Gustav Gratz and Richard Schüller · 1925
This work is a documentary-historical study of Austria-Hungary’s wartime external economic policy, centered on the “Mitteleuropa” projects negotiated with the German Empire and on the related peace-political settlements in Eastern Europe. Gratz and Schüller reconstruct policy not as abstract ideology alone, but as a sequence of concrete negotiations over customs, production interests, territorial settlements, transport routes, raw materials, finance, and the postwar ordering of neighboring states.
The study opens from the premise that the wartime German–Austro-Hungarian negotiations matter in two ways: they illuminate the economic imagination of a Central European bloc, and they reveal the limits imposed by incompatible national and sectoral interests.
Während des Weltkrieges wurden zwischen dem Deutschen Reiche und Österreich-Ungarn Verhandlungen zur Herstellung eines größeren in sich geschlossenen mitteleuropäischen Wirtschaftsgebietes geführt, die ein doppeltes Interesse darbieten.
English translation: During the World War, negotiations were conducted between the German Reich and Austria-Hungary aimed at creating a larger, self-contained Central European economic area, and these are of a twofold interest.
The authors’ central conceptual move is to treat “Mitteleuropa” less as a slogan than as a technical problem of customs policy. The projected bloc aims at the gradual production of a large integrated economic area, but its mechanism is transitional rather than absolute: free circulation is to be approached through staged tariff reductions, while “Zwischenzölle” remain where industries claim essential protection.
Das Zoll- und Wirtschaftsbündnis hat den Zweck, eine möglichst enge wirtschaftliche Verbindung zwischen den beteiligten Staaten herbeizuführen und den zollfreien Verkehr zwischen Deutschland und Österreich-Ungarn anzubahnen, wobei vorläufig Zwischenzölle insoweit aufrechterhalten werden können, als es zum Schutze wesentlicher Produktionsinteressen unbedingt notwendig ist und nur in der Höhe, wie sie vom Standpunkte dieser Interessen unbedingt geboten sind.
English translation: The customs and economic alliance has the purpose of bringing about as close an economic union as possible between the participating states and of paving the way for duty-free traffic between Germany and Austria-Hungary, whereby intermediate tariffs may provisionally be maintained only insofar as they are absolutely necessary for the protection of essential production interests, and only at the level that is unconditionally required from the standpoint of those interests.
This passage condenses the book’s wider argument: economic union is presented as a political project mediated by administrative compromise. The authors pay close attention to how apparently grand designs had to pass through tariff schedules, differential duties, and protectionist bargaining. Hence the program could be summarized in a stark formula:
Für alle Waren teils beiderseitige, teils einseitige Zollfreiheit; die Zwischenzölle gleich der Differenz der Außenzölle.
English translation: For all goods, partly mutual, partly one-sided duty-freedom; the intermediate tariffs equal to the difference of the external tariffs.
The later discussion of the Bucharest Peace with Romania broadens the inquiry from customs union to imperial neighborhood policy. Here the authors emphasize that Austria-Hungary’s leaders did not simply seek punitive domination. Their Romanian policy was framed by the strategic need for a stable, friendly border state.
Meine Monarchie braucht unbedingt an ihren Grenzen ein freundlich gesinntes Rumänien.
English translation: My Monarchy absolutely needs a friendly-minded Romania on its borders.
For Gratz and Schüller, this explains the relative moderation and incompleteness of some provisions. The Bucharest settlement included border, Danubian, railway, property, financial, oil, and grain arrangements, yet its limits followed from a deliberate diplomatic conception: Romania was to be bound, not merely broken.
Die Ursache der Unzulänglichkeit dieser Bestimmungen lag in dem festen Entschluß der österreichisch-ungarischen Leiter der Verhandlungen, daß der Friede mit Rumänien ein Verständigungsfriede sein müsse.
English translation: The cause of the inadequacy of these provisions lay in the firm resolve of the Austro-Hungarian leaders of the negotiations that the peace with Romania must be a peace of understanding.
The work’s relevance lies in this double perspective. It shows how wartime economic planning linked Central Europe, the Balkans, and the Polish question into one field of policy, while also showing how fragile such plans were. The Polish settlement, in particular, depended less on Austro-German will than on the collapse of imperial Russia:
Erst der Zusammenbruch Rußlands ermöglichte eine Vereinigung aller Polen zu einem selbständigen Staate.
English translation: Only the collapse of Russia made it possible to unite all Poles into an independent state.
Overall, Gratz and Schüller present Austria-Hungary’s external economic policy as a balance between integration and restraint: a search for a protected Central European economic space, constrained by production interests, alliance politics, national aspirations, and the practical need for negotiated settlements with neighboring states.
This work was divided into 152 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 152 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian