There Once Was An Empire
November 30, 2023 5:06 PM Subscribe
It's fascinating that the multicultural tolerance that allowed people of different ethnicities to move all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire was, not even one year after the Great War ended, considered to be the great problem of Eastern Europe, that all these people were mixed up together without each having a monocultural, monolingual nation-state of their own.
And, of course, it was this "problem" that was finally "solved" two decades later by the genocides of the Nazis and the forced mass migrations of the Soviets.
posted by clawsoon at 5:41 PM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]
And, of course, it was this "problem" that was finally "solved" two decades later by the genocides of the Nazis and the forced mass migrations of the Soviets.
posted by clawsoon at 5:41 PM on November 30, 2023 [12 favorites]
Nationalism is a hell of a drug.
posted by NotAYakk at 5:57 PM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by NotAYakk at 5:57 PM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
The variation in my family - my grandfather was born in the Austro-Hungarian empire; married in the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes; was imprisoned in the German nation; died in the Yugoslav Republic and is buried in the Republic of Slovenia, and all in the same province.
He was born 1886 and the historical shock is how wealthy the empire was and how few benefited from that wealth. The death of my great-grandfather, a weaver, meant a completely destitute family, with the children made indentured servants. At age 5, my grandfather was indentured as a stable hand and did not sleep in a bed until he was a teenager as he slept with the animals. His indentureship was bought by the Austro-Hungarian army and he was trained as a soldier, fighting in WWI.
From the family histories and diaries - there was no nostalgia for the passing of the empire. The empire was seen as corrupt and brutal - particularly the army. Whatever came after might be uncertain - but the end of the empire was a good start.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 6:35 PM on November 30, 2023 [55 favorites]
He was born 1886 and the historical shock is how wealthy the empire was and how few benefited from that wealth. The death of my great-grandfather, a weaver, meant a completely destitute family, with the children made indentured servants. At age 5, my grandfather was indentured as a stable hand and did not sleep in a bed until he was a teenager as he slept with the animals. His indentureship was bought by the Austro-Hungarian army and he was trained as a soldier, fighting in WWI.
From the family histories and diaries - there was no nostalgia for the passing of the empire. The empire was seen as corrupt and brutal - particularly the army. Whatever came after might be uncertain - but the end of the empire was a good start.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 6:35 PM on November 30, 2023 [55 favorites]
I was maybe expecting a mention of cynical Bohemian author Jaroslav Hašek, also known as founder of The Party of Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law.
posted by ovvl at 6:50 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 6:50 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I'm curious how my ancestors felt in 1918 (Sudetenland Jews - about as Kafkaesque as it gets. Too German to be Czech. Too Jewish to be German.)
Multiculturalism in Austria-Hungary wasn't worth much. Yeah, you could move. To an area with a totally different language. Where nobody knows you. Where the local church isn't your denomination, and in a society where the state's functions are best avoided altogether, you need a religious community to fill the gaps. Where you don't know how to navigate with the local corruption.
Better to just hop on a train the fuck out of there and head to a ship bound for the Americas. But I'm sure life in Vienna proper was pretty sweet while it lasted.
posted by ocschwar at 7:58 PM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
Multiculturalism in Austria-Hungary wasn't worth much. Yeah, you could move. To an area with a totally different language. Where nobody knows you. Where the local church isn't your denomination, and in a society where the state's functions are best avoided altogether, you need a religious community to fill the gaps. Where you don't know how to navigate with the local corruption.
Better to just hop on a train the fuck out of there and head to a ship bound for the Americas. But I'm sure life in Vienna proper was pretty sweet while it lasted.
posted by ocschwar at 7:58 PM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
the multicultural tolerance that allowed people of different ethnicities to move all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire was, not even one year after the Great War ended, considered to be the great problem of Eastern Europe
Welllll....the tolerance can be overstated. Those who are interested may like to read Pieter Judson's The Habsburg Empire: A New History, which really tries to engage with the institution as a positive creation with its own spirit rather than the uneasy sum of a congeries of parts, but has to deal with the congeries nonetheless. The question he raises: is ethnic separatism actually an ahistorical or "natural" force that operates regardless of circumstance?
You can also read Gregor von Rizzori's An Ermine in Czernopol for a rather grimmer picture of the "tolerance" of the era (it's set just after WWI, but draws on existing tensions in the town he's describing).
