Ghosts of Vienna past and future
A new podcast on Vienna, some thoughts on Europe at this point in time.
A friend sent me this podcast yesterday, mentioning it was recommended to her by an American in America. So I was naturally slightly skeptical as I started listening. But soon I realised it was exactly the kind of big-picture overview which would have been so incredibly helpful to me personally when I moved here nearly a decade ago. Instead, I had to learn about the “nanny state” and “red Vienna” surrounded by “conservative countryside” the hard way: through first-hand experience. This podcast is an interview with British historian-turned-journalist, Richard Cockett. As a non-Austrian, he has no problems saying the quiet part out loud. His descriptions of course include a lot of generalisations, but the basic tenants can still be felt today. And as you look around Vienna in 2024, it is often hard to understand why things are the way they are. This podcast does a great job in explaining in a short amount of time. Many Austrians will perhaps find the conclusions simplistic. I would argue it is a very interesting perspective, namely, how did a place that exported so much “intellectual manpower” for lack of a better term, which was at the centre of history, both for incredible and horrific achievements, become a century later, well, basically, irrelevant?
I find this an interesting question not just in the historical context but as Austria so visibly (and Austria is not alone in this, surely many other European countries are having very similar struggles) battles within itself to figure out what exactly it wants to be in the future. The signs of the struggle are visible everywhere at the moment, with EU elections coming up later this week, and the political posters are in full force. The Greens have hung up posters featuring a prominent young climate activist whom they, in what was probably a politically astute move, nominated to run as their candidate in the EU elections. She is featured making a heart with her fingers and the campaign slogan is simply “politics with heart”. Then you have a social democratic party which (again, these are going to be a lot of personal opinions today) has a new leader who proved himself as a popular, hands-on, solutions-oriented local politician in a small town but clearly is not really the right person (intellectually) to lead a party on a national scale, and as a result, the socialists are still stuck in their own past, lacking a vision for the future, and running on slogans like “for a neutral Europe”, speaking skeptically about a possible EU membership for Ukraine one day, which frankly, with Russia bombarding Ukraine just a day’s drive away, make one’s jaw drop from their naivety. And then you have the political right, all trying to outdo each other with their anti-immigration messages. And I think, they are working. Not because of the messages themselves, but because of the context. I’ll explain.
A few months ago I moved from mostly driving to mostly taking public transport, and you see the city in a whole different light. When you are in your car, you can ignore what is around you. You can turn up the A/C and the music, switch on a podcast, and you are in your own little world. On public transport, the great thing is you can get work done on your phone while moving from A to B, but you cannot isolate yourself from people. There are screaming, tired toddlers and lost tourists and many recent immigrants. You see and smell the city in a new light. This Saturday I needed to go to a store way on the outskirts of the city, and it required a long trip through neighbourhoods which were once working class and are now solidly new immigrant. I stepped off the tram to see a giant poster with one of the more infamous far right politicians, his unpleasant face, and the words “we must be patriotic!” in all caps underneath. At that exact moment, two young women of no more than 25 passed by the poster in full black floor-length head scarves and body coverings (I do not know the correct term so am describing instead). Right next to this poster was another one, featuring a cartoon of Zelensky kissing von der Leyen, calling for an end to the “EU craziness”. The far right in Austria would like to be friendly again with Putin. Imagine a German-speaking Serbia or Hungary. That is exactly what many here seek. And they poll around 30%. And I can completely understand why people vote for them. The political left has failed so far to come up with an emotionally compelling alternative argument and has no clear vision for the future.
Since 2015, Austria has felt the weight of immigration waves from Syria, Afghanistan, and other non-European countries. I mean this in the cultural sense too. I think these things must be spoken about, because when they are buried under the rug of political correctness and inclusivity, as the political left likes to do, arguing people are people (of course they are but we have to take into context where they are coming from and what cultural background they bring). The war in Ukraine brought another 70,000+ (I don’t have the most exact figure) immigrants to Austria, albeit from cultural “Europe” more broadly.
The result? The healthcare system is under strain, the social welfare system, built by red Vienna for red Vienna 100+ years ago, is under strain, and the education system is deeply under strain. Vienna is at the moment scrambling to open entire new school classes to accommodate newly arrived children under “family reunification” which basically means the father came to Austria, alone, years ago, finally received asylum, and now brings his wife and children here. None of whom speak German, all of whom will now need to catch up. The school system, also never properly reformed in decades, is struggling to cope with a huge volume of children who do not speak German at home. Because the schools in Austria divide kids at the age of 10 (Germany does this too) into two paths: one quite academic, eight years of gymnasium leading to university, the other four years of middle school most likely leading to trade school or learning a blue collar profession, the burden of these new arrivals is felt by primary and middle schools. The high schools do not have to deal with it because the barrier for entry is nearly always too high.
