Different Paths to the Nation: Regional and National Identities in Central Europe and Italy, 1830-70

Different Paths to the Nation Regional and National Identities in Central Europe and Italy, 1830–70 Edited by Laurence...

Author: Laurence Cole

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Different Paths to the Nation Regional and National Identities in Central Europe and Italy, 1830–70

Edited by

Laurence Cole

Different Paths to the Nation

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Different Paths to the Nation Regional and National Identities in Central Europe and Italy, 1830–70 Edited by

Laurence Cole

Editorial matter, selection and introduction © Laurence Cole 2007 Preface © Gian Enrico Rusconi 2007 All remaining chapters © their respective authors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 9780230000360 hardback ISBN-10: 0230000363 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Different paths to the nation : regional and national identities in Central Europe and Italy, 183070/edited by Laurence Cole. p. cm. ISBN-13: 9780230000360 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0230000363 (cloth) 1. Europe, Central“History“19th century. 2. Italy“History“ 18151870. 3. National characteristics, European. 4. National characteristics, Italian. I. Cole, Laurence. DAW1048.D55 2007 943.0009’034“dc22 2006050347 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Maps

ix

Preface

x

Acknowledgements

xi

Notes on the Contributors

xii

Introduction: Re-examining National Identity in Nineteenth-century Central Europe and Italy Laurence Cole 1 A Mission of Mediation: Dalmatia’s Multi-national Regionalism from the 1830s–60s Dominique Reill ‘The sadness of the province drives most away, and favours only the few’ ‘A noble mission it has as interpreter and mediator’ ‘Our province under the constitutional government of the double-headed Eagle is called for a great destiny’ ‘The word brotherhood is no longer on the lips of men’ The significance of a borderland’s mission of mediation 2 ‘Unity Versus Difference’: The Politics of Region-building and National Identities in Tyrol, 1830–67 Laurence Cole and Hans Heiss Locating the history of Tyrol between national historiographies After the Napoleonic wars: the ‘new’ crownland of Tyrol German-speaking Tyrol in the Vormärz: the conservative elites and provincial consciousness Towards fragmentation: the revolutions of 1848–49 The neo-absolutist era: reform from above and local politics National questions and constitutional politics in the early 1860s v

1

16

18 21 28 30 31

37

37 39 41 42 46 48

vi

Contents

Contradictory paths: consolidation and confusion, 1867–73 Conclusions: parallel nation-building between Germany, Austria and Italy 3 Trieste, 1830–70: From Cosmopolitanism to the Nation Anna Millo Introduction: Trieste in its ‘cosmopolitan age’ Economics, demographic growth and language groups in Trieste The legacy of the Napoleonic era Public space and associational networks in the Restoration era The statute of 1850 and after The emporium in crisis Conclusion: between loyalism and separatism 4 Voluntary Associations and Nation-building in Nineteenth-century Prague Claire Nolte The Museum Society and the early Czech national movement Political mobilization and national competition: gymnastic associations in Prague Conclusion: the consolidation of national separation 5 German, Austrian or ‘Salzburger’? National identities in Salzburg c.1830–70 Ewald Hiebl From independent Archbishopric to Austrian province: Salzburg c.1800–70 Salzburger ‘provincial consciousness’ as a form of regional identity ‘For Emperor and Fatherland’? Salzburg’s weak sense of Austrian identity The ‘German town’ of Salzburg and the Salzburger as a ‘German tribe’ Conclusion 6 Searching for a Role: Austrian Rule, National Perspectives and Memories of the ‘Serenissima’ in Venice, 1848–66 Eva Cecchinato Introduction: the aftermath of the Serenissima’s fall Towards the revolution: Venice’s search for a role

51 53 60 60 62 64 66 69 72 77 82 83 88 94 100

102 103 107 109 115

122 122 124

Contents

vii

The revolution of 1848–49 The ‘third Austrian domination’, 1849–66 Conclusion: the failure to achieve consensus

127 130 138

7 The Construction of National Identities in the Northern Bohemian Borderland, 1848–71 Mark Cornwall

144

The year 1848 The years 1866–71 8 Between the Federative Nation and the National State: Public Perceptions of the Foundation of the German Empire in Southern Germany and Austria Nikolaus Buschmann Nation and nation-state in German liberals’ view of the world National perspectives after the 1848–49 revolutions The martial ideal of community in the encircled nation Reactions to the defeat at Königgrätz The war against France and the future of the großdeutsch nation 9 Similar Paths, Different ‘Nations’?: Ultramontanisation and the Old Catholic Movement in Upper Austria, 1870–71 Max Vögler The Kulturkampf and Upper Austria The liberal vision of the Catholic Church Reactions of a Catholic ‘nation’? Conclusion 10 Symbolic Representations of the Nation: Baden, Bavaria, and Saxony, c.1860–80 Erwin Fink Settings Enthusiasm, exclusion, dissent: Sedan Day celebrations in Bavaria and Baden Saxon peculiarities: preserving regional significance The Emperor as a figure of integration Conclusions: regional and national symbolism in transformation

147 150

157

159 164 167 170 173

180 183 185 190 194 200 201 203 207 211 214

viii

Contents

Conclusions: Performative Effects and ‘Deep Images’ in National Discourse Alberto Mario Banti

220

Index

230

List of Maps

1 Central Europe and Northern Italy after 1815 2 Central Europe and Northern Italy in 1871

ix

xv xvi

Preface For at least a couple of decades now, the theme of national and regional identities has been a defining motif of historical research. Not least due to its location and general aims, the Centre for Italo-German Historical Studies in Trento has also made this subject a focal point of its activities, whether it be in the form of individual research or team projects, and the work presented here stems from international collaboration in this vein. These comparative studies on regional and national identities in Central Europe and Italy c.1830–1870 constitute a noteworthy contribution to the field from both substantive and methodological points of view. While this is not the place to draw general conclusions, much less to discuss individual articles, certain aspects of the volume immediately catch the eye. In the first place, the pieces here trace the dual themes of regional and national identities – and the tensions between them – in such a way as to provoke profound reflection on traditionally dominant ‘national master-narratives’. Moreover, the authors make it clear that we are not simply dealing with ‘little fatherlands’ or ‘anti-national sub-cultures’, as has been suggested in some of the historiography. Rather, we are faced with a complex historical phenomenon which is strictly linked to the geo-cultural and geo-political environment of the areas under study, as well as the specific time period upon which the volume focuses. Beyond the simple geographical references to Central Europe and Italy, there lies here an extraordinary mosaic of historical experiences and places, moving from Dalmatia on the Adriatic up and across towards Bohemia and south-western Germany. The reader will find a wealth of information on these territories as well as numerous impulses to thought. From this point of view, it is also particularly pleasing that this research is being made available in English so that wider discussion can be promoted. Gian Enrico Rusconi, University of Torino Director, Centre for Italo-German Historical Studies in Trento

x

Acknowledgements The work brought together here formed the basis of a Joint Activities Research Project financed by the British Academy, to which I would like to express my thanks for its generous support. The Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico (ISIG) in Trento acted as partner in this project, and I am enormously grateful to its former and current directors, respectively Giorgio Cracco and Gian Enrico Rusconi, for their enthusiasm and cooperation. The ISIG hosted a research workshop in 2004 and further extended its involvement by financing the translations of the Italian contributions to this volume. Clelia Boscolo (University of Birmingham) kindly took on one of the translations at short notice. My thanks also go to Chiara Zanoni Zorzi and Karin Krieg at the ISIG for their administrative help, and likewise to Rowena Burgess at the University of East Anglia. Francis King compiled the index. In Trento, Marco Bellabarba, Vice-Director of the ISIG, acted as coordinator, advisor, and mediator, and I greatly appreciate his practical help in facilitating the link with his institution. Alberto Mario Banti has been involved in the project from the start, and I thank him sincerely for his consistent support and friendly advice, as well as for his comments on the draft manuscript. My thanks also go to Lucy Riall for input and comments at various stages of the project’s development. At Palgrave Macmillan, Michael Strang has been constantly helpful and enabled the idea of publishing this volume to take concrete form. Finally, on a personal note, thanks – as always – must go to my parents for their backing, and to the rest of my family too, above all, of course, to Roswitha, Léon and Paolo.

xi


Alberto Mario Banti is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Pisa. With particular interests in social and cultural history and the Italian Risorgimento, his principal publications are: Storia della borghesia italiana. L’età liberale (Rome, 1996); La nazione del Risorgimento: Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Turin, 2000); Il Risorgimento italiano (Rome-Bari, 2004); and most recently, L’onore della nazione. Identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo dal XVIII secolo alla Grande Guerra (Turin, 2005). Nikolaus Buschmann is researcher and lecturer in the Department of Modern History, University of Tübingen, as well as joint co-ordinator of a major research project on ‘Experiences of War in the Modern Era’. He has published Einkreisung und Waffenbruderschaft. Die öffentliche Deutung von Krieg und Nation in Deutschland 1850–1871 (Göttingen, 2003), and has co-edited (with Horst Carl), Die Erfahrung des Krieges. Erfahrungsgeschichtliche Perspektiven von der Französischen Revolution bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg (Paderborn, 2001), and (with Dieter Langewiesche), Der Krieg in den Gründungsmythen europäischer Nationen und der USA (Frankfurt a.M., 2003). Eva Cecchinato is a researcher at the University of Turin. She has worked extensively on the Italian Risorgimento, historical memory and the phenomenon of ‘Garidbaldinism’ in Italy from 1861 to 1915. She is also a specialist on Venetian history, and has published La rivoluzione restaurata. Il 1848–1849 a Venezia fra memoria e oblio (Padua, 2003). She recently edited the volume Da Milano a Capua. Diario di Ismaele Boga, garibaldino 1860–1861 (Padua, 2005). Laurence Cole is a lecturer in modern European history at the University of East Anglia. His research focuses mainly on the history of the Habsburg Monarchy since 1750. He has written ‘Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland’. Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols 1860– 1914 (Frankfurt a.M.-New York, 2000), and is co-editor (with Daniel Unowsky) of The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy (Oxford-New York, xii


xiii

forthcoming). He is also Associate Editor (Reviews) of European History Quarterly. Mark Cornwall is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Southampton. He specialises in Czech-German relations in the Bohemian lands and the history of the later Habsburg Empire. His publications include The Undermining of Austria-Hungary (Basingstoke, 2000), and as editor, The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: a Multinational Experiment in Early Twentieth-Century Europe (2nd edn, Exeter, 2002). He is currently completing a book about German Bohemian nationalist youth and politics, 1900–40. Erwin Fink completed his PhD at the University of Toronto and his research focuses on regional and national political cultures in imperial Germany, as well as on popular allegiances and processes of nation-building in nineteenth-century Europe. In addition to articles on German history, he has published a number of academic translations, most recently: William F. Pepper, Die Hinrichtung des Martin Luther King: Wie die amerikanische Staatsgewalt ihren Gegner zum Schweigen brachte (Munich, 2003). Currently, he works as a scholarly translator and editor, based in Freiburg, Germany. Hans Heiss, former Deputy Director of the Provincial Archive in South Tyrol, is now a Member of the South Tyrolean Regional Parliament. His research interests cover the history of the bourgeoisie in Austria, the social history of tourism, and urban history. He is author of Der Weg des ‘Elephanten’: Geschichte eines großen Gasthofes seit 1551 (Bozen-Vienna, 2002), and (with Thomas Götz), Am Rand der Revolution: Tirol 1848/49 (Vienna-Bozen, 1998). Ewald Hiebl teaches Austrian history in the Dept. of History and Political Sciences, University of Salzburg. His research interests lie in nineteenth and twentieth-century Austrian history, especially regional history, social history and cultural studies. He has published numerous articles in these areas, and has recently co-edited (with Thomas Hellmuth), Kulturgeschichte des Salzes (18. bis 20. Jahrhundert) (Vienna– Munich, 2001) and (with Thomas Hellmuth, Günther Marchner and Martin Scheutz), Visionäre bewegen die Welt: Ein Lesebuch durch das Salzkammergut (Salzburg, 2005).

xiv Notes on the Contributors

Anna Millo is a lecturer in contemporary history in the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Bari. She is particularly interested in the history of ruling elites and economic history. Her chief publications are: L’élite del potere a Trieste: Una biografia collettiva 1891–1938 (Milan, 1989); Storia di una borghesia: La famiglia Vivante a Trieste dall’emporio alla guerra mondiale (Gorizia, 1998); Trieste, le assicurazioni, l’Europa. Arnoldo Frigessi di Rattalma e la Ras (Milan, 2004). Claire Nolte is Professor of History at Manhattan College in New York. In addition to numerous articles on Czech history and culture in the nineteenth century, she has written The Sokol in the Czech lands to 1914: Training for the Nation (Basingstoke, 2002). Dominique Reill is a Fellow at the Remarque Institue for the Study of Europe as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University. She recently completed a dissertation on the transformation of the Northern Adriatic in the nineteenth century at Columbia University, New York. Max Vögler is a Programme Officer at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn, in Germany. He undertook his doctoral studies at Columbia University, New York, and his research focuses on the social and cultural history of religious politics in Central Europe in the nineteenth century, especially the relationship between liberalism and Catholicism.

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Map 1 Central Europe and Northern Italy after 1815. The shaded area shows the territories of the Habsburg Monarchy.

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Central Europe and Northern Italy in 1871.

Introduction: Re-examining National Identity in Nineteenth-century Central Europe and Italy Laurence Cole

‘Contingency, construction, complexity’ – perhaps no other terms better encapsulate the main trends in research on nationalism in Europe over the last couple of decades.1 As historians and social scientists have sought to analyse nation-building processes and to de-construct national discourses, they have increasingly emphasised three points. Firstly, they maintain that nations and a sense of ‘national belonging’ have not always existed, but emerge from particular historical circumstances and can change as those conditions alter – ‘contingency’. Secondly, it is argued that the process of ‘becoming national’ derives from the social and cultural creation of new group identities, which involves the ‘invention’ or re-discovery of national myths and traditions – ‘construction’. Thirdly, scholars stress that, while national identity basically constitutes a new kind of identity, it does not necessarily represent an all-consuming one; rather, it stands in a series of relationships with other spatially (regional, local, municipal) or socially (class, gender, generation) defined identities – ‘complexity’. If this may look like some kind of consensus, that is in one sense deceptive. As Miroslav Hroch has recently argued, there is at the general level a wide discrepancy as regards definitions used: some scholars refer to ‘nationalism’, others speak of ‘national identity’, ‘nationhood’ or ‘nationness’, with the various terms often masking important differences in approach and interpretation.2 For those, like the contributors to this volume, who are especially interested in the intertwined histories of Central Europe and Italy in the nineteenth century, the apparent consensus looks problematic for practical as well as for theoretical reasons. Closer inspection of the recent literature on nationalism reveals that certain areas of nineteenth-century Europe remain relatively understudied. Of nowhere is this truer for those areas where the lands of 1

2 Different Paths to the Nation

Germany, Italy and the Habsburg Monarchy overlapped, despite an otherwise notable growth of interest in questions of national identity in border regions.3 It is this major gap that the current volume explores.4 The contributions collected here examine in depth the changing conceptions of regional and national identity articulated among the ethnic groups living in societies astride the borders between Germany, Italy and the Habsburg Monarchy, at a time when contemporaries were confronted with new sets of questions regarding nationality and state affiliation. Here, in an area stretching roughly from the Main river and across to Saxony in the north, down to the Po valley and northern Adriatic in the south, the ethnic map of Europe displayed considerable variegation. This situation, together with the plurality of political entities in midnineteenth-century Central Europe and Italy, made issues of belonging, identity, and inclusion in (or exclusion from) ‘the nation’ particularly acute. In chronological terms, the volume focuses on a key period in the formation of national identities, from around 1830, when a combination of social, economic and political developments began to unsettle post-Napoleonic European society, through to around 1870, by which time the new states of Italy and Germany had been established.5 Where many studies end or start either side of the 1848–49 revolutions, the aim here is to look at questions of national and regional identity over the middle period of the nineteenth century by treating the epoch as a coherent whole. By any measure, the mid-nineteenth-century history of this part of Europe is of fundamental importance to those interested in the phenomenon of nationality. This is not because the new nation-states in Italy and Germany were the first of their kind in nineteenth-century Europe (Greece and Belgium had already established precedents), but rather because their creation at Austria’s expense really seemed to confirm the triumph of the national principle, as well as definitively overturning the European system established under the Vienna Settlement of 1815. The size, importance and subsequent history of Germany and Italy – above all in the first half of the twentieth-century – make them paradigmatic examples of nationalism in Europe, and hence key reference points for many theories of nationalism as a whole. And yet, existing research in this field displays two main sets of shortcomings, the first conceptual, the second relating to methodological approaches. To begin with, it might seem rather incongruous to claim that questions of national and regional identity in the zones connecting

Introduction

3

Germany, Austria and Italy have been neglected, given that national unification forms the major event in narratives of nineteenth-century German and Italian history, while historical research on the Habsburg Monarchy continues to be dominated by the nationalities issue. In practice, however, historians’ efforts at deconstructing national myths and histories reveal a significant weakness, seemingly contradictory though it may appear at first sight. On the one hand, a series of specialist studies has appeared, which investigate the relationship between national and ‘sub-national’ levels of identity, above all that of the ‘region’.6 But on the other hand, the regions under study are implicitly related to a fixed national framework, where the nation-states formed from 1860 onwards are still confirmed as the main reference points. In short, national(ist) paradigms continue to influence to a remarkable degree the way in which German, Italian and Habsburg histories are understood. As Stefan Berger has recently written, ‘between 1850 and 1950, history writing in a national key was the dominant tradition in Europe’.7 While this – Berger also points out – should not blind us to the fact that local and regional history continued to be practiced during this period, the predominant outlook of professional history was firmly ‘national’. Historians concentrated on the investigation of their national past, taking the existing state as their main subject of study, usually with little concern for comparative history. In doing so, they often ended up taking a teleological approach, which viewed all previous history as leading up to the formation of the modern nation-state, thereby blending out those aspects of the past which did not fit into such a framework. Moreover, they wrote history from an explicitly national standpoint, often favouring the history of dominant groups (e.g. British history being written mainly from an English perspective and being concerned in practice with ‘English history’, rather than that of the Scottish, Welsh and Irish peoples too).8 While historians have long since moved away from the more rigid manifestations of such approaches, it is nevertheless the case that ‘history writing still takes place overwhelmingly in nationally constituted historiographies, which continue to deal, to a considerable extent, with questions of national history’.9 Such is especially evident for the areas of Europe under consideration here. For example, although we now know that the Austrian Empire was excluded from political power in both Germany and Italy by 1870, too many narratives of Central European and Italian history have taken this outcome for granted. Hence, scholars have often overlooked the contested nature of nationstate formation and the alternative visions of national identity that were


articulated in the different regions inside – and outside of – what became the German and Italian ‘nation-states’, and this historiographical deficit is especially marked for those areas under Austria’s direct or informal influence. In other words, the national ‘master-narratives’ established by professional historians in the nineteenth-century have proven tenacious in setting the geographical terms of reference, as can be looked at in turn for all the areas under consideration here. In the case of Germany, first of all, recent historians certainly have been willing to deconstruct received narratives by focusing on regions, the idea of Heimat, and the multiplicity of German ‘Fatherlands’.10 Similarly, there has been growing interest accorded to the German Confederation and the role of federal traditions in debates on how Germany was to be politically re-organised.11 Nevertheless, neither of these developments corresponds fully to James Sheehan’s call to investigate the history of German culture(s) outside, as well as inside, the German nation-state formed in 1871.12 Admittedly, it is not hard to find an explanation for this situation: the notion of ‘Greater Germany’ was so discredited by the experience of National Socialist rule that historians attempting to ‘re-join’ Austrian and German history ran the risk of being labelled dangerous revisionists, above all if they come from either of the respective countries.13 It is interesting to compare here briefly German and Austrian historiography after 1945, for different developments have served to reinforce what Dieter Langewiesche has consistently referred to as the long-standing ‘Borussification’ of German history, with all the teleologies that has implied for state formation and national identity in Central Europe.14 In the inter-war period, for example, Austrian historians had formed a coherent chorus in calling for Anschluß with Germany and wrote their work from an increasingly racial-national (völkisch) standpoint.15 But while numerous members of the ‘German national’ camp continued to teach and research in post-war Austria, and traces of their influence can be found in historians with residual links to that tradition, mainstream Austrian historiography nevertheless sought to distance itself from the ‘German’ past.16 Historians played a full part in helping to establish the ‘Austrian’ nation after 1945.17 From a different direction, most German historians likewise renounced the ‘Greater German’ framework in the period after the Second World War, having desperately attempted to overcome the limits of the previously dominant ‘Lesser German’ (kleindeutsch) tradition in the years 1918–45.18 The determination to confront Germany’s past and to avoid the grandiose nationalist claims of previous generations led post-war German historians

Introduction

5

to set their compass by the Bismarckian Empire and studiously to avoid the issue of where Austria fitted into pre-1866 ‘German history’.19 While acknowledging that the subject cannot fail to retain potential political and ideological dangers, it is now the case that historians are more willing than before to admit at a general level the open-ended nature of the German Question.20 Nevertheless, even if they have paid increasing attention to the problems that Imperial Germany faced in overcoming particularist traditions and confessional differences after its foundation,21 the majority of discussion on pre-1870 Germany concentrates overwhelmingly on the area covered by the post-1870 state. As the essays in this volume by Nikolaus Buschmann on southern Germany and Austria, and by Erwin Fink on Baden, Bavaria and Saxony argue, the full implications of a more diverse approach to nineteenth-century German history – including a fresh look at the so-called ‘Third Germany’, where there were numerous states that bordered on Austria and / or had strong cultural and historical links to the Habsburg state - have yet to be properly absorbed by the historical mainstream. Yet, it was precisely in such areas that the divisive and contested – rather than unifying – aspects of the German Question were highly visible in local society. More problematic still is the situation with regard to those lands of the Habsburg Monarchy that formed part of the German Confederation, for here the nature of the relationship between state, region and the ‘German nation’ was especially complex. As Robert Evans once remarked, the national identity of the Germans in Austria has scarcely received detailed examination.22 Despite the fact that the vast majority of research on the nineteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy has concentrated on the nationalities question, it is only in the last decade that scholarship has seriously begun to address this issue.23 Much still needs to be learned on this subject, particularly at the regional level, and two articles here – by Laurence Cole and Hans Heiss on Tyrol, and by Ewald Hiebl on Salzburg – present case studies which explore the complexity of German identities in the alpine provinces of Austria. In examining the question of German identity within the Austrian half of the Habsburg Monarchy, it is also necessary to take account of two dimensions: firstly, the relationship between German-speaking Austria and the rest of ‘Germany’; and secondly, the relationship between the ‘Austrian Germans’ and non-German ‘others’ – be they Czechs, Italians or Slovenes – living in the same province. Of particular interest here is the question of relations between Czechs and Germans in the Austrian crownland of Bohemia, both because the latter formed part of the German Confederation and because the Czech-German nationality


conflict is usually seen as the most prominent of its kind in the Habsburg Monarchy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, the respective national historiographies – Czech and German – long devoted much attention to this issue, with prominent emphasis placed on the 1848 revolutions and subsequent political developments in the Bohemian Diet and imperial Austrian parliament. These ethnically separate – and often mutually disinterested – histories were written in strongly national keys, as well as treating nationality as a given.24 Since the 1980s, however, historians here too have argued for a greater appreciation of the contingent and complex nature of the process of national identification. Major works by Jiˇrí Koˇralka and Otto Urban have helped revise monolithical conceptions of ‘Czech national history’, while Jan Kˇren’s pioneering work has looked at both sides of the ‘conflictual community’ of Czechs and Germans in the Bohemian lands.25 Similarly, scholars such as Robert Luft and Jiˇrí Malíˇr have begun to differentiate the landscape of Czech-German relations by focusing on the situation in Moravia.26 Despite these developments, the historiographical picture continues to display serious gaps. Twenty-five years on from Gary Cohen’s seminal study on the Germans of Prague, we still know too little about the process of nationalisation at the ground level in other areas of the Bohemian Kingdom.27 Kˇren’s study proved something of an exception in looking simultaneously at both Czech and German groups until Jeremy King’s intriguing, if not entirely persuasive, recent study of the ˇ southern Bohemian town of Budweis/Ceské Bud˘ejovice, which suggests the enormous potential in such an approach.28 On balance, however, the national–political conflict has dominated the research agenda to such an extent that, apart from the notable efforts by Luft, followed now by King, historians have devoted comparatively little attention to ‘intermediate’ identities (e.g. bilingualism) or more localised, sub-national spheres of identity (e.g. regional and municipal identities within Bohemia and Moravia).29 The contributions here by Claire Nolte on nation-building in Prague and Mark Cornwall on Northern Bohemia build on these foundations, by illustrating both the potential malleability of identities in these areas and some of the reasons for the erosion of that flexibility. If such an analysis of German, ‘Austrian-German’ and Czech identities implies reinterpreting the place of Austria within nineteenth-century ‘German history’, as well as re-examining the history of the Habsburg Monarchy itself, then it is logical that similar questions should be posed of the latter’s Italian-speaking provinces. That is not to overlook the important differences in the historical and cultural relationship between

Introduction

7

Austria and ‘Italy’, when compared to Austria and the rest of Germany’s common links through the Holy Roman Empire. Yet, as historians over the last two decades have questioned received interpretations of the Italian Risorgimento, so it is necessary to ask what the repercussions of this research might be for Italian-speaking border regions of the Habsburg Monarchy.30 Much of this revisionist historiography – as in the case of the German Kaiserreich – has been interested in the difficulties faced by the post-1861 state, such as the Southern Question, the problems of integrating the old Italian states into the centralised Kingdom of Italy, and the process of ‘making Italians’.31 Perhaps more than as happened for Germany, however, historians have investigated the states of Restoration Italy in a way that has obliged scholars to re-think the precise mechanics of state-building and national identity formation in the peninsula in mid-century. As Enrico Dal Lago has argued, ‘regional diversity has become the lens through which revisionist historians have constructed an alternative view of the formation of the Italian nation-state; a view which – unlike previous teleological explanations – identifies the key factor of the success of the national programme in the administrative monarchies’ inability to cope with the particular socio-economic and political features of the Restoration states and create their basis of support among different strata of the population’.32 By extension, such conclusions raise the question of how and why a sense of Italian nationality arose in Italian-speaking areas of the Habsburg Monarchy and how the latter related to the Austrian state. Traditional narratives of the Italian Risorgimento always saw it as a struggle between two ‘hereditary enemies’, Austria and Italy, with the process of Italian unification initially emerging from the fight for independence from Austrian rule. Within this scenario, the liberation of Austria’s Italian territories is seen as a natural process and the inevitable triumph of the national principle – a view confirmed from the opposite direction by Austrian historiography, which long viewed the Italian provinces as ‘unreliable’ and ‘problematic’.33 If such a framework is now regarded as obsolete, substantial traces of it nonetheless remain.34 It must also be acknowledged that Habsburg-ruled Northern Italy and the Monarchy’s other Italian territories have generally not been subject to such extensive revisionist investigation as the histories of other Italian states.35 Of the Habsburg’s Italian possessions, Lombardy is fairly served by key works on elites, politics, and administration by Marco Meriggi and Brigitte Mazohl-Wallnig, and on economic development by Rupert Pichler.36 More noticeably, the history of Venice and Venetia has


attracted growing attention, in the form of new work on the first and second periods of Austrian domination by Michele Gottardi, Eurigio Tonetti, and David Laven, with the latter’s study of Venetia in the early Restoration era representing one of the most ambitious statements to date against the numerous ‘black legends’ surrounding the nature of Austrian rule in Italy.37 However, most of this research has tended to concentrate on questions of administration rather than national identity per se, even if the latter is of implicit interest. Andreas Gottsmann’s impressive volume on Venetia in the period between the 1859 war and the region’s secession to Italy in 1866 now addresses these issues more directly, by analysing in detail the Habsburg state’s inability to sustain its legitimacy among a population which was not necessarily automatically hostile to it.38 Eva Cecchinato’s essay here on Venetia’s ‘search for a role’ complements this recent work, while further contributions provide comparisons with other Italian-speaking populations under Austrian rule. Dominique Reill examines the multinational region of Dalmatia, formerly subject to Venice, where members of the Italian ethnic minority were instrumental in formulating regionalist conceptions of Dalmatian identity, and the article by Cole and Heiss on Tyrol also examines the experience of the local population in ‘Italian-Tyrol’, or ‘Trentino’, as it was coming to be known. In addition, Anna Millo looks at the port city of Trieste, a much older Habsburg possession. This area too has been subject to renewed interest, but arguably not to the same degree as Lombardy-Venetia.39 If the articles brought together here thus seek to re-conceptualise the boundaries of ‘national’ historiographies for the regions astride Italy, Austria and Germany in the nineteenth-century, they also aim to make a significant contribution from a number of methodological angles, which are likewise relevant to scholars interested in the general phenomenon of nationality. In the first place, in contrast to most other studies of German, Italian and Habsburg history, this volume seeks to treat the area in Central and Southern Europe where German, Italian and Slavic cultures met as an interconnected continuum and to place processes of national identification within a comparative, ‘transnational’ context.40 Such an approach assumes, to begin with, that the future nation-state boundaries were not fixed a priori, and that many of the regions under study here should not automatically be subsumed within one, monolithic, national narrative – be it ‘German’, ‘Austrian’ or ‘Italian’ – history. As Miroslav Hroch reminds us, ‘independent statehood is not a necessary criterion for the existence of a nation’,41 which implies that scholars should be more attentive

Introduction

9

to the potential range of national and regional identities expressed by historical actors in the nineteenth-century, along with the attendant conceptions of state political organisation that accompanied them. That, in turn, is important because it is only once the open-ended situation facing contemporaries has been re-captured by historical research that we can appreciate fully why certain options might have been closed off or narrowed down. In this sense, it is necessary to reflect that the – essentially welcome – move away from the nation-state level and the political centre in work on nationalism carries with it the danger of leaving important questions unanswered. Or, as Lucy Riall has forthrightly put it in the case of the Italian Risorgimento, revisionist approaches sometimes leave one wondering why unification took place at all.42 The contributions in this volume therefore aim also to show why it was difficult to sustain open-endedness indefinitely or in all political situations, even if the meaning of national identity was still adaptable in other respects. To return to the variations in terminology mentioned at the outset and used by scholars when examining the phenomenon of nationality, it is fair to say that the authors in this volume are concerned essentially with questions of ‘national identity’, and find this the most appropriate term to employ. While the term admittedly has its critics, of whom Rogers Brubaker and Lutz Niethammer are among the most notable,43 it is ultimately hard to disagree with Philipp Ther’s opinion that ‘the concept of identity comes across increasing scepticism, but one which is based mainly on over-satiation and rarely on well-founded objections’.44 The notion of national identity enables historians better to capture the dynamic process of individual and group identification with a national community, and to comprehend the relationship between ideas of the nation and other social and cultural attributes (regional identity, class, gender, and so on). Equally, the term implies a broader, more neutral and nuanced understanding of how people viewed ‘nationality’ or their sense of ‘nationhood’ than is implied by other terms such as ‘nation-building’ – the general process of forming a nation, in terms of social mobilisation, the development of communication networks, the codification of a national language, symbols, myths and traditions, the establishment of national institutions, and so on; ‘national movements’ – those social movements dedicated to codifying and propagating national culture, and to making political claims on behalf of the nation; and ‘nationalism’ – a political programme or ideology which defines itself primarily or exclusively in national terms, to the subordination of other identities, and in (often forceful) opposition to members of other national groups.

10


In other words, the concept of ‘national identity’ allows historians to move away from – while not neglecting – the state and, for want of a better phrase, ‘high politics’, in order to understand the process of national identification among different social constituencies and institutions. It is only very recently, for example, that historians have begun to analyse systematically alternative understandings of national identity among the confessional groups of nineteenth-century Germany.45 Max Vögler’s contribution here explores such issues in a similar way, and experiments with the idea of ‘nation-like’ attributes characterising the ultramontane community in Upper Austria. More research on these questions is certainly desirable, for it serves as a reminder that the nation was still very much in competition with other sources of legitimization, just as national identities themselves represented contested discourses. Finally, the case studies contained in this volume provide original possibilities for comparison from two points of view. First, existing comparative studies on aspects of German and Italian history in the nineteenth century tend to proceed on general thematic lines, usually without offering detailed regional and local examples and mostly giving little space to the Austrian dimension to the overall picture.46 Indeed, given the frequency with which historians make comparisons between German and Italian history after 1870, and above all, for the period 1918–45, it is somewhat astonishing that there still seems to be no detailed, systematic comparison of national identity formation at the local and regional level in Central Europe and Italy during the period 1815–70 (although scholars of nationalism routinely make general comparisons between the respective unification processes).47 In concentrating on areas that were on the margins of the new nation-states of Germany and Italy (whether eventually included in, or excluded from them), the regional case-studies here provide impulses in this direction, as well as confirming the significance of border regions for understanding how processes of national identification work.48 In this respect, it goes without saying that frontier zones are classic sites for the confrontations of ethnic groups with their ‘others’, but it is worth underlining the fact that such regions are central actors in the construction of national discourses (and stereotypes), even if they may be ‘marginal’ or ‘peripheral’ from economic or other points of view. Secondly, the comparison across German, Italian and Slavic cultural areas feeds back into general theoretical debates on nationalism, in which divisions between Eastern and Western European ‘types’ of nationalism have always played a significant role. However, as

Introduction

11

Ulrike von Hirschhausen and Jörn Leonhard have suggested, such categorisations – even in the modified form they are now articulated – have rarely been subjected to systematic analysis. One way of doing so would of course be to take wide-ranging examples from across the geographical spectrum of Europe, yet the selection of a more concentrated area of study brings specific advantages because the focus is on areas which simultaneously faced very similar kinds of challenges. Clear parallels arise, for example, between the position of cities such as Salzburg and Venice, both obliged after 1815 to digest a situation of decline from more glorious pasts – of which their respective architectural splendours provided constant reminders. Alternatively, there are stimulating contrasts between ethnically-mixed areas such as impoverished Dalmatia and industrially advanced northern Bohemia. In all cases, contemporaries were obliged to work out from a range of options their paths towards nationality, then to alter and adjust their stride as different routes were closed off or re-mapped by the force of events. In charting the changing contours of what national identity meant for ethnic groups in this central band of Europe where German, Italian and Slavic speakers confronted one another, the work presented here tends to support Hirschhausen and Leonhard’s contention that it is the similarities in processes of national identity formation across Europe that is more striking than the alleged differences between (often unsatisfactorily defined) ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ types.49

Notes 1.

Useful surveys of the literature are provided by: D. Langewiesche, ‘Nation, Nationalismus, Nationalstaat: Forschungsstand und Forschungsperspektiven’, in: Neue Politische Literatur 40 (1995), 190–236; H.-G. Haupt and C. Tacke, ‘Die Kultur des Nationalen. Sozial- und kulturgeschichtliche Ansätze bei der Erforschung des europäischen Nationalismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, in: W. Hardtwig and H.-U. Wehler (eds), Kulturgeschichte heute (Göttingen, 1996), pp. 255–83; A.D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism (London–New York, 1998). For an effective overview of the history of theories of nationalism, see: P. Lawrence, Nationalism: History and Theory (Harlow, 2005). 2. For a fuller discussion, see: M. Hroch, Das Europa der Nationen. Die moderne Nationsbildung im europäischen Vergleich (Göttingen, 2005), pp. 11–40. 3. See, among others: J. Chlebowczyk, On Small and Young Nations in Europe: Nation-forming Processes in Ethnic Borderlands in East-Central Europe (Wrocław, 1980); M. Müller and R. Petri (eds), Die Nationalisierung von Grenzen: Zur Konstruktion nationaler Identität in sprachlich gemischten Grenzregionen (Marburg, 2002); P. Ther (ed.), Die Grenzen der Nationen und Nationalstaaten: Regionalismen in europäischen Zwischenräumen von der Mitte des 19. bis zum Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts (Marburg, 2002).

12


4. However, see now: S. Salvatici (ed.), Confini. Costruzioni, attraversamenti, rappresentazioni (Soveria Mannelli, 2005); H.-C. Maner (ed.), Grenzregionen in der Habsburgermonarchie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Ihre Bedeutung und Funktion aus der Perspektive Wiens (Münster, 2005). 5. J. Sperber, Revolutionary Europe, 1780–1850 (Harlow–London, 2000); D. Langewiesche, Europa zwischen Restauration und Revolution 1815–1849 (4th edn., Munich, 2004); D. Laven and L. Riall (eds), Napoleon’s Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe (Oxford, 2000). 6. C. Applegate, ‘A Europe of Regions: Reflections on the Historiography of Sub-national Places in Modern Times’, American Historical Review 104 (1999), 1157–82. 7. S. Berger, ‘A Return to the National Paradigm? National History Writing in Germany, Italy, France and Britain from 1945 to the present’, The Journal of Modern History 77 (2005), 629–78. 8. S. Berger et al. (eds), Writing National Histories: Western Europe Since 1800 (London, 1999). 9. Berger, ‘A Return to the National Paradigm?’. 10. See, among others: C. Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990); C. Tacke, Denkmal im sozialen Raum: Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1995); A. Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1997); G. Kunz, Verortete Geschichte. Regionales Geschichtsbewußtsein in den deutschen Historischen Vereinen des 19. Jahhunderts (Göttingen, 2001); A. Green, Fatherlands. Statebuilding and Nationhood in Nineteenth-century Germany (Cambridge, 2001). A useful survey of recent literature can be found in: R. Petri, ‘Deutsche Heimat 1850–1950’, Comparativ: Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung 11 (2001), 77–127. 11. H. Rumpler (ed.), Deutscher Bund und Deutsche Frage 1815–66 (Vienna– Munich, 1990); M. Umbach (ed.), German Federalism: Past, Present and Future (Basingstoke, 2002); D. Langewiesche (ed.), Föderative Nation: Deutschlandkonzepte von der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, 2000). 12. J.J. Sheehan, ‘What is German History?: Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography’, Journal of Modern History 53 (1981), 1–23. An interesting exception remains: P.J. Katzenstein, Disjoined partners: Austria and Germany Since 1815 (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1976). 13. Compare: F. Fellner, ‘Die Historiographie zurö sterreichisch-deutschen Problematik als Spiegel der nationalpolitischen Diskussion’, in: H. Lutz and H. Rumpler (eds), Österreich und die deutsche Frage im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1982), pp. 117–39. 14. D. Langewiesche, ‘Deutschland und Österreich: Nationswerdung und Staatsbildung im 19. Jahrhundert’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 42 (1991), 754–66; id., ‘Reich, Nation und Staat in der jüngeren deutschen Geschichte’, Historische Zeitschrift 254 (1992), 341–81; id., ‘Kulturelle Nationsbildung im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in: M. Hettling and P. Nolte (eds), Nation und Gesellschaft in Deutschland: Hans-Ulrich Wehler zum 65. Geburtstag (Munich, 1996), pp. 46–64. 15. H. Dachs, Österreichische Geschichtswissenschaft und Anschluß (Vienna– Salzburg, 1974).

Introduction

13

16. See: Gernot Heiss, ‘Im “Reich der Unbegreiflichkeiten”: Historiker als Konstrukteure Österreichs’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 7 (1996), 455–78. For an extensive debate, see the contributions in: G. Botz (ed.), Kontroversen um Österreichs Zeitgeschichte: verdrängte Vergangenheit, ÖsterreichIdentität, Waldheim und die Historiker (Frankfurt a.M., 1994). 17. P. Thaler, The Ambivalence of Identity: The Austrian Experience of Nation-building in a Modern Society (West Lafayette, 2001), pp. 58–77. 18. S. Suval, ‘Overcoming Kleindeutschland: The Politics of Historical Mythmaking in the Weimar Republic’, Central European History 2 (1969), 312–30. 19. S. Berger, The Search for Normality. National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany Since 1800 (Oxford, 1997). 20. See, for example: J.J. Sheehan, German History 1770–1866 (Oxford, 1989); J. Breuilly, The Making of the First German Nation-state 1800–1871 (Basingstoke, 1996); Eric D. Brose, German History 1789–1871: From the Holy Roman Empire to the Bismarckian Reich (Oxford–New York, 1997). 21. S. Lässig and K.H. Pohl (eds), Sachsen im Kaiserreich: Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im Umbruch (Weimar, 1997); H.W. Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology and Politics 1870–1914 (Princeton, 1996); S. Weichlein, Nation und Region: Integrationsprozesse im Bismarckreich (Düsseldorf, 2004). 22. R.J.W. Evans, ‘Josephinism, “Austrianness” and the Revolution of 1848’, in: R. Robertson and E. Timms (eds), The Austrian Enlightenment and Its Aftermath (Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 145–60. 23. On German identity, see: P.M. Judson, Exclusive revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1918 (Ann Arbor, 1996); L. Cole, ‘Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland’. Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols 1860–1914 (Frankfurt a.M.–New York, 2000); T. Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol 1840–1873: Zwischen Stadt und ‘Region’, Staat und Nation (Cologne, 2001); J. Kirchhoff, Die Deutschen in der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie: ihr Verhältnis zum Staat, zur deutschen Nation und ihr kollektives Selbstverständnis (1866/67–1918) (Berlin, 2001); J. Kwan, Austro-German Liberalism and the Multinational State, 1867–1895 (PhD, Oxford, 2004); H. Zettelbauer, ‘Die Liebe sei Euer Heldentum’: Geschlecht und Nation in völkischen Vereinen der Habsburgermonarchie (Frankfurt a.M.New York, 2005). 24. J. Kˇren, Die Konfliktgemeinschaft. Tschechen und Deutschen 1780–1918 (Munich, 1996), p. 17 f. 25. O. Urban, Die tschechische Gesellschaft 1848 bis 1918 (Vienna, 1994); Kˇren, Die Konfliktgemeinschaft; J. Koˇralka, Tschechen im Habsburgerreich und in Europa 1815–1914: sozialgeschichtliche Zusammenhänge der neuzeitlichen Nationsbildung und der Nationalitätenfrage in den böhmischen Ländern (Vienna-Munich, 1991). 26. J. Malíˇr, Od spolku˚ k moderním politickým stranám: Vývoj politických stran na Morav˘e v letech 1848–1914 (Brno, 1996); R. Luft, ‘Politische Kultur und Regionalismus in einer Zentrallandschaft zweiten Grades: das Beispiel Mähren im späten 19. Jahrhundert’, in: W. Branke (ed.), Politische Kultur in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa (Leipzig, 1999), pp. 125–60. See also: H. Glasl, ‘Mährisches Landesbewußtsein am Beispiel eines historischen Vereines’, in: F. Seibt (ed.), Vereinswesen und Geschichtspflege in den böhmischen Ländern

14

27. 28. 29.

30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

35.

36.

Different Paths to the Nation (Munich, 1986), pp. 61–70; G. Sprengnagel, ‘Nationale Kultur und die Selbsterschaffung des Bürgertums. Am Beispiel der Stadt Prost˘ejov in Mähren 1848–1865’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 10 (1999), 260–91. G.B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague 1861–1914 (Princeton, 1981). J. King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002). R. Luft, ‘Nationale Utraquisten in Böhmen. Zur Problematik “nationaler Zwischenstellungen” am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in: M. Godé et al. (ed.), Allemands, Juifs et Tchèques à Prague de 1890 à 1924 (Montpellier, 1996), pp. 37–51. See also the historiographical overview: R. Luft, ‘Landesgeschichte, Regionalforschung, Heimatkunde und regionale Gesellschaftsgeschichte: die neuere deutschsprachige Historiographie zu Mähren im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, in: L. Jan (ed.), D˘ejiny Moravy a Matice moravská. Problémy a perspektivy (Brno, 2000), pp. 179–98 The best guides to recent work are: L. Riall, The Italian Risorgimento. State, Society and National Unification (London, 1994); G. Pécout, Naissance de l’Italie contemporaine, 1770–1922 (Paris, 1997); A. Banti, Il Risorgimento italiano (Rome–Bari, 2004). B. Tobia, Una patria per gli Italiani: Spazi, itinerari, monumenti nell’Italia unita, 1870–1900 (Roma–Bari, 1991); I. Porciani, La festa della nazione: Rappresentazione dello Stato e spazi sociali nell’Italia unita (Bologna, 1999); K. Mayer, Mythos und Monument: Die Sprache der Denkmäler im Gründungsmythos des italienischen Nationalstaates 1870–1915 (Cologne, 2004). For a useful overview of recent trends, see: S. Battente, ‘Nation and State Building in Italy: Recent Historiographical Interpretations (1989–1997): Part 1: Unification to Fascism’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 5 (2000), 310–21. On the Italian South, see as an introduction to recent work: R. Lumley and J. Morris (eds), The New History of the Italian South: the Mezzogiorno Revisited (Exeter, 1997). E. Dal Lago, ‘Society, Economy and Politics in Restoration Italy: Towards a Regional Synthesis’, The Historical Journal 45 (2002), 179–93. J. Berghold, Italien-Austria: Von der Erbfeindschaft zur europäischen Öffnung (Vienna, 1997), pp. 17–28. On this point, see: B. Mazohl-Wallnig, ‘Einleitung’, in: id. and M. Meriggi (eds), Österreichisches Italien – Italienisches Österreich?. Interkulturelle Gemeinsamkeiten und nationale Differenzen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges (Vienna, 1999), pp. 1–11. For an overview, see: R. Pichler, Österreicher in Italien – Italiener in Österreich: Einführung in Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Verfassung 1800–1914 (Vienna, 2000); M. Dassovich, L’Impero e il golfo: Una ricerca bibliografica sulla politica degli Asburgo verso le province meridionali dell’impero negli anni 1815–1866 (TriesteUdine, 2003); id., L’Impero e il golfo da Lissa a Sarajevo (1867–1914): Una ricerca bibliografica sulla politica degli Asburgo nelle province meridionali dell’Impero (Trieste-Udine, 2005). M. Meriggi, Amministrazione e classi sociali nel Lombardo-Veneto (1814– 1848) (Bologna, 1983); id., Il Regno Lombardo-Veneto (Torino, 1987); B. Mazohl-Wallnig, Österreichischer Verwaltungsstaat und administrative Eliten im Königreich Lombardo-Venetien 1815–1859 (Mainz, 1993); R. Pichler, Die

Introduction

37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

47. 48.

49.

15

Wirtschaft der Lombardei als Teil Österreichs. Wirtschaftspolitik, Außenhandel und industrielle Interessen, 1815–1859 (Berlin, 1996). M. Gottardi, L’Austria a Venezia: Società e istituzioni nella prima dominazione austriaca (1798–1806) (Milan, 1993); E. Tonetti, Governo austriaco e notabili sudditi. Congregazioni e Municipi nel Veneto della Restaurazione (1816–1848) (Venice, 1997); David Laven, Venice and Venetia Under the Habsburgs, 1815– 1835 (Oxford, 2002). See also: Marion Lühe, Der venezianische Adel nach dem Untergang der Republik, 1797–1830 (Cologne, 2000). A. Gottsmann, Venetien 1859–1866: Österreichische Verwaltung und nationale Opposition (Vienna, 2005). See below the chapter by Anna Millo for further references (esp. note 1). This is an approach successfully adopted in two recent volumes: A. Moritsch (ed.), Alpen-Adria Städte im nationalen Differenzierungsprozess (Klagenfurt, 1997); M. Cattaruzza (ed.), Nazionalismi di frontiera. Identità contrapposte sull’Adriatico nord-orientale 1850–1950 (Soveria Mannelli, 2003). Hroch, Das Europa der Nationen, p. 42. Riall, Italian Risorgimento. L. Niethammer, Kollektive Identität: heimliche Quellen einer unheimlichen Konjunktur (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2000); R. Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups (Cambridge, Mass., 2004). Philipp Ther, ‘Die Grenzen des Nationalismus. Der Wandel von Identitäten in Oberschlesien in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1939’, in: U. von Hirschhausen and J. Leonhard (eds), Nationalismen in Europa: Westund Osteuropa im Vergleich (Göttingen, 2001), pp. 322–46. D. Langewiesche and H.-G. Haupt (eds), Nation und Religion in der deutschen Geschichte (Frankfurt a.M.–New York, 2001); H.W. Smith (ed.), Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany 1800–1914 (Oxford, 2001). See here: R. Lill and F. Valsecchi, Il nazionalismo in Italia e Germania fino alla Prima Guerra Mondiale (Bologna, 1983); O. Janz et al. (eds), Zentralismus und Föderalismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: Deutschland und Italien im Vergleich (Berlin, 2000); C. Dipper (ed.), Deutschland und Italien im Vergleich 1860–1960 (Munich, 2005); S. Behrenbeck and A. Nützenadel (eds), Inszenierungen des Nationalstaates: Politische Feiern in Deutschland und Italien seit 1860/1871 (Cologne, 2000); R. Lill and A. Ara (eds), Immagini a confronto: Italia e Germania dal 1830 all’unificazione nazionale/Deutsche Italienbilder und italienische Deutschlandbilder in der Zeit der nationalen Bewegungen (1830–1870) (Bologna–Berlin, 1991). The following important exception covers the post1870 period only: A. Ara and E. Kolb (eds), Regioni di frontiera nell’epoca dei nazionalismi. Alsazia e Lorena/Trento e Trieste 1870–1914 (Bologna, 1995). For an effective analysis from this point of view, see: J. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (2nd edn, Manchester, 1993), 96–122. Aside from the works cited above, see also: P. Weichart, ‘Territorialität, Identität und Grenzerfahrung’, in: P. Haslinger (ed.), Grenze im Kopf. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Grenze in Ostmitteleuropa (Frankfurt a.M.-Vienna, 1999), pp. 19–43. For a full discussion, see: U. von Hirschhausen and J. Leonhard, ‘Europäische Nationalismen im West-Ost-Vergleich: Von der Typologie zur Differenzbestimmung’, in: id. (eds), Nationalismen in Europa, pp. 11–45.