Joseph Roth is read only by specialists in the U.S. these days, and that is a pity. The article mentions his peculiar opinion that the solution to the rise of fascism in Europe would be the reestablishment of the Empire, but not (unless I missed it) his strong opposition to Zionism. He did not want to see the Jews (he was Jewish, but may (?) have converted to Catholicism late in life) seduced by what he considered the great modern sin of nationalism. Roth was quite snotty about Zweig and unfortunately Roth's modern translator Hofmann seems to have absorbed that prejudice. The World of Yesterday is splendid memoir if not exactly even-handed history.
posted by praemunire at 8:01 PM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
Welllll....the tolerance can be overstated. Those who are interested may like to read Pieter Judson's The Habsburg Empire: A New History, which really tries to engage with the institution as a positive creation with its own spirit rather than the uneasy sum of a congeries of parts, but has to deal with the congeries nonetheless. The question he raises: is ethnic separatism actually an ahistorical or "natural" force that operates regardless of circumstance?
You can also read Gregor von Rizzori's An Ermine in Czernopol for a rather grimmer picture of the "tolerance" of the era (it's set just after WWI, but draws on existing tensions in the town he's describing).
Joseph Roth is read only by specialists in the U.S. these days, and that is a pity. The article mentions his peculiar opinion that the solution to the rise of fascism in Europe would be the reestablishment of the Empire, but not (unless I missed it) his strong opposition to Zionism. He did not want to see the Jews (he was Jewish, but may (?) have converted to Catholicism late in life) seduced by what he considered the great modern sin of nationalism. Roth was quite snotty about Zweig and unfortunately Roth's modern translator Hofmann seems to have absorbed that prejudice. The World of Yesterday is splendid memoir if not exactly even-handed history.
posted by praemunire at 8:01 PM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
Better to just hop on a train the fuck out of there and head to a ship bound for the Americas.
I'm not sure how heading to America wouldn't subject you to all the same problems you describe in the previous paragraph...
posted by praemunire at 8:03 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure how heading to America wouldn't subject you to all the same problems you describe in the previous paragraph...
posted by praemunire at 8:03 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure how heading to America wouldn't subject you to all the same problems you describe in the previous paragraph...
It wouldn't. Learning English is a bitch, but nowhere near as hard as Hungarian or Czech. You're not the only one in your ethnicity doing it, so if you move to the right city, you at least have a few people in the same predicament speaking your language. Enough of them to organize a small church, almost certainly, so you get some communal support, and if that isn't enough, many of the Yankee churches offer help to non-members because that's a thing they want to do (and then there's the YMCA/YWCA - generic, church-funded). Beats the hell out of getting indentured to a farm family.
I mean, yes, all this is hard, but big difference in degree.
posted by ocschwar at 8:30 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
It wouldn't. Learning English is a bitch, but nowhere near as hard as Hungarian or Czech. You're not the only one in your ethnicity doing it, so if you move to the right city, you at least have a few people in the same predicament speaking your language. Enough of them to organize a small church, almost certainly, so you get some communal support, and if that isn't enough, many of the Yankee churches offer help to non-members because that's a thing they want to do (and then there's the YMCA/YWCA - generic, church-funded). Beats the hell out of getting indentured to a farm family.
I mean, yes, all this is hard, but big difference in degree.
posted by ocschwar at 8:30 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
OTOH that empire produced a group of scientists written up at The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project
Not to mention advances in ideas and culture that made the 20th century what it is. Freud of course, Gödel and Von Neumann in the underpinnings of computing, art by Klimt & Schiele. I'm sure there are others....
posted by morspin at 8:31 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
Not to mention advances in ideas and culture that made the 20th century what it is. Freud of course, Gödel and Von Neumann in the underpinnings of computing, art by Klimt & Schiele. I'm sure there are others....
posted by morspin at 8:31 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
I kind of get Austro-Hungarian nostalgia, but it's also so fucking messed up and ahistorical. It was for the most part a reactionary state. Looking at the brutality of nationalist wars people want to think it was some alternate model. It wasn't.
The piece is right about it being a genre that produced some masterpieces. I did minor in German lit and could once read German well enough to appreciate the basically untranslatable Last Days of Mankind mentioned in the piece, which is a great anti-war work. I can also vouch for the melancholy Radetzkymarch, which should work fine in translation.
