Safeguarding law and order!? Otto Ender, people’s militias and the subtle militarisation of a local community 1918–1938

When in 1918 the Austro-Hungarian monarchy collapsed, two challenges were at hand for Otto Ender, at this stage Landeshauptmann (governor) of Vorarlberg, which declared itself an independent part within the emerging republic of German-Austria: 1). how to keep political power in the hands of the dominating catholic-conservative elite; and 2). how to keep as much autonomy and capacity to act in the hands of local and provincial authorities. In this context “safeguarding law and order” was the main slogan. In this context Ender and the provincial government decided to set up people’s militias to stop any potential threat to “law and order” and these militia’s continued to exist under different names up to the Anschluss of the province to the German Third Reich in 1938, although the danger of political turmoil never really materialized until the mid 1930ties.
The aim of the presentation proposed here is to present an analysis of Vorarlberg’s people’s militias as a form of keeping alive military values in a society, which had been part of a major war, but which had not really experienced military violence at first hand. The people’s militias were not set up to prepare the population of Vorarlberg for a future war, but rather to use military values to safeguard “law and order” in the interest of a local elite at a time, when mass-media such as radio and television were not yet able to reach out to people in the way they can do today. Gatherings and trainings of the people’s militia were therefore an important means for conveying militaristic values to a local community so far largely untouched by such values in their everyday life.