So you have two Austrias, and this is particularly acute in the capital. Recent immigrants often move here as soon as their asylum applications are approved because of the city’s generous social benefits (e.g. subsidised housing) which other parts of Austria do not offer. Some in the federal government would like to ban this practice, arguing those immigrants should have to stay in the towns which they first arrived and applied for asylum from. But the countryside isn’t really keen to keep them, and most local politicians are happy to see recent immigrants relocate to the big city. Some on the political left make the arguments “but we have a labor shortage! we need people!” which is true but one must ask: will the recent immigrants be incentivised and able to work? Because what I hear, as the Ukrainians tell me what they hear from Syrians and Afghans in their language classes, is that it often does not make economic sense in the first three years to work, if you are paid enough to survive with your family (and the number of children does matter as you receive aid money per child; the Ukrainians receive this too) and attend German courses. If the social payments are big enough, you don’t rush to get a job. You just tick the boxes the government asks you to tick. Study German for years. And therein lies the problem.
Europe’s generous social welfare system, built over decades to give the working classes a better life, is open to being manipulated, for lack of a better term. And as long as politicians do not manage to legislate to make things more fair, there remains a huge risk that political forces will be elected into power who will not legislate, but simply act. Some of you may be confused reading this if you have been following what I have been writing about the Ukrainians in Austria. I will explain. Ukrainians in Austria only qualify for Grundversorgung, basic care for immigrants whose asylum claims have not yet been approved. So no Ukrainian can get rich off these payments. In fact, it is really still unclear how anyone can be expected to feed themselves and take care of other basic needs on €260 per month at today’s prices. But Ukrainians do add to the strain on the healthcare system and the education system. Universal healthcare does come with an enormous price tag. As does the promise to educate all children until the age of 15 living here. And the schools are massively under-equipped to educate huge inflows of new children with no prior knowledge of German and the trauma of having fled war zones etc.
A few recent articles about the school crisis in Vienna (unfortunately both behind paywalls)
6291 neue Kinder in Wien - das schaffen wir nicht?
Many Austrian families in Vienna, those who can afford it, will avoid the whole mess by opting for private schools, but this only leaves even fewer native German speakers in public school classrooms. So far, I have failed to hear any creative solutions from the education ministry to deal with this, and in conversations with local educators, you can feel how overwhelming the entire situation is. I have only been privy to a few conversations between teachers and Ukrainian parents, and they vary from incredibly understanding to frustrated and stressed out. Ukrainian parents also must manage their own expectations, naturally, as one teacher explained: they really need supportive parents because learning German quickly cannot happen only in the classroom without substantial support at home. One Ukrainian mom told me her son made a friend in kindergarten and his best friend is originally from Afghanistan. That boy’s mother told the Ukrainian mother that she herself has never been to school. Now imagine integrating families like hers with five kids. This is the challenge Vienna, and not Vienna alone, is facing. The left doesn’t want to talk about these real cultural hurdles, and the right want to fear monger the general population into being able to seize power. Only a few voices in the middle are trying to speak rationally and yet when they manage to get into power, like the Neos in local government in Vienna for education, you see how hard it is to legislate real change in practice.
I wonder if we have tied ourselves here into a knot that we cannot legislate our way out of. Particularly with the tentacles of the “nanny state” and its red tape running deep and up for abuse by those clever enough to navigate it. When the shoulder shrugging no longer works, what then?
This week China’s president Xi will be visiting Europe for the first time in five years, beginning his trip in France, but notably aiming for a soft landing with obligatory fan-boy flag waving in Belgrade and Budapest. Xi will be in Belgrade for the 25th anniversary of when NATO “accidentally” bombed a Chinese complex in Serbia’s capital, killing three. China, like Russia, has been emboldened in a Europe that increasingly appears not to know what to do with the likes of Russia or China. I often wonder when Europe will become like Italy: booming tourism, a museum of the life that once was. Although who will visit German mid-sized towns is another question entirely.