The half of the empire that my ancestors come from--Hungary--was engaged in aggressive Magyarization to stamp out pesky identification with other nationalities. This was, of course, after their own rebellion of 1848 was crushed by the Austrians and Russians. Historian Colin McEvedy (admittedly not a specialist) assessment after the dual monarchy formed was that it "lasted longer than anyone expected, partly because the Hungarians were as enthusiastic as the Austrian at suppressing nationalist sentiment."
posted by mark k at 10:06 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
The piece is right about it being a genre that produced some masterpieces. I did minor in German lit and could once read German well enough to appreciate the basically untranslatable Last Days of Mankind mentioned in the piece, which is a great anti-war work. I can also vouch for the melancholy Radetzkymarch, which should work fine in translation.
Austria-Hungary possessed an eternal quality for its patriots and they believed themselves to be special among European states. Unlike the rest of Europe, it did not aspire to be a nation-state, but was a uniquely cosmopolitan world unto itself.Aristocrats and upper class men of letters experienced it as cosmopolitan. Sucked if you were a Pole who dreamed of rejoining Poland, a Serb who wanted to be part of Slavic state, a Romanian who wanted to embrace Romanian culture.
The half of the empire that my ancestors come from--Hungary--was engaged in aggressive Magyarization to stamp out pesky identification with other nationalities. This was, of course, after their own rebellion of 1848 was crushed by the Austrians and Russians. Historian Colin McEvedy (admittedly not a specialist) assessment after the dual monarchy formed was that it "lasted longer than anyone expected, partly because the Hungarians were as enthusiastic as the Austrian at suppressing nationalist sentiment."
posted by mark k at 10:06 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
ocschwar Vienna proper was pretty sweet while it lasted
My great grandfather was an arms-maker and inventor (everything from explosives and bombs to army boots), he was based in Graz up to near start of WW1 as he was making boots for the entire army* (with his own patented sewing machines enabling a superior boot). From what I've heard it was a good life indeed with a three-storey house supplied - grand staircase and all, and a coach and coachman on hand.
My grandfather was born and grew up there and carried on in the same destructive profession.
* The family myth that I've not confirmed is that he was doing the same product for the British army!
posted by unearthed at 10:29 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
My great grandfather was an arms-maker and inventor (everything from explosives and bombs to army boots), he was based in Graz up to near start of WW1 as he was making boots for the entire army* (with his own patented sewing machines enabling a superior boot). From what I've heard it was a good life indeed with a three-storey house supplied - grand staircase and all, and a coach and coachman on hand.
My grandfather was born and grew up there and carried on in the same destructive profession.
* The family myth that I've not confirmed is that he was doing the same product for the British army!
posted by unearthed at 10:29 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
The city of Trieste is fascinating, having been the only seaport of this major empire a century ago, while today it's just another middling Italian coastal town on the absolute periphery of the country. All the impressive and imposing infrastructure feels out of scale for the city today, which at 200k inhabitants is significantly smaller than 100 years ago. What other coastal town in southern Europe can say that? It really ought to be a part of Slovenia.
posted by St. Oops at 10:29 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by St. Oops at 10:29 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
You're not the only one in your ethnicity doing it, so if you move to the right city, you at least have a few people in the same predicament speaking your language.
Probably at least as many Czechs in Vienna as in Minnesota, or even in NYC!
posted by praemunire at 10:40 PM on November 30, 2023
Probably at least as many Czechs in Vienna as in Minnesota, or even in NYC!
posted by praemunire at 10:40 PM on November 30, 2023
Aristocrats and upper class men of letters experienced it as cosmopolitan. Sucked if you were a Pole who dreamed of rejoining Poland, a Serb who wanted to be part of Slavic state, a Romanian who wanted to embrace Romanian culture.
This is the question, though, isn't it? Is that indeed the chief or even an overriding motive of all peoples, such that not being in a state dominated by your own ethnicity in particular needed to be experienced as intolerable injustice? Poland at least had been a kingdom right before partition, but Serbs and Romanians, did they have some atavistic compulsion to be with "their own kind?" It's a slightly separate question from the desirability of being in a state where your "kind" isn't discriminated against, and yet we see a sort of assumption of nationalism as a fundamental impulse of humankind sneak into these discussions.
(As you fairly note, the chief force suppressing minority cultures in the Hungarian half was the Magyars. Judson discusses how attempts to provide education, etc., in the other languages where another language was dominant were bitterly opposed by the Magyars.)
posted by praemunire at 10:45 PM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
This is the question, though, isn't it? Is that indeed the chief or even an overriding motive of all peoples, such that not being in a state dominated by your own ethnicity in particular needed to be experienced as intolerable injustice? Poland at least had been a kingdom right before partition, but Serbs and Romanians, did they have some atavistic compulsion to be with "their own kind?" It's a slightly separate question from the desirability of being in a state where your "kind" isn't discriminated against, and yet we see a sort of assumption of nationalism as a fundamental impulse of humankind sneak into these discussions.
