Börries Kuzmany | University of Vienna (original) (raw)
Books by Börries Kuzmany
Vom Umgang mit nationaler Vielfalt. Eine Geschichte der nicht-territorialen Autonomie in Europa [Accomodating National Diversity. A History of Non-Territorial Autonomy], 2024
This book explores the practice of non-territorial autonomy, a concept based on collective rights... more This book explores the practice of non-territorial autonomy, a concept based on collective rights and used to address national diversity within a single state. It examines its strands of development and the processes of transfer in the Habsburg monarchy and Russia, connecting them to processes in the interwar period. The flexible instrument was able to adapt to different political and ideological frameworks.
Куцмані Б. Броди. Прикордонне галицьке місто в довгому ХІХ столітті. Перекл. з німецької Володимир Кам’янець. – Львів: Літопис, 2019.
Мета цієї праці – дослідити минуле міста Бродів за австрійських часів з економічного й соціально-... more Мета цієї праці – дослідити минуле міста Бродів за австрійських часів з економічного й соціально-історичного погляду. У роботі поєднано аспекти міської історії з тодішнім і теперішнім сприйманням Бродів і визначено збіги й відмінності в цьому аспекті. Два перші розділи книжки ґрунтуються на аналізі архівних матеріалів, опублікованих джерел та наукової літератури й відповідають класичному історіографічному підходові. Третя ж частина має радше літературознавчу або ж культурологічну спрямованість.
An urban biography, Brody: A Galician Border City in the Long Nineteenth Century reconciles 150 y... more An urban biography, Brody: A Galician Border City in the Long Nineteenth Century reconciles 150 years of the town's socioeconomic history with its cultural memory. The first comprehensive study of this city under Habsburg-Austrian rule, Börries Kuzmany advises against reading urban history solely through the national lens. Besides exploring Brody's extraordinary ethno-confessional structure—Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians—Kuzmany examines the interrelation between the city's geographical location at the imperial border, its standing as a key commercial hub in East-Central Europe, and its position as a major springboard for the dissemination of the Haskalah in Galicia and the Russian Empire. After delving into the contradictory perceptions of Brody in travelogues, fiction and memory books, Kuzmany uses contemporary and historical photographs to provide an illustrated walking tour of this now Ukrainian town.
Das heute in der Westukraine gelegene Brody wurde im Zuge der Ersten Teilung Polens 1772 Teil des... more Das heute in der Westukraine gelegene Brody wurde im Zuge der Ersten Teilung Polens 1772 Teil des Habsburgerreichs und war rund 150 Jahre lang dessen nordöstlichste Grenzstadt. Nach einer anfänglichen Blüte setzte in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts ein rapider wirtschaftlicher Niedergang ein. Als Österreichs jüdischste Stadt nahm Brody eine besondere Stellung in den gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen Beziehungen Galiziens ein. Diese Sonderrolle zeigt sich nicht zuletzt in außergewöhnlichen Lösungen für das ethno-konfessionelle Zusammenleben in Politik, Bildung und Alltagsleben. Reisende und Schriftsteller, wie etwa der in Brody geborene Joseph Roth, sowie ehemalige Bewohner hinterließen Beschreibungen, Erinnerungen und Bilder, die je nach Zeit und Herkunft sehr unterschiedliche Wahrnehmungen dieser Stadt aufzeigen.
Dieses Buch wurde mit fünf internationalen Preisen ausgezeichnet.
![Research paper thumbnail of Getrennt und doch verbunden: Grenzstädte zwischen Österreich und Russland, 1772 - 1918. [Separated Yet Linked. Border Towns Between Austria and Russia]. Wien, Böhlau, 2011](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/43574622/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](In the aftermath of the First Partition of Poland in 1772 a new border was drawn in a region that... more In the aftermath of the First Partition of Poland in 1772 a new border was drawn in a region that had formerly been shaped by the social and economic structures of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Studying the economic, social and political processes in three pairs of border towns situated on this very border, this project analyses the consequences of the partitions on the Austro-Polish and Austro-Russian borderlands. The towns investigated in this micro-study are Brody – Radyvyliv, Pidvoločisk – Voločisk, and Austrian Husjatyn – Russian Husjatyn. Owing to their location at the very border, they followed similar urban development patterns on the one hand. On the other, however, being part of two competing empires, the political conditions varied considerably. Our focus is on the cross-country and cross-city interaction. We look at mechanisms of border control, trading conditions, contraband, pilgrimages and deserters. The time range of this book are the roughly 150 years between the creation of the border in 1772 and its forcible disintegration in the course of the First World War.