1 A Mission of Mediation: Dalmatia’s Multi-national Regionalism from the 1830s–60s Dominique Reill

On 3 April 1848 an announcement was published in Venice and distributed throughout the northern Adriatic, specifically addressed to the ‘valorous of the Venetian and Dalmatian navies’. Signed ‘your brothers in Venice’, the leaflet begged sailors to come join the battle against Austrian troops eager to re-conquer the city. To make sure that the message hit home, Dalmatians from the eastern Adriatic were urged to flock to their former metropolis with the pitiful words that, ‘mother is calling her children to her’.1 Within days of this announcement, Nicolò Tommaseo, one of the leading figures in the Italian Risorgimento and Minister of Education and Religion in the revolutionary Venetian government, contacted Dalmatians insisting that they stay put.2 ‘Remain calm’, the Dalmatian-born Tommaseo insisted, ‘stay far away from either side [of the war] and concentrate on keeping the peace’.3 Though he himself went into debt, lost his eyesight, and was exiled from both Venice and Dalmatia as a result of his participation in Venice’s battle for independence, Tommaseo repeatedly discouraged Dalmatian naval officers, students, soldiers, and community leaders from getting involved, insisting that they concentrate their efforts on their homeland’s own destiny. He assured them, as one Slav to another, that their fortune lay elsewhere. Tommaseo’s refusal to enlist the help of Dalmatians in Venice’s battle for independence aroused much anger from Italian contemporaries and later historians alike. Some even accused Tommaseo of being partially responsible for Venice’s defeat, citing the strong Italian presence in Dalmatia and countless examples from prior centuries of Dalmatians’ willingness to bear arms to protect their rulers.4 On the other hand, Croatian historians have taken this instance as evidence that, at heart, Tommaseo was a true (but inconsistent) Slavic nationalist, determined 16

A Mission of Mediation

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to liberate the majority Slavic-speaking Dalmatian community from a centuries-long Italian hegemony.5 Contemporary Dalmatians, however, saw little discrepancy in their land’s favourite son dedicating his life to a war for Italian national independence, while proclaiming himself a Slav and averring that Dalmatia’s future was not in the Italian camp. Stipan Iviˇcević (1801–78), businessman, local community leader, journalist and amateur linguist, declared that it was just such a stance that proved Tommaseo ‘a true patriot!’6 For in mid-century Dalmatia, the idea of supporting both the Italian and Slavic national movements, while consistently emphasizing the exceptional status of Dalmatia, was not just common, it was representative of a widespread political and cultural outlook. Until recently, historians have attributed Dalmatians’ insistence on identifying with both the Italian and Slavic national movements as indicative of a general cultural and political confusion. According to many historians in Italy and the former Yugoslavia, Dalmatians were caught between two sides.7 However, recent studies have offered a more convincing explanation, maintaining that early to mid-century Dalmatians acted upon regional loyalties as much, if not more, than national ones. Konrad Clewing has demonstrated that Dalmatians could – and regularly did – choose between identities as varied as Dalmatian, Slavo-Dalmatian, Italo-Dalmatian, Italo-Austrian, Illyrian, Slav, Serb, Italian and Croatian.8 Josip Vrandeˇcić supports these findings, emphasizing that, until the second half of the nineteenth century, most educated Dalmatians identified themselves regionally as well as – if not instead of – nationally.9 Both authors concur that, while the importance of the national was appreciated and increasingly emphasized, Dalmatians strongly nourished a regionalist identity incorporating different national orientations. What remains unclear, however, is how Dalmatia’s regionalism could contain its seemingly contradictory, and ostensibly incompatible, Italian and Slavic national components. To evaluate how Dalmatian regionalism and competing nationalisms could mutually sustain each other, this article examines a recurrent theme in mid-nineteenth-century Dalmatian writings: that of Dalmatia’s mission. For just as France by the eighteenth century had developed a guiding principle of a mission civilisatrice, in the nineteenth century Dalmatians, too, declared that their land performed a special role in Europe.10 Unsurprisingly, Dalmatia’s mission was uniquely suited for a borderland – one of social, intellectual, and national mediation. A close analysis of this mission rhetoric, with the scope of understanding its development and function in the mindset

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of its adherents, promises to shed more light on how regionalism and multi-nationalism were interconnected.

‘The sadness of the province drives most away, and favours only the few’ Before looking at what early nineteenth-century Dalmatians saw as their destined place in the world order, it is necessary to recall that Dalmatia had been ruled by the Venetian Republic until 1797. A narrow expanse of land extending over 300 kilometres and comprising over 300 islands, Dalmatia was bordered to the south by the Republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa), to the east by the Dinaric mountains and the Ottoman Empire’s holdings of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and to the north by Hungary’s Croatian territories. Under the Venetian metropole, Dalmatia functioned as a mercantilist colony. In exchange for military support, the financing of public works, and commercial and educational links with the Republic of Saint Mark, Dalmatia supplied raw materials, taxes and a labour force. Like Venice itself, Dalmatia was an oligarchic society, where urban centres enjoyed a large amount of municipal autonomy. In the outlying rural areas, landowners held complete authority. Absentee landlords controlled their holdings through the administration of local agents and panduri (a local militia force financed by landowners). Agricultural relations, called the colon system, followed the basic sharecropper pattern common throughout most of the northern Adriatic. Although Catholicism was the official religion of state, non-Catholic inhabitants were free to live in the cities and outlying areas, with census figures showing that 20 per cent of Dalmatia’s population in the 1840s was non-Catholic.11 Also, while Italian was the official language of government and trade, inhabitants regularly communicated in the South Slavic dialects predominant in the area.12 On the whole, the rural populations tended to speak one of Dalmatia’s many South Slavic dialects, while city-dwellers also spoke Italian. Italian-speaking Dalmatians were mostly limited to the coastal regions and included those involved in trade, administration, and the Church, or those lucky enough to have received a formal education. Before Napoleon entered Venice, the Republic’s administration of Dalmatia had deteriorated significantly. A ruling class more intent on collecting taxes than administering, economic vulnerability caused by the new American markets, and unwise political alliances had placed the Venetian Republic in dire political and economic straits. Dalmatia


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was the first to suffer the consequences. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was one of the poorest regions of Europe, fraught with corruption, illiteracy, a dying maritime commercial culture and a stagnant agricultural system. After the dissolution of the Republic of Saint Mark in 1797, Dalmatia found itself handed back and forth between France and Austria. Educated Dalmatians, seeing a change in regime as an opportunity to reform their ‘poor Dalmatia’, began publishing works of storia patria (local history) specifically addressed to their new ‘wise legislators’.13 Gentleman scholars such as Gian Luca Garagnin14 and Giovanni Kreglianović Albinoni15 explained how their once glorious land of plenty had degraded into an abandoned province suffering from ‘a centuries-long sleep’ with its ‘nations debased by barbarism, misery, and false politics’.16 Their histories begged the new rulers of Dalmatia to ‘first immerse yourselves in the laws appertaining to this vast province, distancing yourself for a moment from the enjoyments of sophisticated Europe, come to observe this region of unhappy men, who have gulped down the cup of suffering in the heart of the harshest of miseries; examine their traditions, their abuses, their pragmatics, their condition’,17 in order to secure ‘il nostro risorgimento’ (our resurgence).18 Again and again, Garagnin and Kreglianović Albinoni emphasized that, with the proper administration, Dalmatia could be a land of great wealth and prosperity. Proclaiming the physiocratic ideals of agricultural reform, free trade and enlightened government, these authors saw Dalmatia as a land where ‘in every direction that I set my gaze, I can observe the sources for wealth’.19 Dalmatia’s backwardness in education and industry was offset by its bilingualism, untapped agricultural possibilities, coastline and its inhabitants’ firmly engrained feelings of civic patriotism.20 Kreglianović Albinoni assured his readers that if Dalmatia was allowed to open a tax-free port, along the lines of the economically thriving port-city of Trieste, it ‘would become the marketplace for all of the manufactures and of all of the productions of Italy, Europe, and finally of the two worlds’.21 Garagnin concurred wholeheartedly, stressing that ‘the opportunity of its seas its numerous and ample ports canals for communication useful for transportation inland, its borders with the Ottoman empire, the opportunity of the most natural outlet of its products within the vast regions between the Danube and the Adriatic, and finally the facility with which one can reach Italy from any point of the coast all of this provides Dalmatia with favorable means of navigation and commerce’.22 By the end of the Napoleonic wars, local elites had come to the conclusion that Dalmatia

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was a land awaiting its own ‘risorgimento’, as the marketplace between East and West.23 With the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Dalmatia was officially named a Kingdom of the Habsburg Empire. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new Habsburg rulers of Dalmatia paid little attention to local suggestions for reform.24 In fact, little was changed from the pre-existing Venetian system: Italian was kept as the official language, regardless of the fact that that over 90 per cent of the local population was Slavic-speaking and the Habsburg monarchy’s administrative language was German. Though the tax system was only marginally modernized, the colon sharecropper system was not reformed, and the panduri were not replaced by a state police force until the 1850s. The few changes made to Dalmatia’s administrative and economic organization proved particularly unfortunate. The administration of Dalmatia was centered on a military-run imperial office, which wrested almost all municipal control from local hands.25 Dalmatia, unlike other areas in the Habsburg Empire, had no form of representative assembly until after the constitutional reforms of the monarchy in 1848–49 and the early 1860s. Although joined to the Austrian royal house politically, economically Dalmatia was declared a separate tariff zone. As such, merchants and consumers paid taxes on any and all goods travelling to or from Dalmatia, even from within the Habsburg Empire. In return for these impositions, the province was made exempt from military service (however, as a regular, compulsory military service had never been implemented in Dalmatia before, this was arguably not much of a change). Censorship rules (though difficult to enforce) were toughened, severely limiting the type of books that were allowed publication or open distribution in the province. Censors and police also increased their efforts to monitor the private correspondence of citizens whose political or cultural activities were considered ‘suspicious’. Finally, two new territories with different cultural and political heritages – the Republic of Dubrovnik and the gulf of Kotor (Cattaro) – were annexed to Habsburg Dalmatia, thus dissipating what cohesiveness the province had previously enjoyed. These changes further isolated already stagnant and unindustrialized Dalmatia. Economically, some went as far as to argue that, without any special trade agreements, ‘for thirty years the administration of our State has studied every way to deviate trade from Dalmatia, and direct it to the centre of the Empire’.26 Intellectually, the new censorship laws and decreased trade made some Dalmatians feel justified in complaining that they were ‘isolated even more than they would be by


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the Great Wall of China,’ restricting all contact with the ‘events of the world’.27 By the 1840s, after more than two decades of Habsburg administration, Dalmatia’s position was unquestionably bleak. According to 1851 statistics, Dalmatia was the second poorest region, with the second lowest percentage of school-age children receiving an education in the Habsburg Empire.28 Devastated by earthquakes, plagues, and drought, Dalmatia consumed twice as much money in relief efforts and administrative expenses as it paid in taxes.29 Even outside of Dalmatia, people despaired of the province’s miserable state. Explaining why migrating to Dalmatia would be a foolish professional move, one young Istrian wrote that Dalmatia was a land ‘where the sadness of the province drives most away, and favours only the few’.30 Without any opportunities for influencing government reforms, languishing in economic and social squalor, Dalmatians’ publications and personal writings echoed the earlier claims of Kreglianović Albinoni and Garagnin that Dalmatia was not a hopeless case for economic and social progress; that with proper administration Dalmatia could procure great wealth for itself and its Habsburg monarch. But unlike the earlier physiocrats, mid-century Dalmatians no longer hypothesized about future possibilities; instead, they firmly declared that Dalmatia had a ‘destiny’, ‘providential role’, and ‘mission’ of social, intellectual and economic mediation to be fulfilled.

‘A noble mission it has … as interpreter and mediator’ Educated Dalmatians believed that each ‘people’ had a providential role to fulfil. In line with the ideas of some of their favorite authors (such as Giambattista Vico, Vincenzo Gioberti, and Alessandro Manzoni), they believed a people’s character and circumstances, in line with God’s plan, determined its mission on the world stage. As the writer, local historian and Dubrovnik bureaucrat Bartolomeo Prospero Bettera (1770– 1852) explained, ‘ in the grand, universal plan of divine Providence every people is supplied with a task, a mission to complete. This task is conditioned by the character of a people, the limits imposed on it by nature and its own talents. The manner in which a people goes about completing its task determines its prosperity’.31 Within mid-nineteenth-century writings, the exact ‘character of the people’ in Dalmatia was not defined by one language group or one religion, but by its heterogeneity. As Dalmatia’s famous native son, Nicolò Tommaseo maintained, ‘no-one born in Dalmatia can call himself

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a pure Italian, and a large number of those who speak Slavic have Italian ancestors or living relatives.’32 Francesco Carrara (1812–54), a Catholic clergyman and Dalmatia’s most prominent archaeologist, expanded further on the mixed ethnic character of his homeland, stating that, ‘determining the origin of our people is a subject of long and serious meditation, and, despite appearances to the contrary, difficult. In the succession of the Frankish, Croatian, Bosnian, Hungarian, Genovese, Neapolitan, Venetian, French and German occupations, how many foreign origins, how many new families! Dalmatia, for its geographic position, was always coveted and contested, barrier against the storming furies from the east and north, safeguard to the progresses of Italian civilization, safe-harbour for the victims of Europe’s political upheavals’.33 In these and other writings, the presence of Dalmatia’s Slavic-speaking majority was recognized, but emphasis was continually given to the effects of centuries of foreign occupation, Mediterranean trade, Italian administration, and eastern immigration. The character of Dalmatia’s people, formative of its providential mission, was one of a Slavic-speaking majority profoundly influenced by its Italianspeaking minority. To local elites, Dalmatia was, in a sense, one patria with two leading national heritages. ‘Dalmatia is one of those countries destined by Providence to serve as a link between people of different stocks (stirpe)’, declared an anonymous Dalmatian journalist. And because of Dalmatia’s ‘geographic position double language, double culture,’ Dalmatia had a ‘nobile missione’ (noble mission), where its two national heritages would ‘serve as interpreter and mediator’ between the Latin and Slavic worlds.34 In countless publications and personal writings, Dalmatians continually echoed these arguments, referring to themselves and their province as a ‘bridge between East and West’, the ‘chain (anello) that keeps two worlds together’, or, as a land ‘destined by God to act as mediator between one people and another’.35 Particularly interesting is how Dalmatians’ understanding of their mediatory mission assigned each national group a special purpose in their divine destiny. With its dual language and culture, locals deemed that both Italian and Slavic performed special and complementary functions for the fulfillment of Dalmatia’s providential role as bridge between East and West, Slavic and Latin. In the mental framework of mid-century Dalmatians, Italian language and culture provided a means for westernization and economic expansion in the East. In the words of Francesco Borelli (1810–84), a large landholder from Zadar/Zara, politician and later deputy to the Austrian


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parliament in the 1850s–60s, ‘no agricultural improvements, no rays of progress can penetrate Dalmatia through its land borders it is necessary that the enlightened section of Dalmatia’s inhabitants fly with their intelligence beyond the seas and mountains, and, like busy and assiduous bees, collect as much of other nations’ science, wealth, and repeated experimentation that can prove useful and advantageous for enriching Dalmatia’.36 This conception of the civilizing function of Italian culture went back a long way. As Larry Wolff has observed, in the eighteenth century Dalmatian elites already identified themselves as agents for the transmission of enlightenment ideas to the uneducated Slavic-speaking peasantry.37 With their fluency in Italian and their close ties to the Italian peninsula’s economic and intellectual networks, Dalmatian elites, ‘like busy bees’, believed that they could pollinate the backward fields of the Slavic world with the teachings of the western Enlightenment. Dalmatia, as a crossroads with the East, could serve as the inroad for a larger westernization process in the Slavic-speaking communities. On a smaller scale, fluency in Italian was also seen as an important economic tool for trade and commercial expansion. Tommaseo went so far as to argue that, ‘if on the (Dalmatian) coast the language of Italy was not already in use, it would be prudent to introduce it’.38 Many believed that only through Mediterranean trade could Dalmatia hope to pull itself out of its economic slump. In an article on the necessity of educational reforms, Stipan Iviˇcević wrote that, ‘geography will teach and remind the Dalmatian of the natural and elect situation of his patria, between the Mediterranean and the Danube. In technical, industrial, and commercial relations, Dalmatia is not a province circumscribed and limited to a half a million inhabitants. Dalmatia is a seashore, head of a large territory – from the Mediterranean to the Danube: outpost to four million inhabitants’.39 Luigi Serragli (1816–80), a Dubrovnik businessman and bureaucrat, who – with Franceso Borelli – was a leading member of the autonomist party in the 1860s–70s, expressed his view of Dalmatia’s place in the world more directly. To Serragli, the Italian language and continued links to its maritime trading partners were of unqualified importance because ‘Dalmatians are born for the sea’.40 Representative of the diffusiveness of this idea would be the 1861 National Dalmatian Committee’s list of political objectives for the province. Number three on the list was the ‘elevated education in the Italian language, indispensable to Dalmatia in regards to its intellectual and scientific needs, not less than its maritime interests’.41 In this vein, Dalmatian intellectuals subscribed to the idea that fluency in Italian would promise not just economic prosperity for Dalmatia

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itself, but that it would serve as an essential element in realizing the province’s mission to act as a channel between different worlds. Always intent on focusing on the larger issues at stake, Tommaseo applauded local initiatives for commercial societies, arguing that they worked not just toward economic gain, but that ‘the traffic of materials is destined to ease the exchange of ideas. Commerce is destined with time to conquer ignorance’.42 While all these ideas about the utility of Italian culture already existed in the eighteenth century, new in nineteenth-century Dalmatia was the rising belief that Italian language and culture could promote the Slavic revival movement at home and abroad. Well-versed in the latest Romantic passion for the exotic and natural, Dalmatians hoped to utilize Italian to encourage greater understanding and sympathy for Slavs in the western world. Without a doubt, Tommaseo was the forerunner in this project. Resident in Italy, contributor to many prominent Italian journals, author of countless volumes, Tommaseo saw it as his patriotic duty to promote Slavic (and specifically Slavo-Dalmatian) culture in western Europe. Saddened by the fact that his work in Slavic was not up to par with his control of the Italian language, Tommaseo consoled himself by stating: ‘I will have done something if I succeed in my Italian writings to render the Slavic world less unknown and more respectable to some in old Europe’.43 One of the many examples of local Dalmatians who followed Tommaseo’s lead was the Dubrovnik writer, historian, journalist and physician, Ivan August Kaznaˇcić (1817–83). In the introduction to his new journal, entitled L’Avvenire di Ragusa (‘The Future of Dubrovnik’), Kaznaˇcić announced that ‘to reconcile with love the Slavic literary element with the Italian seems to me the principal mission that this paper should aspire to’, and expressed his hope that, ‘this journal will fulfil the proposed mission; that it will be a bond of love between all Dalmatians’.44 Dalmatians also viewed their province’s bilingualism as particularly conducive to standardizing and modernizing a Slavic literary culture. Paying close attention to the experience of the Italian peninsula’s disparate regions in forming one standardized Italian literary and spoken language from its many dialects, many Dalmatian elites believed Italy’s Risorgimento could serve as a model for the Slavic revival and language standardization movement within the Habsburg Empire. Stipan Iviˇcević, in a private letter to a young colleague, explained the similarities and differences to the Italian case, indicating what Dalmatians and South Slavs should consider in modernizing their own language: ‘Two are our [Slavs’] creeds, the Western (Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox).


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Therefore: no single religion. If you take away unity in language, what common ground is left? – Aren’t we already politically dismembered enough? Hence, now is not the time for literary arguments about form. Let us focus instead on the subject at hand. Haven’t you seen the old and new Italian orthography? All agree that the Dalmatians speak the best Illyrian. So why can’t we, in exchange, concede the form of four letters?’45 Iviˇcević here argues that Dalmatians and other South Slavs must follow the Italian example; to form a nation they must compromise and construct a common South Slavic/Illyrian language, especially as they had no common religion to bind them. Prevalent among locals was the belief that Dalmatians’ familiarity with Italian would serve as a guide to strengthening their own Slavic revival movement. They also maintained that, because their dialect ‘distinguished itself among the other southern (dialects) for its gentleness and flexibility’,46 it was more than likely that the Dalmatian dialect would become the Tuscan of the South Slav world. Just as the works of Tuscan writers Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio served as the foundation for modern, standardized Italian, Dalmatians insisted that the rich literary heritage of such local authors as Ivan Gundulić, Ignazio Giorgi and Andrija Kaˇcić Miošić would insure that their dialect would be the foundation for a standardized Slavic language. The lawyer, writer, historian and politician Konstantin Vojnović (1832–1903), who was one of the leading political voices in the 1860s–70s in favour of annexing Dalmatia to Croatia, summed up this common conviction, noting that Croatian compared to Dalmatian was ‘like Piedmontese versus Tuscan’.47 Though Croatia and Piedmont were states with prominent military traditions, and strove to launch political unification efforts for their declared nations, Vojnović saw that it was the Dalmatian and Tuscan literary heritages which promised to command cultural unification within their respective spheres. The example of Tuscany in Italy’s Risorgimento seemed to promise Dalmatians a similar key position in their own Slavic revival movement. Dalmatia’s Italian culture was not the only element that determined its destiny to mediate between East and West. At the core of Dalmatians’ vision of their role to bridge two worlds lay the certainty that Dalmatia’s Slavic identity had much to offer both Eastern and Western Europe. Dalmatia’s linguistic ties to its Slavic brethren in the East promised economic benefits. Francesco Borelli emphasized that Dalmatia represented the ideal European marketplace, exulting in the fact that ‘our common languages are the Italian and the Slavic; the one allows us to pick in the garden of Italy all of the flowers of knowledge and

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experience ; the other renders our words intelligible not only to our farmers, but also from this Adriatic coast to the most remote coasts of Kamchatka’.48 United by a common language and the quickly growing Pan-Slavic spirit, Dalmatia’s Slavdom constituted millions of potential consumers and labourers, who could connect the East to the West’s industrial revolution. Borelli also pointed out that with the West’s voracious industrialization, in Western Europe ‘there is almost no more source for wealth. And for that the gaze, studies, and impulse of the (Western) calculators by necessity has to pass to the Orient, to this still virgin field of the richest of hopes’.49 Enterprising Dalmatians hoped that their land could serve as interpreter and agent for this boon of manpower and raw materials represented by the Slavic world. With Italian spoken along the Adriatic coast and Slavic spoken along the caravan routes into Croatia and Bosnia, Dalmatia promised to be the perfect intermediary for continental commerce and industrialization. Dalmatians felt assured that they could hold a leading role in western capitalism’s move eastward because they considered their local dialects, traditions, and literary heritage as exceptionally rich and developed compared to other Slavic peoples. The writings of other leading European thinkers, such as Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Ján Kollár, Adam Mickiewicz, Ljudevit Gaj, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, and Johann Gottfried Herder seemed to confirm this form of Dalmatian chauvinism. For throughout the Slavic and German literary worlds, the ballads of Dalmatia, especially Andrija Kaˇcić Miošić’s folk songs and Ivan Gundulić’s epic poem Osman, were consistently cited and studied in order to illustrate the moral purity of Slavic language and culture.50 Spurred on by these world-renowned authors, locals reassessed their own peasant lore and dialects. Tommaseo, a great admirer of Karadžić, encouraged Dalmatians to participate actively in the new literary interest in Dalmatia’s folk ballads. In 1847 he addressed his fellow Dalmatians: ‘I warmly recommend those who love their patria [to] collect ballads, proverbs, traditions, habits and manners of speech. Before disdaining the poor people, let us get to know them ’.51 To many, incorporating Slavic folk ballads and traditions into the Dalmatian canon seemed a promising way of breaking down class boundaries within Dalmatia itself. Further, to ensure that the development of a standardized South Slavic language incorporated these democratizing trends, Tommaseo and many others urged that Dalmatian peasant ballads be used as the primary point of reference for developing a Slavic lexicon and grammar. For ‘up to now the popular ballads are


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almost the only texts of the language, from which we can study the elegant character, the splendid brevity and the agile simplicity of its construction’.52 Convinced that the desperate social condition of Slavic-speaking peasants was a result of a general alienation from public life, many Dalmatians embraced the message of Tommaseo, Karadžić, Mickiewicz, and Gaj. Consequently, thousands of poems, articles and monographs were published in the early to mid-nineteenth century extolling local Slavic songs, traditions and morals. Several Slavic periodicals were founded, dedicated to providing literature and learning to the ‘people’. With these new outlets for ‘Dalmatians and all our dear Slavic brothers’, a common, modern written language would act as a means for Slavic speakers ‘to support each other and come to hold each other by the hand’.53 Throughout, there was a genuine attempt to elevate popular culture and language into the public sphere. And at the heart of these efforts dwelled a desire among locals to leave a strong imprint on the nineteenth-century Slavic revival movement, where Dalmatia would be one of the ‘centres of civilization for the future Slav world’.54 In short, intrinsic to Dalmatians’ mission to act as bridge between East and West was the conviction that Dalmatia’s strong Slavic identity was seminal in the Slavic revival movement gaining steam throughout Europe. At the same time, Dalmatia’s peasant culture was seen not just as an invaluable resource for the progress of the Slavic movement in the East. Dalmatians also trusted that the strong moral character of folk traditions and beliefs could relieve Western Europe of its spiritual woes. Dalmatia’s Slavic peasants were seen by archaeologist Francesco Carrara as having a ‘virgin character’, living ‘in a state of nature’, untainted by the ‘progressive civilizations of Europe’. Instead of the immoral cosmopolitanism of Paris, Milan, and London, Slavic-speaking peasants’ character was seen as profoundly devout. For Dalmatia’s Slavs, the ‘supreme law of every one of their actions is the will of God, revealed in the commandments of the ancient pact, in the precepts of the Church, and in the instructions of the parish’.55 Dalmatians’ propensity for friendship, generosity and goodness was seen as unrivalled by the citizens of the ‘provinces of Europe, with its gas, railroad lines and sulfuric ether’.56 Nicolò Tommaseo explained that the heightened religiosity of both Dalmatia’s Catholic and Serb Orthodox Slavs was a result of the fact that they were ‘the last to see the Christian light’.57 For Tommaseo, Carrara, and many others, Dalmatia’s Slavic identity was a model of Christian virtue and purity to be emulated. Slavic culture, in many respects, should replace the ‘decrepit civilization of the West’.58

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In a sense, therefore, Dalmatia’s location between two worlds represented a mission to mediate the inequities and losses of Europe’s industrial revolution. Dalmatia – through its Italian networks – promised to spread the wealth of the West’s enlightenment and industrial revolution to the backward lands of the East. Links to Dalmatia’s Slavic world served as the key to reinstating the lost moral purity and simple Christian faith in the now ‘decrepit’ West. Religion was also a fundamental feature in forming Dalmatia’s particular brand of mid-nineteenth-century regionalism. For it would be unwise to discount as purely rhetorical Dalmatians’ arguments that their province’s geographical and linguistic position reveals God’s will. Overall, as most historians agree, nineteenth-century Dalmatians proved exceptionally devout. Francesco Borelli’s instructions to his son – ‘to observe the whole world, every animal, every plant, as the perfect production of a Supreme Mind’ – was typical for the time and place in both Serb Orthodox and Catholic circles.59 But the significance of the religious tones of Dalmatia’s multi-national regionalism goes beyond a simple conviction that, so to speak, ‘God must want Dalmatia to be a mixed region because he made it that way.’ Instead, it appears that Dalmatians looked to religion to act as a harmonizing force within their own region’s multi-ethnicity. Bartolomeo Prospero Bettera admitted that in areas where nations overlapped, ‘oppression’ and ‘violence’ were possible. To avoid these ‘misdeeds against the order desired by God’, the ‘Church of Christ’ was the only force capable of ‘reconnecting the multitude of people in a unity consecrated to God, to cultivate between them a relationship of mutual brotherhood and to create in this way a great family of peoples’.60 Tommaseo agreed with Bettera, and in contemplating the myriad differences within Dalmatia’s populace he wrote: ‘Only religion can make these varieties innocuous and mighty, assembling out of them a worthy end’.61 In this context, it is clear that Dalmatians did not merely trust in God’s will to insure that their mediatory mission would serve Europe; they saw their entire region’s survival and prosperity as being dependent on a divine plan for different nations to live together.

‘Our province under the constitutional government of the double-headed Eagle … is called for a great destiny’ Dalmatia’s mission of mediation reveals much about how locals believed a multi-national region could function. Political initiatives tried to insure that Dalmatia’s destiny could be realized by focusing on


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several different issues, foremost of which were: 1. attempts to change Dalmatia’s tariff status to accommodate its role as trade bridge between East and West; 2. education reforms to ensure that locals were fluent in both Italian and Slavic languages; 3. improved infrastructure (railways, better roads, more steamboats to augment communications between Dalmatia and the inner core of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and the Habsburg crown lands; 4. greater participation in political questions by Dalmatia’s community leaders (landowners, merchants, civil servants, middle-class professionals, peasant chiefs and clergy); and 5. administrative reforms to lessen the divide between Dalmatia’s indigent peasant class and its town-dwelling elite. To push forward these reforms, the demand for partial sovereignty was paramount for mid-century regionalists. As Kaznaˇcić argued, Dalmatia was a ‘province of traditions, language and climate totally different from the rest ’, and as such ‘needs special (political) applications ’ because ‘the spirit of administrative centralism is of no use at all in assimilating nations’.62 During moments of intense political activity, primarily the revolutions of 1848–49, and the years surrounding the unification of Italy from 1859 to 1862, many echoed the chant that not only would centralist and homogenizing efforts fail, they would be to Dalmatia’s detriment. Dalmatia’s heterogeneity was regarded as a necessary attribute to mediate between her many nationalities’ differences. And to guard her heterogeneity, she needed to have a larger say in her administration. In other words, Dalmatia’s multi-ethnicity proved the raison d’être of Dalmatia’s regionalism. Though the central Habsburg administration frowned upon arguments for increased autonomy (and effectively hindered it until at least the late 1860s), it is hard to imagine that Dalmatians were oblivious to the overlapping goals of a multi-national empire and a multi-national province. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to speculate that the continual emphasis on the region’s multi-nationalism was also intended to reassure the imperial authorities of a common political goal as faithful servants of the empire. An example of just such a strategy can be seen by a public letter from the Town Council of Obrovac (Obrovazzo) in 1848, which declared: ‘Our province under the constitutional government of the double-headed Eagle, which respects the different languages and customs of its people, is called for a great destiny.’63 If given increased sovereignty and constitutional government, Dalmatians sought to assure their imperial administrators, not only would their mission be realized, but that of the monarchy as well.

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Compared to Dalmatian regionalism before and after the period under study, peculiar to the mid-nineteenth-century is the idea that progress, preservation and self-realization could be achieved without too much transformation. While mid-nineteenth-century Dalmatians insisted on the region’s distinctiveness from its Italian and South Slav neighbors, eighteenth-century leaders had hoped to weld Dalmatia to the enlightenment projects of western Europe. This regional focus, too, proved quite different from Slavic nationalist (whether Yugoslav, Croatian or Serb) and Italian irredentist creeds of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which completely subsumed the regional element under the national.

‘The word brotherhood … is no longer on the lips of men’ Seminal to Dalmatia’s self-proclaimed mission of mediation was a firm belief that it needed to preserve its borderland status. In discussing Dalmatia’s providential role, locals explained that the heterogeneous character of their population was not just a relic of its past, but an essential element of its future. The cornerstone of this idea was the conviction that Dalmatia was necessarily and inexorably a dynamic borderland area. Yet, it was ultimately the evident fallacy of this notion of dynamism that proved to be the cause for the disintegration of the region’s multi-nationalism. Before 1797, Dalmatia had served as a geographical borderland between two economically interdependent, but sovereign, empires (the Venetian and the Ottoman). After the Napoleonic wars, the province found itself marginalized. Bordered to the north and west by the Habsburgcontrolled regions of Lombardy–Venetia, Trieste, Istria, Rijeka (Fiume) and Croatia, and to the east by the increasingly Habsburg-influenced regions of Bosnia and Hercegovina, the only territorial frontier it shared with a region outside the Habsburg sphere of influence consisted of the small, impoverished, Russian-satellite princedom of Montenegro.64 As such, Dalmatia’s mission of ‘mediation’ quickly became an attempt to reconcile different national groups all within the same state system. As the Habsburgs’ succeeded in consolidating their rule over the Adriatic region, Dalmatia increasingly became a periphery on the edge of different Habsburg lands instead of being a borderland between sovereign states. And when the surrounding national groups to the west and east of Dalmatia became ever more intent on breaking the ties that bound them together within the Habsburg Empire, the difficulty in preserving and promoting a mediatory mission proved overwhelming.


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By the 1860s, with the Italian wars for unification to the west and the increasingly aggressive national claims of Croats and Serbs in the east, Dalmatia’s multi-national regionalists were limited to mediating within their own populace instead of serving as a conduit between neighbours. Quickly, Dalmatians, like most Europeans, abandoned their dreams of multi-national brotherhood. As an anonymous author despaired, ‘the word brotherhood (fratellanza) is no longer on the lips of men; and a utopia of humanitarianism has fallen in disfavour among the politically inexperienced of the cafés. A dispatch announces: 9,000 dead, and no one even murmurs a requiem!’65 After only a few years of parliamentary self-government within the constitutional Habsburg system of the 1860s, believers in Dalmatia’s mission for national mediation opted either for an a-national regionalism (which was particularly hostile to the Slavic revival movement) or for a national movement geared toward joining a federal Slavic state. Those, like Stipan Iviˇcević, who still dreamed of a multi-national future, were accused of being ‘two-sided’, and their national loyalties were called into question.66 Others retreated to their studies and memoirs, as Ivan August Kaznaˇcić so movingly described: ‘The complications of this incredibly interesting epoch in which we find ourselves has underscored the mediocrity of my intellectual forces in a way to disturb their habitual equilibrium. I live in a constant state of morose anxiety and the shadows every day become denser. In this situation my literary activity is limited to copying documents from our ancient Archive, which perhaps will offer me, in calmer times, the material for a volume not lacking in interest.’67 Without states to mediate between, the idea of sustaining a multi-national regionalism seemed hopeless.

The significance of a borderland’s mission of mediation Dalmatia’s period of multi-national regionalism and its accompanying mission of mediation prove fascinating for several reasons. First and foremost, it serves as a reminder that Dalmatia, and the Balkans in general, do not represent some sort of intrinsically intolerant, extreme nationalist cultural sphere – a lesson that Maria Todorova has rightly insisted still needs to be learned.68 In the mid-nineteenth century, the majority of educated Dalmatians attempted to promote their region’s mixed cultural heritage. An examination of this experience is crucial to understanding the vehemence of both the anti-national and national movements of late nineteenth-century Dalmatia.

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Secondly, attempts by elites to promote a regionalism that would cultivate two national revival movements reveals much about what contemporaries believed were the socio-political possibilities in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Clearly, local actors appreciated the political weight and potential for social reform held within the doctrines of modern nationalism. Yet, at this point, the ‘need’ for homogenizing a heterogeneous population was not yet accepted. Early nineteenthcentury Dalmatians – perhaps still recovering from the shock of the Napoleonic wars – viewed the fostering of a national movement as a means to preserve their region’s multi-ethnic character against centralization and ‘westernization’. Nationalism was not conceived as a process of complete assimilation. By cultivating two national traditions, locals believed that they could bolster Dalmatia’s self-proclaimed raison d’être as a separate and special region without eradicating the roots of its multi-ethnic social fabric. Finally, the fascinating case of Dalmatia serves not just as an example of a borderland’s multi-national regionalism, but suggests also the reasons for the precariousness of such a concept. As Dalmatia ceased to be a borderland, so its regionalism ceased to be multi-national. A stable Habsburg dominion over the Adriatic, in essence, changed Dalmatia’s status. With trade directed through Trieste and the intellectual and cultural ties with the new Kingdom of Italy stringently filtered through Habsburg administrative offices, Dalmatia in the latter half of the nineteenth-century was no longer a borderland between East and West, between Slavic and Latin. Instead, it was simply another Habsburg backwater containing many nationalities, its heterogeneity no longer dynamic, but a legacy from a bygone era. Increasingly consolidated within one state system, Dalmatia’s mission for mediation could no longer look without, and was forced to look within. Those eager to avoid Dalmatia’s integration into another nationally-organized state discounted differences and pushed for an assimilative regional identity. In recent studies focusing on multi-ethnic communities, borderlands have taken centre stage, representing self-regenerating, mixed cultural spaces often (though not always) unresponsive to the nationalising initiatives of Europe’s new nation-states. It is this aspect that renders borderlands special sites of study. For whether admitted or not, many see borderlands’ resilience as a potential model for understanding how our own multi-ethnic future can be better managed. The example of Dalmatia, however, points to the fragility of borderlands and their apparent promises, for the difference between once having been a borderland and actually being one was crucial. The downfall


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of Dalmatia’s multi-national regionalism did not have its seed either in the birth of modern nationalism (that process had already begun) or in nationalizing efforts by a nation-state. The transformation began with Dalmatia’s full incorporation into an empire. No longer left on the border, Dalmatians scrambled for new destinies to realize.

Notes 1. I Vostri Fratelli di Venezia, ‘Ai Valorosi della marineria veneta e dalmata,’ in: Raccolta per ordine cronologico di tutti gli atti, decreti, nomine ec. del Governo Prov. della Repubblica Veneta (Venice, 1848), p. 319. 2. Nicolò Tommaseo, b. 1802 Šibenik–d. 1874 Florence, was the most famous and influential Dalmatian of the nineteenth century and is also regarded as one of the leaders of the liberal–Catholic–republican wing of Italy’s Risorgimento. Most of Tommaseo’s publications deal with literary criticism, moral and religious questions, folk ballads, poetry, and educational reform. He was also the author of one of the most acclaimed dictionaries of the Italian language in the nineteenth century. The best biography is still: R. Ciampini, Vita di Niccolò Tommaseo (Florence, 1945). The most effective discussion of Tommaseo’s links with the Slavic National Movement is: J. Pirjevec, Niccolò Tommaseo tra Italia e Slavia (Venice, 1977). I have chosen to spell Tommaseo’s first name with one ‘c’ instead of two, as he commonly did when publishing texts on Dalmatia (in Dalmatian Italian dialect, it was written as such). He spelled it with two ‘c’-s usually when publishing on Italian matters. 3. Letters from Nicolò Tommaseo to his brother-in-law, Antonio Banchetti, from April to May 1848, quoted in: Ciampini, Vita di Niccolò Tommaseo, pp. 413–14. 4. Ibid., pp. 412–18. ˇ 5. One striking example: L. Corali´ c, Šibenˇcani u mlecima (Šibenik, 2003), pp. 158–60. 6. Stipan Iviˇcević, ‘Letter to Luigi Pavissich, Macarsca April 25, 1848,’ in: L.C. Pavissich (ed.), Memorie macarensi: Stefano Ivichevich e la sua epoca in Dalmazia (Trieste, 1897), pp. 50–1. 7. A few examples of this stance are the classic studies by the Croatian historian Grga Novak such as, ‘Maninova vlada. Nacionalni komitet i Garibaldinci u odnosu na Dalmaciju’, Zbornik Historijskog instituta Jugoslavenske Akademije 3 (1960), 23–58; Prošlost Dalmacije (Zagreb, 1944). See also most of the regular contributors to the Rivista Dalmatica journal. 8. K. Clewing, Staatlichkeit und nationale Identitätsbildung: Dalmatien in Vormärz und Revolution (Munich, 2001). Illyrianism was a cultural and political movement founded by Ljudevit Gaj and predominant within Croatia and Slavonia during the 1830s–40s. Illyrianism advocated the formation of a standardized south Slavic language and literary culture, regardless of religion and in line with other Slavic national movements within Europe. 9. J. Vrandeˇcić, Dalmatinski autonomistiˇcki pokret u XIX. stoljeću (Zagreb, 2002). 10. It remains to be investigated how much Dalmatia’s Napoleonic experience stimulated the use of a missionary ideology to sustain patriotism. Compare:

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11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

Different Paths to the Nation S. Woolf, ’French Civilization and Ethnicity in the Napoleonic Empire’, Past and Present 124 (1989), 96–120. Habsburg census figures published in 1845–46 indicate 16,000 Italians, 320,000 Croatians (Slavic-speaking Catholics), 500 Jews and 80,000 Serb Orthodox in Dalmatia. See: S. Obad, ’Dalmacija za vrijeme izlaženja Zore Dalmatinske’, Zadarska Smotra 44, Nos 3–4 (1995), 31–8. The main dialects of Dalmatia all belonged to the language family of SerboCroatian. Today, most Dalmatians speak standardized Croatian. I will refer to the various non-standardized dialects spoken in Dalmatia during the early to mid-nineteenth century as ‘Slavic’, as was common at the time. G.L. Garagnin, Reflessioni economico-politiche sopra la Dalmazia (Zadar, 1806), p.72. Count Gianluca Garagnin, b. 1764 Trogir–d. 1841 Trogir, a Freemason and supporter of the French Revolution, spent much of his life in Venice and was in close correspondence with the Italian intelligentsia. He focused his studies on political economy, the sciences, archeology and animal husbandry. He served in both the Habsburg and French administrations during the Napoleonic wars, but retired to private life thereafter. Count Ivan Kreljanović Albinoni, b. 1777 Kaštel Stari–d. 1838 Zadar, worked as a lawyer in Venice until the fall of the Republic. An ardent sympathizer for Napoleon, he returned to Dalmatia where he served as a judge and chief administrator during the revolutionary period. With the entry of the Austrians in 1814, he was made Provincial Inspector of Education, but retired in 1816. He also worked as a journalist, historian, playwright, and translator. G.K. Albinoni, Memorie per la storia della Dalmazia, vol. I (Zadar, 1809), pp. 227–8. Garagnin, Reflessioni, pp. 72–3. Albinoni, Memorie, p. 239. Garagnin, Reflessioni, p. 36. Ibid., pp. 275–6. Albinoni, Memorie, p. 239. Garagnin, Reflessioni, pp. 35–6. Albinoni, Memorie, p. 239. On the whole, this is similar to what David Laven describes in his analysis of the transformation from the Napoleonic to the Habsburg administration of Venice in the immediate postwar period. However, Venetians had a larger chance to present their plans for provincial reorganization as they possessed a congregazione centrale with noble and non-noble representatives, greater communal autonomy in local administration, and a separation between military and administrative offices within the Habsburg state structure, all of which were lacking in Dalmatia. See: D. Laven, Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs, 1815–1835 (Oxford, 2002). For a particularly well-informed analysis of Dalmatia’s administration in the pre-1848 period see: Clewing, Staatlichkeit. F. Borelli, ‘Del nuovo sistema doganale della Dalmazia,’ L’Agronomo raccoglitore- Giornale ebdomadario di Economia rurale, intento a promuovere in via istruttiva popolare il progresso dell’agricoltura ed altri oggetti economici di patrio interesse I, no. 46 (1851), p. 362.


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27. Ivan August Kaznaˇcić, ‘Letter from I. A. Kaznaˇcić to his son, Antun Kaznaˇcić, Dubrovnik, September 8, 1869,’ (Državni Arhiv u Dubrovniku: RO-170/7: CXCIII/78, 1869). 28. Clewing, Staatlichkeit, p. 118. 29. B. Ghetaldi and F. Borelli, Discorsi di Biagio Barone de Ghetaldi e di Francesco Conte de Borelli di Wrana pronunziati nella solenne inaugurazione della Società agronomica centrale di Zara (Zadar, 1850), pp. 33–4. 30. A. Madonizza, ‘Lettere: 1831–1866,’ in: G. Quarantotti (ed.), Di me e de’ fatti miei (1806–1870) (Trieste, 1951), pp. 49–51. 31. Bartolomeo Prospero Bettera, ‘Untitled draft beginning with ‘Le nazionalità non sono nè parto del caso nè aborto di cieca forza naturale.’ (Državni Arhiv u Dubrovniku: RO-170/6: CCV/ 30, undated). 32. N. Tommaseo, Il Monzambano e Sebenico, Italia e Dalmatia: Cenni di Niccolò Tommaseo e narrazione d’alcuni particolari del fatto (Florence, 1869), pp. 47–8. 33. F. Carrara, La Dalmazia descritta (Zadar, 1846), pp. 121–2. 34. Anon, ‘Degl’intenti del giornalismo in Dalmazia,’ Annuario Dalmatico II (1859), 17. 35. N. Tommaseo, Ai Dalmati (Zadar, 1861), p. 21. 36. Ghetaldi and Borelli, Discorsi, p. 34. 37. L. Wolff, Venice and the Slavs: The Discovery of Dalmatia in the Age of Enlightenment (Stanford, 2001). 38. Tommaseo, Ai Dalmati, p. 21. 39. S. Iviˇcević, ‘Letter to Lazar Mamula on school reforms for Dalmatia, Macarsca 1856,’ in: Pavissich, Memorie, pp. 125–6. 40. L. Serragli, Sulla Riforma doganale della Dalmazia (Dubrovnik, 1851), p. 15. 41. Comitato Nazionale Dalmato, ‘Untitled: Political platform for 1861’ (Državni Arhiv u Zadru: Spisi Obitelji- Borelli: sv. 102, Borelli V. sv.3 br. 177, 1861). 42. N. Tommaseo, ‘Parte Prima: Dalmazia. 12. D’alcuni studi fatti intorno alle cose dalmatiche da stranieri e da nostri. – Lettere due. A N.N.,’ in: id., Intorno a cose dalmatiche e triestine (Trieste, 1847), p. 118. 43. ‘Letter from Niccolò Tommaseo to Pacifico Valussi, Venice 1846,’ (Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze: Tommaseo Carteggi: 142.1.2, 1846). 44. I. A. Kaznaˇcić, ‘Introduzione,’ L’ Avvenire di Ragusa 1, no. 1 (1848), 2. 45. S. Iviˇcević, ‘Letter to Luigi Pavissich, Macarsca May 28, 1844,’ in: Pavissich, Memorie, pp. 22–3. In this quote, Iviˇcević’s reference to the ‘form of four letters’ points to Croatians’ introduction of the cˇ, c´ , ž, and š into South Slavic orthography to mirror similar orthographic forms in Czech and Polish. 46. S. Pavlovich-Lucich, ‘Intorno all’insufficienza ed ai bisogni delle scuole popolari in Dalmazia,’ La Voce Dalmatica: Giornale EconomicoLetterario I (1860), 153. Stipan Pavlović-Luˇcić was a priest and member of the National Party (Narodna stranka) in 1860s–70s Dalmatia. He published many works on the religious and Slavic history of Dalmatia. 47. K. Vojnović, Un voto per l’Unione (Split, 1861), p. 13. 48. Ghetaldi and Borelli, Discorsi, p. 33. 49. F. Borelli, Cenni sull’utilità ed importanza d’una strada ferrata Istro-Adriatica dal basso Danubio al lido dalmatico (Zadar, 1856), p. 9. 50. Herder, Goethe, Karadžić, Gaj and Mickiewicz all published and analyzed sections of Kaˇcić Miošić’s anthology of Slavic folk songs, Razgovora Ugodnoga

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51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

62. 63.