(As you fairly note, the chief force suppressing minority cultures in the Hungarian half was the Magyars. Judson discusses how attempts to provide education, etc., in the other languages where another language was dominant were bitterly opposed by the Magyars.)
posted by praemunire at 10:45 PM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
Ooo, my jam, thanks. On the related reading list: Microcosm: portrait of a central European city [reviewed] by Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse. As a bonus there are 80 pages of notes, references, appendices and indices and 80-something illustrations . . . and loadsa in-text maps. The city in question is Island City; Wrotizla; Vretslav; Presslaw; Breßlau; Breslau; Wrocław - just a little to the North of The Empire.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:18 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:18 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Thanks for posting this. I fell into the Zweig/World of Yesterday nostalgiathon a while back and still hold his description of a free & passport-less pre-war Europe as a kind of ideal. Obviously it was never really thus, even if it felt like it, and equally obviously it was only effectively available to a certain class; for everyone below that line it was as per usual not great. And of course Zweig's memory is only fortified by what came next, which made there having been a pre-war edenic life clearly plausible. I mean, no matter how bad it was before WWII, during it was so much worse. So this essay is a bracing revisit, much expands beyond Zweig and will be the source of some reading going forward. Thanks.
posted by chavenet at 2:35 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by chavenet at 2:35 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Flagged this post as fantastic. Really appreciate the varied perspectives and knowledge shared here. My interests have moved in this direction over the years, but (despite two history degrees) I’ve never formally studied Austria-Hungary.
I grew up in a place that had a couple informal names when I was born, despite those names being informal and not its legal/political designation. It subsequently incorporated, and these days one of its informal names has been claimed by another municipality that aggressively defends its use and deprecates its use by the place where I grew up. All within the U.S., but… yeah. Toponyms and place have always fascinated me.
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:54 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
I grew up in a place that had a couple informal names when I was born, despite those names being informal and not its legal/political designation. It subsequently incorporated, and these days one of its informal names has been claimed by another municipality that aggressively defends its use and deprecates its use by the place where I grew up. All within the U.S., but… yeah. Toponyms and place have always fascinated me.
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:54 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Toponyms, indeed -- places in Central Europe that have different names in different languages, where different ethnic experiences occupy different overlays on the map. Pressburg, Poszony, Bratislava--they're the same geographic place. I get the impression that you could live then in German-world, or Slovak-world, and only have limited interaction with that other layer.
posted by gimonca at 3:38 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by gimonca at 3:38 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
I get the impression that you could live then in German-world, or Slovak-world, and only have limited interaction with that other layer.
I read that book.
posted by rochrobbb at 3:49 AM on December 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
I read that book.
posted by rochrobbb at 3:49 AM on December 1, 2023 [5 favorites]
The hyphen in Austria-Hungary is something to think about, too. Throughout the 1700s and into the first decades of the 1800s, the Habsburg lands were based in Austria, but the emperor also held the titles King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, and so on, which covered sizeable chunks of the Empire. The Hungarians as a nation still had certain theoretical rights, or at least the noble class did.
That changed in 1848, one of the big revolutionary years in Europe. The Hungarians were part of the revolutionary wave, and the Austrians put them down. For the next couple of decades, the Habsburg state tried to snuff out stuff that smelled like Hungarian nationalism.
Move forward a couple of years to 1866, Austria fights a war with Prussia during the finishing stages of German reunification. Prussia wins, and becomes the core of the new German Empire. Austria loses. The Habsburgs are now weak, and the Hungarians cut a deal to make Hungary an equal partner in the Empire.
So, from 1867, you get Austria-Hungary, the dual monarchy. The shorthand K.u.K. that turns up on old documents and postage stamps, Kaiserliche-Königliche, for Emperor of Austria plus King of Hungary. There were two zones named after the tiny river Leitha that divided them at just one point: Cisleithanien and Transleithanien, the first being Austria-Vienna-German, the second being Hungary-Budapest-Magyar. (Note that Vienna is still the "center" in that point of view...) The shape and size of the Transleithanien side was inherited from the old Kingdom of Hungary from the middle ages, most of which had been reconquered by the Habsburgs from the Turks. It was "Hungarian" in the sense that it was the old domain belonging to that "Kingdom", but big chunks of it were inhabited by non-Hungarians.
