborers issue can be found in Hubert Feichtlbauer, Forced Labor in Austria, 1938-1945: Late Recognition, History, Tragic Fates (Vienna: Austrian Reconciliation Fund, 2005), 165-94; see also Fund for Reconciliation, Peace, and Cooperation, http://www.versoehnungsfonds.at/, accessed 15 January 2009; Maria Schaumayer, “Austria’s Contribution to Reconciliation,” in Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy: Coming to Terms with Forced Labor, Expropriation, Compensation, and Restitution, ed. Oliver Rathkolb, vol. 3., Bruno Kreisky International Studies (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2002), 24-29; for the U. S. perspective on the negotiations, see Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, 279-314.

30 Feichtlbauer, Forced Labor in Austria, 183, 198ff, 215, 287f, 296f, 310f; see also the Future Fund of the Republic of Austria, http://www.zukunftsfonds-austria.at/, accessed 15 January 2009.

31 Ursula Kriebaum and Ernst Sucharipa, “Das Washingtoner Abkommen. Die österreichische Restitutionsvereinbarung vom 17. Jänner 2001,” in Die Republik und das NS-Erbe: Raub und Rückgabe — Österreich von 1938 bis heute, ed. Verena Pawlowsky and Harald Wendelin (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2005), 164-69; Ernst Sucharipa, “Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy, Restitution: Why Now? The Austrian Experience,” in Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy, 30-40; Thonke, Hitlers langer Schatten, 147-51; Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, 293-314.

32 Änderung des Bundesgesetzes über den Nationalfonds der Republik Österreich für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, BGBl. I 11/2001.

33 “Medieninformationen des Nationalfonds und des Entschädigungsfonds,” 6.

34 Bundesgesetz über die Einrichtung eines Allgemeinen Entschädigungsfonds für Opfer des Nationalsozialismus und über Restitutionsmaßnahmen (Entschädigungsfondsgesetz) sowie zur Änderung des Allgemeinen Sozialversicherungsgesetzes und des Opferfürsorgegesetzes, BGBl. I 12/2001.

35 Hannah Lessing and Fiorentina Azizi, “Austria Confronts Her Past,” in Holocaust Restitution: Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy, ed. Michael J. Bazyler and Roger P. Alford (New York: New York UP, 2006), 231-34; Kriebaum and Sucharipa, “Das Washingtoner Abkommen,” 169-85; National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, http://www.en.nationalfonds.org/, accessed 17 January 2009.

36 Bundesgesetz, mit dem das Entschädigungsfondsgesetz geändert wird, BGBl. I 142/2005.

37 “Statistics on Application Processing,” National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism, http://www.en.nationalfonds.org/cgi-bin/dynamic?id=20061215235128007&temp=, accessed 17 January 2009).

38 Sucharipa, “Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy,” 31f.

39 Schüssel told Eizenstat during a private meeting that he did not learn until he was sixteen that his father was a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, “a revelation that led to a lifelong estrangement”; see Eizenstat, Imperfect Justice, 305.

40 See, for instance, Der Standard, 1 February 2002; Die Presse Online, 13 November 2002, http://diepresse.com, accessed 29 March 2009.

41 Feichtlbauer, Forced Labor in Austria, 193.

42 Sucharipa, “Revisiting the National Socialist Legacy,” 37.

43 Bundeskanzleramt Östereich and Teresa Indjein, eds., Österreich 2005: Das Lesebuch zum Jubiläumsjahr mit Programmübersicht (Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 2004).

44 The elaborate homepage documenting all the activities and events is still up; see Jubilee Year 2005, http://www.oesterreich2005.at/, accessed 26 December 2008.

45 Bundeskanzleramt and Hans Haider, eds., 2005: Gedanken – Termine – Bücher: 1945 – 1955 – 1995 – 2005 [hereinafter cited as Gedanken]; 2005. Ein Gedankenjahr; DVD I: Die grossen Jubiläen; DVD II: Quer durch Österreich; DVD 2005: 25 Peaces; Die Zukunft der Vergangenheit (Vienna, 2006).

