historians-from-austria

"Even the threads that bind pre-Hellenic and archaic art to that of the people of the Levant have been much more energetically and lucidly studied than the many-sided inter-mixture of ancient oriental and Greek art in the age of the Diadochi; [and the] outcome (of this inter- mixture] has been seen in a much too one-sided way, as decline and fall. It was believed one could ignore [this art]; actually, however, the contact between the old and immobile and the young, fluid and adaptable [cultures] ought to be understood as the beginning of a new period of art and culture, one which is much more closely connected with the coming middle ages than with the era of the Persian Wars."

"The discovery of Iran was only the first step toward a much greater surprise: I recognized that something stood behind Iran and its significance, something that linguistics has been occupied with for the last one hundred years without really getting anywhere: the Indo- German question."

"... for an oriental philologist who undertook the study of art history was not seen as fully respectable, and an art historian, on the other hand, who worked without knowledge of the different languages was seen ever afterwards as a dilettante by the powers that be. Thus the difficult research on the transitional areas between antiquity and medieval art, one characterized by numerous national and linguistic opposing forces, has been left to colleagues who are ready either, as specialists, to die of hunger, or as pariahs, to knock about between the well-established research areas. Under such conditions it was not at all possible to establish the necessary foundations, and to do so [based on] philological fundamentals."

"He ranks high among the professors of the University of Vienna in the fifteenth century. In the struggles which it had to sustain he championed the rights and interests of the university with zeal and energy."

"It is clear that for Herbert Hunger, Byzantium was not an exotic phenomenon in the historical and political self-awareness of Austria in the twentieth century, but a legacy and consequently a claim whose pointed cultivation should certainly benefit the country's image. This – one might say – national goal, which we today would rather describe as a European goal, has, as we all know, been realized."

"Music is become a complaisant and versatile handmaiden, and, since the impossible is demanded of her, she calls up all her strength to perform at least the unusual."

"Both the peacock and the chicken passed through [Mesopotamia] on their way westward[;] the Sumerians called the chicken ‘ the bird from Meluhha’ and the Syrians called it the ‘Akkadian bird’."

"Gute Politik muss den Menschen in den Mittelpunkt stellen"

"Der Wind: „Ich bin nicht. Ich werde nur gemacht." (2024)"

"Weil nämlich nichts auf der Welt so unzufrieden macht wie Klugheit, also ist es besser man bleibt dumm."

"Er vertritt durchweg humanistische, anti-nationalistische und pro-europäische Positionen sowohl in seiner Kunst, als auch in diversen, von ihm veranstalteten Austausch- und Diskussionsprogrammen."

"Der Historie liegt etwas transzendentes zugrunde, stellt diese doch die Verbindung zu dem Menschentum unser Aller Anbeginn dar, zwischen dem vergangenen und dem gegenwärtigen Mensch, der Schöpfung, der Philosophie und den Religionen, und doch ist sie nicht mythologisch, sondern zeigt sich uns in einem rationalen Wesen. Sie ist allgegenwärtig und wahrhaftig, und schöpft ihre Gültigkeit aus der Summe der Handlungen die uns Alle seit Anbeginn ausmachen."

"[...] Die Kulturpolitik ist für mich eine Katastrophe. Österreich ist keine Kulturnation. Das ist nur Elitarismus. Aber die Kunst muss vom Volk ausgehen, aus der Seele des Volkes kommen. Und diese Kultur wird viel zu wenig gefördert"

"Politik ist unsere Verantwortung vor der Geschichte und dem Menschtum seit Aller Anbeginn"

"Es geht nicht darum, das Leben perfekt zu machen, sondern um die Erkenntnis, dass es das nicht ist."

"Aufgrund eines historisch fehlenden Patriziertum auf dem Gebiet des heutigen Österreich, sowie dem traditionellen Herrschaftsbewusstsein des Hauses Habsburg gepaart mit einer Melange aus Dogmen der Katholischen Kirche, konnte sich hierzulande das bürgerlich-freiheitliche Fluidum, das ideologische Bewusstsein der Autonomie, des Denkens, Handelns und einer Innovation nur langsam entwickeln."

