Cohen Nationalist Politics and Dynamics of State and Civil Society 1867 1914 PDF

Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association
Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Civil Society in the Habsburg Monarchy,
1867-1914
Author(s): Gary B. Cohen
Source: Central European History, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 2007), pp. 241-278
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Conference Group for Central European History of
the American Historical Association
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Central European History 40 (2007), 241-278.

Copyright (? Conference Group forCentral European History of theAmerican
Historical Association
DOI:
10.1017/S0008938907000532
Printed in the USA
NationalistPoliticsand theDynamicsofState
andCivil Society in theHabsburg
Monarchy,
1867- 1914
Gary B. Cohen
ISTORIANS
have conventionally depicted theHabsburg Monarchy as the
largestmodern European imperial polity to disappear from themap
because of its inability to accommodate
the national aspirations of its

It is the locus classicus for the failure of an old-fashioned dynastic
empire to develop among its subjects a broader civic identity and loyalty to
the state to counter the rise of nationalist demands for self-government. For
laterhistorians aswell asmany contemporary observers of the frequent internal
peoples.
crises after the 1890s, thiswas already a failed state even beforeWorld War I
brought on the tragic denouement. In thisperspective themonarchy's partici
pation in thewar was not a purely exogenous factor that led eventually to the
polity's demise. Most scholars have agreed that themonarchy's entry into the
war came largely because of its need to preserve its status as a Great Power,
defend itsposition in theBalkans, and counter the challenges of itsown nation
alist political movements, some of them allied with political forces beyond the
borders.1 Older western European and North American histories also tended
to view nationalist politics inHabsburg central Europe, in contrast towestern
European experience, as an intolerant and ultimately anti-democratic force
thathelped doom hopes forparliamentary democracy both under themonarchy
and in the post-1918 successor states.2
^ee, for example, A. J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918
(London: Hamish Hamilton,
Solomon Wank, "Some
1948; reprinted, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 230-33;
on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question," Austrian
Reflections
History Yearbook 28 (1997): 140-41; Samuel R. Williamson, Jr.,Austria-Hungary and theOrigins of
theFirst World War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991); and Steven B?lier, A Concise History of
Austria (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 182-85.
Arguments for the special character of nationalism in Europe east of the Elbe date back to the
scholarly generation ofHans Kohn and his Idea ofNationalism, A Study in itsOrigins and Background,
1st ed. (New York: Macmillan,
1944). The long-term influence of thisdistinction is still apparent in
works from theCold-War era, such asHugh Seton-Watson, Nationalism and Communism (New York:
and Peter F. Sugar, "External and Domestic Roots of Eastern Euro
Praeger, 1964), pp. 3-8,11?20;
inNationalism inEastern Europe, ed. P. F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer (Seattle: Uni
pean Nationalism,"
versity ofWashington Press, 1969), 46-54. The notion of strong regional and national distinctions in
European nationalist ideologies and their relationship to democratic development still resonates in
241
GARY B. COHEN
242
There
ismuch
truth,of course, in the conventional wisdom
regarding the
political decline of the Habsburg Monarchy during the late nineteenth

century and itsultimate demise. Still, such a reading embodies some longstand
ingmisunderstandings and contradictions about the relationship between the
Habsburg state and the internal nationalistmovements and about how popular
loyalties and political lifeactually developed there.Put simply,a polity thatper
mitted and inmany ways abetted the flowering of vigorous nationalist political
movements, an abundance of political parties and interestgroups, and amulti
farious and assertivepolitical press could not have been so immobile or paralytic
that only war and revolution could satisfypopular aspirations for self-rule.As
will be discussed in this essay, recent scholarship offers a much more dynamic
picture of theHabsburg state and public administration, even in the era of the
most intense national political conflicts.
For theirpart, the nationalist and other popular political forces in theHabs
burgMonarchy during the late nineteenth centurywere hardly irresistibleforces
demanding a self-government that could be realized only by dissolving the
empire.3 Indeed, the great majority of the political parties and organizations
up untilWorld War I contended for greater empowerment within a reformed
multinational Habsburg state, not for independence. Even the most radical
Czech nationalists, for example, theNational Social Party and the State-Right
Radical Party, combined a rhetoric thatchallenged the legitimacy of centralized
Habsburg rulewith a practical politics of electing representatives to legislative
bodies and trying towin concrete reforms and partisan advantage.4 The open
attacks on Habsburg rule and the Catholic Church by Georg von Schonerer's
Pan-German movement
and its calls for uniting Austria's German-speaking
sophisticated recent works such as Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to

Modernity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 1-26; Eric J.Hobsbawm, Nations andNationalism since 1780:
Programme,Myth, Reality, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), chapter 4,
101-30; and Dennison Rusinow, "Ethnic Politics in theHabsburg Monarchy and Successor States:
Three 'Answers' to theNational Question,"
inNationalism and Empire: The Habsburg Monarchy and
theSoviet Union, ed. Richard L. Rudolph
and David F. Good (New York: St.Martin's Press, 1992),
243-56. For an analysis of the historiographical connection between nationalism and backwardness
in eastern Europe, seeMaria Todorova, "The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and
the Study of Eastern European Nationalism," Slavic Review 64 (2005): 140-64. On the connections
drawn by scholarsmore generally between nationalism andmodernism or, alternatively,backwardness,
see Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism andModernism (London and New York:
1998).
Roudedge,
A. J. P. Taylor made the confrontation of the seemingly unreformable monarchy with the
irresistible forces of modern nationalism the basis of his The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918.
See
David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 35, on Taylor's fre
quent indulgence, as in this case, ofwhat Fischer calls the "fallacy of contradictory questions."
radical nationalist parties, see Bruce M. Garver, The Young Czech Party,
4On the Czech
1874-1901
and theEmergence of aMulti-Party System (New Haven and London: Yale University
Press, 1978), 295-304, 306-08; and T. Mills Kelly, "Taking It to the Streets: Czech National
ists in 1908," Austrian History Yearbook 29 (1998), pt 1: 93-112.
Social
NATIONALIST POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE 243

population with Germany condemned thatmovement, in fact, to a minuscule
following after 1900.5 Much more successful in winning popular support
were nationalist, agrarian, social Catholic, and social democratic parties,
which accepted the continuation of themonarchy and itsbasic territorialinteg
ritywhile calling for significant reformsof one kind or another.
In the late 1980s theAmerican scholar JohnW. Boyer observed that,despite
all the researchon nationalist politics in theHabsburg Monarchy and the accom
panying cultural developments, historians had done little to analyze the relation
ship of the administrative state to civil society there compared with recent
writing on Imperial Germany.6 Since then a body of new research on themon
archy has developed thatdemonstrates how nationalist politics developed within
the context of an evolving civil society and changing government structures.
New studies have appeared on the evolution of popular politics, political
parties, and representative institutions and on the broader institutional and
legal development of the Habsburg state. Nonetheless, historians have not
been successful in developing cogent broader accounts of the relationship
between society and the state to depict the dynamic and indeed symbiotic pro
cesses of developing civil society,growing popular political action, and changing
While much has been written about the radicalization
governmental structures.
of nationalist political demands and the conflicts both among the competing
national groups and between them and the state before 1914, scholars have
only made a limited start in explaining in broad structural terms the political
and social context, the practical functions, and the very reach and limits of
nationalist politics within themonarchy.
Much of the earlier historical writing was strongly influenced by deeply
entrenched central European nationalist narratives that saw the development
of the nationalist political causes as the core issue in late nineteenth-century
popular politics and as simply counterposed to the absolutist traditions and
institutionsof theHabsburg dynastic state.7 In this view the political history
On the Pan-German movement and other radical German nationalist formations in imperial
Parteien Alt?sterreichs
Austria, see Lothar H?belt, Kornblume und Kaiseradler: Die deutschfreiheitlichen
1882-1918
1993);
(Vienna and Munich: Verlag f?r Geschichte und Politik and R. Oldenbourg,
Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History ofAustrian Anti-Semitism (Chapel Hill:
The Socialism of Fools: Georg
University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Andrew G. Whiteside,
Ritter von Sch?nerer and Austrian Pan-Germanism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975);
andWhiteside, Austrian National Socialism before 1918 (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1962).
JohnW Boyer, "Some Reflections on the Problem of Austria, Germany, and Mitteleuropa,"
Central European History 20 (1989): 11.
of East
See the critiques of the nationalist narratives in Jeremy King, "The Nationalization
Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond," in Staging thePast: The Politics ofCommemoration
inHabsburg Central Europe, 1848 to thePresent, ed.Maria Bucur and Nancy M. Wingfield
(W Lafay
ette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2001), 112-152; and for Slovak historiography in Peter Haslinger,
zur Slowakei im europ?ischen
"Nationale oder Transnationale Geschichte? Die Historiographie
For examples of nationalist narratives of varying shades

Kontext," Bohemia 44 (2003): 326-41.
and stripes, see the syntheses on nineteenth-century Czech and Slovak history in Oldrich Riha
244
GARY B. COHEN
of the period was the storyof the heroic struggleof the national movements
typically the struggleof each national movement viewed largely in isolation-to
develop against the powerful opposition of the state and other nationalities and
to triumph ultimately in 1918 with the creation of independent national states.
Those nationalist narratives stillhave an important influence,particularly among
historians in centralEurope. In contrast to those views, this essaywill argue that
we can best understand the development of the nationalist political formations
and their conflictswith other interests in society and the state as embedded
within the broader development of civil society and bound up with changes
in the Habsburg state itself, rather than simply opposed to that supposedly
rigiddynastic
structure.
This essaywill offer a conceptual framework for debate and furtherresearch

by sketching the general development after the 1860s of public lifeand popular
politics,which, although freerandmore highly articulated in theAustrian half of
themonarchy than in the Hungarian, was an evolving modern civil society
where nationalist loyalties found expression alongside strong class and interest
group allegiances as well
as continuing loyalties to the state, its laws, and

administration. That civil society involved widening segments of the general
population during the last decades beforeWorld War I, and it developed, in
fact, in close connection with evolving governmental and administrative struc
tures thathad to provide a growing arrayof public services for amodern society
and findways to accommodate, to at least some extent, societal demands. In
varying degrees, the societally based political forces, including those espousing
nationalist ideologies, found ways to participate in policy making and aspects
of state administration at various levels of government, again more so in the
Austrian half than inHungary.
and Julius Mesaros,

eds., Pfehled ceskoslenskychd?jin, II: 1848-1918
[Outline of Czechoslovak
History, II: 1848-1918]
1969); John F. N. Bradley, Czechoslovakia: A Short
(Prague: Academia,
Czechoslova
History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971); JosefKorbel, Twentieth-century
kia: The Meanings of Its History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); and from a
Sudeten German
perspective, Emil Franzel, SudetendeutscheGeschichte, eine volkst?mlicheDarstellung,

expanded 4th ed. (Augsburg: A Kraft, 1970), and JosefM?hlberger, Zwei V?lker inB?hmen. Beitrag
zu einer nationalen, historischen und
geistesgeschichtlichenStrukturanalyse (Munich: Bogen-Verlag,
1973); on Poland, Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History ofPoland, 2 vols. (New York: Colum
bia University Press, 1982 ); M. K. Dziewanowski,
Poland in the Twentieth Century (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977); Aleksander Gieysztor et al., History ofPoland, 2nd ed. (Warsaw:
Polish Scientific Publishers, 1979); and Oscar Halecki, A History of Poland, 9th ed.
(New York: D. McKay, 1976); on Slovakia, JosephM. Kirschbaum, Slovakia: Nation at theCrossroads
of Central Europe (New York: R. Speller, 1960); Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, History of Slovakia: The
Strugglefor Survival, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005); and Jozef Lettrich, History of
Modern Slovakia (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1955); and on Hungary, Domokos Kosary, A History of
Hungary (Cleveland and New York: Benjamin Franklin Bibliophile
Society, 1941); and Denis
Sinor, History ofHungary (New York: Praeger, 1959).
PNW,

The concept of "civil society" isused here in a broad but non-teleological sense,
meaning the sphere of individual and group discourse and action, formally inde
pendent of the state,thataddresses issuesof public affairs,
politics, and governance.
Civil society is a highly varied phenomenon inmodern societies. In the circum
stances of the nineteenth century, it included public assemblies, newspapers and
journals, voluntary associations, popular civic action, social and political move
ments, and political parties, among other freepopular phenomena. Civil society
may draw upon social connections that originate in thework place, cafes, and
salons,or the family;but asPhilip Nord has argued, ithas amore public, collective,
and ordered character.8Much
recent writing has tended to appropriate the
concept of civil society as an essential component of modern democracies and

to envision the development of a vigorous civil society as typicallyleading to the
creation or bolstering of democratic modes of government. During
decades beforeWorld War
the last
I, though, the old empires of central and eastern
Europe each saw the emergence of civil society,a process thatwas not predestined
to lead to stable democratic governments in those lands during the interwarera.
Government and theBeginnings of PoliticalMovements

in theMid-Nineteenth Century
The
conventional nationalist historical narratives have typically depicted the

development of the national political movements in theHabsburg Monarchy as
independent of and opposed to the state, a polity thatolder,more extravagantly
nationalist accounts portrayed as a "prison of nations." Yet itwas theHabsburg
state thatmade possible the growth of political space and institutionalvenues

for the development of amodern civil society and,with that,nationalist politics.
Primarily because of this fact, the emergingmodern political forcesduring the
middle and latenineteenth century, including thenationalist interests,contended
foradvantage and power largelywithin thegoverning institutionsof the state itself
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the Austrian Habsburgs
knitted together a mosaic of central European territories, each of which had
its own traditions of law and government institutions.9 The Habsburgs'
8Philip Nord, "Introduction," in Civil Society beforeDemocracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-century
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), xiv.
Europe, ed. Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord
On concepts of civil society, see also John Keane, ed., Democracy and Civil Society (London and
New York: Verso, 1988); and Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).
On the rise of the Habsburg Monarchy
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see R. J.
Evans, The Making of theHabsburg Monarchy, 1550-1700