46 Maimann, ed., Was bleibt.

47 Wassermair and Wegan, Rebranding Images.

48 See Katharina Wegan, “Memory Boom: The ‘Year of Reflection’ 2005,” and Günter Bischof, “Austrian Exhibition-ism: The Year 2005 and its Commemorations of the Recent Past in Exhibition Catalogues,” in Sexuality in Austria, ed. Günter Bischof, Fritz Plasser and Dagmar Herzog (CAS XV) (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2007), 172-224.

49 Berg, “Commemoration versus Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” 47-71; Art mentions Chancellor Schüssel’s early defiant statements about “Austria as victim” in 1938, but does not analyze 2005 as a memory year; see Art, Politics of the Nazi Past, 135f.

50 Maimann, ed., Was bleibt, 11, 21.

51 The smallest Austrian state, the Land Vorarlberg, issued a comprehensive documentation of its commemorative activities; see Ulrich Nachbauer and Christian Niederstätter, eds., Aufbruch in eine neue Zeit: Vorarlberger Almanach zum Jubiläumsjahr 2005 (Bregenz: Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, 2006).

52 The official website can be accessed at Jubilee Year 2005, http://oestereich2005.at . Morak’s and Schüssel’s speeches are reprinted in Gedanken, 9-82; for critical perspectives, see the essays by Anton Pelinka, “Die Gedanken sind frei: Na und?”, and Armin Thurnher “Ein Hintergedankenjahr,” in Was bleibt, 22-38; the “patriotic ‘ jubilee machine’” is mentioned in Uhl, “Europäische Tendenzen, regionale Verwerfungen,” 23.

53 One of the co-authors of this essay, for example, participated in symposia in Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Ottawa, none of them recorded in the extensive, supposedly final list of “Termine ” in Gedanken, 83-115.

54 Schüssel zum Auftakt des Gedenkjahres im Parlament, 14 January 2005, in Gedanken, 17; Raab’s letter to Nahum Goldman, 12 November 1953, cited in Albrich, “Es gibt keine Jüdische Frage,” in “Heiss Umfehdet, Wild Umstritten. . .,” 69.

55 Robert Menasse, “Österreich: Wende und Ende,” in Was bleibt, 77, quote is on 76. Menasse’s controversial essay was first published in the high-brow weekend addition Spektrum of the Viennese daily Die Presse and produced a heated debate among readers. The contentious essayist and gifted polemicist Menasse is probably Schüssel’s fiercest antagonist.

56 Schüssel’s and Fischer’s speeches are reprinted in Gedanken, 15-20.

57 The keynotes by EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, 25 February 2005, are both reprinted in Gedanken, 29-41.

58 Fischer and Schüssel’s April 27 speeches are reprinted in ibid., 45-52.

59 Fischer’s and Schüssel’s 15 May speeches are reprinted in ibid., 55-63.

60 Georg Spitaler, “Von der Normalitätsdebatte zur ‘ Normalposition’ des Erinnerns?” in Rebranding Images, 76.

61 On these exhibits and their catalogues, see Bischof, “Austrian Exhibition-ism.” For a critical perspective on the Belevedere exhibit, see Martin Wassermair, “Privatisiert und eingestampft!,” in Rebranding Images, 37-40.

62 Oliver Marchard, “Die ungezählten Jahre,” in Rebranding Images, 58.

63 Heidrun Zettelbauer, “Das Identitätsbegehren nach musealer Repräsentation,” in Rebranding Images, 147-59 (here 148, 152).

64 See brochure and DVD documentation of the 25 Peaces in the Planungsbüro’s threevolume set.

65 Lisa Mayr, “Anders als gedacht: Gegenstrategien zum ‘ Gedankenjahr’,” in Rebranding Images, 161-69 (here 168); Marlene Streeruwitz, “Gedenkkultur. Jänner 2006,” ibid., 41-50 (here 43); Robert Menasse, “Österreich: Wende und Ende,” and Wolfgang Lorenz, ““Die Anderen sind so fad!’,” in Was bleibt, 76, 137-41 (quote is on 139).

