Exploration was a defining aspect of how European societies encountered and established relations with the wider world. It set the stage for worldwide empires and laid the foundations for understandings of planetary existence. Exploration facilitated the exchange of commodities and ideas, the migration of peoples and the construction of scientific knowledge. This dissertation examines the nexus between ice and imperium through a study of how citizens of the Habsburg Monarchy contributed to polar exploration. In the long nineteenth century, the two main objects of European exploration were Africa and the polar regions. In the former, the dynamic between exploration and empire was fairly straightforward. But how did imperialism function in the frozen, uninhabited, latitudes of the world? This question becomes more problematic for the Habsburg Monarchy, a multinational polity with eleven officially recognized languages, and a self-professed empire that was the one European "Great Power" at the time without overseas colonies. This dissertation analyzes how the symbology and practice of polar exploration was used in the service of sundry - and frequently contradictory - political projects, including various nationalist activisms, Habsburg loyalism, and the liberal politics of notables. The analysis incorporates a case study in the convoluted road between discovery and empire, Franz Josef Land, the northernmost terrain in Eurasia, discovered by an Austro-Hungarian expedition in 1873. This dissertation then traces fractures within the Austro-Hungarian culture of exploration, as explorer/scientists could reach little consensus on the goals and practices for expeditions to the farthest latitudes of the globe. Finally, it examines how the rise of mass-data driven inductive sciences, such as geomagnetism, caused a fundamental redefinition in the practice of polar research toward a model of corporate, coordinated scientific effort and transnational cooperation. With the emergence of nation states and colonial empires, the basic frameworks of sovereignty, legitimacy and political meaning were changing and this study highlights how Habsburg subjects contributed to these modernization processes. In so doing, it brings to light neglected but lasting aspects of nineteenth century imperialism and treats both nationalism and empire as research problems rather than given ends. / History

The thesis investigates the efficiency of depository institutions in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia and Turkey between 2003 and 2006. Four of these countries switched from a planned to a market economy in the early 1980ies. These are contrasted with Austria. High coverage ratios are ensured by using data published by the relevant regulatory authorities. Data envelopment analysis yields higher efficiency scores in all but one country when deposits are treated as output. This implies that banks see deposits as products they offer to their customers and which they do not attempt to minimize. While in some countries improvements in efficiency can be detected against an inter-temporal single-country efficiency frontier, no overall efficiency improvement against a common regional frontier can be identified. Results of a Malmquist Index analysis are also inconclusive for the region as a whole, although technological improvement can be shown for Austria between 2004 and 2005. When data is grouped by country, Austria and Croatia emerge as most and Serbia and Bulgaria as least efficient markets. An interesting pattern emerges when DMUs are grouped by category (savings, cooperative and universal banks) and country. It can then be seen that savings and cooperative banks show comparably low efficiency in Austria but comparably high scores in Serbia and Croatia. For universal banks, this pattern is reversed. (author's abstract)

The Austrian mental health care system has been characterized by reform initiatives since the 1970s. The reform strategies can be summarized under the term 'community mental health care'. The thesis focuses on an analysis of the reform (context) and the related challenges for mental health care financing with respect to its interdependencies with service provision in the process of change. In a qualitative research process, firstly, reform documents and transcripts of qualitative interviews have been analyzed via a discourse-analytical approach. Secondly, secondary data on mental health care financing in Austria and in western European countries have been collected. An analytical framework was, finally, applied to analyze the interrelations between mental health care financing and reform discourse with respect to its impact on the micro-level and on the macro-level of the mental health care system. The results show that the reform discourse reflects broader welfare state transformation processes. Yet, financing issues have hardly been addressed in reform discussions. Nevertheless, discursive elements are either explicitly or implicitly associated with financing issues or are even linked to specific financing models. A central impact from the restructuring processes on the micro-level is an increasing (financial) responsibility for people who are affected by a mental disorder and/or their relatives. On the macro-level, the processes of change are related to decreasing (financial) responsibility for the sector 'state' while responsibility for the sectors 'family' and 'voluntary/community' is rising. The international development shows similar characteristics. The thesis finishes with some recommendations for developing an alternative financing model and provides a guideline for a comprehensive discussion of alternative mental health care financing approaches. (author´s abstract)

No description available.

