The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

By Daniel Unowsky

The overwhelming majority of historical work on the late Habsburg Monarchy has focused primarily on national movements and ethnic conflicts, with the result that too little attention has been devoted to the state and ruling dynasty. This volume is the first of its kind to concentrate on attempts by the imperial government to generate a dynastic-oriented state patriotism in the multinational Habsburg Monarchy. It examines those forces in state and society which tended toward the promotion of state unity and loyalty towards the ruling house. These essays, all original contributions and written by an international group of historians, provide a critical examination of the phenomenon of “dynastic patriotism” and offer a richly nuanced treatment of the multinational empire in its final phase.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Nov 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9780857452245

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Imperial Loyalty and Popular Allegiances

in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

Historians and other social scientists have always been concerned with issues of nationalism and national identity, but scholarly interest has expanded rapidly since the publication of a number of influential general works in the 1980s.¹ The research wave intensified during the 1990s in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, as war and ethnic conflicts tragically unfolded in the former USSR and Yugoslavia (while the Czechoslovak state was also dissolved, although in peaceful fashion). At the same time, the passing of the Warsaw pact witnessed a renewed surge of interest—both on the part of the general public and that of scholars—in the history of the region, including that of the Habsburg Monarchy.

These developments have helped produce two notable trends in research on East Central Europe. On the one hand, the collapse of the Soviet bloc has given rise to more comparative discussions of multiethnic empires and imperial collapse.² On the other hand, historians investigating the history of the nationalities problem in the multiethnic Habsburg state have begun to revise previous views of the challenges it faced, particularly for the western half of Austria-Hungary. Where general assessments of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Austria-Hungary once routinely described a situation of terminal crisis, current verdicts are less condemnatory. Alongside the major difficulties caused by national conflicts, historians recognize a more complex and nuanced picture, which includes a better understanding of the constitutional frameworks provided in 1867, the development of political parties and civil society, and the social and economic transformation of Central and East Central Europe.³ As Gary Cohen has put it, the late Habsburg Monarchy was characterized neither by absolutism, nor anarchy.⁴ Yet, if these developments have opened up new vistas and have encouraged a more refined image of the Habsburg Monarchy, it is still the case that there are some surprising gaps in current scholarship, not least to do with the institution that gave the state its name—the Habsburg dynasty itself.⁵

At least implicitly, the starting point for many investigations of the dynamics of the Habsburg state continues to be Oscar Jászi’s famous paradigm of opposing centrifugal and centripetal forces in Austria-Hungary.⁶ Among the former, Jászi placed nationalism first and foremost, together with the awkward dual-state character of Austria-Hungary, and the exploitative economic relationship between its two halves. Jászi juxtaposed these factors undermining the unity of the state with centripetal forces such as the dynasty, the church, the army, and bureaucracy, as well as specific social groups (Jewish communities) and political forces (socialism). Scholars of the Habsburg Monarchy have largely accepted Jászi’s centrifugal/centripetal opposition and focused their attention on those forces militating against state cohesion. Overviews of Habsburg history, as well as numerous articles and monographic studies, highlight particular moments in the Habsburg past when the state failed to overcome these centripetal pressures, detoured from the path leading to healthy modernization, and turned toward inevitable decline and dissolution. For some scholars, the decline begins as early as 1790, with the death of Joseph II and the demise of his centralizing project. Others point to 1815 and the failure to build on the momentum gained by victory in the Napoleonic wars, or to a more familiar catalogue of defeated liberal revolutions in 1848–49, military losses to Piedmont and Prussia, the tensions inherent in the 1867 Compromise creating Austria-Hungary, and so on. Whichever missed opportunity is selected, scholars have generally tended to view nationalism as the most significant factor propelling the state toward its ultimate collapse.⁷

By contrast, comparatively little attention has been devoted to the centripetal forces identified by Jászi. More importantly, perhaps, even less scholarship has explicitly questioned the assumption of inherent opposition between national consciousness and imperial loyalty, which is at the heart of Jászi’s approach.⁸ As recent work shows, the history of the late Habsburg Monarchy cannot just be reduced to a narrative of rising nationalism and diminishing state unity, for the spread of national movements was accompanied by an expansion in forms of monarchical self-representation and dynastic political rituals that aimed to promote a supranational patriotism.⁹ In short, there is a matter of balance to be achieved: while historians must examine why the Habsburg Monarchy collapsed when it did, they should also ask what held it together for so long. Indeed, only by answering the last question effectively can one expect to provide a satisfactory response to the former.

