Tourism Development and Nature Conservation: An Austrian Interplay Open Access

Abstract

This quote is an advertisement from the official online tourism portal of the Austrian National Tourist Office (Österreich Werbung).¹ It is a telling example of the image of Austria that has been created in close connection with tourism over the last one hundred years. In the different “Austrias” from the Habsburg monarchy to the First Republic, the National Socialist period, to the Second Republic, the political component of patriotism, tourism, and nature conservation / environmentalism became intertwined with the design of an internally and externally homogenizing image of Austria. Some distinguished historiographic studies of recent years deal with partial aspects of these interactions and dependencies; they will be merged and complemented with empirical examples in this article.² This study addresses the complex relationship between tourism development, landscapes, and nature conservation in Austria and contributes to recent scholarship linking environmental and tourism history.³ It considers the discursive interconnections between societies and their environments and the material changes through human interventions. The fact that “societies have altered the natural world to reflect their cultural preferences and to satisfy their economic desires” can be analyzed particularly well on the basis of (natural/cultural) landscapes.⁴ In this spirit, Scott Moranda emphasizes that “nature tourism often brings profound changes to the local landscape” (e.g., nature parks).⁵ At the same time, the landscape itself or its perception is decisive for cultural and social developments. It is an actor and a tool in creating tourism regions and spatial identities (especially national identity). Above all, local, regional, and national stakeholders are decisive in these transformation processes, but, at the same time, influences from outside and transfers (e.g., of ideas) must also be considered. In this history of the triad of tourism, nature, and space, influence from the United States, for example, has repeatedly played a role. The question is how (tourist) landscapes were created as an Austrian national endeavor and which discourses, actors, and conflicts were decisive in this process. Austria is an excellent case study for analyzing and demonstrating the connection between tourism, nature conservation and environmental protection, and cross-border transfers of ideas and cultures—especially spanning different territorial and administrative historical contexts. It is shown that these areas are inseparably connected, which is also of high social relevance for current debates. Depending on the stakeholder’s interests, the areas are usually examined in isolation, and influence from “outside” is ignored, especially in the politicized Heimat discourses. However, historical observation shows that influence from the United States was particularly operative in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century and, with a different connotation, in the context of the occupation after World War II and the period of the Cold War. The global influence of the United States was perceived in highly political terms and generated divisive interpretations in many countries, including Austria. However, it was evident and especially vital for developing an Austrian consciousness and creating an Austrian identity to which popular culture and tourism, in particular, contributed immensely. The impact of the United States should not be underestimated. It is particularly relevant where it is a matter of territorial, cultural, and patriotic-nationalistic claims of tradition and Heimat, which were and still are sold internally and externally. “Americanization” or “self-Americanization” is a component of Austria’s tourism and environmental history.⁶

In essence, the following analyses deal with a systematic connection of tourism, nature conservation, territorial identities, and transfers in, and on the basis of, Austrian history. The article builds on two main aspects of this relationship, which are connected but distinct: First, it deals with the identity-creating element of Austrian natural landscapes across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The second part focuses on the conflicts that result from these natural landscapes’ use, preservation, and development. Drawing from various historical sources, literature and films are highlighted as discursive and society-shaping media.

“Land of the Mountains”—Natural Landscapes, Tourism, and Identities

Austria’s iconic natural landscapes—especially the Alps and the Danube—have been construed as an identity-forming element of national consciousness.⁷ In various surveys of Austrians and in advertising, the identification of Austria with its natural and cultural landscapes is a central and recurring element.⁸

The appreciation and stereotyping of Austrian landscapes received significant attention since the nineteenth century, especially in nation-building, Heimatschutz, touristic advertising, and nature conservation.⁹ Portrayals of the country with precise descriptions of the landscapes served the purpose of a unifying state patriotism.¹⁰ Moreover, in the course of the reform movements (e.g., Lebensreform), heritage protection and nature conservation became crucial for valorizing the monarchy’s landscapes and “the nature.”¹¹ The drastic changes in societies, living environments, and landscapes were perceived as a threat to humans and nature, especially during the Romantic period, and the idea of the need to protect this finite nature was reinforced.¹² The notion that landscapes with their flora and fauna were devalued and destroyed by human intervention set the history of nature conservation (and, to some extent, environmental protection/environmentalism) in motion from the nineteenth century onward.¹³ The need to preserve beautiful or unique natural sites (Naturschönheiten) was equally articulated as protection for and protection from tourism. Here, the ambivalence of tourism, later even more pronounced, became apparent: tourism consumes its central resource.¹⁴ Hans Magnus Enzensberger argued along these lines in his much-cited and discussed essay from 1958 that tourists who want to escape from everyday life are destroying the very thing they seek.¹⁵ Tourism is a fundamentally ambivalent phenomenon. Tourism (especially in the Alpine regions) depends on supposedly authentic, beautiful landscapes worth seeing and, therefore, focuses on their protection. Paradoxically, however, modernizations and infrastructural developments considered equally inevitable for tourism often have a destructive effect on these very landscapes. Starting in the nineteenth century, tourism thus became both a primary collaborator in and an opponent to nature conservation and environmentalism.¹⁶ In this context, it is essential to take a look at the actors. The various collective and individual actors and stakeholders decided which spaces were to be preserved and promoted and which were not. These included community representatives who saw an economic benefit, innkeepers who wanted to attract travelers, or associations such as the Alpine clubs that wanted to publicize the Alps and recruit members.¹⁷