Edited volumes and special issues by Börries Kuzmany
This Open Access textbook is a result of the work of ENTAN – the European Non-Territorial Autonom... more This Open Access textbook is a result of the work of ENTAN – the European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network. It provides students with a comprehensive analysis of the different aspects and issues around the concept of non-territorial autonomy (NTA). The themes of each chapter have been selected to ensure a multi- and interdisciplinary overview of an emerging research field and show both in theory and in practice the possibilities of NTA in addressing cultural, ethnic, religious and language differences in contemporary societies.
Nationalities Papers, 50/5, 2022
This special issue assumes that attempts to accommodate national diversity within states have alw... more This special issue assumes that attempts to accommodate national diversity within states have always needed to negotiate the tension between the fundamental territorial nature of statehood and the much less territorial and more personal and elusive character of nationhood.
The history of accommodating intrastate national diversity has thus seen both territorial and non-territorial approaches being pursued by a variety of majority and minority actors. While acknowledging that territoriality crucially constrains and conditions any attempt by a state to accommodate national diversity, and that non-territorial and territorial approaches in this context are intertwined, we analytically distinguish between these approaches and study the interplay between them. At the same time, the special issue refrains from maintaining a too rigid dichotomy and instead draws a spectrum of such approaches that are territorial or non-territorial to varying degrees.
Bringing together contributions by eight authors, this special issue sheds light on important moments in this history and on the strategies and motives of some of its main protagonists. Highlighting the respective limitations, pitfalls and advantages of each approach, the papers revolve around the challenge of adjusting relatively rigid, territorially-bound forms of statehood to the more fluid and much less territorially determined manifestations of nationhood throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Some of our authors ask what the biographies of legal scholars or political activists can tell us about the genesis of some of these approaches towards national diversity. Others embark on country-specific case studies that examine how non-territorial and territorial autonomy have fared in various national contexts. Lastly, some of our authors take a broader comparative approach between countries to examine how regional and historical contexts have favored specific approaches to the accommodation of national diversity and the territorialization of the state.
Besides the introduction, most of the contributions are open access and can be downloaded from the journal website:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/issue/1569C292CA327944B39B48DCE788AF74
Papers by Börries Kuzmany
Journal of Austrian-American History, 2019
By bringing together the most important refugee crises that struck first the Habsburg Empire and ... more By bringing together the most important refugee crises that struck first the Habsburg Empire and later the Republic of Austria during the last three hundred years, this paper analyzes the longue durée experiences this country has had in dealing with such situations. It explores the driving factors behind societal and governmental responses and conceives four topics that are recurrent, if in different forms: 1) the socioeconomic disruption and the ethical imperative to provide relief; 2) the legal authorities and their power to determine a legal settlement and the ultimate right to belong; 3) their quest to maintain sovereignty and control; and 4) the question of the legitimacy of refugees as perceived by authorities but also by a (fickle) public opinion.
Nationalities Papers, 2022
Kwartalnik Historyczny, 2010
Nations and Nationalism, 2023
Western societies over the last few decades have seen an increased interest in questions of group... more Western societies over the last few decades have seen an increased interest in questions of group belonging and group identities, including ethno-national groups. According to essentialising or constructivist paradigms, belonging to a national group is commonly conceptualised in the range of objective versus subjective criteria, where objective entails ascription and subjective, self-identification. This paper suggests disentangling the paired dimensions—objective and other-classification versus subjective and self-classification—by analysing the late Habsburg Empire. I argue that the introduction of national registers in the new provincial constitutions and electoral laws of Moravia, Bukovina and Galicia accelerated an objective understanding of nationality and increasingly favoured other-classification over self-classification in cases where national belonging had become an administrative category. Yet, to do justice to the individual's subjective feelings, authorities were supposed to investigate objectively a citizen's subjective identification—a procedure that can be termed “objectivisation.” Such objectivising procedures thus reconciled an individual's subjective identification with an increasingly objective understanding of nationality by developing guidelines on how classification by others should proceed.