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979);
Robert A. Kann, A History of theHabsburg Empire, 1526?1918
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, and
London: University of California Press, 1974); Karl Vocelka, Glanz und Untergang der h?fischen
Welt. Repr?sentation, Reform und Reaktion in habsburgischenVielv?lkerstaat (Vienna: Ueberreuter,
2001); and Thomas Winkelbauer,
St?ndefreiheitund F?rstenmacht.L?nder und Untertanen desHauses
Habsburgs im konfessionalleZeitalter, 2 vols. (Vienna: Ueberreuter, 2003).
GARY B. COHEN
246
centralization effortsfrom the seventeenth century onward combined theAlpine

and Bohemian crown lands and eventually what had been southern Poland
under a strong imperial authority centered inVienna.10 After 1526 theAustrian
Habsburg sovereignswere also kings of Hungary, but the lands of the crown of
St. Stephen escaped much of the centralizing effortsfromVienna.
In Hungary,
Croatia, and Transylvania, too, though, the authority of the absolutist sovereign
grew over time at the expense of the diets and the county congregations. Even
with
the rise of a centralized, absolutist Habsburg
state, though, the landed
nobility in each historic crown land continued to enjoy important privileges

grounded
in surviving older laws and institutions. Enlightened
reformsduring the late eighteenth century weakened
absolutist
the diets of the various
crown lands and Hungary's county assemblies, and the crown authorities also
began to rationalize and modernize administration, law, public education, and
economic regulation, encouraging the beginnings of industrialization.
During thenineteenth century economic development, urbanization, and the
growth of the state itselfsparked the development ofmodern middle-class and
eventually working-class society and with that the firstinitiatives toward con
structingmodern civil society.By the late 1830s and 1840s, as repressive abso
lutistgovernment graduallywaned, themiddle and lower classes in various parts
of themonarchy began to develop voluntary associations aswell as literaryand
journalistic activity.11This nascent public life provided the early nationalist
10On the development of Habsburg absolutism, see Derek Beales, Joseph II (Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Timothy C. W Blanning, Joseph II (London and
New York: Longman, 1994) ;Charles W
2nd ed. (Cam
Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618-1815,
bridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Oswald Redlich, Weltmacht des Barock.
?sterreich in derZeit Kaiser Leopolds I, 4th ed. (Vienna: R. M. Rohrer, 1961); Franz A. J. Szabo,
Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism, 1753?80
(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1994); Vocelka, Glanz und Untergang; andWinkelbauer,
St?ndefreiheitund F?rstenmacht.
On the beginnings of associational life and civil society in the early and mid-nineteenth century,
see in English, for example, Hugh L. Agnew, Origins of theCzech National Renascence (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), passim; George Barany, Stephen Sz?chenyi and theAwakening
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), passim;
ofHungarian Nationalism, 1791-1841
JohnW Boyer, Political Radicalism inLate Imperial Vienna: Origins of theChristian Social Movement,
1848-1897
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 1-10, 122-132; Gary B. Cohen, The
rev. second ed. (W Lafayette, IN:
Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague, 1861-1914,
Purdue University Press, 2006), 18?56; Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics,
Social Experience, and National Identity in theAustrian Empire, 1848?1914
(Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan
Press, 1996), 11-164; Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002),
History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948
15-47; Rita A. Krueger, "Mediating Progress in the Provinces: Central Authority, Local Elites,
and Moravia," Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 49-80;
and Agrarian Societies in Bohemia
Robert Nemes, "Associations and Civil Society inReform-Era Hungary," Austrian History Yearbook
32 (2001): 25-45; Nemes, The Once and Future Budapest (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University
Press, 2005), 33-106, passim; Alex Drace-Francis, "Cultural Currents and Political Choices: Roma
nian Intellectuals in the Banat to 1848," Austrian History Yearbook 36 (2005): 65-93; and Zsuzsanna
T?r?k, "The Friends of Progress: Learned Societies and the Public Sphere in the Transylvanian
Reform
Era," Austrian History Yearbook 36 (2005): 94-120.

intellectuals and professionalswith platforms to begin tomobilize supporters, at
firstmostly in cities and larger towns. In the 1840s that emerging civil society
produced demands for liberal and eventually also radical democratic reforms
of government. In several crown lands, the urban middle and lower middle
classeswere joined by segments of the landed nobilitywho also wanted liberal
economic reforms to aid furtheragricultural and industrial development and
constitutional changes toweaken the central bureaucracy.While
ary effortsof 1848-49
the revolution
to liberalize government largely failed, the Habsburg
imperial authoritieswere forced to confirm the final emancipation of the peas

antry, renovate state administration, and then in the late 1850s liberalize eco
nomic regulations in general. After military defeat in northern Italy and near
state bankruptcy at the end of the 1850s, Emperor Francis Joseph (ruled
1848-1916)
had to bow
to renewed demands from segments of the great
landowners and the urban middle
classes for constitutional government and
freedom of speech, press, and association.

Civil society, including nationalist groups, already showed signs of
reinvigoration in the late 1850s; and it gave voice to the demands to liberalize
government. The constitutional reforms after 1860, in turn, greatly stimulated
the furtherdevelopment of civil society. After several years of constitutional
improvisation and the Austro-Prussian War, Francis Joseph in the famous
1867 compromise sanctioned two constitutions, one for the Kingdom
of
Hungary, including Transylvania and Croatia, with a centralized parliament

and
cabinet
Carpathian,
in Budapest, and the second for the Alpine, Bohemian,

and Adriatic crown lands gathered together under a separate
parliament and cabinet of ministers inVienna. Both halves of themonarchy

soon approved legislation to grant civil equality to the formerlydisadvantaged
religious minorities and recognized at least formally the equal linguistic and
cultural rights of citizens of all major nationalities, defined primarily on the
basis of language.12
Representative institutions and a vibrant civic life of political parties and
interestgroups enjoyed strong development throughout theHabsburg Monar
chy during the half century after 1867. At firstduring the 1860s, parties of
notables, similar to those common in the German states and France, domi
nated the representative bodies, basing themselves on systems of limited
suffrage and local associational networks and habits of social deference.
On theAustro-H?ngarian
compromise of 1867 and the constitutional arrangements in the two
halves of themonarchy, see Peter Berger, ed., Der ?sterreichisch-ungarischeAusgleich von 1867. Vor
geschichte and Wirkungen (Vienna: Herold, 1967); L'udovit Holotik, ed., Der ?sterreichisch-ungarische
1971); Robert
Ausgleich 1867 (Bratislava: Verlag der Slowakischen Akademie derWissenschaften,
A. Kann, Das Nationalit?tenproblem derHabsburgermonarchie, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Graz and Cologne:
1964); and Gerald Stourzh, Die GleichberechtigungderNationalit?ten in der Verfassungund Ver
(Vienna: Verlag der ?sterreichischen Akademie derWissenschaften,
waltung ?sterreichs 1848-1918
1985).
B?hlau,
GARY B. COHEN
248
The
firstnationalist political formations emerged in various crown lands as
parties of local and regional notables committed in themain
to the cause of
constitutional
reform.13
Conventional nationalist historical narratives saw littleneed for comparisons
between the rise of theirown nationalistmovements and others, but such com
parisons can help us understand better the dynamics of each movement's devel
opment and what was specific to each.14 Czech, German, and Italian nationalist
political activity in theAustrian halfof theHabsburg Monarchy
initiallytook the
form of classic central European liberal nationalistmovements, based largely in

urban social networks of voluntary associations led by members of the pro
fessional and entrepreneurialmiddle classes, but also drawing on alliances with
parts of the local landowning elites.The liberalparties of notables in theAustrian
half of themonarchy established strong foundations at the local and regional
levels by taking advantage of the considerable autonomy granted to communal
councils and the provincial diets. The Slovene-, Ukrainian-, Slovak-, and
Romanian-speaking populations, which resided largely inmore slowly develop
ing and still stronglyagrarian regions, developed nationalist political formations
somewhat later than the Czech-, German-, and Italian-speaking populations.
The national movements in the economically less developed regions had
more
predominantly lower middle-class and peasant farmer constituencies

with larger leadership roles for local clergy and schoolteachers. It should not
be forgotten, though, that even with a limited suffrageand a stratified,curial
electoral system,Slovene national interests,for instance, alreadywon amajority
See Boyer, Political Radicalism, 1-39; Cohen, Politics ofEthnic Survival, 41-56; Judson, Exclusive
Revolutionaries, 69?116; King, Budweisers, 15?48; Lukas Fasora and Pavel Kladiva, "Obecni samo
spr?va a lok?ln? elity v ceskych zemich 1850?1918. Koncept a d?lc? vysledky vyzkumu" [Communal
Self-Government and Local Elites in the Bohemian Lands, 1850-1918:
Sketch and Partial Results],
Lukas Fasora, "Socialni a profesni struktura brn?nsk?
Cesky casopis historicky102 (2004): 796?827;
komunaln? reprezentace v letech 1851-1904"
[Social and Professional Structure of the Brno Com
munal Representatives,
1851-1904], Cesky casopis historicky103 (2005): 354-81; Ale?a Simunkov?,
inNineteenth-century Prague,"
"B?hmische Skizzen: Reflections on Social Space and Nationhood
Nationalities Papers 30 (2002): 335-50; Gerald Sprengnagel, "Nationale Kultur und die Selbsterschaf
1848-1864," ?sterreicische Zeit
fung des B?rgertums. Am Beispiel der Stadt Prost?jov inM?hren,
and Otto Urban, Cesk? spolecnost 1848-1918
schriftf?rGeschichtswissenschaften10 (1999): 260-91;
[Czech Society, 1848-1918],
(Prague: Svoboda, 1982), 123-83.
14Robert A. Kann, particularly inDas Nationalit?tenproblem derHabsburgermonarchie,was unique
among North American and Austrian historians of the monarchy of his generation in examining
all the national movements together, but he did not attempt any structural analysis or comparison
In the next generation, the Czech historian Miroslav
of the nationalist political movements.
Hroch was unique in central Europe in drawing systematic comparisons of the national revivals
and the nationalist political movements. See Hroch, Die Vork?mpferder nationalen Bewegung bei den
et Historia Monographia
kleinen V?lkern Europas. Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philosopohica
24
(Prague: Universita Karlova, 1968) [English transi., Social Preconditions ofNational Revival inEurope:
A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European
Nations (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985]; and Hroch, Obrozem
of Small European
malych evropskych n?rod?. I. N?rody severn? a vychodni Evropy [The Revival
Nations,
I: The Nations
of Northern
and Eastern Europe]
(Prague: Universita Karlova,
1971).

in theCarniolan diet in 1867.15 In contrast, the stronggrip on theGalician diet
of Polish landowners and lateralso Polish urbanmiddle-class interestslong blocked
the political advance of theRuthenian nationalist interests.The limited suffrage
systems forHungary's county congregations and parliament prevented Slovak,
than small
and Romanian
nationalists from electing more
Ruthenian,
numbers of representativeseach at any one time throughout the dualist era.
During themiddle thirdof thenineteenth century, the lessernobility played a
strong role as founders and carriers of nationalist politics among the Polish-,
Magyar-, and Croatian-speaking populations within the monarchy. These
nationalists, too, became committed to constitutional reforms, though often
with a more conservative, federalistbent. In the 1840s and then increasingly
after 1860, the reforming nationalist nobility was joined by growing numbers
of urban-based professionals, public and private officials, and entrepreneurs,
who gradually became more prominent in Polish,Magyar, and Croatian nation
alist politics during the last decades of the century.16The governmental auton
omy thatFrancis Joseph granted toHungary in 1867 and de facto toGalicia as
empowered conservative and moderate nationalist
landowning, bureaucratic, and professional interestsin each of those territories.
well after the mid-1860s
The Nagodba, the agreement worked out between theHungarian government

and the Croatian diet in 1868, nominally reserved significant autonomous
powers to that diet, the Sabor, while recognizing the incorporation of Croatia
in a now more unitaryHungarian state.
During the late 1860s and 1870s German liberals in theAustrian crown lands
andMagyar liberal nationalists in theKingdom ofHungary both used systemsof
limited suffrageand gerrymandering of the parliamentary voting districts to
bolster the strengthof their propertied and educated constituents and protect
theirown partisan interests. Itmust be remembered, though, that civil society
extended well beyond the limits of the enfranchised electorate. With the
advance of free capitalist agriculture and industryafter the 1850s, continuing
urbanization, and the growth of public education, increasing numbers of the
petty bourgeoisie and working classes participated in aspects of civil society.
Mass political movements flowered after themid-1880s, picking up in society
where the parties of notables left off, often initiallyusing many of the same
basic organizational methods while attacking the elitist liberal and conservative
partieswith harsh populist rhetoric.17Urban petty bourgeoisie, peasant farmers,
III. Die V?lker des

15SeeJanko Pleterski, "Die Slowenen," inDie Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918,
Reiches, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna: Verlag der ?sterreichischen Akademie
derWissenschaften,
1980), pt. 1, 807.
overviews of the formation of all the nationalist
For generally sound English-language
movements, see Sugar and Lederer, eds., Nationalism inEastern Europe.
On the rise of mass politics out of the older parties of notables, see Boyer, Political Radicalism,
passim; and Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries, 193-266.
250
GARY B. COHEN
industrial labor, and eventually also farm laborerswere attracted to the mass
political movements. Suffrage reform for the Austrian crown lands in 1882
gave voting rights to wider segments of the lower middle classes. Another
reform in 1897 added a new group of deputies to the Austrian chamber of
deputies elected by universal male suffrage.After 1907, thewhole chamber of
deputies was elected by universal, direct, and equal male suffrage.To the end
of the monarchy, however, the electoral systems formost of the provincial
diets and communal councils in theAustrian crown lands remained restricted
and stratified.InHungary, the county congregations and theparliament retained
strictlylimited suffragesystemsup to 1918, surviving even the emperor's threat
in 1906 to initiate a law establishing universal male suffragefor the lower house
of parliament. Nonetheless, mass political formations, including social demo
crats, Christian socials, agrarians, and various non-Magyar nationalist parties
arose inHungary aswell after the late 1880s.18
The governmental system that developed in the Habsburg Monarchy after
the 1860s was verymuch a hybrid. It preserved considerable authority for the
crown and for the central bureaucracy in each half of the realm along with
elaborate privileges for various elite groups and historic institutions such as
the Catholic Church and the diets of each crown land. Yet the system also
guaranteed a wide sphere of individual civil liberties and permitted increasing
engagement of societal interests in public debate and agitation for the creation
of new laws, policies, and government services. JohnW Boyer has termed
the arrangements for the Austrian half of the monarchy a "mixed
constitutional-bureaucratic political system," and this applies in general
terms to Hungary as well.19
There is no denying the development of a vigorous political press and highly
diverse public political action throughout themonarchy during thehalf century
after the 1860s, but political freedomswere not absolute. Article 13 of the con
stitutional laws adopted inDecember 1867 for theAustrian half included a full
listingof individual civil rights,comparable to contemporary liberal legislation
On the development ofmass politics in the two halves of themonarchy, see the overviews for
the Austrian half by Robin Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy from Enlightenment toEclipse (New York:
St. Martin's, 2001), 257-309,
336-56; Helmut Rumpier, ?sterreichische Geschichte, 1804-1914.
Eine Chance f?r Mitteleuropa. B?rgerliche Emanzipation und Staatsverfall in derHabsburgermonarchie
and Ernst Hanisch, ?sterreichische Geschichte,