Particularly apposite here is the brilliant vignette on the year 1898 in Hungary written by the late Hungarian scholar Péter Hanák, who described the parallel action by Hungarian nationalists celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1848 revolution and rebellion against Habsburg rule in the same year—1898—as the festivities for Emperor Franz Joseph’s 50th jubilee.¹⁰ In effect, Hanák posited the existence of parallel realities in the Habsburg Monarchy: a national reality, where the primary bonds were determined by language and ethnic identity; and a supranational, Habsburg-patriotic reality, defined by loyalty to the dynasty and positive acceptance of the multinational state. Hanák acknowledged the potential power of the latter, but suggested that it was only a sham reality by 1898, one with a spectacular appearance whose once vivid colors were fading fast. In practice, however, it remains to be discovered in detail how these parallel realities worked, not just within Habsburg society as a whole, but within provinces, social classes, ethnic groups, and even individuals. And just as pertinent, it is further open to question as to whether these realities were indeed simply parallel and therefore separate, as Hanák seems to imply, or whether there was not in fact overlap between the national and dynastic or supranational spheres.

In order to investigate such issues, a widening of perspective is required. If historians now recognize the different layers of national, regional, and local identities present in Austro-Hungarian society, it follows that the imperial level must be incorporated properly into the analysis of popular allegiances.¹¹ Eric Hobsbawm once wrote that it would be desirable to see a study of the attempts by more authentically legitimist dynasties, such as those of the Habsburg and the Romanov, not merely to command the obedience of their peoples as subjects, but to rally their loyalty as potential citizens.¹² Yet, although the role of the dynasty as a binding force for the Habsburg state is mentioned in general works, historians have not seriously engaged with such issues for the period from the mid-nineteenth century onward. To a great extent, the region’s subsequent history explains the lack of scholarly attention to the functioning of the kingship mechanism in the case of the penultimate Habsburg ruler, Emperor Franz Joseph (1848–1916). In the successor states that rejected the Habsburg yoke, historians concentrated on investigating the history of their oppressed national pasts. And in an Austria characterized by partisan politics in the twentieth century, the subject has been either ignored or viewed uncritically through a semi-nostalgic lens.¹³ The handful of serious studies of Franz Joseph and dynastic loyalty in the late Habsburg Monarchy contrasts sharply with the growing body of work on the political and symbolic roles of medieval, renaissance, and baroque courts in Europe, including those of the early modern Habsburgs.¹⁴ There is also considerable scholarly literature on other European countries examining the social and cultural process now conventionally described as the invention of tradition, namely, the efforts by states and dynasties to create new festivities, establish symbols, and organize ritualized public celebrations in order to bolster state patriotism and/or reaffirm the importance of royalty in the era of mass political mobilization.¹⁵

By comparison, almost ninety years after it collapsed, we still know far too little about how the modern Habsburg Monarchy worked as a state and social system in which the dynasty provided a symbolic center and formed a deep-rooted element in the mental structure of central/east central European society. Certainly, historians such as Robert Kann and Stephen Fischer-Galati pointed some time ago to the role of loyalty to the Emperor (Kaisertreue) in contemporary political discourse.¹⁶ Friedrich Heer’s classic study on Austrian identity also considered the importance of the once sacral image of the emperor, while simultaneously observing that there has not been any attempt at an anthropological, ethnographical or psychological investigation into belief in the Emperor.¹⁷ Heer was especially concerned with the long-term picture, but his remark can also be applied to the question of popular allegiances in the nineteenth century, because the majority of treatments of Emperor Franz Joseph, his court, members of the imperial family, and imperial celebrations are, with some significant exceptions, limited to popular accounts of family scandals, Elisabeth’s beauty secrets, and coffee table books readily available in souvenir shops in Vienna and elsewhere.¹⁸ It is only in the last five to ten years that historians have seriously started to examine the renewal of imperial ritual and celebration as a tool for bolstering state unity and imperial loyalty, and to analyze the adaptation of dynastic imagery by rival political movements in the Habsburg lands in the final decades of the state’s existence.¹⁹