64.

65.

66.

67. 68.

Different Paths to the Nation Naroda Slovinskoga (1756) or of Gundulić’s work (1626), which describes the Ottoman sultan Osman II’s defeat by the Poles at Khotin in Bessarabia. N. Tommaseo, ‘Parte Prima: Dalmazia. 1. Dei canti del popolo serbo e dalmata,’ in: id., Intorno a cose dalmatiche, pp. 39–40. Ibid., pp. 37–8. S. Margetich, Riçi na slogu k Dalmatinskoj Zori, in: Zora dalmatinska I (1844), 3. The Zora dalmatinska (Dalmatian Dawn) was the most important Slavic language journal in early nineteenth-century Dalmatia. Tommaseo, ‘Parte Prima: Dalmazia. 1. Dei canti del popolo serbo e dalmato’, p. 36. Carrara, La Dalmazia descritta, pp. 150, 153, 168, 171. Ibid. N. Tommaseo, ‘Appendice Nona - Gli Sciti, gl’Illiri, gli Slavi,’ in: G. BalsamoCrivelli (ed.), G. B. Vico (Turin, 1930), p. 157. Ibid. ‘Letter from Francesco Borelli to his son, Andrea Borelli, Zadar, August 13, 1858,’ (Državni Arhiv u Zadru: Spisi Obitelji- Borelli: sv. 53, Borelli III sv. 2, br. 193, 1858). It is not possible here to go into the differences in Serb Orthodox and Catholic conceptions of a Dalmatian mission. As a general rule, followers of the Serb Orthodox faith tended to have a more developed sense of a specifically national identity. However, this did not preclude them from supporting the multi-national regionalism discussed here. Bettera, Untitled draft beginning with ’Le nazionalità non sono nè parto del caso nè aborto di cieca forza naturale’. Tommaseo, ‘Parte Prima: Dalmazia. 12. D’alcuni studi fatti intorno alle cose dalmatiche da stranieri e da nostri. – Lettere due. A N. N.’, p. 122. Tommaseo and many others believed it was both the Catholic and Serb Orthodox clergies’ responsibility to mend relations between the two Christian churches in the region. I.A. Kaznaˇcić, ‘Sulle finanze della Dalmazia’, L’Avvenire di Ragusa 1 (1848), 13. Comune d’Obbrovazzo, ‘Letter from the Comune d’Obbrovazzo to Francesco Borelli, Obrovac, April 20, 1848’, (Državni Arhiv u Zadru: Spisi Obitelji: sv. 103, Borelli V sv. 4 br. 188, 1848). Though Bosnia-Herzegovina was only occupied by the Habsburg Empire in 1878, already by the mid-nineteenth century economic and political relations between the region and Istanbul were significantly weakened. ‘Varietà’, La Voce Dalmatica: Giornale Economico-Letterario I (1860), 240. It is most likely that this death toll is referring to either the Italian wars or the Schleswig–Holstein war. ‘Letter from Mihovil Pavlinović to Stipan Iviˇcević, Podgora, October 12, 1868’ (Državni Arhiv u Zagrebu: Spisi Obitelji- Stijepan Iviˇcević: 802-I-1b-5, 1868). ‘Letter from Ivan August Kaznaˇcić to Ðuro Pulić, Dubrovnik, September 10, 1860’ (Državni Arhiv u Dubrovniku: RO-170/9: CCCX/12, 1860). M. Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York–Oxford, 1997).

2 ‘Unity Versus Difference’: The Politics of Region-building and National Identities in Tyrol, 1830–67 Laurence Cole and Hans Heiss

Locating the history of Tyrol between national historiographies On his way through Tyrol in the year 1828, on a journey from Munich to Genoa, the German poet Heinrich Heine stopped in two of the largest towns in the province: Innsbruck, where he heard at first-hand stories from the famous 1809 uprising against the Bavarians and French; and the episcopal residence of Brixen, where he was on the look-out for the hordes of Jesuits he had been warned about. Leaving Brixen, he continued his journey south, noting that he was passing from one cultural area, Germany, to another, Italy, though without specifying where precisely the boundary between the two lay. He simply wrote that, ‘in southern Tyrol the weather began to clear, the sun of Italy let its nearness be felt ’. South Tyrol, he added several lines later is ‘where Italy begins’.1 In identifying the southern part of this Austrian crownland as the start of Italy, Heine was feeding into a debate that had been going on since the early modern period, as humanist travellers and thinkers wrote on the issue as to where the border between the realms of ‘Italia’ and ‘Germania’ might be drawn.2 The existence of this debate, and the Alpine region’s long-standing geographical importance – thanks to the route over the Brenner pass – indicate that Tyrol has historically been a transition zone between the Italian and German cultural worlds, both a meeting point and a contested area. For these reasons too, it raises a series of issues relating to the formation of German and Italian national identities in the midnineteenth century, given its status as part of the Habsburg state, one 37

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of the southernmost parts of the German Confederation, and the fact that it was ethnically mixed in population – German-speakers being in a majority (c.55–57 per cent) over Italian speakers (c.42–4 per cent), while a small Ladin-speaking population (1 per cent) inhabited some of the high mountain valleys in the Dolomites. In short, the case of Tyrol poses for historians – as it did for contemporaries – the crucial question of where ‘Germany’ (and ‘German history’) ends and where ‘Italy’ (and ‘Italian history’) starts in the nineteenth-century, as well as the issue of the region’s relationship to the Austrian state. It is, therefore, all the more surprising that the question of national identity in nineteenth-century Tyrol has not been the subject of critical investigation until very recently. As suggested in the Introduction to this volume, historians of the Habsburg Monarchy have been slow to probe the meanings of national identity for its German-speaking populations. Although there has been a surge of scholarly interest in Austrian national identity since the 1980s, the focus of this research has been almost exclusively on the post-1945 period, with only a few exceptions taking a longer-term perspective.3 This has meant that, within Austria, the history of nineteenth-century Tyrol has remained the preserve of local historians writing the history of the province (Landesgeschichte) without any meaningful engagement with wider historiographical trends and adopting a partisan, ‘German-Tyrolean’ stance towards the region’s past.4 While Austrian historiography has been concerned almost exclusively with the history of Tyrol’s German population, the history of nineteenth-century Italian-Tyrol/Trentino was long held firmly under the spell of Risorgimento-inspired history-writing, whereby the history of Austria’s Italian border areas is conceived essentially as part of ‘Italian history’ and viewed in terms of the long path to ‘redemption’ by the Italian motherland. Even if the likes of Umberto Corsini began to move away from the most rigid manifestations of such an approach as early as the mid-1960s, both the assumptions and agenda of the Risorgimento tradition have remained influential, as Italian-language historiography has focused solely on the Italian-speaking part of Tyrol (the area covered today by the province of Trentino, which came into Italy’s possession in 1918).5 Historical research on nineteenth-century Tyrol has thus found it difficult to move beyond the constraints of ethnically separated, ‘nationalised’ local history, in which each side has written its own history and has shown muted, if any, interest in recent revisions of older views of the Habsburg Monarchy.6 Outside historiography has also shown little interest in the history of the region prior to the ‘South Tyrol Question’ of

‘Unity Versus Difference’

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the twentieth century, aside from honorary mentions made of the 1809 uprising in general histories of the Habsburg Monarchy and Germany. Thus, in looking at ‘national histories’ from a regional perspective, this article emphasizes the corollary that it is also necessary to ‘internationalise’ local history too, which implies examining the history of the region from a comparative perspective and taking account of developments across both of the main ethnic groups.7 In short, the experience of this multiethnic Habsburg-ruled province forms part of ‘Austrian’ and ‘German’ and ‘Italian’ history in the nineteenth-century.

After the Napoleonic wars: the ‘new’ crownland of Tyrol Although the core territories of Tyrol had come into the possession of the Habsburg dynasty in 1363, the province that Heinrich Heine was travelling through was one which, like so much of Central Europe and Italy, had undergone significant changes during the Napoleonic period. In uniting different territories and creating wider communicative spaces, these changes gave the crownland, which lay between the Kingdom of Bavaria, Switzerland and the other Habsburg territories of Lombardy– Venetia and Carinthia, a substantially ‘new’ appearance. In 1803, the secularization of the Holy Roman Empire’s ecclesiastical territories had removed the independent status of the archdioceses of Trento and Brixen, which were now incorporated into Tyrol.8 Hardly had these territorial adjustments been registered when the whole province was transferred to Bavaria under the terms of the Treaty of Pressburg (1805). The reforms undertaken by the Kingdom of Bavaria aroused considerable opposition, especially among the rural population, which culminated in the uprising of 1809. Although the initially successful peasant rebellion against Bavaria and its French ally was eventually defeated, it nevertheless left a long-lasting imprint upon collective memory in the German-speaking parts of the land, where the uprising had been strongest.9 After the uprising, and with Austria losing the war of 1809, Tyrol was divided into three parts: the southern area fell to the Kingdom of Italy, and the easternmost corner to the Kingdom of Illyria, while the majority of German Tyrol remained under Bavarian control. In 1814, the entire crownland returned to the Habsburgs, but the terms of the relationship to the Habsburg state were now defined in significantly new ways. Despite the great hopes raised by the province’s reunion with Austria, Tyrol lost the special status which it had attained in the early modern period and which – in modified form – had been respected by the Habsburgs down to 1805 (and by the Bavarians until

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1808). Already at the end of the Middle Ages, the land had constituted a core territory of the burgeoning Habsburg empire, thanks to its central geographical location between Burgundy and Italy, as well as its productive mining sector. This had enabled the provincial estates, made up of noblemen, upper clergy, and delegates from the towns and – unusually for much of Central Europe – the rural population, to assume a comparatively powerful position, which was institutionalized in the local Diet (Landtag). From roughly 1550 onwards, however, economic impoverishment and a loss in Tyrol’s strategic significance led to the gradual marginalization of the province’s position within the framework of the Austrian Hereditary Lands. Nevertheless, this relative decline was off-set after 1600 by a thoroughgoing process of re-confessionalisation and the self-assertion of the interests of the provincial estates, who cooperated closely with the Habsburg dynasty’s Counter-Reformatory project. By the mid-eighteenth century, the predominantly Germanspeaking upper strata viewed Tyrol as a heartland of the Habsburg Monarchy, whose provincial consciousness was based upon the distinct, baroque Catholicity of its population.10 The regional elite’s understanding of its status and role continued beyond 1814, despite Tyrol being integrated into the state-building process taking place in the Habsburg Empire.11 Although the ‘provincial constitution’ (Landesverfassung) was formally restored, in practice the powers of the estates were limited to a right of petition, while the church was subordinated to state supervision, and communal rights unified under a new law. In addition, the neo-corporatist structure of the Landtag failed to adjust to the revised territorial map of the region: the small Italian-speaking minority had already been under-represented under the old system, but the size of the Italian-speaking population in Tyrol had increased enormously with the accession of the former archbishopric of Trento – yet without any proportionate alteration in the assembly’s ethnic balance. Hence, the German-Tyrolean elite was confronted after 1815 with the drive towards homogenization on the part of the Austrian state, but in other respects saw its local predominance reinforced. This was also true in social terms, because the devastating consequences of the Napoleonic era, intensified by the hunger crisis of 1816–17, produced great economic hardship, as well as dissolving long-standing social bonds.12 In combination with the state authorities, the Landtag responded to the growing pauperization by instituting a welfare network for the poor, but also by passing a law in 1820 that required official approval for marriages among the landless or propertyless population – a mechanism of social control that was unique in Austria.13


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German-speaking Tyrol in the Vormärz: the conservative elites and provincial consciousness From around 1830 onwards, Tyrol began to experience a complex thrust of societal redefinition. Nurtured first and foremost by the conservative elite in the Landtag, a renewed sense of consciousness about the province (Landesbewußtsein) became discernible in German-speaking Tyrol in the 1820s, which later resulted in a gradual crystallisation of the land into German and Italian ‘sub-regions’. In summary, the German-speaking conservative elite reacted to the effects of socio-economic change on the one hand, and the emergence of national and liberal ideas on the European continent on the other, by reactivating the claims for Tyrol’s special status that had been postulated since the early modern era.14 This development was characterized in the first instance by two main aspects: the proclamation of unswerving loyalty to the Austrian dynasty, combined with the insistence that Tyrol should occupy a particular position in the structure of the monarchy. In ideological terms, the conservative nobility, who were especially prominent in the Etsch and Lower Inn Valleys, viewed the agrarian character of the province as a guarantee for social order, the preservation of the Catholic faith, and the continued existence of what contemporaries sometimes referred to as the ‘Tyrolean Nation’, or more often, ‘Fatherland’.15 A particular fear was the spread of industrialization: the elite believed that the establishment of factories would upset the demographic balance and lead to social disruption by ‘immoral masses of workers’.16 Emphatically rejecting industrialisation, the Landtag put its trust in the traditional sources of employment formed by agriculture, the transit trade across the Alps, and commerce, with the lack of raw materials and any food shortages to be compensated for by seasonal emigration. Correspondingly, the development of the railways, which was increasingly evident throughout the Austrian empire in the 1840s, met with considerable resistance among rural and clerical Landtag deputies. The benefits of being connected to the Austrian rail network were thus only realized much later, with the completion of stretches from Rosenheim to Innsbruck and Verona to Bozen coming in 1858–59, and the line over the Brenner in 1867. At the same time, the conservative elite pushed forward a strengthening of ecclesiastical authority, in a manner that was more ‘rabidly pro-Church’ than other Austrian crownlands (e.g. Salzburg). Beginning in 1823, Church dioceses were entrusted again with the education of priests, and a romanticist-tinged restorationary wave gripped the middle levels of the Church hierarchy in particular. In the 1830s, this

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found expression in the promotion of a popular religiosity attuned to the exigencies of daily life. Ritualistic and highly emotional forms of worship, such as the cults of the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, began to assume renewed levels of importance from this period onwards.17 The upholding of morality and ‘unity of religion’ (Glaubenseinheit) thus formed the core programme of Tyrol’s German-speaking conservative elite, and this dominant self-image received sustenance from outside visitors too (though not, of course, from one such as Heine). Observers like Joseph von Görres, a leading member of the contemporary Catholic revival in Germany, sang the praises of ‘the land in the mountains’ as an Alpine redoubt that was not only aesthetically alluring, but immune against revolutionary challenges and inhabited by a morally exemplary breed of people.18 A good deal of the early tourist literature on Tyrol also bought into this self-image. From the 1830s, travel guides described Tyrol as the home of a naturally pure, morally upstanding people, whose way of living preserved many of the features of a pre-industrial era.19

Towards fragmentation: the revolutions of 1848–49 Prior to 1848, the absolutist trend of state politics and the particular form of conservatism propagated by the Catholic church and the Germanspeaking regional elite redefined public discourse on Tyrol in terms of a particularist, though Habsburg-loyalist, regional identity, which claimed validity for the province’s entire territory. Yet, Italian-speakers, who referred to their part of the land with increasing frequency as ‘Trentino’, balked at this closed image of the province and sought to disentangle their ‘sub-region’ from it.20 In this respect, the fact that the two main ethnic groups lived in linguistically clearly separated areas (aside from a few exceptions) meant that, rather than contesting whether Tyrol was a ‘German’ or ‘Italian’ land (as, say, Czech and Germans fought over Bohemia), it was easier for Italians to dissociate themselves from the notion of Tyrol and create their own alternative region of ‘Trentino’. Here, the urban upper class and sections of the nobility nurtured the early impulses of liberalism and cultivated the values and expressive forms of ‘Italianness’ (Italianità). As well as following with interest the activities of the national movement on the Italian peninsula, they specifically contrasted German-Tyrolean particularism – the ‘provincialismo di Innsbruck’ – with Trentino’s historical ties to the rest of ‘Italy’. The urban elites in the two main towns of Trento (the ecclesiastical and


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administrative centre) and Rovereto (the commercial hub) found in the investigation of local history a means of distancing themselves from Innsbruck and the German–Tyrolean claim to predominance. Leaving aside the role that Trento had played in the Holy Rome Empire, local historians concentrated on the links that made ‘Trentino’ part of the Roman cultural sphere or pointed to the fact that Rovereto and surrounding territories had been ruled by the Venetian Republic before they were taken over by the Habsburg state in the sixteenth century.21 Interestingly, the liberal forces coalescing in the area’s main towns at this stage viewed Catholicism as a unifying force, which was thoroughly beneficial to national unity and Italian civilization. At the same time, however, this increasingly pronounced sense of Italianità barely reached beyond the upper classes and the larger towns. The Italian-speaking rural population was plagued by economic crisis and lacked the self-confident sense of status evident among the Germanspeaking peasantry, whose better-off members possessed the right to inherit a farm in its entirety and enjoyed representation in the Landtag. By contrast, the Italian peasantry was comparatively disadvantaged by the practice of dividing inheritance, less secure property rights, tenant farmer status, and an absence of political representation. Thus, it did not develop any substantial awareness either of Tyrol as a whole, or of the sub-region of Trentino, with its horizons being determined, on the one hand, by localism at the valley or district level, and on the other hand, by the widespread experience of emigration, which tended to rupture any fragile feeling of identification with their region of origin.22 The revolution of 1848 pushed forward this already strongly developed disposition to sub-regional and socio-political differentiation. In German-speaking Tyrol, the revolutions in the rest of the Habsburg Monarchy, together with the parliamentary activities at Frankfurt, served to reinforce the Conservatives in their particularist image of Tyrol. Fearful of the religious equality demanded by the revolutionaries, and of the institutional and social destabilization which they believed was caused by it, they retreated into a defence of the existing political and ethnic order in Tyrol, rejecting any involvement in the new political organization of Germany (though they did maintain close contacts with German Catholic organizations and continued to see themselves as part of the German Catholic world). Instead, strong support for the ruling dynasty (which for a period sought refuge from Vienna in the Tyrolean capital, Innsbruck), Austrian predominance in the German Confederation, and the strengthening of the monarchy’s federal constitution were viewed as the best guarantees for the future of the conservative model.23

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Significantly, however, this distancing from closer involvement with the rest of Germany in no sense precluded the vehement defence of ‘German’ interests in Tyrol, above all with respect to demands by Italianspeakers for greater equality in the provincial assembly (if not outright administrative separation from Innsbruck). To the principle of ‘unity of the faith’ (Glaubenseinheit), there was thus added the notion of ‘territorial unity’ (Landeseinheit), as a certain Dr. Staffler, leading member of the Catholic Constitutional Association, warned his compatriots: ‘German brothers! Be watchful, the unity of the Fatherland is at stake. the entire will of the German Tyrolean people deserves and commands attention. From the wisdom and justice of our ministers we expect that they recognise that a division of the land, even with regard to administration, would be extremely destructive, and that the wish of the Italian-Tyroleans (Welschtiroler), which manifestly could only be allowed at the cost of the ruin of the German tribal land (Stammland), will be most decisively rejected.’24 If this reluctance to contemplate the administrative partition of the land, and a common desire to protect its borders from forays by Garibaldian volunteers seemed to create a unified ‘German-Tyrolean’ front, the appearance was superficial. The modest liberal movement in German-speaking Tyrol remained isolated in the face of conservative pressure because of fundamental differences over other key issues. German liberals advocated close union with the rest of Germany, seeing economic progress as being intimately linked with the practice of confessional tolerance. A leading liberal from Bozen, Joseph Streiter, argued that one only had to consider the conservative arguments at Frankfurt ‘in order to arrive at the firm conviction, as to who trembles that Tyrol might be merged into Germany, and thereby become, educated, intelligent, active in trade and commerce, prosperous and rich, free and self-supporting. Germany’s enemies, as our own, are the Ultramontanists ’ .25 Liberals also demanded greater bourgeois representation in a reformed Landtag, but were unable to make headway in the provincial Diet, outnumbered as they were by the conservative forces. They thus concentrated their energies on municipal politics in places like Innsbruck and Bozen, where they were able to exercise governing responsibility as well as establishing political and associational networks.26 In the southern, Italian-speaking part of the land, 1848 saw this subregion’s conception of itself as ‘Trentino’ achieve programmatic status, as this name was now publicly proclaimed by the charismatic priest and politician Giovanni a Prato as a way of distancing the area politically from German Tyrol (‘il tirolo tedesco’).27 Along with the emergence


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of ‘patriotic committees’, a Prato’s journalistic activity provided a platform for the main demand for administrative separation from Germanspeaking Tyrol and wide-ranging autonomy, which was supported by a broad range of groups including sections of the nobility, the liberal urban elites and much of the clergy. The precise form this should take remained open: some argued for a separate crownland, others advocated union with Lombardy and Venetia. Significant in this respect is that only a very small minority believed that union with Piedmont was the ideal course to follow. Equally, it should be noted that Trentino did not witness an armed uprising against Habsburg authority, as was occurring in Milan and Venice. Moreover, an important body of opinion from in and around the commercial town of Rovereto adopted an even more cautious stance, censuring Giovanni a Prato, who went as a deputy to the Frankfurt Parliament, for declaring that Trentino should secede from the German Confederation. While also arguing for autonomy from GermanTyrol, petitions from these areas to the Frankfurt assembly stated: ‘The two districts of Tyrol, Trento and Rovereto, must not be dissolved of their political link to the German Confederation, but this tie must be maintained firm and unalterable in the future, just as it is at present. We are persuaded, moreover, that the guarantee and protection of Italian nationality already contained in full in the constitution granted by their most beloved sovereign will not result in His Majesty’s paternal government denying them separation of the Italian Tyroleans from the German Tyroleans regarding administrative matters.’28 If this meant that the precise nature of Trentino’s relationship to the Habsburg state was an issue on which Italian-speakers could not achieve consensus, there can be no doubt that the experience of 1848–49 accelerated the process of ethnic differentiation and revealed a complex series of conflict lines in Tyrol. In the first place, the differences between German-speaking ‘Tyrol’ and Italian ‘Trentino’ appeared barely reconcilable, and the nationalization process was accompanied by an increased use of negative images of the foreigner and the enemy.29 In Vilpian in southern Tyrol, the tense political situation helped produce a flashpoint on top of existing social disputes. Here, migrant workers from Trentino were allegedly living with female companions ‘outside of wedlock’ in a way that met with the disapproval of their German-speaking employers. When the workers were asked to send the women away, an argument flared out of control, which resulted in the lynching and death of seven workers.30 The fact that Tyrol was vulnerable to the insurgents in Lombardy– Venetia, Garibaldi’s volunteers, and the Piedmontese army undoubtedly

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sharpened these dividing lines. One poem, the ‘Voice of the Tyroler’, which was destined to become a programmatic expression of GermanTyrolean identity in years to come and was written by the lawyer Ferdinand Weller from Bozen, addressed these issues by stating the people’s determination that the Brenner pass should remain in Tyrolean hands: ‘As long as German men/May cultivate Tyrolean fields/So long should the Brenner/Look down on German Land’, ‘They should not divide us/The South from the North/As long as we call ourselves/The protector of the German borders.’31 As elsewhere in the Habsburg Monarchy, therefore, the revolutionary period had started to crystallize out ethnic differences, to mobilize a new generation into public action, and to place a series of issues on the political agenda. Yet, few of the questions raised had been clearly answered and the experience had also highlighted tensions which historical actors had perhaps not explicitly reflected on previously. Liberals in Germanspeaking Tyrol, for example, were obliged to consider the compatibility between a großdeutsch option and their loyalty to Austria, as well as dealing with the hard reality of how to assert themselves politically in a conservative environment. In both Trentino and German-speaking Tyrol, the social gap between urban and rural milieus had also been exposed, together with different moral and political expectations.

The neo-absolutist era: reform from above and local politics Once viewed as an impossibly reactionary decade, historians of the Habsburg Monarchy are increasingly painting a more nuanced picture of the 1850s. Certainly, the period down to 1859 was characterized by a return of censorship, and the suspension of the imperial parliament and constitution, but a combination of economic modernization policies (e.g. trade liberalization, educational reforms) and the maintenance of certain key gains from the revolution opened up new areas for political and social action, even in a relatively backward crownland such as Tyrol.32 In the first place, a new communal law (Gemeindegesetz) passed in 1849 gave communities the opportunity to restore local government.33 This was used to advantage when local elections were held in 1850. Although subsequent elections were suspended until 1861, a cadre of local representatives was installed, which was at least able to embark on a programme of infrastructural improvements (e.g. urban expansion, the regulation of rivers) and other initiatives to promote economic progress. Such opportunities were particularly welcome in the larger towns in the region, which were granted self-administration statutes in


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1851. Particularly in the city of Trento, the status of ‘free municipality’ served as a partial substitute for the autonomy that had been denied to ‘Trentino’. Secondly, the establishment of new chambers of commerce in Innsbruck, Bozen, and Rovereto, provided the economic elite with representative bodies which were able to formulate economic and political policy outlines. For example, the economic bourgeoisie in Italian Tyrol succeeded in putting on the first commercial exhibition in Trento in July 1857, the ‘prima esposizione del circolo di Trento’, which proudly showed the ‘the history of our industrial progress’.34 The chambers of commerce could also intervene on isolated economic issues, and communicated directly with the government ministries in Vienna, thus establishing a degree of consultation between province and centre. Further economic dynamism was then provided by the arrival of the railway, which – as mentioned – reached southern and northern Tyrol in 1858–59. This development took on a symbolic importance from a national perspective too, as the liberal bourgeoisie in German-speaking Tyrol hoped to encourage both economic progress and closer political integration into Germany and Austria. In contrast, their counterparts in the southern part of the province looked in the opposition direction, expecting great things from their links to the rail network in Northern Italy.35 The gradual modernization made possible by state reforms and the activities of the liberal bourgeoisie in particular helped create a residual communicative space for the local elites. Germans in the north and Italians in the south of Tyrol saw themselves drawn along paths towards new economic and political developments. Yet, these were viewed as essentially separate paths, despite the fact that all sides were faced with a strong, authoritarian state. It was only where the government displayed its firmly conservative ideology in the religious and moral sphere that a potential convergence of interests between liberals across the ethnic groups appeared feasible: the programme of ‘modernisation from above’ had been offset in August 1855 by the conclusion of a Concordat between the Holy See and Vienna. Through this agreement, the Catholic Church gained new freedom from state control and a number of important privileges relating to marriage legislation and the supervision of schools.36 While the restrictions on open political activity under neo-absolutism made public criticism of the settlement more or less impossible, the educated liberal elites expressed horror and dismay in private, and from then on saw the overturning of the Concordat as an urgent political task. Indeed, together with growing signs of political tension in the late 1850s, and heightened antagonism between the central government and its north Italian provinces, the

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Concordat contributed decisively to a renewed period of uncertainty and experimentation in the Habsburg Monarchy, characterised by the re-emergence of the German and Italian questions and a developing Kulturkampf.

National questions and constitutional politics in the early 1860s In 1859, Austria lost the province of Lombardy in the war against Frenchbacked Piedmont. Public criticism of the loss, and the government’s need for financial and constitutional retrenchment created a decisive push towards re-politicisation. In Tyrol, the short but bloody war produced different nationalizing experiences in the province’s German and Italian areas. The unfolding unification of nearly all the Italian peninsula was watched with great fascination by the national-minded nobility and urban bourgeoisie in Trentino, though as in 1848–49, this did not result in direct agitation against the Habsburg state. The new Kingdom of Italy created a powerful new point of orientation for liberal politicians in Trentino, who pressed their claims for autonomy with revived force when the Landtag reconvened in 1861.37 When these were rejected, they embarked upon a policy of boycotting the provincial assembly, which continued through much of the decade, while pressing their claims vigorously at the imperial parliament in Vienna.38 The national-liberal movement, which dominated political representation in Trentino, thus maintained the concentration of its energies on municipal politics, as well as asserting their identification with the Italian cultural nation ever more openly. A particular highpoint in this respect was the commemoration of the 600th birthday of Dante Alighieri, which was marked in Trento by the unveiling of a bust of the poet in the municipal library. The project had been proposed by Giovanni a Prato in 1863, when Trento town council also made a substantial donation to the major monument to Dante being erected in Florence. A Prato argued that ‘all of Italy from the Alps to the sea’ was called upon to honour Dante’s memory, while local historian Raffaele Zotti pointed out that Dante, in the twentieth canto of the Inferno, had referred to the Trentine region as ‘land of Italy’ (terra d’Italia).39 In German-Tyrol, the war of 1859 again saw the calling out of the local militia (village-based companies of sharp-shooters), as had occurred in 1848 and would again in 1866. This helped create a common, martialised sense of community among German-Tyroleans, who also became aware


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of constituting one of the Habsburg Monarchy’s border territories to the south with the secession of Lombardy.40 The sense of threat from Piedmont and the constant attempts at ‘liberating’ Trentino by Garibaldi (especially in 1866) accentuated the proliferation of negative images of the Italian other and intensified German-Tyrolean suspicion of the Italian minority – despite the fact that Garibaldi’s volunteers repeatedly failed to spark a popular uprising among them, gaining only a handful of collaborators from sections of the local bourgeoisie.41 Rather than seeing this as evidence of the Trentine population’s trustworthiness, all sides of the political spectrum in German-Tyrol agreed that no risks should be taken in granting autonomy to Trentino, the liberals having hardened their stance in this respect since 1848–49. While this meant that most of German-Tyrolean society coincided to a considerable degree in the ‘anti-Italian’ dimension of its German identity, the situation was very different with regard to their relationship towards the rest of Germany and the Austrian state – for these aspects of Germanness meant very different things. The 1848–49 revolutions had already highlighted the chief socio-political cleavages in German-Tyrolean society, but this divide became deeper as constitutional politics began to return in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1859 to 1861. In Tyrol, the main item immediately dominating the political agenda was the place of the Catholic Church in state and society, as a Kulturkampf began that anticipated what would engulf the Monarchy’s alpine provinces in the next two decades. The constitutional reforms, which led to the recalling of provincial Diets and the holding of a (for now, indirectly elected) imperial parliament, involved the Austrian government permitting the unrestricted practice of Protestant religions in 1861. The German conservative majority in the Tyrolean Landtag flatly refused to contemplate this equalisation of civil rights for nonCatholics, maintaining that their fight to prevent the foundation of Protestant parishes in Tyrol was merely upholding the terms of the 1855 Concordat.42 For the German-Tyrolean Catholic-Conservatives and their clerical and rural constituency, this implied an ‘isolationist’, federalistparticularist position with regard both to Austrian state-building and the German Question, which was returning with renewed urgency to public debate. However, the reforming impetus from the political centre and Habsburg efforts to make good the loss of Lombardy by re-asserting their position in Germany placed the locally dominant Conservatives on the defensive and encouraged the German-Tyrolean liberals to promote their vision of a region that would be modernised in line with the central

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state and integrated more fully into a reformed Germany under Austrian leadership. Aside from petitions in this direction, this stance had found symbolic expression in the holding of centenary celebrations for the birth of the German poet, Friedrich Schiller, in 1859. In common with towns throughout the German Confederation and German-speaking Austria, Innsbruck, Bozen, Meran and the smaller centres of Reutte, Hall and Kufstein all organized Schiller festivals (to which the Dante celebrations in Trento should be seen as a response).43 More especially, German national-liberal activity reached a highpoint in the extensive celebrations held in 1863 for the 500th anniversary celebration of Tyrol’s union with the House of Habsburg.44 The invocation of the land’s takeover by Rudolf of Habsburg, the first of his house to be elected Holy Roman Emperor, was a clear expression of the wish that the current Habsburg monarch, Emperor Francis Joseph, would likewise be ‘ruler’ of Germany. Liberals praised Francis Joseph, who made a surprise visit to the celebration, as the monarch who had given Austria a constitution, while hailing him too as the renewer of Germany. In the words of an address to Francis Joseph by Anton Ritter von Strele, a state bureaucrat and head of the shooting-range in Innsbruck, which was one of the main festival sites: ‘Holding fast to Tyrol’s core virtues, we tread with conviction on the new paths, which your Majesty’s provident wisdom has opened up for our homeland; we hold fast to the constitutional togetherness with all the lands of the great and mighty empire; and we call for God’s blessing on all the steps by which your Majesty strives to renew and strengthen the Confederation of German lands’.45 The presence of the German black-red-and-gold colours alongside the black-and-yellow of the House of Austria and the green-and-white flags of Tyrol demonstrated the widespread national expectations bound up with this event. However, the eventual failure of the Habsburg reforming initiative in Germany at the Frankfurt Congress of 1863 and the hardening of relations between the major German powers from 1864 onwards already led to a modification of ambitions even before the liberals’ national-political hopes were crushed by the defeat at Königgrätz in 1866. For example, the campaign to erect a memorial to Rudolph of Habsburg in Innsbruck, in commemoration of the anniversary celebrations, embodied revised expectations on the part of the project’s liberal promoters: where they had sought to advertise the 1863 event throughout Germany, and stimulate participation from neighbouring German states, the fund-raising drive for this monument was concentrated above all on the lands of the Habsburg Empire.46 This sense of realism, and disillusionment with the course of German politics


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helps explain the re-orientation that took place in 1866–67, in the war’s aftermath. While the loss of the war was an enormous shock, German liberals in Tyrol re-focused their aims, by confirming their concentration on preserving – and if possible, extending – the constitutional gains of the early 1860s, and consolidating the drive towards Austrian statebuilding under German liberal leadership.47 As the leading liberal paper in the southern part of German-Tyrol, the Bozner Zeitung, argued in the aftermath of Königgrätz: ‘Feudalists and federalists are jubilant over Austria’s exit from the German Confederation May we be granted the time to order the existence of our state on the basis of education and healthy progress before new events burst upon us’.48

Contradictory paths: consolidation and confusion, 1867–73 The defeat against Prussia – despite victory in the South against Italy – obliged the Habsburg government rapidly to re-adjust its sights after 1866. The dualist arrangement with Hungary achieved by the Compromise of 1867 was accompanied in the Austrian half of the Monarchy by a renewed, centralising state-building drive, designed to accommodate the liberal upper classes and weaken the conservative federalists. The promotion of economic growth, railway construction, and rapid industrial expansion in the years 1866–73 were accompanied by the restriction of church influence in a series of laws on marriage, schools, and the Austrian church’s external communication with Rome, with these latter developments in particular ensuring that the Kulturkampf intensified across western Austria.49 Yet, if events up to the mid-1860s had seemed to create a fixed pattern of relationships among Germans and Italians in Tyrol/Trentino, changing circumstances after 1867 rendered the dynamics of the situation much more complex. Although 1866 again saw skirmishing on Tyrolean territory, and the loss of Venetia accentuated still further the province’s border position, the following years saw previous identities and strategies taking on a new fluidity, rather than hardening altogether. A key development in this respect was the promulgation of the Austrian constitution (the ‘Basic Laws’) in December 1867. The constitution’s safeguarding of civic freedoms and national rights proved attractive to the Trentine liberals, for the progressive centralism of the Austrian government seemed to offer a way of by-passing the obstructionist German Conservatives in Innsbruck. The reinforcement of municipal government and the institution of an efficient, district-level administration were also popular, especially when the

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establishment of a special sub-section of the provincial lieutenancy (Statthalterei-Sektion/Sezione di Luogotenenza) in Trento in 1868 could be read as a possible step towards de facto autonomy. Moreover, liberal participation in the Austrian parliament began to integrate them into the Austrian constitutional framework. The series of laws between 1868 and 1874 restricting Church powers, and the revocation of the Concordat in 1870, constituted an area of political action where liberals from German and Italian-speaking Tyrol could meet together on common anti-clerical ground, which led to a partial revision of previous positions on constitutional questions. As the Innsbrucker Tagblatt argued in March 1873: ‘we wish to see our fellow Italian citizens placed with equal rights at our side, in the firm conviction that there is enough room within the edifice of the common empire and constitution for both groups – not misled by one another, but still bound by higher, similar purposes – to fulfil their respective national, humanitarian and cultural tasks’.50 While Italian liberals found themselves unexpectedly drawn into a more Austrian direction, the events of the 1860s had started to polarise Trentine politics, as Catholics were scared off by the laicism of the new Italian kingdom and its acquisition of Rome in 1870.51 Ideological differences thus produced marked fissures in the previously broad national movement, as much of the clergy distanced themselves from anti-Church legislation. While the Kulturkampf also alienated Trentino’s agrarian majority from the liberal government, Catholics nevertheless viewed the Habsburg dynasty as a bulwark of the Roman church (and indeed, Francis Joseph set certain limits on the attacks on the Church, while the Austro-Hungarian state would express more openly its sympathy with the Pope after the liberal fall from Austrian government in 1879). With liberals in German-Tyrol compensating for their disappointments over the German Question by identifying with the programme of Austrian state-building and expanding their progressive economic policies at the municipal level, this left the German CatholicConservatives as the one group which felt more excluded from the Austrian state than before. They vehemently opposed the dismantling of federalism, the weakening of the church and the strengthening of a centralist administrative system. Rejecting the concept of the modern state, they expoused a particularist vision of Tyrol, whereby membership of the community was defined primarily in terms of religious allegiance, as was implicit in a description of a religious celebration for the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1870 as ‘just as much Catholic as Tyrolean’.52 Held in protest against the government’s policy of religious toleration,


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that event was emblematic of how the concern to prevent the settlement of non-Catholic denominations (Protestants and Jews) in Tyrol and the public practice of their religion dominated German Conservative political action through to 1876 – when the Austrian government finally enforced the constitutional stipulations. As part of a series of such events, the 1870 occasion also indicated how the Conservative elite now sought to mobilize the German–Tyrolean rural population around a religious-patriotic programme based on the cult of the Sacred Heart and the figure of Andreas Hofer, leader of the 1809 uprising, as the Tyrolean ‘national hero’.53 The half decade from 1867 to 1872 thus re-shuffled previously clear political positions: the conservatives of the German-speaking part of the province became more provincially patriotic and fiercely pro-Catholic Church than ever, dissociating themselves from an identification with Austria; German liberals maintained their strong sense of identity with German culture and as Germans in Tyrol, but voiced a firmer identification with the Austrian state; Italian liberals had been partially integrated into the Austrian sphere, while still proclaiming their Italianness and pursuing an autonomist programme; and the emerging Trentine Conservatives likewise accepted an autonomist agenda, but distanced themselves clearly from the national programme of the liberals, adopting a more Austrophile position.54

Conclusions: parallel nation-building between Germany, Austria and Italy In placing the process of ethnic differentiation in Tyrol within a wider context, a useful starting-point is Ernst Bruckmüller’s argument that it is necessary to distinguish between two German nation-building processes in the nineteenth-century, which might be termed ‘German’ and ‘Austrian-German’ respectively.55 Bruckmüller’s work usefully draws our attention to how factors such as religion, dynastic loyalty and regional consciousness created different forms of German identity in Central Europe, as well as highlighting the specific dilemmas faced by German-speakers in the Habsburg Monarchy, who had to orient themselves in three relational fields: the province, the German cultural nation and the Austrian state. Yet, it should also be recognised that it was this three-fold set of references, rather than any separate ‘nationbuilding’ path, which really distinguished the Austrian-German experience from that of Germans in the rest of the German Confederation, who were only obliged to reconcile two nodes of identity (their own

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region/particular state on the one hand, the nation/putative nation-state on the other). In other words, Bruckmüller’s thesis can be qualified in three key respects: firstly, as Abigail Green among others has pointed out, ‘nationbuilding’ also took place in differentiated ways at the level of the individual German states, which formed their own ‘fatherlands’.56 Secondly, while recognising the fact that the Austrian government had restricted contacts with other parts of Germany in the Vormärz era in particular,57 it would be misleading to imply (as Bruckmüller almost seems to) that nation-building in Austrian Germany simply ran contemporaneously, but otherwise separately from the rest of Germany. As the case study here shows, the development of German-Tyrolean society intertwined closely with developments elsewhere. Thirdly, it is also necessary to distinguish between the competing visions of national identity articulated within the different socio-political milieus in each region. In the case of German Tyroleans, the experiences of the mid-nineteenth century led across the board to a re-formulation of their sense of provincial consciousness and their relationship to the wider German world, both of which had to be reconciled with their Austrianness, which was never placed in question. In practice, therefore, two distinctive interpretations of GermanTyrolean identity emerged: 1. a Catholic–Conservative concentration on the ‘Tyrolean Fatherland’, in which German dominance over the Italians was defined in corporatist terms, and where Tyrol’s provincial rights were asserted within Germany and against the Habsburg state; and 2. a National-Liberal view of Tyrol integrated into an Austrian central state and a Germany under Austrian leadership. With the former more particularist in outlook, its close identification of being a ‘German’ in Tyrol with Catholicism created a greater sense of distance from the political idea of Germany, and subsequently laid the grounds for an increasingly strong identification with Austria.58 For National-Liberals, cultural identification with Germany implied a concerted effort to achieve closer political ties as well, but not at the price of forsaking their links to Austria and a leading position in state and society. Hence, the German– Tyrolean liberals were able to re-orient themselves fairly rapidly after 1866 around a national identity bound up with a constitutional order guaranteed by the monarch, economic progress, education, and the ‘civilising mission’ of their German culture in the Habsburg state. Positioned on the southern rim of the German-speaking world, they viewed themselves as constituting a part of ‘Germanhood’ (Deutschtum) in their


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own right, and as the guardians of a German nation that was not limited by state boundaries. On the Italian-Tyrolean side, a three-fold set of references may also be said to have existed, but in less convoluted fashion than for the German majority. The overlap between regional, national and state levels functioned differently because the national identification of Trentino as Italian created a distinct cultural marker, such that the relationship to the Austrian sphere was essentially functional in character (whereas for German-Tyroleans, ‘Austria’ clearly contained national-cultural as well as political meanings). The programmatic assertion of the idea of Trentino represented a response to the Italians’ minority position within Tyrol, as well as expressing a desire for change within the Habsburg Monarchy and a sense of identification with the national movement in other Italian regions to the south. Yet, this construction of an Italian identity in Trentino was not accompanied by a crisis of legitimacy in the way that occurred in Lombardy-Venetia, let alone the problems of law and public order that helped drive the Risorgimento in Italy as a whole. Whether this is because Trentines did not view the Habsburg state as ‘foreign’ to the same extent that Lombards and Venetians did must remain an open question, given the current state of research. What is clear is that a Trentine path to Italian nationality could be built outside of the nation-state framework. The nationalization process taking place in mid-nineteenth century Tyrol had established clear senses of ethnic difference, with Italians successfully establishing the notion of Trentino as a distinct sub-region separate from German-dominated Tyrol. Significantly, however, the meanings of this regional Italian identity and the province’s relationship with Austria still displayed fluidity and required constant re-negotiation. The loss of liberal power in the Austrian government in 1879 led to a sharpening of rhetoric by both German and Italian national-liberals, which was compounded by the failure of revised proposals for Trentine autonomy. Disillusioned, the urban ruling classes of Trentino distanced themselves anew (no longer participating in the Innsbruck Landtag), and threw their energies into the region’s economic revival (risorgimento economico).59 Conscious too of the growth of German power in the new Bismarckian Empire, they instinctively looked south for guidance in social, economic and national terms, even if outright irredentism did not form the mainstream of cultural activities in the region.60 Nevertheless, the political monopoly of the Italian liberals was to be increasingly challenged by Trentine Catholics, whose popular-based, more Austrophile programme was to make substantial electoral gains

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after 1900 for a renewed Trentino based on regional consciousness, economic growth and social stability.61 While the respective Italian and German-speaking groups had therefore established clear boundaries between their communities in national terms by the last third of the nineteenth century, this had not been dependent on integration into either the German or Italian nationstates. Where political events had in a sense not determined any clear-cut or neat dividing line between ‘Italia’ and ‘Germania’, local actors assigned national markers to their territory, but in such a way as to retain a measure of ambivalence towards the nation and national history. As the subsequent history of the area would show, these German and Italian regions astride the Alps would see both intense contestation and open conflict as to their national categorisation, but also the persistence of strong localist-autonomist traditions, which firmly relativised the significance of the national, blending regional identities, dynastic loyalities and national feeling into a complex, continuously shifting pattern.62

Notes 1. H. Heine, Reisebilder (Frankfurt 1997; originally published 1834), pp. 264–5. 2. R. Stauber, Der Zentralstaat an seinen Grenzen: Administrative Integration, Herrschaftswechsel und politische Kultur im südlichen Alpenraum 1750–1820 (Göttingen, 2001), 49–129. It should be noted that, in contemporary usage, South Tyrol might refer to the whole of Tyrol south of the Brenner pass, not just the German-speaking area with which it is associated today. See here: H. Heiss/G. Pfeifer, ‘ “Man pflegt Südtirol zu sagen und meint, damit wäre alles gesagt”. Beiträge zu einer Geschichte des Begriffs “Südtirol”’, Geschichte und Region/Storia e Regione 9 (2000), 85–109. 3. See, among others: K.-D. Erdmann, Die Spur Österreichs in der deutschen Geschichte. Drei Staaten, zwei Nationen, ein Volk? (Zürich, 1979); E. Zöllner (ed.), Volk, Land und Staat. Landesbewußtsein, Staatsidee und nationale Fragen in der Geschichte Österreichs (Vienna, 1984); J.W. Boyer, ‘Some reflections on the problem of Austria, Germany and Mitteleuropa’, Central European History 22 (1989), 301–15; A. Pelinka, Zur österreichischen Identität (Vienna, 1990); G. Stourzh, Vom Reich zur Republik. Studien zum Österreichbewußtsein im 20. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1990); G. Bischof and A. Pelinka (eds), Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity (New Brunswick-London, 1997). The main studies taking a longer-term perspective are: F. Heer, Der Kampf um die österreichische Identität (Vienna, 1981); E. Bruckmüller, Nation Österreich. Kulturelles Bewußtsein und gesellschaftlich-politische Prozesse (Vienna, 1996); R. Plaschka (ed.), Was heißt Österreich?: Inhalt und Umfang des Österreichbegriffs vom 10. Jahrhundert bis heute (Vienna, 1995). An important regional study is: H. Haas, ‘Bilder vom Heimatland Salzburg’, in: R. Kriechbaumer (ed.), Liebe auf den zweiten Blick. Landes- und Österreichbewusstsein nach 1945 (Vienna, 1998), pp. 149–81.


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4. Compare: M. Gehler, ‘ “Regionale” Zeitgeschichte als “Geschichte überschaubarer Räume”. Von Grenzen, Möglichkeiten und Fragen einer Forschungsrichtung’, Geschichte und Region/Storia e Regione 1/2 (1992), 85–120; R. Stauber, ‘Regionalgeschichte versus Landesgeschichte? Entwicklung und Bewertung von Konzepten der Erforschung von “Geschichte in kleinen Räumen”’, Geschichte und Region/Storia e Regione 3 (1994), 227–60; L. Cole, ‘ “Fern von Europa”? The peculiarities of Tirolian historiography’, Zeitgeschichte 23 (1996), 181–204. 5. On this, see: T. Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol 1840–1873: Zwischen Stadt und ‘Region’, Staat und Nation (Cologne, 2001), 34-44. Of note is the work by Umberto Corsini, Il Trentino nel secolo decimonovo (Trento, 1963). The most recent history of the region, albeit one that fails to offer any historiographical reflections on traditional national narratives, is: M. Garbari and A. Leonardi (eds), Storia del Trentino. V. L’età contemporanea 1803–1918 (Bologna, 2003). 6. G.B. Cohen, ‘Neither absolutism nor anarchy: new narratives on society and government in late imperial Austria’, Austrian History Yearbook 29 (1998), 37–61. 7. Compare here: S.J. Woolf, ‘La Valle d’Aosta: modello di un’identità proclamata’, in: id. (ed.), Storia d’Italia. La Valle d’Aosta (Rome, 1995), pp. 5–47. 8. On the Napoleonic period, see above all: Stauber, Der Zentralstaat an seinen Grenzen; also: M. Nequirito, Il tramonto del principato vescovile di Trento. Vicende politiche e conflitti istitutuzionali (Trento, 1996). For a comparative view, see: C. Donati and H. Flachenecker (eds), Le secolarizzazioni nel Sacro Romano Impero e negli antichi Stati italiani: premesse, confronti, conseguenze/Säkularisationsprozesse im Alten Reich und in Italien: Voraussetzungen, Vergleiche, Folgen (Bologna-Berlin, 2005). 9. L. Cole, ‘Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland’. Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols 1860–1914 (Frankfurt a.M.–New York, 2000), pp. 225–321. 10. J. Riedmann, ‘Politische, gesellschaftliche und ökonomische Entwicklungen im Tiroler Raum während des Mittelalters und in der frühen Neuzeit’, in: K. Drexel and M. Fink (eds), Musikgeschichte Tirols. Bd. 1: Von den Anfängen bis zur Frühen Neuzeit (Innsbruck, 2004), pp. 63–79; H. Heiss, ‘Grenzen und Transhumanzen: Politische, administrative, wirtschaftliche und kulturelle Übergangszonen in Tirol zwischen 1780 und 1848’, in: H.-C. Maner (ed.), Grenzregionen in der Habsburgermonarchie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Ihre Bedeutung und Funktion aus der Perspektive Wiens (Münster, 2005), pp. 167–83. 11. H. Rumpler, Eine Chance f ür Mitteleuropa. Bürgerliche Emanzipation und Staatsverfall in der Habsburgermonarchie. Österreichische Geschichte 1804–1914 (Vienna, 1997), pp. 125–259. 12. H. Heiss and T. Götz, Am Rand der Revolution: Tirol 1848/49 (Vienna–Bozen, 1998), pp. 27–30. 13. E. Mantl, Heirat als Privileg: Obrigkeitliche Heiratsbeschränkungen in Tirol und Vorarlberg 1820 bis 1920 (Vienna, 1997). 14. See in general: Heiss and Götz, Am Rand der Revolution, pp. 11–46. 15. N. Priesching, Maria von Mörl (1812–1868): Leben und Bedeutung einer ‘stigmatisierten Jungfrau’ aus Tirol im Kontext ultramontaner Frömmigkeit (Brixen, 2004), pp. 34–64.