After all, the landscapes, due to their perception by locals and foreigners alike as tourist destinations worth seeing, have become a symbol of (territorial) identification. In the case of the Alps, this not only involved singular countries or regions but the Alpine space as an integral construct, prompting, for example, Laurent Tissot to speak of “alpinization.”¹⁸ In this context, expanding tourism advertising through posters was crucial. Since the end of the eighteenth century, the enjoyment of natural landscapes had become a guiding form of Alpine tourism, and this was also reflected in advertising. The tourist gaze was thus predefined by idealized images, for example, the panoramic view (Panoramablick), as it emerged from summits or heightened positions and brought new perspectives.¹⁹ The “Alpine self-understanding of Austria” can also be captured in stamps, which Christian Rohr views “as a kind of ‘official business card of a country.’”²⁰ Like Austrian tourism posters before 1938, Rohr argues that stamps were “strongly dominated by images of nature and homeland, by folklore and, at least, at first sight, unpolitical topics.”²¹

With the end of the Habsburg Monarchy, the scenically diverse territory disintegrated, and the small “Alpine Republic” remained. More than before, stereotypical advertising was needed for Austria to define a new emblematic destination worth visiting. The tourist destination Austria was presented as a peaceful little world.²² A relatively stable, from then on unchanging Austrian promotional image was established, which Ernst Hanisch describes as the “infantilization of the landscape and the people”: a portrait of mountains, meadows, lakes, and forests, of rural life in supposed harmony with nature, of idealized female and male bodies, traditional costumes and folklore, and in between, when needed, modern infrastructures leading to these (peripheral) places but, of course, not destroying them.²³ Tourism advertising created idyllic images or fantasies that did not necessarily have anything to do with the actual situation. Landscapes remained a medium to develop and characterize an Austrian mentality and to advertise such inside and outside the country.²⁴ Landscapes and imagery of a wholesome rural world could also act as an identification stimulus for the locals.

The supposedly pure Austrian natural landscape was also appropriated and instrumentalized under National Socialism. Frank Uekoetter argues that “the mountain [Obersalzberg] symbolized the unification of the countries that Hitler achieved with the Anschluss of 1938, and in one of his wartime monologues, Hitler referred to this view as illustrative of his longing for the Austrian Heimat”.²⁵ This very attachment to the landscape as homeland was denied to Jews as “eternal nomads.”²⁶ As a consequence of the National Socialist racist “blood and soil” ideology, the Austrian landscapes were also contaminated by the hateful ideas of National Socialism.²⁷ This was evident, for example, in the exclusion of Jewish guests from the Sommerfrische resorts (summer resorts).²⁸ Like other tourists, Jewish guests associated the Sommerfrische with the natural landscape and cultural events such as the Salzburg Festival. National Socialist policy, however, meant that places such as Salzburg’s Mattsee became “Jew-free” as once-welcomed Jewish guests were chased away from this idyllic world and their “dream of belonging” to it was destroyed.²⁹ Yet the memory of the idealized Sommerfrische culture, from which the Jewish guests had been excluded, persisted over the years.³⁰ The supposedly salutary natural and cultural landscapes remained in the memories for generations. The Austrian publicist Eric Frey ponders Alt-Aussee as an ambivalent Sommerfrische resort from a Jewish point of view and everything negative that resonates in the memory of Nazi crimes and expropriations. And yet, he concludes with the rhetorical question, “And aren’t Jewish people simply allowed to vacation where it’s beautiful?”³¹ The linkage of landscape/nature concepts with racist, inhumane meanings also shows the ambivalence of what should be protected from whom and for what reason, and what is perceived as “beautiful.”