The essays in this volume expand on this emerging body of work and seek to broaden the research agenda by integrating the institution of the dynasty into the study of the Habsburg state and the lives of its inhabitants. The authors examine institutional mechanisms such as schools and the military, which were utilized by the multinational state in its efforts to mobilize the loyalty of its citizens in an age of widening political participation. At the same time, by exploring issues of state patriotism, imperial loyalty, and popular allegiances in various provincial contexts and from differing perspectives, the articles collected here seek to understand how national identities and dynastic loyalties stood in relation to each other, whether in perpetual conflict or complementing one another. Taken together, these essays consider the degree to which the Habsburg dynasty retained meaning and relevance in an emerging modern, mass society, and they assess how successful such efforts at supranational integration were. As Hobsbawm noted, we know that the Habsburg state eventually failed in this regard since, after all, the monarchy collapsed in 1918. But was this ultimate failure a foregone conclusion?²⁰ How did the Habsburgs fight against what Francis Oakley has recently described as the fading nimbus of modern kingship in a disenchanted world?²¹

A first stage in the analysis of this overall problem is provided by an examination of some of the institutional mechanisms used to inspire state loyalty, an area which has been the subject of only a handful of studies hitherto, mainly with regard to the bureaucracy.²² In his essay, Ernst Bruckmüller explores a crucial area highlighted by Oskar Jászi, namely what the latter alleged to be the Habsburg state’s failure to develop a systematic patriotic education designed to ensure the loyalty of future generations to the dynasty and the common fatherland.²³ In analyzing classroom materials used in the Austrian half of the monarchy, Bruckmüller shows that, despite the heavy emphasis placed on the Habsburg family and efforts made to avoid offending ethnic sensibilities, the textbooks used for the study of history in the monarchy’s schools did in fact present a coherent message of unity and loyalty, while simultaneously incorporating a range of national myths and local traditions.

Next to the dynasty, the Habsburg army is often seen as one of the key bulwarks of the state, not least because the common army was one of the few institutions active in both halves of the monarchy. The common army was the chief guarantor of the physical unity of the state and was, as István Deák’s acclaimed study of the Habsburg Officer Corps illustrated, a potential school of patriotism.²⁴ Equally, the organization of military veterans associations throughout the monarchy created an institutional basis for widespread patriotic activities. Laurence Cole offers here the first extensive scholarly treatment of these groups. His case study focuses on the south-western periphery of the monarchy, the Italian-speaking Tirol/Trentino, and examines the complex reasons behind the growing popularity of this Habsburg-patriotic movement among considerable—but not all—sections of the population.

Moving from an analysis of institutional mechanisms, the next group of essays focuses more closely on the dynasty. These essays indicate two important aspects of how the dynasty functioned in relation to society. First, the monarch may be said to have possessed a multiple persona in legal and symbolic terms, as embodied in the famous list recited when the mortal remains of deceased Habsburg rulers sought entry to the Capuchin crypt in Vienna for burial. As well as being Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, Franz Joseph was of course also the—uncrowned—King of Bohemia, alongside his numerous other titles. Habsburg historiography, with its emphasis on individual nationalities within specific crownlands, has largely ignored this dimension to Bohemian history. Hugh Agnew addresses this subject by describing Franz Joseph’s visits to Bohemia and the unfulfilled popular expectations that he be crowned Bohemian king. By looking at the series of imperial visits as well as symbolic representations of the Bohemian crown, Agnew suggests how, over time, the image of the crown became less a reminder of Bohemia’s link to the Habsburg state than a popular symbol of potential, and later actual, Czech statehood.