There were things in common, a common military, a common economic zone, but the Hungarian side got powers that the other non-German ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary didn't, up to and including being able to do at least some "Magyarization" campaigns against minority ethnic groups. Who is oppressed and who is the oppressor now?
All that fell apart after 1918. Most of the territory of Transleithanien-Hungary got divided up into the new and neighboring countries after World War I (and after another war right after World War I that Hungary had with Romania--Romania won that one). The treaty of Trianon after World War I set most of the new boundaries.
I'll stop there, there's a lot more that could be said about the further developments in the 20th Century. The situation between 1867 and 1918 is kind of fascinating in its own right, with lots of layers and twists and turns. And it was "modern" in a sense, with railroads and telephones and things. And becoming modern in design and looks and fashion. The good aspects, the romanticized bits, the less attractive and ugly things, they happened in a landscape that was closer to 20th Century than to the 1700s.
posted by gimonca at 4:23 AM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]
That changed in 1848, one of the big revolutionary years in Europe. The Hungarians were part of the revolutionary wave, and the Austrians put them down. For the next couple of decades, the Habsburg state tried to snuff out stuff that smelled like Hungarian nationalism.
Move forward a couple of years to 1866, Austria fights a war with Prussia during the finishing stages of German reunification. Prussia wins, and becomes the core of the new German Empire. Austria loses. The Habsburgs are now weak, and the Hungarians cut a deal to make Hungary an equal partner in the Empire.
So, from 1867, you get Austria-Hungary, the dual monarchy. The shorthand K.u.K. that turns up on old documents and postage stamps, Kaiserliche-Königliche, for Emperor of Austria plus King of Hungary. There were two zones named after the tiny river Leitha that divided them at just one point: Cisleithanien and Transleithanien, the first being Austria-Vienna-German, the second being Hungary-Budapest-Magyar. (Note that Vienna is still the "center" in that point of view...) The shape and size of the Transleithanien side was inherited from the old Kingdom of Hungary from the middle ages, most of which had been reconquered by the Habsburgs from the Turks. It was "Hungarian" in the sense that it was the old domain belonging to that "Kingdom", but big chunks of it were inhabited by non-Hungarians.
There were things in common, a common military, a common economic zone, but the Hungarian side got powers that the other non-German ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary didn't, up to and including being able to do at least some "Magyarization" campaigns against minority ethnic groups. Who is oppressed and who is the oppressor now?
All that fell apart after 1918. Most of the territory of Transleithanien-Hungary got divided up into the new and neighboring countries after World War I (and after another war right after World War I that Hungary had with Romania--Romania won that one). The treaty of Trianon after World War I set most of the new boundaries.
I'll stop there, there's a lot more that could be said about the further developments in the 20th Century. The situation between 1867 and 1918 is kind of fascinating in its own right, with lots of layers and twists and turns. And it was "modern" in a sense, with railroads and telephones and things. And becoming modern in design and looks and fashion. The good aspects, the romanticized bits, the less attractive and ugly things, they happened in a landscape that was closer to 20th Century than to the 1700s.
posted by gimonca at 4:23 AM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]
Both the revolutions of 1848 and the Russian Revolution of 1905 should have been disconcerting news for anyone feeling too snug and comfortable in Vienna. But of course, hindsight and all that.
posted by Harald74 at 6:15 AM on December 1, 2023
posted by Harald74 at 6:15 AM on December 1, 2023
I've been around remnants of empire my whole life, at least if you're pretty generous with the term "empire". I grew up almost next to burial mounds from Viking times, in my youth I ended up with a blue helmet in the former Yugoslavia while people were still shooting at each other, and from 2000 I spent a lot of time in the Baltics, the echoes from the Soviet collapse still extremely audible. I've also been to Rome twice, seen the Egyptian obelisks that were ancient when the Romans dragged them there.
I don't know what I've gotten out of it except for very easily being able to imagine that things might not just keeping going like they are forever. Well, yes, and an interest in history, I guess.
Enjoyed the article, thanks for sharing!
posted by Harald74 at 6:45 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't know what I've gotten out of it except for very easily being able to imagine that things might not just keeping going like they are forever. Well, yes, and an interest in history, I guess.
Enjoyed the article, thanks for sharing!
posted by Harald74 at 6:45 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Great post and thread, thanks all. I teach music history through these periods, and this is very helpful context.