This paper estimates the effects of imports on employment, wages, and the wage share in Austria for the period of 1990-2005 using panel data of manufacturing industry. Imports are disaggregated according to their origin and as final vs. intermediate imports. There is evidence of significant negative effects of imports on employment, wages and the wage share. Particularly workers in high skilled sectors experience negative effects. Offshoring to both Eastern Europe and the developed countries have a negative impact on employment, whereas offshoring to the East has a positive effect on wages, indicating the dominance of scope effects. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Starting in 1952 with Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Union (EU) successively enlarged to 27 member states in 2011. Since 2004, 10 Eastern European countries have joined the EU and, at the time of writing, five countries still have official EU candidate status and may join the EU in the near future. The permanent enlargement of the EU has led, and continues to lead, to social, cultural, economic, and linguistic pluralization and heterogenization and, more and more, causes a feeling of alienation among EU citizens. This comes along with a reduced willingness to share power, labor, and money among EU states, provokes tendencies of renationalization, and the resurgence of national thinking and acting. In the European common labor market these tendencies are attended by emerging exclusive nationalistic working climates and therefore undermine the formal freedom of movement for workers within the EU. In the European markets for consumer products (especially for food) these tendencies are reflected in augmented efforts that are undertaken to accentuate the national origin of domestic products. Empirical data of several EU member states will be analyzed and discussed. As a case study, the actual nationalistic tendencies of the Austrian consumer market will be parsed and integrated in a broader European picture. (author's abstract)

This paper estimates the effects of outward Foreign Direct Investment (employment in the affiliates abroad) on employment, wages, and the wage share in Austria using panel data for the period of 1996-2005. There is evidence of significant negative effects of FDI on both employment and wages, and consequently on the wage share. The results are not limited to workers in low skilled sectors or blue collar workers. The negative employment effect is primarily due to the rise in the employment in the foreign affiliates in Eastern Euope. The negative wage effects are originating from affiliate employment in both the East and the developed countries in industry, but no effect is found in the total economy. (author´s abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

<p>The period following the Second World War in Austria represents a unique historical situation. On the one hand, strongly conservative and restaurative trends in politics, publications, media, and social life dominated the country - at the same time, a radically new avant-garde movement emerged. What today is collectively referred to as the Wiener Gruppe was, in the 1950s, a circle of young writers, connected by friendship and collaboration with the filmmakers Kurt Kren and Peter Kubelka. These artists created experimental works that pre-empt the concept of performance art established at a theoretical level two decades later, and anticipate the re-conceptualization of the role of the reader theorized by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault in the 1960s. </p><p>In this dissertation, I outline the socio-political situation in Austria during the years following World War Two in Chapter One and discuss the key concepts and works which are relevant for the understanding of experimental literature and film in Chapter Two and Three. I demonstrate that the radical experimentation of postwar experimental authors and filmmakers draws attention to the materiality, visuality, and performativity of their works and establishes experimental literature and film as individual art forms: writing-as-writing and film-as-film. In conclusion, I argue that their works represent an implicit critique of language, culture, and society in the context of the "grand narratives" or the "invisible structurations" supporting a post-World War Two Austrian society.</p><p>In this dissertation, I will outline the socio-political situation in Austria during the years following World War Two in Chapter One, and discuss the key concepts which are relevant for the understanding of experimental literature in Chapter Two and Three. I will demonstrate that the radical experimentation of postwar experimental authors and filmmakers draws attention to the materiality, visuality, and performativity and establishes experimental literature and film as individual art forms: writing-as-writing and film-as-film. In conclusion, I argue that their works represent an implicit critique of language, culture, and society in the context of the "grand narratives," the "invisible structurations" which support society.</p> / Dissertation

Coloratura arias for soprano were popular with Viennese opera audiences in the late eighteenth century. Prima donnas of the Singspiel and opera buffa companies expected composers to write arias that would display their technical skills, even requesting substitute arias to replace less virtuosic ones in revivals of older operas. However, in using coloratura in the comic opera genres, Mozart was not only creating an opportunity for virtuoso display of the singer's talent, but was also using this vocal style as a dramatic and rhetorical device, one that defined a character's social level. depicted her emotions, and advanced her dramatic situation. This thesis investigates how coloratura functions in Mozart's soprano comic roles by examining the arias of three characters from two different operas: Konstanze and Blonde in the Singspiel Die Enifiihrung aus dem Serail, and Susanna in the opera buffa Le nozze di Figaro. An analysis of these arias shows evidence of Mozart's skill in using coloratura while meeting the conflicting demands of diva and drama.