![Research paper thumbnail of Galizische Kultur und Identität -Kulturen und Identitäten in Galizien [Galician culture and identity – Cultures and identities in Galicia ]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/77105427/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. X: Das kulturelle Leben [The Cultural Life]. Edited by: Andreas Gottsmann, Vienna, Verlag d. Österreichischen Akademie d. Wissenschaften, 829–886, 2021
Andreas Gottsmann (ed.): Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. X: Das kulturelle Leben [The Cul... more Andreas Gottsmann (ed.): Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. X: Das kulturelle Leben [The Cultural Life] (Vienna, Verlag d. Österreichischen Akademie d. Wissenschaften 2021), 829–886
Remaking Central Europe. Edited by: Peter Becker and Natasha Wheatley, Oxford, University Press, 315-342, 2020
What is the relationship between ethnic diversity and sovereign territoriality? Central Europe wa... more What is the relationship between ethnic diversity and sovereign territoriality? Central Europe was a bustling laboratory for this question both before and after the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire. The notion of minority rights overseen by an international organization like the League of Nations was one of the most striking innovations of the interwar international order. From the perspective of Central European activists, scholars, and politicians, however, this system emerged as just one possible response to an older problem concerning the form of rights and jurisdiction best suited to a region in which different ethnicities, languages, and religions were densely intermingled. In fact, various thinkers had developed a number of bold proposals that sought to redefine the relationship between rights and territory by forming national jurisdictions and communities on a corporate-and thus non-territorial-basis. This chapter traces the emergence of 'non-territorial autonomy' , as this idea is referred to by scholars today, in the multinational Habsburg state and its translation into the area of interwar minority protection.
![Research paper thumbnail of From the Great Russian People to a National Minority: The Ministry of Great Russian Affairs in Ukraine, 1917–18 [Від імперського народу до національної меншини. Міністерство великоруських справ в Україні, 1917–18 рр]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/68086279/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Ukraina Moderna [Україна модерна] 29, 2020
This article is devoted to the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs, which existed under various nam... more This article is devoted to the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs, which existed under various names in revolutionary Ukraine from the fall of 1917 to the summer of 1918. To this day, scholars have paid little attention to this institution, deeming it unproductive and hence on the margins of the Ukrainian Revolution. The Jewish and Polish ministries, which represented the two other large non-Ukrainian populations, were significantly more active. However, documents held in the Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv reveal that the activity of the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs was not all that insignificant.
The first part of the article discusses the circumstances surrounding the creation of ministries for minorities, as well as the legislative process governing the protection of minorities in revolutionary Ukraine, which culminated in January 1918 in the passage of a non-territorial law about autonomies. These processes must be understood strictly in the context of the discussion about the possible or indispensable restructuring of the Russian Empire, which lasted decades. This discussion was conducted not only by the representatives of the more active national movements on the outskirts of the multinational empire, but also political figures in the center, who held very different ideological positions.
The second part of the article features an analysis of the concrete measures that were implemented by the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs within the structure of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. These measures are very revealing, particularly in terms of the attempts to preserve a Russian-language education system and to create autonomous organizational structures. In addition, they indirectly indicate a surprising change in Russian self-awareness. The example of the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs may be used to demonstrate that at least part of the Russian population was in accord with the transformation accompanying the Ukrainian Revolution—the transformation from Great Russian citizen to member of an ethnic minority. Initially, this ministry saw itself to a greater degree as a general government department representing the interests of Russian-speaking citizens in the Ukrainian regions of a Russia organized along democratic lines. However, over time it changed its perspective and began to operate instead as a department representing the non-territorial Russian minority in Ukraine—not least because of the new legislative circumstances that arose in January 1918.
Journal of Austrian-American History, 2018
By bringing together the most important refugee crises that struck first the Habsburg Empire and ... more By bringing together the most important refugee crises that struck first the Habsburg Empire and later the Republic of Austria during the last three hundred years, this paper analyzes the longue durée experiences this country has had in dealing with such situations. It explores the driving factors behind societal and governmental responses and conceives four topics that are recurrent, if in different forms: 1) the socioeconomic disruption and the ethical imperative to provide relief; 2) the legal authorities and their power to determine a legal settlement and the ultimate right to belong; 3) their quest to maintain sovereignty and control; and 4) the question of the legitimacy of refugees as perceived by authorities but also by a (fickle) public opinion.