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16. A. Bonoldi, ‘Le incertezze dello sviluppo: alcune considerazioni sull’economia tirolese tra Sette e Ottocento’, in: A. Leonardi (ed.), Aree forti e deboli nello sviluppo della montagna alpina (Trento, 2001), pp. 171–90. 17. Priesching, Maria von Mörl, pp. 70–98. 18. Ibid., pp. 303–4. 19. A. Stannek, ‘Frömmigkeit und Patriotismus. Zum politischen Tirolbild europäischer Reisender im Vormärz’, in: Der Weg in den Süden von Dürer bis Heine/Attraverso le Alpi. Appunti di viaggio da Dürer a Heine, published by Landesmuseum Schloss Tirol (Meran, 1998), pp. 111–28. 20. On the term ‘Trentino’, see: M. Nequirito, ‘Territorio e identità in un area di frontiera fra Otto e Novecento: il dibattito sul nome “Trentino”’, Geschichte und Region/Storia e Regione 9 (2000), 49–66. 21. T. Götz, ‘Città, Patria, Nazione. Geschichtskultur und liberales Milieu im Trentino 1840–1870’, Geschichte und Region/Storie e Regione 5 (1996), 93–142. 22. C. Grandi, ‘Gente del Trentino. Un secolo di storia’, in: Garbari/Leonardi, Storia del Trentino, pp. 839–72. 23. Heiss and Götz, Am Rand der Revolution, pp. 11–46; Gottfried Mayer, Österreich als ‘katholische Großmacht’: Ein Traum zwischen Revolution und liberaler Ära (Vienna, 1989), pp. 51–140. 24. Volksblatt f ür Tirol und Vorarlberg, 5.10.1848. 25. Innsbrucker Zeitung, 15.11.1848. 26. Heiss and Götz, Am Rand der Revolution, pp. 74–86. 27. Messaggiere Tirolese, 15.4.1848. 28. Cited after: Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol, pp. 161–2. 29. Compare: W. Altgeld, Das politische Italienbild der Deutschen zwischen Aufklärung und europäischer Revolution von 1848 (Tübingen, 1984), pp. 264–9. 30. J. Fontana, ‘Von der Restauration bis zur Revolution 1814–1848’, in: id. et al (ed.), Geschichte des Landes Tirol. Bd.2 (Bozen-Innsbruck-Vienna, 1986), pp. 583–737, here pp. 724–5. 31. Tiroler Schützen-Zeitung, 1.6.1848. 32. See especially: Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol, pp. 239–80. 33. J. Klabouch, Die Gemeindeselbstverwaltung in Österreich 1848–1918 (Vienna, 1968), pp. 31–53. 34. Messaggiere Tirolese, 25.7.1857. 35. Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol, p. 299. 36. K. Vocelka, Verfassung oder Konkordat? Der publizistische Kampf der österreichischen Liberalen um die Religionsgesetze des Jahres 1868 (Vienna, 1978), pp. 26–31. 37. S. Benvenuti, L’autonomia trentina al Landtag di Innsbruck e al Reichsrat di Vienna. Proposte e progetti 1848–1914 (Trento, 1978); M. Meriggi, ‘Persistenze e trasformazioni del regionalismo tra XIX e XX secolo’, in: R. Schober, Storia della dieta tirolese 1816–1918 (Trento, 1987), pp. vii–xxxii. 38. I. Ganz, La rappresentanza del Tirolo italiano alla Camera dei Deputati di Vienna, 1861–1914 (Trento, 2001). 39. Cited after: Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol, p. 431. 40. Compare: D. Klenke, ‘Nationalkriegerisches Gemeinschaftsideal als politische Religion. Zum Vereinsnationalismus der Sänger, Schützen, und Turner am Vorabend der Einigungskriege’, Historische Zeitschrift 260 (1995), 395–448.


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41. M. Grazioli et al., Garabaldiner. Immagini e realtà della campagna garabaldina del 1866 (Tione, 1987). 42. J. Fontana, Der Kulturkampf in Tirol 1861–92 (Bozen, 1978). 43. Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol, pp. 421–4; J. Mikoletzky, ‘Bürgerliche Schillerrezeption im Wandel: Osterreichische Schillerfeiern 1859–1895’, in: H. Haas and H. Stekl (eds), Bürgerliche Selbstdarstellung: Städtebau, Architektur, Denkmäler. Bürgertum in der Habsburgermonarchie IV (Vienna, 1995), pp. 165–83. 44. For a full analysis, see: Cole, ‘Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland’, pp. 45–138. 45. T. Wildauer, Das Tiroler Landesfest 1863. Denkbuch der Feier der 500–jährigen Vereinigung Tirols mit Österreich (Innsbruck, 1864), p. 99. 46. Cole, Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland, pp. 129–34. 47. P.M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1918 (Ann Arbor, 1996), pp. 69–142. 48. Bozner Zeitung, 28.7.1866. 49. Further discussion in: L. Cole, ‘The Counter-Reformation’s last stand: Austria’, in: C. Clark and W. Kaiser (eds), Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in 19th-century Europe (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 285–312. 50. Cited after: Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol, pp. 510–11. 51. S. Benvenuti, La chiesa trentina e la questione nazionale 1848–1918 (Trento, 1987). 52. F. von Zallinger, Zur feierlichen Erneuerung des Bundes mit dem göttlichen Herzen Jesu am 24., 25. und 26. Juni 1870 in Bozen (Bozen, 1870). 53. Cole, Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland. 54. Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol, pp. 516–29. 55. Bruckmüller, Nation Österreich, pp. 276–303; Haas, ‘Bilder vom Heimatland Salzburg’, here p. 166. 56. A. Green, Fatherlands: State-building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-century Germany (Cambridge, 2001). 57. D. Langewiesche, ‘Deutschland und Österreich: Nationswerdung und Staatsbildung im 19. Jahrhundert’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 42 (1991), 754–66. 58. Cole, Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland. 59. M. Garbari, Vittorio de Riccabona, 1844–1927. Problemi e aspetti del liberalismo trentino (Trento, 1972); M. Wedekind, ‘Borghesia e liberalismo in Trentino nell’ultimo periodo della monarchia asburgica (1866–1915)’, in: E. Conze et al. (eds), Alcide De Gasperi: Un percorso europeo (Bologna, 2005), pp. 63–92. 60. D. Preda, Alcide De Gasperi federalista europeo (Bologna, 2004), pp. 37–66. 61. M. Garbari, ‘Linguistica e toponomastica come difesa nazionale nella cultura trentina fra otto e novecento’, Studi Trentini di Scienze Storiche 63 (1984), 157–96. 62. For overviews, compare: P. Pombeni and A. Leonardi (eds), Storia del Trentino. Vol. VI. L’etä contemporaneá: il novecento (Bologna, 2005); A. Pelinka and A. Maislinger (eds), Handbuch zur neueren Geschichte Tirols. Bd.2. Zeitgeschichte I. Teil Politische Geschichte (Innsbruck, 1993).

3 Trieste, 1830–70: From Cosmopolitanism to the Nation∗ Anna Millo

Introduction: Trieste in its ‘cosmopolitan age’ The origins of modern Trieste are conventionally traced to the year 1719, when mercantalist-inspired reforms by the Habsburg monarchy declared the city a free port. By promoting the economic growth of this harbour on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, the government in Vienna sought to strengthen the empire’s power base and gain a foothold in long-distance commercial trade. During the course of the eighteenth century, the flourishing trade gave rise to a new, multiethnic society in Trieste, dedicated to commercial and financial activities, and characterized by the emergence of meritocratic forces which were unleashed by the creation of a free-trading environment. Recent studies have indicated how, by the start of the nineteenthcentury, a powerful bourgeoisie had emerged, whose ruling elite would play the key role in guiding the fortunes of one of the Habsburg Empire’s most important commercial, financial and industrial centres down to the First World War. Moreover, the economic development of the city produced a civil society and governing class which was essentially cosmopolitan, its outward-looking nature reinforced by the concern to further the city’s material prosperity. Hence, interpretations of the city’s history long put forward by nationalist and imperialist-minded Italian historiography are, at a general level, no longer accepted today.1 According to this older tradition of national history-writing, the cosmopolitan development of the city was downplayed in favour of the primacy of Italian nationality. It was further assumed that there was a definite irredentist sentiment in Trieste, while the whole of the city’s history – right from its ancient origins in the Roman era – was interpreted as moving towards the ultimate goal of annexation to the Italian 60

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Kingdom in 1918.2 In truth, Carlo Schiffrer had already sought to show at the end of the 1930s that the nation could not be considered as an abstract, given entity existing outside of time, because he viewed the national struggle between Italians and Slavs as the result of the specific historical developments taking place in the region during the nineteenth century.3 Yet, Schiffrer’s insights remained an exception to the historiographical mainstream, and it was only subsequently with Elio Apih’s work that a more visible renewal of the city’s political and social history started to emerge. For Apih, the key to Trieste’s modern history resided in its ‘artificial’ character, deriving from the monarchical decision to change its status in 1719, and the subsequent transformations in the local economic and political system.4 Within this overall line of historiographical development, the question of national identity has received comparatively little explicit attention for the early and middle parts of the nineteenth century. This article therefore seeks to provide an overview of the situation in Trieste from around 1830 to 1870, a period that saw a series of changes place the city’s cosmopolitan character in question, as well as the emergence of the national tensions that would subsequently assume a central role in Triestine politics and society. From the 1840s onwards, shifts in the patterns of international trade and industrial development in other parts of the Habsburg Monarchy began to change the city’s economic terms of reference. Particularly relevant in this respect were: the opening of rail links with the Austrian interior (1857); the gradual substitution of sail-powered craft by steamships; the start of construction work on a new harbour (1867), and the inauguration of the Suez Canal (1869). While such developments redefined the nature and scale of international commerce, the geopolitical changes in the centre of Europe occurring through the wars of 1859 and 1866 not only redrew state boundaries, but also led to a reclassification of vital import and export markets for goods passing through the port. Finally, the re-introduction in the 1860s (after the brief interlude of 1848–51) of a constitutional political system in the Habsburg Monarchy created an electoral arena that encouraged socio-political organization on the basis of group identities. Although, seen purely from a local perspective, an alternative periodisation of the city’s nineteenth century history could also be applied, the concentration here on the middle third of the nineteenth century allows Trieste to be placed more readily within the comparative context of the Risorgimento taking place on the Italian peninsula and the secession of Lombardy and Venetia from Austrian rule. In seeking to

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understand why certain areas of the Habsburg Monarchy proved less susceptible to the appeal of the Risorgimento than others, the fact that Trieste had come under Habsburg protection as early as 1382 must certainly be taken into consideration, but should not be deemed decisive on its own. On the one hand, the development of national movements occurred throughout all the Habsburg lands, irrespective of how long they had been ruled by the House of Austria. On the other hand, the dynamics of the relationship between the governing centre and the empire’s various territories might also change substantially over time, meaning that there could be no automatic correlation between longevity of rule and propensity towards a ‘pro-Habsburg’ stance (as the example of Hungary since the sixteenth century implies, but also the changed relationship of Lombardy to Habsburg rule in the nineteenth century when compared to the eighteenth). As this article documents, it was the particular character of Trieste’s position as an international port, and the specific form of its relationship to the Habsburg state which meant that the city’s large Italian-speaking majority developed forms of Italian identity over this period in which the anti-Austrian dimension to the Risorgimento found at most only sporadic appeal.

Economics, demographic growth and language groups in Trieste Sitting between the Adriatic sea and the Carso hills, Trieste had expanded over a compact geographical area in growing from a small town of less than 5,000 souls at the start of the eighteenth century to a genuine city of 104,707 inhabitants in 1857, when the first official Austrian census was held. While experiencing upward and downward turns, the city’s population growth generally corresponded to its economic development. For example, the most dramatic rise – both in absolute numbers and percentage terms – took place between 1820 and 1841, when the population grew at an average rate of 4.05 per cent per annum, almost doubling in number from 43,467 to 80,414. Indeed, this period has often been viewed as Trieste’s real ‘golden age’: once the crisis of the Napoleonic period and the continental blockade had been overcome, the city was properly able to assert its position as the heir to Venice at the head of maritime traffic between the near East, the Italian markets, the Mediterranean and southern central Europe, while the extension of routes towards the Atlantic and the Americas indicated that it was consolidating its international position too. Thereafter, the population proved comparatively stable down to 1850, when 82,596

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inhabitants were registered, before experiencing renewed rapid growth in the next two decades, with population counts of 108, 227 in 1860 and 123,098 in 1870 respectively. Even if these original figures may require slight modification in the light of recent research, there is no doubting the general pattern, nor the fact that this demographic growth derived primarily from a flow of immigrants, drawn in by the city’s expanding economy.5 It is, however, much more difficult to determine satisfactorily the place of origin for these immigrants. In the first phase of the city’s growth, throughout the eighteenth century and down to the first years of the nineteenth, the greatest prevalence seems to be that of migrants coming from eastern Venetia, with the decline of the Republic of Saint Mark encouraging their transfer to a city that appeared to have a more promising future. Italian-speaking populations also arrived from Carniola, Friuli, the area around Gorizia, Istria and Dalmatia, although these were territories from where a considerable number of Slovenespeakers also came. In the decades around the mid-nineteenth century, a more consistent stream of migrants than previously came from Germanspeaking areas such as Tyrol, Styria, Upper and Lower Austria, and Carinthia. Again, though, it is difficult to delineate these flows more precisely in ethnic terms because many of these provinces were mixed language areas, meaning that many Slovene-speaking migrants arrived alongside Germans from Styria and Carinthia. As with the rest of the Habsburg Empire, the first official indication of ethnic groups present in Trieste stems from 1846. According to these estimates, there were around 25,000 Slovenes out of an approximate total of 80,000 inhabitants (i.e. roughly 30 per cent), while Germanspeakers accounted for 8,000 (about 10 per cent). These figures are now generally considered to be overestimates, and they were modified by subsequent calculations. In 1868 and 1875, for example, the city of Trieste undertook two censuses of its own, using ‘language spoken in the family’ as the measurement criterion. Needless to say, these data must also be treated with caution, for it is noticeable that the Italian group emerges in a much clearer majority from them. In 1875, out of a total population of 126,633, Italians accounted for 93,896, while the Germans had declined to just under 5,000 individuals and Slovene-speakers were stable at around 25,000 (or 20 per cent of the total).6 In any case, the basic picture of a population divided into three main nationalities – an Italian majority, a significant Slovene minority and a small German component does not do justice to the real character of the city, given the settlement there of a number of ethnic and religious minorities since

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the beginnings of the Triestine emporium in the eighteenth century. Although comparatively tiny in number, their significance derived from the qualitative nature of their presence, rather than quantity: Greeks, Jews, Swiss Huguenots, German and English Protestants all made contributions in terms of human resources and financial capital disproportionate to their numbers, and helped stimulate economic growth.7 The fact that, for centuries, Venice dominated commerce and maritime trade in the Adriatic and Near East favoured the adoption of Italian as an instrument for intercultural mediaton in Trieste too, as merchants’ books and numerous other documents testify. Indeed, the italophone culture of the city was considered so important that in 1789, the mercantile Exchange – the chief institution representing the commercial class – petitioned against the government’s centralizing reforms, which proposed to introduce German as the administrative language for commercial and judicial business in the city.8 Throughout the nineteenth century, Italian continued to be the dominant economic language, with contracts, the minutes from assurance firms, accounts, speeches by delegates from the Exchange, and – after 1850 – the business of the Chamber of Commerce all being conducted in that idiom, even when corresponding with the central government. The various ethnic and religious minorities arriving in Trieste thus found in Italian a means of universal communication, even though they continued to use other languages. A common linguistic code also encouraged cultural integration, and it was not uncommon that, after a lengthy period of residence in the city, a trading family would now employ Italian, rather than its original mother tongue, for private family documents such as wills and letters.9 For much of the nineteenth century, the use of Italian should therefore be understood as a sign of cultural prevalence, not national predominance.10 Its spread testified to the ability of a great urban centre to assimilate diverse ethnic groups, at least until the turn of the century, when this capacity seemed to exhaust itself in the face of the growth of a strong Slovene national movement, which accompanied the city’s industrialisation.

The legacy of the Napoleonic era The first decade and a half of the nineteenth-century constituted a significant interruption in Trieste’s lively growth, as Napoleon’s continental blockade led to a drop in traffic and paralysis in the port’s European commerce. The city also underwent two military occupations in 1797

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and 1805–1806, before being annexed to the Illyrian provinces, which were formally created in 1809, but only properly came into being in 1811. With their capital in Ljubljana, the provinces were directly integrated into the French Empire down to 1813. Although the experience of French rule was thus comparatively short, it was not totally ephemeral.11 The city’s mercantile society may not have openly aspired to universal democratic rights, but was nevertheless characterized by the expression of new ideas. Such is evident from private correspondence, and indeed, the Triestine bourgeoisie had already shown its receptivity to the ideals of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, with Freemasonry having penetrated deeply within local society according to later Austrian police reports.12 Particularly numerous among the adherents of these values were members of the Greek and Jewish communities, who found the principles of equality and liberty especially attractive in light of the longstanding discrimination against them.13 The ideals to which Triestine trading circles felt attracted were realized by the French occupiers via the political model of the revolution. Having already removed the city’s free port status, the French authorities in 1812 dissolved the ‘Patricians’ Council’ (Consiglio dei Patrizi), thereby abolishing the last vestiges of the institutions created by the Habsburg state, and nominated in its place a new council to rule communal affairs. The criteria used in making nominations can be seen as an attempt to open up a space for collaboration and dialogue between the local bourgeoisie and the city’s conquerors, as well as accelerating the recognition of groups such as stock exchange traders and members of the free professions, who had emerged over a century of intense social mobility. In practice, however, the principle of belonging to a particular social rank had already been loosened for some time in the commercial city, where a recognizable civil society had been established under the absolutist reforming government in the second half of the eighteenth century. Promotion of religious toleration and legal reforms had created a situation where the recognition of professional merit – defined in terms of business success, credit, and the good commercial reputation of a family – was considered the prerequisite for admission to the merchants’ exchange. In other words, Napoleonic rule took principles already established in the exercise of free trade and intellectual life and applied them to the practice of public representation as well. This made these principles susceptible to further amplification in the political sphere, but the fact that the French were in a sense only strengthening existing social trends arguably made the long-term impact of Napoleonic-style government less significant than in northern Italy.

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With the defeat of France, the commercial elites were confronted with the tension between, on the one hand, the anxiety that Austria, which had been at the forefront of the struggle against Napoleon and political radicalization, would not uphold similar principles to the French, and, on the other hand, recognition of the economic impact that foreign occupation had made. The ending of free port status had restricted commerce to such an extent that it was patently clear that this had been the real motor of the city’s prosperity. No matter how much there had been an opening towards the universalistic values espoused by the French in the Triestine bourgeoisie’s culture and ways of thought, economic rationality was the only sure guide for their actions. In this respect, Napoleonic occupation had taught a sharp lesson: the city did not have the capacity to sustain its port-based economy on its own.14 The connection to Austria was thus viewed as essential to Trieste’s very existence.

Public space and associational networks in the Restoration era When Austrian rule was restored, the government for the most part recognized the specific institutional status that Trieste had previously enjoyed and the economic functions deriving from it. At the same time, the city was accorded a particular form of constitutional representation, which was different to that in the Habsburg Monarchy’s other lands, where the provincial estates were superficially confirmed in existence while having their former powers reduced. The solution took account of the fact that, over the preceding century, Trieste had been ruled directly by organs of central government, such that it had become an advanced model for the reorganization and modernization of the Habsburg Monarchy as a whole. In 1814, a new province was created, the Littoral, which comprised a complex array of heterogeneous territories including the county of Gorizia and Gradisca, and the Margravate of Istria. From 1825–48, Trieste was proclaimed a separate district (‘circolo’) of the Littoral, although this description was purely administrative in character.15 The shift from Napoleonic back to Austrian rule was, therefore, in several respects more complex than in the Kingdom of LombardyVenetia. In Trieste, too, some major changes were not reversed: for example, the Magistracy, the political and economic organ which had been responsible for governing communal affairs, was not revived. This was a further sign that the patrician class, which had dominated the

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Magistracy during the eighteenth century, no longer held sway over Triestine society. Yet, at the same time, the state retreated from its past role of imposing a system of rules from above. The mercantile and entrepreneurial bourgeoisie was now able to take into its own hands the direction of economic development and civic society, and advanced to the position of a ruling class between the 1820s and mid-century. In place of the Magistracy, the real instrument of self-government proved to be the Exchange Deputation, which had arisen in 1794 as the Exchange’s own executive and representative organ. This became the institutional channel through which the economic leadership succeeded, through a combination of political loyalty and a convergence of economic interests with the industrializing state, in attaining the necessary measures to safeguard economic development and the growth of the large new joint stock companies in the fields of navigation and insurance then coming into being.16 The economic bourgeoisie thus viewed public institutions as a means of achieving symbiosis with a state which both protected its status and encouraged entrepreneurial activity. Two new institutions created in the Restoration era strengthened this mutual recognition of interests and acted as a form of compensation for the lack of a municipal government. In 1825, a Communal Deputation was established, followed in 1839 by a consultative council known as the Consiglio ferdinandiano (after the then Emperor Ferdinand), in both of which leading members of the bourgeoisie were co-opted into the administration of the city, alongside civil servants. This fusion of interests resulted in a model of economic development and an accompanying mentality whereby private interests and the state sphere were closely identified with one another. As Fabio Cusin long ago remarked, one does not register in Restoration-era Trieste that ‘process of differentiation between rulers and ruled, between the instruments of foreign sovereignty and the local elements subordinated to them’, which in other Italian-speaking parts of the Habsburg Empire led to overt support for the Risorgimento.17 This cooperative relationship between the state and local elites was in many respects reflected in Triestine society, both in public and private life, where the diverse members of the ethnic and religious communities frequently mixed with the same level of integration that pervaded economic activity. As Marina Cattaruzza has shown, this was for the most part true of the leading social institution in the city, the ‘Old Club’ (Casino Vecchio), with the exception that this preserve of upper society excluded members of the Jewish community.18 Hence, Jews tended to congregate particularly in the ‘Greek Club’ (Casino Greco), founded in

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1795, which – despite its name – was open to all members of the economic class, not just individuals from the Greek community. The circulation of ideas, modes of thought, and ways of life were thus distinguished more by a socially defined ‘bourgeois culture’, rather than by any exclusive ‘national’ markers. Even those associations which seemed to be oriented towards a specific national base in practice took definite account of the city’s cosmopolitan character. In a way similar to the Casino Greco, membership of the ‘German Club’ (Casino Tedesco) was not reserved to ‘Germans’ alone, and in 1831 it even wrote its revised statute in the Italian language.19 The books and newspapers available to members were chosen not to disseminate German culture programmatically, but served the universal aim of ‘education’ (Bildung). The use of German also became more prominent in public, because from 1827 onwards theatrical productions were regularly produced in that language – but these were attended by a broad public, which was used to multilingual communication. Likewise, the performances by the Società filarmonico-drammatica, founded in 1829, were attended by a bourgeois public formed according to social and economic criteria. While this association certainly had a ‘nationalcultural’ aim, in promoting Italian culture through music, song and public recitals, this did not serve any overt political purpose. The repertoire did not exclusively privilege ‘national’ productions, but drew on foreign composers and authors as a matter of course. Only around the start of the twentieth century did the association follow a more actively Italophile attitude, albeit without this creating a rigid opposition in its membership between supporters of Austria and sympathisers with the Kingdom of Italy. From the 1820s onwards, therefore, a more visible expression of ‘national’ cultures in Triestine society was noticeable, with the new clubs based more on the middling bourgeoisie when compared to the socially exclusive Casino Vecchio.20 Yet this development remained firmly embedded within a cosmopolitan environment: there was no nationally exclusive definition of club membership, and social events attracted a polyglot audience. An indication of this complexity is provided by a reception held at the Casino Greco in January 1837, in honour of the visiting King and Queen of Greece, accompanied by the heir to the Bavarian throne. The Casino Greco had moved to a new location just a few years previously, where the walls were decorated with frescoes depicting the recent wars against the Ottoman Turks, in which numerous members from the Greek community in Trieste had also participated. Profoundly influenced by enlightened ideas and Masonic

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practices, the elite of Triestine society firmly advocated the principles of liberty and religious toleration, and had vividly followed the Greek struggle for liberation. Thus, ‘all of brilliant society was joined here to celebrate such a happy occasion’, as the bourgeoisie paid tribute to the representatives of the newly independent nation, and a contemporary chronicle recorded how women’s dress at the event coincided in reproducing the blue and white colours of the Greek flag.21 In other words, the common liberal outlook of the multiethnic bourgeois elite could bring them together in celebrating this assertion of national independence. Yet, for the Greek community, this expression of national sentiment in no sense brought into question their loyalty towards the Austrian state, under whose laws they had secured freedom from persecution. For other groups present, the event implied primarily the recognition of ideas of freedom, and the Greek example did not provide a model to be imitated.22

The statute of 1850 and after Without the political turbulence that occurred in Milan or Venice, and somewhat indifferent to events taking place in the rest of Italy, Trieste did not experience the full force of the 1848–49 revolutions. Recent historiography concurs in attributing relatively slender importance to the first open manifestations of Italian national sentiment in 1848, and much the same is true for the nascent Slovene movement. Although these developments left significant traces, their immediate impact was slight. Both represented isolated expressions of opinion which did not lead to the kind of direct political conflict on national lines evident elsewhere. The national programmes did not act as rallying points for more widespread action, and the dominance of the commercial and financial bourgeoisie was not seriously jeopardised.23 Certainly, the latter was obliged to adopt new instruments, such as political associations and newspapers, for the articulation of its interests and to influence public opinion, given that the constitutional reforms of 1848 gave many taxpaying citizens the right to vote. This enlarged public arena encouraged political participation and the mobilization of social groups beyond that of the upper bourgeoisie. It was here, among the younger generation of the middling and lower bourgeoisie, that the Italian national movement found support, and it would be misleading to suggest that the idea of independence had no appeal whatsoever because small circles of conspirators and Garibaldian agents were present in the city throughout the 1850s, under constant police vigilance.24

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Nevertheless, there was nothing similar to the attempts at insurrection in Lombardy-Venetia in the early 1850s, not least because of the fact that there had been no widespread radicalization in 1848–49. Then, the upper bourgeoisie had sought to counter the possibility of revolution by propagating a linked Triestine and ‘Austrian’ identity. On the one hand, the establishment of political associations, above all the Società dei Triestini, and the opening up of society to more members of the possessing classes offered the possibility of integration into the particular collectivity that Trieste represented: a civil society which had developed over the previous century, recognised the individuality of its various citizens, and where the primacy of Italian culture was not called into question. On the other hand, because the city could not do without it for economic reasons, the link to Austria was also carefully emphasized. This was motivated partly by the memory of the Napoleonic Wars, but it was also a response to debates at the German assembly in Frankfurt, to which Trieste sent two deputies (having been included in the German Confederation since 1815). Fears that the Adriatic port might find itself in a subordinate position under a new, centralized German constitution meant that the connection to Austria was firmly stressed. The assertion of dynastic loyalty and Trieste’s place in the Empire as a whole found vivid expression on 18 August, 1849, when the official birthday celebrations for the new Emperor, Francis Joseph, were first held.25 An important factor in helping make this strategy viable was that the outcome of 1848–49 proved to be more advantageous to Trieste than elsewhere in the Empire. During the brief period of constitutional government, the Adriatic city was given the status of Reichsunmittelbare Stadt in October 1849, meaning it was answerable directly to the authority of the central government, without any intervening level of administration. In that it made the city the equivalent of a province both in terms of administration and political representation, this designation placed Trieste in a unique position, which reflected the importance the state attached to its main port for its project of political reorganization and economic modernization in the post-revolutionary era.26 The municipal Statute issued in April 1850 built on the situation established the previous autumn. Although many towns and cities in the Habsburg Monarchy were granted a degree of municipal autonomy around the same time, the range of competences granted to Trieste (and which endured until the First World War) were more substantial: the right to raise direct taxes, and administrative responsibility for military conscription, the local police, urban planning and infrastructure, health, welfare, schools, and scientific institutions.

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At the political level, the autonomist course was reinforced by the outcome of the elections for the city council held in August 1850, with the council members destined to remain in office until 1861 (the suspension of the imperial constitution in December 1851 made it clear that new elections would not occur, but did not prevent those elected at the local level staying in post). Leading business circles had formulated a series of requests to Vienna via a commission nominated by the municipality in November 1849, and these were largely met by the Statute of 1850 and the neoabsolutist regime’s reforming economic policies. Hence, the bourgeois elite re-consolidated its ties to the state, and at an individual level, this could lead to striking demonstrations of solidarity. In February, 1853, for example, two traders at the Trieste stock exchange, Carlo Ferdinando and Costantino de Reyer, made donations to the troops passing through the city after repressing the insurrectionary movements in Lombardy-Venetia – a gesture which could hardly have been clearer in terms of distancing themselves from the anti-Habsburg, national aspirations voiced in those areas.27 A similar stance of conforming to the existing order is visible elsewhere too. Although two different political groupings had started to emerge among the Triestine bourgeoisie in 1848–49, they were bound together by their common adherence to liberal ideas. While more cautious on the issue of the right to vote, equality before the law and religious toleration were two key principles advocated by candidates from the Società dei Triestini standing for election to the constituent assembly in Vienna in 1848, with the local experience of socio-economic integration of Jews and other religious minorities being used to argue that this should be a universal right rather than a special privilege.28 The political climate of the 1850s made it difficult to pursue the agenda of 1848 further, but it is noticeable how careful the city’s bourgeoisie was not to step out of line. A key episode in this regard is the latter’s reaction to the Concordat signed between the Papacy and Austria in 1855. The only public pronouncement on this subject issued by the political and economic elite was printed in an official newspaper, and was rigidly conservative in expression: the Catholic Church was defined as ‘the most valid safeguard of legitimate authority, the symbol of order and peace, the foundation of the true prosperity of peoples’.29 Seemingly, no other public reaction was made, either of indifference or opposition, for neither the police nor provincial governor registered any expression of discontent (whereas disapproval was certainly evident in other parts of Austria, even if it was not always openly expressed).30 In short, the majority of the Triestine bourgeoisie adopted a calculated strategy of

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not infringing in any way the expression of loyalty towards the state, and they were certainly influenced in this by the changing social and economic situation. A policy of caution and continuing identification with Austria seemed advisable at a time when economic difficulties were starting to become apparent, while the revolutionary period had also witnessed social unrest, with navvies and port workers striking in July 1849 for pay rises corresponding to price inflation, and manifestations of popular discontent being expressed around the time of Carnival celebrations in February 1850.31 At the same time, the effect of full peasant emancipation in 1848 was also starting to change the socio-economic structure in Trieste’s hinterland. Moves towards a more capitalistic form of agriculture and migration to urban centres slowly began to lead to the formation of a Slovenian bourgeoisie, which – with an active clergy – led to the formation of a national movement across a number of Austrian provinces (Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, Gorizia and Gradisca, and Trieste). Although a Slovenian-speaking commercial bourgeoisie, with a distinct physiognomy separate from the upper bourgeoisie’s traditional network of relationships, did not become established in Trieste until the 1880s, moves towards associational organization along national lines already started to emerge in the late 1850s.32 It was at this time that the ‘Slav Club’ (Casino Slavo) began its activities, taking its impulse from another Slovenian association, the ‘Slavic Assembly in Trieste’ (Slavjanski Zbor v Trstu). In several respects, this development maintained the permeability of ethnic boundaries visible across Triestine society in the first half of the century. The very choice of Casino Slavo as a name indicated the continuing relevance of the Italophone cultural model, while participation in the association was still ethnically mixed in 1857. Meetings were often frequented by individuals who would later form part of a liberal, Italophile association, the Società del Progresso. Within the space of a few years, however, there were distinct signs that the surrounding climate was slowly inducing more rigid definitions of national identity. In 1862, for example, some members of the Casino Slavo protested against the usual practice of opening its doors to nonSlavic participants on the occasion of festive balls, because this rendered the society ‘too cosmopolitan’ in their eyes.33

The emporium in crisis A number of factors point to the 1860s as a decisive moment in creating new orientations in Triestine society, which would create splits within

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the dominant upper bourgeoisie as well as establishing national identity for the first time as a distinctive dividing line. Without doubt, the crucial development here was the crisis in the port’s economy. The loss of its function as a commercial marketplace showed itself in all its gravity in the 1860s, with the industrial growth in other parts of the Habsburg Monarchy adding to this gradual marginalization. At the same time, the rapid geopolitical changes of this decade created a new set of reference points for the city’s Italian-speaking majority. In 1857, the railway link between Trieste and Vienna was inaugurated, but it rapidly revealed itself to be insufficient for joining the Adriatic city with central Europe in such a way as to give it a new economic role. A fall in commercial traffic was then compounded by the loss of key Italian markets after the unification of the peninsula in 1860–61. After 1861 (1866 in the case of Venetia), goods coming to Trieste from southern Italy could no longer be transported to other parts of Italy without being registered as coming from abroad. This meant the payment of customs duties, and a loss of competitiveness compared to Genoa and Venice. The extent of this crisis can be gauged by the fact that almost a third of the exports from the port of Trieste were destined for Italian markets. Needless to say, those commercial enterprises which worked mainly or solely with Italy, to where they often had extensive family ties as well as feelings of linguistic and cultural affinity, were particularly hard hit. In this respect, the early 1860s created a rupture in a way that had not been the case in 1848–49. This section of local society now articulated an Italian national identity in an overtly political sense, believing that there was no alternative solution to the economic crisis other than annexation to the Kingdom of Italy.34 A leading proponent of secessionist projects in this vein was Raffaele Costantini, an important businessman, member of both the city council and Exchange Deputation, and head of the Jewish community. Significantly, Costantini had in 1848 adhered to the Società dei Triestini and its moderate combination of local autonomy and loyalty to Austria. Yet, during Italy’s war against Austria for the possession of Venetia, he called for the Italian government not to hold back from pushing on its conquests as far as the Adriatic city, and not to renounce the indubitable benefits that would accrue to the Italian economy from possession of the port.35 In seeking to make the secessionist case against supporters of Austria, Costantini set out a line of argument that would be followed down to the First World War, whereby it was supposedly geographical, ‘natural’ factors which caused the port’s prosperity, rather than the ‘artificial’ conditions created by specific state policies, tariffs

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and the granting of privileges. Hence, prosperity was achievable under any state, and the link with Austria not necessary. Other sections of the economic elite, however, were less directly linked to the commercial markets and correspondingly less affected by the downturn. Those whose business affairs extended to the major European industrial and financial centres sought instead to obviate the crisis by finding a new economic position for Trieste based above all on its links to central Europe. Among such circles, there prevailed a mentality that was open towards outside contacts, as well as the habit of operating on a European and international scale.36 Down to 1918, this outlook also implied a solid, consensual relationship between large-scale enterprises and the Habsburg administration, as embodied in the local Chamber of Commerce and a network of public institutions. The political and economic shift of the 1860s profoundly altered the shape and orientation of local society, which had previously been characterized by its essential openness and social mobility. With some exceptions, social mobility and entry into the economic class had been possible irrespective of birth, religion or ethnicity, while a predominant Italophone culture had coexisted in overlap with those of other ethnic groups.37 As circumstances changed, the idea of the nation now acted as a focus for collective identity and for cooperative organization and aggregation in both the social and the economic spheres. This favoured more exclusive interpretations of ethnicity, above all with regard to the overlap between the Italophone culture and that of the Slovene minority (whereas the integration of Greek and Jewish minorities was relatively unchanged). After the return of constitutional politics and new elections in 1861, Trieste was run until the mid-1880s by an administration which was decidedly loyalist towards Austria, continuing to follow the reasoning that links to the Habsburg state would guarantee the city’s economic development. Only much later on (and in a stable fashion, only after 1897) was local power assumed by the national-liberal party, which held evident irredentist sympathies. Political loyalties among the socioeconomic elite were thus divided, although much of the economic bourgeoisie shared a basically liberal outlook and an interest in the ‘defence’ of Italian culture.38 Thus, while following an ‘Austrianist’ line in terms of state politics, the city council adopted a firmer ‘Italian’ policy with regard to municipal politics and national culture. For example, one of the council’s first actions was to establish in 1863 an Italian-language grammar school, a step that the government had previously refused to sanction (despite a German-language grammar school having been

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founded in the city in 1842). At the same time, the council denied to the Slovenes – and continued to do so down to 1914 – the possibility of founding schools instructing in their own language, in order not to lose a key instrument for the assimilation of this minority into Italian culture.39 As the previously Italophone culture became more assertively national, there was also increasing political antagonism between the Italian-speaking upper and middling bourgeoisie and the lower middleclasses. Artisans, shopkeepers, printers, insurance company employees and others who were not economically dependent on the state challenged the dominant political class and pursued a strong national line. The recruitment of Garibaldian volunteers in the city between 1860 and 1866 should be seen as symptomatic of these tensions, even if they were not many in number.40 Aware of such challenges to their political and social dominance, the ruling elite sought to maintain its position by founding in the course of the 1860s a series of associations, such as mutual insurance societies, popular lending libraries, low-cost housing projects, and public welfare institutions, which were aimed in the first instance at artisans and small traders (an industrial working-class not yet really being in existence in the city). Not unlike liberal parties elsewhere in Europe, these moves reflected the socially conservative strategy of a bourgeoise whose position was reinforced by a restricted electoral franchise (the system adopted in 1850 of voting rights being conferred on tax-payers of a certain class survived with only slight modifications until the start of the twentieth century). Equally, while many of these associations were not primarily national in aim, they nevertheless acted to integrate broader social classes into an Italian national community in Trieste. From this point of view, much as Pieter Judson has argued for German liberals in Austria, the rhetoric of national inclusion provided a means of upholding the bourgeoisie’s ‘universalist’ vision of education and social mobility while maintaining clear social distinctions in practice (increasingly so in the decade before 1914).41 Alongside the assertion of an overtly national Italian identity, both the Slovene and German minorities began to differentiate themselves more clearly, even if bi- or multilingualism would still often be a necessity in daily life. The first ‘Slavic Reading Room’ (Slovanska citavnica) was opened in 1861, though it was not until 1874 that the first Slovene political association in Trieste, the Edinost, was founded.42 In February 1860, Robert Hammerling, a writer who had moved to Trieste, initiated an association in honour of the German poet Friedrich Schiller, inspired by the centenary celebrations for the poet’s birth across Germany and

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Austria the previous year, which had embodied a concerted expression of national sentiment. Nevertheless, the Schillerverein (which would eventually absorb the Casino Tedesco) sought to uphold what it saw as the universalist, enlightened culture of Schiller’s time, and to this end concentrated much of its activities in the musical field. Hammerling’s original programme called for the maintenance of the enlivening value of artistic and scientific cosmopolitanism expressed in Triestine cultural life, and even down to 1914 aimed to appeal not just to co-nationals, but to all members of the educated bourgeoisie interested in the quality of its cultural programme.43 Among the 485 members listed in 1861, there were indeed a fair number from the Italian community. Nevertheless, the political radicalisation occurring at the end of the 1860s succeeded even here in infringing on the aspiration for a liberal dialogue of cultures, as was indicated by the subject of a meeting held in March 1869, which celebrated ‘The German war and German warriors in antiquity’.44 At the same time, a more explicit national tone was present in associations whose membership comprised the middling and lower bourgeoisie, such as the German gymnastic and choral societies. These had been established in Trieste at the end of the 1850s, and it is hard not to assume that a more overt assertion of German identity followed on from the events of 1859–61 and the formation of the Kingdom of Italy. In 1864, a number of smaller clubs fused to form the most representative of these German associations, the ‘Gymnastic Association “Concord” ’ (Turnverein Eintracht).45 The comparatively small German community in Trieste was socially clearly defined in terms of civil servants, army officers, teachers, commercial traders, and business agents, and these associations acted as focal points for social life within this numerically circumscribed group. In contrast to the Schillerverein, however, these national associations lacked the cosmopolitan opening up to Trieste’s wider bourgeoisie and hence played a much more restricted role in the social life of the city as a whole. If the general outlook of the internationally-oriented economic elite and (to a degree) the example of the Schillerverein indicates that the cosmopolitan aspects of Triestine society certainly did not disappear altogether, this attitude moved from the mainstream of social and cultural life to a minority position. The changed nature of the situation can be seen very clearly towards the end of the 1860s, when ideological divisions over liberal legislation on the Church also assumed clear national dimensions. After the cautious stance adopted in the 1850s, the Triestine liberals rediscovered their political instincts, influenced by events in both Austria (the re-emergence of constitutional politics and liberal policies in

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government) and Italy (the opposition between Church and state in the new Kingdom). The 1855 Concordat’s concession of control over education became of more urgent concern to liberals, who sought to gain influence in this area for both national and ideological reasons. The professed intention of the liberal government in office after 1867 effectively to revise the terms of the Concordat by passing legislation on civil marriage and schools met with the support of the Triestine bourgeoisie, which passed similar measures at the municipal level. In July 1868, a protest against Pope Pius IX, who had spoken out against the Austrian legislation on civil rights, turned into unrest in which Mazzinian and Garibaldian elements confronted groups of Slovenes, ‘villagers’ of ‘reactionary and clerical tendencies’ as one local liberal newspaper described them.46 The demonstration was disbanded by Slovene militiamen, causing two deaths among the Italian protestors. While shifting responsibility for what had happened onto the other side, the leader of the Italian liberals in the city council, Francesco Hermet, understood at that precise moment that a profound rupture along national lines had occurred between the city and its surrounding territory. In this episode, we can therefore discern in nucleus the elements of the national conflict that in the coming decades would oppose Italians against Slovenes, with a number of different factors interacting, such as social origin (city against countryside), ideological polarisation (liberalism against clericalism), and the refusal on the part of the Italian bourgeoisie to extend civil rights to the popular classes (so as not to have to extend them to the Slovene minority as well). Likewise, a number of terms employed on this occasion as a way of categorising political adversaries came to define subsequent public discourse. The Austrian police authorities referred to the proponents of the extreme wing of the liberals, with their hidden secessionist agenda, as ‘Italianissimi’; Italian liberals referred to Slovenian politicians as ‘clericalist agitators’, who supported the Church in asserting their national claims; and Italophile protestors denounced the Austrian state as ‘the enemy of liberty’.

Conclusion: between loyalism and separatism Compared with developments elsewhere, the case of Trieste shows a number of particular characteristics, notwithstanding the presence of a large Italian-speaking majority in the city. The specific, international character of the port, the concrete interventions by the Austrian state to sustain its position, the close collaboration between Triestine businessmen and the Habsburg administration, the degree of municipal

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autonomy accorded by the central government – all these factors help explain the substantial consensus around the assertion of a ‘Triestine’ identity combined with allegiance to Austrian institutions. Together with the fact that national conflict between Italians and Slovenes did not develop fully until the period after 1870, this meant that the city did not in the period under consideration share the choices and aspirations of other Italian-speaking areas under Habsburg rule like Lombardy and Venetia, although these were not entirely extraneous and began to create marked tensions during the 1860s. While many of the issues raised here would certainly repay closer attention, in conclusion it is possible to suggest that a key difference to the experience of Northern Italy was the combination of constitutional status and the particular social structure evident in Trieste. As Rupert Pichler’s recent study has argued, Lombardy’s internationally oriented economic dynamism did not necessarily create automatic pressures for unification with the rest of Italy either.47 Yet the political and social alienation of the nobility from the state was evident there and in Venetia in a way that did not occur in Trieste, where the bourgeoisie was closely integrated into the matrix of economic and political interests propounded by the Austrian state. And while the status of Italian culture was essentially respected in all these areas, neither Lombardy nor Venetia – with their ineffectual consultative ‘Congregations’ – achieved a satisfactory constitutional settlement within the Habsburg Monarchy after 1815, and the presence of ‘foreign’, German-speaking administrators was more obtrusive there too.48 In contrast to these areas, therefore, Trieste did not participate in the struggle to overthrow Habsburg rule before 1860, even if the formation of the new Kingdom was subsequently to create definite lines of tension within local society.

Notes ∗

Translated from the Italian by Laurence Cole. 1. See, among others: A. Millo, Storia di una borghesia: La famiglia Vivante a Trieste dall’emporio alla guerra mondiale (Gorizia, 1998); M. Cattaruzza, Trieste nell’Ottocento. Le trasformazioni di una società civile (Udine, 1995); id., Socialismo adriatico: La socialdemocrazia di lingua italiana nei territori costieri della monarchia asburgica 1888–1915 (Manduria, 1998); T. Catalan, La comunità ebraica di Trieste 1781–1914 (Trieste, 2000). 2. The most representative exponent of this historiographical current is: A. Tamaro, Trieste, 2 vols, (Rome, 1924). For a critical anlysis of this work, see: G. Cervani, ‘La Storia di Trieste di Attilio Tamaro. Genesi e motivazioni di una storia’, in: A. Tamaro, Storia di Trieste (Trieste, 1976), pp. vii–xli.

