A War of Words: Framing the Austrian Civil War through the Language of the Combatants

Abstract

The Austrian civil war was a four-day conflict in 1934 between the largest left-wing paramilitary, the Schutzbund, and government forces aligned with the largest right-wing paramilitary group, the Heimwehr. The Schutzbund was quickly and brutally suppressed through the use of overwhelming force, armoured vehicles and even artillery deployment against civilian homes. But although the government victory was definitive, the Austrian civil war was fought over during and after its conclusion and had significant, far-reaching consequences. The way in which a conflict was described was itself part of the political struggle over its meaning. The Austrian civil war was fought not only in the streets and towns but also through competing vocabularies that sought to define the conflict as rebellion, restoration of order, workers’ struggle or civil war. This article demonstrates how the newspapers of the time made active efforts to address the violence within an ideological framework which defined the Other as barbarous or savage.