Second, the dynasty was multifaceted, by virtue of the range of personalities—both living and historical—that it could offer as points of reference for the peoples under its rule. Put most simply, if one member of the Habsburg dynasty did not attract popular support, there was always another who might be chosen as a channel for maintaining a link with the monarchy and expressing loyalty (and, perhaps also, thereby implicitly presenting an idealized vision of how the current monarch should be). Such a picture, for much of his reign at least, seems to fit with Franz Joseph’s role as Hungarian King. His wife Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, remains a popular presence in the souvenir shops of central European cities, but serious scholarly considerations of her personal popularity in Hungary and the political significance of her role as Hungarian queen are far rarer than popular treatments of her fitness regime and eating disorders. Alice Freifeld explores this gap in the scholarly literature through an exploration of Elisabeth’s role as an actor on the Hungarian political stage, placing her contribution to the reconciliation of Hungary to Dualism at the center of her analysis. By way of contrast, Nancy Wingfield’s piece turns to the complex and contested memorialization of Emperor Joseph II, the only member of the Habsburg clan who bequeathed to posterity a personalized neologism (Josephinism). She demonstrates how different social and ethnic groups imbued Joseph II’s image with contrasting interpretations during the nineteenth century: he was celebrated as protector of the peasantry, advocate of Jewish freedoms, promoter of progress, creator of the centralized modern bureaucratic state, and opponent of baroque religious practice. Wingfield argues that, in the context of the ethnically defined political battles of the late nineteenth century, the image of Joseph II became increasingly associated with German nationality within the Austrian state, such that his memory no longer served as a unifying symbol of the common fatherland.

In addition to studying dynastic self-representation and perceptions of the dynasty in various parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, other essays underline the important point that explorations of the invention of tradition must consider how a variety of social groups and provincial and municipal institutions participated in the process of cultural construction and appropriated dynastic traditions for their own purposes.²⁵ Given that many studies of invented tradition or imagined communities pay insufficient attention to the impact in society at large of cultural images or forms of public representation, particular emphasis is placed here on the reception of tradition in the various Habsburg lands. One further route into this terrain is offered by discussion of the changes occurring at the political center after the defeat of the 1848–49 revolutions, when Franz Joseph’s court sought to restore Habsburg prestige through the revival of formal imperial celebrations, including imperial inspection tours of the provinces.²⁶ Daniel Unowsky’s article shifts the focus to Galicia, the northeastern border province today divided between Poland and Ukraine, and examines three public events from 1880—Franz Joseph’s inspection tour, the commemorations of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1830 uprising in Russian Poland, and the centenary celebration of Joseph II’s accession to the throne. Analyzing the interplay between ethnic groups, regional institutions, and the Habsburg state, Unowsky argues that national movements within the monarchy must be understood within the context of ongoing interaction with existing and expanding imperial loyalties. If imperial visits could thus bolster the popularity of the political center, the presence of the emperor-king in the provinces also offered opportunities for competing political factions to interpret the monarchical celebration in local political terms, as Sarah Kent likewise shows in her contribution about Croatia in the year 1895. Kent’s piece is at once a narrative of a seemingly traditional Habsburg imperial progress and an acute analysis of the challenges to the existing state structures arising in the era of modern political mobilization.

A focus on specific events and particular regions of the monarchy reveals the range of shifting, intricate responses to the imperial message. It is also clear that complex processes of identification and self-definition could take place on an individual level. Alon Rachamimov draws on recent theoretical discussions surrounding the meaning of identity and nationhood in his exploration of Avigdor Hameiri, most widely remembered today as a major Hebrew writer. Hameiri identified himself at various times and in different contexts as, among other things, a Zionist, a Hungarian patriot, and a Habsburg loyalist. Through his discussion of Hameiri, Rachamimov offers a critique of the historiography of nationalism and of Habsburg Jewry, introducing a new framework for understanding the relationship between Jews and the Habsburg polity.