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3. C. Schiffrer, Le origini dell’irredentismo triestino (1813–1860) (Udine, 1937); id., La Venezia Giulia nell’età del Risorgimento. Momenti e problemi (Udine, 1965). 4. E. Apih, La società triestina nel secolo XVIII (Torino, 1957); id., Trieste (Rome– Bari, 1988). 5. A complete series of data can be found in: P. Montanelli, Il movimento storico della popolazione di Trieste (Trieste, 1905), esp. p. 50. For an up-todate re-examination of contemporary statistical information, see: M. Breschi, A. Kalc and E. Navarra, ‘La nascita di una città. Storia minima della popolazione di Trieste, sec. XVIII–XIX’, in: R. Finzi and G. Panjek (eds), Storia economica e sociale di Trieste: Vol.I La città dei gruppi 1719–1918 (Trieste, 2001), pp. 69–237. 6. C. von Czoernig, Die ethnologischen Verhältnisse des österreichischen Küstenlandes nach dem richtiggestellten Ergebnisse der Volkszählung vom 31: Dezember 1880 (Trieste, 1885), pp. 17, 33; La popolazione di Trieste nel 1875: Resoconto ufficiale del censimento generale della popolazione effettuato secondo lo stato del 31 dicembre 1875, edited by the Civico ufficio statistico-anagrafico, (Trieste, 1878), p. xli. 7. On the general role of ethnic minorities in economic activity, see: R. Ward and R. Jenkins (eds), Communities in Business: Strategies for Economic Survival (Cambridge, 1984). Specifically on Trieste, see: L. De Antonellis Martini, Portofranco e comunità etnico-religiose nella Trieste settecentesca (Milan, 1968); A. Millo, ‘La formazione delle élites dirigenti’, in: Finzi and Panjek, Storia economica e sociale di Trieste. Vol.I, pp. 38–410, here pp. 382–8. 8. The document is published in: Apih, La società triestina, pp. 193–6. For a more recent analysis, see: R. Finzi, ‘La base materiale dell’italofonia a Trieste’, in: Finzi and Panjek, Storia economica e sociale di Trieste. Vol.I, pp. 317–31. 9. Millo, Storia di una borghesia, esp. pp. 49, 248. 10. Compare: J. Plamenatz, ‘Two Types of Nationalism’, in: E. Kamenka (ed.), Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea (New York, 1976), pp. 23–4, here pp. 23–36. 11. P. Kandler, Emporio e portofranco di Trieste (Trieste, 1864); M. Pivec-Stelé, La vie économique des Provinces Illyriennes (1809–1813) (Paris, 1930); G. Quarantotti, Trieste e l’Istria nell’età napoleonica (Florence, 1954). 12. R. Masiero, ‘In una biblioteca a Trieste’, in: La fondazione della Biblioteca Civica ‘Attilio Hortis’ di Trieste: 1793–1993 (Trieste, 1993), pp. 26–35. 13. A. Tamaro, ‘Inizi della massoneria a Trieste’, in: Documenti di storia triestina del secolo XVIII, published by the Società istriana di archeologia e storia patria, Vol.1 (1929), pp. 183–205; G. Stefani, Bonapartisti triestini (Trieste, 1932). 14. As was argued by the most representative member of this circle: D. Rossetti, Meditazione storico-analitica sulle franchigie della città e porto-franco di Trieste dall’anno 949 fino all’anno 1814 (Trieste, 1815), pp. 208–9. For further analysis of the municipalist limits embedded in such a concept, see: G. Negrelli, Al di qua del mito: Diritto storico e difesa nazionale nell’autonomismo della Trieste asburgica (Udine, 1978), pp. 63–9. 15. G. Cervani, Il Litorale austriaco dal Settecento alla ‘Costituzione di dicembre’ del 1867 (Udine, 1979); P. Dorsi, ‘Il problema costituzionale del Litorale nell’età della Restaurazione’, in: id., Il Litorale nel processo di modernizzazione della monarchia austriaca (Udine, 1994), pp. 189–231.

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16. R. E. Coons, I primi anni del Lloyd Austriaco: Politica di governo a Vienna ed iniziative imprenditoriali a Trieste (1836–1848) (Udine, 1982). 17. F. Cusin, ‘Trieste e il Risorgimento’, La porta orientale (1938), p. 417. 18. M. Cattaruzza, ‘Tra logica cetuale e società borghese. Il “Casino Vecchio” di Trieste (1815–1867)’, in: id., Trieste nell’Ottocento, pp. 11–58. 19. Statuti del Casino Tedesco (Trieste, 1831). 20. Cattaruzza, ‘Tra logica cetuale e società borghese’. 21. L’Osservatore Triestino, 31.1.1837. 22. Only subsequently, after the formation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1860, did advocates of secession from Habsburg rule among the Italian national movement in Trieste retrospectively draw parallels between the Greek struggle for independence and the Italian Risorgimento. 23. For an extensive discussion, see: M. Cattaruzza, ‘Il primato dell’economia: l’egemonia del ceto mercantile (1814–60)’, in: R. Finzi, C. Magris and G. Miccoli (eds), Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità ad oggi: Il Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Vol.I, (Turin, 2002), pp. 149–79. It is also worth consulting two older texts still of fundamental importance for the interpretation of 1848–49 in Trieste, albeit reaching different conclusions: A. Vivante, Irredentismo adriatico: Contributo alla discussione sui rapporti austro-italiani (Florence, 1912); Schiffrer, Le origini dell’irredentismo triestino. On the Slovene movement, see: G. Pierazzi, ‘Studi sui rapporti italo-jugoslavi (1848–49)’, Archivio storico italiano (1972), 181–249. 24. The anxiety of the authorities in this respect is evident in an ordinance issued by the Police Directorate on 4 January 1853, which in view of the forthcoming Carnival season forbade the wearing of ‘badges or marks with political allusions, or which might excite contests of nationality both for those in masked costume or anyone else attending the public ballrooms’ (Il diavoletto, 8.1.1853). 25. See the report on ‘La Festa del 18 Agosto a Trieste’, Il diavoletto, 20.8.1849. 26. Cervani, Il Litorale austriaco, pp. 74–84; U. Cova, ‘La Dieta provinciale per Trieste, città immediata dell’Impero, e il suo territorio’, Archeografo triestino 51 (2001), 329–66. 27. Il diavoletto, 1.3.1853. 28. Promemoria pei Deputati triestini all’Assemblea costituente austriaca, deliberato dalla Società dei Triestini nelle assemblee popolari del 22, 23, 24 e 25 giugno 1848 (Trieste, 1848). Members of the Jewish community accounted for around 10 per cent of the association’s members. Once the constitution of 1849 was withdrawn, full civic emancipation was not granted to Jews in Austria until 1867. 29. Osservatore triestino, 31.8.1855, reporting the comment in the Gazzetta ufficiale di Verona. 30. On this episode, and the problem of sources, see: G. Valdevit, Chiesa e lotte nazionali: il caso di Trieste (1850–1919) (Udine, 1979), pp. 12–14 and 37. 31. The navvies’ demonstration is reported in the political rubric of Il diavoletto, 15.7.1849. For documentation on the authorities’ concerns about public order, see: Archivio di Stato di Trieste, Imperial Regia Luogotenenza del Litorale, Atti Presidiali, 1849, busta 6, Trieste, 13.2.1850. 32. On the Slovenes in Trieste, see: M. Cattaruzza, ‘Italiani e sloveni a Trieste: la formazione dell’identità nazionale’, in: id., Trieste nell’Ottocento,

Trieste, 1830–70

33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

48.

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pp. 119–65; M. Verginella, ‘Sloveni a Trieste tra Sette e Ottocento. Da comunità etnica a minoranza nazionale’, in: Finzi and Panjek, Storia economica e sociale di Trieste. Vol.I, pp. 455–62; J. Pirjevec, Introduzione alla storia culturale e politica a Trieste nel Novecento (Trieste, 1983); M. Kacin Wohinz and J. Pirjevec, Storia degli Sloveni in Italia (1866–1998) (Venice, 1998). Cited after: Verginella, ‘Sloveni a Trieste’, p. 477, and see also pp. 456–57. Millo, Storia di una borghesia, pp. 59–63 and 77–81. Memoria delle condizioni politiche ed economiche della città di Trieste presentata a S.E. il barone Bettino Ricasoli presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri del Regno d’Italia (Florence, 1866), pp. 28–9. For further discussion, see: A. Millo, ‘Un porto tra centro e periferia (1861–1918)’, in: Finzi, Magris and Miccoli, Storia d’Italia, here pp. 189–90. For a more extensive discussion, see: A. Millo, ‘Il capitalismo triestino e l’impero’, in: R. Finzi, L. Panariti and G. Panjek (eds), Storia economica e sociale di Trieste: Vol. II, La città dei traffici 1719–1918 (Trieste, 2003), 125–42. Millo, Storia di una borghesia. For an overview, see: Cova, ‘La Dieta provinciale’. A. Millo, L’élite del potere a Trieste: Una biografia collettiva 1891–1938 (Milano, 1989), pp. 185–206. Millo, ‘Un porto tra centro e periferia’, here pp. 197–8. P. Judson, ‘ “Whether race or conviction should be the standard”: national identity and liberal politics in nineteenth-century Austria’, Austrian History Yearbook 22 (1991), 76–95. Verginella, ‘Sloveni a Trieste’, p. 457. J. Rabl, Der Schiller-Verein in Triest (Triest, 1885). Il Diavoletto, 4.3.1869. On the Germans in Trieste, see: P. Dorsi, ‘Stranieri in patria. La parabola del gruppo minoritario tedesco nella Trieste austriaca’, Clio: Rivista trimestrale di studi storici 37 (2001), 5–58. An exhaustive reconstruction of the events of July 1868 can be found in: Valdevit, Chiesa e lotte nazionali, pp. 71–85. Rupert Pichler, Die Wirtschaft der Lombardei als Teil Österreichs: Wirtschaftspolitik, Außenhandel und industrielle Interessen, 1815–1859 (Berlin, 1996). See: A. Gottsmann and S. Malfèr, ‘Die Vertretungskörperschaften in Lombardo-Venetien’, in: H. Rumpler and P. Urbanitsch (eds), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918. Band VII: Verfassung und Parlamentarismus. 2. Teilband: Die regionalen Repräsentativkörperschaften (Vienna, 2000), pp. 1593–662.

4 Voluntary Associations and Nation-building in Nineteenth-century Prague Claire Nolte

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Prague underwent a rapid transformation from provincial backwater to one of the major cities in the Habsburg realm. For Czech historian Zden˘ek Šolle, this change began with the revolutionary year 1848: ‘the events of 1848 showed the key position of Prague in the future of the crownland, and of the Czech nation. We can honestly date this year as the beginning of a new stage in the development of the capital city of Prague’.1 Although the 1848 revolution was relatively short-lived in Prague, weakened by disputes between its Czech and German leaders and crushed by military force in June 1848, its long-term impact re-made the city. The abolition of serfdom helped accelerate industrial development within the Habsburg Empire, and the neo-absolutist regime imposed after the revolution instituted liberal economic policies which fuelled the expansion of business. The results were spectacular, and turned Prague into a thriving industrial and banking centre whose population grew from 146,418 in 1843 to 514,345 by the century’s end.2 The migration of peasants from the Czech-speaking countryside driving this population growth shifted the ethnic balance of the capital at a time when national movements were challenging traditional loyalties and creating new societal fault-lines based on language and ethnicity. At first glance, Prague in 1848 appeared to be a ‘German city’. German was the lingua franca of higher education, business, and government, and the only language spoken in polite society. Yet, although most residents spoke German, only the highest strata spoke it exclusively, since the majority of the population was bilingual. Thus, it would be incorrect to describe Prague as ‘German’ at this time, because language was a marker of class and a means of social advancement, and identity was regional rather than ethnic. All this changed in the ensuing decades, 82

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thanks to the transformative impact of industrial development and the rise of linguistic nationalism, as recent studies of other central European cities such as Budapest and Pressburg/Poszony (the later Bratislava) have shown.3 Or as Jeremy King has argued in the case of the Southern ˇ Bohemian town of Budweis/Ceské Bud˘ejovice: ‘individual languages and linguistic repertoires in the Bohemian lands during the first half of the nineteenth century were complex and historically contingent. Broad structural transformations gradually undermined the social asymmetry between the Czech and German languages. Even as that asymmetry faded, though, it found new expression in national understandings of ethnicity ’.4 Examining how this process unfolded in Prague reveals the central role voluntary associations played in articulating new understandings of identity. Voluntary associations, defined by Gary Cohen as ‘any free, formal combination of individuals established independently of the state for joint purposes other than earning a livelihood’, proliferated in the nineteenth century.5 In the newly emerging social order, voluntary organizations became vital ‘expressions of bourgeois self-awareness’, transmitting bourgeois social values and helping to establish a civil society.6 At the same time, clubs also performed political functions, giving members experience with democratic practices, and providing aspiring politicians with networks of supporters. Beyond these social and political functions, clubs in Habsburg-ruled Central Europe played an additional role in articulating national identity.7 This was especially the case in Bohemia, where more than 40 per cent of the clubs in the Habsburg Monarchy were located in 1869 and where ‘clubs formed the true foundation of the Czech and German national movement[s].’8 Prague, the site of the oldest university in the Habsburg Monarchy and the seat of the Bohemian provincial government, was a major centre of associational life.9 For this reason, an examination of club life in nineteenth-century Prague will not only reveal the social foundations of popular nationalist associations, it will also show how broad social, economic and political change caused the flexible identities of the early part of the century to harden into rigid categories, transforming eighteenth-century ‘Bohemians’ into twentieth-century ‘Czechs’ and ‘Germans’.

The Museum Society and the early Czech national movement Although voluntary associations really came into their own in the nineteenth century, they originated much earlier. The first voluntary

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associations in Europe were the preserve of the well-off and titled, and were devoted to charitable or religious purposes. Beginning with the Enlightenment, however, new forms of club life appeared in the form of scholarly associations and reading societies. Organizations of this sort were established in the Bohemian lands in the late eighteenth century, many devoted to the advancement of the cultural and economic development of the province. In addition to promoting progressive ideals, these early societies also harboured a political agenda, making them ‘important stepping stones to mature identity in the Czech lands’.10 The Bohemian Kingdom had lost its political independence following the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, when Czech Hussitism had been decisively defeated by a revived Habsburg Catholicism and thousands of Protestant leaders and nobles had fled into exile. In the ensuing turmoil, the Czech culture of the Hussite years declined as a new nobility, many of them foreigners, adopted the German culture of the victors.11 One hundred and fifty years later, this nobility undertook to rehabilitate Czech culture in order to reinforce their assertion of provincial privileges against the centralizing efforts of the reforming Habsburg monarchs. By sponsoring research into Bohemian history and culture, they sought to demonstrate the distinctiveness of the region as a justification for federalist concessions. The scholars who carried out this research, many of them clerics, sought to ‘defend’ the Czech language, regarded in cultivated circles as a debased peasant jargon. Although the linguistic revival they stimulated became the first phase of a cultural revival which Czech nationalists later called the ‘Awakening’, these scholars, along with their noble patrons, were not promoting ‘nationalism’. The ‘nation’ at this time was limited to groups with political rights, primarily the nobility, and ‘patriotism’ implied an historical and territorial attachment to the Bohemian Crown. According to this interpretation, therefore, the two linguistic groups in the province were all ‘Bohemians’ by birth and country, while many nobles felt themselves to be ‘Slav, Czech, and German at the same time’.12 Nevertheless, this early linguistic revival was the starting point of a national movement that made language into the ‘touchstone of belonging to the nation’ and the eventual basis for ethnic separation in the Bohemian lands.13 Following the classic typology formulated by Miroslav Hroch, the Czech national movement evolved in three main stages.14 It began with the linguistic revival in the late eighteenth century, progressing into a ‘period of patriotic agitation’, when the ideas and values of these early scholars were disseminated among local elites, before culminating with


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the rise of a mass national movement. The second phase began in the early nineteenth century, when a new generation of Awakeners abandoned the cautious stance of their Enlightened predecessors to embrace a Romantic notion of national destiny. The scholars of this second stage, mostly the sons of peasants, carried the Awakening beyond language reform into a broad cultural revival, and emerged in 1848 as the political leaders of the ‘Czech nation’.15 In the process, they transformed the scholarly associations founded by patriotic noblemen into vehicles for modern Czech nationalism. The history of the Museum Society exemplifies these processes. This bilingual association, founded by patriotic noblemen, was created in a spirit of enlightened progress to advance learning and scholarship in Bohemia. It was also intended to underscore the political programme of the nobility, as well as demonstrate their ‘regional patriotism’ (Landespatriotismus) at a time when local museums were being founded elsewhere in the Habsburg lands, including one in Brünn/Brno in neighbouring Moravia.16 The driving force behind this venture was Count Kasper Sternberg, an aristocrat with deep family ties to the Bohemian lands. Although later claimed by both Czech and German nationalists as one of their own, Sternberg was a cosmopolitan aristocrat of enlightened spirit who spoke French at home, some Czech to his servants, studied English, and only learned German after an extended stay in Bavaria.17 His scholarly interests lay in the area of natural science, rather than philology or history, and he donated his extensive collection of fossils to the museum he helped to found. Although most clearly identified with the National Museum, Sternberg was also active in other groups, demonstrating the overlapping nature of associational life at this time and the central role nobles had in it.18 In 1818, as Sternberg and his cousin, Count Franz Klebelsberg, were finalizing their proposal for a museum, an alternative proposal was developed by a representative of the second generation of Czech Awakeners, the linguist Josef Jungmann, who espoused a different interpretation of the mission of the new venture. Where the Sternberg– Klebelsberg proposal called for the creation of a ‘Patriotic Museum’ [Vaterländisches Museum] focusing on the ‘gathering of artefacts, plants, and relics of the past and present, their preservation and presentation for the purposes of science, art, and industry of the homeland’, Jungmann proposed creating a ‘National Museum of the Czechs’ whose first task would be the ‘preservation and advancement of the Czech language, literature, and learning, the publishing of Czech books, the expansion of Czech natural science, and the awakening of Czech economic

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productivity’.19 Although Jungmann’s proposal was ultimately rejected, it foreshadowed the direction taken by the institution later known as the ‘National Museum’. The new ‘Society for the Patriotic Museum in Bohemia’ (Gesellschaft des vaterländischen Museums in Böhmen/Spoleˇcnost vlastenského muzeum v ˇ Cechách) differed from the older scholarly organizations in its demand that all members understand at least some Czech.20 The meetings of the governing board were carried out in German, a decision which prompted Jungmann to complain in a letter to a friend: ‘Only German, not a mention of Czech! I expect nothing for us ’.21 However, to demonstrate the bilingual nature of the ‘Bohemian nation’, the minutes were printed in both Czech and German. From the beginning, however, it was clear that ‘only Czechs regarded this museum, created by supposedly “German” aristocrats, as their own’, especially after the museum launched the publication of two journals, one in Czech and one in German.22 The journals were the brainchild of the young scholar, František Palacký, later renowned as the ‘Father of the Czech Nation’. The German journal was intended as a scholarly publication, focusing on natural science and aimed at promoting awareness of Bohemia in the foreign scientific community, while the Czech journal was aimed at the masses and was intended, in Palacký’s words, to be a ‘mirror of true Czech nationality’ that would ‘awaken national feeling and uphold its sacredness’.23 Both journals began publication in 1827, but only the Czech journal succeeded. Ignored by German-speakers in the empire, and hampered in its international outreach by Austrian censors, the German journal ceased publication in 1832. Following the model of the Matica srbska, an association founded in 1826 in Hungary to publish books in the Serbian language, Palacký also proposed creating a similar organization under the aegis of the museum. His idea was opposed by some of the museum’s leaders, who feared it would draw resources away from the museum’s other work and undermine the bilingual foundation of Bohemian identity.24 Nevertheless, the Matice ˇceská, described as ‘the first independent Czech cultural organization to advance nationalism, the first modern institution of a purely Czech character’, came into existence in 1831.25 An immediate success, it was more popular than the museum itself. Led by the second generation of Awakeners, it became the ‘forum for the burgeoning Czech intellectual life’ and published several books which laid the foundation for Czech identity, among them Jungmann’s German-Czech dictionary and Pavel Šafaˇrík’s Slovanské starožitnosti (‘Slavic Antiquities’), which sought


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to give the Slavs an ancient pedigree by establishing their presence in the area in the pre-Christian era.26 If, as has been argued, the ‘relationship of the museum to the Czech language is a barometer, tracing the increase in pressure of the growing national camp,’ then the success of the Matice marks a turning point.27 Especially after the death of Sternberg in 1838, the nobles, increasingly regarded as ‘German’ and ‘foreign to the nation’, were less involved in the work of the museum.28 Not only was Palacký elected museum secretary in 1841, the first commoner to hold this position, Czech was used as the primary language at museum meetings during the revolutionary year of 1848, and several gatherings related to the Slavic Congress in Prague that year took place in the museum’s building. For this reason, as Josef Polišenský has argued, ‘in the middle of the [nineteenth] century the provincial museum became de facto, if not de jure, the national museum’.29 Although the museum’s activities declined during the neo-absolutist era which followed the suppression of the 1848 revolution, it resumed with renewed vigour following the dismantling of this system after the losses in the Italian War of 1859.30 The introduction of a constitution in the Habsburg Monarchy in 1860 lifted the restrictions on public life which had characterized the reactionary 1850s, sparking the growth of new journals, newspapers, and publishing ventures. As a result, the significance of the Matice ˇceská as the pioneering centre of Czech literary efforts declined, although it continued to publish for more than seventy years. Bohemian nobles were largely absent from the newer clubs founded in the 1860s yet they continued to dominate the museum’s board, making the society appear ‘a bastion of the remnants of feudal conservatism’.31 An incident from 1889, however, revealed how out of touch these nobles became with the institution’s new direction. As work began on the magnificent structure at the top of Wenceslas Square which presently houses the museum, a debate about which famous individuals should be honoured with commemorative plaques on the building’s exterior pitted the aristocratic old guard against the Czech nationalist contingent. The nobles wanted to honour Count Vilém Slavata, the President of the Royal Chamber whose defenestration at Prague Castle in 1618 had sparked the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, while the nationalists suggested a plaque for Kryštof Harant of Polžice, one of the rebellious nobles executed on Old Town Square by the Habsburg regime following the Battle of White Mountain. The biggest controversy, however, erupted around the proposal to erect a plaque to Jan Hus. In his classic work, The

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History of the Czech Nation, published by the Matice ˇceská, Palacký had rehabilitated the Hussites, condemned by the Counter-Reformation as dangerous heretics, and placed the Hussite period at the core of Czech history, as the ‘deiform period’ of the nation when it came closest to fulfilling its mission. In the course of the debate about the Hus plaque, the museum president, Count Karl von Schwarzenberg, raised a storm of protest when he referred to the Hussites as ‘a band of looters and arsonists’. The resulting outcry prompted Schwarzenberg’s resignation from the museum, and inspired a movement to erect a memorial to Hus in Prague’s Old Town Square.32 The incident thus demonstrates how the definition of nationhood had evolved from the linguistically inclusive Landespatriotismus of the enlightened noble founders of the museum, to the ethnic exclusivity of Czech bourgeois nationalists, whose understanding of history had been shaped by the writings of the Awakeners, many of them funded by the Society for the Patriotic Museum of Bohemia.

Political mobilization and national competition: gymnastic associations in Prague If the example of the National Museum shows how an emerging Czech educated bourgeoisie in Prague developed new, less flexible understandings of ethnicity, the history of Prague’s gymnastic associations illustrates how these modern definitions of nationality became socially anchored at the mass level. The political liberalisation of the constitutional era rapidly expanded the public sphere, causing the number of all clubs in the Habsburg empire to grow from 2,234 in 1856 to more than 85,000 in 1910.33 Unlike the older societies, these new clubs drew their membership from the petite bourgeoisie and working class, and were led by educated and moneyed elites, who sought to convey the ideas and values of the national movement to the broader masses through ritual and symbolic elements. The most successful club of this sort was the Czech gymnastic club, Sokol (‘Falcon’), which was founded in Prague in 1862, at the same time as its German counterpart, the Prague Turnverein. Since both these clubs drew on the model of nationalist gymnastics pioneered by the Prussian school instructor Friedrich Ludwig Jahn a half century earlier, they provide excellent case studies for the nationalization of the masses in Prague. Jahn had created his Turnverein in 1811, in the dark days following the Prussian defeats at Jena and Auerstädt, transforming exercise programmes developed for progressive schools and fencing academies


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into rituals of national renewal, and making gymnastics into a major vehicle of mass nationalism in the German lands.34 Jahn promoted a feeling of equality among his gymnasts by mandating the use of the familiar ‘thou’ (Du) among members, who addressed one another as ‘Brother’. The simple club uniform of unbleached linen, without tie or gloves, topped off after practice sessions with a long German coat that reached to the knees, was intended to demonstrate solidarity with the common German peasant. Jahn further fostered esprit de corps through group singing of nationalist songs, the club greeting ‘Gut Heil!’ (‘Good luck!’) and the motto ‘Frisch, frei, fröhlich, fromm ist des Turners Reichtum!’ (‘Fresh, free, happy, devout is the gymnast’s wealth!’).35 The egalitarian spirit and patriotic enthusiasm of the Turnverein came under suspicion in the more conservative atmosphere of post-Napoleonic Europe and, following a series of incidents, the clubs were banned in the German Confederation in 1820. These restrictions were eventually eased, and the Turnverein reemerged to play a major role in the 1848–49 revolutions in the German lands, reinforcing its reputation for liberal and national idealism. The political reputation of the Turnverein had made it unwelcome in the Habsburg lands, where they were banned – except for a brief period during the 1848–49 revolutions. In the more liberal atmosphere of the constitutional era, however, gymnastic clubs appeared throughout the empire’s lands. In the case of Prague, the initial effort to form a gymnastic club on a bilingual basis fell victim to the rising tide of national prejudice, which was causing older, binational organizations to divide on ethnic lines.36 To differentiate the Czech Sokol from its older German model, its leaders took pains to give it a spirit and style that were peculiarly Czech, prompting no less a critic than Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk to describe the club years later as a ‘purely German concept, of German origins, which was transferred to us and decked out with national eclecticisms’.37 The driving force behind this effort was an aspiring academic named Miroslav Tyrš, the club’s Gymnastic Director and major ideologue. Born Friedrich Emanuel Tirsch in the Germanspeaking borderlands of Bohemia, he had come to Prague as a child and adopted Czech identity as a young man.38 He was aided by the Prague Sokol’s first president, Jindˇrich Fügner, originally ‘Heinrich Fügner’, a wealthy German businessman and recent convert to the Czech cause, who contributed significant ideas and much of his fortune to the organization. Together, they undertook to adapt Jahn’s concept of ‘love of the fatherland through gymnastics’ to Czech circumstances.39

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Tyrš and Fügner, who were born and raised in German-speaking environments but chose to become Czech, provide excellent examples of the malleability of ethnic identity in mid-century Prague. Tyrš, who had learned some Czech as a child in the Bohemian countryside, befriended several future leaders of the Czech national movement while a student at Prague university. After his attempt to acquire a post at the university failed, he found employment as a writer and worker in the new Czech publications and nationalist ventures of the 1860s. Like other ambitious young men of his era, he was drawn by the energy and vitality of the Czech national movement, and the creative opportunities it offered.40 If Tyrš’s conversion to a Czech identity is understandable, in the light of his inclinations, linguistic skills, and economic circumstances, Fügner’s motivations are rather less apparent. He was financially well-off and never mastered Czech, a circumstance that limited his public role in the club. His decision to adopt a Czech identity arose from personal and political considerations, among them disdain for the capitalist spirit of the German industrialists in the Bohemian borderlands, to whom he was connected by family ties; resentment of the repressive spirit of the post-1848 Reaction in the empire and the ‘loyal Germans’ who supported it; and rejection of the social pretensions of Prague’s German elite. At the same time, he was attracted to the romantic–heroic legends of the Bohemian past popularized by German writers of the day, and once described his identity to his young daughter as a type of local patriotism, ‘I was never a German. I am a Praguer, a German-speaking Praguer.’41 Although the founders of the Sokol adopted the training schedule of the Turnverein, along with practices like the use of the familiar ‘ty’ (thou), they added symbolic elements to demonstrate the club’s Czech identity. One example is the elaborate club uniform, an eclectic mix of Slavic elements including trousers and a jacket of brown ‘Russian’ linen with embroidered ‘Slavic’ button closures called ˇcamara, which symbolized Czech identity in the 1860s. The whole was completed by a round ‘Montenegrin’ cap with a falcon feather. The major non-Slavic aspect of the uniform was the red shirt like those worn by Garibaldi’s soldiers, which had been introduced by Fügner, an admirer of the Italian revolutionary. Although the shirt was immediately controversial in view of the empire’s recent losses in Italy, it eventually became a Sokol trademark and, as Fügner had hoped, an enduring symbol of the club’s liberal heritage. The club symbol, a falcon in flight, was drawn from South Slav folklore, in which falcons designated heroes. It was a fortunate choice, and the club itself was soon popularly known simply as ‘the


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Sokol’, although its official name was ‘Prague Gymnastic Club’ (Pražský tˇelocviˇcný spolek).42 While the Sokol greeting, ‘Nazdar!’ (Good luck!) was a Slavic approximation of the Turnverein’s ‘Gut Heil!’, its slogan, ‘Tužme se!’ (Let us strengthen ourselves!) bore little resemblance to that of Jahn’s movement. Beyond such symbolism, the Prague Sokol actively supported contacts with other Slavic nations, and promoted the spread of the Sokol idea among them. (By 1910, the Slavic Sokol movement had grown to encompass over 120,000 members in branches throughout the Slavic world).43 The new club also cultivated a strong identification with the Hussites, who were the object of popular veneration in the 1860s.44 Tyrš made Hussite military prowess the model for Sokol training and held up the moral fervour and scholarly achievement of the Hussite era as examples for modern Czechs. The commemoration of Hussite events became a club ritual and the focus of solemn ceremonies, while the club paper carried articles on Hussite history, and copies of Hussite weapons decorated the walls of the Prague Sokol training hall.45 If the evolution from Landespatriotismus to nationalism came more easily to the small Czech nation living within the geographic confines of the Bohemian crownlands, the national development of Bohemian Germans, torn between a traditional dynastic loyalty to the Austrian state, an awakening German identity, and a lingering Landespatriotismus, was more complex.46 Without direct links to the German states, Prague Germans clung to their Bohemian loyalties longer than the Germans living in the border areas later called the ‘Sudetenland’, who derisively referred to them in 1848 as ‘the doubtful Germans in Prague’ (‘die zweifelhaften Deutschen in Prag’).47 The rising power of the Czech national movement, however, ultimately caused the Prague German community, which made up a disproportionate percentage of the city’s elite, to develop a modern national identity. In particular, the leaders of the German community opened their doors to Jewish professionals and successful businessmen who supported their programme of political liberalism. Most Jews, repelled by traditions of Czech anti-Semitism, opted for German identity, and were proud of their membership in the broader German cultural world.48 In addition, the German elites, like their Czech counterparts, sought to enroll lower-class German-speakers in their national struggle, and found nationalist gymnastics an effective vehicle for this outreach. Their efforts took on a new urgency in 1861, when the first municipal elections in ten years were held. Despite a curial system that weighted votes toward the wealthy elite, the Czech nationalist contingent won a resounding

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victory, which proved a turning point for German-speakers in the city: ‘It is not possible to overestimate this victory which in the long run had far more than local significance. It is possible to say that Prague became a forerunner for the fate of the German minority in Bohemia, which began to lose the political and cultural hegemony it had enjoyed up to now’.49 Seeking to offset these losses, the leaders of the Prague German community saw the Turnverein as the organization most likely to appeal to the German-speaking masses. However, compared to the creative excitement of the Sokol’s first year, the beginnings of the Prague Turnverein were far more subdued. As a club history recalled, ‘the first period of our club’s existence offers little of note’.50 Unlike its Czech counterpart, the Turnverein was not the headquarters of an exciting new venture, rather it was the latest addition to a network of clubs that stretched throughout German-speaking Central Europe, and whose traditions dated back fifty years. The modest uniforms and seriousness of purpose that had characterized German gymnastics since its founding in French-occupied Berlin stood in stark contrast to the flamboyant style of the Sokol, as one German observer later remarked in 1912: ‘Outwardly the colourful Slavic gymnastic movement, with its clamourous enthusiasm of a degree and expression nearly unattainable for Germans, and with its broad popular foundation, makes a strong contrast to our gymnastic movement, outwardly so plain and simple, promoting its gymnastic work and the great ideas of its founding era with restrained earnestness, and drawing strength from deep within for the welfare of the nation.’51 Jahn had given the gymnastic movement a variety of symbolic elements with which to express its German identity and promote the unification of the German lands. Drawing on this tradition, the decor of the Prague Turnverein featured likenesses of Goethe, Schiller, and Jahn, surrounded by the black-red-gold tricolour of the German national movement.52 Where the Prague Sokol was to organize funding drives for Slavic victims of the Balkan Wars in the 1870s, the Turnverein attempted to send an address to its brother association in Kiel during the Danish War of 1863, declaring: ‘Your struggle is our struggle – your victory is Germany’s victory! Hail Germany!’53 During the Franco-Prussian War, the Prague Turnverein took up a collection to aid the families of the fallen, and placed a limit on its public events and celebrations, viewing such activities as ‘not appropriate in this time of Germany’s distress and danger’.54 In addition, the club maintained contact with the larger German gymnastic world and hired instructors from the German Empire to lead its practice sessions.


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While proclaiming their national differences, the respective organizations nevertheless followed similar practices. Both of Prague’s gymnastic clubs adopted the Turnverein habit of undertaking excursions to the countryside. Yet, while Sokol marches to Czech-speaking villages in the surrounding countryside were grand public events featuring triumphal arches and brass bands, speeches by local dignitaries, and festivities in the town square, Turnverein outings were often booed by Czech-speaking villagers and eventually suspended altogether in 1886.55 Both clubs also undertook to legitimize their efforts with ritualistic enactments, following Jahn’s contention that festivals ‘are a human necessity, man recognizes more purely the spiritual rendered into a symbol, the transcendental penetrates the heart more deeply as a material realization’.56 Where Jahn’s festivals had been limited in size and geographic extent, the advent of modern forms of transportation ushered in an era of allGerman events, at which gymnasts from throughout German-speaking Central Europe exercised together in a display of physical and national solidarity.57 For example, at the 1861 Turnfest in Berlin, 4,500 gymnasts performed before more than 10,000 spectators in a ceremony that culminated with the laying of the foundation stone for a memorial to Jahn.58 Completed in 1872, the final monument was comprised of a statue of Jahn resting on a base of 130 stones sent in by clubs in Germany and abroad to symbolize the participation of the ‘whole nation’. The Prague Sokol dedicated a similar monument to the Hussite hero, Jan Žižka, in 1874. Set in Pˇribyslav Field, the site where he was believed to have fallen 450 years earlier, it was a large cone-shaped structure with a chalice at the top, set on a base of stones sent in from throughout the Czech lands by Sokol clubs and other organizations. The dedication ceremony brought together over fifty Sokol clubs, along with other national and craft organizations, to honour a religious warrior from the distant past who had become a symbol of modern Czech identity.59 Finally, each of the gymnastic clubs celebrated special occasions with public festivities, the most important of which was the ceremony for the trooping of the club’s colours, as one early twentieth-century account explained: ‘The club flag was a symbol of strength and of the ideals for which the club was founded. Therefore, without a flag, a club was not complete. The flag symbolized visually what the slogan signified conceptually. Everything that the club should be was encompassed in it.’60 Accordingly, the flags of Prague’s two gymnastic clubs respectively featured symbols specific to their national identity, such as the red and white colours of the Bohemian crown on the Sokol flag, and the black-red-gold tricolour of the German national movement on the Turnverein flag.61

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Despite their separate nationalist agendas, the elite leadership of both clubs moved in the same social circles and maintained a cordial relationship, which occasionally sparked criticism from rank-and-file members. For example, in the early years each club would send a delegation to the public ceremonies of its counterpart. Sokol leaders had to defend their presence at one Turnverein celebration by pointing out that the participation of Turnverein leaders at the Sokol flag ceremony had made it their ‘proper duty’ to reciprocate.62 The Sokol and the Turnverein were also present at the same public events in their early years, such as the 1863 funeral of the Czech mayor of Prague, František Pštross, although the Turner recorded that they were pelted with stones by the Czech crowd.63 Members of the Turnverein attended the funeral of Jindˇrich Fügner in 1865, while Tyrš himself led a Sokol delegation to the funeral of the Turnverein official, Wenzel Dreßler, in 1868.64 Indeed, although Sokol leaders demonstrated their loyalty to the empire in 1866 as war with Prussia loomed by proposing the creation of a gymnastic legion to serve alongside the regular army, once under occupation, gymnastic solidarity trumped national hostilities and gymnasts in the Prussian army were invited to demonstrate their prowess in the club’s new training hall.65

Conclusion: the consolidation of national separation The outcome of the Austro-Prussian War destroyed the dreams of Greater German unity which had inspired the great German gymnastic festivals of the 1860s and caused a crisis in the Turnverein movement, which was not overcome for several years. At the same time, the subsequent Ausgleich (Compromise) between Austria and Hungary in 1867 shattered Czech hopes for equality and weakened their national movement. The festival practices of the two gymnastic clubs in Prague reflected the varying fortunes of their ethnic communities at this time. While the Prague Turnverein occasionally sent delegations to gymnastic celebrations in other cities in the Habsburg Empire, it first participated in an all-German festival in 1885.66 The Sokol, on the other hand, experienced a revival in the 1880s, due in part to the more favourable atmosphere under the Taaffe government. As a result, in 1882, the newly confident Prague Sokol organized a gymnastic festival to celebrate its twentieth anniversary. Called a ‘Slet’, from the Czech word for a flocking of birds, this event brought together Sokol gymnasts from throughout the Habsburg lands to Prague for a display of Czech pride and solidarity. Like the grand Turnfeste, the event included the ceremonial greeting of foreign guests at the train stations, a march through the city by clubs


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in full regalia carrying their flags and led by leaders on horseback, a mass calisthenic display of hundreds of gymnasts performing in unison, and an evening of uplifting entertainment in full formal dress including declamations of patriotic poems, along with smaller dinners and more casual social events.67 The rise of a less tolerant, lower-class nationalism eroded the initially cordial relations between Prague’s two national gymnastic clubs and challenged the traditional liberalism of their leaders. In the German community, this trend took the form of völkisch ideology, a racist tendency which created a schism in the German gymnastic movement in 1887, when the Lower Austrian Province of the Deutsche Turnerschaft, the central organization of German gymnastics, voted to bar Jews from membership and other clubs followed.68 This ideology was especially disruptive in Prague, where Jews comprised an estimated one-third of the membership in the Turnverein and a völkisch contingent seceded, forming a separate ‘Aryan’ Turnverein in 1888.69 The liberal elites who led the Sokol came under a similar challenge at the end of the century from new clerical and socialist gymnastic clubs.70 In both instances, the apparent unity that had characterized the nascent national movements in the Bohemian Crownlands in mid-century shattered under the impact of new social and political forces. By World War I, Prague, never simply a German city, had become a Czech city with a German minority comprising 6 per cent of the population.71 As this overview of associational life has demonstrated, this had not been the case in mid-century, when the ethnic divide was porous and definitions of nationhood were still evolving. Aristocrats assumed the existence of a bilingual Bohemian nation, native Germanspeakers presided over Czech nationalist clubs, and Jews held places of honour in German society. This fluidity eroded over time, as national fault lines hardened into hostility and exclusionary policies defined identity in increasingly inflexible ways. Voluntary associations played a key role in this process of ethnic differentiation, both articulating and disseminating modern concepts of identity. From the instrumentalization of the Museum Society into a vehicle for Czech nationalism, to the symbolic references of nationalist gymnastics, clubs in the Bohemian capital played a central role in the phenomenon of nation-building in the conflicted heart of modern Europe. As such, they illustrate both the contingent aspects of identity formation and the potential contradictions that had to be overcome in order to consolidate the boundaries of national groupings.

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Notes 1. Z. Šolle, ‘Praha v období 1848–1918’, in: J. Janáˇcek (ed.), Dˇejiny Prahy (Prague, 1964), p. 45. 2. Ibid., pp. 452 and 500. These figures refer to the city and its suburbs, which were merged to form Greater Prague, the present-day city, after World War I. 3. See: E. Babejová, Fin-De-Siècle Pressburg: Conflict and Cultural Coexistence in Bratislava 1867–1914 (Boulder, 2003); R. Nemes, The Once and Future Budapest (DeKalb, 2005). 4. J. King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002), p. 20. 5. G.B. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival: Germans in Prague 1861–1914 (Princeton, 1981), p. 53. ˚ m: Úvodní slovo v 6. J. Pešek, ‘Od stˇredov˘ekých bratrstev k moderním spolku dvanácti bodech’, in: V. Ledvinka and J. Pešek (eds), Od stˇredovékých bratrstev k moderním spolku˚ m (Prague, 2000), p. 9; P.M. Judson, ‘ “Whether Race or Conviction Should be the Standard”: National Identity and Liberal Politics in nineteenth-century Austria’, Austrian History Yearbook 22 (1991), 76–95. 7. W. Hardtwig, ‘Strukturmerkmale und Entwicklungstendenzen des Vereinswesens in Deutschland 1789–1848’, and K. Tenfelde, ‘Die Entfaltung des Vereinswesens während der industriellen Revolution in Deutschland (1850–1873)’ in: O. Dann (ed.), Vereinswesen und bürgerliche Gesellschaft in Deutschland (Munich, 1984), pp. 11–50 and 55–114; see also the essays in: P. Urbanitsch and H. Stekl (eds), Kleinstadtbürgertum in der Habsburgermonarchie 1862–1914 (Vienna, 2000). 8. M. Lašt’ovka et al., Pražské spolky. Soupis pražských spolku˚ na základ˘e úˇredních evidencí z let 1895–1990 (Prague, 1998), p. vii. In 1856, there were 466 clubs in Bohemia; in 1867, 1,717; and in 1869, 2,651. By 1876, the total had grown to 4,476 (ibid., pp. xxxv–xxxvi). 9. P. Burian, ‘Das Vereinswesen in den böhmischen Ländern’, in: F. Seibt (ed.), Vereinswesen und Geschichtspflege in den böhmischen Ländern (Munich, 1986), pp. 39–51. 10. R.A. Krueger, ‘Mediating Progress in the Provinces: Central Authority, Local Elites, and Agrarian Societies in Bohemia and Moravia’, Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004), 49–79, here 71. 11. Scholars are now careful to emphasize that Czech culture was in no sense suppressed altogether, contrary to what nationalist historians long argued. See: J. Petrán ˇ and L. Petránová, ˇ ‘The White Mountain as a symbol in modern Czech history’, in: M. Teich (ed.), Bohemia in History (Cambridge, 1998), 143– ˇ ˇ 63; J. Rak, Bývali Cechové: Ceské historické mýty a stereotypy (Jinoˇcany, 1994), pp. 129–40; J.F. Zacek, ‘Czech National Consciousness in the Baroque Era’, in: History of European Ideas 16 (1993), 935–41. 12. K. Sklenáˇr, Obraz vlasti: Pˇríb˘eh Národního muzea (Prague-Litomyšl, 2001), p. 24. On the patriotism of the nobility, see R. Luft, ‘Nationale Utraquisten in Böhmen: Zur Problematik “nationaler Zwischenstellungen” am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in: M. Godé et al. (eds), Allemands, Juifs et Tchècques en Prague/Deutsche, Juden und Tschechen in Prag 1890–1924: Actes du colloque international de Montpellier 8–10 décembre 1994 (Montpellier, 1996), pp. 37–51. 13. H. Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence (Pittsburgh, 1993), p. 171.


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14. M. Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups Among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge, 1985). 15. M. Hroch, ‘The Social Composition of the Czech Patriots in Bohemia, 1827– 1848’, in: P. Brock and H.G. Skilling (eds), The Czech Renascence of the Nineteenth Century (Toronto, 1970), pp. 33–52. 16. J. Polišenský, ‘Historie, muzejnictví a Národní museum’, in: 150 let Národního muzea v Praze: Sborník pˇrisp˘evku˚ k jeho d˘ejinám a významu (Prague, 1968), pp. 7–13. 17. On Sternberg, see: Sklenáˇr, Obraz vlasti, pp. 46–50. 18. Krueger, ‘Mediating Progress’, here p. 67. 19. Sklenáˇr, Obraz vlasti, pp. 65–6. Although the original draft of Klebelsberg’s proposal was entitled ‘Aphorismen zum Entwurf des Plans eines NationalMuseums für Böhmen’, the term ‘National’ was not meant in an ethnic sense, rather was a neutral reference to the province. Sternberg later called it a ‘Vaterländisches Museum’ although both names were used interchangeably in the early years (ibid., pp. 61–2, and 79). 20. S.B. Kimball, ‘The Matice cˇeská, 1831–1861: The First Thirty Years of a Literary Foundation’, in: Brock and Skilling, The Czech Renascence, p. 53–73. 21. Josef Jungmann to Antonín Marek, quoted in: Sklenáˇr, Obraz vlasti, p. 95. 22. Ibid., p. 82. 23. František Palacký, memorandum of 14 May 1828, quoted in: Ibid., p. 121. 24. Palacký initially created the Matice to publish the first Czech-language encyclopedia, but work on the project was never completed. On controversies about the Slavic direction of the early Museum, see: K. Švehla, ‘Knihovna Národního muzea’, in: 150 let Národního muzea, here p. 41. 25. Kimball, ‘Matice cˇeská’, p. 54. 26. A.M. Drabek, ‘Matice cˇeska und Matice moravaská: Ihre Bedeutung für die kulturelle und nationale Entwicklung der tschechischen Gesellschaft im 19. Jahnhundert’, in: Seibt, Vereinswesen und Geschichtspflege, pp. 71–96. 27. Sklenáˇr, Obraz vlasti, p. 128. 28. The Czech nationalist attitude toward the Bohemian nobility is described in: ˇ Rak, Bývali Cechové, pp. 67–81. 29. Polišenský, ‘Historie, muzejnictví a Národní muzeum’, here, p. 12. 30. Šolle, ‘Praha v období 1848–1918’, here p. 464. 31. J. Šp˘et, ‘Kapitola z d˘ejin Spoleˇcnosti Národního muzea’, in: 150 let Národního muzea, p. 77. 32. Sklenáˇr, Obraz vlasti, pp. 283–4; B. Garver, The Young Czech Party 1874–1901 and the Emergence of a Multi-Party System (New Haven, 1978), p. 123. 33. Lašt’ovka, Pražské spolky, pp. ix–xx; Burian, ‘Vereinswesen’, pp. 41–3. 34. D. Düding, ‘Friedrich Ludwig Jahn und die Anfänge der deutschen Nationalbewegung’, in: H. Ueberhorst (ed.), Geschichte der Leibesübungen (Berlin, 1972–1982), Vol. 3/1, p. 232; G. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars Through the Third Reich (New York, 1975), pp. 127–36. 35. D. Langewiesche, ‘ “ für Volk und Vaterland kräftig zu würken ”. Zur politischen und gesellschaftlichen Rolle der Turner zwischen 1811 und 1871’, in: O. Grupe (ed.), Kulturgut oder Körperkult?. Sport und Sportwissenschaft im Wandel (Tübingen, 1990), pp. 22–61; D. Düding, ‘The Nineteenth-Century

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36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49.

50.

Different Paths to the Nation German Nationalist Movement as a Movement of Societies’, in: H. Schulze (ed.), Nation-Building in Central Europe (Leamington Spa, 1987), pp. 19–49. ˇ B. Soukupová, ‘Ceské a n˘emecké spolky v Praze v 60. až 80. letech 19. století: Soužítí a kulturní vým˘ena’, in: Pražané-jiní-druz-cizí, edited by the Institute for Ethnography and Folklore (Prague, 1992), pp. 10–18. The splitting of military veterans associations into separate Czech and German organizaˇ tions is described in: J. Pokorný, ‘Ceští veterání v užší a širší vlasti’, in: ˇ Z. Hojda and R. Prahl (eds.), Ceský lev a rakouský orel v 19. století/Böhmischer Löwe und osterreichischer Adler im 19. Jahrhundert (Prague, 1996), pp. 120–24. ˇ T.G. Masaryk, Ceská otázka: Snahy a tužby národního obrození (Prague, 1895), p. 104. For a more extensive discussion of Tyrš’ life, see: C.E. Nolte, The Sokol in the Czech Lands to 1914: Training for the Nation (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 25–38. F.L. Jahn and E. Eiselen, Die deutsche Turnkunst zur Einrichtung der Turnplätze (Berlin, 1816), p. 236. As one scholar argues: ‘Each act was also a founding act. Possibly this played a role in the initial attraction of “Czech culture” for those born as Germans. To enter the Czech world gave them the opportunity, through their individual efforts, to change the whole in a fundamental way, to go down in history for all times.’ See: V. Macura, Masarykovy boty a jiné semi(o)fejetony (Prague, 1993), p. 12. R. Tyršová, Jindˇrich Fügner: pam˘eti a vzpomínky na mého otce (Prague, 1927), part 1, p. 19. Fügner’s motives are explored further in: C.E. Nolte, ‘Choosing Czech Identity in Nineteenth-Century Prague: The Case of Jindˇrich Fügner’, Nationalities Papers 24 (1996), 51–62. See also, Luft, ‘Nationale Utraquisten in Böhmen’, here pp. 41–2. The club’s name was then officially changed to ‘Prague Gymnastic Club Sokol’ in 1864. Membership statistics are in: ‘Svaz Sokolstva slovanského’, in: V˘estník ˇ sokolský: List svazu Ceskslovanského Sokolstva (1910), pp. 103–7. See also: C.E. Nolte, ‘All for One! One for All! The Federation of Slavic Sokols and the Failure of Neo-Slavism’, in: P.M. Judson and M. Rozenblit (eds), Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (New York, 2005), 126–40. ˇ P. Cornej, Lipanské ozv˘eny (Prague, 1995), pp. 49–103; P. Heumos, ‘Krise und hussitisches Ritual’, in: Seibt, Vereinswesen und Geschichtspflege, pp. 109–22. ˇ M. Tyrš, ‘T˘elocvik v ohledu esthetickém’, Sokol: Casopis v˘enovaný zájmu˚ m t˘elocviˇcným 3 (1873), pp. 2–3 and 25–6. ˇ a N˘emci 1780–1918 (Prague, 1990), pp. 36, J. Kˇren, Konfliktní spoleˇcenství: Cesi 38, and 482. This criticism was levelled at the Prague contingent at a Congress of Germans from Bohemia held in Teplice in August 1848, because they had boycotted the elections to the Frankfurt Parliament. See: J. Havránek, ‘The Development of Czech Nationalism’, Austrian History Yearbook, 3/2 (1967), 223–60. On this issue, see Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, pp. 221–30. J. Novotný, ‘Kasino a pražské n˘emecké elity do první sv˘etové války’, in: O. Fejtová et al. (eds), Národnostní skupiny, menšiny a cizinci ve m˘estech: Praha; M˘esto správ a zpravodajství (Prague, 2001), pp. 135–6. Gedenkschrift des deutschen Turnvereines in Prag, 1862–1887 (Prague, 1887), p. 6.