Learning English is a bitch
Just wanted to comment on this: a genuine polyglot (this guy) once explained to me that the primary reason English is the world's default language is because English is actually fairly easy to pick up as a basic second language because the grammar is simple and completely consistent (i.e., always subject-verb-object). So with an understanding of that basic structure and about 150 words, a person can survive speaking English in a place where it's understood.
However, he stressed, English is among the very hardest languages to master because it is so inconsistent in its details, and idiomatic, and even just plain nonsense sometimes. (Native speakers often master complex rules without even knowing they exist, like the order of adjectives.)
(Apologies for this tangent.)
posted by LooseFilter at 7:09 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
Learning English is a bitch
Just wanted to comment on this: a genuine polyglot (this guy) once explained to me that the primary reason English is the world's default language is because English is actually fairly easy to pick up as a basic second language because the grammar is simple and completely consistent (i.e., always subject-verb-object). So with an understanding of that basic structure and about 150 words, a person can survive speaking English in a place where it's understood.
However, he stressed, English is among the very hardest languages to master because it is so inconsistent in its details, and idiomatic, and even just plain nonsense sometimes. (Native speakers often master complex rules without even knowing they exist, like the order of adjectives.)
(Apologies for this tangent.)
posted by LooseFilter at 7:09 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
(Also very few declensions to worry about on regular words - just 2 on nouns and 4 on verbs, including the root forms)
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 7:21 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 7:21 AM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Throughout the 1700s and into the first decades of the 1800s, the Habsburg lands were based in Austria, but the emperor also held the titles King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, and so on, which covered sizeable chunks of the Empire
Further back than that! The split between Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs happened after Charles V abdicated as emperor right at the mid-sixteenth century.
posted by praemunire at 8:22 AM on December 1, 2023
Further back than that! The split between Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs happened after Charles V abdicated as emperor right at the mid-sixteenth century.
posted by praemunire at 8:22 AM on December 1, 2023
Great read and such a fascinating time. If you want to really see what government chaos is take a look at what was going on in parliament in Vienna leading up to the First World War. It was crazy. In 1989 I was at the funeral procession for Zita Maria delle Grazie Adelgonda Micaela Raffaela Gabriella Giuseppina Antonia Luisa Agnese AKA Zita, the last monarch of the Austro-Hungarian empire. It was surreal and felt like seeing the epilogue of that chapter of history. It was also an interesting time in Vienna as it was what felt like the end of the black-and-white era of the Cold War and the start of a new chapter.
posted by misterpatrick at 9:02 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by misterpatrick at 9:02 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
Better to just hop on a train the fuck out of there and head to a ship bound for the Americas.
Worked for my g-g-grandfather (1816-1880). His naturalization papers (1848) have him renouncing "forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty whatever, and in particular to the Emperor of Austria of whom I am a subject." ("Emperor of Austria" is hand written, the rest, printed.) Interestingly, the government body responsible for this document was the Court of Common Pleas for the City and County of New York. NB, no feds involved. (I have sometimes wondered whatever happened to his brother, a doctor in the Imperial Army.)
The city of Trieste is fascinating, having been the only seaport of this major empire a century ago,....
Which comment is my excuse to put in a plug for the (modern English) works of John Biggins, whose Otto Prohaska ("a cadet in the Austro-Hungarian navy at the beginning of the 20th century") series is good fun.
posted by BWA at 9:37 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Worked for my g-g-grandfather (1816-1880). His naturalization papers (1848) have him renouncing "forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty whatever, and in particular to the Emperor of Austria of whom I am a subject." ("Emperor of Austria" is hand written, the rest, printed.) Interestingly, the government body responsible for this document was the Court of Common Pleas for the City and County of New York. NB, no feds involved. (I have sometimes wondered whatever happened to his brother, a doctor in the Imperial Army.)
The city of Trieste is fascinating, having been the only seaport of this major empire a century ago,....
Which comment is my excuse to put in a plug for the (modern English) works of John Biggins, whose Otto Prohaska ("a cadet in the Austro-Hungarian navy at the beginning of the 20th century") series is good fun.
posted by BWA at 9:37 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
this is really what I keep coming to Metafilter for! I have not (yet!) dug into the links, but what a thread. I have a history degree, not in this area. I love to learn more about the diverse areas of history I have not had a chance to study. I really really appreciate the anecdotes of personal family history people are sharing! I am adding some books to my reading list, and now I will go and RTFA.
posted by supermedusa at 10:13 AM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 10:13 AM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
A few months ago I read Climate in Motion, a book about the development of climate science in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I'll admit that I didn't find the book very interesting and struggled to get through it, but if it sounds like your sort of thing, this review or this one will give you a more positive introduction.
