Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience

257 Pages·2014·2.515 MB·English

by  Johannes Feichtinger, Gary B. Cohen (eds.)

Understanding MUlticUltUralisM
AustriAn And HAbsburg studies
General Editor: Gary B. Cohen
Published in Association with the Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota
Volume 1 Volume 10
Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and Embodiments of Power: Building Baroque
Twentieth Centuries: Cross-Disciplinary Cities in Europe
Perspectives Edited by Gary B. Cohen and
Edited by David F. Good, Margarete Franz A. J. Szabo
Grandner, and Mary Jo Maynes
Volume 11
Volume 2 Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating Religious
From World War to Waldheim: Culture and Differences in Central Europe, 1500–1800
Politics in Austria and the United States Edited by Howard Louthan,
Edited by David F. Good and Ruth Wodak Gary B. Cohen, and Franz A. J. Szabo
Volume 3 Volume 12
Rethinking Vienna 1900 “Vienna Is Different”: Jewish Writers in
Edited by Steven Beller Austria from the Fin de Siècle to the Present
Hillary Hope Herzog
Volume 4
The Great Tradition and Its Legacy: Volume 13
The Evolution of Dramatic and Musical Sexual Knowledge: Feeling, Fact and Social
Theater in Austria and Central Europe Reform in Vienna, 1900–1934
Edited by Michael Cherlin, Halina Britta McEwen
Filipowicz, and Richard L. Rudolph
Volume 14
Volume 5 Journeys Into Madness: Mapping Mental
Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Illness in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe Edited by Gemma Blackshaw and Sabine
Edited by Nancy M. Wingfield Wieber
Volume 6 Volume 15
Constructing Nationalities in East Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of
Central Europe Germany in the Second World War: Goals,
Edited by Pieter M. Judson and Expectations, Practices
Marsha L. Rozenblit Edited by Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan
Dyroff, and Dieter Langewiesche
Volume 7
The Environment and Sustainable Volume 16
Development in the New Central Europe The Viennese Cafe and Fin-de-Siecle Culture
Edited by Zbigniew Bochniarz and Gary Edited by Charlotte Ashby, Tag Gronberg,
B. Cohen and Simon Shaw-Miller
Volume 8 Volume 17
Crime, Jews and News: Vienna 1890–1914 Understanding Multiculturalism: The
Daniel Mark Vyletta Habsburg Central European Experience
Edited by Johannes Feichtinger and Gary
Volume 9
B. Cohen
The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Sumbolism,
Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in
the Late Habsburg Monarchy
Edited by Laurence Cole and
Daniel L. Unowsky
u
nderstAnding
M
ulticulturAlisM
The Habsburg Central European Experience
d
Edited by
Johannes Feichtinger
and
Gary B. Cohen

berghahn
N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First edition published in 2014 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2014 Johannes Feichtinger and Gary B. Cohen
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Understanding multiculturalism: the Habsburg Central European experience / edited by
Johannes Feichtinger and Gary B. Cohen.
pages cm. — (Austrian and Habsburg studies ; volume 17)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-78238-264-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78238-265-2 (ebook)
1. Austria—Ethnic relations—History. 2. Europe, Central—Ethnic relations—
History. 3. Multiculturalism—Austria—History. 4. Multiculturalism—Europe,
Central—History. 5. National characteristics, Austrian. 6. National characteristics,
Central European. I. Feichtinger, Johannes, editor of compilation. II. Cohen, Gary B.,
1948– editor of compilation.
DB47.U64 2014
305.8'009436—dc23 2013023149
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed on acid-free paper
ISBN: 978-1-78238-264-5 hardback
ISBN: 978-1-78238-265-2 ebook
c
ontents
d
List of Tables and Figures vii
Preface ix
Introduction. Understanding Multiculturalism:
The Habsburg Central European Experience 1
Johannes Feichtinger and Gary B. Cohen
section i. identity ForMAtion in MulticulturAl societies
1. Heterogeneities and Homogeneities: On Similarities
and Diversities 17
Anil Bhatti
2. Mestizaje and Hybrid Culture: Toward a Transnational
Cultural Memory of Europe and the Development of Cultural
Theories in Latin America 47
Michael Rössner
3. Do Multiple Languages Mean a Multicultural Society?
Nationalist “Frontiers” in Rural Austria, 1880–1918 61
Pieter M. Judson
section ii. tHe dynAMics oF MulticulturAl societies,
Politics, And tHe stAte
4. Multiculturalism, Polish Style: Glimpses from the Interwar Period 85
Patrice M. Dabrowski
5. Multiculturalism against the State: Lessons from Istria 101
Pamela Ballinger
6. Migration in Austria: An Overview of the 1920s to 2000s 122
Michael John
vi | Contents
section iii. identities exPressed, negotiated,
and cHallenged in MUlticUltUral settings
7. The Slice of Desire: Intercultural Practices versus National
Loyalties in the Peripheral Multiethnic Society of Central Europe
at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 161
Oto Luthar
8. On “Neighbors” and “Strangers”: The Literary Motif of
“Central Europe” as Lieu de Mémoire 174
Andrei Corbea-Hoisie
9. Culture as a Space of Communication 187
Moritz Csáky
Selected Bibliography 209
Notes on Contributors 233
Index 237
t F
ables and igUres
d
Tables
6.1. Place of Birth, Residents of Vienna, Language of Everyday Use,
Religion, 1923–34 130
6.2. Population Born Outside Austria by Province, 1951–2001 139
6.3. Population in Austria, 1 January 2011, by Nationality and Birth 144
Figures
6.1. Workforce in Austria by Nationality, 1963–2006 138
7.1. Recipe for Preznic from a Manuscript Cookbook by Marija Hujs,
in the possession of Oto Luthar 171

P
reFace
d
The experience of people in the lands of the Habsburg Monarchy and its suc-
cessor states—with their varied languages, religions, histories, and diverse
and changing ethnic and national loyalties—has long interested scholars, policy
makers, and anyone concerned with issues of cultural diversity around the globe.
For centuries the multiplicity of cultural traditions in Habsburg Central Europe
has made for a particularly rich intellectual and artistic life. These circumstances
also contributed to great political ferment during the nineteenth and twenti-
eth centuries, as nationalist activists worked to develop political allegiances and
movements for empowerment on the basis of the distinct languages and cul-
tures of particular popular elements. Many scholars have seen the experience
of the Central European lands of the Habsburg Monarchy as contributing to a
broader understanding of the rise and fall of imperial states in the early mod-
ern and modern eras, particularly where culturally diverse empires faced grow-
ing centrifugal forces of contending ethnic and nationalist political formations.
Scholars’ increasing appreciation over the last three decades of the constructed,
contingent, and negotiated character of group cultures and ethnic or national
loyalties, and of the ambiguities and mutability of just who consider themselves
members of particular groups, has only added to interest in the historical expe-
rience and expressions of cultural diversity, multiculturalism, or pluricultural-
ism—as it has been variously termed—in Habsburg Central Europe. Bringing
together a group of scholars for a thoughtful, analytic reassessment of the Cen-
tral European experience in light of our heightened awareness of the dynamism,
contingency, and ambiguities in values and modes of behavior, perception, and
discourse should contribute much to fresh understandings of the development
of group loyalties and the relations of diverse ethnic and national groups to each
other and to governments in modern societies.
These were the aspirations of the Commission (now Institute) of Culture
Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Cen-
ter for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota in 2006 when they began
an international group research project entitled, “Multiculturalism: The Central
European Experience and Its Impact on Identity Formation in a Globalized