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51. Franz Spina, ‘Aus dem Bildungs- und Wirtschaftsleben der Tschechen I: Das Sokolwesen’, Deutsche Arbeit 13 (1913–14), p. 354. 52. Gedenkschrift des Turnvereines, pp. 163–4. 53. Quoted in: E. Rychnovsky, Der deutsche Turnverein in Prag, 1862–1912 (Prague, 1912), p. 24. Police authorities stopped this message from being delivered. 54. Secretary’s Report of 1870, quoted in: Gedenkschrift des Turnvereines, p. 48. 55. Rychnovsky, Der deutsche Turnverein, p. 23. 56. F.L. Jahn, Deutsches Volkstum (Lübeck, 1810), p. 337. 57. On these festivals, see: H. Neumann, Deutsche Turnfeste: Spiegelbild der deutschen Turnbewegung (Bad Homburg, 1985); K. Zieschang, Vom Schützenfest zum Turnfest: Die Entstehung des Deutschen Turnfestes under besonderer Berücksichtigung des Einflusses vom F.L. Jahn (Ahrensburg, 1977). 58. H. Ueberhorst, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and His Time, 1778–1852 (Munich, 1978), p. 56. 59. On the impact of these celebrations, see Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses, pp. 47–72; P. Wittlich, ‘Socháˇrství’, in: E. Poche et al. (ed.), Praha národního probuzení (Prague, 1980), pp. 225–6; Z. Hojda and J. Pokorný, Pomníky a zapomníky (2nd edn, Prague-Litomyšl, 1997), pp. 16–18. 60. Z. Nejedlý, ‘D˘ejiny pražského Hlaholu, 1861–1911’, in: R. Lichtner (ed.), Památník zp˘eváckého spolku Hlaholu v Praze, vydaný na oslavu 50tileté ˇcinnosti, 1861–1911 (Prague, 1911), p. 18. 61. The Sokol flag is described by Kv˘etoslava Štursová, Prapory Sokola pražského (Prague, 1992), pp. 6–7. The Prague Turnverein introduced a new flag in 1864, the modest banner with tricolour being replaced by a more elaborate flag featuring the Bohemian lion on one side and the eagle of the German Confederation on the other (Gedenkschrift des Turnvereines, pp. 21–2). 62. ‘Jednatelské zprávy’ (16 October 1864), Památník vydaný na oslavu dvacetiletého trvání t˘elocviˇcné jednoty Sokola pražského (Prague, 1883), p. 88. 63. Gedenkschrift des Turnvereines, pp. 8–9; Rychnovsky, Der deutsche Turnverein, p. 23. 64. Dreßler was later praised as ‘one of the first to recognize the danger of Czech ambitions for the German community’ (Secretary’s Report of 1870, quoted in: Rychnovsky, Der deutsche Turnverein, p. 21). 65. ‘V dob˘e obsazení pruského’, in: Památník Sokola pražského, pp. 115–16. 66. Gedenkschrift des Turnvereines, 87. 67. The first Slet in 1882 featured 1,600 in the main parade and 720 in the gymnastic display. It is described in: F. Kožíšek and J. Müller, ‘Jubilejní slavnost Sokola Pražského r. 1882’, in: Památník Sokola pražského, pp. 138–42. 68. F. Hirth and A. Kießlich, Geschichte des Turnkreises Deutschösterreich (TeplitzSchönau, 1928), pp. 175–311; E. Mehl, ‘Deutsches Turnen, seine Vorläufer und seine Begleiter in den Länder der böhmischen Krone von den Anfängen bis 1918’, in: R. Jahn (ed.), Sudetendeutsches Turnertum (Frankfurt a.M., 1958), pp. 83–93. 69. The events in the Prague club are chronicled in: Rychnovsky, Der deutsche Turnverein, pp. 63–4, and Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, pp. 196–204, who also provides the estimate on Jewish membership (p. 178). 70. A socialist movement, called the Workers’ Gymnastic Clubs was established in 1898, and a clerical organization called ‘Orel’ (Eagle), which had close ties to the Catholic trade union movement, appeared in 1902. 71. Cohen, The Politics of Ethnic Survival, p. 272.

5 German, Austrian or ‘Salzburger’? National identities in Salzburg c.1830–70∗ Ewald Hiebl

Answers to the question as to how the term ‘identity’ can be most satisfactorily defined now fill countless volumes, but for our purposes a simple, practical definition must suffice. In what follows, ‘identity’ will be understood as a process whereby individuals and social groups – in this case, those within the Austrian province of Salzburg – perceive the nature of their existential and social situation and seek to create a stable system of values, which provide the foundation for the interpretation of their material and cultural environment. Identity can thus be defined as the ‘direct perception of one’s own place and continuity in time, and – related to this – the realisation that others also recognise this identity and continuity’.1 By means of communication and negotiation, it is possible for individual perceptions to coincide in such a way that generally accepted group identities are established. These collective identities may be shared by small groups in village communities, or may extend to large communities such as regions and nations. Influences from outside – such as descriptions by travellers, or interaction with others from outside the group – may be important for the process of identity formation, but only become relevant when they are reflected upon and given meaning by the individuals or groups concerned.2 ‘National identity’ may then be understood as one among several spatially defined levels of identity, such as those of the home-town or village, region, nation, Europe, and so on. The approach here will be to take national and regional identities as a form of identity which refers to regions and nations objectively, as concepts and spaces. In other words, neither nations nor regions possess identities in themselves; rather, individuals and groups relate to nations and regions, attribute identities to them, and then appropriate these identities for their own purposes.3 Such a distinction is important because it enables us to grasp 100

German, Austrian or ‘Salzburger’?

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more readily the fact that individuals and communities may possess more than one form of identity, which will be articulated more weakly or strongly according to changing contexts. This implies both that various forms of territorial identity can exist alongside each other, and that national identities can change, even though nations as social entities (what Miroslav Hroch calls ‘a large social group’) may be in existence over longer periods of time.4 As recent research contends, nations are not a constant feature of human history, contrary to what nineteenth-century national movements claimed. The modern significance of the nation in the wake of economic, social, technical and political changes from the eighteenth century onwards emerged from the reorientation accompanying integration into new, larger entities. The resulting social constructs were defined by a characteristic common to all members, that of belonging to one and the same nation.5 Nevertheless, what social scientists refer to as the constructed nature of nations should not blind us to the fact that the contemporary perspective was not one of ‘invention’ and ‘construction’, but used the language of ‘tradition’, ‘revival’, ‘re-awakening’, ‘re-discovery’ (e.g. of national myths), and so on.6 In other words, the idea of the nation could only achieve success when it had gained widespread acceptance among historical actors – at which point it may be said to move beyond the level of ‘invention’ to that of social reality. Once the nation became a social entity, whose members recognised themselves to be members of that entity, a series of rituals and symbols (including hymns, songs, and flags) were elaborated in order to establish and to re-affirm continually this emotionalised sense of identification and the existence of the nation as socially ‘real’.7 In examining such a process of identity formation in the Austrian province of Salzburg in the middle period of the nineteenth-century, this article will look in turn at three levels of identification – Salzburger (‘regional’), German (‘national’), and Austrian (‘state’) – and the different social practices and symbolic manifestations accompanying them. It will thus be possible to assess how these different levels related to one another, and how and why each took on changing meanings over time. In doing so, it must also be remembered that the concept of ‘nation’ itself possessed a variety of overlapping connotations in nineteenth-century Austria, of which four can be mentioned: first, the word ‘Nation’ could be directly linked to the notion of state citizenship, which encompassed all citizens within the territory of the state.8 Secondly, it might refer to a geographical area, describing a specific state territory. A third, ethnic definition then referred to language, customs

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and other traditions. Fourth, and lastly, the nation could take on a racial connotation, in which special emphasis was placed on one’s own nation within a presumed ethnic hierarchy.9 Generally speaking, we can see in Salzburg during the period 1830 and 1870 the start of a gradual shift in meaning from the first towards the latter definition, though this did not mean the latter (yet) had an exclusive monopoly on national definitions.

From independent Archbishopric to Austrian province: Salzburg c.1800–70 When considering the historical background of this region, it is essential at the outset to stress that Salzburg’s development was in one central respect different to that of the Habsburg Monarchy’s other alpine provinces. Where the latter had come into the possession of the Habsburg dynasty during the late middle ages, Salzburg was until 1803 an autonomous state within the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by an archbishop, who was subordinate only to the authority of the Emperor. After the secularisation of the Holy Roman Empire’s ecclesiastical territories in 1803, the province experienced several changes of rule (e.g. French administration from 1809 to 1810; Bavarian rule 1810–16), before the Archbishopric became a part of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1816.10 With this change in status, the city of Salzburg lost its function as home to the court of the Archbishop, and its diminished importance was further underlined when the province was incorporated into the crownland of ‘Upper Austria and Salzburg’, whose capital was Linz. This was perceived as a great humiliation in Salzburg and was an important feature of the province’s identity until after the revolutions of 1848–49. The subordination to a distant administration in Linz hindered Salzburg’s integration into the Habsburg Monarchy and vitalised links and sympathies with the province’s neighbouring states in Germany. Only in 1850 did Salzburg receive back a degree of self-government, when it was given the status of a separate crownland; ten years later, it was also granted a provincial assembly (Landtag).11 As a consequence of the territorial re-structuring during the Napoleonic wars, Salzburg had lost some of its territory to Bavaria and to another Austrian province, Tyrol. Notably, the loss of the Rupertigau, a fertile agrarian area, led to strong complaints, which reflected the difficult post-war situation. The combined effect of high tax contributions during the Napoleonic wars, the loss of external territorial possessions, and deteriorating trade relations (particularly in the important salt


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exporting sector) resulted in a severe economic and social crisis lasting until the 1830s, when a weak recovery began.12 However, it was not really until Salzburg was connected to the international railway network in 1860 that a decisive economic improvement came about.13 In terms of social structure, Salzburg in the nineteenth century was dominated by the agrarian sector, which involved over 60 per cent of the population in 1810 and still accounted for 51.8 per cent in 1890. In contrast to certain other alpine provinces, such as Tyrol, Styria or Carinthia, Salzburg was almost entirely a German-speaking crownland: even at the beginning of the twentieth century, no less than 99.7 per cent of the population gave German as their ‘language of everyday use’. In confessional terms, too, it was highly homogeneous, after tens of thousands of Protestants had been expelled from the Archbishopric in 1731.14 Hence, 99.9 per cent of the population was officially Roman Catholic in 1851, and this barely changed prior to World War I (in 1910, for example, 98.1 per cent of the population was registered as Roman Catholic).15 In contrast to other parts of the Habsburg Monarchy, therefore, ethnic or confessional ‘others’ were absent, in Salzburger society – a fact which may help account for the relative lack of scholarly interest in this region compared to the attention devoted to nationality conflicts elsewhere.16 It remains the case, however, that issues of German national identity have generally been less well researched in imperial Austria’s alpine provinces, and this is especially true for the early phase in the development of national movements. Such is also the case for Salzburg, aside from general overviews or shorter articles on this subject by Hanns Haas and Robert Hoffmann.17

Salzburger ‘provincial consciousness’ as a form of regional identity In looking at Salzburger ‘provincial consciousness’ (Landesbewußtsein) as the first of three levels of spatially-related identity, it can be argued that Salzburg generally lacked the kind of regional identity evident in provinces like Styria or Tyrol. In Tyrol, the experience of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had provoked strong resistance to the French and Bavarian ‘enemy’, and this struggle was subsequently mythologised during the nineteenth century as the key event in the master narrative of Tyrolean history.18 By contrast, Salzburg did not possess a comparable military tradition of local defence, nor was it successful enough to establish any long-lasting sense of identity. Even

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if local memories of heroes from the Napoleonic Wars, such as the militia major Anton Wallner or local defence commander Josef Struber, from the Pongau district, were vivid, there was no central figure who served as a focus for regional identification in the way that Andreas Hofer did in Tyrol. The province’s geographical diversity may certainly be considered a factor here, above all the separation between its southern, mountainous region, with its strong sense of local and valley-based consciousness, and the fertile agrarian region in the north, at the centre of which lay the town of Salzburg itself. Equally important was the fact that a sizeable proportion of provincial officials displayed a strong degree of sympathy with reformist Bavaria, with the result that the main opponents in the wars were not seen as ‘enemies’ by all sections of the population.19 Prior to the nineteenth century, the weak local nobility had never established an estates-based form of provincial consciousness. Nor had the authority of the sovereign Archbishops, who lacked the hereditary continuity of secular dynasties, proven effective in creating much in the way of a common ‘Salzburger’ identity. Attempts to ‘invent tradition’ (in the sense used by Eric Hobsbawm) transpired to be failures: for example, the resonance of a myth surrounding Saint Rupert, who supposedly arrived in Salzburg in 582 as the first missionary to central Europe,20 could not be sustained after 1803, when the Archbishopric was secularised; efforts by the conservative middle class to breathe new life into the myth during the nineteenth century were equally unsuccessful.21 Similarly, it did not prove possible to produce a coherent ‘Salzburgpatriotic’ myth or hero-figure after the province had achieved crownland status in 1850, although there was a new wave of interest in Salzburg and its history. Together with the degree of political autonomy achieved through the creation of the provincial Diet in 1861, the foundation in 1860 of a ‘Society for Salzburger Studies’ (Gesellschaft f ür Salzburger Landeskunde) signified an increased awareness of the region’s current and past status. Nevertheless, it must be stressed that this association had a clear political purpose, because it was primarily a vehicle for the liberal bourgeoisie to pursue its goal of social emancipation through education. But education went beyond simply commemorating Salzburg’s glorious history, as Franz Valentin Zillner, a doctor, amateur historian and the society’s first president, emphasised when stating that the new association’s members were more than ‘mere barrow-men for patriotic curiosities and plunder’.22 The social composition and goals of the Gesellschaft f ür Salzburger Landeskunde made it a typical example of


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nineteenth-century bourgeois associational culture, but one in which the fostering of regional consciousness was secondary to other aims. As such, the association exemplified in the Vormärz period. From the early 1830s, it is possible to discern in Salzburg social and political stirrings in the public sphere, which began to focus on a figure who mostly stood outside the religious tradition of the ecclesiastical principality: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The rediscovery of the genius loci, who had been virtually forgotten in his hometown since his death in 1791, combined a new self-awareness about Salzburg and its surrounding region with the conscious assertion of the local bourgeoisie’s status as a distinct social group. The subsequent idea to erect a memorial to Mozart stemmed from two writers resident in Salzburg, Julius Schilling and Sigmund von Koflern. In 1836, the president of the ‘Museum Society’, the most important bourgeois association in Salzburg in the Vormärz era, founded a ‘Committee for the Erection of a Mozart Statue’, thereby pushing the composer – who had of course left the town after an argument with his employer – to the forefront of public attention. At the same time, this action constituted a symbolic demand on the part of the urban bourgeoisie for more rights over the town’s administration vis-à-vis Austrian government officials. The Austrian authorities understood precisely the deeper meaning of the new initiative, and initially refused to give their consent to the erection of the statue. Hence, the project became a matter of political conflict, which eventually extended beyond the boundaries of the region. In particular, middle-class groups from the Habsburg Monarchy’s German-speaking provinces and other German states supported the monument project, making sufficient donations for the statue to be erected through private funding.23 Although the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand later joined the list of sponsors in September 1837 with a donation of 360 florins (fl.), this represented a minor amount compared to the 1,155.33 fl. collected in Darmstadt, the 1,000 fl. from Munich, or the 822.49 fl. from the Styrian capital of Graz.24 The Mozart statue was eventually unveiled during a ceremony held in September 1842, at which thousands of guests from throughout the German-speaking world participated. It constituted a significant innovation in the Habsburg Monarchy, because it was the first secular statue not to be erected to a monarch. In line with the typology proposed by Thomas Nipperdey, it can be interpreted both as a monument that sought to assert the town’s place in the wider German cultural nation, and as an important means for demonstrating the urban bourgeoisie’s

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new found self-confidence, which was centred on Salzburg.25 With this monument, Salzburg sought to portray itself as ‘Mozart’s town’, with its own particular identity, and no longer as a simple provincial town in Austria.26 Once the statue had been erected, the Austrian authorities had to decide how to react to this new symbol. On the one hand, they remained wary of the fact that it embodied a new political and cultural awareness among the bourgeoisie, was linked with liberalism and the national movement, and thus represented a potentially ‘revolutionary danger’. On the other hand, they sought to try and interpret this monument as part of an Austrian tradition, which was opposed to these dangerous offshoots of ‘progress’. The state sought to stress Mozart’s place within ‘Austrian culture’ and his strong links to the Habsburg lands. Crucially, the Salzburg bourgeoisie was concerned that the conflict did not escalate, and tried to avoid an open challenge to the authorities. The organising committee sought to ease tensions by making an explicit confession of faith in the Austrian monarchy in the form of a poem written by the patriotic writer and archbishop, Ladislaus Pyrker: And ho! How did the grace of heaven, Present [Austria] with you, the chosen sons, So dear and worthy in the lovely realm of sounds? Your Mozart, Haydn, and on and on, Before all the world, to your adornment! And let us praise Schubert, too, For his magical tunes. Cheers, three cheers, And long live Austria.27 In this way, Mozart could be integrated into a continuous Austrian cultural tradition, at least for the duration of the official celebration. In contrast to the early phase of the monument project, he was no longer purely a symbol for newly awakened middle-class self-confidence. A significant factor in this respect was the notable role played by the Archbishop of Salzburg, Cardinal Friedrich Johann Schwarzenberg, in the construction of the emerging Mozart-cult.28 Schwarzenberg founded the ‘Cathedral Music Association and Mozarteum’ in 1841, and was not against the erection of the Mozart statue, although it was unpopular among the rural, conservative milieu. The place on the main town square where the statue stood had long been occupied by a statue of Saint Michael, who was widely loved among the Catholic population.


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The fact that the holy man had to give way to Mozart was seen as a kind of heresy by many, as the Viennese publicist Matthias Koch remarked: ‘When the monument to Mozart was erected in Salzburg, the people from the countryside said that now the end of the world must be nigh and that the anti-Christ has come. For what stands in the scriptures has already happened, namely that false idols have been set up, and worshipped in pagan fashion, and that people have gone in procession to them.’29 It was precisely such resentments among large sections of the conservative elites and rural population that ultimately prevented this bourgeois-fostered awareness of the city of Salzburg from developing into a regional symbol common to the whole province. This further suggests that a sense of identity focused on the province of Salzburg continued to find difficulty in transcending the limits evident in the Vormärz period. Around mid-century, provincial consciousness was still restricted to certain social groups – above all the urban bourgeoisie and the clergy, because the nobility and civil servants were traditionally weak forces in regional society. By way of contrast, the well-off sections of the peasantry in Salzburg’s upland areas displayed considerable sympathy with a region such as Tyrol, with its regional – or, as contemporaries also referred to it, ‘national’ – traditions.30 This situation did not change substantially until new social, economic and political networks were established within the crownland of Salzburg from the 1850s onwards. It was only with the development of agrarian cooperatives and political involvement in local and regional government that a real sense of belonging to Salzburg started to develop among the conservative, rural milieu. Prior to 1848, however, it is noticeable that the federalist tendencies evident in other parts of the Habsburg Monarchy such as Bohemia, Carinthia or Tyrol were not present in Salzburg.31

‘For Emperor and Fatherland’? Salzburg’s weak sense of Austrian identity The second level of identity to be examined relates to Salzburg’s position as a crownland within the Austrian half of the Habsburg Monarchy. Generally speaking, the identification with ‘Austria’ was not primarily political in nature, but consisted of respect for the Austrian authorities and had the figure of the Emperor as its main reference point.32 Encapsulated by the motto ‘For Emperor and Fatherland’, this Austrian patriotism was based above all on the rural population and the petty bourgeoisie in provincial towns, and enjoyed considerable support from

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the clergy too. In addition, the link between Catholicism and Austrian patriotism was evident in attempts by the Catholic elites to counter the appeal of national movements within the Habsburg Monarchy by propagating a common Catholic solidarity, which was meant to encompass the entire Empire.33 To begin with, it is necessary to recognise that the circumstances of war and economic crisis under which Salzburg had become part of the Habsburg Monarchy at the start of the nineteenth century led many to feel that the region had simply been annexed by Austria. Until at least 1848–49, this greatly hindered the population’s integration into the Habsburg state and represented a significant obstacle to be overcome. Steps were made in this direction by the encouragement of an emotional attachment to the Emperor; imperial patronage of charitable institutions, provincial associations and other ‘patriotic’ activities; school education; and regular visits by members of the imperial house. For instance, several members of the Spanish branch of the dynasty made lengthy stays in Salzburg between 1836 and 1841. Above all, it was the permanent presence of the Dowager Empress Carolina Augusta in the town from 1835 onwards that gave a decisive impulse, with her patronage of the municipal museum being the outstanding example in this respect.34 On balance, however, these efforts bound the population more to the dynasty and the person of the Emperor than the Austrian state as such – even if this did not necessarily make Salzburg untypical of the Monarchy as a whole.35 The renewal of court ceremony in the neo-absolutist era led to an intensification of such activities, as the birthday of Emperor Francis Joseph developed into an official state ceremony, accompanied by gunsalutes and a Te Deum mass attended by local dignitaries.36 Yet, these state-sponsored events need to be contrasted with other activities, which indicate a lower level of support for Austrian patriotism. For example, a voluntary collection carried out in the 1860s for an altar in the new Votive Church in Vienna (being built in thanksgiving for the Emperor’s survival of an assassination attempt in 1853) produced the rather miserable sum of 86 florins. Similarly, a collection for a memorial in Trieste to Francis Joseph’s brother Maximilian, the Emperor of Mexico who had been executed in 1867, had to be content with just a handful of donations.37 In the first instance, long-standing resentments towards Vienna must be held partly responsible, while in the second case, an absence of identification with a wider imperial vision is evident. Again, however, it must be acknowledged that Salzburg was perhaps following a general pattern here, because the Votive Church ended up being paid for mainly


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by the dynasty rather than the ‘spontaneous’ contributions of a grateful population.38 Generally speaking, therefore, the appeal of ‘Austrian identity’ in Salzburg had its limits, though there was certainly a greater sense of ‘Austrianness’ at the end of the 1860s than had been the case in the Vormärz period. In this respect, the impact of the war of 1866 was influential, as it led to a re-orientation in the province’s relationship to Germany. With strong support from the petty bourgeoisie, women and military veterans, patriotic associations were founded, such as the ‘Military Patriotic Women’s Aid Association’ in Salzburg, which cared for wounded soldiers and prisoners-of-war – an engagement which was duly recognised by the Austrian authorities through the bestowal of public honours. The two military veterans’ associations extant in the town of Salzburg in 1870 defined their aims as fulfilling charitable purposes and supporting ‘soldiers who risked their life for Emperor and Fatherland’, and they were especially active during state festivities.39 Thus, a focus was provided for explicitly Austrian patriotic activities and the expression of loyalty to the monarchy, in a way that offered an alternative to the otherwise dominant German national movement of the 1860s.

The ‘German town’ of Salzburg and the Salzburger as a ‘German tribe’ A more significant element than Austrian consciousness in the identity discourse in Salzburg was the German dimension, a legacy of the region having been an integral part of the Holy Roman Empire without any formal ties to Austria. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Salzburg was often described simply as a ‘German’ town. In particular, the use of the term, the ‘German Rome’ (which was also used for other towns in the German-speaking world) should be understood as an expression of national sentiment and not merely architectural reminiscence. Equally, however, this phrase indicates the complexity of the identity discourse under consideration: on the one hand, the phrase asserted Salzburg’s links to Germany and its past importance under the old Empire, while on the other hand the reference to Rome invoked both the native tradition of an ecclesiastical principality and a ‘foreign’ element, present in Salzburg’s Italianate, baroque sacral architecture – associations which were both unwelcome to convinced national-liberals.40 The Austrian National Encylopedia of 1836 defined Salzburg in seemingly self-evident fashion as ‘the most picturesque town in Germany’, a view which coincided with the town’s own view of itself as well

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as that of other outsiders.41 For example, John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Southern Germany (1840) came to a similar conclusion: ‘Salzburg is allowed by common consent to be the most beautiful spot in Germany.’42 In practice, these apologias for the town’s great beauties stood in stark contrast to contemporary reality, because Salzburg in the Vormärz was an economically backward and antiquated city – a ‘beggars’ village with empty palaces’, as a petition by town burghers to the Emperor Francis wrote in November 1816.43 Be that as it may, the notion of Salzburg’s being part of Germany was commonly held, and was symbolically underlined by the fact that the archbishop of Salzburg held the title of ‘Primus Germaniae’. If such references showed the town’s continuing connection to the rest of the German-speaking world, one should be careful in evaluating their significance. On the one hand, it is clear that they embodied a firm sense of identification with Germany, especially given that the term was not used to differentiate between different ethnic groups in Salzburg (in contrast to ‘German’ and ‘Italian’ in Tyrol, or ‘German’ and ‘Czech’ in Bohemia). On the other hand, it should be remembered that Germany was not yet defined in ethnic-national terms, while the absence of ethnic ‘others’ in Salzburg meant that there was not a strong national movement with a developing programme of demands prior to the 1840s. Moreover, given that much of the Habsburg Monarchy’s western territories were part of the German Confederation, the identification with ‘Germanhood’ (Deutschtum) was not necessarily in conflict with an Austrian identity. Finally, it is important to differentiate between the various phases and forms of ‘German nationalism’. The early German national movement in Salzburg understood the concept of nation in the sense of the French Revolution. In other words, it was not the principle of ethnic inclusion or exclusion that predominated, but the emancipatory goal of political participation by the people, formed by citizens enjoying equal rights. The events during the revolution of 1848 can be seen as something of a turning point in this respect, after which the citizenship-based model of the nation began to give way to a new, ethnically defined concept. 1848 symbolised, in Salzburg too, the heterogeneous nature of national identity in the middle of the nineteenth century. The revolution not only posed the theoretical question as to how the region fitted into state-building projects in Central Europe, but it also required concrete responses, in the form of participation by deputies from Salzburg at the German national assembly in Frankfurt and the Austrian ‘Constituent Parliament’ in Vienna (and later, Kremsier).44 One appeal, addressed to


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all Salzburgers regarding the elections to the Frankfurt assembly, urged that ‘honourable, free-spirited men’ be elected, and that no form of ‘imperial proxy’ be given them. Their ‘sole accreditation’ should be ‘genuine, German disposition’, so that they would represent Salzburg’s interests at this gathering of ‘all the German tribes’. Those interests were then summarised as follows: ‘it is one united, free German Fatherland which we all want, and which every genuine German has up until now held as a pious wish in his innermost heart – this is now to become a reality. A new, internally and externally strong Germany will rise up, fresh and powerful, on the old territory’.45 That was a declaration in favour of a greater German (großdeutsch) form of state in Germany, but one that did not question either the existence of the Habsburg Monarchy or the Austrian Emperor’s leading role in Germany. Indeed, the urban bourgeoisie had already expressed loyalty to ‘their’ Emperor at a celebratory mass held in Salzburg cathedral in March, while ‘respectable citizens’ viewed press freedom and the prospect of a constitution as being something ‘that the Emperor had granted us’, not as the achievement of the revolution.46 In this way, the year 1848 saw two declarations being made simultaneously in Salzburg: one in favour of a ‘united, free German Fatherland’, the other in official support of the Habsburg Monarchy. Hence, the declaration for the German nation was still compatible with support for the multiethnic Habsburg monarchy. Nevertheless, here too there was a clear difference between the city of Salzburg, which was dominated by liberals in 1848, and the rural parts of the province. The liberal town distanced itself from the idea of an Austrian Empire not involved with the other German states. The großdeutsch solution, with Austria taking a leading role in a German federal state, was strongly preferred.47 In the countryside, expressions of loyalty to the Emperor and the Habsburg dynasty dominated, meaning that allegiance to a more limited Austrian identity was most visible among this section of the population. During the second half of the nineteenth century, German national sentiment in Salzburg shifted its focus onto the nation as a cultural concept, and there was widespread support for the großdeutsch solution to the German question. In the first instance, this was certainly a reflection of the ethnic homogeneity within this almost exclusively Germanspeaking crownland. In contrast to other provinces in the Habsburg Monarchy, nearly all immigrants into the area came from predominantly German-speaking regions, mainly Upper Austria, Carinthia and Tyrol. The few immigrants from other ethnic groups, such as the Czechs,

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were quickly assimilated.48 More particularly, it was the urban bourgeoisie which provided the social base for the construction of a German identity in Salzburg. The gradual democratization of Austrian politics after 1860 allowed the propertied and educated classes to take part in local, regional and national politics. This increasingly involved the middle class in a supra-regional network of political communication, which was dominated by a common German consciousness. In the towns and larger localities, it was the educated bourgeoisie (Bildungsbürgertum) that was most engaged in public life. In the more rural parts of the province, what Hanns Haas has termed an ‘intermediate milieu’ (Zwischenmilieu) – a group of property-owning rural elites, who combined agrarian production with market-oriented commercial activities, and were thus socially situated between ordinary peasant-farmers and the middle-class – took part in politics and supported the Germannational movement.49 After 1848, the German national movement in Salzburg created latent political tensions within the Austrian state, above all when it advocated geopolitical changes in a großdeutsch direction. The government drew a vague and very unclear boundary, beyond which legally allowed German nationalism turned into ‘traitorous abandonment’ of the state. More and more symbols in public spaces took on a German-national connotation. Commemoration of Mozart was now integrated into a großdeutsch context in 1856, when the composer’s 100th birthday was celebrated, albeit in a fairly modest manner given the prevailing political restrictions. That was to change in the first half of the 1860s, when the cultural expression of German national identity in the public sphere was particularly visible, and Salzburg became a centre of German national festivities, many of which culminated in a torchlight procession to the Mozart monument. As well as the changed attitude of the Austrian government, which was now seeking to play a more assertive role in German affairs, very important here was Salzburg’s connection to the international railway network. It was now possible to cover long distances in a relatively short period of time and Salzburg assumed an important function as an Austrian border-town. Around this time, a number of civic associations oriented themselves increasingly towards Germany and joined in large-scale events which involved participants from throughout the German Confederation.50 Thus, in 1861, 57 members of the Liedertafel, a choral society, attended a großdeutsch singing festival in Nuremberg. The national-political aspect to the event was already displayed before their departure, when the group marched to the rail station carrying


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a black–red–golden German flag alongside the Salzburg town banner. Interestingly, even the local military band joined in the mood, when sending them off with a rendition of a song called ‘German Fatherland’51 – a clear indication of the benign stance that the authorities took towards such manifestations at this time. One of the highlights in the activities of the German national movement took place a year later, when in 1862 the 7th ‘German Artists’ Festival’ took place in Salzburg. Once again, a torch-light procession to the Mozart statue combined the expression of German national sentiment with middle-class consciousness. At the head of the festival procession rode ‘three marshals on horse-back, with black-feathered German hats’, followed by a Bavarian military band. The black-red-gold flags of the local gymnastic association and choral society expressed the event’s German national political orientation, while the presence of a military band from the Austrian army ensured that the occasion was also of a ‘loyal’ nature. The municipal banner of Salzburg and flags from districts and valleys throughout the province were intended to symbolise the whole of Salzburg’s participation at this großdeutsch manifestation, which sought a coming together of the German states under Austrian leadership.52 As Robert Hoffmann has pointed out, the highpoint of this ‘flowering of German festival culture’ occurred in 1863, when no less than eight elaborately staged festivities took place.53 Thereafter, the movement seems to have lost its momentum slightly, in tune with similar activities in other provinces and the stalling of Austrian reform efforts in the German Confederation.54 Though a großdeutsch solution to the German Question was politically no longer feasible after the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866, it was still possible for Salzburgers to declare their membership of the German cultural nation. The idea of ‘the nation’ understood in a cultural and ethnic sense is increasingly visible from the 1860s onwards, as a means of stating both the German claim to a leading role in the Habsburg Monarchy and of defending ‘German Salzburg’ from its alleged enemies, the Habsburg Monarchy’s Slavic populations. Simultaneous with the gradual emancipation of other ethnic groups in the Empire, German nationalism moved from a civic concept of the nation, which included all citizens, towards an ethnically – and later racially – defined understanding. It was no longer cooperation with Germans from other regions that stood at the centre of their concerns, but the exclusion of romance and slavic language groups. Inclusion, as a democratic attempt to form a German nation, was replaced by exclusion, a defence of the privileged status of Germans within the Habsburg Monarchy.55

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While Königgrätz may have ended attempts at an alternative political re-ordering of Central Europe, it was still possible to assert an identity as a ‘German’ province or as ‘German’ towns and villages. Thus, the above-mentioned local historian, Franz Valentin Zillner, wrote around 1870 a cultural history of Salzburg, whose constant refrain reflected a ‘territorially limited expression of German nationality (Volksthum)’. One critic of Zillner’s historical interpretation rightly asked where this left the role of ‘Romanist’ influences, who were ‘not somehow the pariahs of the original Bavarian (baivarisch) cultural nation’, but ‘on the contrary, the most powerful ferment for civilisation and the culture of this country’. Likewise, this author indicated that the Slavic settlement of the Lungau, the southernmost part of Salzburg province, in the sixth-seventh centuries clashed with the picture of a purely ‘German Salzburg’.56 The anonymous critic offered ‘the higher unity’ to be found ‘in the actions of the Church’ as an alternative framework for a Salzburger identity, instead of looking for it ‘in an actually imprecise, vague “German nationality” ’.57 The Catholic tradition of the ecclesiastical principality was counterposed to that of a German Salzburg, and with the mobilisation of political Catholicism in the region, this cleavage in regional society became increasingly visible.58 Around 1880, the traditional form of German liberalism in Salzburg was replaced at the political level by German nationalism. The economic crisis of the 1870s made the achievement of a universal middle-class society appear unrealistic, and liberals increasingly employed national rhetoric as a means of uniting its increasingly fissiparous and socially divided constituency. At the same time, the old style of ‘notable politics’ was giving way from the 1880s onwards to modern mass parties, which also meant that more radical tendencies were encouraged in the attempt towards the mobilisation of a mass basis.59 The increasingly vociferous German nationalism now became unmistakably ethnically defined, as well as growing ever more antisemitic. Along with the Styrian capital of Graz, Salzburg developed into a major centre of racially-based German nationalism in the Austrian provinces. Associations played an important role in supporting this political message, particularly the socalled ‘defence associations’ (Schutzvereine), which sought to ‘protect’ the German population in multilingual areas from the ‘dangers’ facing them.60 Nevertheless, the process of defining identities linked to territory would remain potentially ambivalent, even around 1900. For example, in a small town such as Hallein, situated approximately 20 kilometres south of Salzburg, celebrations for the 600th anniversary of the civic


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guard showed the old and new middle class attempting to demonstrate public unity by focusing on the town, its history, the person of the Emperor and the Habsburg Monarchy. One poem specially written for the occasion celebrated both the ‘old, honourable little town’ and the Austrian Monarchy: ‘And finally, the “May God Protect!” [the national anthem] beseeches our mighty sovereign!’61 What is noticeable about such an alignment with the Habsburg state is that the German Nationals formed the dominant political camp in the town, suggesting that it was still possible for the middle class to shift the emphasis of identity according to context – to celebrate the emperor and the multiethnic monarchy in official ceremonies, while singing German nationalist songs and holding antisemitic speeches in associational life or the private sphere.62

Conclusion After the Prince-Archbishopric had lost its independence at the start of the nineteenth century, Salzburg initially lacked a widely accepted form of regional identity. In the Vormärz period, a nascent Austrian identity, focused on the Emperor and Habsburg dynasty, competed with an identity as a German town, and to a much lesser extent, as a German province. In the 1840s, the emerging social and political emancipation of the urban bourgeoise was accompanied by the invention of a specific, primarily municipal Salzburger identity, which used the commemoration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as its main reference point. In the 1850s and early 1860s, a German national movement gained in importance, above all in Salzburg itself and other towns and market centres. Thereafter, German nationalism shifted its emphasis away from an emancipatory, civic conception of the nation towards an ethnically and later racially based definition of an exclusionary, cultural nation. What is also noticeable is how articulations of local, regional and national identity were closely related to specific historical circumstances and contexts, and became embedded in social practices and individual actions in such a way that they became ‘customary’ in the sense used by Pierre Bourdieu.63 Equally, these identities showed both durability and flexibility, with the articulation of national identity changing rapidly if circumstances demanded or allowed it. Thus, where they had previously been in potential tension, German nationalism and a declaration of faith in the Austrian Emperor and Monarchy showed their compatibility in the 1860s, as words spoken in 1861 by the head of the

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provincial government (Landeshauptmann), Joseph Ritter Freiherr von Weiß, suggested: ‘Gathered around our monarch’s throne’, Salzburg bore ‘the banner of the entire monarchy, hand in hand with the other peoples of the empire’. But, the people of Salzburg stood equally ‘in loyal, insoluble alliance with our German brothers, to whom we belong by dint of origin and over a thousand years of history’.64 In this respect, it is useful to apply Miroslav Hroch’s analysis of the nation-building process in Central Europe at the regional level too. Hroch argues that nation-building in this part of Europe proceeded in a different way from that in countries such as France, England or the Netherlands, because the construction of a state-based nation did not coincide with that of cultural nations. Hroch concludes that the Czechs, Slovenes and other ethnic groups were unable to build independent nations because, firstly, the nations were not politically autonomous; secondly, they did not possess a social elite, which could shape the nation-building process; and thirdly, they lacked cultural traditions from the feudal period, which were bound up with the respective national languages.65 Transferring such a scheme to the case-study of Salzburg, it can be argued that Hroch’s first point, relating to the lack of political autonomy, played a specific role in shaping regional and national identities in the province. It was not just the loss of its function as home to a princely court at the start of the nineteenth century, but also its ‘degradation’ to the status of an administrative district within the crownland of Upper Austria and Salzburg between 1816 and 1850 that restricted local and regional elites’ room for action. In other words, the absence of separate crownland status led individuals and social groups to focus more narrowly on town, village and valley, or to orient themselves towards the state and dynasty on the one hand, and Germany on the other – but not, or only weakly, towards the region of Salzburg. Related to this political situation, part cause, part consequence, was the relative weakness of the regional elites compared to other provinces, which effectively meant that there was no social leadership for the construction of a regional identity that could incorporate those of the diverse towns, villages, and valley communities. Where the urban bourgeoise found in Mozart a symbol for their political, cultural and social programme, the rural, village-level elites preferred to look towards the Emperor and the Austrian Monarchy. The growing sense of Germanness was, however, for the most part compatible with identification with Austria – although, for the German Nationals, this was an Austria that was to be dominated by German-speakers.


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Perhaps even more interesting is a consideration of Hroch’s third point, relating to national traditions and language in the case of German-speakers within Austria. For, on close inspection, it is difficult to discern what might be construed as a longstanding ‘German’ tradition in Salzburg. As elsewhere in Europe, we are really dealing with localised traditions, and these were only identity-forming in particular regions or sub-regions, which in any case often possessed local dialects as well. In practice, it is only possible to speak of a ‘German cultural tradition’, which started to unify the province internally and to connect it externally with other German-speaking regions, during the nineteenth century. The often different regional traditions started to come together on the back of the German national movement, through the writing of common histories or even by reference to recent developments, such as German Classicism – as countless festivities in honour of Schiller throughout the province during the nineteenth century indicate.66 In this sense, a completely new German national feeling was ‘invented’, which grew up alongside local traditions, sometimes complementing and extending, sometimes suppressing them. Ultimately, therefore, the case of Salzburg indicates that, in contrast to other areas in Germany and Austria for which historians have argued that a sense of national identity was achieved through the region, German and Austrian identities were here established despite a comparatively weak sense of regional identity.

Notes ∗

Translated from the German by Laurence Cole 1. E. H. Erikson, Identität und Lebenszyklus (6th edn, Frankfurt a.M., 1990), p. 10. 2. See, above all: K. Haußer, ‘Zur subjektiven Bedeutsamkeit und Bedeutung von Heimat als regionaler Identität’, Zeitschrift für Kultur- und Bildungswissenschaften der Universität Flensburg 10 (2000), 17–23; id., Identitätspsychologie (Berlin, 1995); H.P. Frey and K. Haußer (eds), Identitätsforschung. Entwicklungen in Psychologie und Soziologie (Stuttgart, 1987); G.H. Mead, Geist, Identität und Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a.M., 1973). 3. P. Weichhart, Raumbezogene Identität: Bausteine zu einer Theorie räumlichsozialer Kognition und Identifikation (Stuttgart, 1990). 4. M. Hroch, ‘From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation: The Nation-building Process in Europe’, in: G. Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (New York–London, 1996), pp. 78–97. 5. E. Hobsbawm, Nationen und Nationalismus: Mythos und Realität seit 1780 (Frankfurt a.M., 2004), p. 13; E. Gellner, Nationalismus und Moderne (Berlin, 1991), p. 39. On the economic dimension of nationalism, see: M. Hroch,

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

Different Paths to the Nation Das Europa der Nationen: Die moderne Nationsbildung im europäischen Vergleich (Göttingen, 2005), pp. 88–98. E. Balibar, ‘Die Nation-Form: Geschichte und Ideologie’, in: E. Balibar and I.Wallerstein (eds), Rasse – Klasse – Nation: Ambivalente Identitäten (Hamburg, 1990), pp. 107–30, here p. 107 ff. B. Anderson, Die Erfindung der Nation: Zur Karriere eines folgenreichen Konzepts (Frankfurt a.M., 1996). On Austria generally, see: E. Bruckmüller, Österreichbewußtsein im Wandel: Idenität und Selbstverständnis in den 90er Jahren (Vienna, 1994). For a full discussion, see: E. Wangermann, ‘Das Leitbild des Citoyens’, in: G. Hauch and M. Mesner (eds), Vom Reich der Freiheit : Liberalismus. Republik. Demokratie 1848–1998 (Vienna, 1999), pp. 19–30. E. Hiebl, ‘Die nationale Zurichtung des Bürgers: Aspekte zu Ethnizität und Nation in der Revolution von 1848’, in: Hauch and Mesner (eds), Vom, Reich der Freiheit , pp. 85–114, here pp. 85–7. G. Ammerer and A.S. Weiß (eds.), Die Säkularisation Salzburgs 1803: Voraussetzungen – Ereignisse – Folgen. Protokoll der Salzburger Tagung vom 19–21 Juni 2003 (Frankfurt aM, 2005). P. Putzer, ‘Salzburgs rechtliche Stellung im Staatsverband der Habsburgermonarchie’, in: H. Dopsch and H. Spatzenegger (eds), Geschichte Salzburgs: Stadt und Land, Band II: Neuzeit und Zeitgeschichte, 2. Teil (Salzburg, 1988), pp. 1023–56. On the economically important salt-producing sector, see: T. Hellmuth and E. Hiebl, ‘Zeit des Umbruchs. Salzproduktion und Salzarbeiterschaft im 19. Jahrhundert’, in: Salz. Katalog der Salzburger Landesausstellung 1994 (Salzburg, 1994), pp. 248–65, here pp. 257–59. J. Wysocki, ‘Die Wirtschaft Salzburgs im 19. Jahrhundert’, in: H. Dopsch and H. Spatzenegger (eds), Geschichte Salzburgs, Band II, 4. Teil (Salzburg, 1991), pp. 2713–42. G. Emrich, Die Emigration der Salzburger Protestanten 1731–1732: Reichsrechtliche und konfessionspolitische Aspekte (Münster, 2002). K. Klein, ‘Bevölkerung und Siedlung’, in: Dopsch and Spatzenegger (eds), Geschichte Salzburgs II/2, pp. 1314–23. For overviews, see: G. Stourzh, ‘Die Gleichberechtigung der Volksstämme als Verfassungsprinzip 1848–1918’, and R.A. Kann, ‘Zur Problematik der Nationalitätenfrage in der Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918’, in: A. Wandruszka and P. Urbanitsch (eds), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918 band III. Die Völker des Reiches, 2. Teilband (Vienna, 1980), pp. 975–1206 and 1304–38; E. Bruckmüller, Nation Österreich: Kulturelles Bewußtsein und gesellschaftlichpolitische Prozesse (Vienna, 1996). H. Haas, ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Vormärz, Revolution und Neoabsolutismus’, id., ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Vom Liberalismus zum Deutschnationalismus’, and id., ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Nationalbewußtsein, Patriotismus und Krieg’, in: Dopsch and Spatzenegger (eds), Geschichte Salzburgs II/2, pp. 661–717, 833–900 and 991–1022; R. Hoffmann, ‘Die Stadt Salzburg in Vormärz und Neoabsolutismus’, in: Dopsch and Spatzenegger (eds), Geschichte Salzburgs II/4, pp. 2241–80; H. Dopsch and R. Hoffmann, Geschichte der Stadt Salzburg (Salzburg–Munich, 1996); H. Haas, ‘Bilder vom Heimatland Salzburg’,


18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

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in: R. Kriechbaumer (ed.), Liebe auf dem zweiten Blick. Landes- und Österreichbewußtsein nach 1945 (Vienna; 1998), pp. 149–201; R. Hoffmann, Mythos Salzburg: Bilder einer Stadt (Salzburg, 2002). L. Cole, ‘Ein Held für wen? Andreas-Hofer-Denkmäler in Tirol im 19. Jahrhundert’, in: Stefan Riesenfellner (ed.), Steinernes Bewußtsein I: Die öffentliche Repräsentation staatlicher und nationaler Identität Österreichs in seinen Denkmälern (Vienna, 1998), pp. 31–61. F. Ortner, ‘Vom Kurfürstentum zum Wiener Kongress – Salzburg 1803–1816’, in: Dopsch and Spatzenegger (eds), Geschichte Salzburgs II/2, pp. 601–11. Already in the early eighteenth century, scholars calculated the correct date of Rupert’s arrival in Salzburg to be the year 696, although this was only generally accepted more than a hundred years later. See: J. E. Ritter von KochSternfeld, Begründungen zur ältesten Profan- und Kirchengeschichte von Bayern und Österreich aus den neuen und neuesten Verhandlungen über das wahre Zeitalter und die Wirksamkeit des heil. Rupert, mit dem Direktorium zur einschlägigen Literatur und ihrer Quellen (Regensburg, 1854), pp. xix. Haas, Bilder vom Heimatland Salzburg, here pp. 156–9. F.V. Zillner, ‘Ein kurzes Vorwort zur Gründung der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde’, in: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde 1 (1861), pp. 1–19. Hoffmann, ‘Die Stadt Salzburg in Vormärz und Neoabsolutismus’, p. 2262; Dopsch and Hoffmann, Geschichte der Stadt Salzburg, p. 425; R. Angermüller, ‘Die Errichtung des Salzburger Mozart-Denkmals’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft 26 (1971), 429–34. R. Angermüller, Das Salzburger Mozart-Denkmal: Eine Dokumentation (bis 1845) zur 150-Jahre-Enthüllungsfeier (Salzburg, 1992), p. 46 ff. T. Nipperdey, ‘Nationalidee und Nationaldenkmal in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift 206 (1968), 529–85. Hoffmann, Mythos Salzburg, pp. 47–56. ‘Und ha, wie hat, so lieb und werth/Im holden Reich der Töne, Die Huld des Himmels dir bescheert/die auserwählten Söhne?/Dein Mozart, Haydn, für und für/Vor aller Welt zur Zierde dir!/Auch laßt uns Schubert preisen/Ob seiner Zauberweisen./Hoch, Österreich, hoch,/Es lebe hoch!’. Cited after: Hoffmann, Mythos Salzburg, p. 52. S. Falk-Veits, ‘Friedrich Fürst zu Schwarzenberg (1836–1850). Säule der Kirche im Vormärz’, in: P.F. Kramml and A.S. Weis, Lebensbilder Salzburger Erzbischöfe aus zwölf Jahrhunderten. 1200 Jahre Erzbistum Salzburg (Salzburg, 1998), pp. 203–20. M. Koch, Reise in Oberösterreich und Salzburg auf der Route von Linz nach Salzburg, Gastein und Ischl (Vienna, 1846), p. 181. Haas, ‘Bilder vom Heimatland Salzburg’, pp. 153–4. Haas, ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Nationalbewußtsein, Patriotismus und Krieg’, p. 992. On Austrian identity generally, see: Bruckmüller, Nation Österreich; G. Bischof and A. Pelinka (eds), Austrian Historical Memory and National Identity (New Brunswick, 1997). Haas, ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Nationalbewußtsein, Patriotismus und Krieg’, here p. 994. Hoffmann, ‘Die Stadt Salzburg in Vormärz und Neoabsolutismus’, p. 2244.

