Marion Löffler

Protecting children and young people. Moral frames for censorship policies in Austria's First Republic

 After World War I censorship in Austria was abolished to a large extend. This was meant to foster democracy in the new republic. But already in 1920 the national parliament discussed new rules of censorship. As a result, film and cinema remained under control, and in 1922, censorship of journals and newspapers was partially re-established and expanded at the end of the decade. The official line of argumentation was the protection of children and young people, their welfare and moral education. Regulation was established on a local level and executed by police, schools, and youth welfare departments. Youth policy and the protection of children ensured the agreement of democrats to censorship. But others used those arguments in order to reach anti-democratic and anti-Semitic goals. So, protecting children and young people became a universal argumentative frame, open for abuse in nearly every policy. Social policies as well as cultural policies had a paternalistic bias which turned out to be an obstacle to the development of a democratic culture. Consequently, censorship was discussed for popular entertainment not for high culture, applied on cinema, hardly on theatre, on trash novels, but not on (high) literature.

 Those policies still affect our knowledge about popular political culture in Austria between the Wars. Libraries and archives have hardly kept trash novels or censored films and journals. Nevertheless, there still exists a very diverse set of data which could inform us about censorship policies of the 1920s. In 2002 the Austrian Film Archive published lists of censored films as well as journal articles and letters discussing censorship. Most of the films are lost. Nevertheless, the material gives insights into the real degree of censorship which was not very high. But we know of several scandals that were regarded as an assault on morality, like the performance of Schnitzler's "Reigen". Many cinema performances were disturbed by outraged groups who claimed moral protection of young people and demanded for censorship. Discussions on youth policy in the local council of Vienna and newspaper reports about them highlight further dimensions of use and abuse of youth protection during the period. One famous example is a dispute between Anton Orel and Julius Tandler on children day-care in 1924. This dispute was related to a controversial discussion of prohibiting a journal edited by Hugo Bettauer. Orel, in a very offensive anti-Semitic style, blamed this journal to seduce the youth. Further material can be found in the historical archive of the city hall of Vienna and in some youth welfare departments. Especially draft bills on censorship and related stenographical notes and letters can give further insights. In order to complete the moral frames on which argumentation for censorship could rely on I will also turn to novels and short stories which deal with questions of sexuality and violence.

Penelope Marshall

'The 'Newtonian' effect of a box of papers': To what extent does an interpretative analysis of historical data dislodge the current narrative of wild dog management and control policy?

 I sat on the floor of the 'walk in' safe and looked up. On either side of the walls sitting on rickety masonite shelving were hundreds of original historical documents: leather bound and worn, tan coloured, A3 sized, financial ledgers with ribbons dividing entries; Minute books dating back to 1868; 'scalp' books recording payments to trappers and landholders; travelling stock route maps and notices; rate notices and receipts, rolls of landholders and landholdings, old funding applications and reports; and a box of Christmas decorations and fund raising office confectionery shoved in between. I sat in awe while the full realisation of what I had discovered dawned on me. Later, as I probed the top shelf I dislodged a cardboard box. Like confetti, original speeches, correspondence and documents from the 1960s onwards fell to the ground. One of the office ladies came in after a while. 'Yeah,' she said, looking at me as I read with interest the then NSW Premier's address to a Symposium on the Dingo in 1978.  'The boys were going to have a clean up and dump it all at the tip, but I said we should divide the stuff up between the local historical societies and let them have whatever they want.'

 Written historical records of wild dog management and control in NSW begin literally with the European invasion of Australia although their presence and the stories they give witness to are scattered. By and large these records have been ignored, neglected, and reportedly appropriated at whim by policy makers. In contrast, various Wild Dog Associations and farmers around NSW treasure the records they still hold. Yet, overall, there has been little concerted attempt to catalogue what documents exist nor a recognition of how these documents may contribute to an understanding of the development of wild dog management and control policy in Australia. This paper walks through some of this rich 'data' asking the question: 'To what extent does an interpretative analysis of this historical data dislodge and challenge the current narrative of wild dog management and control policy?'