In the final essay, Christiane Wolf demonstrates that the Habsburg dynasty sought to adapt to the demands of constitutional politics and the modern world in similar ways to those of its European counterparts. Wolf looks at the Habsburg, Hohenzollern, and Saxe-Coburg (later, Windsor) monarchs as active political agents, comparing their respective constitutional roles as well as contemporary discussions concerning the success of these monarchs in fulfilling their subjects’ expectations. Utilizing this comparative approach, Wolf evaluates the degree to which Franz Joseph provided a meaningful counterbalance to nationalism. Franz Joseph may have portrayed himself as the last monarch of the old school, but Wolf’s essay, together with the others in this volume, indicate that the Habsburg dynasty adapted to the changing constitutional and mass political environment in a number of ways.

A powerful monarchical cult surrounding the figure of Franz Joseph emerged simultaneously with the development of vibrant national movements in the Habsburg Monarchy. This cult and the related efforts at promoting a supranational form of identification proved effective to differing degrees, and the authors in this volume recognize both the extent and the limits to its success. Clearly, the Habsburg polity was not the harmonious European Union ahead of its time claimed by some of the more fanciful nostalgists who have emerged with greater voice since 1989.²⁷ But neither was it completely unloved, nor left helplessly marooned by the challenges of modernity. Contrary to the picture painted in Robert Musil’s oft-cited work, The Man without Qualities, where the famous parallel action for the monarch’s projected seventieth jubilee seems to exist in a form of never-never land, the Habsburg dynasty did undertake a series of concrete measures to provide a sense of unity above and alongside national identities. The essays presented here switch the focus of historical discussion toward those elements in society that accepted and positively supported the multinational state. Collectively, these essays suggest that the growth of national consciousness and the development of a dynastic-based patriotism was not necessarily a zero-sum game. What emerges is a more complex picture of the Habsburg Monarchy, one which recognizes more readily its contradictions and ambivalences.

Notes

1. For a good overview of the history of research into nationalism, see Paul Lawrence, Nationalism. History and Theory (Harlow, 2005). Of the key theoretical works, see above all John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester, 1982); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca and London, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983); Peter Alter, Nationalismus (Frankfurt a.M., 1985); Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions for National Revival in Europe (Cambridge, 1985); Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, 1990).

2. Uri Ra’anan et al, eds., State and Nation in Multi-Ethnic Societies. The Break-Up of Multinational States (Manchester, 1991); Richard Rudolph and David Good, eds., Nationalism and Empire. The Habsburg Empire and the Soviet Union (New York, 1992); Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, eds., The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective (Amonk, NY and London, 1997); Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen, eds., After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building. The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires (New York, 1997); Emil Brix et al., eds., The End of Empires (Vienna-Munich, 2001); Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the Middle East (London, 2001); Dominic Lieven, Empire. The Russian Empire and its Rivals (New Haven and London, 2002).

3. For overviews of recent discussion, compare Gerald Stourzh, The Multi-National Empire Revisited: Reflections on Late Imperial Austria, Austrian History Yearbook 23 (1992): 1–22, and Denis Rusinow, The ‘National Question’ Revisited: Reflections on the State of the Art, Austrian History Yearbook 31 (2000): 1–13.

4. Gary B. Cohen, Neither Absolutism Nor Anarchy: New Narratives on Society and Government in Late Imperial Austria, Austrian History Yearbook 29/Pt.1 (1998): 37–61.

5. Regarding terminology, it should of course be remembered that the term the Habsburg Monarchy (or Habsburg Empire) has been used most prevalently after its demise. When used at the time, this tended to be a form of reference from outside the state itself, which unofficially became known as the Austrian Empire after 1804 and then Austria-Hungary after 1867.

6. Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago, 1929).

7. For discussions of how historians have treated nationalism in the Habsburg Monarchy, see Paula S. Fichtner, Americans and the Disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy: The Shaping of an Historiographical Model, in The Habsburg Empire in World War I, ed. Robert A. Kann et al. (New York, 1977), 221–234; Alan Sked, Historians, the Nationality Question and the Downfall of the Habsburg Empire, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 31 (1981): 175–193.