549-60;
(Vienna: Ueberreuter,
1997), 486-523,
1890?1990.
Der lange Schatten des Staates. ?sterreichische Gesellschaftsgeschichte im 20. Jahrhundert
and forHungary, Andrew C. Janos, The Politics ofBackward
(Vienna: Ueberreuter, 1994), 209-41;
ness inHungary, 1825-1945
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), 149-89; J?rg
K. Hoensch, A History ofModern Hungary, 1867-1986
(London and New York: Longman,
and Peter
1988); Ervin Paml?nyi, ed., Geschichte Ungarns (Budapest: Corvina,
1971), 424?79;
Sugar and P?ter Han?k, eds., A History ofHungary (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana Univer
sity Press, 1990), 267-91.
JohnW Boyer, "Freud, Marriage, and Late Viennese Liberalism: A Commentary from 1905,"
Journal ofModern History 50 (1978): 73.

elsewhere in Europe.20 The constitutional laws adopted inHungary after 1867
rested on the model of the 1848 reform legislation, but in contrast to the
Austrian half, they defined civil rights in broad, general terms. L'aszlo Peter,
George Barany, and other scholars have argued that civil rights in Hungary
were based not so much in private or penal law but in the sovereign legal au
thorityof the state itself.The Hungarian state structure, as Peter views it,was
based on autocratic legal presumptions thatpostulated an overriding responsibil
ity to assure law and order through sustained surveillance of society.21Although
government in Hungary, like that in theAustrian crown lands, followed the
principles of a Rechtsstaat after the late eighteenth century, the basing of civil
rights in the powers and obligations of the state allowed formore far-reaching
regulation and restrictionof individual rights than in theAustrian crown lands.
In both halves of themonarchy after1867, in fact,government limited freedom
of assembly,association, and thepress.The development of civil rightsneeds more
systematichistorical research,but therewas a clear tensionbetween a broad public
and official recognition of theprinciplesof freedom of the press, association, and
of governmental regulation
assembly inboth Austria andHungary and thepractices
and interventionwhen officials felt threatened by subversive forces. Libel and
sedition laws hemmed in thepress, and both theAustrian and Hungarian admin
istrationsharassed, restricted, and at times prohibited anarchist, revolutionary
22
socialist, and some of the most radical nationalist groups. To combat the
social democratic movement, theAustrian government inJune 1886 had thepar
liament pass repressivemeasures against "anarchist agitation,"modeled afterGer
many's anti-socialist laws.The Hungarian government similarlyrestrictedsocialist
activity in the late 1870s and 1880s, arresting leaders and banning meetings and
publications.23 By late December 1888, though, Austrian social democrats
were able to convene inHainfeld the foundingmeeting of theAustrian Social
Democratic Workers Party. In late 1889 and 1890 Hungarian socialistsworked
to transformthe small General Workers' Party of Hungary into theHungarian
Social Democratic Party and convened itsfirstcongress in earlyDecember 1890.
On Austrian constitutional and legal development, see the syntheses byWerner Ogris, "Die
inCisleithanien, 1848-1918,"
inDie Habsburgermonarchie, 1848-1918,
II. Ver
Rechtsentwicklung
and Peter Urbanitsch
waltung und Rechtswesen, ed. Adam Wandruszka
(Vienna: Verlag der ?ster
and Wilhelm
reichischen Akademie
"Die
der Wissenschaften,
Brauneder,
1975), 538-662;
VII.
1848-1918,"
Verfassungsentwicklung in ?sterreich
and Peter Urbanitsch

(Vienna: Verlag der
Verfassung und Parlamentarismus, ed. Helmut Rumpier
?sterreichischen Akademie derWissenschaften, 2000), pt.l, 69-237.
L?szlo P?ter, "Die Verfassungsentwicklung inUngarn," inDie Habsburgermonarchie, 1848?1918,
and Urbanitsch, pt. 1, 372-78;
and George Barany, "Ungarns Verwaltung:
VII, ed. Wandruszka
1848-1918,"
II, ed.Wandruszka and Urbanitsch, 417-18.
On restrictions of civil liberties after 1867, see forHungary, Barany, "Ungarns Verwaltung,"
and for theAustrian half of themonarchy, Ogris, "Die Rechtsentwicklung
417-18;
nien, 569-571.
23See Paml?nyi, ed., Die Geschichte Ungarns, 402-04, 438-40.
in Cisleitha
252
GARY B. COHEN
Overall, theAustrian government proved to be fairlytolerantof awide spec

trumof political activity,particularly after the early 1890s,while theHungarian
government generally treatedmore harshlywhat itviewed as subversive groups.
Given the determination of the rulingMagyar nationalist forces after the early
1870s to create aMagyar nation-state inHungary, authorities there tended to
be more openly repressive toward nationalist political activity among the non
Magyar groups thanwas theAustrian officialdom. Both theAustrian and Hun
garian state bureaucracies reserved broad powers of surveillance by requiring
registrationof voluntary associations and having police agents attend political
meetings, but therewere similar controls inmuch of Germany, for instance,
during this era. The Austrian and Hungarian interior ministries could also
invoke emergency powers to deal with civil unrest and natural disasters.24
Such occasions arose, but one should not exaggerate their number. For the
most part, the police authorities in both halves of themonarchy at the end of
the century operated within the frameworkof settledpublic law and regulations.
theAustrian and Hungarian governments imposed restrictionson civil
When
rights and combated groups that they considered threatening to law and
order, they typicallydid so under the cover of law and established ordinances
and with judicial due process.25
By European standardsof the era, theAustrian half of theHabsburg Monar
chy after the 1860s enjoyed broad freedom of speech, the press, association, and
assembly and widely respected guarantees of legal process. Popular expectations
about guarantees of justice were sufficientlyhigh by the 1880s and 1890s that
blatant governmental abuse of the judicial system was an infrequent and
loudly protested phenomenon. When state officialsdid pervert justice as they
did, for example, in theOmladina conspiracy trials in Prague during the early
1890s, they faced loud condemnation in newspapers and legislative chambers.26
After relaxing the anti-socialistmeasures in the late 1880s, theAustrian govern
ment made no further efforts to outlaw opposition political forces outright.
Short of creating civil unrest, engaging in criminal action, or threatening the
discipline of the military and police forces, the various mass-based parties
were free to develop opposition politics. The government typicallydealt with
On the legal basis for declaring a state of emergency, see for theAustrian crown lands, Ludwig
Spiegel, "Ausnahmszustand," in ?sterreichisches Staatsw?rterbuch,2nd ed. rev., ed. Ernst Mischler and
and Brauneder, "Die Verfassungsentwicklung in
JosefUlbrich, 4 vols. (Vienna, 1905), 1: 370-73;
inUngarn,"
?sterreich
1848-1918,"
190; and forHungary, P?ter, "Die Verfassungsentwicklung
487-92.
P?ter, in "Die Verfassungsentwicklung inUngarn," 373-81.
6On the Omladina
trials, see Karen Johnson Freeze, "The Young Progressives: The Czech
Student Movement"
(Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1974); Bruce M. Garver, The Young
Czech Party, 178-189; Urban, Cesk? spolecnost 1848-1918,
431-33; Jiri Pernes, Spiklenci protijeho
velicenstvu: historie tzv. spiknutiOmladiny v Cech?ch [Conspirators against His Majesty: A History of
the So-Called Omladina Conspiracy in Bohemia]
(Brno: Barrister & Principal, 1992).

opposition groups, including radical nationalists and the social democrats, by
political means, propagandizing against them, and trying to strengthen their
opponents but also at times by negotiating and offeringconcessions.
Hungary's central government exercisedmuch greater power to restrictindi
vidual liberties and political opposition than did itsAustrian counterpart, and
Hungarian
law offered fewermechanisms for legal recourse. The Hungarian

government authorities tended toview nationalist opponents toMagyar national
interests as opposition to theHungarian state itselfand invoked ever tighter
restrictionson political expression, popular political agitation, the authority of
the county congregations, and even parliament itselfin order tomaintain thepo
litical statusquo. For most of the era after1867 theHungarian interiorministry
and the administrative officials it sent to the counties used their authority to
restrain, harass, and occasionally jail leaders of the non-Magyar nationalist
formations and of the radical lower-class movements that they found most
obnoxious. All thiswas done, though, under the cover of laws and ministerial
decrees; and the Hungarian
government generally recognized political and

legal limits to themeasures itused against political opposition.
The failureof some of theHungarian government's cruder effortsto control
the political situation in Croatia between 1907 and 1913 shows that the resis
tance of civil society and the judicial system limited how far the government's
executive authority reached. Baron Pavao Rauch, the tough-minded governor
appointed by theWekerle ministry in 1908, responded to the risingagitation for
reform in Croatia by a new Serb-Croat coalition with repeated dissolutions of
the Sabor and rule by decree. The government mounted a mass trial in
Zagreb in 1909 of some fiftySerbs and Croats on trumped-up charges of a trea
sonous conspiracy to join Bosnia and Croatia with theKingdom of Serbia. The
Zagreb trial,however, soon backfired: newspapers throughout themonarchy
and abroad denounced the shoddy evidence and obvious breaches of justice,
and the convicted defendants were ultimately exonerated by a higher court.
In the meantime, the Austrian historian Heinrich Friedjung published an
article inVienna's Neue Freie Presse inMarch 1909, apparently based on docu
ments from the Austro-Hungarian foreign ministry, in which he claimed a
conspiracy of Serb and Croat politicians in Croatia with the Serbian govern
ment. Sued for libel, Friedjung had to admit the fraudulence of some of his
27
assertions. Now, both the j'oint foreign ministry and the Hungarian
27On the Zagreb trial and the Friedjung affair see the brief treatments inArthur J.May, The Haps
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), 383-85; Barbara and
burg
Monarchy, 1867-1914
Charles Jelavich, The Establishment of theBalkan National States, 1804-1920
(Seattle and London:
University ofWashington Press, 1977), 257-58; Janko Pleterski, "The Southern Slav Question,"
in The Last Years ofAustria-Hungary :A Multi-National Experiment inEarly Twentieth-CenturyEurope,
ed. Mark Cornwall, rev. ed. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), 131; and Hugh and Chris
topher Seton-Watson, The Making of aNew Europe: R. W. Seton-Watson and theLast Years ofAustria
Hungary
(London: Methuen,
1981), 68-78.
254
GARY B. COHEN
government faced public disgust for the apparently crude attempts to discredit
and repress dissident politicians in Croatia. The Hungarian government again
suspended theSabor in 1911 and 1912 and tried to ruleCroatia with royalcom
nissioners, but after IstvanTisza became speaker of theHungarian parliament in
May 1912 and thenprime minister inJune 1913, he saw the necessity of amore
conciliatory, constitutional approach in Croatia.28
Rising Popular Political Engagement and theGrowth

of theNational Movements
The emperor and appointed government officials retainedmuch authority in
domestic as well as foreign affairs,and theHungarian ruling elites stubbornly
resistedany realmoves toward a democratic suffrage,but representativegovern
ment and popular political engagement advanced significantlyin both halves of
themonarchy after the 1860s. The two parliaments, the elected communal
councils and provincial diets in theAustrian lands, and the county assemblies
in Hungary gave a direct voice in lawmaking and the formation of public
policy to thosewho enjoyed voting rights.Broader segments of thepopulation,
however, made their views and interestsknown throughmeetings, lobbying,
demonstrations, and the press.
The development of representative institutions,political parties, and interest
groups and the state officials' growing responsiveness to them resulted in a
gradual, albeit uneven empowerment of various segments of society. John
W Boyer has argued that the German liberal reformers of the 1860s did
much more to liberalize the state structure in theAustrian half of themonarchy
than older historicalwriting typicallyrecognized. In Boyer's reading, the consti
tutional reformsof the 1860s gave theAustrian propertied elements, particularly
the privileged German Burgertumand the great landowners, along with the state
bureaucracy much increased power at the cost of the emperor. Despite the fed
eralist claims of many conservative noblemen and Czech, Polish, and Croatian
nationalists, ultimate authority still resided with
the crown and the central
foreachhalfof themonarchy.29
ministries
The twoparliaments
had substantial
legislative authority, but the Austrian and Hungarian ministries conducted
See Hodimir Sirotkovic, "Die Verwaltung imK?nigreich Kroatien-Slawonien,
in
1848-1918,"
Die Habsburgermonarchie, 1848-1918,
and Gabor
VII, ed. Rumpier and Urbanitsch, pt. 2, 497-98;
Vermes, Istv?n Tisza: The Liberal Vision and Conservative Statecraftof aMagyar Nationalist (Boulder and
New
York: East European Monographs/Columbia

University Press, 1985), 196-97.
in Central Europe around 1900: A
29See JohnW Boyer, "Religion and Political Development
View from Vienna," Austrian History Yearbook 25 (1994): 32?34; and Theo ?linger, "Zur Entste
des ?sterreichischen F?deralismus," inAus
hung, Begr?ndung und zu Entwicklungsm?glichkeiten
?sterreichs Rechtsleben inGeschichte und Gegenwart. Festschrift
f?r Ernst C Hellbling zum 80. Geburtstag,
ed. Ernst Carl Hellbling
(Berlin: Dunker & Humblot,
1981), 314-15.

much governmental business by means of ministerial decrees and ordinances,
endorsed where needed by the sovereign.
In the Austrian half of the monarchy the role and influence of societal
interests in public policy making grew substantially during the last decades
of the century. Representatives of the propertied and educated found
avenues into government decision making and administration thanks to the
considerable autonomy vis-a-vis the central state authorities granted to
the municipal and communal councils by the Stadion law of 1849 and the
Reichsgemeindegesetzof 1862 and to the provincial diets and their executive
committees by the various constitutional reforms of the 1860s.30 In the
Austrian crown lands between the 1860s and the 1890s, conservative and
liberal nationalist political forces, based largely in propertied and educated
social elements, established bastions of power and influence in communal
councils, in the provincial diets and their executive committees, and in
the chamber of deputies of the Austrian parliament. The German liberals
in the Alpine
and Bohemian
lands and the conservative Polish forces in
Galicia
began with
considerable
Czech
and Young
Czech
Bohemia
and Moravia
advantages in the 1860s, but the Old

parties carved out important positions in
during the 1870s and 1880s as did Slovene
liberal
and Catholic nationalist forces in Carniola after the late 1860s.

