Delectations

The Austria Austrians Know NIKA STANDEN HAZELTON

Vienna. People are forever talking of the German Wirtschaftswunder, but after driving some 2,500 miles the length and breadth of Austria Ive come to feel the greatest ad- miration for the Austrian economic miracle and also chagrin at the simple-minded image that has been created for Austria in the United States. Austria is incredibly lovely. It is impossible to realize as you. drive through the cities, towns and villages that this country was largely destroyed during the Second World War and occupied, to boot, until 1955 by the victorious powers, who first sliced it up among themselves like a pie. This reconstruction, admirable in itself, becomes truly remarkable when you consider that Austria had been completely changed in its geographi- cal and social structure by the First World War. What the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy must have meant became really clear to me when I looked at the palaces and castles of the Austrian aristo- cracy. Here you see what enormous, entrenched – through – the – centuries – as-part-of-divine-law power the Aus- trian aristocracy had, and how the abolition of this power could not help shaking up Austrian social life as it did. Not to mention that the Aus- trians lost the First World War as well as the Second. A country that has survived all of this, and the true hunger and distress that fol- lowed, and that has managed to _

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Nika Hazelton

The Austria Austrians Know NIKA STANDEN HAZELTON

Vienna. People are forever talking of the German Wirtschaftswunder, but after driving some 2,500 miles the length and breadth of Austria Ive come to feel the greatest ad- miration for the Austrian economic miracle and also chagrin at the simple-minded image that has been created for Austria in the United States. Austria is incredibly lovely. It is impossible to realize as you. drive through the cities, towns and villages that this country was largely destroyed during the Second World War and occupied, to boot, until 1955 by the victorious powers, who first sliced it up among themselves like a pie. This reconstruction, admirable in itself, becomes truly remarkable when you consider that Austria had been completely changed in its geographi- cal and social structure by the First World War. What the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy must have meant became really clear to me when I looked at the palaces and castles of the Austrian aristo- cracy. Here you see what enormous, entrenched – through – the – centuries – as-part-of-divine-law power the Aus- trian aristocracy had, and how the abolition of this power could not help shaking up Austrian social life as it did. Not to mention that the Aus- trians lost the First World War as well as the Second. A country that has survived all of this, and the true hunger and distress that fol- lowed, and that has managed to _