Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

My Personal Encounters
with History
229
Hannes Swoboda
We all have our different encounters with history. The times and
places in which we grow up and live are steeped in history. Perhaps
it is very Eurocentric of me to assume that Europe, and Central Europe
in particular, has been especially shaped over the past hundred
years by conflicts that have subsequently become historic. I
was to some extent a conscious witness of this for around half of
the twentieth century.
I was born in 1946 in a small town on the Danube, closer to
Bratislava than to Vienna. Part of my family on my mother’s side
came from Hungary and my father’s family from Moravia. My father’s
job brought them to the region in which I was later born. The area
was once home to a famous Roman military and civil encampment
and this fact has also contributed to my sense of historical awareness.
We visited the excavations and museum which today still bear
witness to this Roman past.
My home town was in the Soviet occupied zone until the withdrawal
of occupying forces at the end of 1955. The troops were part of our
everyday lives. Wartime tales of the advance of the Soviet troops
were not unusual at home. One consequence of the war was, of
course, the Iron Curtain which hung not far from my home town.
Ironically crossing this border during the occupation was easier
than it later became. I remember well a school trip organised by the
Russians, as we called the occupying forces, on the Soviet Danube
steamer Caucasus.
Although Bratislava – which we knew by its German name of
Pressburg and which for many years bore the name of Pozsony,
capital city of Hungary – lay only a few kilometres away, it was inaccessible
to us after the strengthening of the Iron Curtain. There
were two district capitals. The principal capital was Vienna, about
45 kilometres away, divided into four zones until the withdrawal of
Hannes Swoboda is Vice-President of the Socialist Group in the
European Parliament.