In Hungary theMagyar propertied and bureaucratic elites' resistance to suf
frage reform and determined government efforts to centralize state adminis
tration impeded the penetration of societal interests into policy making
during thewhole dualist era, but the government could not silence the rising
voices of society. In many ways, theKingdom of Hungary functioned more
like a constitutional monarchy with a unitary administration and strong
cabinet based on a parliamentarymajority than did theAustrian half.Restricted
voting rightsand gerrymandered districtshelped to assure theHungarian Liberal
Party a safemajority in the parliament from themid-1870s through the 1890s,
and theLiberal Partyministers carefullymanaged legislativebusiness. Successive
Hungarian governments worked to take autonomous powers away from the
counties and to impose on them administrators appointed by the interior
ministry.The Hungarian state still relied heavily on the counties' administrative
personnel to execute government policies, and the numbers of the latter in the
late nineteenth century considerably exceeded
the ministerial employees.31
^oyer, "Freud, Marriage, and Late Viennese Liberalism," 73. Austrian historian Ernst Hanisch
describes the state as at once "a dynastic, bureaucratic, authoritarian state" (dynastischer,b?rokratischer
Obrigkeitsstaat) and a liberal state of law (Rechtsstaat);Hanisch, ?sterreichischeGeschichte, 1890?1990,
209-10.
On the centralization of domestic administration in Hungary, see Barany, "Ungarns Verwal

and P?ter, "Die Verfassungsentwicklung inUngarn," 476-503,
537-40. On the
tung," 409-46;
numbers ofministerial and county officials, see Janos, Politics ofBackwardness, 94.
GARY B. COHEN
256
Hungarian government at all levels, however, was hardly immune to increasing

pressures during the last decades of the century from political movements and
interestgroups based in society.
thematuring of an industrialmarket economy and advancing urbani
With
zation after the 1880s, the responsibilitiesof theAustrian and Hungarian central
governments grew steadily. In theAustrian crown lands, the public services pro
vided bymunicipalities and the individual lands also grew at a rapid pace, ranging
fromprimary education, sanitation, and local police to roads, highways, public
utilities, public health, and industrial and housing regulation. In theAustrian
crown landsmany of those new public serviceswere the responsibilityof the
elected members of the provincial diets and of the communal councils, working
within regulatory schemes established by the ministries in Vienna
or by the
provincial governors responsible to the interiorministry.Vigorous public debate

regarding those services demonstrated that theywere the subject of considerable
public interest. Indeed, recent research on theAustrian crown lands has shown
that after the 1880s public administration at all levels became subject to
complex political negotiation involving competing local political organizations
and interest groups, elected local representatives, and various government
officesand agencies.32 By around 1900, the growing responsibilitiesof the auto
nomous communal and provincial administrationswere causing serious friction
between the elected communal councils and provincial diets on the one hand
and theAustrian ministerial authorities on the other.Ministerial officialscom
plained frequentlyabout the extent of communal and provincial autonomy.33 In
a famous study published in 1904, Austrian minister-president Ernest von
Koerber called in vain for the reduction of the authority of the communal
bodies.
34
On the growing responsibilities of theAustrian communal and crown land governments and the
rising engagement of societally based political and social groups in their affairs, see JohnW Boyer,
Culture and Political Crisis inVienna: Christian Socialism inPower, 1897-1918
(Chicago and London:
inCentral
University of Chicago Press, 1995), passim; Boyer, "Religion and Political Development
in ?sterreich
31-36; Brauneder, "Die Verfassungsentwicklung
204-05;
1848-1918,"
Giustino, Tearing Down Prague's Jewish Town: Ghetto Clearance and theLegacy ofMiddle
Class Ethnic Politics around 1900 (Boulder and New York: East European Monographs/Columbia
in
des Gesundheitswesens
University Press, 2003), passim; Margarete Grandner, "Regelungen
im 19. Jahrhundert," Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte derNeuzeit 4 (2004): 79-99;
?sterreich
Europe,"
Cathleen
King, Budweisers, 48-113, passim; and Gary B. Cohen, Education andMiddle-Class Society in Imperial
Austria (W Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996), 55-126, passim.
See, as examples, Erich Graf Kielmansegg, Kaiserhaus, Staatsm?nner und Politiker (Vienna: Verlag
furGeschichte und Politik, 1966), 8-9, 205-06;

and Enqu?te derKommission zur F?rderung der Ver
waltungsreformveranstaltetin derZeit vom 21. Oktober bis 9. November 1912 (Vienna: K. u. K. Hof- und
Staatsdruckerei, 1913), 5-6, 161. On provincial and local government in theAustrian lands during
the late nineteenth century, see Ernst C. Hellbling, "Die Landesverwaltung inCisleithanien,"and Jiri
"Die Lokalverwaltung in Cisleithanien," inDie Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918,

II, ed.
Klabouch,
Wandruszka
and Urbanitsch, 190-269, 270-305.
On Koerber's ideas for reform, see Alfred Ableitinger, Ernest von Koerber und das Verfassungs
1973); and Fredrik Lindstr?m, "Ernest von Koerber and
problem imJahre 1900 (Vienna: B?hlau,

Inmany areas of domestic policy after the 1880s the pressures of civil society
pushed up stronglyfrombelow while ministerial officials tried tomaintain what
they could of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century traditions of
powerful
top-down state administration. Increasingly, the Austrian state

bureaucracy had to compromise inmatters of domestic policy with representa
tives of political parties and interest groups, including nationalist parties and
interestgroups among many others.35Even in policy areaswhere theAustrian
ministries continued to have broad authority, such as public education and
social welfare, the officials after the late 1880s often had to bow to pressures
from societal interestsand the autonomous provincial and communal councils
and to accept innovations demanded by popular interestgroups and political
parties. At the end of the century books, journals, and newspapers presented
a rich flowering of political and social criticism of all stripes in all themajor
languages of the Austrian crown lands.36Nationalist politicians and organi
zations were deeply engaged inmost of these debates, but theywere only part
of a broader trendof increasing impingement by civil society on thework of
government.
Public education, always of vital interest to nationalist politicians, offered

many instances of this.The Austrian Ministry of Religion and Instruction, for
instance, tried repeatedly to restrict the growth of Gymnasium and Realschule
enrollments and to limit the founding of new secondary schools; but the
theAustrian State Idea: A Reinterpretation of theKoerber Plan (1900-1904)," Austrian History Year
book 35 (2004): 143-184.
See Boyer, Culture and Political Crisis, passim; Cohen, Education andMiddle-Class Society,67-75,
and Hans Peter Hye, Das politische System in derHabsburgermonarchie (Prague: Karolinum,
95-126;
1998), 160-77.
36For soundings in these rich and varied debates, seeWilliam Johnston, The Austrian Mind: An
Intellectual and Social History, 1848?1938

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1972); Jacques Le Rider, Modernity and Crises of Identity:Culture and Society in Fin-de-Si?cle
Vienna (New York: Continuum,
1993); Boyer, "Freud, Marriage, and Late Viennese Liberalism,"
72-102; Cohen, Education andMiddle-Class Society, 119-26; Margarete Grandner, "Conservative
Social Politics in Austria, 1880-1890," Austrian History Yearbook 27 (1996): 77-107; Katherine
Feminists and Nationalism
in the Late Habsburg Monarchy:
"Czech
'The First in
David,
Austria,'" Journal ofWomen's History 3, no. 2 (1991): 26-45; Katherine David-Fox,
"Prague
Slavic Review 59, no. 4

Prague-Berlin: The Hidden Geography of Czech Modernism,"
"The 1890s Generation: Modernism
and National Identity
(2000): 735-760; Katherine David-Fox,
in Czech Culture, 1890-1900"
(Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1996); Freeze, "The Young Progres
and the
sives"; T. Mills Kelly, "Feminism, Pragmatism, or Both? Czech Radical Nationalism
Woman Question,
1898-1914," Nationalities Papers 30 (2002): 537-52; Derek Sayer, The Coasts
Vienna,
Scott
of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 154-63;
Spector, Prague Territories:National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka's Fin de Si?cle
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000); LarryWolff, "Dynastic Conserva
tism and Poetic Violence
in Fin-de-Si?cle Cracow: The Habsburg Matrix of Polish Modernism,"
American Historical Review 106 (2003): 735-764;
and Nathaniel D. Wood,
"Becoming a 'Great
City': Metropolitan
Imaginations and Apprehensions
Austrian History Yearbook 33 (2002): 105-130.
in Cracow's
Popular
Press,
1900-1914,"
258
GARY B. COHEN
provincial diets and communal councils could simply start new secondary
schools at theirown expense, providing therebypolitical trophies fornationalist
interestswhile they hoped to get ministerial funding later.Ministerial officials
long resisted the granting of equal opportunities towomen in secondary and
higher education and the introduction of new curricular options for the state
gymnasia, but afteraround 1900 the pressure for change from societal interests
was so great that theministry had to grant one concession after another on
women's education and other issues.37
InHungary, the cabinets, typicallybased on carefully cultivatedmajorities in
the Budapest parliament, took advantage of their broad freedom of action to
exercise strong central control over domestic affairs.The Liberal Party prime
ministers vested great powers in a growing ministerial bureaucracy and system
aticallyweakened the traditional authority of the county congregations. Tran
sylvaniawas fullyamalgamated into theKingdom of Hungary, and only Croatia
continued to have its own diet in Zagreb, dominated by native propertied
elements. Nonetheless, the Hungarian cabinet worked steadily through the
last decades of the century to impose tight central control over Croatia by
appointing strong-willed governors, manipulating the Sabor, passing much
legislation forCroatia in theHungarian parliament, and, as alreadymentioned,
repeatedly suspending the Sabor.38 The Hungarian cabinet gained even greater
power over the parliament in the 1890s and again after 1912 as the reorganized
Liberal Party forces, now led by Istvan Tisza, imposed tighter controls over
legislative
procedures.39
The increasing centralization of authority over Hungary and Croatia in the

Hungarian ministries limited opportunities for any broad range of societal inter
ests to participate directly in policy deliberations and governance compared to
Austria. Throughout the era after the 1870s, theHungarian government was
willing to use more openly repressivemeasures against dissident nationalist
groups and lower-class radical movements. Nonetheless, a growing range of
interestgroups and political movements arose in Hungary as well
after the late 1880s; and they found ways to exert increasing pressure on the
government. In the last fifteenyears beforeWorld War I, the rising demands
mass-based
of disaffected landowners, professionals, the urban lower-middle classes,

peasant farmers,and laboring groups, both urban and rural, forced theHungar
ian government to make at least some concessions on social and economic
See Cohen, Education andMiddle-Class Society, 108-26; and Helmut Engelbrecht, Geschichte des
?sterreichischen
Bildungswesens, Band 4. Von 1848 bis zum Ende derMonarchie (Vienna: ?sterreichischer
Bundesverlag, 1986), 30.
On theHungarian government's control of Croatia, see Barany, "Ungarns Verwaltung," 379,
im K?nigreich Kroatien und Slawonien
386, 396; Sirotkovic, "Die Verwaltung
1848-1918,"
and P?ter, "Die Verfassungsentwicklung inUngarn," 351-52.
479?98;
See P?ter, "Die Verfassungsentwicklung inUngarn," 472?77;
and Vermes, Istv?n Tisza, 86?88,
180-84.