Immigration can be wildly successful, like in the U.S., historically, when you have a plan about who to attract, and you have an economy that rewards entrepreneurism. Austria does not have that. It has no plan, and it certainly does not reward those who seek to open businesses here. Which means you end up attracting those who see what you are offering as attractive enough, meaning those who will use, access, whatever you want to call it, the social safety-net. It is strange to me to think you can arrive somewhere and ask for money having never paid tax in. But then you look around and see others are doing it, so naturally you want to do it too. And it is up to voters and taxpayers to have their say at the ballot box on this. So far, the politicians have come up with incredibly cheap rhetoric, like the Austrian Chancellor’s comment that “more DNA tests” should be used for family reunification, as if anyone is going to pretend to have five kids and a wife they have to feed… Liberal politicians point out DNA tests are already at the government’s disposal.
The problem is that what no one wants to actually say out loud. That Europe may have a present crisis in finding workers to fill jobs, but that has more to do with low salaries and too high unemployment payments (anyone can perform a cost-benefit analysis for him/herself), and does not mean that new wave of immigrants, without language skills nor the necessary education, will fill these jobs. It is like saying we need apples and someone offers oranges instead, arguing they are both fruit.
So my fear, and I don’t really have anything to do about it, is that this fall we will see Austria elect a government which will take the country towards Belgrade and Budapest. Using Austria for Austrians populist rhetoric. There are many political scandals at the moment emerging from the far right, but just like Trump in America, I think they will shed them like teflon. A conservative mayor of a suburban town near Vienna was recently re-elected despite corruption. It would appear corruption scandals are the new normal, and many voters do not care. They care more about the person holding office sharing their core values. Looking like them, talking like them.
I cannot vote here, but I do now really understand, much better than I did even a year ago, where the frustration that leads people to the far right is coming from. I see wonderful counter-examples all the time but you have to live them. For example, Mama Olya is receiving care in a Vienna hospital. We had an incident on Friday with an Austrian nurse raising his voice at her, and making threats he should not have made. I had to speak up and it was unpleasant. This weekend, there was a shift with wonderful nurses originally from Tunisia and Egypt, who are like a breath of fresh air and bring a compassion to their work, a human quality sometimes lacking in locals (I am generalising horribly but you get the idea). A diverse society can be a beautiful thing but you have to shape it around some shared core values, like the U.S. does, and even the UK to a lesser extent. Austria has not managed to do that yet. There is an idealistic left who want to welcome everyone, and think the state should be able to fund that, like magic, and there is a racist right that would like everyone without blond hair and blue eyes to be sent back to their homelands. They dream of turning the clock back one hundred years, not asking themselves who then will actually work those jobs they don’t want their own kids to perform.
This weekend was Orthodox Easter, and it was also a phenomenal week for Cards for Ukraine, as I was able to send out over 100 €50 Hofer gift cards. As a result, I was flooded with grocery photos and words of gratitude, particularly on the Saturday before Easter. I made a little video here:
The news out of Ukraine continues to be quite grim, and the mood when I speak with Ukrainians here in Austria is also one of reluctant acceptance of the new reality, and gratitude for being able to be here.
I recommend this recent reporting from Chasiv Yar by Francis Ferrell of the Kyiv Independent. He also made a video report which you can view here. I think to the TikTok videos on my For You page filmed by volunteers delivering food and basic goods to elderly who refuse to leave that city. They say to the cameras they believe in a Ukrainian victory. But when you see the scenes of the already-abandoned apartment blocks in the video, it is hard to imagine what if any future can be had in such parts. And then you read the headline, “Ukraine offensive in 2025 possible with U.S. weapons” and I have to genuinely ask, who do they think are going to fight? Which of the men who can no longer leave the country or have been told they cannot renew their passports abroad? How is locking people in supposed to create a mass feeling of patriotism? I think morale is going to be the number one problem if it is not already, and I see no indications of the Ukrainian government (and a president who did not have an re-election due to war) doing anything to address this with its population. I would say the overall frustration and anger with the government (and ongoing corruption even during the war) is palpable. But I cannot measure this. It is just a feeling. Perhaps Ukrainians in Ukraine are more upbeat, but every time I ask a Ukrainian in Austria how their trip home was, they tell me it was depressing.
So this is what has been on my mind. I realise it is rather a stream of consciousness, backed up with no hard facts, only feelings. My kids accused me the other day of being racist. I tried to explain I am not racist, but I see difficulties in integrating different cultures without a plan as to how not to lose your own cultural norms. I know countries like Canada which have been massively successful in this, but Canada has a very strong sense of what it means to be Canadian, and what is expected of immigrants, and the hurdle to entry was much higher than simply walking across the border. This is the challenge Europe faces now due to its geography and the numbers of immigrants it received over the past decade, with, most troubling, unfortunately no end to regional wars in sight.
