Austria is marking two big 60th anniversaries, each with wartime echoes.
Last Thursday, members of the Von Trapp family returned to Salzburg for the 60th anniversary of The Sound of Music. The 1965 movie musical retold – with just a little embellishment – the singing family’s life in, and flight from, Nazi-annexed Austria.
Kristina von Trapp recalled her grandmother Maria was far from the “warm and cuddly” Julie Andrews version and “definitely had an element of discipline” about her.
Few Austrians noticed the movie on its original release, however, given a far bigger event looming: the first national holiday, held on October 26, 1965, and every year since.
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A military parade and official speeches in Vienna on Sunday marked the withdrawal of postwar occupying powers in 1955 after a decade under Allied rule and the previous seven-year Nazi annexation.
Under pressure from Moscow, Austria’s restoration of independence included a commitment to “perpetual neutrality” and non-alignment.
On Sunday Austrian chancellor Christian Stocker urged citizens to defend their democratic way of life, warning that “democracy is not a given and neutrality does not mean indifference”.
A new poll confirms neutrality is as much a part of the Austrian DNA as Wiener schnitzel: 69 per cent of respondents oppose joining Nato, with 13 per cent in favour and 19 per cent undecided or unsure.
Although support for Austria’s neutrality stance remains solid, it slides from 88 per cent backing among over-60s to 65 per cent among Austrians under 30.
Sunday’s anniversary has prompted lively debate on Austrian neutrality, in particular given the 1955 text commits Austria to “maintain and defend” its neutrality “with all means at its disposal”.
Just what does that mean now with a Russian-led war 600km away and, in Hungary and Slovakia, two Moscow-friendly neighbours?
Unlike Ireland, Austria has no opt-out of European Union common security and defence policy. In a nod to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Vienna will, by 2032, more than double its defence spending to 2 per cent of gross domestic product from 0.8 per cent now.
Defence minister Klaudia Tanner vowed on Sunday to create the “best and strongest army” in modern Austrian history.
Meanwhile pro-neutrality Austrian campaigners have protested against Nato equipment movements through their territory and despair at Vienna’s recent sign-up to the 24-country European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), a plan to defend EU airspace with ballistic missiles.
Despite these shifts, last year an Austrian think tank still placed their country beside Ireland on the naughty step of European “strategic schnorrer” – freeloaders – who benefit from others’ security spending.
Prof Martin Senn, an international law expert at the University of Innsbrück, warned in Die Presse daily that myths are hindering debate on what neutrality actually means “considering Austria is acting now in a very different world”.
Before Sunday’s anniversary, Austria’s liberal foreign minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger revived talk of a European army “given the kind of threat” now posed by Russia.
That prompted right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl to warn of the “betrayal” of Austria’s neutrality by politicians who were becoming “flunkeys of foreign interests”.
In a sign of the times, however, even the FPÖ has distanced itself from a “friendship treaty” it signed in 2016 with Russia’s ruling party.
That was just one link in a tight web of Austrian ties to Russia – from investment to energy – that Vienna is now unravelling at speed.
As the neutrality debate rumbles on, destination unclear, one musical-loving hawk likened Austria’s security policy to “the modus operandi of its famous Von Trapp family: stay out of politics, sing your part and, when the storm comes, flee to the mountains”.