questions and to adopt social reforms even while it frequently crushed strikes
and demonstrations and stepped up measures toMagyarize theminority nation
alities.40Hungary, too, saw a rapid growth of new public services at the end of
the century,which theministries, counties, or cities administered and which
attracted growing popular political interest.41Public debate about political
and social issues in voluntary associations, the press, and academic circles was
every bit as varied and vigorous in Hungary around 1900 as in theAustrian
crown lands. The Hungarian government officials could neither stifle nor
ignore the criticism voiced by radical democratic, Christian social, social demo
cratic, and minority nationalist groups.42
The growth of civil society and the gradually increasing responsiveness of
government agencies to the public in theHabsburg Monarchy at the end of
the nineteenth century surely represented rising democratizing pressures and
tendencies, but one cannot argue that any far-reaching democratization of
government occurred in either half of the realm.43Outright democratization
would require clear moves toward popular control over government action on
allmajor public issues, includingmore parliamentary oversight of central execu
tive authority and broader voting rights for all themajor representativebodies,
than actually arose before 1918. Rather thanmaking any excessive claims for
democratization as such, it seems better to speak of the increasing penetration
of public interests into some areas of government decision making, their
growing implicationin the functioning of parts of the state administration, and
perhaps an advancing cohabitationof public interestgroups and political parties
with the state bureaucracy-with all these tendencies significantlystronger in
theAustrian half of themonarchy than in theHungarian.
The growth of civil society and constitutional, representativegovernment in the
Habsburg Monarchy opened up considerable space for thedevelopment of a range
ofpopular politicalmovements, including thenationalist formationsamong them.
By 1900 nationalist political parties and their affiliated social, economic, and
On the political calculus of the ruling elements inHungary in the late nineteenth century, see
Janos, The Politics ofBackwardness, 84-170, passim; Paml?nyi, ed., Die Geschichte Ungarns, 379-498;
Peter Han?k, Ungarn in derDonaumonarchie. Probleme der b?rgerlichen
Umgestaltung einesVielv?lkerstaates
and Budapest: Verlag f?rGeschichte und Politik, 1983), 195-239.
(Vienna, Munich,
On developments in the city of Budapest, see the overview inZsuzsa L. Nagy, "Transformations
in the City Politics of Budapest, 1873-1941,"
in Budapest and New York: Studies inMetropolitan
ed. Thomas Bender and Carl E. Schorske (New York: Russell Sage
Transformation, 1870-1930,
Foundation, 1994), 35-54.
On various aspects of the social and political debates inHungary, see Lee Congdon, The Young
Luk?cs (Chapel Hill, NC: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1983); Mary Gluck, "The Modernist
as Primitive: The Cultural Role of Endre Ady in Fin-de-Si?cle
Hungary," Austrian History Yearbook
33 (2002): 149-62; P?ter Han?k, The Garden and the
Workshop: Essays on theCultural History ofVienna
and Budapest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 63-97, 110-134; Janos, The Politics
ofBackwardness, 167-189; and Sugar et al., eds., A History ofHungary, 284-88.
43See the comments inHanisch, ?sterreichische Geschichte, 1890-1990,
28-29, 209-12.
260
GARY B. COHEN
cultural groups had acquired strong support and influence in all parts of themon
archy.By then largepartsof thepopulation, although by no means all, had devel
oped national loyaltiesand chosen sides in the nationality contests.The nationalist
activists' pioneering cultural initiatives and effortsfor economic improvement
between the 1820s and early 1840s and their political agitation in the crisis
years of the 1840s and again after the late 1850s gradually built up bodies of fol
lowerswho accepted the nationalist arguments that their respective languages
or, for some, a combination of language, religion, and territoryof birth defined
theywere in society,determined their life chances, and provided the basis
forgroup action to shape their future.Nationalist activistsconstructed historical
narratives that postulated that their respective nationalities had always been
who
present in their home regions with shared identities based on distinct group
culture, family descent, and local rootedness. Yet throughout the nineteenth
century,nationalist leaders in centralEurope had to admit thatnational identities
were not transmitteduniversallyby birthwhen theycomplained about partsof the
population that remained nationally "indifferent"or "amphibious," bilingual (or
"utraquist" in theBohemian Lands), or perhaps even polylingual. To the end of
themonarchy and into the interwarperiod, nationalist activistsstruggled towin
the loyaltyof popular elements that often spoke several languages and were
ambivalent about ethnic and national affiliations,particularly in rural areas
inhabitants saw the nationalist political struggles of the larger cities as
remote to their livesand disruptive to established customs of social interaction.44
where
For examples of recent treatments of the creation of nationalist historical narratives as part of the
(Prague:
development of national ideologies, see Vladimir Macura, Cesky sen [The Czech Dream]
Nakl. Lidov? noviny, 1998); Macura, Znamenx zrodu. Cesk? n?rodn? obrozen?jako kulturn? typ [Birth
as a Cultural Type], 2nd expanded ed. (Prague: H & H,
Signs: The Czech National Revival
1995); Derek Sayer, The Coasts ofBohemia, 82-153; Brian A. Porter, When Nationalism Began to
Hate: ImaginingModern Politics inNineteenth-Century Poland (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000); and Nation and History: Polish Historians from theEnlightenment to theSecond World War, ed.
Peter Brock, John D
(Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto
Stanley, and Piotr J.Wr?bel
Press, 2006). On the continuing ambiguity and mutability of national loyalties in parts of the popu
lation, seeMark Cornwall, "The Struggle on the Czech-German
Language Border, 1880-1940,"
The English Historical Review 109 (1994): 914-51; Pieter M. Judson, "Frontier Germans: The Inven
um
tion of the Sprachgrenze," in Kulturelle Praktiken und die Ausbildung von Imagined Communities
1900, ed. Susan Ingram,Markus Reisenleitner, and Cornelia Szabo-Knotik

(Vienna: Turia + Kant,
the Geography of a German
85-99; Judson, "Frontiers, Islands, Forests, Stones: Mapping
in The Geography of Identity,ed. Patricia Yeager
1848-1900,"
Identity in the Habsburg Monarchy,
Press, 1996), 382-406;
(Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan
Judson, "Inventing Germans: Class,
Nationality, and Colonial Fantasy at theMargins of theHabsburg Monarchy," in "Nations, Colonies,
2001),
ed. Daniel Segal and Richard Handler, Social Analysis 33 (1993): 47-67; Judson,
in Creating theOther, ed. Nancy
in Cisleithania,
1880-1914,"
"Nationalizing Rural Landscapes
M. Wingfield
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), 127-148; King, Budweisers, passim; Robert
am
in B?hmen. Zur Problematik 'nationaler Zwischenstellungen'
Luft, "Nationale Utraquisten
Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts," inAllemands, Juifs et Tch?ques ? Prague?Deutsche, Juden und Tschechen
in Prag, 1890-1924,
ed. Maurice
God?, Jacques Le Rider, et Fran?oise Mayer
(Montpellier:
Universit? Paul-Val?ry-Montpellier
III, 1996); Tara Zahra, "Reclaiming Children for theNation:
in the Bohemian
Lands, 1900-1945,"
Germanization, National Ascription, and Democracy
and M?tropoles,"

As long ago as 1948, thehistorianA.J. P. Taylor warned that in centralEurope
simply speaking a particular language or a dialect thereof did not necessarily
45
entail a conscious loyalty to a particular larger ethnic or national grouping.
Only
in the last twenty-fiveyears, though, have historians and social scientists
gone beyond studying the political and intellectual processes of building

nationalist movements and begun to address systematicallypopular national
identification and the popular imagining of national communities in central
and east-central Europe
change.46 The
as complex processes of political, social, and cultural
founding of local and regional nationalist organizations, the
development of electoral politics, the opening of schools or classeswith alterna

tive languages of instruction, and the introduction of census questions on
mother tongue or language of everyday use were among themany changes in
public life after the middle of the nineteenth century that gave the general
populace
the occasion
to choose
sides and eventually created pressure to
affirmnational loyalties.
Nationalist campaigning forgroup cultural and political rights,including edu
cation and other public services in native languages, and government conces
sions to those demands led gradually to dividing much of public life in the
monarchy on linguistic lines and eventually politically articulated national
lines. Numerous voluntary associations and political organizations divided
sharplyalong lhnesof nationality inmany of the crown lands soon after the inau
guration of constitutional rule in the 1860s, although some charities, special
interestgroups, craft and labor organizations, and many religious institutions
remained nationally neutral for years or even decades thereafter.The consti
tutional laws for theAustrian half of themonarchy from the late 1860s recog
nized the cultural rights of individual citizens, including their language and
nationality, although not any formal political rightsof nationalities as collective
entities.47 Those legal commitments and the autonomy of communal and
Central European History 37 (2004): 501-543; and Zahra, "Your Child Belongs to theNation: Nation
in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1945,"
alization, Germanization, and Democracy
(Ph.D. diss., Uni
versity ofMichigan, Ann Arbor, 2005).
264.
45Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918,
See the critiques of the historiographical traditions on nationalism and national identity in
of East Central Europe: Ethnicism,

central and east-central Europe in King, "The Nationalization
Ethnicity, and Beyond," 112-152; King, Budweisers, 6?11; Pieter M. Judson, '"Whether Race or
Conviction
Should be the Standard': National
Identity and Liberal Politics in 19th-century
Austria," Austrian History Yearbook 22 (1991): 21-34; and Karl F. Bahm, "Beyond the Bourgeoisie:
in Nineteenth-Century
Central Europe," Austrian
Rethinking Nation, Culture, and Modernity
History Yearbook 29 (1998): 19-35.
On the rights of the nationalities in theAustrian half of themonarchy, see Stourzh, Die Gleich
berechtigungderNationalit?ten, particularly 189-200; Emil Brix, Die Umgangssprachen inAlt?sterreich

zwischen Agitation und Assimilation. Die Sprachenstatistik in den zisleithanischen Volksz?hlungen, 1880
bis 1910 (Vienna: B?hlau,
1982); Hannelore
B?rger, Sprachenrecht und Sprachgerechtigkeit im
262
GARY B. COHEN
provincial governments in Austria made
it possible to develop full systems of
public primary schools and, somewhat more slowly, secondary schools teaching
in the language of each national group wherever
it could claim sufficient
numbers of residents, typically at least twentypercent of the local population.

In Austrian secondary and higher education, German-speakers continued up
I to enjoy disproportionate advantages in enrollments and in
the numbers of institutions that used German as the language of instruction,
but after1871 the universitiesof Cracow and Lemberg/Lwow/L'viv taughtpri
toWorld War
marily in Polish. Prague had, in addition to German-language institutions, a

Czech technical college after 1868 and a Czech university after 1882. By the
firstdecades of the twentieth century, the Slovene-, Ukrainian-,
Italian-, and
Serbo-Croatian-speaking populations in theAustrian crown lands all had exten

sive systemsof public primary schools and were able to complete at least the
lower formsof secondary education in theirown languages, although they did
not get universities or technical colleges teaching in their respective languages
under themonarchy.48
InHungary thegovernment policies ofMagyarization and repressivemeasures
against non-Magyar nationalist politics impeded but could not stop the develop
ment of nationally divided public life and distinct national communities in the
public sphere. The ostensibly liberalHungarian nationality law of 1868, like its
Austrian counterpart,did not recognize national groups as collective political enti
ties, but it guaranteed the rightsof individuals to use their own languages in
elementary and secondary education, indealingswith thegovernment, and in reli
gious affairs.49In practice, however, theHungarian cabinets from themid-1870s
onward worked tomake Magyar the language of all importantgovernment ser
vices, to demand competence inMagyar for all public school teachers, and to
requireMagyar as a subject in the higher formsof all elementary schools and in
all secondary schools. The Hungarian authorities shut down Slovak gymnasia in
late 1874 and the Slovak nationalist educational society,Matice slovenskain late
the pretext that theywere propagating "unpatriotic" and Pan-Slavist
1875-on
ideas. Over time theministerial bureaucracy required that increasing numbers

of subjects in non-Magyar schools be taught inMagyar and granted or withheld
state subsidies in order tomake Magyar the language of instruction in the vast
majority of Hungary's primary and secondary schools. By the last years before
1914, seventy-eightpercent of theprimary schools and ninety percent of the sec
ondary schools inHungary (not including Croatia) used Magyar as the primary
der
Akademie
?sterreichischenUnterrichtswesen 1867-1918
(Vienna: Verlag der ?sterreichischen
Wissenschaften,
1995); and Kann, Das Nationalit?tenproblem derHabsburgermonarchie, passim.
On the development of Austrian education, see Cohen, Education andMiddle-Class Society, and
Bildungswesens, Band 4.
Engelbrecht, Geschichte des ?sterreichischen
See the brief discussion inRobert A. Kann, A History of theHabsburg Empire, 362.

language of instruction.50In 1906-7, Hungary had 205 accredited gymnasia and
Realschulen, of which 189 used Magyar
as the language of instruction, eight
German, sixRomanian, one Italian, and one mixed Magyar and Romanian. At
that time no gymnasium inHungary used Slovak or Ukrainian as its language
of instruction.51During the era after1867, all universities and technical colleges
inHungary proper used Magyar as the language of instruction.Spokesmen for
the Hungarian Liberal Party justified theirMagyarization
policies simply in
terms of the requirements for good citizenship and loyalty to the state, a state
understood as aMagyar nation-state:
"Since patriotism is inconceivable without a common language, our taskmust
be to create one ...What we expect from them isnot only that they speak the
Magyar vernacular but that they start to feel likeMagyars themselves."52
The centralized state administration under theHungarian ministries and the
limited suffrage for the Budapest parliament and the county congregations
meant that the non-Magyar nationalities and the lower classes in general had
littledirect role inHungary's government and public administration.There was
certainly less penetration of public policy making from society at large in
Hungary than in theAustrian half of themonarchy, and during the lastyears
beforeWorld War I therewere only small numbers of deputies at any one time
representing the non-Magyar nationalistmovements in the lower house of the
parliament. Nonetheless, throughout theHungarian half of themonarchy from
the 1890s onward, small farmers,urban lower-middle classes, and urban and
rural laborers of all nationalities increasingly found their own political voices.
Advancing
literacy in whatever language, economic development, and urban
population growth, all encouraged by the government's own policies, helped

drive forward the development of civil society.The Hungarian authorities com
bated the Slovak nationalist groups, for instance,with the harshest repressive
measures, but Slovak nationalistpolitical activitycontinued to grow.The Hungar
ian government shut down many Romanian nationalist organizations and news
papers inTransylvania during the 1880s and 1890s butmoderated its stance after
1900, particularlywhen IstvanTisza came to power. Relations between theHun
garian government and Serbian nationalist groups in the 1880s and 1890s were
less confrontational than thosewith the Slovak and Romanian groups, and the
governor of Croatia in themid-1880s, K'aroly Khuen-Hedervary, even showed
some favor to Serbian nationalist groups there in order to play them off against
Croatian nationalists. A major impediment for the Hungarian authorities in
tryingtoMagyarize Romanians and Serbs was that theyconld not easily establish
Statistics quoted in Janos, The Politics ofBackwardness, 127.
5
Statistics quoted inC. A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire, 1790-1918
1969), 724.
52JozsefSandor, 1910, quoted
in Janos, The Politics ofBackwardness, 126.
(New York: Macmillan,
GARY B. COHEN
264
Magyar leadership over the Serbian and Romanian churches as they did in the
Catholic and Lutheran churches in the heavily Slovak-speaking regions.
In the 1880s and 1890s grassrootscultural and political organizations grew sub
stantiallyamong all the non-Magyar nationality groups inHungary and Croatia,
and they even organized a "congress of nationalities" in Budapest in 1895.
Despite
the barriers of restricted suffrageand gerrymandered districts,deputies
from the non-Magyar nationalities sat in theHungarian parliament throughout

the dualist era. The largestcontingent was ethnic Germans, mostly fromTran
sylvania, although many of these supported pro-government parties.Romanian
nationalists,when they did not boycott elections, won parliamentary seats in
small numbers throughout the era after the 1860s. There were fifteenRomanian
deputies of all political stripes in 1905, five in 1910. The parliament also regularly
included smaller numbers of Serbian deputies. In 1901 the Slovak People's Party
organized formally,ledmost prominently by theCatholic priestAndrej Hlinka
and allied with the clerical People's Party in Hungary. The Slovak People's
Party soon managed
to elect four deputies to the parliament, despite the
limited suffragesystem.53Despite thecontinuing policies ofMagyarization spon

sored by allHungarian cabinets in the lastdecades beforeWorld War I, some in
theMagyar political establishment, including the otherwise authoritarian Istvan
Tisza, increasingly recognized that thenon-Magyar nationalistmovements were
not going to disappear and thatnegotiation and some conciliatorymeasures were
prudent.54 Relations between the non-Magyar nationalist parties and theHun
garian central government remainedmuch more contentious than those between
the nationalist parties and theAustrian government during the last two decades
before 1914, but therewere at least some opportunities forpolitical negotiation
inHungary aswell.
Mass Politics and Nationalist Radicalism in theEra of Crises