Ethnopolitics 15/1, Spring 2016, 43-65, 2016
In the early twentieth century, three provinces of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire enact... more In the early twentieth century, three provinces of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire enacted national compromises in their legislation that had elements of non-territorial autonomy provisions. Czech and German politicians in Moravia reached an agreement in 1905. In the heavily mixed Bukovina, Romanian, Ukrainian, German, Jewish and Polish representatives agreed on a new provincial constitution in 1909. Last but not least, Polish and Ukrainian nationalists compromised in spring 1914, just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War vitiated the new provisions. Even though the provisions of these agreements varied substantially, new electoral laws introducing national registers were at their heart. These were designed to ensure a fairer representation of national groups in the provincial assemblies and to keep national agitation out of electoral campaigns. The earliest compromise in Moravia went furthest in consociational power sharing. However, the national bodies within the provincial assembly had no right to tax their respective national communities, and the provisions of the provincial constitutions kept the non-nationally defined nobility as an important counterbalance. The compromises in Bukovina and Galicia, even if they categorised all inhabitants nationally, contented themselves with even less autonomous agency for the national bodies in the provincial assemblies and rather emphasised the symbolic elements of national autonomy. The non-territorial approach in all three crownlands, however, was an instrument to reorganise multi-ethnic provinces that increasingly became the model for national compromises in other Austrian provinces.
East Central Europe 42/2-3, 2015, 216-248
This article provides an overview of the political representation and integration of Galician Jew... more This article provides an overview of the political representation and integration of Galician Jews on the municipal, provincial, and central state level under Austrian rule. It demonstrates that political representation on the latter two levels started only after the revolution of 1848 and was rather modest considering the numeric and economic weight Jews enjoyed in Galicia. Even though representation in municipal councils started earlier, the position of Jews depended very much on local circumstances. After the turn of the century, the widening of the electorate to the lower classes led to a broader Jewish representation and participation not only in terms of numbers but also within the political spectrum. This is particularly true for the paper's second part. In this section, the text explores the reform of the electoral system for Galicia's provincial parliament and the attitude of Jewish politicians towards the compromise eventually found in 1914. The article argues that among Jews the positive or negative assessment of the new voting system depended largely on their position in the larger antagonism between Jewish nationalists and assimilationists. The former complained that the entire reform was on the backs of the Jews ignoring their numeric strength and their national rights. Assimilationists, on the other hand, were satisfied that, against all counter-claims of Zionists and Anti-Semites, the compromise legally established that Jews were Poles.
![Research paper thumbnail of Das intellektuelle und wirtschaftliche Umfeld der Familie Schapire in Brody [The intellectual and economic background of the Schapire Familiy in Brody]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/58198771/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Burcu Dogramaci, et al. (ed.): Anna und Rosa Schapire. Sozialwissenschaft, Kunstgeschichte und Feminismus um 1900 (Munich 2017), 38–53 , 2017
![Research paper thumbnail of Der Galizische Ausgleich als Beispiel moderner Nationalitätenpolitik? [The Galician Compromise as an example of modern nationality policy], in: Elisabeth Haid (ed.): Galizien. Peripherie der Moderne – Moderne der Peripherie (Marburg 2013)](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/37555460/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This article investigates how Polish and Ukrainian political parties, state officials as well as ... more This article investigates how Polish and Ukrainian political parties, state officials as well as religious leaders negotiated national-personal autonomy for the virtually unstudied Galician Compromise in 1914. My conclusion maintains that a compromise-friendly atmosphere in the Empire’s public opinion, careful interference from Vienna and increasing tensions with neighbouring Russia forced the Polish establishment to cede some power to Ukrainian parties.
Vom Umgang mit nationaler Vielfalt. Eine Geschichte der nicht-territorialen Autonomie in Europa [Accomodating National Diversity. A History of Non-Territorial Autonomy], 2024
This book explores the practice of non-territorial autonomy, a concept based on collective rights... more This book explores the practice of non-territorial autonomy, a concept based on collective rights and used to address national diversity within a single state. It examines its strands of development and the processes of transfer in the Habsburg monarchy and Russia, connecting them to processes in the interwar period. The flexible instrument was able to adapt to different political and ideological frameworks.
