A “New Kind of Soldiering”. The Social Democratic Construction of Military Masculinity in the Austrian Volkswehr (1918–1920)

Abstract

The years 1918/19 were frequently interpreted as a caesura and disruption in Austria’s history. But one can also understand them as a time of societal-political starting points, where the search for new meanings intensified and old senses were re-phrased or newly interpreted. The dissolution of the k.(u.)k. Army and the installation of Soldiers’ Councils created a scope of action to question the gendered military hierarchies between men. This article examines the discursive processes of negotiating military gender orders and conceptions of soldierly masculinities in times of societal and cultural transformation from war to peace, from monarchy to republic, and from a hierarchical to an at least imagined democratic society. The Volkswehr, which was established as a makeshift successor of the k.(u.)k. Army and dominated by the Austrian Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei (SDAP), was discursively designed as an antimilitaristic, democratic, and republican army between 1918 and 1920. A gender theoretical analysis of the weekly journal Der Freie Soldat illustrates the position and role of the Volkswehr, the Soldiers’ Councils, and the Militärverband in postwar gender discourses. The social democratic discursive construction of military masculinity intertwined a male soldierly ideal with revolutionary, republican, and proletarianly charged meanings along with concepts of protective masculinity. How did this conception impact the understanding of categories of military discourses such as (male) comradeship and discipline? The differentiation of militarized gender orders during the ‘Austrian Revolution’ illustrates the complexity of negotiating gendered meanings and further complements the gender history of the First Austrian Republic. Also, it is necessary for a deeper understanding of processes of re/militarisation in the interwar period.