University camps under Austrofascism

With the Hochschulerziehungsgesetz (university education law) of 1935, the Austrofascist government introduced university summer camps, so-called “Hochschullager”. These camps held in 1936 and 1937 were mandatory for all male students and had the goal of militarizing them mentally and physically. They were places of elite ideological community- and nation-building, raising “new Austrians” – contrasting the National Socialist identity of the German Reich. Through the community experience of several weeks of shared camp life, the new Austrian people’s community was meant to be experienced. A Catholic-German Austria was supposed to assert itself against Hitler’s Germany, while the youth was trained in Austrian patriotism. Paramilitary training furthermore was intended to militarize the students, but was used more for infusing discipline than for actual military training.