Куцмані Б. Броди. Прикордонне галицьке місто в довгому ХІХ столітті. Перекл. з німецької Володимир Кам’янець. – Львів: Літопис, 2019.
Мета цієї праці – дослідити минуле міста Бродів за австрійських часів з економічного й соціально-... more Мета цієї праці – дослідити минуле міста Бродів за австрійських часів з економічного й соціально-історичного погляду. У роботі поєднано аспекти міської історії з тодішнім і теперішнім сприйманням Бродів і визначено збіги й відмінності в цьому аспекті. Два перші розділи книжки ґрунтуються на аналізі архівних матеріалів, опублікованих джерел та наукової літератури й відповідають класичному історіографічному підходові. Третя ж частина має радше літературознавчу або ж культурологічну спрямованість.
An urban biography, Brody: A Galician Border City in the Long Nineteenth Century reconciles 150 y... more An urban biography, Brody: A Galician Border City in the Long Nineteenth Century reconciles 150 years of the town's socioeconomic history with its cultural memory. The first comprehensive study of this city under Habsburg-Austrian rule, Börries Kuzmany advises against reading urban history solely through the national lens. Besides exploring Brody's extraordinary ethno-confessional structure—Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians—Kuzmany examines the interrelation between the city's geographical location at the imperial border, its standing as a key commercial hub in East-Central Europe, and its position as a major springboard for the dissemination of the Haskalah in Galicia and the Russian Empire. After delving into the contradictory perceptions of Brody in travelogues, fiction and memory books, Kuzmany uses contemporary and historical photographs to provide an illustrated walking tour of this now Ukrainian town.
Das heute in der Westukraine gelegene Brody wurde im Zuge der Ersten Teilung Polens 1772 Teil des... more Das heute in der Westukraine gelegene Brody wurde im Zuge der Ersten Teilung Polens 1772 Teil des Habsburgerreichs und war rund 150 Jahre lang dessen nordöstlichste Grenzstadt. Nach einer anfänglichen Blüte setzte in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts ein rapider wirtschaftlicher Niedergang ein. Als Österreichs jüdischste Stadt nahm Brody eine besondere Stellung in den gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen Beziehungen Galiziens ein. Diese Sonderrolle zeigt sich nicht zuletzt in außergewöhnlichen Lösungen für das ethno-konfessionelle Zusammenleben in Politik, Bildung und Alltagsleben. Reisende und Schriftsteller, wie etwa der in Brody geborene Joseph Roth, sowie ehemalige Bewohner hinterließen Beschreibungen, Erinnerungen und Bilder, die je nach Zeit und Herkunft sehr unterschiedliche Wahrnehmungen dieser Stadt aufzeigen.
Dieses Buch wurde mit fünf internationalen Preisen ausgezeichnet.
In the aftermath of the First Partition of Poland in 1772 a new border was drawn in a region that... more In the aftermath of the First Partition of Poland in 1772 a new border was drawn in a region that had formerly been shaped by the social and economic structures of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Studying the economic, social and political processes in three pairs of border towns situated on this very border, this project analyses the consequences of the partitions on the Austro-Polish and Austro-Russian borderlands. The towns investigated in this micro-study are Brody – Radyvyliv, Pidvoločisk – Voločisk, and Austrian Husjatyn – Russian Husjatyn. Owing to their location at the very border, they followed similar urban development patterns on the one hand. On the other, however, being part of two competing empires, the political conditions varied considerably. Our focus is on the cross-country and cross-city interaction. We look at mechanisms of border control, trading conditions, contraband, pilgrimages and deserters. The time range of this book are the roughly 150 years between the creation of the border in 1772 and its forcible disintegration in the course of the First World War.
This Open Access textbook is a result of the work of ENTAN – the European Non-Territorial Autonom... more This Open Access textbook is a result of the work of ENTAN – the European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network. It provides students with a comprehensive analysis of the different aspects and issues around the concept of non-territorial autonomy (NTA). The themes of each chapter have been selected to ensure a multi- and interdisciplinary overview of an emerging research field and show both in theory and in practice the possibilities of NTA in addressing cultural, ethnic, religious and language differences in contemporary societies.