66 Mayr, “Anders als gedacht,” in Rebranding Images, 161.

67 The most ambitious effort in 2005 to capture the ambiguous narrative of Austrians’ conflicted World War II roles and memories is the superior scholarly collection of essays in the exhibit catalogue ‘ Heiss Umfehdet, Wild Umstritten…’, ed. Koroschitz and Rettl. These state-of-the-art essays constitute the ambiguous counter-narrative to Schüssel’s official success narrative. Strangely, yet appropriately, the exhibit and the catalogue were produced by the city museum of Villach, in the heart of Haider country and defiant Austrian World War II revisionism — yet another example of popular and scholarly narratives at war.

68 Marchard, “Die ungezählten Jahre,” in ibid., 55.

69 Art, Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria, 136.

70 Marchard, “Die ungezählten Jahre,” 55; Anton Pelinka, “Gedanken sind frei,” 22ff.

71 Bratic, “Die Ausstellung als Ort der Macht,” 36.

72 Elisabeth Röhrlich, “Kreisky’s Aussenpolitik: Zwischen österreichischer Identität und nationalem Programm,” Ph. D. diss, University of Tübingen, 2008, 93-96, 177-85.

73 For a thoughtful essay on the “Trümmerfrauen,” see Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann and Ela Hornung, “‘ Trümmerfrauen’— Deutungsmuster für eine Ikone der Nachkriegszeit,” in Rebranding Images, 79-92.

74 All citations are from Marchard, “Die ungezählten Jahre,” 55f. These Schüssel quotes were cited frequently in the attacks on his Geschichtspolitik in 2005, suggesting that he refused to abandon the old victim’s doctrine.

75 Berg, “Commemoration versus Vergangenheitsbewältung,” 65-69.

76 In his April 27 speech, he disavowed those “who pooh-poohed the horrors of the [Hitler] regime and qualify the existence of camps and gas chambers”; see Gedanken, 50.

77 After the Jersualem Post interview, the Greens rightly charged that this was “an unbelievable step backward in Austria’s process of confronting history”; quoted in Art, Politics of the Nazi Past, 135.

78 Uhl, “Europäische Tendenzen, regionale Verwerfungen,” in “Heiss Umfehdet, Wild Umstritten…,” 21-23.

79 Art, Politics of the Nazi Past, 202.

80 See note 14.

81 Ever since he invited and engaged Austrian intellectuals and professionals to think about the future of Austria (Österreich zukunftsreich), Schüssel had been a chief promoter of the idea of a national Austrian history museum, concentrating on the two Austrian Republics. In his final months as chancellor, he returned to the controversial plans for a museum of contemporary history (Zeitgeschichtemuseum,) supporting the suggestion of using the contents of the successful Belvedere exhibit as the core for such a museum. His historian friend Stefan Karner had been his chief consultant in planning such a history museum. The vast majority in the community of professional Zeitgeschichtler opposed Schüssel’s plan, being suspicious of his identity politics. They pleaded for a Holocaust Museum/“Museum of Tolerance,” or a contemporary history museum with a European focus. For an excellent summary of this long-standing museum controversy with its confrontational politics of history, see Martina Nussbaumer, “‘Haus der Geschichte’, Version 05-06,” Rebranding Images, 197-210; see also Heidemarie Uhl, “Haus der Konflikte,” Falter, 15 November 2008, 18.

82 Next to the 1.1 million visitors, 475 different meetings were staged and 170 books published on the memory year 2005; for these numbers, see Franz Morak, “Editorial,” Gedanken, 25.

83 Prime examples of outstanding scholarly publications produced as part and parcel of the Gedankenjahr are Arnold Suppan et al., eds., Staatsvertrag 1955: Internationale Strategie, rechtliche Relevanz, nationale Identität/The Austrian State Treaty 1955: International Strategy, Legal Relevance, National Identity (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005); and Stefan Karner and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, eds., Die Rote Armee in Österreich: Sowjetische Besatzung 1945-1955, 2 vols. (Graz: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2005).

84 Pollak, “Vergangenheit und Reflexion,” 342.