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35. On this, see Daniel Unowsky, The Pomp and Politics of Patriotism. Imperial Celebrations in Habsburg Austria, 1848–1918 (West Lafayette, 2005). 36. D.L. Unowsky, ‘Reasserting Empire. Habsburg imperial celebrations after the Revolutions of 1848–1949’, in: M. Bucur and N.M. Wingfield (eds), Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present (West Lafayette, 2001), pp. 13–45; A. Blöchl, ‘Die Kaisergedenktage’, in: E. Brix and H. Stekl (eds), Der Kampf um das Gedächtnis: Öffentliche Gedenktage in Mitteleuropa (Vienna, 1997), pp. 117–44. 37. Hoffmann, ‘Die Stadt Salzburg in Vormärz und Neoabsolutismus’, p. 996. 38. M. Kowarik, Das Attentat Johann Libényis auf Kaiser Franz Joseph 1853 und die Gründung der Votivkirche: eine Studie aus der Ära des österreichischen Neoabsolutismus (PhD, Vienna, 1976). 39. H. Haas, ‘Salzburger Vereinskultur im Hochliberalismus (1860–1870)’, in: H. Dopsch (ed.), Vom Stadtrecht zur Bürgerbeteiligung. Festschrift 700 Jahre Stadtrecht von Salzburg (Salzburg, 1987), pp. 174–98, here p. 193. 40. Hoffmann, Mythos Salzburg, pp. 36–45. 41. Cited after: R. Höllbacher, Landschaft und Stadt als entwicklungsgeschichtliche Paradigmen – der Wandel der Rezeption vom Ende des 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (PhD, Salzburg, 1990), p. 92. 42. Cited after: Hoffmann, Mythos Salzburg, p. 28. 43. Cited after: Haas, ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Vormärz, Revolution und Neoabsolutismus’, here p. 676. 44. Kann, ‘Zur Problematik der Nationalitätenfrage’, here p. 1311; G. Stourzh, ‘Die Gleichberechtigung der Volksstämme’, p. 985 ff. 45. Salzburger Zeitung, 21. 4. 1848, Beilage. 46. Haas, ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Vormärz, Revolution und Neoabsolutismus’, here p. 693; see also: F. Spatenka, Salzburg im Revolutionsjahr 1848 (Salzburg, 1991). 47. Kann, ‘Zur Problematik der Nationalitätenfrage’, p. 1311. 48. Klein, ‘Bevölkerung und Siedlung’, p. 1317. 49. H. Haas, ‘Postmeister, Wirt, Kramer, Brauer, Müller und Wundarzt. Tragerschichten und Organisationsformen des Liberalismus. Das Salzburger Beispiel – vom frühen Konstitutionalismus bis zum Kulturkampf’, in: E. Bruckmüller et al. (eds), Bürgertum in der Habsburgermonarchie (Vienna, 1990), pp. 257–73. 50. Haas, ‘Salzburger Vereinskultur im Hochliberalismus’, pp. 183–7. 51. H. Haas, ‘Die liberale Vorherrschaft’, in: R. Wilflinger and P.M. Lipburger (eds), Vom Stadtrecht zur Bürgerbeteiligung: Ausstellungskatalog 700 Jahre Stadtrecht (Salzburg, 1987), pp. 126–53, here p. 138. 52. R. Hoffmann, ‘Bürgerliche Kommunikationsstrategien zu Beginn der liberalen Ära: das Beispiel Salzburg’, in H. Stekl et al. (eds), ‘Durch Arbeit, Besitz, Wissen und Gerechtigkeit’: Bürgertum in der Habsburgermonarchie 2 (Vienna, 1992), pp. 317–36. 53. Ibid., p. 326. 54. Compare: L. Cole, ‘Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland’. Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols 1860–1914 (Frankfurt a.M.–New York, 2000), pp. 129–34. 55. Haas, ‘Bilder vom Heimatland Salzburg’, pp. 165–7.


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56. On this, see: F. Moosleitner, ‘Die Merowingerzeit’, in: H. Dopsch and H. Spatzenegger (eds), Geschichte Salzburgs. Stadt und Land I/2 (Salzburg, 1983), pp. 105–20. 57. Einige Bedenken zur salzburgischen Culturgeschichte des Herrn Dr. Med. Fr. V. Zillner (Salzburg, 1872), pp. 9 ff. 58. R. Klieber, Politischer Katholizismus in der Provinz. Salzburgs Christlichsoziale in der Parteienlandschaft Alt-Österreichs (Vienna–Salzburg, 1994). 59. P. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor, 1996); L. Höbelt, Kornblume und Kaiseradler: Die deutschfreiheitlichen Parteien Altösterreichs 1882–1918 (Vienna–Munich, 1993). 60. On this, see: Haas, ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Vom Liberalismus zum Deutschnationalismus’, pp. 833–900; H. Zettelbauer, ‘Die Liebe sei Euer Heldentum’: Geschlecht und Nation in völkischen Vereinen der Habsburgermonarchie (Frankfurt aM–New York, 2005). 61. Volksfreund, 15.9.1900. 62. E. Hiebl, Soziale Orientierung und politische Partizipation: Bürger und Arbeiter im Hallein der Jahrhundertwende (PhD, Salzburg 1997), pp. 72–5; T. Hellmuth and E. Hiebl, ‘Hallein – Bürgertum einer Salinenstadt’, in: P. Urbanitsch and H. Stekl (ed.), Kleinstadtbürgertum in der Habsburgermonarchie 1862–1914: Bürgertum in der Habsburgermonarchie IX (Vienna, 2000), pp. 257–306. 63. P. Bourdieu, Die feinen Unterschiede. Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft (10th edn, Frankfurt a.M., 1998), pp. 277–86; P. Bourdieu, Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen (6th edn, Frankfurt a.M., 1997), pp. 125–58. 64. Cited after Haas, ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Nationalbewußtsein, Patriotismus und Krieg’, here p. 993. 65. M. Hroch, ‘Das Bürgertum in den nationalen Bewegungen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Ein europäischer Vergleich’, in: J. Kocka (ed.), Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich, Band III: Verbürgerlichung, Recht und Politik (Göttingen, 1995), pp. 197–215. 66. In 1869, for example, a Zweigverein der Schiller-Stiftung (Branch Association of the Schiller Foundation) was founded in Salzburg. Compare: Haas, ‘Salzburger Vereinskultur im Hochliberalismus’, p. 186 ff.; Haas, ‘Salzburg in der Habsburgermonarchie. Vom Liberalismus zum Deutschnationalismus’, p. 857; Hiebl, Soziale Orientierung, p. 195.

6 Searching for a Role: Austrian Rule, National Perspectives and Memories of the ‘Serenissima’ in Venice, 1848–66∗ Eva Cecchinato

Introduction: the aftermath of the Serenissima’s fall Pride and frustration: these are the two characteristics that emerge most strongly from reading Venezia e le sue lagune (Venice and its lagoons), a massive two-volume work produced on the occasion of the IX Congress of Italian scientists, which took place in the city of Venice in the autumn of 1847. The work constituted an impressive monument to Venetian history and identity, with political aspects assuming unusual prominence. Put together by individuals who saw themselves as a potential ruling class, the two volumes contained a set of implicit demands and set out an ambitious vision of the city’s future.1 This initiative came on the eve of the Venetian revolution of 1848–49, towards the end of what is commonly referred to as the second ‘Austrian domination’ of Venetia, which had begun in 1815. From the fall of the Republic of St Mark – the Serenissima – in 1797, Venice and its provinces had undergone a major crisis, involving political dismemberment and a reappraisal of its economic role. The experience of Austrian (the ‘first domination’, from 1797 to 1806) and then French rule led to an exacerbation of trends already obvious during the last phases of the aristocratic Republic.2 Renewed rule from Vienna was unable to affect this negative trend of economic decline and social crisis in any positive direction, or, above all, to achieve consensus among the most enterprising sections of the population regarding its attempts at reform and modernisation. In addition to the deteriorating political situation over the short term, the 1847 Congress must therefore be seen from a long term perspective, as 122

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well as within the context of the city’s outspoken reluctance to tolerate a fate of decline and marginality. At the same time, the history of Venice in this period should be viewed in connection to a renewed interest in the phenomenon of the Italian Risorgimento, as historians have sought to reflect more fully on the constitutive components and diffusion of national discourse.3 In looking at the Risorgimento from a microhistorical perspective, however, the picture remains rather patchy. For example, as Simonetta Soldani has remarked of the recent 150th anniversary of the 1848 revolutions, commemorations of these events tended to produce a series of local initiatives, but without leading to any profound impulses towards new historical research.4 With regard to the area under consideration here, the last decade has witnessed greater interest in Venice and Venetia under the first and second periods of Austrian rule, following on from the authoritative study by Paul Ginsborg on the revolutionary period itself.5 A significant example of this trend is David Laven’s study of Venice and Venetia during the two decades from the Congress of Vienna to the death of the Austrian Emperor, Francis I, in 1835.6 Rather than being a detailed study of political developments, the book concentrates on specific elements of the Habsburg administration of the province, discussing how Venetia fitted into the Austrian Empire and how Vienna dealt with the legacy of Napoleonic rule. Laven draws our attention to a hitherto neglected period, and argues that developments after 1815 did not inevitably lead to the later dissent against Vienna and the separation of Venetia from Habsburg rule. While Laven suggests that, compared to Lombardy or other parts of the Italian peninsula, Venetia was characterised by its ‘passivity’ in the period 1815–35, Eurigio Tonetti’s research highlights further aspects of the Habsburg regime.7 Tonetti examines the administrative and representative institutions in Venetia during the Restoration era with respect to how far they were able to guarantee a measure of autonomous and ‘democratic’ space. More than Laven does, Tonetti emphasises the relative inefficiency of Austrian government and the heavy pressures placed on local society. The representative bodies (‘congregations’) were purely consultative in character and there were considerable tensions between Vienna and the Venetian notables, especially over fiscal matters. Above all, Tonetti’s work confirms the incapacity of the Austrian administrative and representative system in Venetia to absorb the emerging new classes; instead, it continued to be the expression of landowning interests. As Michele Gottardi has indicated, it is thus in the rigidity of the Austrian system that the reasons are to be found for the choice made

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by the region’s most energetic cultural, economic and political forces to place in question the legitimacy of Habsburg power.8 Paying close attention to the different positions articulated in Venetian society, this article traces key developments in the political relationship between Venice and the Austrian Empire. The irreparable break between Austria and vast sections of society can indeed be located primarily in the period after 1835, when the intereaction between local elements and the wider dynamics of economic crisis, governmental stagnation, and the political choices exercised by the Kingdom of Piedmont determined a radical outcome to the problems facing Venice and its surrounding territory (the Terraferma). Yet, if this seems to imply a basic opposition in national terms, close analysis of the Venetian case reveals that here too a differentiated picture of the Italian Risorgimento needs to be drawn. In the first place, what is striking about the public discourse under consideration is how much it is initially focused on Venice and its territories. In other words, the opposition between Venice and the Habsburg state was expressed in terms of a local, municipalist identity too. The revolution of 1848–49 would then definitively join invocations of the former republic to a national perspective. For this reason, particular attention will be paid here to the subsequent period of the so-called ‘third Austrian domination’ from 1849 to 1866, a phase that has received relatively little study.9 At the same time, it is necessary to emphasise that a defining element in the expression of Venetian identity was adherence to the notion of republicanism – a republicanism drawing above all on memories of the Serenissima, but infused for some with democratic elements based on the Jacobin model of the 1790s. While this republican identity established a clear sense of difference from the Habsburg Monarchy, it also shaped the contours of Venetians’ sense of Italian identity and simultaneously created opposition to the vision of Italy propagated by Piedmont and its supporters. The limited prominence given to this aspect of public discourse is evidence both of the ambivalent, contradictory nature of the republican experience in Venice, and of the predominantly moderate, traditional key in which this episode has been re-read and narrated over subsequent decades.10

Towards the revolution: Venice’s search for a role To begin with, let us return to the Congress of 1847. The most significant contributions to Venezia e le sue lagune are undoubtedly those by the historian and archivist, Agostino Sagredo, and the lawyer, Daniele


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Manin, which deal respectively with the city’s political and civil history and Venetian jurisprudence. The historical reconstruction offered by Daniele Manin – the future leader of the revolution – anticipates some of the demands made in the famous petition of December 1847.11 Overall, the two volumes of Venezia e le sue lagune display a self-awareness that, on the one hand, fits in very well with the idea of ‘legal struggle’, but on the other hand is certainly not unrelated to future revolutionary developments. The pride and frustration mentioned above appear in a variety of ways. The first of these comes in the presentation of an ‘almost complete catalogue of those men of science and letters who at the present time bring most honour to the city’.12 Likewise, it is shown in the effort to outline the fundamental traits of an age-old legacy of political and civil knowledge, and of expertise in government, although this is done without reference to the so-called ‘black legend’ of a decadent Venice, and without the kind of apologias for the Serenissima that long proved popular after the latter’s demise.13 The creeping sense of frustration is then implicit in the work’s denunciation of the persistent political and social under-representation of groups who felt themselves worthy of greater consideration.14 At the same time, demands for reform are placed in a dialectical relationship with the city’s past. In the case of Daniele Manin’s contribution, for example, the author highlights – albeit while stretching the meaning at times – the guarantees given to the accused under Venetian law (and reinforced through the public nature of trials under the former Republic).15 In addition to the two pieces already mentioned, Venezia e le sue lagune offered further opportunities for translating the reconstruction of the past into an implicit accusation of the present. This is particularly true, for instance, of the emphasis placed by Giovanni Tomasoni on the significance of Venice’s geographical position and ancient commercial traditions in determining the city’s destiny.16 Ever since the first origins of Venice, Tomasoni claims, environmental and anthropological characteristics favoured the development of trade and, consequently, manufacturing and industrial activities. Not even a decisive transformation in the European and global situation could justify the currently drastic restriction of Venice’s role, because this equates to a distortion of nature. The author’s lengthy contribution on the economy then identifies two prerequisites for the realisation of the city’s great potential: firstly, the construction of the railway link from Milan to Venice, concluded in 1846; and secondly, free-port status, which had been granted to the city and to some areas of the surrounding estuary after

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1830. The latter especially was considered a key issue later on, after its temporary, ‘punitive’ withdrawal in the wake of the 1848–49 revolution, and formed the basis for repeated demands by administrative bodies and representatives of the economic elite, as well as being the subject of several publications.17 Significantly, Tomasoni concludes by resorting to a declaration that had been made by Napoleon to reassure Venice’s citizens about the city’s future. As a legitimising argument, this was considered all the more reliable because it assumed important ties to the German-speaking world: Before steam was used to power ships and vehicles, before the Malamocco dyke was built, before access – with incredible speed – to the lagoons, through the Alps and up to the shores of Lake Constance, or to other parts of Germany, was even thought possible, Napoleon had dictated the following words: ‘Venice is the best located city and commercial port of all. All the goods from Constantinople and from the East arrive there by the shortest route, which is the Adriatic. Hence they are distributed as far as Turin on the Po, and throughout Germany . Nature made Venice the link between the trading routes of the East, of Italy, of Southern Germany’.18 Above all, it is in the pages of Venezia e le sue lagune devoted to political history and law that there is articulated most clearly the search for a more active role for the city and leading social groups in particular. Within the space of a few months, the political context, the government’s rigid attitude, and the increasingly radical choices made by key individuals turned these desires for active participation in a process of modernisation and constitutional reform into concrete demands for autonomy and self-government.19 As Agostino Sagredo argued in his contribution to the two volumes, the ‘mutual trust’ between rulers and ruled, which he believed encapsulated one of the best features of the inheritance left by the Serenissima, did not properly exist under Habsburg rule because of the implicit threat of force. Sagredo stated that, formerly, there was ‘no army stationed in the city’ and ‘ no military court’, before continuing: During public celebrations, or solemn functions, when the Doge, the senate, the great council stood before the people, no arms or armed men were ever to be seen. The only arms were the love of the people, that mutual trust between ruled and rulers, which is a solid basis for governments, for which an infantryman of the magistrates with his


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red cap bearing a medal with the effigy of Saint Mark, was sufficient to control and lead the whole people.20 The revolutionary regime born on 23 March 1848 then used the history and memory of the Serenissima as a form of patrimony that could be drawn on to re-awaken the republican spirit. In other words, the legacy of the old Venetian state was exploited in order to mobilise the various strata of the population in a liberal and national direction.

The revolution of 1848–49 Without underestimating the liberal and democratic aspects of the regime led by Daniele Manin, which introduced freedom of religion, the press and opinion, as well as universal male suffrage, there is no doubt that it is not comparable to our current idea of a republican political system; nor can it really be equated with the Mazzinian model. If one wished to establish a correspondence between the Venetian experience of 1848–49 and the etymological roots of the term ‘republic’, one could highlight how the revolutionary regime intended popular consent, or at least, some form of direct relationship with the masses, to be one of the main foundations for its legitimacy. Nevertheless, Manin’s republic represented an experience that was politically less radical than that of the Roman republic of 1849, which is generally considered to be the most energetic and consistent republican experiment during the Risorgimento (even if individuals and groups promoting such ideas were active in Venice too). Between March and June 1848, the revolutionary unrest in the Venetian provinces died out, as they were militarily re-conquered by Austria. Venice, on the other hand, was only re-occupied in August 1849, after a long and hard siege. With the exception of its brief fusion with Piedmont in July–August 1848, the lagoon city was ruled for 17 months by a republican regime, supported by local forces and liberal groups coming from elsewhere in Italy, where the revolutions were already defeated. Given the seminal research on 1848–49 in Venetia and Venice by Paul Ginsborg and Adolfo Bernardello, it is not necessary here to provide a systematic treatment of events and the focus can therefore be placed on certain key themes.21 During the months of war and revolution, the Venetian Republic’s search for, and definition of, a role took on a predominantly political tone. Different expectations and plans were laid out, firstly for the mainland territories freed from Austrian rule, but soon reduced

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to the city of Venice alone. At the same time, the changing political landscape in Italy and Europe, which was shaken almost everywhere by revolution or strong pressures for reform, could influence the choice in favour of one political line over another. This might imply, on the one hand, adherence to a model which transcended the local and ‘national’ context. On the other hand, the dynamics of events in Northern Italy and the Habsburg Monarchy could alter the power relationships inside the basically ‘liberal’ alliances that had assumed power across Italy in 1848–9. On a practical level, this situation had direct consequences with regard to whether the new regime could count on military forces or armed help from outside the city. For example, it was not by chance that a sharp dispute arose between Venice and the mainland over the prospect of tying the future of revolutionary Venetia to Savoy-ruled Piedmont. In this respect, it is hard to separate political implications from purely military ones, because it is not always easy to determine whether the decisive element in the province’s more favourable stance towards Piedmont derived from pressing defence needs or a conservative attitude among the leaders of the revolution on the Terraferma, who were politically less advanced than their counterparts in Venice itself. During the revolutionary period in Italy, a number of places embodied alternatives to the monarchical, moderate leadership around which a united Italy subsequently arose. The insurrectionary ‘Five Days’ in Milan and the Roman republic are often referred to as typical examples of such a tendency, but closer inspection shows that the longest-lasting example of anti-monarchical and anti-Savoy rule can be found in the Venetian revolution of 1848–49 (notwithstanding the already mentioned interlude of July–August 1848). In the first few weeks of the spring of 1848, in a climate of almost miraculously triumphant revolution, Venetia and Venice represented an important prize to be won for democrats and moderates. However, it was precisely the political polyvalence of the republican form which created both internal frictions within the city and worries in mainland Venetia. The latter was afraid of being placed again in a subordinate position vis-à-vis its old ruler, Venice, the former dominating power (‘Dominante’). Equally, the provincial towns were – in the revolutionary phase – often led by liberal-moderate groups who were wary of the republican form per se. It was only the short duration of the revolution on the Terraferma that forcibly interrupted this disagreement, which otherwise had no obvious or simple solution. In this sense, social and ideological orientations could directly determine national-political choices, especially when the leaders of the


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revolution were faced with popular demands. The mixture of old republican traditions and new prospects for the future had ensured that the revolution achieved resonance among the people. Memories of the Serenissima could also work as a symbol for popular political participation, while the new formulations of republican language continued to focus on the initial, widespread demands for civil rights and economic justice. During the revolution, groups inspired by thinkers such as SaintSimon and Fourier were active in Venice. A flourishing periodical press (around one hundred journals appeared in 1848–49) criticised Manin’s line ‘from the left’, and in some cases expressed faith in Mazzini’s ideals. Moreover, the fact that the length of Venice’s revolutionary experience was without parallel in Italy meant that the city became a gathering point for republicans and revolutionaries from elsewhere, and the activities of the predominantly Mazzinian National Circle and the popular Circles in Castello and Cannaregio are emblematic from this point of view.22 The open social and ideological conflict between the leaders of the republican government in Venice and popular political forces meant that the other side of the coin to persistent resistance to rule by the House of Savoy was the constant attention devoted to what was happening in France. Particularly for Manin, events in Paris became an important reference point, in good times and bad. Alongside the assertion of Venetian interests against Austria, this international dimension became intertwined with Italian national discourse. Paul Ginsborg has in fact shown how, during 1848–49, the gradual evolution of Manin’s social vision was influenced by the more conservative direction taken after the events of June 1848 in Paris, when the military intervened against the popular revolt.23 Moreover, the Venetian leaders – who were the first in Italy resolutely to ask for support from Paris – relied right up to the end on the possibility of a life-saving intervention from France as a way of rescuing the besieged city. Their moderate stance made them prefer such an alliance to closer links with either the Roman Republic or revolutionary Tuscany. Yet, the position adopted by the French Second Republic, which intervened in Rome against Mazzini and Garibaldi, rendered implausible any likelihood of a direct intervention in favour of the liberal and national cause in Venice. The fact that the leader and symbolic head of the 1848–49 revolution in Venice chose France as a point of reference tells us much about the nature of the republican ideal by which he meant to shape his revolution. Manin’s intellectual and cultural background derived much more from the Enlightenment and the ideals initially expoused

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in France in 1789, rather than the subsequent political and social radicalisation evident there and elsewhere.24 Moreover, the focus of his political actions on the republican ideal implied a break with Austria, but did not create instinctive sympathies with Piedmont. And the moderation in social terms likewise created distance from more radical governments elsewhere in Italy. Thus, the Italian ‘national’ movement in Venetia represented in the first instance a striving for independence from ‘foreign’ rule and for new political rights, yet it stood apart from both moderate-monarchical and Mazzinian-republican visions of ‘Italy’.

The ‘third Austrian domination’, 1849–66 The extraordinary length and severity of the revolutionary experience in Venice had significant repercussions for political attitudes after the return of Austria. The economically disastrous and culturally traumatic effects of 1848–49, combined with Vienna’s punitive policies towards the re-conquered territories, brought about a political retreat among the groups who had followed Manin. While the Venetian mainland was plagued by cases of banditry, which prompted strong repressive action by the authorities,25 the capital city underwent a period of serious decline. This was caused, at least to some extent, by the withdrawal of free-port status, which was only re-introduced in July 1851. If economical and political weakness made those who had previously demanded reforms potentially more malleable, enforced exile and emigration caused by the generally difficult circumstances deprived the city further still of dynamic economic and social forces. ‘Deprived of its most representative figures’, states Alvise Zorzi, ‘the social fabric of protest, dissent, [and] conspiracy’ was reduced to a few ‘elements from the petty bourgeoisie of shop-keepers and office workers’.26 While it seems clear that supporters of the Venetian revolution remained irrevocably alienated from Habsburg rule, it is particularly interesting – in the context of reactions to the revolutionary experience – to follow briefly the evolution of the relationship between the Austrian government and the Venetian clergy, who possessed a certain amount of influence. From August 1849, a prominent stand was taken by Jacopo Monico, patriarch of Venice from 1827 to 1851, who had already made his voice heard during the revolutionary period, calling for strong limitations on press freedom, and also contesting the involvement of Jews and Greek-Orthodox Christians in education and parts of the ministerial machinery.27 As has recently been pointed out, Monico ‘was convinced that the Austrian monarchy – although not without its


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shortcomings, amongst which the limitations and constraints imposed by Josephist policies stood out – was more able than other governments to guarantee the defence of Catholicism and its role as the foundation for civilised society’.28 Although he had not shared the patriotic demands of Manin’s republic, Monico had not spoken out against it, because it was the nominated government. Monico maintained this stance so long as the latter ‘appeared respectful towards the Catholic Church, but he adopted a critical position against all those measures which he thought overstepped the line into the remits of religion and of morality, or which sometimes touched upon the Catholic Church’s sphere of action (even if only indirectly), reduced (often drastically) the social privileges it had enjoyed under the previous political regime, or damaged directly its material goods’.29 Moreover, the distance between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the revolutionary regime had grown progressively larger after April 1848, when Pope Pius IX had made his so-called ‘about-turn’ regarding the wave of constitutional and other reforms sweeping through Italy. Repeated attacks launched by the Venetian press against the Pontiff only exacerbated the situation (and were a major reason for Monico’s hostility towards unlimited press freedom).30 The final deterioration in the relationship between the Venetian Church and the republican government was symbolised by the storming on 3 August 1849 of the Patriarch’s palace, which had become a rallying point for those sections of the city in favour of surrender.31 With Austria’s return, the church leaders sought to capitalise upon their traditionalist and anti-liberal stance by presenting themselves as the implacable bulwark of social order and the political status quo.32 From this position of strength, the clergy aimed to erode the bases of Josephist jurisdiction and worked towards the goals embodied in the Concordat between Austria and the Holy See, signed in 1855. Nonetheless, the concessions made by Vienna were never enough, given the increasingly intransigent attitude adopted by Church leaders in Venice, in line with the progressive rigidity of Pius IX’s position (as later expressed in the Syllabus of 1864).33 The liberal wing of the clergy, by contrast, had already been weakened by the events of 1848–49 and was finally defeated by the trials at Mantua in the early 1850s. Thus, the real discriminating factor in practice was no longer one of being proAustrian or not, but acceptance or rejection of the Pontiff’s position and claims to temporal power.34 The different positions towards Austrian rule were superimposed on, and intertwined with, the deeper clash between liberal and doctrinaire Catholicism. In official pronouncements

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and the directives issued by the Church leadership, the intransigent interpretation of Roman Catholicism was distinctly predominant, which made a genuine ‘marriage between Throne and Altar’ in Austrian Venetia unfeasible.35 After 1849, it is not therefore possible to speak of solid consent to rule by Vienna, but rather of a contingent convergence with the interests of some segments of certain social groups. However, even this fragile and unstable support was undermined by a feeling that Austria was increasingly unable either to ensure economic prosperity or to guarantee the social order and rigid cultural conservatism.36 In any case, quite apart from the conspiratorial networks present in Venetia and the patriotic committees working in exile, anti-Austrian opposition from professional and entrepreneurial classes was growing in strength, fed by persistent economic difficulties and the relative backwardness of Venetia compared to other areas of Northern Italy, which was allegedly being accentuated by inadequate and inflexible Austrian policies. After the armistice of Villafranca in July 1859, the secession of Lombardy from the Habsburg Monarchy and the birth of the Kingdom of Italy in 1860–61, the feeling that the relationship between Venetia and Vienna was effectively redundant undoubtedly increased. Yet, it is important to emphasise that this sentiment had already become widespread prior to the ‘Second War of Independence’, as a ‘nationalisation’ of identity occurred in the 1850s in a way that had not happened before 1848. Such, for instance, was the implicit leitmotiv running through the various issues of a Venetian periodical, L’Età presente (‘The present Age’). This was a weekly publication, which – for the brief period of its existence between 1858–59 – represented the only alternative to the hegemony of the Gazzetta Uffiziale di Venezia and put forward various demands of a liberal and constitutional nature. The short and troubled life of L’Età presente imitated that of its predecessor, Il Lombardo–Veneto, which had tried to follow a more audacious path at an even less favourable historical juncture – that of 1850–51, when Venice was under occupation and martial law.37 Frequently suspended by the Austrian authorities because of its political stance, it also met with the disapproval of the Venetian clergy because of its liberal attitude and support for the Piedmontese government’s ecclesiastical reforms. In particular, Il Lombardo–Veneto had stood out for its strong ideological position and readiness to draw lessons from the experience of 1848–49, as the opening article from the first issue symbolically expressed:


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The first needs of a people moving on the path to civilization are guaranteed equality of rights and protection of those freedoms which have been promised or granted. We shall always bear in mind the respect of nationality promised by the edict of 4th March [1848] To support equality of rights, to defend legal freedom, to encourage the nation on the path to moral and material progress, to examine and defend the real needs of the kingdom : – here is our aim. And we have chosen the name shown at the top of our periodical, so that, by removing from it any idea of municipalism, it may gather and unite behind it all the live forces of Lombardy and Venice. May it make Milan shake the hand of its sister, still queen of the Adriatic despite being widowed of its ancient sea, [and] may it enable the enjoyment of a national life for that people for whom thirty years of moral compression, falsified education and excessive protection have dulled every moral energy, every feeling of individual independence and reciprocal trust.38 This programmatic article also picked up on arguments made before 1848 about the prostrate fortunes of Venetian trade, suggested that an improvement here would be advantageous to ‘the rest of the kingdom’ of Lombardy–Venetia too, and called for a restoration of the city’s freeport status. However, the opening number did not yet openly declare that the principle of nationality should serve as the basis for one’s reasoning and political demands. This was expressed a few weeks later, when the newspaper outlined its viewpoint regarding the establishment of political consent in a state: ‘States cannot exist without material and moral strength. The moral strength of a State comes either from patriotism, or from the feeling of Nationality, or from the people’s gratitude and affection towards the Government. Patriotism, which is the love of one’s birthplace, was possible within the limits of a city. Nowadays it is anachronistic, or rather, a lie or an error, because we now have only kingdoms and republics, which encompass several cities and makes the notion of ‘homeland’ (patria) no longer possible. He who nowadays talks to you about a homeland, and, above all, a homeland common to several peoples, is either deluding himself in good faith, or cunningly deludes you. The most noble and strong feeling of our age is Nationality, and these same revolutions which were promoted and nourished in its

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name have just proven that to us. But however much more noble and strong this feeling is, so much worse must be its place in the circumstances of Austria, whose nationalities are many and varied, and therefore resistant. No moral link is therefore left to it other than that of the gratitude and the affection of its peoples Now, can this gratitude and affection of the people be gained by putting taxes up, and by worsening the future through constant loans?’39 This new, overt recognition of the role of nationality was then embedded in specific discussions on the fate of Venice and its future prosperity, whereby the memory of the Serenissima continued to serve as a legitimising factor. This was evident in the ongoing calls for the protection and enhancement of commercial activities, and especially in the emphasis placed on the city’s strategic importance. A major corollary of the newspaper’s vision of the past was the demand for ‘equality with the other maritime cities of the empire’.40 In practice, this meant a firm reluctance to accept a subordinate status to that of Trieste: ‘the military and political superiority of Venice, whose possession, if considered strategically and diplomatically, is of infinitely greater importance is indisputable. Another city like Trieste can be created, a second Venice never. Venice was great and exercised power many centuries before Trieste existed; history, traditions, monuments, cannot be cancelled by fortune or city rivalry!’41 This protest against the role accorded to Trieste was, however, an already well established rhetorical device, and not simply a means of seeking reforms in restricted political circumstances. If the rivalry with Trieste was one indication of the continued centrality of Venetian identity (and contrasted with the more reconciliatory attitude towards Milan), historical considerations likewise came into play in debates surrounding the Arsenale, which provided the symbolic focus for a series of economic, social and military issues. Seen by Venetians as the embodiment of past glories, both economic and military, the arsenal’s situation was all the more delicate because of the leading role that its workers had played in the revolution.42 When, in July 1850, several hundred workers from the Arsenale were laid off, Il Lombardo–Veneto accused the government of ‘paying with destitution and contempt this chosen part of the people, who for more than five centuries, so to say, from generation to generation, have been entitled to the right to work in the Arsenale, and were famously honoured with great


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trust by the government of the doges If it is true that the enlargement of the empire’s maritime forces is desired, for what reason are these 300 experienced workers sacked now ? – If we are then told that they had to be punished for some crimes, then give them a regular trial, but don’t condemn them to a certain and shameful beggary!’43 Here, the newspaper invoked the historical heritage of the Serenissima as a basis for its social and economic demands, but that same past was used as a parameter at a political level too. The centuries-long experience of independent government was contrasted with the insufficient voice currently allowed to Venice: The men who will be given the right to take part in the representation of Lombardy-Venetia, must understand the serious responsibility weighing upon them, and work out the real needs that must be satisfied. The past has left our country too many memories for it to find anything new in institutions which, at another time, it used wisely. We seek lessons for political life in our patriotic traditions, and in the heritage of talents which cannot be destroyed with the passing of only a few generations.44 What links more openly the editorial line of Il Lombardo–Veneto to that followed a few years later by L’Età presente is undoubtedly its polemical stance against the Austrian tax system and the attention paid to contemporary reforms in the Kingdom of Piedmont, especially with regard to the economy. Compared to its predecessor, however, L’Età presente is characterised by its moderate tone and a reluctance to declare explicitly the political basis for its journalistic activity. Nevertheless, the paper was unambiguous in its renunciation of any notion that the Habsburg state might be the proper home for Venice’s current demands and future plans. The idea that the Habsburg authorities were nothing more than the city’s compulsory interlocutors was expressed in various ways, such as the ostentatious detachment from any matters of Austrian politics which did not directly concern Italian territories, the close attention paid to anything happening in Piedmont and the reforms underway there, and the constant highlighting of the Serenissima’s past as an expression of Italy’s historical heritage.45 L’Età presente thus devoted considerable space to political news, the history and economy of Venetia, and reviews of works that were not always on a strictly literary topic. What was now viewed solely as a formal link with Austria was counterposed to the substantive links with the rest of the Italian peninsula and the Kingdom of Piedmont in particular. Especially in the sections devoted to reviews,

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the newspaper spoke as if a cultural union with Italy had already been achieved. Alongside an increasing interest in events in France, the fact that greater attention was paid to daily reports from Turin than from Vienna was designed to familiarise the paper’s readers with prominent figures in Piedmontese political life, as well as pointedly illustrating the dynamic mechanisms of constitutional government and parliamentary activity. One of the central topics in L’Età presente was undoubtedly the agricultural crisis in Venetia, which provided a real weapon for indirectly attacking Austrian policies. Particularly noticeable is the fact that the anti-Vienna polemic did not express any demands for social transformation. Rather, the government was implicitly accused of hindering processes of modernisation, which were necessary to ensure social order. Indeed, Vienna’s excessive and iniquitous fiscal demands were allegedly encouraging a dangerous tendency towards the proletarianisation of certain agricultural sectors.46 In this sense, the periodical was not just voicing the views of urban elites, but reflecting changing sentiments in Venice’s hinterland too. Analysing the limits of the Venetian rural classes’ approval of Austria, Letterio Briguglio has argued that the ‘owner-peasants did not desire important political innovations so long as the Austrian government appeared able to protect their interests and their property from rural theft and public taxes. But, since Austrian fiscal policy in the provinces of Venetia appeared progressively more drastic and therefore demotivating, their pro-government feelings could not be – and in fact were not – stable and lasting’.47 Overall, what emerges strongly from the pages of the weekly is a sense of exclusion and marginality, and the urgent desire to exit from such a peripheral situation. The general image presented was that of the Habsburg Empire as being on the outskirts of advanced Europe, within which Venetia was in turn kept at the margins. The periodical backed up its views with examples of policies being implemented in liberal-run European countries and by concentrating on practical issues. Particularly in the last few months of its brief existence, L’Età presente also made more open stands in defence of the dignity of Italy and Italians, such as when reacting with indignation to portrayals of a backward, and conflictridden Italy, which allegedly arose from its inhabitants’ unchangeable natural features.48 Equally, contributions to the periodical reflected more generally on questions of nationality. As with Il Lombardo–Veneto, L’Età presente expressed a conviction that nationality had become a central factor in the course of history:


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The demise of certain secondary and isolated nationalities, the merger and association of similar nationalities into some large nationality, the subsequent changes they undergo, the prevailing of one nationality rather than another in certain epochs of universal history, is the destiny of humanity. But if the civilising process is guided by Providence, then from now on no single nationality must be violently strangled by another nationality .49 While embodying the general moderation and social conservatism of a large part of the anti-Austrian opposition in Venetia, L’Età presente was nevertheless bound to attract the attention of the censors. After several warnings from the police, the editorial office decided to suspend publication on 30 April 1859, in the wake of the outbreak of war between Austria and Piedmont, because it was impossible to continue the periodical’s line. In the context of increasing political and social distance between Venetia and the Austrian authorities, there is no doubt that the year 1859 intensified the situation. Above all, it brought to a conclusive end the practice of looking ‘cockeyed’ in political terms: especially in the phase leading up to the revolution of 1848, for example, the most decisive advocates of reforms had still continued to look constructively towards Vienna as the logical destination for their demands for modernisation, even as they were starting to develop explicit ways of identifying with the broader Italian context. After Villafranca and the foundation of the Kingdom of Italy, the supranational Habsburg Monarchy appeared to have lost legitimacy as a political model, which exacerbated the tendency towards widespread social disapproval of anyone co-operating with the ‘occupiers’.50 After 1848, the assumption of public office had already carried ideological connotations, and now it became more and more difficult for individuals even to accept a position in municipal assemblies.51 As Andreas Gottsmann has recently shown, the office of mayor was not remunerated and many could not afford to take on such a position and neglect their business, given the serious economic crisis Venetia was experiencing. Moreover, this situation deteriorated further, ‘because mayors were attacked and accused of being pro-Austrian. In the small towns of Venetia, a politically compromised person would often pay for the honour of the position with his exclusion from local society and sometimes even had to fear for his life’. Thus, ‘to avoid the collapse of municipal management, the government resorted to the nomination of governmental commissioners, who suspended municipal selfmanagement and embodied the political authorities’ direct interference

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in municipal matters’.52 The political alienation between the region and Vienna was highlighted in the spring of 1861, with the sensational failure of elections for the imperial parliament (Reichsrat). Not a single representative from Venetia sat in the chamber, because either nobody was elected or the elected delegate refused to accept the nomination.53 On this occasion, the crucial factor was the out-and-out boycott of the elections by the local ruling classes, who found it less and less appropriate to exercise their social leadership along lines decided by Vienna. Between 1859 and 1866, therefore, the range of practicable solutions to the problem of Venice and Venetia progressively narrowed, all the more so because the birth of the Kingdom of Italy marked the arrival of a new political reference-point, which provided a clear alternative to the Habsburg state. Indeed, a brief look at the views expressed in these years in the pages of the Gazzetta Uffiziale di Venezia reveals the kind of rearguard battle to which Vienna had resigned itself. This government mouthpiece legitimised the union between Venetia and Austria in the name of traditionalism, propped up by folkloristic representations of Venetia’s inhabitants which stressed their meekness, industriousness, religiosity, love of social order and distrust of change. At the same time, there is an attempt to give the impression that the rest of the peninsula is being overwhelmed by a sort of ‘upside-down world’. Venice itself is attributed the role of a museum-like background, characterised by a moderate economic prosperity devoid of excessive ambitions, which should feed on the development of the tourist industry and worldly pleasures. Within this view, Venice’s greatest attractions are summed up in its description as a carnavelesque ‘city of festivities’54 – a far cry from the proud memories invoked in the pages of Venezia e le sue lagune a decade earlier.

Conclusion: the failure to achieve consensus After the end of the 1848–49 revolution, and especially from 1859 onwards, the Austrian state’s failure to establish consent to its domination of Venetia derived not just from the quantitative and qualitative weight of the consistently anti-government element, but above all from the lack of one or more social groups on which it could count with confidence. Particularly significant from this point of view was the growing disaffection of civil servants. Many were already compromised by their involvement in the revolution and were affected by the subsequent controls and purges,55 but they were further burdened by a progressive fall in their purchasing power.56 After Villafranca, the best


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organised and most clearly defined political element in Venetia was a socially conservative, politically liberal anti-government party with a national outlook, drawing support from all social classes and closely linked to Piedmont, where the Central Political Committee of Venetia resided. Although the pro-Austrian element also spread across the social spectrum, it was not as well organised and could not compete with the action and propaganda of the pro-Italian forces.57 Within this antiliberal front, Venice stood out from the rest of Venetia in two respects, because it possessed a more traditionalist clergy and a nobility that overall was closer to Austria than elsewhere in the province.58 Ultimately, however, certain sections of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy were led to assume resolutely philo-Italian positions after Villafranca more out of disaffection towards Austria and distrust of its politics than deeprooted patriotic faith. These groups adopted politically more conservative positions compared to the Venetian émigrés or that section of liberal public opinion which was genuinely pro-Italian. All this was not without consequence in determining the ways in which the union between Venetia and the Kingdom of Italy would be carried out after 1866. While it would be a simplification to say that Venetia’s only role post-1866 was to provide a constant guarantee of political moderation, this would not betray the essence of local reality. The discussions surrounding the question of legislative unification – achieved only in 1870–71 – are highly instructive from this point of view. After 1866, for example, resistance against an automatic extension to Venetia of the entire body of Italian legislation gathered together a cross-party alliance, which united people from the democratic movement, conservatives, and also legal experts who were more attentive to ‘technical’ issues than political implications. In its most positive form, this struggle represented an opportunity to promote an overall modernisation of Italian legislation: on the basis of a comparison between Piedmontese law and that of the other pre-unification States, reforms might be extended to the entire peninsula by taking the ‘best’ legislation from each area. For its part, Venetia drew on the experience of Austrian law, which in certain respects (such as the civil code) was more advanced than in Piedmont, as well as the legacies of the Serenissima and the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.59 The ensuing debate produced pamphlets, clashes in the press, and discussions in parliament, but without any notable result. The final outcome was certainly influenced by the general balance of power within Italy (weighted towards the moderates), but the potential complications arising from maintaining separate legislation prompted

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some of those involved to distance themselves from a campaign which often appeared to be a defence of pockets of privilege.60 From a wider perspective, the extension to Venetia of the formerly Piedmontese – now ‘Italian’ – legislation amounted to the latest in a series of defeats for alternative models of state-building and national unification, in the face of the successful ‘annexationist’ line. A number of factors contributed to this outcome, including the diversity of the forces engaged in opposition. More decisive still was the fact that Venetia had only joined the rest of Italy in 1866, rather than in 1861, meaning that the distribution of political power within the new state had already been consolidated in key respects. Equally, the essentially moderate – where not conservative – outlook of a large part of the Venetian ruling class drastically limited the room for manoeuvre in opposing the governing majority. A substantial convergence of action between moderates and progressives in Venetia proved unfeasible, thus depleting the ranks in the battle against a systematic unification of the legal system, which then ran the risk of being reduced to either an a priori opposition to all government decisions or a reactionary, defensive retrenchment. With its republican traditions also being submerged in the new kingdom, where national discourse was increasingly ‘monarchalised’, Venice’s long search for a satisfactory re-definiton of its role was destined to continue within the Italian state.

Notes ∗ Translated from the Italian by Clelia Boscolo, with Stephen Harrison and Laurence Cole.

1. For further discussion, see: G. Cozzi, ‘ “Venezia e le sue lagune” e la politica del diritto di Daniele Manin’, in: G. Benzoni and G. Cozzi (eds), Venezia e l’Austria (Venice, 1999), pp. 323–41. 2. M. Gottardi, L’Austria a Venezia. Società e istituzioni nella prima dominazione austriaca (1798–1806) (Milan, 1993). 3. Among the best and most important of recent studies are: A. M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento. Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Turin, 2000); M. Bertolotti, Le complicazioni della vita. Storie del Risorgimento (Milan, 1998). 4. S. Soldani, ‘1848, memoria d’Europa’, Passato e presente XVIII, no.46 (1999), 5–16. 5. Paul Ginsborg, Daniele Manin e la rivoluzione veneziana del 1848–49 (Milan 1978) [English version, Daniele Manin and the Venetian Revolution of 1848–49 (Cambridge, 1979)]. See also: A. Bernardello, Veneti sotto l’Austria. Ceti popolari e tensioni sociali (1840–66) (Verona, 1997), which brings together a series of


6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

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articles concentrating on the social history of Venice before and after the revolution, and expands skilfully on Ginsborg’s findings. D. Laven, Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs, 1815–1835 (Oxford, 2002). E. Tonetti, Governo austriaco e notabili sudditi. Congregazioni e Municipi nel Veneto della Restaurazione (1816–1848) (Venice, 1997). M. Gottardi, ‘Da Manin a Manin: istituzioni e ceti dirigenti dal ’97 al ’48’, in M. Isnenghi and S. Woolf (eds), Storia di Venezia. L’Ottocento e il Novecento, 1797–1918 (Rome, 2002), pp. 75–105 However, see now: A. Gottsmann, Venetien 1859–1866: Österreichische Verwaltung und nationale Opposition (Vienna, 2005). On this, see E. Cecchinato, La rivoluzione restaurata. Il 1848–49 a Venezia fra memoria e oblio (Padua, 2003). Compare: Ginsborg, Daniele Manin, pp. 83–8. Venezia e le sue lagune: I (Venice, 1847), no page numbers. On this issue, see: M. Infelise, ‘Intorno alla leggenda nera di Venezia nella prima metà dell’Ottocento’, in: Benzoni and Cozzi (eds), Venezia e l’Austria, pp. 309–21. Gottardi, ‘Da Manin a Manin’; P. Del Negro, ‘Il 1848 e dopo’, in: Isnenghi and Woolf (ed.), Storia di Venezia, pp. 107–86, here pp. 114–27. On the problematic relationship between the Venetian legal class and the Austrian law code, whose introduction had severely limited the former’s employment opportunities, see: A. Zannini, ‘Vecchi poveri e nuovi borghesi. La società veneziana nell’Ottocento asburgico’, in: Benzoni and Cozzi (eds), Venezia e l’Austria, pp. 186–8. G. Tomasoni, ‘Porto franco, Industria, Commercio’, in: Venezia e le sue lagune. I, pp. 497–570. For a more extensive discussion of Venice’s laborious transition from occupying a primary intermediary role between the East and the countries of North-Central Europe to that of maritime terminal for regional and interregional traffic, see: A. Bernardello, ‘Iniziative economiche, accumulazione e investimenti di capitale (1830–1866)’, in: Isnenghi and Woolf, Storia di Venezia, pp. 567–601. Tomasoni, ‘Porto franco, Industria, Commercio’, here pp. 540–1. For a careful assessment of these developments, see: G. Benzoni, ‘Dal rimpianto alla ricostruzione storiografica’, in: Benzoni and Cozzi (eds), Venezia e l’Austria, pp. 363–4. A. Sagredo, ‘Storia civile e politica’, in: Venezia e le sue lagune. I, pp. 191–2. Ginsborg, Daniele Manin, Bernardello, Veneti sotto l’Austria. See also P. Brunello, Voci per un dizionario del Quarantotto. Venezia e Mestre, marzo 1848–agosto 1849 (Venice, 1999). For example, among the followers of Mazzini helping to defend Venice were the actor, Gustavo Modena, and Giuseppe Sirtori, the Milanese veteran of the 1848 revolution in Paris and a future lieutenant of Garibaldi in 1860. The popular Circles were dominated in these months by figures who were accused by the republican government of Venice of spreading socialist theories, including the cleric Ugo Bassi (who was in Rome with Garibaldi and then executed in Bologna by the Austrian authorities on 8 August, 1849), Father Gavazzi (who also joined the Roman republic and Garibaldi in 1860), and Bernardo Canal (later executed in Belfiore in 1852).