Nationalities Papers, 50/5, 2022
This special issue assumes that attempts to accommodate national diversity within states have alw... more This special issue assumes that attempts to accommodate national diversity within states have always needed to negotiate the tension between the fundamental territorial nature of statehood and the much less territorial and more personal and elusive character of nationhood.
The history of accommodating intrastate national diversity has thus seen both territorial and non-territorial approaches being pursued by a variety of majority and minority actors. While acknowledging that territoriality crucially constrains and conditions any attempt by a state to accommodate national diversity, and that non-territorial and territorial approaches in this context are intertwined, we analytically distinguish between these approaches and study the interplay between them. At the same time, the special issue refrains from maintaining a too rigid dichotomy and instead draws a spectrum of such approaches that are territorial or non-territorial to varying degrees.
Bringing together contributions by eight authors, this special issue sheds light on important moments in this history and on the strategies and motives of some of its main protagonists. Highlighting the respective limitations, pitfalls and advantages of each approach, the papers revolve around the challenge of adjusting relatively rigid, territorially-bound forms of statehood to the more fluid and much less territorially determined manifestations of nationhood throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Some of our authors ask what the biographies of legal scholars or political activists can tell us about the genesis of some of these approaches towards national diversity. Others embark on country-specific case studies that examine how non-territorial and territorial autonomy have fared in various national contexts. Lastly, some of our authors take a broader comparative approach between countries to examine how regional and historical contexts have favored specific approaches to the accommodation of national diversity and the territorialization of the state.
Besides the introduction, most of the contributions are open access and can be downloaded from the journal website:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/issue/1569C292CA327944B39B48DCE788AF74
Journal of Austrian-American History, 2019
By bringing together the most important refugee crises that struck first the Habsburg Empire and ... more By bringing together the most important refugee crises that struck first the Habsburg Empire and later the Republic of Austria during the last three hundred years, this paper analyzes the longue durée experiences this country has had in dealing with such situations. It explores the driving factors behind societal and governmental responses and conceives four topics that are recurrent, if in different forms: 1) the socioeconomic disruption and the ethical imperative to provide relief; 2) the legal authorities and their power to determine a legal settlement and the ultimate right to belong; 3) their quest to maintain sovereignty and control; and 4) the question of the legitimacy of refugees as perceived by authorities but also by a (fickle) public opinion.
Nationalities Papers, 2022
Kwartalnik Historyczny, 2010
Nations and Nationalism, 2023
Western societies over the last few decades have seen an increased interest in questions of group... more Western societies over the last few decades have seen an increased interest in questions of group belonging and group identities, including ethno-national groups. According to essentialising or constructivist paradigms, belonging to a national group is commonly conceptualised in the range of objective versus subjective criteria, where objective entails ascription and subjective, self-identification. This paper suggests disentangling the paired dimensions—objective and other-classification versus subjective and self-classification—by analysing the late Habsburg Empire. I argue that the introduction of national registers in the new provincial constitutions and electoral laws of Moravia, Bukovina and Galicia accelerated an objective understanding of nationality and increasingly favoured other-classification over self-classification in cases where national belonging had become an administrative category. Yet, to do justice to the individual's subjective feelings, authorities were supposed to investigate objectively a citizen's subjective identification—a procedure that can be termed “objectivisation.” Such objectivising procedures thus reconciled an individual's subjective identification with an increasingly objective understanding of nationality by developing guidelines on how classification by others should proceed.
Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. X: Das kulturelle Leben [The Cultural Life]. Edited by: Andreas Gottsmann, Vienna, Verlag d. Österreichischen Akademie d. Wissenschaften, 829–886, 2021
Andreas Gottsmann (ed.): Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. X: Das kulturelle Leben [The Cul... more Andreas Gottsmann (ed.): Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. X: Das kulturelle Leben [The Cultural Life] (Vienna, Verlag d. Österreichischen Akademie d. Wissenschaften 2021), 829–886
Remaking Central Europe. Edited by: Peter Becker and Natasha Wheatley, Oxford, University Press, 315-342, 2020
What is the relationship between ethnic diversity and sovereign territoriality? Central Europe wa... more What is the relationship between ethnic diversity and sovereign territoriality? Central Europe was a bustling laboratory for this question both before and after the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire. The notion of minority rights overseen by an international organization like the League of Nations was one of the most striking innovations of the interwar international order. From the perspective of Central European activists, scholars, and politicians, however, this system emerged as just one possible response to an older problem concerning the form of rights and jurisdiction best suited to a region in which different ethnicities, languages, and religions were densely intermingled. In fact, various thinkers had developed a number of bold proposals that sought to redefine the relationship between rights and territory by forming national jurisdictions and communities on a corporate-and thus non-territorial-basis. This chapter traces the emergence of 'non-territorial autonomy' , as this idea is referred to by scholars today, in the multinational Habsburg state and its translation into the area of interwar minority protection.
Ukraina Moderna [Україна модерна] 29, 2020
This article is devoted to the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs, which existed under various nam... more This article is devoted to the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs, which existed under various names in revolutionary Ukraine from the fall of 1917 to the summer of 1918. To this day, scholars have paid little attention to this institution, deeming it unproductive and hence on the margins of the Ukrainian Revolution. The Jewish and Polish ministries, which represented the two other large non-Ukrainian populations, were significantly more active. However, documents held in the Central State Historical Archive in Kyiv reveal that the activity of the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs was not all that insignificant.
The first part of the article discusses the circumstances surrounding the creation of ministries for minorities, as well as the legislative process governing the protection of minorities in revolutionary Ukraine, which culminated in January 1918 in the passage of a non-territorial law about autonomies. These processes must be understood strictly in the context of the discussion about the possible or indispensable restructuring of the Russian Empire, which lasted decades. This discussion was conducted not only by the representatives of the more active national movements on the outskirts of the multinational empire, but also political figures in the center, who held very different ideological positions.
The second part of the article features an analysis of the concrete measures that were implemented by the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs within the structure of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. These measures are very revealing, particularly in terms of the attempts to preserve a Russian-language education system and to create autonomous organizational structures. In addition, they indirectly indicate a surprising change in Russian self-awareness. The example of the Ministry of Great Russian Affairs may be used to demonstrate that at least part of the Russian population was in accord with the transformation accompanying the Ukrainian Revolution—the transformation from Great Russian citizen to member of an ethnic minority. Initially, this ministry saw itself to a greater degree as a general government department representing the interests of Russian-speaking citizens in the Ukrainian regions of a Russia organized along democratic lines. However, over time it changed its perspective and began to operate instead as a department representing the non-territorial Russian minority in Ukraine—not least because of the new legislative circumstances that arose in January 1918.
Journal of Austrian-American History, 2018
By bringing together the most important refugee crises that struck first the Habsburg Empire and ... more By bringing together the most important refugee crises that struck first the Habsburg Empire and later the Republic of Austria during the last three hundred years, this paper analyzes the longue durée experiences this country has had in dealing with such situations. It explores the driving factors behind societal and governmental responses and conceives four topics that are recurrent, if in different forms: 1) the socioeconomic disruption and the ethical imperative to provide relief; 2) the legal authorities and their power to determine a legal settlement and the ultimate right to belong; 3) their quest to maintain sovereignty and control; and 4) the question of the legitimacy of refugees as perceived by authorities but also by a (fickle) public opinion.
Ethnopolitics 15/1, Spring 2016, 43-65, 2016
In the early twentieth century, three provinces of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire enact... more In the early twentieth century, three provinces of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire enacted national compromises in their legislation that had elements of non-territorial autonomy provisions. Czech and German politicians in Moravia reached an agreement in 1905. In the heavily mixed Bukovina, Romanian, Ukrainian, German, Jewish and Polish representatives agreed on a new provincial constitution in 1909. Last but not least, Polish and Ukrainian nationalists compromised in spring 1914, just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War vitiated the new provisions. Even though the provisions of these agreements varied substantially, new electoral laws introducing national registers were at their heart. These were designed to ensure a fairer representation of national groups in the provincial assemblies and to keep national agitation out of electoral campaigns. The earliest compromise in Moravia went furthest in consociational power sharing. However, the national bodies within the provincial assembly had no right to tax their respective national communities, and the provisions of the provincial constitutions kept the non-nationally defined nobility as an important counterbalance. The compromises in Bukovina and Galicia, even if they categorised all inhabitants nationally, contented themselves with even less autonomous agency for the national bodies in the provincial assemblies and rather emphasised the symbolic elements of national autonomy. The non-territorial approach in all three crownlands, however, was an instrument to reorganise multi-ethnic provinces that increasingly became the model for national compromises in other Austrian provinces.