Conventional
views of theHabsburg Monarchy during the last twenty years

I have focused on growing domestic political crises in both
beforeWorld War
theAustrian and Hungarian
halves, caused by the lack of stablemajorities in
the two parliaments and the radicalization of nationalist demands encouraged

by mass politics. In this perspective, both halves of the monarchy became
increasingly ungovernable,
forcing repeated dissolutions or suspensions of
provincial diets and the two parliaments.With the Austrian parliament and
several of the diets frequentlydeadlocked, theministers and provincial governors
relied increasinglyon rule by executive decree. In theAustrian half after 1897,
See the overview of the composition of theHungarian parliament inAdalbert Toth, "Die soziale
1848 bis 1918," inDie Habsburgermonarchie 1848- 1918, VII,
Schichtung im ungarischen Reichstag
ed. Rumpier and Urbanitsch, pt. 1, 1061-1105.
See Vermes, Istv?n Tisza, 196-210.

the emperor frequently appointed cabinets composed of experts and career
bureaucratswith few parliamentary leaders, and most of theminister-presidents
had to manage without stable parliamentary majorities. Despite repeated
attempts, the government and moderate party leaders failed to resolve the
most intense national conflict, thatbetween Czechs and Germans inBohemia.
In 1905-06 Hungary entered its deepest political crisis of the pre-war era
when
the declining Hungarian
Liberal Party lost control of the parliament

nationalists, conservatives, and clerical
and a coalition of opposition Magyar
the coalition challenged the emperor

politicians gained a majority. When
regarding control of the common Austro-Hungarian army, Francis Joseph
responded by appointing his own prime minister above the parties and propos
ing to introduce a bill for universal male suffragefor the parliament. After the
coalition agreed to a compromise with
the emperor and formed a new
cabinet, it then passed various minor social reforms.To placate Magyar nation
alists, the government enacted a new education law in 1907 that called for
as the language of instruction in all primary schools that served the
other nationalities. In June 1913, Istv'anTisza, the son of Kalman Tisza, who
had built the Liberal Partymachine back in the late 1870s and 1880s, returned
Magyar
as prime minister, leading his own Party of National Work. As speaker of the
parliament during theprevious year, he had taken toughmeasures against oppo
sition filibustering; now he asserted the government's authority over society
with new restrictive regulations on civil rights. Fearing Pan-Slav and pro
Russian tendencies among the Ruthenians in northeastern Hungary, the
Tisza government responded to a wave of conversions from theGreek Catholic
Church toEastern Orthodoxy by ordering the arrestof nearly two hundred and
the trialof fifty-eighton charges of sedition.55
Tisza upheld the central government's longstanding policies of Magyariza
tion, but he also supported negotiations and modest conciliatory measures
toward some Croatian and Romanian political groups. The Hungarian govern
ment had reacted stronglyafter1905 to the joint effortsof Croat and Serb poli
ticians in Croatia to resistMagyarization effortsfromBudapest. An emerging
coalition of Croat and Serb politicians asserted the autonomy of Croatia from
Hungary and called for the union of Croatia with Dalmatia, heretofore one of
the Austrian crown lands. In 1908 the Budapest government suspended the
Sabor; it did so again in 1912 and imposed dictatorial control under the gover
nor appointed from Budapest. Tisza moderated the government's tactics in
1913, however, and worked out a new understanding with moderate Croatian
deputies to reconvene theSabor and restore thenormal Croatian administration
on terms acceptable to theHungarian cabinet.
55Ibid., 194-95.
266
GARY B. COHEN
With Count Karl Stiirgkh serving asAustrian minister-president after1910 and

relyingheavily on rule by decree and IstvanTisza using authoritarianmethods to
control theHungarian parliament and limitcivil rights,one could easily conclude
that thegrowing discord of the political parties and, above all, the nationalist for
mations was making it impossible to govern either half of themonarchy by con
stitutionalmethods. The nationalist parties appeared tobecome evermore radical
in theirdemands, colliding with each other and with the constitutional arrange
ments anchored in the seemingly immutableAustro-Hungarian compromise. If
the revival of bureaucratic absolutism was the only remaining alternative to this
growing chaos, that development, according to many conventional historical
accounts, leftlittlehope at all for the futureof theHabsburg polity.56
If,however, one places the domestic political crises after themid-1890s into
the context of theongoing structural transformationof popular politics and gov
ernment, one draws a differentunderstanding of the changing relationsbetween
society and the state and the nature of nationalist politics in this period. The
growing conflicts and political instabilitywere not simply the resultof nationalist
feeling acting as an independent factor but more the product of the transfor
mation of civil society and political life,of which the radicalization of national
politics was only one of many results.Throughout theAlpine and Bohemian
lands after themid-1880s and inmost of the other Austrian crown lands after
the early 1890s, the landowners and urban middle-class notables who had con
trolled the old Honoratiorenparteienfound themselves increasingly challenged by
insurgentmovements of peasant farmers, shopkeepers, craftsmen,white-collar
employees, and wage laborers,marching under flagsof class interestor a com
bination of economic and national or social Catholic interests.The middle
and upper-class interests formerly represented by the parties of notables were
increasingly fragmented along socioeconomic, national, and ideological lines,
and they faced strengthening opposition from groups representing petty
bourgeois and laboring interests. In Hungary mass-based politics developed a
littlemore slowly than in theAustrian half of themonarchy, and theHungarian
noble
landowners and officialdom were much more successful in resisting

expansion of the suffrageand major social reforms.Nonetheless, the increasing
fragmentation of Hungarian politics after the late 1890s and the loss of
hegemony by the Hungarian
Liberal Party resulted from a broad structural

transformationsimilar to that in theAustrian crown lands.57
56See Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918,

passim, for a classic statement of this interpre
tation of themonarchy's political development in the last decades.
57See Hoensch, A History ofModern Hungary, 68?73, for a brief summary of the development of
mass-based political movements inHungary around 1900. See Alice M. Freifeld,Nationalism and the
Crowd in theLiberal Hungary, 1848-1914
(Washington, Baltimore, and London: Johns Hopkins
for a vivid description of
University Press andWoodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000), 281-306,
mass politics inHungarian popular culture and everyday life around 1900.

In both halves of themonarchy afteraround 1890, multiple new mass-based
parties challenged the old deferential politics of great landowners, conservative
clerical interests,and the urban middle class of property and education. The
mass-based formations presented theirown populist notions of community to
replace those of the national liberals and clerical conservatives,whether itwas
a secular radical nationalism and anti-Semitism, Catholic or secular agrarianism,
urban social Catholicism, or social democracy. Many in the older conservative
and liberal formations tried to survive by embracing the most compatible
elements of one or another new popular ideology. InAustria's older conservative
clerical circles, for instance,many initiallyopposed populist social Catholicism,
but after1900 they tended tomerge forces,most notably in the union between
the rural clerical elements from theAlpine provinces and Karl Lueger's Vienna
based Christian Social Party.
National liberal parties such as the Young Czech
Party and the German
Liberal Party in theBohemian and Alpine crown lands shifted to amore aggres
sive integralnationalism to tryto retainold constituencies, capture new support,
and compete with radical nationalists, agrarians, and social democrats forvotes
fromwithin theirown language groups. The growth of the radical nationalist
parties, such as Georg von Sch6nerer's Pan-Germans and their offshoots, the
Czech National
Democrats
Socials and State-Right Radicals,
and the Polish National
in Galicia,
typically represented populist revolts against the elitism

of the old conservative or liberal nationalists. In general, the radical nationalists,
whether German, Czech, Polish,Magyar, or Croat, urgedmaximalist nationalist

goals in order to counter the appeals of the liberal nationalists, social Catholics,
and the agrarian and social democratic parties. In fact, the radical nationalists
typically focused more on competing with rival parties within their own
national camps than in combating their so-called national enemies. The
Czech National Socials, for instance,deployed their radical nationalist offensives
more often to combat other Czech parties in order to win Czech popular
support than to fight the German interests in Bohemia and Moravia. The
same was
true for many of the German nationalists in Bohemia and the

lands, who contended with the liberal and clerical forces for voter
support, or themore radical Polish nationalist and peasant parties thatcontested
the Polish conservatives' power inGalicia.58 In Carniola, the divisions grew so
Alpine
On radical Czech nationalism, see Kelly, "Taking It to the Streets," 93-112;

andjif? Malir, Od
[From
spolk? k modern?mpolitickym stran?m. Vyvoj politickych stran na Morave v letech 1848?1914
Associations toModern Political Parties: The Development
of Political Parties inMoravia,
1848
1914] (Brno: Filozofick? fakultaMagarykovy university v Brne, 1996), passim. On the German
radical nationalists' competition with the German liberals and progressives, see H?belt, Kornblume
und Kaiseradler, passim; Whiteside, The Socialism ofFools, passim; andWhiteside, Austrian National
Socialism before 1918, passim. On Polish nationalist, agrarian, and Ruthenian
competition with the
conservative Polish forces in Galicia, see Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Nation in the Village: The
Genesis ofPeasant National
Identity inAustrian Poland,
1848?1914
(Ithaca and New
York: Cornell
268
GARY B. COHEN
deep between the Slovene Catholic
interestsand the Slovene national liberals,

that the Slovene liberals formed a coalition with German liberals in 1896 to
run the diet. That Slovene-German liberal coalition was renewed afterelections
in 1901, and the Slovene Catholic forces responded with obstructionist tactics
and calls for electoral reform directed against both the Slovene and German
liberals.59The radical populist appeals to national community at the turn of
the century, of course, often included an anti-Semitic dimension, particularly
where members of the larger "enemy" nationalities were few in number and
where Jews could be attacked as supporters of the existing liberal constitutional
and legal order and as allies of hated German or Hungarian liberals or Polish
conservatives.60 The parties of the non-Magyar nationalities inHungary may
have been less finelydifferentiatedthan those of theGermans or Slavic nation
alities in theAustrian half,but after the late 1890s itwas hard forany nationality
in themonarchy to find political unity around a common national interest for
any significant length of time.
Mass politics challenged and ultimately dissolved many, but not all, of thepre
viously negotiated relationships between the older parties of notables and the
government bureaucracy. In the process, political discourse and partisan
demands were radicalized on all sides.The new,mass-based groups offeredcom
peting notions of community, civic identity,and loyalty.In theAustrian crown
lands, the conflicting popular interestscompeted for control of local govern
ment, district and provincial school boards, the provincial diets and executive
committees, the officialdom of the provincial executive committees, and, of
course, seats in the parliament. At the grass roots, one can easily see how the
growing competition of themass-based parties and interestgroups for popular
support led directly to the radicalization of political demands and rhetoric.61
On the surface, the heated political contests after 1890 between Czech and
German nationalists in the Bohemian lands, between German and Slovene
University Press, 2001), 60-94, 216-42; Daniel Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics ofPatriotism: Impe
rialCelebrations inHabsburg Austria, 1848-1916
(W Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2005),
64-75; Piotr S.Wandycz, The Lands ofPartitionedPoland, 1795-1918
(Seattle and London: Univer
and John-Paul Himka, Socialism inGalicia: The
sity ofWashington Press, 1974), 226-28, 288-95;
Emergence of Polish Social Democracy and Ukrainian Radicalism (1860?1890)
(Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1983), 152-79.

59See Andrej Rahten, "Der Krainer Landtag,"
Rumpler and Urbanitsch, pt. 2, 1755-65.
inDie Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918,
VII, ed.
in the last decades beforeWorld War I, see Peter

On anti-Semitism in theHabsburg Monarchy
G. J. Pulzer, The Rise ofPolitical Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1988); Pauley, From Prejudice toPersecution;Dirk van Arkel, Antisemitism
inAustria (Leiden: Proefschrift-Leiden, 1966); and Vera Ranki, The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion:
Jews andNationalism inHungary (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1999).
See, for example, the accounts by Judson, "Nationalizing Rural Landscapes,"
and King, Budweisers, pp. 80-147, passim.
"Taking It to the Streets," 93-112;
127-148;
Kelly,

nationalists in southern Styria and Carniola, between Polish and Ruthenian or
Ukrainian nationalist parties inGalicia, or among Magyars and Slovak, Croatian,
Serbian, and Romanian nationalists inHungary and Croatia increasinglycaused
public confrontations and political breakdowns in local governments and parlia
mentary chambers. Time and again, though, radical nationalists launched initia
tives in the legislative bodies in direct connection with effortsto rallypopular
support within theirown national populations. As Lothar H6belt has pointed
out, the radical nationalists' extreme demands and obstructionist tactics in the
Austrian parliament often representedgestures to demonstrate to theirown con
stituents that theywere doing at least something on behalf of the national cause.
The outrageous scenes in theAustrian chamber of deputies and occasionally also
in theHungarian parliament or various diets in theAustrian crown lands earned
much public contempt for parliamentary politics. Nonetheless,
as H6belt
has
argued about Austrian political life,both the deputies and theministerial officials
learned to deal with the frequent interruptions in legislative business and used
the periods during filibusters and adjournments for vigorous, multi-sided
negotiations about actions to be taken by the bureaucrats or the parliament
and dietswhen
they reconvened.62
It is important then to recognize thatwhile the development ofmass politics
and the rise of the various radicalmovements increased political conflict, the
work of stateadministration and government continued as did also complex pro
cesses of political negotiation among nearly all the contending interests and
between them and the state. Itwas not easy to recast the patterns of negotiation
developed during the era of parties of notables to deal with mass politics, but
mechanisms of negotiation were developed and utilized at all levels in both
theAustrian and Hungarian halves of themonarchy. Recent historical research
has begun to recover and clarify those processes of continuing negotiation and
governance, although the picture is clearer in thewestern language literature
for theAustrian half than forHungary. While political wrangling in a number
of theAustrian crown lands led to periodic boycotts or obstruction of represent
ative bodies by one group or another,most of the political parties and interest
groups, in fact, found ways towork with each other and with the state officials
to at least some extent. The obstruction of proceedings obliged the governors to
suspend diet sessions occasionally in Upper Austria and repeatedly in
Bohemia
or to call long recesses in Styria. Typically, though, the governors
62Lothar H?belt,
"Parliamentary Politics in a Multinational
Setting: Late Imperial Austria,"
Center for Austrian Studies Working Paper, 92-6
(Minneapolis: Center for Austrian Studies, 1992),
See also Hanisch,
4-6, 11-13; and H?belt, Kornblume und Kaiseradler, 180-99, 248-90, 305-14.
230-31.
On
the tactics used by the Austrian minister
?sterreichische Geschichte, 1890?1990,
presidents to deal with radical deputies in the parliament, see thememoirs of Robert Ehrhart, Im
Dienste des alten ?sterreichs (Vienna: Bergland, 1958), 132-38,

