This is a major new contribution to the historiography of the First World War. It examines the lively battle of ideas which helped to destroy Austria-Hungary. It also assesses, for the first time, the weapon of 'front propaganda' as used by and against the Empire on the Italian and Eastern Fronts. Based on material in eight languages, the work challenges accepted views about Britain's primacy in the field of propaganda, while casting fresh light on the creation of Yugoslavia and the viability of the Habsburg Empire in its last years.
The Habsburg Empire was an experiment in multi-national politics. The eight essays in this volume seek to unravel the complexities of the final twenty years of Austria-Hungary and its eventual disintegration.
When Austria-Hungary broke up at the end of the First World War, the sacrifice of one million men who had died fighting for the Habsburg monarchy now seemed to be in vain. This book is the first of its kind to analyze how the Great War was interpreted, commemorated, or forgotten across all the ex-Habsburg territories. Each of the book’s twelve chapters focuses on a separate region, studying how the transition to peacetime was managed either by the state, by war veterans, or by national minorities. This “splintered war memory,” where some posed as victors and some as losers, does much to explain the fractious character of interwar Eastern Europe.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was just one link in a chain of events leading to World War I and the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian empire. By 1918, after nearly four hundred years of rule, the Habsburg monarchy was expunged in an instant of history. Remarkably, despite tales of decadence, ethnic indifference, and a failure to modernize, the empire enjoyed a renewed popularity in interwar narratives. Today, it remains a crucial point of reference for Central European identity, evoking nostalgia among the nations that once dismembered it. The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary examines histories, journalism, and literature in the period between world wars to expose both the positive and the negative treatment of the Habsburg monarchy following its dissolution and the powerful influence of fiction and memory over history. Originally published in Polish, Adam Kozuchowski's study analyzes the myriad factors that contributed to this phenomenon. Chief among these were economic depression, widespread authoritarianism on the continent, and the painful rise of aggressive nationalism. Many authors of these narratives were well-known intellectuals who yearned for the high culture and peaceable kingdom of their personal memory. Kozuchowski contrasts these imaginaries with the causal realities of the empire's failure. He considers the aspirations of Czechs, Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, and Austrians, and their quest for autonomy or domination over their neighbors, coupled with the wave of nationalism spreading across Europe. Kozuchowski then dissects the reign of the legendary Habsburg monarch, Franz Joseph, and the lasting perceptions that he inspired. To Kozuchowski, the interwar discourse was a reaction to the monumental change wrought by the dissolution of Austria-Hungary and the fear of a history lost. Those displaced at the empire's end attempted, through collective (and selective) memory, to reconstruct the vision of a once great multinational power. It was an imaginary that would influence future histories of the empire and even became a model for the European Union.
“A monumental new volume. . . . Revelatory, even revolutionary. . . . Clark has done a masterful job explaining the inexplicable.” — Boston Globe One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Historian Christopher Clark’s riveting account of the explosive beginnings of World War I. Drawing on new scholarship, Clark offers a fresh look at World War I, focusing not on the battles and atrocities of the war itself, but on the complex events and relationships that led a group of well-meaning leaders into brutal conflict. Clark traces the paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts between the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and Belgrade, and examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals that drove the crisis forward in a few short weeks. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Sleepwalkers is a dramatic and authoritative chronicle of Europe’s descent into a war that tore the world apart.
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...visit was on everybody's lips in those days. He tried to investigate, but all of a sudden the whole gang of young men cleared their quarters. Thereupon he decided to call at the Austro-Hungarian Consulate General, but was arrested on his way to the consular office by a Servian gendarme who escorted him to the police. Here he was questioned about the purpose of his visit to the consulate. Then he was put into various jails on a trumped up charge that he was a spy. In the jail he was beaten repeatedly with sandbags, and once he nearly fell victim to an assault of another inmate of the jail. According to the witnesses' statement this murderous assault must have been arranged by the police, as a police officer was quietly standing by when the assault took place. Eventually one day he was taken out of jail and brought before the chief of police. Both this latter and ihe assistant chief were present. They handed him triumphantly a clipping from a paper referring to the murder of the Crown Prince. "You tried to prevent this" so he testified they said to Mm, "but we are cleverer than you are. Nou? Austria-Hungary's turn comes next. We will destroy it." Witness was told that he would have to leave Belgrade at once. Before leaving, however, he icas asked to sign a paper that all his effects had been handed over to him in best order. Milanic refused to sign because both his money and sundry valuables had been taken from him during his confinement. In spite of his protestations he was escorted over the frontier to Belgrade, and was told by the police that Count Berchtold would undoubtedly come and call for his lost effects. Witness was shown the photos of the murderers, and he was asked whether he could identify them as some of...
Combining history of science and a history of universities with the new imperial history, Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space by Jan Surman analyzes the practice of scholarly migration and its lasting influence on the intellectual output in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburg Empire and its successor states were home to developments that shaped Central Europe's scholarship well into the twentieth century. Universities became centers of both state- and nation-building, as well as of confessional resistance, placing scholars if not in conflict, then certainly at odds with the neutral international orientation of academe. By going beyond national narratives, Surman reveals the Empire as a state with institutions divided by language but united by legislation, practices, and other influences. Such an approach allows readers a better view to how scholars turned gradually away from state-centric discourse to form distinct language communities after 1867; these influences affected scholarship, and by examining the scholarly record, Surman tracks the turn. Drawing on archives in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine, Surman analyzes the careers of several thousand scholars from the faculties of philosophy and medicine of a number of Habsburg universities, thus covering various moments in the history of the Empire for the widest view. Universities in Imperial Austria 1848–1918 focuses on the tension between the political and linguistic spaces scholars occupied and shows that this tension did not lead to a gradual dissolution of the monarchy’s academia, but rather to an ongoing development of new strategies to cope with the cultural and linguistic multitude.
