Asylum: 20th Century Case Studies
Vienna, 15–16 October 2009
On the occasion of its 25 th anniversary the Bruno Kreisky Archive Foundation is soliciting conference papers that treat various aspects of the reception of refugees throughout the 20 th century. Totalitarian regimes, armed conflict, natural disasters and grinding poverty forced people to leave the place they used to life in in the hope for open borders and opportunities to build a life in a new country. The individuals and groups turned into refugees met a wide range of reaction: from warm welcome to exclusion, tolerance, neglect, support, etc. The focus of the conference lies on those who chose to receive or not to receive people, individuals or groups, having experienced forced migration: state institutions, private groups, NGOs, individuals, and how they reacted: policies, strategies, and images of those needing and/or wanting to enter.
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Women's Day! The Invention of a Tradition
In 1911 the International Women's Day (IWD) was first established in Austria and, with the exception of the two world wars and Austrofacism, it has been honoured yearly ever since. Like sunbeams concentrating in the focal point of a magnifying lens, the celebration of the IWD bundles the changing demands of women and gender politics through time.
Despite the long continuity of the Women's Day, it is remarkable how little is known about its emergence, its respective activists and organizations as well as its celebrations within party political contexts (mostly socialist) and beyond. Profound research is still in need to close the scientific knowledge gap on national and international levels.
This lack of knowledge is astonishing for several reasons: Firstly, the International Women's Day was and still is a public festive day with (varying) presence in the media. The yearly celebration was and continues to be an occasion for the mobilization and political organization of women. Thus, the IWD plays a crucial role in establishing ‘women' as political agents. Secondly, we are interested in the different concepts on women and gender politics advocated by activists and special interest groups. Thirdly, celebrations demonstrate international connections and transfer of ideas and politics. Ultimately, the International Women's Day is a unique possibility to analyze booms and shifts of feminist positions. Our research will enable us to fill the scientific knowledge gap mentioned above.
The project results will be published separately. Furthermore, we will arrange an exhibition in 2011.
Project management: Maria Mesner
Staff: Heidi Niederkofler, Johanna Zechner
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A female "Lieu de memoire": A knowledge base on state gender politics in Austria goes online
The aim of the project is to provide archival material on women's politics in Austria adapted to online-media exigencies. Unpublished holdings covering the last three decades of women's politics are made digitally accessible, a commented selection is put online. The most crucial issues are abortion conflict, debate and information on the wage gap, family law reform, domestic violence and equal sharing of care work among others. They will be presented and made intelligible more clearly than in traditional social science presentation with authentic documents, pictures, posters, and pamphlets. Historical narratives will provide additional information and context.
Visitors of the knowledge base will be able to download various items in order to use them for own activities: as teachers, students or just for their own education. Thus, we hope to establish and support a new transfer of knowledge and material between archives and people interested in the past.
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Family Law and Gender Policies: Comparative Historical Perspectives on the Codification of Private Lives
The project deals with the development of family law in Austria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and their respective predecessor states during the period from 1945 to 2000 in a comparative perspective. The study focuses on the interactions between public discourse and the establishment of legal norms, whereby the following aspects are crucial: we are interested in the political actors involved in the public discussion and the legislative process. We focus both on the various actors' mode of organization and on their strategies for structuring policies. Furthermore, we are interested in the extent to which political interest groups are able to influence political deliberations and law making. At the same time, the significance of political framework conditions for the possibility of participation in public debate and in the structuring of the development of law will be elucidated. The comparison of states with different political systems and forms of society forestalls the danger of universalizing the research results. The project analyses the concepts of family and society advocated by special interest groups and reflected in codified family norms in a historical longitudinal study.
In our research we will start from legal initiatives. The material produced in the framework of the family law discourse will be examined using historical discourse analysis; interviews with important protagonists will be conducted.
The comparative reconstruction of the development of family law in the European states in question is a novelty in historical research. The period of investigation ranging into the year 2000 enables multidimensional inquiries that go beyond an East-West dichotomy, providing an important contribution to transnational European historical research.
Project management: Maria Mesner
Staff: Sonja Niederacher, Heidi Niederkofler, Andrea Salingova, Veronika Wöhrer
Programme of the workshop on November 23-24, 2007 
pdf 49 kb
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Unter dem Kruckenkreuz. |
Paul Pasteur is a professor of history at the University of Rouen and co-editor of the journal Austriaca. In his book Pasteur examines Austrian trade unions during the Austrofascist period.
After having been illegalized by the authoritarian corporatist regime Socialdemocratic, Communist as well as Nationalsocialist labor organizations were forced to go into hiding. In hard competition to each other they established company organizations, in order to win over the employees, while the Austrofascists required all workers to join the Christian corporatist organizations. Paul Pasteur describes these strongly differing groups with particular focus on their fields of conflict. Whereas most studies limit their attention to one ideological group, Pasteur includes all kinds of weltanschauungen. To date there is no similar historical analysis covering Austrian trade unions in such a broad perspective.
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Vienna: Site of Remembrance 1945–1955–2005
The Bruno Kreisky Archives Foundation is in the possession of more than 2000 boxes of fairly unknown material on the role and significance of Vienna as catalytic agent in the political, social and economic processes during the early years of the so-called second republic of Austria. The project “Vienna: Site of Remembrance” will make these historical documents available/ accessible on-line for a wider audience, especially to scientific research, media, journalists and the public. In presenting primary sources within a context that describes as well as explains, new aspects of the more recent history of Vienna as a city and a region can be communicated to a non-scientific audience for the first time. The presentation will offer high-profile texts and pictures and will allow the reader to gain access not only to the historical background bur also to the story ‘behind' the document. Tips to further or similar sources, complimentary visual sources as well as further reading will complete the information. Thereby we want to enable a non-academic audience in particular a simple and accurate access to recent scientific historical research and results. Additionally, a number of tools will be offered to the reader for the construction and deconstruction of cultural remembrance and memories which have only been available to researchers and journalists, both active agents in the process of constructing sites of remembrance and collective memory.
Project management: Univ. Doz. Dr. Maria Mesner
Staff: Remigio Gazzari, Mag.a Li Gerhalter, DI Christiane Koch, Mag.a Sonja Niederacher
www.erinnerungsort.at
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