"Das Sterben ist kein schöner Tod"

"Die Kunst ist es, etwas nicht klar auszusprechen, es aber trotzdem unmissverständlich mitzuteilen."

"Was unsere Gesellschaft benötigt, ist ein vom Humanismus getragener Liberalismus, der die Entwicklung der Menschen in den Mittelpunkt stellt."

"[...] Meinen Erfahrungen nach sind Geschichte und Politik zwei miteinander kommunizierende Gefäße, die unsere Gesellschaft ausmachen, das eine ist die Verbindung zu unser Aller Anbeginn, das andere ist unsere Aufgabe das Miteinander zu bestreiten [...]"

"Das Glück ist rund und schwer darauf zu stehen."

"The Jews are not merely a different religious community but — and this is to us the most important factor — ethnically an altogether different race. The European feels instinctively that the Jew is a stranger who immigrated from Asia. The so-called prejudice is a natural sentiment. Civilization will overcome the antipathy against the Israelite who merely professes another religion, but never against the racially different Jew. The Jew is cosmopolitan, and possesses a certain astuteness which makes him the master of the honest Aryan. In Eastern Europe, the Jew is the cancer slowly eating into the flesh of the other nations. Exploitation of the people is his only aim. Selfishness and lack of personal courage are his chief characteristics; self-sacrifice and patriotism are altogether foreign to him."

"Extraordinary, and yet when we look in the mirror of a higher possibility it seems understandable, even self-evident."

"“How then can you research history?” “We don’t use the same methods as our applied among those of the Evening Countries—or rather, those which were used there. The fundaments of those methods were logical conclusions and empirical research: excavations, the study of archives, the deciphering of inscriptions. These sources are deceiving: they can have different explanations, are vague, can be ambiguous and are generally superficial. We try to approach true history along clearer and more secure paths: by looking with the inner, sympathetic senses, using our minds to draw spiritual conclusions, not logical but intuitive ones. In this way a clear, faultless view of whatever happened in world history, forward as well as backward, is shown to the Blessed among us in a series of pure images.”"

"Your history has no age, and your age has no history."

"Strangely enough most people only do sensible things if they are ordered to."

"Hope and curiosity are the two big powers which force us to continue our existence in repulsive circumstances. It is exactly our not-knowing that is the thrusting power behind our most daring adventures, the constant source of our action. A man who has seen all the twists and turns of destiny and its complete unity no longer would have the courage to do anything about it. He who knows can’t act anymore."

"It is the politician’s profession to invent facts."

"Many things no longer appear as “miracles” to us, if we decide to look at them through the eyes of practical physics."

"“The most superficial scanning of the statements produced in connection with the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 provides abundant evidence of the continuing power of the jihad concept in its original drastic and military intent. Fighting the unbeliever is a religious duty of the collectivity and secures religious merit; however ‘secular’ the issues, the simple fact of their involving a confrontation between Muslim and non-Muslim suffices for popular sentiment, and hence for governmental direction, to identify the armed dispute as religious warfare. Denials of this fact by the authorities when they address themselves to a Western audience have no meaning beyond constituting an attempt, inevitable in the present international situation, at making their point in a manner likely to be acceptable to a forum averse to the spirit of the religious crusade and altogether disposed to take for granted the separation between religious sentiment and political action.…What is truly and unqualifiedly reprehensible lies elsewhere. It is to be found in the projection of internal Western self-criticism on to the plane of comparative culture studies, in the reification of Western complexes, in the conferring of objective existence to what is little more than a stage setting for a Western cathartic monologue. Psychological and political needs, anguish kept alive by the weight of four dead centuries, pride and ambition supported by dependence on loaned weapons, they combine quaintly to sustain this deliberate illusionism sprung from history undigested and, almost typical of a faltering denial of reality, proclaimed as a new moral gospel. Transferred to the printed page this mood assumes various shapes of which perhaps the most objectionable—to those promoted to cultural donors as much as to those demoted to recipients, for it is the inadequate system of coordinates which inevitably oversimplifies historical process and works offensive injustice to both artificially constituted ‘parties’—is to be found in such Western writing as tries to buy friendship by self-debasement.…. Whatever the motivation, learning or stylistic skill, it is this kind of scholarship and parascholarship which is reducing the incentive of the societies most in need of them for self-comprehension and more than momentary self-esteem to identify with modern historical scholarship, regardless of the constellation of the hour of publication.…Self-criticism in the Anglo-Saxon and French style, itself a fairly recent phenomenon of great pedagogical value, must not be abused to mislead. Why accept anyone on his own terms unless there is reason for accepting the terms? This goes first of all for ourselves; but only arrogance would exempt the others.”"

