Emphasis in Research

Historical research beyond short-lived trends

The expert knowledge of Institute faculty members is the result of many years of experience in research and practice, and is readily made available to journalists, politicians, magistrates, and representatives of business in the interest of a free knowledge transfer.

If, however, this considerable expertise at the Institute of Economic and Social History is to continue to grow and thrive, our researchers’ professional curiosity cannot be restricted by the short-lived trends and fashions of a commercialized public discourse.

Interpreting Austria’s past

Thanks to the diversity of our faculty’s long term research projects, the Institute of Economic and Social History has been able to substantially contribute to a number of current intellectual debates. On two occasions in 2008, one being the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Austria’s annexation by the German Reich, the other the 90th anniversary of the fall of the Habsburg Empire, members of our Institute helped organize official exhibitions and co-authored prestigious anthologies that will help set the standards in contemporary Austrian studies for years to come.

Crises and opportunities

Another current issue of concern to historians is the imminent economic downturn caused by a crisis in the global financial sector. Well-equipped with expert knowledge of the Great Depression in the 1930s, of 20th century economic thought, and of the struggle between liberal democracy, fascism, and communism for world domination, our faculty is and will continue to be an active participant in the intellectual debate on the current crisis.

The taxation project & a biography of Arthur Seyss-Inquart

A number of our research activities may seem somewhat off the beaten track, but have a high potential for public relevance in the very near future. One such project is a comparative historical analysis of taxation and tax laws, which is of increasing importance as the USA and the European Union continue to step up regulations on undeclared offshore accounts. In 2007, our Institute was awarded a substantial financial grant to support a biographical project on Arthur Seyss-Inquart, an Austrian National Socialist who helped orchestrate Austria’s “Anschluss” to Germany, and who served as the Reich’s commissary in occupied Holland during most of World War II.

Creative industries and cultural innovation

Another focus of our Institute`s research – one which has been a major concern of the Business History Group since its creation several years ago – is on the historical development of creative industries (CI). CIs have had a long and successful history in Austria. They flourished in Fin-de-siècle Vienna and were still very much alive during the “roaring” 1920s, until the Great Depression and the rise to power of the Nazis drove the country’s most creative minds into bankruptcy or exile, even killing many of them. After 1945, the print media, film and theater, broadcasting, and other creative sectors of the economy staged dramatic comebacks in a society drastically changed by Austria’s transformation into a western-style consociational democracy, and by US cultural hegemony. Most of the Business History Group’s research into the CI-sector has received financial support from institutions outside the WU. As the largest of these externally funded projects draws to a close, the focus of further research will probably shift to the subject of cultural and intellectual innovation.