Well written post, as usual.
I find these posts very interesting. While I now live in the US, I was raised and educated in Canada and so I am somewhat familiar with government bureaucracies and the idea of an "managed economy".
Being raised under the long shadow of WWII, unfortunately only of late have I come to realize that the real change into the world order we now live under happened during WWI. The only major empire that did not outrightly collapse during WWI was the British empire.
What intrigues me about Vienna, in addition to its cultural history, is how massive its immigration population was in the early 1900's. I wondered if that fact partly inspired Hitler's views on race. Who knows. But, as far as the current situation described in the post, I am reminded of an old French saying about being careful about tearing down old fences. At the same time, I think there is some truism that certain people are attracted to certain career choices that amplify not so much the general public welfare but their fetish for control, law enforcement and government. If true, it is one of the reasons that Churchill famously said that democracy is the worse form of government except for all the others. And, with the situation in russia now manifestly obvious, it is easy to understand what can happen to any society if even the hope for positive change can be suppressed.
Regarding the plurality electoral parties, while it may seem like chaos, here in the US, with its two party system, I would take the former over the latter because the most constructive path to change is where there is open dialog about what needs to be changed. In the US, its almost pure partisan politics. And, with partisan politics, in a two party system, there is massive pressure to conform and follow party rules, hence the arrival of the geriatric generation of political leaders at the federal level. There is almost universal understanding that the health care system needs an overhaul, not just a symbolic one which the ACA is in reality, but it will never happen when individuals like Nancy Pelosi argue that the solution is simply for people to have more disposable income. The MAGA crowd with its recent "real men wear diapers" cause du jour is just as vicious and fanatical as the so called "Democrats" when somebody says anything disparaging about Biden and co.....I have never met an American who could tell me what the per capita debt is where when I raised in Canada, we understood what it meant if it rose too high for it meant higher taxes and lower levels of social services. In that vein, it was the norm to discuss issues for its was accepted that whoever was in office would have to do whatever was needed, regardless. In a two party system, the survival and dominance of the each political party at the expense of even its host democracy takes precedence more often than not. I personally think the American flag should include a picture of a can being kicked down the road.
In a multi party system, it is the issues that engenders often bi-polar viewpoints, and while it may feel like politically an either/or situation, especially when change isn't happening fast enough, at least at the cultural level, it is still possible to have meaningful discussions which eventually will percolate upwards over time....unless big money gets in the way.
I am originally from western Canada. I think in its relatively short history there have been several political parties that have risen to power only to be eventually crushed into oblivion. I lived thru a few of them, and yes often the flakes would come out when the need for a new party would arise but eventually, cultural norms shaped their eventual trajectory. In a two party system, such a thing never happens. Politicians in the US just don't have the same level of fear of their constituents approval as they do when electors have a real choice. Even, when a politician loses, the two party system has its own safety net via its lobbying system.
I can't speak European. I can't comprehend what it means when the culture I was raised in was once part of an empire, or thru colonization arrested the development of several African/middle east countries. I would suspect it is a challenge for everyone, and there is not an one solution fits all like authoritarians would have the people in their country believe. It is in the cracks between one flawed system versus another flawed system where the real war of hearts and mind is won or lost. I'm championing the view that as crappy as it seems to have too many political parties, it is way better than having just one or two. The challenge remains how to prevent the likes of the Hitlers and Trump from exploiting people's indifference. Martin Luther King Jr. greatest fear wasn't racists but a complacent middle class.
Last, Canada and Canadians have long struggled with what it means to be "Canadian". I know we love irony, but we did not have own home brew flag or anthem until 1967. It just seems to be a large melting pot not of cultures but of ideas. The biggest battle has been over the nature of civil rights. The English side champions the view that civil rights should be centered around protecting the interests of the individual, whereas Quebec(the French) champion a collective view of civil rights with the battle front being language. And, in between, those two sides, is the battle of over the nature of government itself. In the US, allegedly, it derives its legitimacy on the rule of law premis. In Canada, it is a Parliamentary system where it is the people who rule, and in essence, Parliament functions like a dynamic constituent assembly and its will was absolute until it adopted a constitution which makes it a different form of government than Britain's which was its original model. I used to hate it until I moved to the US.
So well written and insightful, as always, Tanja. Thank you for writing this!