8. For a discussion of this point, see the introduction to Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit, Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (New York and Oxford, 2005).

9. Daniel Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism: Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848–1916 (West Lafayette, 2005).

10. Péter Hanák, Die Parallelaktion von 1898. Fünfzig Jahre ungarische Revolution und fünfzig Jahre Regierungsjubiläum Franz Josephs, in id., Der Garten und die Werkstatt. Ein kulturgeschichtlicher Vergleich Wien und Budapest um 1900 (Vienna, 1992), 101–115.

11. For an example of such an approach, see Laurence Cole, Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland. Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols 1860–1914 (Frankfurt a.M.- New York, 2000).

12. Eric. J. Hobsbawm, Mass-Producing Traditions in Europe 1870–1914, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge, 1983), 266.

13. Laurence Cole, Der Habsburger-Mythos, Memoria Austriae. Bd..I: Menschen – Mythen – Zeiten, ed. Emil Brix et al. (Vienna-Munich, 2004), 473–504.

14. On the early modern Habsburgs, see Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: the Habsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven, 1992); Karl Vocelka, Habsburg Festivals in the Early Modern Period, in Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Karin Friedrich (Lewiston and Lampeter, 2000), 123–135; Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550–1780 (Cambridge, 2003); Karin J. MacHardy, War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622 (Basingstoke, 2002). For comparisons, see among others Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, 1992); John Adamson, ed., The Princely Courts of Europe. Ritual, Politics and Culture Under the Ancien Regime 1500–1750 (London, 1999).

15. Among many others, see John Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, 1994); John Plunkett, Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch (Oxford, 2003); Elizabeth Fehrenbach, Images of Kaiserdom, in Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations, ed. John C.G. Röhl (Cambridge, England, 1982), 269–285; Werner Blessing, Staat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft. Institutionelle Autorität und mentaler Wandel in Bayern während des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1982); Richard Wortman, Scenarios of Power. Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy volumes 1 and 2 (Princeton, 1995 & 2000).

16. S. Fischer-Galati, Nationalism and Kaisertreue, Slavic Review 22 (1963): 31–36; R.A. Kann, The Dynasty and the Imperial Idea, Austrian History Yearbook 3/I (1967): 11–31.

17. Friedrich Heer, Der Kampf um die österreichische Identität (Vienna, 1981), 258.

18. Brigitte Hamann’s work is the most scholarly of such popular publications. Elisabeth: Kasierin wieder Willen (Vienna, 1982); Rudolf: Kronprinz und Rebell (Vienna, 1978; revised edition 2005). Of considerable use is the essay by Hannes Stekl, Der Wiener Hof und die Hofgesellschaft in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, in Hof und Hofgesellschaft in den deutschen Staaten im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Karl Möckl (Boppard am Rhein, 1990), 61–78. On Franz Joseph’s court, see Ivan Żolger, Der Hofstaat des Hauses Österreich (Wien, 1917); Margit Silber, Obersthofmeister Alfred Fürst von Montenuovo. Höfische Geschichte in den beiden letzten Jahrzehnten der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (1897–1916), (Diss., University of Vienna, 1987); Unowsky, Pomp and Politics. Jean-Paul Bled devotes one chapter of his excellent biography of Franz Joseph to the imperial court, Franz Joseph, trans. T. Bridgeman (Oxford, 1987), but other recent works only briefly touch on such issues, if at all. Steven Beller, Francis Joseph (London and New York, 1996); Alan Palmer, Twilight of the Habsburgs. The Life and Times of Emperor Francis Joseph (London, 1994).

