“We Do Not Even Possess Our Selves”: On Identity and Ethnicity in Austria, 1880–1937

Abstract

Two Brothers Were born in Budapest before the turn of the century and grew up in that city speaking Hungarian. After they had left Hungary for good, they became assimilated in Austria and Germany. Later, one of them Attila Hörbiger, went on to become one of Nazi Germany's top movie stars, as did his wife Paula Wessely. During the Austrian Second Republic, the two brothers achieved cult figure status in the theater. Fifteen years ago, as Paul Hörbiger lay close to death, he expressed the wish to speak with Attila once again, after so many years, in Hungarian, the language of their childhood. In the final hour of Paul's life, that is what te brothers did.1Regardless of the extent to which this story is, in fact, true, it can nevertheless serve as the leitmotiv for a discussion of ethnic and cultural identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, providing an indication of the way many Austrians dealt with their ethnic origins or cultural background.