After World War II, the Austrian landscape myth once again thrived. In the postwar period of reconstruction, when there was societal need for stability and security, as well as for a national Austrian identity or consciousness, the supposedly apolitical, peaceful natural landscape served as a crucial tool and symbol. In “the land of mountains,” as the national anthem (inaugurated in 1947) formulates, nature features as an element worth protecting.³² An illustrative example is The Book of Austria (Das Österreichbuch) of 1948, which Ernst Marboe—an Austrian writer and public official—published as a promotional work.³³ This was a core piece of Austrian nation-building from above. The book, rich in imagery and lavishly designed (translated into four languages), paid homage to Austria as a land of (high) culture and beautiful landscapes. The idealizing landscape depictions and a romanticizing hymn of praise to the Austrian Heimat were directed inward and served to strengthen Austria’s national consciousness to inspire the people with pride. At the same time, the book was directed outward to the occupying powers to point out that Austria deserved freedom and to advertise the country as a tourism destination in order to further stimulate the emerging tourism industry.³⁴ The Austrian propaganda movie 1. April 2000, released in 1952, pointed in the same direction. Ernst Marboe was the screenwriter for the film, and the four Allied powers were satirically made fun of, peppered with historical nostalgia.³⁵ The film’s musical highlight, the “Austria Song” (Österreichlied), which calls for Austria’s freedom, says, among other things: “But even if it stings in the heart sometimes—we remain gemütlich, that doesn’t change. We fight with flowers, music, and humor—a fight no one has ever lost. . . . We admit that our country is tiny—it only has much heart and the most wonderful wine.”³⁶ The uncritically presented juxtaposition of almost all the worn-out clichés about Austria in the film, focusing on Viennese high culture and rural traditions, was also criticized by (Austrian) viewers. As one daily newspaper put it in 1952: “Furthermore, the question is whether it is good for Austria to be eternally portrayed as the land of the Heurigen [wine tavern] singers, operetta bon vivants, dancers, Geigerbuam [fiddle boys], and the blissfully bedazzled. The world does see us that way, as a historical museum of traditional costume, and apparently, one didn’t want to contradict the cliché. But whether an impression—or a state—can be made only with Baroque, Burgmurrer [guards in the Hofburg], and being squiffy until 1 April 2000 is open to doubt.”³⁷ There were initial considerations to apply for Marshall Plan funds for the movie, but in the end, it was financed without it because the Council of Ministers stressed that an Austrian propaganda film should not be funded by foreigners.³⁸ There is also the question of whether the film—in which the Allied powers do not come off particularly well—would have fit into the concept of the European Recovery Fund (ERP / Marshall Plan), in which the United States positioned itself primarily as a humanitarian savior.

Nevertheless, it can be noted that the Marshall Plan propaganda campaign financed and produced films on a large scale to legitimize and promote the program in Europe and the United States. Maria Fritsche recognizes two main aims of the propaganda campaign, which were closely connected: “One was to explain the aims of the ERP or its measures; the other was to persuade the European spectators to accept its arguments as truths.”³⁹ In this respect, films seemed to be particularly effective. And, as Fritsche argues, cinema “intervened in and shaped popular discourses and thus helped to stabilize and modernize Austrian society. . . . After the Second World War, Austrian film productions continued to draw large audiences in Austria, at least up to the late 1950s.”⁴⁰ In this regard, once again, tourism comes into play. Tourism as the content of Austrian cinema has a long tradition, with its primary purpose “to sell beautiful landscapes to the cinema-going public.”⁴¹ After all, cinematography’s first peak coincided with mass tourism’s first take-off. Thus, after international production companies, state authorities in Austria-Hungary also showed interest in cinematographic tourism propaganda and participated in tourism advertising in the form of travel and tourism films. It was particularly effective to focus on a dramatic or comic plot (usually with love stories) and use Austria’s natural beauty as a picturesque backdrop. Karin Moser refers, for example, to films like Evas Rosengartentour from 1913, which successfully used such a strategy. In the film, a young American woman travels to South Tyrol and gets to know not only the beautiful landscape, people, and customs but also her mountain guide.⁴²

Not only as a cinematic representation of an ideal world but in general, tourism quickly played a significant economic role in Austria—and some other European countries—in the postwar period. It is quite significant that immediately after the end of the war in 1945, while Europe was in ruins and people were still suffering from hardship and hunger, numerous individuals in Austria followed up on the years of flourishing Belle Époque tourism to rebuild it instantly. Austria was not an exceptional case in this respect. European countries started to rebuild their tourism industry in 1945—and in some places, the nurturing of a tourism industry never completely stalled, even during the war.⁴³ For many Austrian actors it seemed apparent that “tourism constituted an important element in the effort to rebuild Austria’s economy after the destruction caused by World War II.”⁴⁴ They pointed to the importance of tourism as a vital source of state income and an asset to other sectors of the economy.⁴⁵

And here the United States emerged as an influential player in the wake of the Marshall Plan.⁴⁶ In the initial concept of the ERP / Marshall Plan, tourism promotion was not at the top of the agenda. In light of the devastating situation of food and energy supplies, traveling seemed to be of low priority.⁴⁷ Yet, little by little, dissenting voices started appearing. Senator J. William Fulbright, for example, argued in 1950 that “a further measure, and one which is often overlooked, for breaking down the barriers of ignorant prejudice between ourselves and our allies is tourism,” and he declared it “the most important industry of Europe.”⁴⁸ Until 1955, 525.5 million shillings in ERP credits and 2.3% (305 million shillings) of counterpart funds were invested in the tourism industry—mostly in hotels, ski lifts, transportation, and tourism promotion.⁴⁹ This seems low compared to the 51.8% in industrial investments, but as Günter Bischof points out, it was crucial for tourism per se in some regions. He affirms that “the take-off towards broad-based Austrian prosperity after World War II—in which tourism played a major role—would not have occurred to the same degree or with such rapid speed were it not for the Marshall Plan.”⁵⁰ One main aim was to import the US ideology of modernization through the infrastructural transformation of tourist sites.⁵¹ With the help of the ERP counterparts, not only prominent hotel and ski resorts in Austria were funded by modernizing hotels, building lifts, and other means of transportation, but the tourism landscape was profoundly shaped.⁵²