"The new historiography on Logical Empiricism sets in with the rediscovery of Ernst Mach (1838-1916) as a precursor of Gestalt theory, evolutionary epistemology, (possibly radical) constructivism and the modern historically oriented philosophy of science. But already in Mach’s reception of the Vienna Circle one can see not only a certain pluralism of views but also a polarization of the various positions (Mach’s influence on Carnap’s Aufbau / Logical Construction, the critical distancing to “psychologism” in the manifesto, the alternative to the principle of economy in Karl Menger, etc.) Nevertheless, this research program, which was interpreted differently by the Vienna Circle, actually represented a sort of prototype for Logical Empiricism in the interwar years – irrespective of whether one backs the bold claim as to the existence of a “typical Austrian philosophy” (as opposed to German idealism)."

"“What is the Vienna Circle?” is a question which is neither rhetorical nor trivial. It is perhaps an attempt to ‘square the circle’ – which is, meanwhile, mathematically possible, as Karl Menger described as early as 1934."

"The history of the development of Logical Empiricist theories since the turn of the century does not allow any clear canonization of a philosophical school in the strict sense, since what we are dealing with is a dynamic between center and periphery. The varying receptions of Wittgenstein, Tarski and Popper have influenced the development of various philosophies of science inspired by rational reconstruction, on the one hand, and by encyclopedic models on the other."

"Towards the end of his life Neurath referred to the ‘mosaic of the sciences’. In the spirit of this formulation we can arrive at an understanding of his life’s work by means of a kind of collage, employing the regulative idea of the unity of science and society."

"Many innovations of current history and philosophy of science were, in fact, anticipated in Neurath’s oeuvre. The rediscovery of Neurath was therefore not merely a phenomenon of academic nostalgia, but itself constitutes research into the conditions and possibilities of changing a paradigm in the philosophy of science."

"After 1910 there began in Vienna a movement which regarded Mach's positivist philosophy of science as having great importance for general intellectual life [...] An attempt was made by a group of young men to retain the most essential points of Mach's positivism, especially his stand against the misuse of metaphysics in science. [...] To this group belonged the mathematician H. Hahn, the political economist Otto Neurath, and the author of this book [i.e. Frank], at the time an instructor in theoretical physics in Vienna. [...] We tried to supplement Mach's ideas by those of the French philosophy of science of Henri Poincaré and Pierre Duhem, and also to connect them with the investigations in logic of such authors as Couturat, Schröder, Hilbert, etc."

"The horizontalist is tied down and cannot rise above himself. In his antagonism toward all hierarchy he even finally opposes the idea of God as a superior to himself, as a Supreme Being, and therefore also the conceptual images of Popes, emperors, kings, and fathers."

"From a purely human and material point of view we are utterly unequal — unequal in the eyes of our fellow men (which matters less) but also unequal from an absolute material standard. From that point of view we are not even born equal; the syphilitic babe and the healthy newcomer in this world are different in material quality. The stupid and the intelligent man or woman, the physically strong and the physically weak, the learned and the unlearned — they are all humanly unequal from the aspects compared. And of course there is also a hierarchy of characteristics. The Theist will give precedence to spiritual qualities over intellectual qualities, and most people will value intellect higher than mere bodily strength."

