War, Welfare, and Social Citizenship: The Politics of War Victim Welfare in Austria, 1914-1925

TitleWar, Welfare, and Social Citizenship: The Politics of War Victim Welfare in Austria, 1914-1925
Publication TypeThesis
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsHsia, Ke-Chin
Academic DepartmentDepartment of History
DegreePh.D
Number of Pages528
UniversityUniversity of Chicago
CityChicago
Abstract

This dissertation examines the politics of welfare for Austrian war victims (specifically disabled soldiers, widows, and orphans) during and after the First World War. It is an investigation of the changing relations between the state and citizens and, more broadly, the warfare-welfare nexus, in the western half of the Habsburg Monarchy—the multinational empire that initiated the Great War—and in the early First Austrian Republic in the period from before the outbreak of the war to the mid-1920s. Seeing war victim welfare as a field of interventions in and interactions over key social and political issues, this dissertation reconstructs how the military leadership, central state civilian officials, local authorities, voluntary welfare organizations, parliamentary politicians, and war victims themselves negotiated the field of welfare provision and pursued both complementary and competing goals. Based on a detailed examination of archival sources and contemporary publications, this dissertation argues that the catastrophic losses suffered by the Habsburg Army and the subsequent social-economic consequences for wounded soldiers and surviving dependents were a catalyst in redefining the state-citizen relationship and the basis of the Austrian state's legitimacy.

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