For some public officials, tourism became almost a panacea. After all, the tourism industry was able to secure jobs, infrastructure development, and an influx of currency.⁵³ Franz Freundlinger, a representative of the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) in Salzburg, pleaded in 1946 in the Landtag (state diet) for the importance of tourism in the land- and the industry-poor province of Salzburg, referring to the usual argumentation: “Our country is an honest country with its mountains and lakes, with its villages and its magnificent provincial capital. It is an area for tourism and thus has the best power of attraction. . . . We must take all action necessary to increase the number of foreigners coming to our country.”⁵⁴ Particularly interesting is the reference to being an “honest” country. Freundlinger plays with the images of nature as pure, uncontaminated, and thus sincere. He also implies the understanding of an “innocent” Austria (with an eye toward the myth of being solely a victim of Nazi Germany).⁵⁵

The members of the Landtag were influential actors who continuously emphasized the importance of tourism—of course furthering their own interests—and thus propelled its development forward at the political level.⁵⁶ Local political stakeholders were undoubtedly decisive regarding financial allocations for tourism development, tourism promotion, and infrastructure development. They discussed and helped decide which places should be supported to maintain or develop into tourism destinations and how they could be promoted. They also decided on the preservation of natural sites. They thus played an active role in shaping landscapes and tourism destinations. However, the same and other actors were also influential on a cultural level outside this political arena.

In his recently published study, Revisiting Austria, Gundolf Graml examines the performativity of these tourist images and narratives in the context of Austrian national identity or “Austrian-ness.” Graml uses movies, specifically Heimatfilme, to study “how the discourse of tourism facilitated not only Austria’s performative self-reinscription on the (imaginary) map of the international community but also Austrians’ journey toward a new national self-image after 1945.”⁵⁷ Graml also considers postwar Austrian masculinity, which is an essential aspect for images of “nature.” Ideas of heterosexual masculinity, the steeling of male bodies, the desire for adventure in connection with wilderness and being outdoors, and also male domination and subjugation of the natural world were formative in the discourses on nature and nature conservation. Especially in alpinism, the masculine imagery of combat, adventure, domination of nature, and male camaraderie was central.⁵⁸ In Austria, the Alpine associations have strongly influenced the discourse on the natural landscape and, in the process, have imposed masculine imagery. Especially the mountains are gendered spaces of masculinity.⁵⁹ After all, concepts of nature and masculinity or femininity stabilized each other as powerful discursive norms and consolidated a binary hierarchical symbolic order.⁶⁰ Film/cinema played a vital role in the widespread impact of these visual worlds. In the so-called Bergfilm (mountain film) that emerged in the 1920s, men proving “their virility by fighting hostile nature” were central to the man-nature narrative. It was often a “misogynist glorification”⁶¹ of masculinity. With these films, the alpine landscape was again enhanced, medially staged, and, with impressive images, imprinted on society. The mountain films by Arnold Fanck and with Luis Trenker are not only of outstanding film-historical importance but were also trendsetting in the history of the perception of the Alps.⁶²

Nature also became the main protagonist in the so-called Heimatfilme and Heimatromane, which emerged in the context of “temporary escapism and contributed to the beautified image of Austria.”⁶³ In the longing for amusement and entertainment after the destructive years of the war, these movies satisfied the search for new and, at the same time, traditional places of longing (Sehnsuchtsorte), above all by sentimentalizing the landscape. This concerned primarily not the city but the idyllic countryside, the so-called nature.⁶⁴ It was suggested that the world was still somewhat in order and peaceful in the countryside. These nostalgic films, which trivialized the past and turned the landscapes into a consumable object, reached an audience of millions.⁶⁵ The musical The Sound of Music, which can almost be described as an exceptional case, represents a somewhat different dimension than the Austrian Heimatfilme.⁶⁶ It is “one of the most successful motion pictures of all times and has lured vast numbers of American and Asian tourists to Austria.”⁶⁷ In Austria, on the other hand, the film was not very popular, “nobody could understand what the American audience especially was so excited about for a long time,” and many people still don’t know the musical at all.⁶⁸ This movie’s setting in the National Socialist era certainly did not fit into the phase of Austria’s suppression of this past. However, a unifying element, still highly effective for tourism today, is the picturesque, postcard-like depiction of Austrian natural and cultural landscapes.⁶⁹ The film thus functioned primarily as an outward advertisement and had a particular impact on Salzburg’s tourism marketing—where, for example, Sound of Music tours, souvenirs, and exhibitions very much became a part of the city’s everyday life.