posted by clawsoon at 11:13 AM on December 1, 2023
posted by clawsoon at 11:13 AM on December 1, 2023
Georg von Trapp was a submarine commander in the Austro-Hungarian Navy. He "was born in Zara, Dalmatia, then a Crown Land of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Zadar, Croatia)."
posted by kirkaracha at 11:39 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 11:39 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]
Georg von Trapp was a submarine commander in the Austro-Hungarian Navy
Causing later pedants to sniff impossibly stupid! Austria was landlocked…
posted by Hypatia at 11:59 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Causing later pedants to sniff impossibly stupid! Austria was landlocked…
posted by Hypatia at 11:59 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Last night I noticed Wittgenstein’s Vienna and Hitler’s Vienna adjacent on the bookstore shelf. Same Vienna.
posted by clew at 12:20 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 12:20 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
Those are both fantastic. I’d also recommend Thunder and Twilight, Fin-de-Siécle Vienna, The Sleepwalkers and The Hapsburg Café.
posted by misterpatrick at 12:25 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by misterpatrick at 12:25 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
(My only ancestors who we have any immigration history for are a pair of great-grandparents who immigrated from the Polish territories of the Empire to Pennsylvania a little before the turn of the century. My great-grandfather ended up working as a coal miner and it's not even clear if he was literate (in any language)--my grandmother filled out his census forms for him, my great-grandmother having died in her thirties after having churned out nine (?) kids. Our knowledge is very incomplete, and they were Catholic, not Jewish, but I'm not sure the New World worked out so great for them. They now have multiple great-grandchildren with graduate degrees and successful professional careers, but they never met any of us, so I daren't guess whether they'd care.)
posted by praemunire at 12:51 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 12:51 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is the question, though, isn't it? Is that indeed the chief or even an overriding motive of all peoples, such that not being in a state dominated by your own ethnicity in particular needed to be experienced as intolerable injustice?
Whether it "needed to be" is an open question, but in Habsburg terms it was perceived by many as a huge injustice. The reason the collapse of A-H was long predicted (as the piece accurately says) is that it wasn't working and people knew it. The state was obsessed with finding ways not to fly apart among the increasingly strong desire of its subjects to go their own way.
The piece is a bit of a paean to a multicultural, multilingual state, but every single work they cite is written in German, the minority language spoken by the dominant class. German was the internal language of the Austrian bureaucracy as well. There was no question who was in charge and everyone knew it. If you didn't speak German, you were a second class provincial.
A rough analogy would be looking at the current system filtered through a bunch of international consultants for McKinsey talking about the current system. From that point of view where you're born doesn't matter, as long as you learn English, acculturate to the corporate climate, and don't make waves. It doesn't capture anything at all about experiences for most of the people, which was becoming increasingly frustrating over the reign of Franz Josef.
. . . but Serbs and Romanians, did they have some atavistic compulsion to be with "their own kind?"
Yes? I mean, atavistic compulsion is a loaded term but he nationalist movements in A-H, the Ottoman Empire and Russia by Serbs and Romanians were real, huge and had major impact. With A-H it was especially the Serbs and other south Slavs, which heavily influenced Balkan policy and contributed both to the 1908 Bosnian crisis and later to WWI.
A lot of the problems with A-H's foreign policy is directly tied to its internal issues, as the state was trying to balance, placate, intimidate or co-opt its various nationalists. The existence of a Serbia advocating pan-Slavic rhetoric caused domestic problems.
(I'd have a lot of negative things to say about the early 20th century Serbian state and its nationalist model, but that's a different thread.)
posted by mark k at 1:15 PM on December 1, 2023 [7 favorites]
Whether it "needed to be" is an open question, but in Habsburg terms it was perceived by many as a huge injustice. The reason the collapse of A-H was long predicted (as the piece accurately says) is that it wasn't working and people knew it. The state was obsessed with finding ways not to fly apart among the increasingly strong desire of its subjects to go their own way.
The piece is a bit of a paean to a multicultural, multilingual state, but every single work they cite is written in German, the minority language spoken by the dominant class. German was the internal language of the Austrian bureaucracy as well. There was no question who was in charge and everyone knew it. If you didn't speak German, you were a second class provincial.
A rough analogy would be looking at the current system filtered through a bunch of international consultants for McKinsey talking about the current system. From that point of view where you're born doesn't matter, as long as you learn English, acculturate to the corporate climate, and don't make waves. It doesn't capture anything at all about experiences for most of the people, which was becoming increasingly frustrating over the reign of Franz Josef.