Katalin Teller

Mass Events as a Challenge for Urban Policy Making: Primary Sources and their Analysis in a Historical Perspective

How to analyze cultural and/or political events organized for urban masses in regard to their implications for urban policy making in a historical perspective? The proposed paper will discuss the challenges of such unique events on two discursive levels: first, through a descriptive approach, it will highlight tangible problems of infrastructural policies and city management, as well as conflicts between interpretations and solutions applied by the state and the city. Also, the crucial question of how tradition and innovation, exclusion and inclusion, centralization and decentralization are viewed by different political parties and on levels of city/state governance and the public field has to be raised. This will point towards a model of communication which is defined not only by prescriptive or deliberative political attitudes but also the way how cultural phenomena, such as mass culture and heterogeneity, are perceived and bear on policy making decisions. In this case, continuities and disruptions in ideologies, discernment, and therefore in policy solutions will come to the fore.

The second level that will be addressed in the paper concerns the methodology of such analyses. When aiming at the reconstruction of an historical event or its social, political and cultural contexts, one is confronted with the fact that all available sources are already results of different modes of representation, of various processes of symbolization and a number of discursive patterns. Newspaper reports, press articles and feuilletons, official statements, statistical data, diverse media records, archive materials offer, on the one hand, an extremely heterogeneous stock of materials in regard to their contents, genres, and medial and rhetorical qualities. In addition, the contingent character of finding sources and the possible materially determined lack of information call for an increased reflexivity on the qualities of these sources. On the other hand, they are integrative parts of both established and emerging discourses that have to be viewed in their historical contexts, latter being, again, an entity constructed via narration and interpretation. Thus, in order to apply a methodological approach which allows for appropriate statements the analyst is urged not only to expose these conflicting factors and consider their relevancy both on the micro and macro levels but also to define his or her position in terms of argumentation and mode of reflection. In this regard, Frank Fischer's general definition of argumentative policy analysis can be extended to the analyst itself: one has to "focus on the crucial role of [his or her own] language, rhetorical argument, and stories in framing debate."

Even if mass events can be considered as unique and exceptional cases in public life, one should note that they too were, firstly, integrated into seemingly homogeneous frameworks of urban management, and, secondly, they gave incentives for later policy decisions. I. e., they simultaneously influenced the ways of (symbolical and political) usages of spaces and signs and, being narrated, also induced certain patterns of policy interpretation determining how subsequent "readers" could trace back the event and apply its consequences both on practical and theoretical levels.

Thomas Koenig

When, in the early days of the Cold War, liberal internationalists in the Washington political arena started to discuss how to foster "mutual understanding" between the United States and its Western allies, educational exchange was one of the top priorities. The idea was not new, but striking: Engaging the growing academic community for the means of cultural diplomacy.

To some extent, this alliance between liberal politicians and the academic community was consequent: The liberal agenda matched with a specific premise from the scientific community that was engaged by the exchange program, usually known as "Fulbright Program". This premise was an elaborate set of values, commonly agreed on by the members of the academic community and commonly referred to as "academic freedom".

Nevertheless, to convince the members of the academic community that they would avail themselves of this program was crucial. The implementation of academic freedom, thus, was not an easy thing to do, particularly in a time when anti-communism and McCarthyism was growing and the practice of loyalty oaths became a regular habit on American campus.

In this presentation, I discuss how academic freedom became a key feature in the world wide exchange program, how it was enacted and, at the same time, used as a rhetoric to convince academic communities at home and abroad of the benefits of this program, and how it contributed to its ongoing success. The Fulbright Program is an important part of the 20^th century story about the fast growing entanglement of politics and academia; it is also a story that tells us something how a policy can be construed on the basis of a distinct cultural phenomenon, such as academic freedom.

Sascha Münnich