The opposing reaction in Austria, which was not without significance, must also be mentioned when referring to the idealization and broadly effective creation of landscapes. As opposition and a provocation, so-called anti-Heimat films, and anti-Heimat novels were created, which critically, sometimes with black humor, dealt with the darker sides of Austria and especially its past.⁷⁰ Here, the natural landscapes also played a central role but were inverted as a feigned setting for the “negative” Austria. The hypocritical whitewashing image of Austria, which suppressed and covered up its participation in National Socialism and the lived continuities of the Nazi legacy, was dramatically criticized in film and literature (e.g., the works of Elfriede Jelinek). Another important topic was the embellishment of Austria in the course of tourism and the “selling out” of its landscapes. In cinematic terms, for example, the well-known, medially intensively discussed, and still-broadcasted Piefke Saga, a four-part Austrian film (1990–1993) based on the screenplay by the writer Felix Mitterer, should be mentioned here.⁷¹ Its main focus is on the relationship between Austrians and German tourists, portrayed with sarcasm. The film tells the story of a tragicomic encounter of ingratiation and exploitation between travelers and those they travel to when a Berlin business family takes a vacation in Tyrol. The deliberately exaggerated climax of the four-part show is an absurd fictional scene in which the future Tyrol is nothing but an artificial tourist machinery full of soulless people surgically transformed into “typical Tyroleans,” a world of kitschy plastic and lustful visitors. The negative portrayal made Tyrolean tourism experts fear the film would damage their image. Hence, they intervened with the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting) and demanded that the film not be broadcast again.⁷²

This glance at art and popular culture clearly shows how ambivalent and conflict-ridden the creation of Austrian landscapes was and still is. The creation of an ideal identity and of tourism advertising is only one side of the coin. On the other side, thus-idealized nature was a valuable resource that had to be exploited for the country’s development. Increasingly, technological enthusiasm and belief in progress became guiding principles in Austria from the 1950s onward.⁷³ Herein lies a central point of conflict that will be discussed in more detail in the following section. It is essential that this is not only about a culturalist representation. The combination of Austrian national identity, tourism, and landscapes shows that discourses and narratives are socially formative and reality-constituting elements. These discourses and narratives manifested in an actual, severe transformation of Austrian landscapes.

Conservation/Preservation or Development?

Günter Bischof very aptly observes that “the battle between economic development versus environmental preservation is as old as tourism itself in Austria.”⁷⁴ Indeed, one of the most critical aspects of tourism conflicts is the inherent antagonism between preservation/conservation and development.⁷⁵ This tension has played and continues to play a prominent role, particularly in Austria, where the natural landscapes have been chosen and intensively designed as a spatial and cultural symbol. From the late nineteenth century to the present, this has been a central socially shaping discourse and a field of conflict between various interest groups.⁷⁶ In the Alpine region, in particular, the question of utilization rights is striking. Who owns the Alps? Who is allowed to enter and use them, and who is not? How much infrastructure does the Alpine world need and bear? These questions and points of contention still cause the same stir today as they did over a hundred years ago.⁷⁷

In Europe, the Alps—mountains fundamentally evoke human fascination—were among the first objects chosen by conservationists as worthy of protection.⁷⁸ The “combination of marginal economic value and high symbolic and emotional value, as well as national and international fame . . ., helped make the Alps a hotspot of nature conservation”.⁷⁹ One solution was the establishment of protected areas with restricted access. In this context, the divergence between the claim to free use and free enjoyment of the Alps and the enclosure and demarcation of areas becomes apparent.⁸⁰ Following the example of the US national parks, there was an increasing demand for nature reserves in Europe. The national park was “predominantly associated with the United States, in particular Yellowstone, and the preservation of extensive stretches of uninhabited wilderness,” as Patrick Kupper stresses.⁸¹ At this point, it is essential to emphasize that these were only supposedly or seemingly uninhabited areas. In the conception of a wilderness uninhabited by people, the Native Americans who lived there were deliberately disregarded. The history of national parks is also a history of suppression and removal of indigenous peoples. In the European context, the idealized idea of American wilderness has been carried far into the present and also into research, ignoring the concomitant problem of the Indigenous peoples’ displacement.⁸² However, the concept of North American national parks was considered difficult to transfer to Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth century due to the absence of similarly vast areas confined within single states, as well as the significant challenges posed by private property rights. In the United States, it was much easier to have no regard for disenfranchised indigenous peoples, whereas in Austria, for example, to declare areas protected areas was a complicated process of negotiation with the inhabitants. The national park idea had to be adapted to European conditions. It, therefore, became standard practice for influential actors to travel abroad and study the US national parks. Thus, a significant cultural transfer from the United States to Europe is evident, which remained central in the late twentieth century. A trip to the United States continued to be standard for those interested in national parks from a scientific and/or practical point of view, as shown in the case of Edith Ebers. A Bavarian geologist, glaciologist, conservationist, the main initiator of the founding of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA), and founding member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), she planned a nature reserve across several Alpine countries.⁸³ This was a complicated undertaking; she had to be well informed and knowledgeable about various legal frameworks. Pursuing her plan, she went on two extensive lecture and study trips to the United States to learn about US regulations of wilderness areas.⁸⁴ After all, the United States was still considered the birthplace of national parks and the role model for large wilderness areas, even if conservationists were quite conscious of the fundamental differences between North America and Europe.⁸⁵ This was especially true because tourism was the basic idea behind the US national parks.⁸⁶ After 1945, Ebers built on her acquired knowledge and continued the national park idea, hoping for US support in Allied-occupied Germany: “The national parks of the USA have gained popularity worldwide, e.g., the Yellowstone N.P., the Yosemite Valley N.P., the Glacier N.P., the Rocky Mountains N.P., and others.⁸⁷ Thus, one may hope for the understanding of the occupying powers with similar efforts in Germany. . . . The nature reserves, to which the parents’ generation has forebodingly committed itself, thus represent today our last reserves serving the mental reconstruction.”⁸⁸ Tourism is, above all, a crucial factor in the nature/national park issue. Even during the first deliberations on a park in the mountain range of the High Tauern (Hohe Tauern), it became apparent how divided the various stakeholders were on what role people or visitors should be assigned. Preserving the status quo of this natural and cultural landscape should be the priority—but the question remained: Should visitors be allowed at all, and if so, how many?⁸⁹ However, the legal basis for the types of protected areas defined in Austria as compared to the United States differs. In Austria, the Salzburg Nature Conservation Act (Salzburger Naturschutzgesetz) defines the national park as a representative landscape to be preserved in order to benefit the population, science, and economy. Thus, traditional agricultural use and regional economic development are included in the concept. The various interests and interest groups, sometimes diametrically opposed to each other, must be reconciled in the national park.⁹⁰

