A short History of Demography in Austria. From a Population Issue to Special Scientific Discipline
This paper deals with the very beginnings of demographic research in the Austrian Monarchy, the abusage of this young branch by the NAZI-regime and the renaissance as a scientific discipline in Austria in the 1960s. Since 1875 the K.K. Statistische Zentral-Kommission edited the Statistische Monatsschrift, containing many articles and reports on demographical issues, mainly but oriented on ”population”, even when there were detailed explorations about specific topics, even regarding data from the 18th century. In Europe’s 3rd most populated state, namely the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, the state of the population played a strong role, like in other big nations too: A strong state needs a strong population. This motto, stemming from the times of Absolutism, still was decisive, even for research on population and demographic issues in the Inter-War period in the First Austrian Republic, when since 1934-1935 some statisticians argued that Austria could disappear, due to low fertility rates, lowered again by the Big Economic Crisis. In the NAZI-era population science and demography were massively abused in a racist sense. After 1945 therefore these topics obviously were somehow burdened for a longer time. Only since the 1960s research on historical demography, oriented on international standards emerged and was evolved as a specific scientific discipline. Besides the methodological, scientific aspect this paper tries to outline the political backgrounds of research on fertility decline.
Teibenbacher, P. und Exner, G. (2016): A short History of Demography in Austria. From a Population Issue to Special Scientific Discipline, in: Fauve-Chamoux, A., Bolovan, I. und Sogner, S. (Hrsg.): A Global History of Historical Demography. Half a Century of Interdisciplinarity, Peter Lang, Bern u. a., S. 117-130.
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