"The Catholics can find consolation in the fact that Catholicism is the only conscious negation of our ailing and perverted modern world, and therefore (spiritually and intellectually at least) the only revolutionary movement. All other political philosophies — Leftist "Democrats," National Socialists, Continental Liberals, Communists, and Technocrats — agree on the coming earthly millennium of equality, plumbing, hygiene, and statistical increases in the material sphere. Their fight against each other is so bitter only because it is in its essence fratricidical. They all believe in a more or less identical Utopia yet they differ about the means to achieve it. In this respect they resemble the unfortunate masons trying to build the Tower of Babel but who failed to achieve their goal because the confusion of languages prevented them from mutual understanding and common planning; the man who could translate their thoughts would indeed be antichrist."

"If medieval man would have been told that he could "appoint" his kings or superiors, he might have become quite interested in the proposition. Yet on discovering that his vote was scheduled to be drowned in an ocean of millions of other votes his reaction would have been that of a man whose leg had been pulled successfully."

"It must furthermore be borne in mind that equality stands for monotony and not for harmony. A harmonious melody can only be established by different unidentical musical tones. These tones must be assembled and have to follow in a certain sequence; otherwise they will result in chaos and not in melody. Human society presupposes such an inequality and unity."

"A Christian will consider a tyrannical person bossing a city brutally a lesser evil than a whole city lynching one man. In the first case there is one sinner and thousands of sufferers, in the latter case thousands of sinners and one sufferer. The materialist will look at the problem the other way round. He is never interested in sin, but as a humanitarian only in suffering. His final logical conclusion is euthanasia and the sacrifice of individuals to the whim of the masses."

"The automatic desire for more power is only apparent in children, primitives, people of low character or intellect; for the superior man, power is like a cross, duty a burden, responsibility an obligation."

"The worship of size and number is an old ochlocratic as well as materialistic trend as opposed to the Christian traditional love for quality. It is "bigger and better" and not "better and bigger" which inspires our democratists with their competitive and recordistic tendencies."

"We must furthermore always bear in mind that equality presupposes the perpetual application of force; equality after all is an unnatural condition — it is just as unnatural as a completely straight line, a geometrical plain, a perfect circle, distilled water, etc. It needs the intervention of human agencies who have to curtail and to stem the natural growth and development sometimes in the most brutal and cynical way. Docteur Guillotin, Procrustes, the mythological Hellenic bandit, and the magistrate of Strasbourg who decided during the French Revolution to demolish the tower of the medieval cathedral because it was higher than the surrounding houses, belong all to the same category."

"Cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Glasgow are high spots of slavery in comparison to Albania, Bulgaria, or even Central Africa. The slavery of the watch and clock, the bourgeois, anthropocentric slavery of material prestige and successful competition (to slave in order to keep up standards), the wage slavery of the proletarian, the school slavery of the children, the conscription slavery of the adolescents, the road slavery, the factory slavery, the barrack slavery, the party slavery, the office slavery, the parlor slavery of manners and conventions — all these slaveries make political "freedom" appear a bitter joke."

"America is not a democracy. We are not fighting for democracy. We fight for liberty. America not only fights for its own survival, for its own liberty, but also for liberty abroad. Human dignity can never be preserved without liberty. Liberty is therefore a real good, a precious good worth while to be redeemed by blood."

"True herdism, elevated from the status of a low and contemptible instinct to the supreme level of an ideology, of a Weltanschauung, has become a tremendous force in our modern culture and civilization. The herdist ideologies, based on that powerful animal instinct, have attacked and transformed most spheres of human activities including love, sex, and politics. The different "democratic" (and superdemocratic totalitarian) parties of the twentieth century have continued and fostered this process of dehumanization of our Christian culture to a degree hitherto unknown in the annals of human existence."

"There is something pathetic in seeing Americans almost daily besmirching unconsciously their ideals and their traditions—all thanks to a faulty education. The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if they could hear themselves called "Democrats"; America indeed was never a democracy, and never will be [...] Those who have been taught the wrong interpretation may ask their money back from the schools where they have wasted their adolescence. And the textbooks which preach a spurious democracy may still provide us with fuel in cold days to come."

"We have said before that it is difficult to find the exact reasons for the growing popularity of the word democracy and democratic taken from a dead language which is thoroughly nonunderstandable to 999 out of 1000 Americans. The decline of classical education in favor of progressive "self-realization" has favored the increased use of wrong labels."