During the 1950s and 1960s, which Robert Groß and Ute Hasenöhrl consider as the “heyday of regional/national planning of tourist infrastructures,” the nature park movement in Austria grew stronger and “brought an intensification of efforts to ‘harmonize’ tourism, regional development, and nature protection.”⁹¹ The High Tauern National Park (Nationalpark Hohe Tauern) is a well-known example of success. Efforts to place the high Alpine region around the Großglockner under special protection date back to the turn of the nineteenth century, but the plans faltered with the start of World War I. Between 1981 and 1992, the Austrian federal states of Carinthia, Salzburg, and Tyrol managed to establish the High Tauern National Park.⁹² It was the first park to include areas of three Austrian states (Länder), and arrangements with about 1,100 landowners. Today, it contains about 1,856 km² and is one of the “largest projects in the history of spatial planning in Austria.”⁹³ It is the largest national park in Central Europe and has become a role model for Alpine area protection.⁹⁴ Another high point was its inclusion in the World Heritage Sites list of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 2003. The World Heritage Convention was created to protect testimonies to past cultures, including “unique natural landscapes, the destruction of which would be an irreplaceable loss for all humanity.”⁹⁵ The basic idea is, therefore, not related to tourism. But, with their inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List, most cultural and natural sites receive increased recognition and more visitors. The UNESCO seal of approval, whether intentional or not, is undoubtedly a tourism label. Being outstanding means being worth seeing.⁹⁶

In 2015, for example, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road (Großglockner Hochalpenstraße), located in the national park, was placed under monument protection and applied for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List. According to the applicants and many proponents, this road, inaugurated in 1935, with a length of about 50 km, should be considered a monument of extraordinary universal value. It is a scenic road in a high Alpine landscape that, from the beginning, celebrated technical progress and claimed to blend perfectly into the natural landscape, a harmony of technology and nature. The engineer, mountaineer, and Carinthian provincial official Franz Wallack designed the Grossglockner High Alpine Road to fit perfectly and harmoniously into the landscape. It also became a flagship of the Republic of Austria, an important source of labor, and an internationally renowned tourist destination with more than 800,000 visitors per year during the summer months and thus central to the regional tourism economy.⁹⁷ However, not everyone views the chance of the road becoming a World Heritage Site so positively; rather, some consider it a threat to nature conservation.⁹⁸ From the beginning, the design of the road was driven by the goal to combine technical progress and the conservation of nature. The question as to whether this is possible or has succeeded cannot be answered easily. But what comes to light here is the seemingly inseparable connection of these elements. Here, the question of perspective is decisive. The beauty of nature is one thing; the beauty of technology is another.⁹⁹ Technical exploitation could be interpreted as the destruction of nature’s beauty, virginity, and authenticity or it could be viewed as having the potential to forge an aesthetic unity between technology and nature, a modern and more realistic interplay.¹⁰⁰

