Catherine Horel has undertaken a comparative analysis of the societal, ethnic, and cultural diversity in the last decades of the Habsburg Monarchy as represented in twelve cities: Arad, Bratislava, Brno, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Oradea, Rijeka, Sarajevo, Subotica, Timișoara, Trieste, and Zagreb. By purposely selecting these cities, the author aims to counter the disproportionate attention that the largest cities in the empire receive.

With a focus on the aspects of everyday life faced by the city inhabitants (associations, schools, economy, and municipal politics) the book avoids any idealization of the monarchy as a paradise of peaceful multiculturalism, and also avoids exaggerating conflicts. The author claims that the world of the Habsburg cities was a dynamic space where many models coexisted and created vitality, emulation, and conflict. Modernization brought about the dissolution of old structures, but also mobility, the progress of education, the explosion of associative life, and constantly growing cultural offerings.

Catherine Horel is Research Director at CNRS (SIRICE, Paris I University)

List of Figures
List of Tables
Note on the spelling of city names

Introduction

Chapter 1. Midsize Cities in Austria-Hungary
Municipal law in Austria and Hungary and the status of cities
Twelve cities of Austria-Hungary: twelve different situations and many similarities
Urban growth and city development, 1848–1914

Chapter 2. Austro-Hungarian Tower of Babel: The City and its Languages
Defining the languages of the empire
Statistical approach to multilingualism
Multilingualism and professional mobility
Literacy and language practice
The Jews: a multicultural group par excellence?
Signs of multilingualism
The language of the city

Chapter 3. Bells and Church Towers: The Confessional Diversity
A fragmented confessional landscape
The Roman Catholics
The Greek-Catholics
The Orthodox
Evangelical and Reformed Protestantism
Judaism
The Muslims: newcomers to the scene of confessional diversity
Mobile communities: mixed marriages and conversions
Religion and national politics
Building the multiconfessional city: churches, temples, and synagogues

Chapter 4. Schools: Places to Learn Multiculturalism or Factories of the Nation?
The framework of instruction and school systems in Austria-Hungary
Languages in school curricula
National struggle in Brünn, Trieste, and Lemberg
The gender issue: educating the “mothers of the nation”
Sharing schools in Czernowitz
Troublesome student associations
The struggle for the university

Chapter 5. Cultural Institutions: Multiculturalism and National Discourse
Cultural associations as political actors
The song of the nation: choirs
The politics of singing
National institutes
Women’s associations: new ways of action
Jewish associative life: coming out of the ghetto
The city as a stage: nationalizing the theatre
The press: actor and enemy of multiculturalism

Chapter 6. Spaces and Landscapes of the City
Modernizing the city
The appropriation of public space
Uses of and struggles for the public space: building a home for the nation
Going beyond the nation: social contest

Chapter 7. Politics in the City
Inside the city hall
Turbulent Czernowitz
The experimental city: Sarajevo
Political parties

Chapter 8. Sharing the City
The dimensions of city patriotism
Celebrating the city
The loyal city: memorializing the Habsburgs
Two cases of “constructed” Habsburg cities: Czernowitz and Sarajevo. A colonial project?

Conclusion

Appendix
Statistics
Polyglossia in Hungarian towns
Bibliography
Index