144-45,
167-68,
175-85, 302
51-52,
56-57, 263, 356,
13; and Kielmansegg, Kaiserhaus, Staatsm?nner und Politiker, 44-45,
410-11.
270
GARY B. COHEN
took these actions to allow time for cooling off,hold negotiations among all
the parties, and prepare for new sessions or elections. The Austrian minister
president used similar tacticswhen obstruction led to suspending parliament
and temporary rule by decree.63
The boycotts and obstruction of various provincial diets and the two parlia
ments attractedmuch public criticism at the time, and historians have used these
episodes to demonstrate the failingsof parliamentary development in themon
archy.These episodes, however, must be viewed in context. Not just radicals,
but a range of political interestsused parliamentary boycotts and obstruction
as tools. Typically, they did so to achieve practical political goals. In most
cases theywanted to return to normal legislative business as soon as theywon
suitable concessions and rewards, and that iswhat often happened.64
The premier example was theAustrian parliament after1897, where repeated
episodes of disorder and sustained obstruction made it the subject of great
opprobrium. For many observers then and since, the scenes in the chamber of
deputies epitomized the increasinglydysfunctional character of thewhole polit
ical system in the Austrian half of the monarchy.65 After 1911 theAustrian
minister-president resorted frequently to dissolving parliament and governing
by emergency decrees, but as a contemporary journalist put it, article 14 in
theAustrian constitutional laws was really a "round-trip ticket for the consti
tution." The decrees had force only between parliamentary sessions, and the
minister-president was under pressure to summon the parliament again after
each crisis subsided.When theReichsrat reconvened, the government had to
submit to it all the emergencymeasures, and, in fact, theywere usually ratified.66
The government looked to make deals wherever it could, even with radical
nationalist deputies. On at least one occasion, a member of theminister-presi
dent's staffhad to draft both an interpellation for a radical Czech nationalist
deputy and theministerial response to it as part of an agreement to stop obstruc
tion in the chamber.67 Lothar Hobelt has pointed out that the government's
emergency decrees often broke stalemates in theVienna parliament and typically
led to negotiations and often eventually to some productive legislativework.68
See the overviews of the development of the two parliaments and the individual diets of the
crown lands in Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918,
and Urbanitsch, parts 1
VII, ed. Rumpler
and 2.
the practice of parliamentary obstruction inAustria, see H?belt, Kornblume undKaiseradler,
and Ehrhart, Im Dienste, 167-68, 302-13.
248-90, 305-14;
See, for example, the famous journalistic account of the turmoil at the end of 1897 byMark
Twain, "Stirring Times inAustria," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 96 (March 1898): 530-40.
66Ehrhart, Im Dienste, 167-68, 302-13.
67Ibid., 144-45.
see also Hanisch, ?sterreichische
305-14;
68H?belt, Kornblume und Kaiseradler, 180-99, 248-90,
On
180-99,
Geschichte, 1890-1990,230-31.

The suspension of theBohemian
diet by imperial decree in 1913 illustrates
well
the dynamics of obstruction by nationalist politicians and the responses

available to theAustrian government. In July 1913, afterCzech-German con
tention and German nationalist obstruction had paralyzed theBohemian
diet
formonths, theAustrian cabinet under Count Stiirgkh had the emperor issue
the so-called Annapatente.With
these extraordinary decrees the central govern
ment dissolved the diet and the provincial executive committee and put an
administrative committee in charge of the provincial government. In protest,
Czech nationalists then blocked legislative business in theAustrian chamber
of deputies, forcing itssuspension. In fact,Count Stiirgkh and his aides had con
ferred intensivelywith nearly all the leading politicians in Bohemia before
invoking the imperial decrees. In the end he felt constrained to suspend the
diet and the provincial executive committee by themounting fiscal crisis and
impending collapse of public services inBohemia caused by the diet's inaction.69
Perhaps itwas no surprise that thenew special administrativecommittee took on
many officialsfrom the staffof the provincial executive committee, who carried
on much of their old work.70 Czech and German nationalist politicians alike
loudly condemned the Annapatente. Privately, though, as Hobelt and others
have shown, they expressed relief that the central government had temporarily
resolved the fiscalparalysis of theBohemian administration,making itpossible
to assure public services.71
The Czech and German nationalist interestsand theAustrian government
failed to find any compromise in Bohemia, but negotiations in other locales
achieved modest successes before World War I. Agreements were reached
governing the representation of competing national interests in the provincial
diet and administration ofMoravia in 1905, Bukovina in 1910, and Galicia in
1914. Czech and German nationalist interestsalso worked out a compromise
in early 1914 for the city of Budejovice (Budweis) in southern Bohemia.72
On theAnnapatente, see J?rgHoensch, Geschichte B?hmens von der slavischenLandnahme bis ins20.
Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1987), 405; Jan Galandauer, "Husuv n?rod amost Frantiska Fer
dinanda" [The Nation ofHus and the Francis Ferdinand Bridge], Historie a vojenstv?44 (1995): 3-20;
550-51; Lothar H?belt, "Bohemia 1913?A Consensual
Urban, Cesk? spolecnost 1848-1918,
coup
d'?tat?," Parliaments, Estates, and Representation 20 (Nov. 2000): 207-14; Karel Kazbunda, Ot?zka
cesko-n?meck?v pfedvecer velk? v?lky [The Czech-German
Question on the Eve of the Great War],
(Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1995); and Gerald Stourzh, "Verfassungsbruch
B?hmen. Ein unbekanntes Kapitel zur Geschichte des richterlichen Pr?fungsrechts
im alten ?sterreich,"
in Staatsrechtund Staatwissenschaften inZeiten desWandels. Festschrift
f?r Ludwig
and Bernd-Christian
Funk (Vienna and New York:
Adamovich, ed. Ludwig Karl Adamovich
ed. Zden?k
K?rn?k
im K?nigreich
Springer-Verlag, 1992): 675-90.

See Anton?n Kl?stersky, Vzpom?nky a portrety [Recollections and Portraits] (Prague: F. Borovy,
1934), 172-74.
H?belt, "Parliamentary Politics in aMultinational
Setting," 13; H?belt, Kornblume und Kaiser
and H?belt, "Bohemia 1913," 207-14.
adler, 288-290;
See Kann, Das Nationalit?tenproblem derHabsburgermonarchie, vol.
on Moravia,
Stourzh, Die GleichberechtigungderNationalit?ten, 213-40;
1, 199-200, 231, 331-35;

Horst Glassl, Der m?hrische
272
GARY B. COHEN
On
the one hand, the compromises for the three crown lands earned sharp criti
cism frommany democratic mass-based parties for preserving the privileged
representation of landed and urban elites in the diets. On the other hand, the
Moravian agreement did add a new curia of deputies to the diet, to be
divided nationally between Czechs and Germans and elected by universal
male suffrage.Voters for this curia had to be registered as Czechs or Germans
by nationality and would vote for separate listsof candidates. The agreement
forBukovina generally followed theMoravian model but was more complex,
since it provided for national voting groups of Romanians, Ruthenians,
Germans, and Poles along with arrangements to distinguish Jewish from non
Jewish voters. In the case of the Galician compromise, not put into effect
because of the outbreak ofWorld War
I, the decision to distinguish voters for

the added new voting groups based on the "language of everyday use" (Umgangs
sprache)as reported in the last census permitted greater freedom of choice for
those who were ambivalent or indifferentabout nationality. The Moravian

agreement also provided thatpublic schools therewere to be administered by
separateCzech and German provincial and local school boards and thatchildren
must attend schools with language of instruction according to theirnationality.
This latter provision created significant difficulties,of course, for those who
might be ambiguous about nationality or wanted to cross over in choosing
schools.73
Historians who have been concerned with the question ofwhether themon
archy'snationality problem could be solved have divided in assessing these com
promises.74 The parties to the agreements believed that they represented
siguificantprogress in resolving the nationality disputes, although itwas uncer
tain what the compromises portended in the longer term. The agreements
demonstrated that at least conservative and moderate nationalist politicians in
Ausgleich (Munich: Fides-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1967); and T. Mills Kelly, "Last Best Chance or Last
of 1905 and Czech Politics inMoravia," Austrian History Yearbook 34
Gasp? The Compromise
on Bukovina, John Leslie, "Der Ausgleich in Bukovina von 1910. Zur ?sterrei
(2003): 279-303;
vor dem Ersten
chischen Nationalit?tenpolitik
in Geschichte zwischen Freiheit und
Weltkrieg,"
Ordnung. Gerald Stourzh zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Emil Brix, Thomas Fr?schl, and Josef Leidenfrost
(Graz: Styria, 1991), 113-44; and Al?n Rachamimov,
"Diaspora Nationalism's Pyrrhic Victory:
The Controversy Regarding theElectoral Reform of 1909 inBukovina," in State andNation Building
inEast Central Europe: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. JohnMicgiel
(New York: Columbia University
Press, 1996), 1-16; on Galicia, John Paul Himka, "Nationality Problems in theHabsburg Monarchy
and the Soviet Union: The Perspective ofHistory and the Soviet Union," inNationalism and Empire,
ed. Rudolph
and Good, 79-93; and on Budejovice, King, Budweisers, 137-47.
See Zahra, "Reclaiming Children," 501-543;

and Zahra, "Your Child Belongs to theNation."
74Kann, Das Nationalit?tenproblem derHabsburgermonarchie, vol. 1, 199-200, 231, 331-35; May,
200?01,
Hapsburg Monarchy, 340; and Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 1809?1918,
emphasize
what theMoravian
compromise or all such agreements demonstrated was actually possible, while
or
"Last
Last
Best
Chance
and
Geschichte
1804?
Kelly,
Gasp?," 300?01,
Rumpier, ?sterreichische
1914, 554-55,
stresshow little of the larger conflicts they could resolve.

the respective territoriescould reach limited understandings on critical issues in
collaboration with the government. For itspart, the state showed that,within
limits, itwas able to change some institutionsand regulations tomeet current
political needs and to accept at least a partial formalpartitioning of the political
and constitutional spheres on national lines. To the extent that the compromises
all established separate cadastres of voters defined by nationality (or by language
of everyday use in Galicia) who were then to vote for candidates of theirown
nationality, theybroke fundamentallywith theAustrian constitutional principles
of 1867 which did not recognize collective rights to political representation for
the nationalities as such.
The various national compromises and the effortsin the 1907 suffragereform
tomake voting districts for theAustrian chamber of deputies as uninational as
possible pointed, in fact, in the direction of government of each nationality
by officials and institutionsof itsown in a sort of "national autonomy," as the
Austrian constitutional scholar Edmund Bernatzik
termed it.75 This
trend
suggests that, amid all the domestic turmoil during the last decade before
World War I, the basic relationship between nationalist politics and the state
in theAustrian half of themonarchy may have been entering a new phase of
development. In the short run, of course, these stepswere only partial, applying
merely to certain territories;and theychanged law, state institutions,and politi
cal practice only in limited, equivocal ways. The compromises themselves
tended to recognize national loyalties alongside broader allegiances to the
Habsburg state,but as JeremyKing has commented, they also had significant
structural flaws with regard to how individuals' nationality was defined,
where the officially registered nationality might limit some civic and legal
rights,and how individualsmight be able to change theirnational registration.76
The compromises forMoravia and Budejovice, for instance, leftlegacies of con
siderable political and legal debate to the firstCzechoslovak Republic.77
Developments inHungary during the lastdecade before 1914 did not include
any important agreements among contending national interestsor reveal any
capacity of the state to change institutionsand laws significantlyto accommodate
non-Magyar nationalist interests.From the era ofKalman Tisza in the late 1870s
and 1880s to thatof Istv'anTisza in the lastyears beforeWorld War I, prime min
isterscarefully tried to stage-manage the parliament and elections for it.They
repeatedly used authoritarian measures against political opponents, whether
they were representatives of the non-dominant nationalities or opposition
Stourzh, Die GleichberechtigungderNationalit?ten, 200; and Edmund Bernatzik, ed., Die ?sterrei
chische Verfassungsgesetzemit Erl?uterungen, 2nd exp. ed. (Vienna: Manz,
1911), 989, cited in
Stourzh. On the Austrian electoral reform of 1907, seeWilliam A. Jenks, The Austrian Electoral
Reform of 1907 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1950).