As Ernst Hanisch points out, the landscape is not only an aesthetic phenomenon, beautiful or ugly, sublime or bleak, but the land is also a commodity.¹⁰¹ The tension between technological development or the exploitation of natural resources, tourism, and nature conservation or landscape protection is particularly well illustrated by one example. It is one of the best-known cases of a natural site or resource preserved for the benefit of tourism: the Krimml Waterfalls (Krimmler Wasserfälle). When plans emerged that the waterfalls’ hydrodynamic power should be used, protests arose with the argument that it was a tourist attraction. In the Salzburg Landtag, the president argued in 1899: “On the one hand, the establishment of industrial plants . . . can only be welcomed for reasons of general welfare and must be strongly encouraged in the spirit of our restlessly striving era, for industry brings prosperity and wealth, it creates work and money, it promotes and stimulates traffic on roads and railways. . . . On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the . . . picturesque beauty of the Krimml Waterfalls virtually demands the protection of the authorities and that it would be irresponsible if the authorities were to admit that a natural beauty of the first order, which brings thousands of visitors to Krimml, would be impaired or disappear altogether.”¹⁰² At this time, municipalities and especially associations such as the Alpine Association (Deutscher und Österreichischer Alpenverein) participated in a petition against the development of the waterfalls, as they represented “a natural spectacle of the highest rank, of which not only Salzburg, but all of Austria boasts.”¹⁰³ According to studies at the time, the residual water volumes remaining with the power plant would have almost dried up the falls in the summer months. This finding prompted the Pinzgau communities to file the petition mentioned above, which, with the support of the majority in the provincial parliament (Landtag), secured the preservation of the Krimml Waterfalls. A new attempt in the 1950s to exploit the waterfalls with a power plant led to protests that soon went beyond nature conservationists and regional actors. A central actor then was the Naturschutzbund (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union Austria), but also institutions beyond that such as the Austrian Academy of Sciences and tourism representatives got involved. Significantly, the argument of nature and landscape protection only ranked second; in the first place, reference was made to the waterfalls’ great importance for tourism.¹⁰⁴ Today, the Krimml Waterfalls are one of Austria’s biggest tourist highlights, attracting an average of 400,000 visitors annually.¹⁰⁵

An interesting opposite example of the triumph of technology is the hydroelectric power station Kaprun. The Tauernkraftwerk Kaprun became a showcase for reconstruction and, thus, a central symbol of Austrian identity in the Second Republic. ERP funds were decisive for the financing: a sum of US$1,43 billion was invested in finishing the large-scale project.¹⁰⁶ The power plant had already been planned in the 1920s by Franz Rehrl, then governor of Salzburg and technology enthusiast. Still, he encountered numerous problems and protests against this large-scale technical construction. People feared a permanent withdrawal of water from the Alpine pastures and the destruction of nature, and they feared for tourism. With the world economic crisis, the project was shut down for the time being. After the National Socialist annexation in 1938, Hermann Göring announced that the power station was to be built in the High Tauern. The Nazi dictatorship, as a totalitarian system, did not consider and did not have to consider people’s resistance. With the beginning of the war, forced labor was used for the operation of the power plant. In an effort to process this difficult past, Kaprun became a memorial landscape from around the year 2000 onward. Central to this development was Elfriede Jelinek’s play Das Werk (2003), in which she comes to terms with the dark, long-silenced past of Austrian identity.¹⁰⁷ Of similar importance was a text by Christoph Ransmayr, “Kaprun oder die Errichtung einer Mauer” (1985), in which the author reflects on the tragedies and triumphs lamented and celebrated during the years of construction, the victory of nature, the technological triumph, and the hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting a landscape that does not bear immediate witness anymore to the National Socialist intervention in all its ruthlessness.¹⁰⁸

The socialist federal minister Karl Waldbrunner even declared Kaprun the “national shrine of Austria.”¹⁰⁹ The focus was on the victory over nature for the vital stream. In contrast to the Krimml Waterfalls, for example, the dominant discourse this time was that there were things more crucial than the enjoyment of nature, and one of them was electricity.¹¹⁰ The result was a severe landscape transformation, which, from a technophile point of view, did not devalue the landscape but rather could be reinterpreted as aesthetically pleasing.

The workers at the Kaprun power station, who carried out life-threatening work on the mountain, became icons of the nation, symbols of masculinity. Above all, it was their work in and against nature that caused fascination. Former workers might concede an eerie feeling that often befell them at dizzying heights, but more potent was the power of the impressions and the pride of being part of this (dangerous) construction. During the construction period, around 15,000 workers and employees were involved. Between 1939 and 1955, around 160 workers perished during their dangerous work on the rope in the high mountains.¹¹¹ A myth was created around Kaprun that became Austria’s national symbol on various levels—including male or masculine mastery of the forces of nature, technical progress, and Austria’s modernization. This mythologizing runs through the entire project. Onlookers arrived in buses to marvel at the large-scale project; there were countless reports in the media, unique stamps were created with the subject of Kaprun, and plenty of Kaprun novels and films, such as Die Männer von Kaprun (1955) and Das Lied von Kaprun (1955), contributed significantly to the idealization and mythologizing of this project.¹¹² It is particularly revealing that the power plant is now a tourist attraction. An information center at the Kaprun power plant, guided tours and fixed rope routes along the dam walls, and an exhibition entitled “Erlebniswelt Strom” (World of Electricity Experience) once again expand the myth of Kaprun by adding the factor of tourism.