19. For a general discussion, consult Peter Urbanitsch, Pluralist Myth and Nationalist Realities: The Dynastic Myth of the Habsburg Monarchy—a Futile Exercise in the Creation of Identity? Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 101–141. More specifically, see James Shedel, Emperor, Church, and People: Religion and Dynastic Loyalty during the Golden Jubilee of Franz Joseph, Catholic Historical Review 76 (1990): 71–92; Elisabeth Grossegger, Der Kaiser-Huldigungs-Festzug Wien 1908 (Wien, 1992); Laurence Cole, Vom Glanz der Montur. Zum dynastischen Kult der Habsburger und seiner Vermittlung durch militärische Vorbilder im 19. Jh. Ein Bericht über ‘work in progress,’ Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 7 (1996): 577–591; Andrea Blöchl, Die Kaisergedenktage. Die Feste und Feiern zu den Regierungsjubiläen und runden Geburtstagen Kaiser Franz Josephs, in Der Kampf um das Gedächtnis. Öffentliche Gedenktage in Mitteleuropa, ed. Emil Brix and Hannes Stekl (Wien, 1997), 117–144; András Gerő, Francis Joseph, King of the Hungarians (New York, 2001); Nancy Wingfield and Maria Bucur, eds., Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (West Lafayette, 2001); Ernst Bruckmüller, Die österreichische Revolution von 1848 und der Habsburg Mythos des 19. Jahrhunderts, in Bewegung im Reich der Immobilität, ed. Hubert Lengauer and Primus Heinz Kucher (Wien, 2001), 1–33; Werner Telesko, Die Wiener historischen Festzüge von 1879 und 1908. Zum Problem der dynastischen Identitätsfindung des Hauses Österreich, Wiener Geschichtsblätter 51/3 (1996): 133–146. In addition, Andrew Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire (London, 1995), provides an overview of Habsburg self-presentation from its origin until the present day, including brief discussions of imperial celebrations.

20. Hobsbawm, Mass-Producing Traditions.

21. Francis Oakley, Kingship (Oxford, 2006), 132–157.

22. See Karl Megner, Beamte. Wirtschafts- und sozialgeschichtliche Aspekte des k.k. Beamtentums (Vienna, 1985); Waltraud Heindl, Gehorsame Rebellen. Bürokratie und Beamte in Österreich 1780 bis 1848 (Vienna, 1991); E. Lindström, Ernest von Koerber and the Austrian State Idea: A Re-Interpretation of the Koerber Plan (1900–1904), Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004): 143–184; Waltraud Heindl, Bureaucracy, Officials and the State in the Austrian Monarchy: Stages of Change Since the Eighteenth Century, Austrian History Yearbook 37 (2006): 35–57.

23. Jászi, Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, 433–439.

24. István Deák, Beyond nationalism. A Social History of the Habsburg Officer Corps (Oxford, 1990).

25. Hobsbawm, Introduction, in Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1–14.

26. Unowsky, Pomp and Politics.

27. For a critical examination of such trends, see Mathias Weber, Ein Modell für Europa? Die Nationalitätenpolitik in der Habsburgermonarchie – Österreich und Ungarn im Vergleich 1867–1914, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 47 (1996): 651–672.

Chapter 1

PATRIOTIC AND NATIONAL MYTHS

National Consciousness and Elementary School Education in Imperial Austria*

Ernst Bruckmüller

The modern nation is unthinkable without a national education system: it transmits to each new generation of schoolchildren the idea of belonging to a greater, nationally delimited community, without which the existence of modern nations cannot be imagined.¹ States seeking to transform themselves into nation-states assigned schools the role of teaching children a standardized national language. At the same time, language was used to disseminate a whole series of ideas, legends, stories and so on, which can be summarized under the heading of national myths.² As studies of other European countries have shown, literature and history were two key disciplines in the process of creating these national mythologies.³

For a state such as the Habsburg Monarchy, the relationship between the education system and nation-building was much more complex and potentially problematic. Indeed, following Oscar Jászi’s argument, it is often assumed that the Habsburg state failed to produce a common civic education for its citizens.⁴ Schools in the Habsburg Monarchy certainly had the job of educating pupils patriotically. However, the fact that the Habsburg polity was not a unitary nation-state meant that a whole series of historical figures, myths, and traditions were potentially in competition with the state’s official rhetoric. For example, there already existed histories and legends associated with the old-established territories, such as the Kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, or the Duchies of Lower and Upper Austria, but from the first half of the nineteenth century onward, the process of national awakening created a new set of symbols, images, and ideas focused around linguistically based national cultures.