76King, Budweisers, 145-47.
and Zahra, "Your Child Belongs
See Zahra, "Reclaiming Children," 501-543;
to theNation."
274
GARY B. COHEN
Magyar interests.After the deep crisis provoked in 1905-06 by the opposition

Magyar coalition, Istv'anTisza and his allies from the old Liberal Party ranks
responded with new steps to tighten central government authority over parlia
ment and society along with modest social reformsand other limited gestures to
mollify lower-class and non-Magyar nationalist opposition.
Once IstvanTisza was prime minister, he pulled back from theheavy-handed,
confrontational tacticsused by his immediate predecessors to control theCroa
tian political situation; and he offerednegotiations toRomanian nationalists in
Transylvania. At the same time, though, he pushed through parliament legis
lation to provide for far-reaching emergency powers during wartime, narrow
citizens' rights to jury trials, toughen the press and libel laws, and tighten con
trolson associations and public assemblies. Tisza pursued his own Sammlungspo
litik,hoping to reunite in support of a strengthened central government all the
Magyar propertied and educated classes along with some moderate and conser
vative non-Magyar interestsaswell. Tisza recognized that the government now
faced stronger and more diverse challenges than before from a society thatwas
demanding evermore loudly a democratic and pluralistic political system. In his
determined, self-righteous perspective, the government must take positive,
forward-looking steps to defend the interests of the ruling classes. Tisza's
cabinet put through a token suffragereform in 1913 thatexpanded the electorate
only minimally. While
showing both Magyar and non-Magyar opponents a

strong hand, Tisza, like most Hungarian prime ministers after the 1890s,
offered opposition groups modest concessions and tried to engage some of
themore tractable in negotiations and other political processes that the govern
ment expected to control.78
One Structural
Model-or
Two?
The evolution of constitutional, representativegovernment in theAustrian and

Hungarian halves of themonarchy and the growth of a wide spectrum of po
liticalparties and interestgroups demonstrates a broad process ofmodern politi
cal development during the half century beforeWorld War I.With thiscame a
gradually increasing penetration of policy making and state administration by
societal interestsin theAustrian half and growing pressures to broaden societal
participation inHungary's government aswell. Throughout themonarchy, the
evolution of civil society,which theHabsburg statepermitted and abetted, sup
ported thegrowth of nationalist political causes. To be sure,nationalist politics in
central Europe beforeWorld War I, particularly in the hands of radicals, had its
violent, destructive side; but the nationalist formations, like their clerical,
On
see Vermes, Istv?n Tisza, 135-49,
Istv?n Tisza and Hungarian
politics in 1912-14,
160-210; Hoensch, A History ofModern Hungary, 67-76; Paml?nyi, ed., Die Geschichte Ungarns,
and Sugar et al., eds., A History ofHungary, 284-91.
466-79;

agrarian, and socialist rivals, also served in fundamentalways to empower their
constituencies. JohnW Boyer wisely pointed out more than a decade ago that
politicized nationality in imperial Austria functioned "within the context of a
dynastic state system" [emphasis in the original] as a factor among the various
developments that fueled a popular revolt against the traditionsof state absolut
ism and elitist liberalpolitics. Boyer went on to argue that thenationality conflict
inAustria functioned not merely as a "destructive, centrifugalprocess" but also
asan "emancipatory,
thepost-1867
centripetal
process"that
helpedtotransform
state,making all the bourgeois ethnic and national groups "agents, as well as
subjects," of their political futures.79By now many historians have distanced
themselves from the traditionalnationalist historical narratives,but scholars, par
ticularlyin centralEurope, stillneed to be cognizant of their lingering influence.
In particular, historians stillneed to explore more fully,both inmonographic
research and in broader syntheses, the complex relationship of the nationalist
political formations to the Habsburg state, their context in an evolving civil
society, and how the nationalist formations functioned within the framework
of the state and succeeded in enhancing their own political influence during
the last three decades before 1914.80
Compared to theAustrian half, the governmental system in Hungary was
much more resistant to popular penetration and to the empowerment of the
non-dominant nationalities and the lower classes in general. Still, growing polit
icalmobilization of the non-Magyar nationalities and the petty-bourgeois and
working-class masses after the late 1880s and 1890s created ever strongerpublic
debate and demands for democratization. The
intransigence of theHungarian
ruling elements and their tendency to strengthencentral government authority

in the face of challenges made the domestic conflictsmore intractable and the
confrontations between government and opposition, if anything,more volatile
than those in theAustrian half. In this regard, one could only be even more
pessimistic in early 1914 about the short- and medium-range outlook for
Hungary's internal political situation than forAustria's. The unwillingness of
Hungary's conservative political forces to accept any significant compromise
with democratizing forces and their tendency to demonize opposition before
World War I, of course, helped sow the seeds for the failure of the broad
democratic coalition led byMihaly Karolyi at the end of thewar, the rise of
Bela Kun's communist republic, and the right-wing counter-revolution that
followed.
Boyer, Culture and Political Crisis, xii. On the 1912 law on emergency powers inwartime, see
P?ter, "Die Verfassungsentwicklung inUngarn," 487-92.
For an example of the fresh insights that can be achieved by carefully examining popular political
loyalties and the relationship of populace to the state in the context of changing civil society, see
Maureen Healy, Vienna and theFall of theHabsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life inWorld
War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
276
GARY B. COHEN
It cannot be emphasized enough, though, that the greatmajority of nation

alist politicians and organizations throughout themonarchy during the dualist
era were eager to work within the framework of the Habsburg state. They
looked for democratic reform and the development of self-government under
theHabsburg Monarchy, which, as theCzech historian Frantisek Palacky had
famously recognized in 1848, would assure security and other practical benefits
of being part of a large state in centralEurope. Before theoutbreak ofWorld War
I, itwas not surprising then that few nationalist politicians within themonarchy
expected it to disappear from themap any time soon or, apart from small fringe
groups such as theSerbian radicals in the recentlyannexed Bosnia, were working
actively toward that end.
For most of the general population, national loyalties continued to coexist
until well intoWorld War Iwith strong allegiances to the laws and institutions
of the Habsburg state. Throughout the realm after the 1860s, the public
showed great respect and affection forEmperor Francis Joseph as the embodi
they feltgenuinely attached.81 As Daniel Unowsky,
ment of a state towhich
Peter Urbanitsch, and other scholars have shown, imperial celebrations and
local visits by the emperor and other members of the imperial house were
occasions both for central state authorities to seek popular affirmation of
loyalty to the state and the dynasty and for local and regional political forces
to demonstrate their own influence through participation in the public cer
emonies.82 After the 1890s court officials often feared the possible disruption
of such occasions by protesters,but typically these events proceeded peacefully,
On the issue of loyalty to the dynasty, see Peter Urbanitsch, "PluralistMyth and Nationalist Re
alities: The Dynastic Myth of theHabsburg Monarchy?A
Futile Exercise in the Creation of Iden
tity?"Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 101-142. For a somewhat more traditional perspective on
loyalties to the dynasty and theHabsburg statemore generally, see Ernst Bruckm?ller, Nation ?ster
reich.Kulturelles Bewu?tsein und gesellschaftlich-politische
Prozesse, 2nd ed., rev.& exp. (Vienna: B?hlau,
276-98. On the response of local politicians and populace to imperial visits in

1996), 200-36,
various parts of themonarchy, see Pernes, Spiklenci proti jeho velicenstvu,5-6; Catherine Albrecht,
"Pride in Production: The Jubilee Exhibition of 1891 and Economic
Competition Between
and Germans in Bohemia," Austrian History Yearbook 24 (1993): 114-15; Milan Hlav?cka
and Frantisek Kol?r, "Tschechen, Deutsche
und die Jubil?umsaustellung
1891," Bohemia 32
und Politik in
Lothar H?belt,
(1991): 380-411;
"Ausgleich und Ausstellung?Wirtschaft
B?hmen um 1890," Bohemia 29 (1988): 141-47; Daniel Unowsky,
'"Our gratitude has no limit':
Polish Nationalism, Dynastic Patriotism, and the 1880 Imperial Inspection Tour of Galicia," Austrian
Czechs
History Yearbook 34 (2003): 145-172; Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics ofPatriotism; and Laurence
Cole and Daniel Unowsky, eds., The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Celebrations and theDynamics of
State Patriotism in theLate Habsburg Monarchy (forthcoming, New York: Berghahn Books, 2007).
See Unowsky, Pomp and Politics, passim; Urbanitsch, "Pluralist Myth," 101-42; Laurence Cole,
"Patriotic Celebrations in Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Tirol," in Staging thePast,
ed. Bucur andWingfield, 75-111; Freifeld, Nationalism and theCrowd, 266-78; Nancy Wingfield,
"Statues of Emperor Joseph II as Sites of German Identity," in Staging thePast, ed. Bucur andWing
field, 178-208; and Cole and Unowsky, eds., The Limits ofLoyalty. See also the treatment of officially
sanctioned Polish nationalist celebrations inGalicia in Patrice M. Dabrowski, Commemorations and the
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), 25-74.
Shaping ofModern Poland

and local and regional political forces competed to use the occasions for their
own purposes. This was consistentwith thewell-established determination of
most political groups inAustrian society to compete for influence and control
over parts of the state and to try to use its symbols for their own political
advantage. This was much harder, of course, in Hungary for the non
Magyar nationalist groups and the new mass-based political formations. Still,
most of themworked vigorously where they could to use the local and parlia
mentary elections and whatever other political space was available to voice their
own interestsand goals.
By 1914 therewas a broad and significantdevelopment throughout theHabs
burgMonarchy of civil society and popular engagement in political debate and
action.With
suffragereformsfor theVienna parliament and some of theprovin
cial diets and the growth of autonomous communal and provincial adminis
tration in theAustrian crown lands, the state also accommodated
increasing penetration of societal interests into policy making.
a gradually
In varying
degrees, nationalist parties and organizations of all the non-dominant national

ities in theAustrian half ultimately advanced their intereststhrough thisprocess.
In many ways, political tensions and confrontations grew more intense in
Hungary after 1900 than in theAustrian half because, while popular political
engagement was growing rapidly, it confronted political elites and aHungarian
governmental system that resistedmuch more determinedly any opening to
broader segments of society.
The modernization of theHabsburg state over the long nineteenth century
led to the development of modern
laws, regulations, and public services,
the public accepted as legitimate and as theirs, for better or worse.

Indeed, with the development of parliamentary institutionsand, in theAustrian
half, of autonomous communal and provincial government, the population in
many parts of the realm became so deeply invested in the legal systems and
which
public services thatmany were happy to continue significant elements of

them after 1918. The Poles of Galicia took with them into the new Polish
Republic the great advantages of a fullydeveloped system of state-supported
Polish-language education up to university level, something lacking in the
formerRussian and Prussian zones, aswell as a large Polish-speaking educated
professional class. Slovenes and Croats similarlyenjoyed considerable advantages
in educational and social development in thenew Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats,
and Slovenes compared to theirnew compatriots fromSerbia,Montenegro, and
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Along with the intensepolitical conflictsofthe lastdecades beforeWorld War I,
theHabsburg Monarchy lefta powerful legacy to all the successor states in the
instrumentalitiesof civil society, interestgroups, and political parties. It also left
a strong legacy in law and public administration, perhaps strongest,most
obvious, and persistent in theAustrian Republic, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.
GARY B. COHEN
278
Alois Rasin, the doughty Czech nationalistwho served asminister of finance in

the firstCzechoslovak government in 1918-19,
for example, demonstrated the
strongattachmentsofmany Czechs to the legal and administrative systemsdevel

oped under themonarchy when he draftedmuch of Czechoslovakia's firstgeneral
law, issuedwith the declaration of independence on October 28, 1918. The
second paragraph declared simply that "all previous provincial and imperial
laws and regulations remain for the time being in effect."Rasin later explained
candidly this insistence on continuity: "The basic purpose of this law was to
prevent any anarchic situation fromdeveloping so thatour whole state adminis
tration (cela nase sprava)would remain and continue on October 29 as if there
had been no revolution at all" ("jako by revoluce viubec nebylo").83 Rasin,
Tomas G. Masaryk, Edvard Benes, Milan R.
Stefanik, Vavro Srobar, and the
otherswho joined in founding Czechoslovakia were all committed Czech
and
Slovak nationalists, but they considered much of the state administration devel
oped under themonarchy as not simply the instrumentalitiesof the emperor or
the old Austrian and Hungarian governments, but theirown.84
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, TWIN CITIES
Alois Ras?n quoted in Vera Olivov?, D?jiny prvn? republiky [History of the First Republic]
(Prague: Karolinum, 2000), 67.
See George Barany, "Political Culture in the Lands of the Former Habsburg Empire: Author
itarian and Parliamentary Traditions," Austrian History Yearbook 29, pt. 1 (1998): 195-248;
and
Helmut Slapnicka, ?sterreichs Recht ausserhalb?sterreichs.Der Untergang des ?sterreichischen
Rechtsraums.
Ostund
4
vol.
Schriftenreihe des ?sterreichischen
(Munich:
S?dosteuropa-Instituts,
R. Oldenbourg,
1973).

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Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association

Central European History 40 (2007), 241-278.

Printed in the USA

the national aspirations of its

truth,of course, in the conventional wisdom

political decline of the Habsburg Monarchy during the late nineteenth

and its calls for uniting Austria's German-speaking

sophisticated recent works such as Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to

NATIONALIST POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE 243

For examples of nationalist narratives of varying shades

This essaywill offer a conceptual framework for debate and furtherresearch

as continuing loyalties to the state, its laws, and

and Julius Mesaros,

perspective, Emil Franzel, SudetendeutscheGeschichte, eine volkst?mlicheDarstellung,

NATIONALIST POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE 245

recent writing has tended to appropriate the

concept of civil society as an essential component of modern democracies and

I, though, the old empires of central and eastern

Government and theBeginnings of PoliticalMovements

conventional nationalist historical narratives have typically depicted the

state thatmade possible the growth of political space and institutionalvenues

Evans, The Making of theHabsburg Monarchy, 1550-1700

centralization effortsfrom the seventeenth century onward combined theAlpine

the rise of a centralized, absolutist Habsburg

state, though, the landed

nobility in each historic crown land continued to enjoy important privileges

in surviving older laws and institutions. Enlightened

reformsduring the late eighteenth century weakened

the diets of the various

Era," Austrian History Yearbook 36 (2005): 94-120.

NATIONALIST POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE 247

to liberalize government largely failed, the Habsburg

imperial authoritieswere forced to confirm the final emancipation of the peas

to renewed demands from segments of the great

landowners and the urban middle

classes for constitutional government and

freedom of speech, press, and association.

Hungary, including Transylvania and Croatia, with a centralized parliament

in Budapest, and the second for the Alpine, Bohemian,

parliament and cabinet of ministers inVienna. Both halves of themonarchy

firstnationalist political formations emerged in various crown lands as

parties of local and regional notables committed in themain

form of classic central European liberal nationalistmovements, based largely in

predominantly lower middle-class and peasant farmer constituencies

and Eastern Europe]

(Prague: Universita Karlova,

NATIONALIST POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE 249

well after the mid-1860s

The Nagodba, the agreement worked out between theHungarian government

III. Die V?lker des

and Ernst Hanisch, ?sterreichische Geschichte,

Journal ofModern History 50 (1978): 73.

NATIONALIST POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE 251

and Peter Urbanitsch

Overall, theAustrian government proved to be fairlytolerantof awide spec

NATIONALIST POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE 253

law offered fewermechanisms for legal recourse. The Hungarian

government generally recognized political and

Rising Popular Political Engagement and theGrowth

the crown and the central

York: East European Monographs/Columbia

NATIONALIST POLITICS AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATE 255

lands and the conservative Polish forces in