The study of the war against Revolutionary France (1793-1802) has always been rather overshadowed in British history by the attractions of the second part of the struggle with France, the more successful Napoleonic Wars (1803-15). This is to see events out of perspective. Moreover, in both wars attention has usually been concentrated on the actual military operations rather than on the factors influencing the formulation of war policy and on the essential position of international diplomacy in this struggle. Although four (arguably five) European coalitions were organized against France in theSa wars, only the final, successful, combination has been studied in detail, yet, as this last coalition proved, the only way to defeat France was by such combinations. This thesis therefore examines both the handling of the Revolutionary War by the government of the Younger Pitt between 1793 and 1801, and the course of its diplomacy through its attempts to form a workable combination with the European Powers against France. It does this through a detailed study of British relations with Austria in particular. Austria was chosen because the connection with Vienna provides the key to British policy on the continent throughout the war. Although Ministers desired a general European Coalition, they came to realize that in practice their best hope of success lay in close co-operation and alliance with Austria, the Power with whom they appeared to have most in common and who possessed the largest and most efficient army facing France. Moreover, even in the period of disagreement with Austria between 1797 and 1799 the fact of this disagreement had a decisive effect on British policy and its execution. Such a study also has a wider perspective in that it marks the final revival of the Old System: the union of Britain, Austria and (to an ever decreasing extent) Holland, the efficacy of which as a barrier against France constituted one of the basic tenets of British foreign policy in the eighteenth century. The System had been in existence from 1689 to 1756, at which date the Austrians had dropped it, but British governments had never lost faith in it, and successively they had vainly attempted to restore it ever since. Its revival and failure in the 1790s therefore represents the passing of an era in British foreign policy, and the reasons for its passing are fully considered in this thesis. In order to place the Austrian alliance of the 1790s in its proper setting, both as an integral part of British war policy and as the major factor in British diplomacy, it has been necessary to consider Britain's relations with the other major European Powers besides Austria, and also the close relationship of diplomacy with three other factors: military considerations, finance, and public opinion. Attention has therefore been paid not only to diplomatic archives, but also to private correspondence among members of the government, to the state of the money market and foreign exchanges, to parliamentary debates and political pamphlets. Finally, in order to understand the path taken in Anglo-Austrian relations it has also been necessary to investigate policy and reactions to British policy in Vienna. Such a study reveals the immense difficulties faced by British Ministers in trying to pursue a coherent foreign policy in this war. Not only did they have to satisfy public opinion at home, but they also had to reconcile their natural wish to engage as many Powers as possible in the war with the obvious fact Austria was the most necessary Power to the implementation of their plans. The need to steer a delicate balance between a grand coalition and an Austrian alliance, at a time of conflicting interests in central and eastern Europe, was an insurmountable problem. Equally, the difficulties, both physical and personal, in trying to cooperate with an ally whose capital was anything from two weeks to two months away were immense. Moreover, even the best-laid plans were at the mercy of events elsewhere and of chance on the battlefield. As a result Ministers very rarely held the initiative and were often hurriedly reacting to ever-changing situations and problems. It was as a result of these factors that diplomatic needs in Britain's relationship with Austria dominated British strategy in the 1790s, constantly forcing Ministers away from their original intention of pursuing a maritime war. The truth of Dundas's observation that 'all modern wars are a contention of purse 1 is also apparent: from 1794 onward finance was at the heart of Anglo-Austrian relations and it held British policy in a straight-jacket. The legend of the limitless flowing of 'Pitt's gold' cannot be sustained when the paucity of British resources and the government's caution in using them is seen, but neither can the more recent myth of Pitt's niggardliness towards Austria. Pitt was quite willing to subsidize Austria, but having burnt his fingers on the disastrous Prussian subsidy of 1794, he wished to impose strict conditions which Austria was unwilling to accept. Consequently it was Austria, wishing to retain some freedom of action, and not Pitt, who insisted on the policy of loans which so much plagued Anglo-Austrian relations. The thesis begins -with, an examination of the factors which drew Britain and Austria into a close cooperation in the first year of the war. It shows that Britain became committed to Austria because of the circumstances in which the war began. The British government wished to ensure its dominance over that of Holland, it wished to protect its trade and security interests in the Netherlands, and it believed that the best way to attain these ea££ was by keeping the latter independent of France through their continued possession by Austria. In order to encourage the reluctant Austrians to retain the Netherlands, it had politically to hold out the hope of enlarging them at France's expense and militarily to commit its forces to a 'Flanders war' to obtain such an enlargement. Austria, which wished in any case for a British alliance to escape from its diplomatic isolation, took the bait and so assumed the leading part in the war on the continent. Despite difficulties caused by Britain's attempts to hold the rest of the Coalition together and by Austria's sudden financial demands in the summer of 1794, this cooperation developed into alliance because the British Ministers came to realize that of all the European Powers Austria was the most earnest in the war, contributed the largest and most effective army, and constituted the best barrier to France on the continent. In Vienna the Austria Foreign Minister, Baron Thugut, wanted the alliance because he hoped for conquests from France and needed British money to continue the war, and also because he saw the chance of a Triple Alliance of Austria, Britain, and Russia which would isolate Austria's rival Prussia and enable it to make gains in Poland at Prussia's expense. The thesis goes on to show that one of the basic reasons for the failure of the alliance, as in 1756, was Austria's rivalry with Prussia. For Britain the alliance was directed exclusively against France; for Austria it was directed as much against Prussia as France. Thugut became increasingly disstisfied when British Ministers not only refused to accept this interpretation but actually began to negotiate with Prussia to bring it back into the war. British Ministers became both annoyed and alarmed when they realized that Thugut, in his rivalry with Berlin, was neither interested in the Netherlands nor devoting his whole attention to the French war. As the war went from bad to worse the alliance fell apart because all bonds of common rnterest and mutual trust disappeared.