While a number of scholars have explored the subject of legislation on schooling,⁵ this article will focus on the relationship between schooling and the development of national identity in the Austrian half of the Habsburg Monarchy through an examination of school textbooks. In contrast to the Hungarian half of the Monarchy, this is a topic which has received little attention to date.⁶ Certainly, there is other material by which the historian might seek to reconstruct pedagogical practice in Austrian schools, such as the annual reports published by primary and secondary schools, or classroom books, which often recorded from day to day the content imparted to schoolchildren. Likewise, the autobiographical works left by contemporaries who reflected on such issues, such as Stefan Zweig, or the humorously conceived, and at the time, very well-known MEYRIAS by Oskar Kraus, also constitute useful sources.⁷ Nevertheless, a full analysis of such material requires a lengthier and more systematic treatment than can be offered here. More importantly, it is essential to establish first of all what the state sought to instruct and what it allowed to be published in this area. Accordingly, two main areas will be discussed here: firstly, the elementary schools (Volksschulen) will be investigated by looking at a series of primers or reading books in use after 1869. By making a comparison between materials in different languages, it will be possible to ascertain which historical figures and events were utilized in order to mediate a sense of identity beyond the locality and region.⁸ Secondly, I will examine which goals the central state set itself for the teaching of history in academic secondary schools (Gymnasien),⁹ and assess how it sought to control the production of classroom materials in order to guarantee the desired outcome with regard to patriotic education.¹⁰

1. Language and teaching in Austrian elementary schools

As Hannelore Burger has shown, the principle of monolingualism started to inform everyday practice in schools in the Austrian half of the Habsburg Monarchy from the mid-nineteenth century onward.¹¹ Particularly in the lower reaches of the school-system, the method of instruction in just one language came to dominate and replaced almost entirely the former principle of multi- or bilingual teaching. Based on what at the time was considered to be the most up-to-date pedagogical findings, monolingualism was assumed to be the most beneficial and only possible means of teaching children effectively, but this emphasis on the mother-tongue was to have far-reaching consequences.

Following Herder, language was understood to be an expression of a people’s spirit (Volksgeist), whereby a particular language of instruction constituted much more than just a means of communication. Language was considered to be the most pure expression of the culture belonging to a linguistically delineated community—a community that was simultaneously understood as a community of descent. For the majority of contemporaries, this culture consisted not just of language and literature, but also folk music, specific forms of architecture and popular dress (all of which were the object of the new academic discipline of ethnography or Volkskunde), a particular mentality, and above all, a shared history. The logic of this understanding of culture meant that one language of instruction was not interchangeable with another and that the values and content of a culture could not be disseminated through other idioms; rather, it was taken for granted that cultural values and traditions were entirely bound up with languages and also varied with them. While Czech and Slovene-speaking children were to learn about the virtues of the ancient Slavs, German-speaking children were to be acquainted with the equally significant qualities of the ancient Germans. The central role attributed since the Romantic period to the place of language within the system of culture made this kind of division unavoidable.

For the Habsburg Monarchy, this situation presented a potentially enormous problem, because the multitude of languages of instruction meant that schoolchildren were presented with different sets of images and symbols when learning languages and literature. It was therefore necessary to employ additional tools in order to anchor in children’s minds the notion of state unity beyond their own national cultures, such as by drawing on the public image of the good emperor.¹² The long-standing belief in the salvation (Heil) offered by the divinely ordained monarch retained a residual effectiveness right down until the collapse of the Habsburg state, albeit in a much changed, weaker form than in earlier times.¹³ Indeed, the force of such mechanisms was visible in the way in which Francis Joseph, who at the start of his reign had been very unpopular not just in Hungary and northern Italy, but even in Vienna, eventually became the old Emperor, a figure beyond criticism.¹⁴ At the