East Central Europe 42/2-3, 2015, 216-248
This article provides an overview of the political representation and integration of Galician Jew... more This article provides an overview of the political representation and integration of Galician Jews on the municipal, provincial, and central state level under Austrian rule. It demonstrates that political representation on the latter two levels started only after the revolution of 1848 and was rather modest considering the numeric and economic weight Jews enjoyed in Galicia. Even though representation in municipal councils started earlier, the position of Jews depended very much on local circumstances. After the turn of the century, the widening of the electorate to the lower classes led to a broader Jewish representation and participation not only in terms of numbers but also within the political spectrum. This is particularly true for the paper's second part. In this section, the text explores the reform of the electoral system for Galicia's provincial parliament and the attitude of Jewish politicians towards the compromise eventually found in 1914. The article argues that among Jews the positive or negative assessment of the new voting system depended largely on their position in the larger antagonism between Jewish nationalists and assimilationists. The former complained that the entire reform was on the backs of the Jews ignoring their numeric strength and their national rights. Assimilationists, on the other hand, were satisfied that, against all counter-claims of Zionists and Anti-Semites, the compromise legally established that Jews were Poles.
Burcu Dogramaci, et al. (ed.): Anna und Rosa Schapire. Sozialwissenschaft, Kunstgeschichte und Feminismus um 1900 (Munich 2017), 38–53 , 2017
This article investigates how Polish and Ukrainian political parties, state officials as well as ... more This article investigates how Polish and Ukrainian political parties, state officials as well as religious leaders negotiated national-personal autonomy for the virtually unstudied Galician Compromise in 1914. My conclusion maintains that a compromise-friendly atmosphere in the Empire’s public opinion, careful interference from Vienna and increasing tensions with neighbouring Russia forced the Polish establishment to cede some power to Ukrainian parties.
Once overwhelmingly inhabited by Jews, the Austro-Galician border town of Brody, in present-day W... more Once overwhelmingly inhabited by Jews, the Austro-Galician border town of Brody, in present-day Western Ukraine, has retained an important place on Ashkenazi mental maps until today, even though scholarly studies on Brody are scarce. The present article tries to capture the elements that allowed Brody to inscribe itself so successfully in Jewish memory. Therefore, this paper analyses several lieux de mémoire underlining Brody's enduring perception as a town closely related to Jewish issues. These places, however, are not only physical spots in the cityscape, like the ruins of the synagogue and the cemetery, but also images of and texts about Brody. Whether intended or not, pictures and postcards also have an impact on how Brody has been remembered; and so do memory books, be they written in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish or Ukrainian. This study argues that Brody appears on the mental maps of Eastern European Jewry as an amalgam of physical places, icons and texts linked to a multi-layered and multifaceted urban history
Center and periphery are popular concepts to describe geographical, political, or economic power ... more Center and periphery are popular concepts to describe geographical, political, or economic power relations. Both are mostly perceived as strict and mutually exclusive categories. This article examines a Galician border town whose history illustrates the complexities of conceptualizing center and periphery relations. At first glance, nineteenth-century Brody (in today's Ukraine) would seem to qualify as a peripheral town located on the Galician border between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. An analysis of this city under Habsburg rule (1772–1918), however, shows us that during that period it constituted both an important center and a declining periphery, not only consecutively, but also simultaneously. Its situation on the country's physical and political periphery did not harm Brody's central role in Europe's East-West trade until the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. Only in later decades did the city lose its place within a modernizing commercial system, and eventually it declined in importance. If we leave aside the economic aspect and take a closer look at Brody's mostly Jewish inhabitants, we see that for centuries this city functioned as an important center for Eastern and Central European Jewry. Even though the town's centrality for Jewish history also changed over time, Brody nevertheless kept its place on Jewish mental maps, whether as a center of religious learning, as a pioneering site of political emancipation, or as a safe haven for Jewish refugees.
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