. . . but Serbs and Romanians, did they have some atavistic compulsion to be with "their own kind?"
Yes? I mean, atavistic compulsion is a loaded term but he nationalist movements in A-H, the Ottoman Empire and Russia by Serbs and Romanians were real, huge and had major impact. With A-H it was especially the Serbs and other south Slavs, which heavily influenced Balkan policy and contributed both to the 1908 Bosnian crisis and later to WWI.
A lot of the problems with A-H's foreign policy is directly tied to its internal issues, as the state was trying to balance, placate, intimidate or co-opt its various nationalists. The existence of a Serbia advocating pan-Slavic rhetoric caused domestic problems.
(I'd have a lot of negative things to say about the early 20th century Serbian state and its nationalist model, but that's a different thread.)
posted by mark k at 1:15 PM on December 1, 2023 [7 favorites]
the nationalist movements in A-H, the Ottoman Empire and Russia by Serbs and Romanians were real, huge and had major impact.
They were real--of course!--but there is also a serious danger of reading an inevitability and a naturalness into historical developments that seem to bring the world into line with the present day. (*) This is especially challenging when it comes to nationalist movements, which almost inevitably involve exaggerated claims of historical continuity and ethnic and linguistic unity. Modern Western nationalism crystallized slowly in the early modern period and arguably didn't begin to take fully recognizable shape until the 18th century. As I said, the Poles at least had a substantial history of independent self-governance in a defined territory...while I'm not an expert on them and will happily accept corrections on details, the Serbs and the Romanians, not so much. If Ferdinand goes straight home after being shot at the first time, what happens?
(*) P.S. Ex-historian here, you needn't waste any time explaining to me how retroactive characterizations by linguistic and social central elites are unlikely to closely reflect the experiences of people on the linguistic and social periphery! My point is not that Stefan Zweig knew much about "Jan Kowalski"'s life or could accurately represent his opinions about anything. I doubt he did, or could.
posted by praemunire at 1:32 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
They were real--of course!--but there is also a serious danger of reading an inevitability and a naturalness into historical developments that seem to bring the world into line with the present day. (*) This is especially challenging when it comes to nationalist movements, which almost inevitably involve exaggerated claims of historical continuity and ethnic and linguistic unity. Modern Western nationalism crystallized slowly in the early modern period and arguably didn't begin to take fully recognizable shape until the 18th century. As I said, the Poles at least had a substantial history of independent self-governance in a defined territory...while I'm not an expert on them and will happily accept corrections on details, the Serbs and the Romanians, not so much. If Ferdinand goes straight home after being shot at the first time, what happens?
(*) P.S. Ex-historian here, you needn't waste any time explaining to me how retroactive characterizations by linguistic and social central elites are unlikely to closely reflect the experiences of people on the linguistic and social periphery! My point is not that Stefan Zweig knew much about "Jan Kowalski"'s life or could accurately represent his opinions about anything. I doubt he did, or could.
posted by praemunire at 1:32 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]
"Such political consequences as it [the Congress of Vienna] achieved were in the main disastrous and brought much misery. But its glittering gaiety had one odd result. It gave Vienna--a fine but rather sombre city, with not a particularly happy history--a curious glamour, a touch of magic, determinedly exploited by writers and composers of operettas and the like, that refused to vanish until after the First World War, when even the ghost of the Congress stopped dancing." --J B Priestley, The Prince of Pleasure (1969)
posted by graywyvern at 1:56 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by graywyvern at 1:56 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Adding another "thanks" for this post and thread.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:37 PM on December 1, 2023
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:37 PM on December 1, 2023
For that last grasp of the Habsburgs, there's the anecdote of Charles of Hapsburg, showing up basically by himself in 1921 in Budapest, and interrupting Admiral Horthy while he was having dinner to discuss the situation. Hey, can I be Emperor--and King of Hungary--again? Sorry, pretty much nobody wants that at the moment, and if you don't mind, I'm going to get back to the table before the dish gets cold.
posted by gimonca at 4:25 AM on December 3, 2023
posted by gimonca at 4:25 AM on December 3, 2023
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The answer from one older couple was a province - I don't remember now which one - of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. "It doesn't exist anymore," they said, with what sounded like a mixture of sadness and irritation at having to explain.
posted by clawsoon at 5:21 PM on November 30, 2023 [27 favorites]