The enabling and disabling of power plants in Austria represent pivotal moments in the history of society’s relationship with nature. National narratives regarding the significance of nature have become symbolic or subject to debate, and they have become firmly entrenched in society’s collective memory. For example, the Danube power station at Hainburg wanted to follow up on the glorious history of Kaprun’s technical achievement and, in turn, experienced the opposite outcome. Both, like the prevented Zwentendorf nuclear power plant, have become memorial sites (Gedächtnisorte), which wrote Austrian environmental history, but in opposite ways.¹¹³

Landscapes are also by no means static, stable, or unchanging. Both the perception of landscapes and the actual material (e.g., geographical and geological) change of the earth’s surface are determined by continuous motion. Mountains, in particular, appear to most people to be static entities. But, to quote Dragos Simandan, regarding a “continuum of change”: “Both the flower and the mountain are fading, but their different paces make us see the mountain as static.”¹¹⁴ As is well known, especially from environmental research, humans have a decisive impact on these processes of change on Earth. The Alps, for example, have changed more profoundly than in previous millennia due to the encroachment of modern humans’ world on all areas.¹¹⁵ Austria’s landscapes and geographical entities have changed considerably in recent years, shaped by developments such as urbanization, the sealing of natural surfaces, urban sprawl, agricultural modernization or industrialization, or monocultures, but also by upgrading natural landscapes and protected areas. Agriculture, forestry, tourism, nature conservation, and environmental protection are fundamentally involved as actors and stakeholders, albeit by no means in a balanced way. However, Austrian landscapes continue to be of high importance for all the various stakeholders, a fact that is particularly evident in the high symbolic power Austrian nature holds as a selling point. This latter aspect was consciously and actively created top-down by the state and institutions, bottom-up by individual stakeholders and mediated to the population at large. At the same time, it also emerged as a by-product of differently directed interests. Here, for example, the Alpine Association can be mentioned, which was one of the strongest promoters and developers of tourism since the nineteenth century; although as an institution, it did not intend to do just that.¹¹⁶ The visual representations of Austria’s natural “beauties” were disseminated in posters, stamps, postcards, art and literature, and above all in film, and they manifested themselves inside and outside the country.

Conclusion

Tourism has undoubtedly been intensively involved in shaping Austria’s national and regional image since the nineteenth century at the latest. With the success of tourism, the “discovery,” and subsequent promotion of the Austrian (Alpine) landscapes, a homogenizing tourist gaze was created and established. An image of Austria was established that became decisive for both external and internal perceptions. In addition to (high) culture, the natural landscapes were undoubtedly at the center. Their creation as a symbol of Austrian peacefulness and bliss continues today. It stabilized an almost static image of a supposedly homogeneous Austrian society and culture, which—in a seemingly deterministic way—is affected by its surrounding environments or natural landscapes. This focus on nature-worth-seeing—which is always also culture—led to a linkage and interdependence with nature conservation. In the case of the nature-park movement and specifically the advocacy for national parks, which was a driving force, the ambivalent relationship between tourism and nature conservation as collaborators and opponents became apparent. On the one hand, natural landscapes were to be conserved in the form of protected zones for tourists, but on the other hand, mass tourism as an industry also had a destructive effect on these landscapes. The United States served as a model for the creation of protected areas and national parks. A decisive transfer of ideas to Europe emanated, although the conditions were quite different, and the concept of the national park had to be adapted to the European setting.

The United States exerted an even more direct influence after World War II at the latest, in connection with the financial support granted by the ERP / Marshall Plan. A significant impact on the shaping of Austrian tourist regions and landscapes has occurred, materially and in the cultural perception.

It is essential to look at Austrian history and the origins of tourism in the nineteenth century. Austrian actors laid the foundations that immensely impacted the social development and that are still effective today. The high valuation of natural landscapes, especially in connection with Heimatschutz and patriotic images, is a decisive element of Austrian history—and also resonated in the environmental protest, for example, against the power plant in Hainburg. With all the intrinsic motivation to focus on the natural landscape, preserve it, and promote it to strengthen the national consciousness of heritage, but especially for tourism as an economic factor, one must not forget about influences and cultural transfers from the “outside,” such as from the global power of the United States. The actors involved (collectively and individually) within and outside the country, and the transfers accompanying them illustrate this complex interplay.

However, all these developments, borne by intense conflicts between stakeholders, contributed to homogenizing the image of Austria or the Austrian regions. Tourism and nature conservation are a contentious couple, fundamentally linked by shared and divisive interests. Examining Austria—a country of tourism and a land of natural landscapes—especially regarding long-term development allows to trace how the creation of landscapes, tourism, and nature conservation/environmental protection can interact. This requires consideration of both the perceptual and material levels or a culturalist and material perspective within the field of cultural and environmental history. And so, the historical perspective can also be incorporated into current debates on tourism and sustainability. This story must be spun even further because Austria does not only consist of the Alps (even if they are very dominant in the general perception), and Austria does not stand alone but is part of a European and global history that can start here—connecting tourism and environmental and cultural history in a transregional perspective.¹¹⁷

Notes