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23. Ginsborg, Daniele Manin, pp. 279–81. 24. See, in particular: A. Ventura, ‘La formazione intellettuale di Daniele Manin’, Il Risorgimento 9/1 (1957), 1–21. 25. P. Brunello, Ribelli, questuanti e banditi. Proteste contadine in Veneto e in Friuli 1814–1866 (Venice, 1981). 26. A. Zorzi, Venezia austriaca (1798–1866) (Rome–Bari, 1985), pp. 112–13. 27. G. Vian, ‘La Chiesa’, in: Benzoni and Cozzi (eds) Venezia e l’Austria, pp. 103–27, here p. 117. 28. G. Vian, ‘La Chiesa cattolica e le altre Chiese cristiane’, in: Isnenghi and Woolf, Storia di Venezia, pp. 649–709, here p. 654. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid, here pp. 654–5. 31. Ginsborg, Daniele Manin, p. 353. 32. Vian, ‘La Chiesa’, here p. 122. 33. Already in 1859, for example, the Venetian clergy debated article 9 of the Concordat, which guaranteed freedom of intervention by the bishops against press criticism of religion and morality, and whose implementation had often given rise to clashes with the political authorities. The conflict exploded, however, in 1863, around the refusal to confiscate Renan’s book Vie de Jésus, considered sacrilegious by the Church. See: L. Briguglio, ‘Lo spirito religioso nel Veneto durante la terza dominazione austriaca (fortuna di Ernesto Renan)’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento 42/1 (1955), 22–57. 34. L. Briguglio, Correnti politiche nel Veneto dopo Villafranca (1859–1866) (Rome, 1965), p. 113. 35. Ibid, p. 111. 36. On this see: S. Lanaro, ‘Dopo il ’66. Una regione in patria’, in: ibid. (ed.), Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi: Il Veneto (Turin, 1984), here p. 413. 37. See: G. Gambarin, ‘Il giornale “Lombardo-Veneto” (18 giugno 1850–4 novembre 1851)’, Archivio Veneto 90 (1959), 64–99. 38. ‘Programma’, Il Lombardo–Veneto, 1, No.1, 18 June 1850. 39. Il Lombardo–Veneto, 1, No.21, 18 July 1850. 40. Il Lombardo–Veneto, 1, No.4, 28 June 1850. 41. Il Lombardo–Veneto, 1, No.39, 8 August 1850. 42. See here: G. Gambarin, ‘La Delegazione veneziana a Vienna nel settembre 1849’, Rassegna Storica del Risorgimento, 44/4 (1957), 725–33; Cecchinato, La rivoluzione restaurata, pp. 265–8. 43. Il Lombardo–Veneto, 1, No.6, 1 July 1850. 44. Il Lombardo–Veneto, 1, No.45, 16 August 1850. 45. For example, significant space was devoted to the figure of Paolo Sarpi and the episode of the Interdiction, using as a pretext the publication of documentary sources or a new edition of Sarpi’s works. See in particular: ‘Storia del Concilio Tridentino di fra Paolo Sarpi’, L’Età presente, 1, No.12, 18 September 1858; ‘Paolo V e la Repubblica di Venezia’, L’Età presente, 2, No.6, 12 February 1859. 46. L’Età presente, 1, Nos 2, 20, 21, 22, and 25; 10 July, 13, 20, 27 November, and 18 December 1858; L’Età presente, 2, Nos 2, 5, 10, and 11; 15 January, 5 February, 12 and 18 March 1859. 47. Briguglio, Correnti politiche, pp. 84–5.


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48. ‘L’Italia e la Gazzetta Universale d’Augusta’, L’Età presente, 2, No.7, 19 February 1859; ‘Di un’accusa data all’Italia’, L’Età presente, 2, No.10, 12 March 1859. 49. L’Età presente, 1, No.16, 23 April 1859. 50. See: M. Fincardi, ‘I luoghi delle relazioni sociali’, in: Isnenghi and Woolf, Storia di Venezia, pp. 489–512. 51. Tonetti, Governo austriaco, pp. 240–6. 52. A. Gottsmann, ‘Amministrazione austriaca e autogestione comunale nel Veneto (1859–1866)’, in: D. Calabi (ed.), Dopo la Serenissima. Società, amministrazione e cultura nell’Ottocento veneto (Venice, 2001), pp. 327–45. 53. Zorzi, Venezia austriaca, pp. 127–8; P. Del Negro, ‘Il 1848 e dopo’, here p. 173. 54. Gazzetta Uffiziale di Venezia, No.181, 11 August 1858. For further discussion, see: Cecchinato, La rivoluzione restaurata, pp. 293–308. 55. M. Meriggi, ‘Pubblici funzionari e crollo dello Stato. Il ’48-’49 a Venezia’, in: P. Macry (ed.), Quando crolla lo Stato. Studi sull’Italia preunitarie (Napoli, 2003), pp. 329–47. 56. Briguglio, Correnti politiche, pp. 100–1. 57. Briguglio, Ibid., pp. 93–4. 58. Vian, ‘La Chiesa cattolica e le altre Chiese cristiane’, here p. 657; Briguglio, Correnti politiche, p. 90. 59. See especially the pages of the Venetian daily, Il Tempo, which represented the progressive wing of the front opposed to legislative unification. 60. See M.R. Di Simone, ‘Diritti e istituzioni nel passaggio dall’Impero d’Austria al Regno d’Italia’, in: Isnenghi and Woolf (ed.), Storia di Venezia, pp. 189– 204.; M.R. Di Simone, ‘Il diritto austriaco e la società veneta’, in: Benzoni and Cozzi (eds), Venezia e l’Austria, pp. 129–56.

7 The Construction of National Identities in the Northern Bohemian Borderland, 1848–71∗ Mark Cornwall

It was in 1855 that there appeared the first detailed ethnographic map of the Habsburg Monarchy. Based on a systematic investigation by Karl Freiherr von Czoernig, head of the Austrian bureau of administrative statistics in Vienna, it seemed to show a precise division between the nationalities of the Empire. Visually, the divide was accentuated through the colours used on the map. Northern Bohemia was clearly dominated by ‘Germans’. They were coloured in red, sharply distinguishing them from ‘Czechs’, coloured in yellow, who seemed to cover most of the territory of the crownland.1 The map was based largely on linguistic data meticulously gathered by Czoernig just before the 1848 revolutions. Yet, its precision was deceptive if language and local culture were taken as synonymous with ‘nationality’. For national allegiance or consciousness was a fluid concept in the late 1840s, and only by the 1870s might it be argued that Czoernig’s map illustrated more accurately the CzechGerman national picture across northern Bohemia. The intervening period was a crucial one in offering a range of ‘national’ paths which both Czech and German-speakers might follow. These paths were influenced by revolt and constitutional upheaval both inside and outside the Habsburg Monarchy. To introduce the fluid and diverse character of what it meant to be a German in northern Bohemia in these decades, we might turn first to the memoirs of a German–Bohemian poet, Alfred Meißner. Meißner’s memoirs, although clearly influenced by being published in the 1880s when the German national movement in Bohemia was fast taking a more radical, racial-nationalist (völkisch) direction rooted in the ‘homeland’, still reveal the diversity of outlook among educated 144

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German-speakers in the middle of the century. Meißner’s father was from Dresden in Saxony; his mother was a Scot from the island of Bute. Since her German was poor, Meißner himself grew up with English as his first language. His childhood was spent in Teplitz/Teplice2 and Carlsbad/Karlovy Vary but, like many educated German-Bohemians of the Vormärz era, his eyes were set especially upon the burgeoning liberalism of the German Confederation. While his father, a doctor, subscribed to the Nürnberger Correspondent which was banned in the Monarchy, he himself noted of his own peers: ‘All our yearning, all our thinking was directed exclusively over the northern border to Germany That was the romantic land for our fantasies.’3 Despite this assertion, some of Meißner’s early poems contained Bohemian themes and were an expression of his Bohemian origins. He was especially drawn to medieval Bohemian heroes by their spirit of resistance to autocracy; and in early 1848 he was duly congratulated by the Czech liberal leader František Palacký for his poem about Jan Žižka, the Hussite military leader. But Meißner was not pleased. Already by this time he had abandoned what he now accepted as ‘Czech–Bohemian’ themes (such as the disaster at White Mountain in 1620), turning in favour of a firm allegiance to Bohemia as part of the broader German political nation.4 For one section of educated north Bohemian Germans in 1848, this pan-German unity became the foremost objective. Nonetheless, Meißner acknowledged that some, perhaps many, thought differently. He noted: ‘We were surrounded by noisy men without any national consciousness. These anational hybrids, neither cold nor hot, neither fish nor fowl, were especially loathsome.’5 Since Meißner was writing after the German unification of 1871, the ‘hybrids’ were undoubtedly all who vacillated when it came to a firm pan-German commitment directed northwards. They included those whose horizons were confined to the borders of Bohemia or even the region of northern Bohemia. More especially, they included those who, with one eye on Germany, thought as much about a Habsburg (Austrian) solution to the German–Bohemian predicament. Certainly, the Germans of north Bohemia, forced increasingly to define where their loyalties lay after 1848, had no one patriotic allegiance. However, the evidence suggests that twenty years later a good number had drifted away from Meißner’s pan-German perspective towards a German-Austrian identity. In 1866, after all, their Austrian patriotism was severely tested in the Austro-Prussian war; in 1871, they faced the practical reality of German unification. These events, together with the constitutional upheavals

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which brought liberalism to power in Austria, led many of the north Bohemian German elite to pin their colours increasingly to the GermanAustrian mast. We can test these ideas further by taking examples from a few localities, particularly the towns of Reichenberg/Liberec and Leitmeritz/Litomˇeˇrice, and by weighing up how German identity in north Bohemia was shaped by the events of 1848, 1866 and 1871. On this subject – the outlook and mentality of northern Bohemian Germans – there has been no substantive historical research, despite the notorious behaviour of their descendants in the ‘Sudeten era’ of 1933–45. On the one hand, there are now excellent general political studies of the Czech–German relationship in the nineteenth century.6 On the other hand, Czech historians have recently been producing impressive synthetic studies of major north Bohemian urban centres, all of which contain a mass of local detail.7 However, a blend of these two approaches, attaching to the detail some broader understanding of ‘national mentalities’, is missing. There is, for instance, no work comparable to Jeremy King’s thought-provoking study of the southern ˇ Bohemian town of Budweis/Ceské Budˇejovice for the north Bohemian region or its component parts.8 Czech minority communities in north Bohemia have certainly also been researched, the growth of their cultural and political institutions duly explored in many local studies. Much, however, still needs to be explained about the context for a rising Czech national consciousness in this border region. It is clear that for the Czech-speaking minority population, the mid-century decades were crucial in creating a generation who gradually became aware of possessing a Czech national identity, and who increasingly looked to Prague for guidance. Yet, it was certainly not a clear-cut national path, or one which all Czech-speakers easily followed. When the Czech novelist Božena Nˇemcová lived in Reichenberg in 1850, she observed well the paucity of cultural facilities for local Czechs. But she herself, as an official’s wife, also found these Czechs suspicious of her when she attempted to collect folk tales in the locality.9 By the 1860s, these social barriers were being broken down: local Czech cultural institutions were being created, and better educated Czechs were encouraged to broaden their horizons through contact with Czech national activists in Prague. By 1871, the Czechs of north Bohemia, largely invisible in 1848, had become a presence which could not be ignored by the local authorities. In contrast to the German elite, who often had a Janus-style national outlook, Czech identity was mostly being shaped by local and regional Bohemian developments.


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The year 1848 The power of the German elite in northern Bohemia rested not just on landed property and on a social status linked to education. They had control, notably through the phenomenal textile industry, of the most advanced economic region of the Habsburg Empire.10 In 1848, it can be said that these educated Germans envisaged their political, economic and cultural activities within at least four or five geographical frameworks. During the year, one or more of these loose frameworks might gain pre-eminence. But they continued to coexist and often overlap in the minds of the German elite. Each framework had an urban centre, a focus for meetings or elections where (usually) there was some north Bohemian representation. Each framework also stimulated a different aspect of a north Bohemian German identity, and could arouse certain hopes or fears about the future. First, when the revolutions broke out in the German Confederation there was offered to northern Bohemians the prospect of a liberal ‘Greater Germany’ which could fulfil the romantic dreams of those like Meißner. With a parliament summoned to Frankfurt in April, and elections to it expected across Bohemia (as well as the other Austrian lands), this framework seemed to offer many German-Bohemians national and economic security at a time when the fate of the Austrian Empire was so uncertain. Most northern Bohemians, however, did not envisage ‘Germany’ as their only future. A second framework remained that of the Austrian Empire, even if many hoped that this Austria would form part of a federal greater Germany. The ‘Austrian option’ for northern Bohemians (always on the cards in 1848) secured extra attention from the early summer when elections were held for an imperial parliament in Vienna: German delegates from northern Bohemia duly travelled southwards. Their priority, in the next six months of debate, was to ensure that the new, constitutional Austria would uphold the security of German-Bohemians, through a state structure centralized on Vienna, and autonomy guaranteed for German regions such as northern Bohemia. This ‘Austrian option’ could still function as part of the greater German framework being discussed at Frankfurt. For the northern Bohemians, the former was specifically designed to counter a third threatening framework: that of an autonomous Bohemian province. In 1848 this, of course, was the principle solution advocated by the Czech national leadership in Prague.11 They demanded that Bohemia recover its ‘historic’ powers of self-government, with a democratically elected

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Diet, and then form part of a restructured, federal Austria. Only at the start of the revolution in March 1848 did some northern Bohemians effectively operate within this Bohemian framework, pressing alongside their Czech liberal colleagues for constitutional reform. But already from April, radical Germans in Reichenberg were loudly rejecting any ‘Bohemian option’. On the one hand they denounced it as a Czech nationalist ‘apple of discord’ designed to suppress German culture in Bohemia; on the other hand, they viewed the invitation to the Frankfurt parliament, and the chance to ‘return’ Bohemia to a united German nation, as the really progressive and liberal option.12 The three frameworks described so far are a variation of those outlined for 1848 by the Czech historian Jiˇrí Koˇralka: namely the ‘old Austrian’ idea, the ‘Greater German’ idea, and the concept of Austro-Slavism.13 Yet, Germans in northern Bohemia had at least two further frameworks or mindsets in which they operated. A fourth framework was the German-inhabited territory of northern Bohemia. There, on several occasions in 1848, local German leaders met to discuss as a group how to safeguard their political and economic position. After Germans abandoned the National Council in Prague to the Czech leadership because of its ‘radical’ direction, it was Reichenberg which increasingly became the centre for German-Bohemian interests (gaining amongst Czechs a radical reputation which was not really deserved).14 Then at Teplitz in August, leaders from north Bohemian towns designed an administrative structure for their national space in order to defend it from Czech nationalist usurpers. And at Eger/Cheb in November, the German local associations met again for a follow-up congress. Finally, it was also natural that northern Bohemians had something of a localized agenda, a fifth framework. Whether in the towns of Leitˇ meritz, Reichenberg, Böhmisch Leipa/Ceská Lípa or Niemes/Mimon, ˇ the German liberal elite at the start of the revolution moved to take control of the local administration and clearly had a strong allegiance to their own locality. It would be a key liberal success of the revolution that a town like Reichenberg secured self-administration after 1850.15 Parochial loyalties were clear in the small German community of Niemes, where they were displayed on the colours of the local national guard; on one side of the flag was the town coat of arms, on the other side a silver Bohemian lion on a red background.16 Despite this, a preliminary survey of the evidence suggests that much of the northern Bohemian elite did not identify themselves anationally or parochially. Few seem to have privileged their place of residence by calling themselves ‘Reichenbergers’ or ‘Teplitzers’, in a manner Jeremy King has recently asserted for


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the mid-century elite in Budweis.17 In this respect, Budweis is probably atypical, largely due to its more equal ethnic balance between Czech and German speakers. Instead, the geographical location of north Bohemia ensured that the German-speaking elite had a peculiar national awareness of their own. They were generally well informed about distant developments that might affect their locality, and quickly established or retained a network of ‘cross-border’ connections. As one local Habsburg official noted in June 1848, north Bohemian Germans were mainly interested in events affecting German-Austria or the German Confederation. In contrast local Czechs, isolated from the main events in Prague, seemed to be obsessed with equality for the Czech language.18 How diverse then was the ‘national’ outlook of north Bohemian Germans in 1848? We can probe further through some examples from Leitmeritz and Reichenberg. In Leitmeritz by April 1848 some panGerman enthusiasm was certainly on display, but the fluidity of regional contacts was also evident. From the dome of the ‘Kalich’ castle in Leitmeritz the German national colours were flown, and the town’s students were to be found boldly singing the German national hymn. The local Constitutional Society focused most attention on the discussions taking place at Frankfurt. At the same time, the town’s elite kept up links as much with Prague and Vienna as with fellow north Bohemians in ‘radical’ Reichenberg. The nationalist credentials of many ‘Leitmeritzers’ were certainly moderate. Hence, the rowdy students were duly arrested by the Leitmeritz national guard. Many local notables were most anxious about the fate of Austria and about the preservation of law and order: they thus founded their own newspaper, Vaterlandsfreund, to counter the pan-Germanic organ, Der Wegweiser. Even so, the Constitutional Society clearly also exercised national moderation. In November, for example, it suggested that Czechs might be invited to the congress in Eger, an idea rejected by the Germans of Reichenberg.19 Reichenberg itself is usually portrayed as northern Bohemia’s radical nationalist centre in 1848. On 1 April, in its first edition, it was the Reichenberger Wochen-Bericht which threw down the gauntlet to the liberal Czech agenda of enhanced political autonomy for Bohemia. The paper’s editor, Anton Anschringer, portrayed this as a Czech separatist crusade at a time when ‘national’ borders were dissolving. The Czech leaders, he argued, were throwing an ‘apple of discord’ into the common fatherland of Bohemia; they were trying to impose the Czech language on the Germans who, in cultural terms, had brought the province out of the ‘labyrinth of ignorance.’20 Most of Reichenberg’s German elite shared something of this outlook, but felt at first that Anschringer was

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too confrontational. Only gradually would their sense of ‘Germanness’ become more pronounced. Naturally, it did so partly in response to the interaction between Frankfurt and Prague. But there were other notable influences. From Vienna, there came news of a ‘Society of Germans of Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia to Maintain their Nationality’. Out of Leipzig came propaganda from a ‘Society for the Preservation of the German Cause on the Eastern Borders’. By 1 May, there had appeared in Reichenberg a ‘Society for Maintaining German Nationality in Bohemia and Preserving Constitutional Interests’. Here, the provincial context of the north Bohemian Germans was quite apparent, although the Society’s programme still showed that the wider context was the crucial one for German–Bohemian security. The priority was unity with Germany while maintaining the integrity of Austria. As the Wochen-Bericht noted: ‘Bohemia will remain what it was, an integral part of Austria, an integral part of Germany’.21 How exactly this might occur depended on the discussions in Frankfurt and Vienna over the next six months. The idea of a Germany–Austria symbiosis was constantly repeated by Reichenberg’s elite and their political representatives. In political terms, one could say that the elite’s identity was most bound up with Austria: after all, in Teplitz in late August, restructuring Austria was the focus of the north Bohemian discussions. But in economic terms, most of Reichenberg’s industrialists inclined forcefully towards the Zollverein and the secure economic framework which the new Germany would provide. Indeed, Janus-like, Reichenberg’s elite continued to look in both directions. Thus, a few weeks after the August meeting in Teplitz, the town hosted a ‘fraternal festival’ for 20,000 people, uniting Bohemian Germans with Prussians and Saxons from over the border. Amid calls for the removal of all borders, the streets were bedecked with German, Prussian, Saxon and Bohemian flags. The display was testament itself to the fluid character of Reichenberg’s identity under a common German national umbrella.22

The years 1866–71 If we move forward eighteen years, we find a north Bohemian German elite with the same preoccupations but far less confident in outlook. The mood is well signalled in the Reichenberger Zeitung, the chief mouthpiece of north Bohemian opinion. In its first edition of 1867, the newspaper noted that Austria had seldom endured such a fateful blow as defeat by Prussia the previous summer. The Prussians had certainly acted in a perfidious and disloyal fashion, but ‘we Germans of Austria have to


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atone for the mistakes of disastrous ministers’. The Monarchy was now excluded from a new German state structure and the ‘Austrian option’ for north Bohemians was, of necessity, pushed to the fore. Even so, the paper continued to stress the wider sense of identity for German-Bohemians: ‘Nobody can annihilate our national relationship to our German motherland [Stammlande]. Spiritually we form a great whole, and if Prussia continues to strive to divide up Germany she will not succeed!’23 After a decade of absolutism in the 1850s, when public political discourse was extremely limited,24 the 1860s witnessed more distinct national identities being articulated across northern Bohemia. As far as Czech-speakers are concerned, it is true that a growing Czech consciousness was apparent in the 1850s. Partly this was caused by interaction with Prague on a cultural level. Already in 1852, for example, the Czech minority of Reichenberg had been collecting funds for a national theatre for the ‘Czech capital’. But consciousness was also home-grown, based on a better-educated community who increasingly sensed their isolation in towns which had a pronounced German identity. In Leitmeritz, in November 1860, both Czechs and Germans commemorated the birthday of the native Czech poet, Karel Hynek Mácha, doing so in a common demonstration of new civic activity. Already in 1861, however, a cultural polarization was also emerging. It was chiefly Czechs who attended the unveiling of a Mácha monument in the local cemetery, while Germans turned to publicize a lesser-known poet of their own, Josef Hilscher.25 Developments in Reichenberg are also instructive. The initiative there for stimulating a specific Czech community came from a priest, Josef Bernat, who was appointed to Reichenberg in 1859. He began by encouraging his congregation to recite and sing in Czech (previously they had attended mass in silence). As the parishioners proceeded to socialize after church with reading material, there developed further initiatives. The year 1862 witnessed not only the first Czech ball, an occasion for further fund-raising, but the creation of a Czech cultural centre or Beseda which founded a library for Czech workers. Not surprisingly perhaps, disagreements began to emerge about the church’s role. Bernat on one occasion had to warn his audience in a Czech pub about the ‘consequences of discord [when living] in the midst of the German element’. Such comments represented small crises of growth though, for a Czech community was taking shape in the region. It subscribed to Czech newspapers from Prague, it featured in the north Bohemian novels of Karolina Svˇetlá based around Mount Jeschken [Ještˇed] – and it started to attract a hostile reception from the local Reichenberger Zeitung.26

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For the German elite, the Czech phenomenon of the 1860s was both a social and national challenge. The Czech liberals had now gained control of Prague city, and in the first Czech encyclopaedia František Rieger proclaimed the Czech nation as the main occupier of Bohemia.27 Germans, however, could draw comfort from the Austrian constitutional system installed by Emperor Franz Joseph through his so-called February Patent of 1861. This centralized constitutional government on Vienna, firmly asserting the Austrian over the Bohemian framework (even if until 1883 the Bohemian Diet was secure in German hands anyway). Pending further research, it seems highly likely that north Bohemian Germans in these years were also stimulated in their broader German identity by national developments north of the border. Equally, the war of 1866 sharpened their understanding of themselves as ‘GermanAustrians’ within a sadly dysfunctional German family. In June 1866, the communities across north Bohemia were in a state of fear in anticipation of the Prussian invasion and the rumours of atrocities; they hastened to hide their possessions from over 30,000 marauding soldiers. In many cases, the anxiety was fully justified in view of the scale of requisitioning required. For example, Prussians appearing ˇ in the town of Böhmisch Aicha/Ceský Dub announced that Austria was responsible for the war and had to be annihilated; they destroyed most of the local harvest.28 Similarly in Niemes, where hundreds were billeted, many Prussians behaved coarsely, violating pictures of Franz Joseph and demanding that dinner be served on silver. When, on their departure, they held a Protestant service to celebrate victory ‘in effusive style’, the local population demonstratively absented themselves.29 Nevertheless, there is much evidence also for Prussian orderly behaviour during the ¨ invasion. In some communities, such as Bohmisch Aicha, the Prussians did eventually establish a friendly modus vivendi, ensuring that the legacy of the invasion was not too embittered. If the short-term material damage was soon forgotten, the legacy of the war for north Bohemian German identity was being sharply debated in 1867. As we have already seen, the Reichenberger Zeitung was anxious about German-Austrians being excluded from the wider German framework. From the new Berlin parliament some voices emerged suggesting that, if Hungary was now to break away from Austria, the German parts of the Monarchy might still be united to a greater Germany. However, this seemed increasingly utopian in view of the stance of the southern German states. Early in 1867, the Bavarian foreign minister made a striking speech in which he rejected any union under Austrian leadership since the Monarchy seemed to be favouring non-German


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interests.30 A few months later, the north Bohemian elite was shocked to find that Bavaria and Baden were far more tied to Prussia than had first been suspected. In view of this, the German–Austrian position seemed increasingly circumscribed and threatened, all the more so because the creation of Dualism was focusing German-Bohemian minds on Cisleithania and the regional spectre of Czech nationalism. The elite of Reichenberg seem to have been typical in how they reacted. They threw their weight behind a centralized constitution worked out by the new Austrian minister-president, Baron Beust. Indeed, Reichenberg elected Beust to the Bohemian Diet and proclaimed him as the ‘new Aristotle’, who would bring order out of Austria’s twentyyear chaos. As a Saxon, Beust also seemed to offer north Bohemia and German-Austria the security of pan-German connections. In September 1867, Beust duly visited Reichenberg, assuring his constituents that he would remain true to the Austrian constitution and to the German character of Austria. Having himself brought what he termed ‘a warm German heart’ from Saxony to Austria, he reminded his audience of their place in the wider German firmament. Reichenberg had kinship with Saxony, he noted: ‘Here, only a short distance separates me from my ever beloved homeland’.31 By the end of 1867, the Reichenberger Zeitung was again upbeat. It pledged that henceforth, the fight for domestic German-Austrian interests would be more stubborn and more successful than the battle of 1866 against the Prussians.32 By the time of the German Empire’s creation in 1870–71, there was a certain consistency in the outlook of the north Bohemian elite. They fervently condemned Czech politicians for their programme of Bohemian autonomy. A worrying new phenomenon was also the emergence of grassroots politics, represented most noticeably in the ‘people’s camps’ of 1870, when not only Czech but also German workers participated in calling for equal rights. These Czechs in the borderland drew inspiration both from Czech activists in Prague and from the display of pan-Germanism over the border.33 As for the impact of German unification on north Bohemian Germans, many of them were residually critical of Prussian violence and despotism since the events of 1866. Many now put their trust in the Austrian imperial ideal, but still expected that the manner of German unification would allow German–Austrians a flexible interaction with their northern brethren, particularly through the ¨ mediation of southern states like Bavaria and Wurttemberg. The ‘national lessons’ which north Bohemian Germans might learn from the stormy decades of the mid-nineteenth century were set out in November 1870 by the Reichenberger Zeitung. It confidently asserted that

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German-Austrians did not need to join the new Germany. It then distinguished between two different processes at work in recent state formation. The liberation of Greece and the creation of Austro-Hungarian Dualism were indeed pure expressions of the ‘nationality principle’. The Italian kingdom and the German Empire were not examples of this principle: rather they were cases of ‘large state formation’. In this situation, Germans in Austria had their own particular identity to uphold, for ‘the German in Austria is very much, indeed exclusively, an Austrian with his whole heart; the Germans [here] have at all times upheld the Austrian state ideal’.34 Thus the leading newspaper of north Bohemia affirmed the primacy of the Austrian context for borderland Germans. That context gave them security against Czechs and security about their own identity. At the same time, it never excluded a continuing, fluid relationship with the wider German nation. It was a fine balance, one which was pragmatically upheld in 1848 and in 1871. By 1880, this would be seriously under threat, for the Germans of Austria lost governmental power in Vienna in 1879 and thereafter were always on the defensive against Austria’s Slav majority.35 While Bohemia’s borderland Czech minorities were increasingly nourished, culturally and economically, by nationalist ‘propaganda societies’ from the Czech hinterland, the German leaders of northern Bohemia became increasingly defensive, seeking at all costs to shore up their national position against the uncouth ‘Czech aggressor’. As we have seen, most Germans of the borderland were brought up to have a Janus-like mentality, their national identity an amalgam of various perspectives including a firm loyalty to northern Bohemia. If the Austrian framework failed them, and the Bohemian (Czech) context seemed ever more threatening, many – like Alfred Meißner – might well turn for security to the vast German community to the north.

Notes ∗

The research for this article was made possible through an award from the British Academy. I would particularly like to thank Dr Václav Kˇríˇcek of the Krajská vˇedecká knihovna in Liberec for his help in locating sources. 1. Karl Freiherr von Czoernig, Ethnographische Karte der Oesterreichischen Monarchie (Vienna, 1855). For Czoernig’s activitities, see E. Brix, Die Umgangssprachen in Altösterreich zwischen Agitation and Assimilation (Vienna, 1982). 2. Note that, at the first mention of each place-name, the German version is given first, followed by the Czech.


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3. A. Meißner, Geschichte meines Lebens, 2 vols (Vienna and Teschen, 1884), Vol.1, p. 55 4. Ibid., pp. 289–91. 5. Ibid., p. 118. 6. J. Kˇren, Die Konfliktgemeinschaft: Tschechen und Deutsche 1780–1918 (Munich, 1996). See also the documents collected together in: R.J. Hoffmann and A. Harasko (eds), Odsun. Die Vertreibung der Sudetendeutschen: Vyhnání sudetských Nˇemcu, ˚ Vol.1 (Munich, 2000); this also contains a colour reproduction of Czoernig’s map. 7. For example: K. Kaiserová and V. Kaiser (eds), Dˇejiny mˇesta Ústí nad Labem (Ústí nad Labem, 1995); O. Kotyza et al., Dˇejiny mˇesta Litomˇeˇric (Litomˇeˇrice, 1997); R. Andˇel et al, Frýdlantsko: Minulost a souˇcasnost kraje na úpatí Jizerských hor (Liberec, 2002); R. Karpaš (ed.), Kniha o Liberci (Liberec, 2004); P. Holodnák ˇ and I. Ebelová (eds), Žatec: Historie, Kultura, Lidé (Prague, 2004). 8. J. King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002). 9. F. Mach, Pamˇeti ˇceské besedy v Liberci (Liberec, 1882), p. 2. See also R. Adam et al. (eds), Božena Nˇemcová: Korespondence, vol. 1, 1844–1852 (Prague, 2003), p. 150. 10. See: J. Belda, Liberec v revoluˇcním roce 1848 (Liberec, 1959). 11. See: S.Z. Pech, The Czech Revolution of 1848 (Chapel Hill, 1969); and for the best Czech study of national developments in 1848 and thereafter: ˇ O. Urban, Ceská spoleˇcnost 1848–1918 (Prague, 1982). 12. See, for example: Reichenberger Wochen-Bericht aus der Nähe und Ferne, 6 May 1848, p. 43. 13. J. Koˇralka, Prag-Frankfurt im Frühjahr 1848. Österreich zwischen Grossdeutschland und Austroslawismus, in: H. Lutz and H. Rumpler (eds), Österreich und die deutsche Frage in 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1982), pp. 117–39. 14. The first Czech encyclopaedia described the Germans of Reichenberg as displaying a ‘peculiar national intolerance’. See: F. Rieger (ed.), Slovník nauˇcný (Prague, 1865), Vol.4, p. 1267. 15. Karpaš, Kniha o Liberci, p. 117. 16. J. Tille, Geschichte der Stadt Niemes und ihrer nächsten Umgebung (Niemes, 1905), p. 247. On 28 September 1848, the town square was the scene for an oath of allegiance to be sworn to the flag, a ceremony which drew guardists from neighbouring towns but was otherwise a very local event. 17. King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans. 18. Belda, Liberec v revoluˇcním roce 1848, p. 134. 19. Kotyza, Dˇejiny mˇesta Litomˇeˇric, pp. 261–3. 20. Reichenberger Wochen-Bericht aus der Nähe und Ferne, 22 April 1848, p. 28. 21. Ibid., 17 June 1848, p. 109. 22. Ibid., 7 October 1848, pp. 330–1. 23. ‘1866 und 1867’, Reichenberger Zeitung, No.1, 1 January 1867. 24. The town of Friedland/Frýdlant seems typical, a town run throughout the decade by officials elected in the local elections of 1850. Even so, civic activity was hardly suppressed and only too evident when the town suffered a major fire in 1853 (gathering sympathy from neighbouring Saxony and Silesia over the state border, as well as from Vienna where Karl Czoernig himself organized a public collection); see Andˇel et al., Frýdlantsko, p. 83.

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25. Kotyza, Dˇejiny mˇesta Litomˇeˇric, pp. 264–5. 26. Mach, Pamˇeti ˇceské besedy, pp. 3–8. ˇ 27. See: F. Rieger, Cechy, zemˇe i narod: Obraz statisticko-historický (Prague, 1863), p. 1. 28. K. Schiller, Böhm. Aicha. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Stadt und ihrer Umgebung ¨ (Bohmisch Aicha, 1898), pp. 132–3. 29. Tille, Geschichte der Stadt Niemes, pp. 221–9. 30. ‘Eine Folge von Koniggrätz’, Reichenberger Zeitung, No.19, 23 January 1867. 31. ‘Rede Seiner Excellenz des Reichskanzlers Freiherrn von Beust’, Reichenberger Zeitung, No. 219, 19 September, 1867. 32. ‘In der Jahreswende’, Reichenberger Zeitung, No. 305, 31 December 1867. 33. See: Karpaš, Kniha o Liberci, p. 138 for the camp on Mount Ještˇed in August 1870. 34. ‘Osterreich und Deutschland’, Reichenberger Zeitung, No.274, 23 November 1870. 35. P.M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1918 (Ann Arbor, 1996).

8 Between the Federative Nation and the National State: Public Perceptions of the Foundation of the German Empire in Southern Germany and Austria∗ Nikolaus Buschmann

As nationalism started to become a key political principle in nineteenth-century Europe, many regimes came under pressure from emancipatory movements. In Germany, national ideas gained ground due to the refusal to reform on the part of both territorial princes and the German Confederation, which had been established in 1815. For the majority of liberals, particularism (Kleinstaaterei) stood for the blocking of reforms, while the nation-state (Nationalstaat) represented freedom and progress. Such was argued in 1832 by a liberal from the southwestern German state of Württemberg, Paul Achatius Pfizer, who was leader of the opposition in the state parliament and later Minister of Education and Public Worship in Württemberg’s new government in 1848: ‘It cannot be doubted that, if unity is present, then freedom – this most sacred possession of all peoples – cannot fail to be missing; but without the power of union, freedom has never been established.’1 However, the question as to how, and in what form, the ‘German Question’ should be solved deeply divided the national movement, not least because there were no real political reference points available: Metternich’s Europe did not envisage the existence of a German nation-state. Hence, demands for the political unification of Germany only began to take concrete form at a relatively late stage in the conceptual development of the national movement. If one follows many standard works on German history, the nationstate of 1871 often appears as the end-point towards which German historical development in the nineteenth century was inexorably 157

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flowing.2 By contrast, the role of the Habsburg state in the nationbuilding process in central Europe is usually ignored entirely. For Thomas Nipperdey, for example, Prussia’s military victory over Austria in 1866 constituted the victory of a modern state over a redundant historical model. Bismarck had ended the federalist, universalist, greater German (großdeutsch) tradition of the Holy Roman Empire and had helped the dominant political principle of the time – the national principle – to achieve a breakthrough.3 This line of interpretation can of course also be found in contemporary reactions to the German ‘civil war’ (Bruderkrieg; literally, a ‘fratricidal war’). The liberal National-Zeitung, a mouthpiece for the ‘lesser German’ (kleindeutsch) national movement celebrated the withdrawal of Austria from Germany as the end of the middle ages and the beginning of a new historical epoch.4 The academic framework for the depiction of a history concentrated totally on Prussia and its national ‘mission’ was created by the so-called ‘Borussian school’ of historiography, centred around prominent historians such as Heinrich von Sybel and Heinrich von Treitschke.5 Their national-liberal interpretation has remained remarkably effective down to the present day, with no place within it for the federative legacy of German history, historical alternatives to the kleindeutsch nation-state, or the view represented by the losing side in 1866.6 When we look at events in Germany between the 1848–49 revolutions and the founding of the Empire in 1870–71, the multiple layers of national political experience provide a much more complex picture than that provided by the kleindeutsch legend of Prussia’s ‘German calling’. Both among the German public and within the national movement, diametrically opposed approaches to national politics competed well into the 1860s. The centuries-old federal arrangement of German statehood and its multiple historical landscapes allowed for more than one route into the age of nation-states.7 This point can be demonstrated especially well through an examination of political visions and national ideas in the south of Germany, which will form the focus of this investigation. For the vast majority of southern Germans, a national state without Austria was unimaginable for historical, cultural, confessional and political reasons, quite apart from the fact that a centralistic solution to the German Question (as advocated, for example, by von Treitschke) was highly unpopular, irrespective of whether the putative capital might be Berlin or Vienna. In view of this situation, it is no surprise that there were such strong reservations against a kleindeutsch solution in Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg – not to say, Austria itself.

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Prior to turning in more detail to the debates surrounding the foundation of the German Empire, it is first necessary to examine the place of terms such as ‘nation’ and ‘national state’ in the political value-system of south German liberals during the nineteenth century. Subsequent sections investigate in turn the political perspectives and sense of threat experienced in post-1849 Germany. What emerges here is that the desires for war expressed at the time were not just a reflection of the erosion of the European order in the 1850s, but also the expression of a national–political paralysis. Finally, the concluding parts of this article analyse reactions in the South German public sphere and sections of the Austrian press, firstly, to the defeat of 1866 (not, as usually occurs, to the victory), and secondly, to the war between Germany and France in 1870– 71. The contemporary commentaries demonstrate clearly just how far the military triumph over the ‘hereditary enemy’ allowed the political losers from 1866 to reconcile themselves to the verdict of 1871.8

Nation and nation-state in German liberals’ view of the world The rise of nationalism to the position of the most powerfully effective modern ‘social belief system’ (Norbert Elias) could already be discerned around the mid-nineteenth century, yet the full extent and consequences of this development were barely visible to observers at the time. Audible calls for a national state that would break up the political order established by the Vienna settlement of 1815 were only expressed by the German national movement immediately prior to the revolutions of 1848–49. This was the result of a long-term change in attitudes, which reflected the political experiences of German liberals in the first half of the nineteenth century. For the first generation of liberals, whose main sphere of activity after 1815 comprised the southern German Diets, the concept of the nation formed part of a model for reform based on the constitutions of the individual German states.9 Such was the case for the likes of Christian Friedrich Winter (1773–1858), Johann Adam von Itzstein (1775–1855) and Carl Theodor Welcker (1790–1869), all members of the Diet in Baden. They acted out their political roles within the concrete framework of their own state, whereas ‘Germany’ was a more abstract term defined by geography, culture and history. Their social backgrounds made these men typical representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie in south Germany. Winter, who came from a protestant clergy family, was a publisher; voted into the Diet in the elections of 1819, he developed into one of

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the leading figures in the liberal opposition. Von Itzstein had studied law and initially embarked on an administrative career before becoming a Diet member in 1822; between 1832 and 1847, his vine-growing estate in Hallgarten became an important meeting point for prominent south German liberals such as Carl von Rotteck, Heinrich von Gagern and Karl Mathy. Welcker, the son of a lutheran priest, began his academic career in 1814 as a law professor at the University of Gießen. Welcker belonged to the Baden Diet from 1831 onwards, and later became a member of the German national parliament in 1848–49. The ‘State-Lexikon’ that Welcker edited with Carl von Rotteck (1775–1840) became one of the most important liberal manifestos in the pre-1848 era. In the first half of the nineteenth century, ‘nation’ for these liberals meant in the first place the ‘cultural nation’ (Kulturnation). Thus, Carl von Rotteck, another leading liberal from Baden, characterised the cultural nation as a form of ‘community of fate’, ‘to which we are bound by nature itself, by blood, by language, by speech, by heaven and by so many other valuable ties to the past and the present’.10 Rotteck came from a respected academic family in the formerly Austrian territory of Freiburg im Breisgau. A teacher of science of the state (Staatswissenschaft) and history, he was voted to Baden’s first representative chamber in 1818, and became a Diet member in 1831, but his work as a politician and publicist won him a significant reputation outside the region too. Rotteck understood the political organisation of the German nation as emanating from the federative structure of the German state system, at the centre of which was the individual state. According to him, Baden’s transition to a constitutional state was a milestone of political progress and constituted a model for the reform of the German Confederation. Yet, Rotteck did not thereby envisage a German nationstate: the ‘German imperial representation’ that he pleaded for in 1831 was intended to supplement the constitutions of particular states, not replace them.11 The logic of this evolutionist conception of politics meant that liberal initiatives with regard to the politics of Germany took already existing institutions as their starting point. Political changes were to be achieved via reforms and, if possible, in cooperation with state governments, not by revolutionary caesuras. Like many other liberals, Rotteck’s political companion Carl Theodor Welcker spoke up for a constitutional reform of the German Confederation, but not for the foundation of a national state. For this generation of liberals, the ‘German nation’ only came to bear their political hopes at a relatively late stage, once they became convinced that the princes’ refusal to reform meant that the sovereignty


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of the individual states was acting as a block on – and not (or no longer) as a guarantee for – the development of freedom. The path taken by Ludwig Uhland (1787–1862), from being a defender of Württemberg’s ancient rights to a proponent of a großdeutsch nation-state, offers a typical example of this nationalisation of political consciousness. Uhland came from the ranks of the upper bourgeoisie and began his great career as a poet, scholar and politician after studying law. In 1815, he participated in the struggles to achieve a constitution in Württemberg, joined the Diet in the state capital of Stuttgart in 1820, and was voted to the Frankfurt national parliament in 1848, where he supported a großdeutsch position. At the beginning of his political career, Uhland had fought for the restoration of the old estates system, but then developed into a liberal politician who essentially saw his field of activity as being within Württemberg. Increasingly, however, his hopes for reform shifted towards the political union of the German nation.12 Whereas the constitutionalism of southern Germany formed the basis of political identity for Rotteck and Welcker’s generation, the political socialisation of liberals born around 1800 – the likes of Heinrich von Gagern (1799–1880), Robert von Mohl (1799–1875) and the abovementioned Paul Achatius Pfizer (1801–67) – occurred under completely different conditions. Heinrich von Gagern, who stemmed from the nobility of the old Empire, was a leading member of the student fraternity while studying law at the university of Jena. Von Gagern became a member of the Diet in Hesse in 1832 and president of the Frankfurt parliament in 1848. He was the originator of the plan for a ‘closer union’ between Prussia and the German middle states, which would then be extended into a ‘wider union’ through the accession of Austria. The lawyer Robert von Mohl, professor at the university of Tübingen from 1824, and later at Heidelberg, belonged to the left-wing of the Centre grouping in the Frankfurt parliament. After the revolution, he was a member of the Baden Diet (and for a time, its president), and ultimately a member of the German imperial parliament (Reichstag). Paul Achatius Pfizer, likewise the offspring of an academic family with long-established roots in Württemberg, entered the local civil service after his legal training. A leading liberal figure in Württemberg between 1831 and 1848, he too was voted into the national parliament in 1848. The political biographies of these men are rooted in the restoration period, the onset of which was signalled by the Carlsbad decrees of 1819, under which the German princes sought to re-conquer some of the lost constitutional terrain. In the decades that followed, liberalism was subject to state repression and had to suffer a series of defeats over

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political reform. It is not, therefore, surprising that this generation trusted neither the particular states nor the German Confederation to fulfil the promise of freedom that was bound up with the concept of the nation. Pfizer’s criticism of the German princes was suitably caustic, as he accused them of ‘doing nothing from their side for the development and strengthening of constitutional life, but instead allowing absolutism to claw back on a daily basis ground that had already been won and set free’.13 Yet, the notion – later transmitted in schoolbooks – that a (lesser) German nation-state was a historical necessity was alien to Pfizer’s generation. These liberals considered a more national conception of politics to be an urgent imperative, but not self-evident, because the national principle at this time still counted as a historically recent phenomenon. ‘Up until a few decades ago, a people’s tribal particularity (Stammeseigenthümlickeit) was regarded by the state only in a very subordinate way’, noted Robert von Mohl in 1862. Only just recently ‘had conditions and demands founded on nationality assumed one of the first places in practical politics’. Nevertheless, Mohl treated the situation in Germany in more reserved fashion: the ‘idea of nationality’ is becoming ‘ever livelier’ and is ‘entering more and more into the sum of political factors, which must be taken into consideration’.14 Personally, Mohl adhered decisively to the concept of the modern nation-state, but he did not consider this to be the only conceivable future form of state in Germany, in view of the mixed political and ethnic situation in central Europe and the federal tradition of the old Holy Roman Empire. While it was essential for the state to take account of its inhabitants’ nationality, ‘the attribute of statehood does not constitute an essential characteristic of a people’s particularity, rather, it is much more the case that different nationalities can be isolated in one state; equally, a dispersion of the same nationality across different states is quite possible.’15 From Mohl’s point of view, political unification of a nation by means of force – be it in the form of war or revolution – was not acceptable. Indeed, the Tübingen scholar was concerned that the politics of national interests were starting to ignore sovereign laws and endanger the international order. Especially revealing in this context is a comment by a member of the next liberal generation, Ludwig Bamberger (1823–99). Bamberger was sentenced to death for his participation in the uprising in the Rhenish palatinate in 1849, but managed to flee to Switzerland and then on to England. There, he became a banker, before returning to Germany in 1866, where he became a member of the Customs Parliament (Zollparlament) and later the Reichstag. ‘One sees’, Bamberger remarked in 1888 of Mohl’s stance, ‘that twenty-five years ago the


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admirable and distinguished teacher of public law was still a long way away from the lofty self-confidence on which our sense of national belief draws today, so as to dispose over life and death in matters both great and small’.16 As a member of the Frankfurt parliament, Minister of Justice, and later national-liberal parliamentarian of the Reichtsag, Mohl had worked energetically towards the establishment of the kleindeutsch nation-state, but was very much aware of the obstacles that lay in its way. He knew full well that, not just the territorial princes, but also large parts of the population viewed the novel creation sceptically, because it was a form of state that broke with historical continuity.17 The fear that the centralistic pull of a Prussian-dominated nationstate would destroy Germany’s historical diversity was widespread in the so-called ‘Third Germany’. It is important to note that this was in no sense an exclusively conservative phenomenon, but one that stretched from the democratic left, through liberalism and political Catholicism into the particular state courts. Yet, the großdeutsch camp proved unable to forge an effective political alliance, because the consensus did not extend beyond opposition to Prussia and a vague sympathy for Austria. This is evidenced by the short-lived history of the Reform Association (Reformverein), which more or less inevitably foundered on the social and political heterogeneity of its supporters.18 However, the kleindeutsch oriented National Association (Nationalverein) was unable to establish a political foothold south of the Main river either, despite being the largest middle-class political organisation in Germany in the early 1860s.19 The organisational weakness of the großdeutsch camp cannot, therefore, be explained by the increasing attractiveness of the kleindeutsch national idea. The folklorist Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823–97), who, though not a liberal, was – like Mohl – a critic of ‘particularism’, argued that the political alienation between the mid-sized states, Prussia and Austria resulted from Germany being split in three geographically and culturally. Riehl came from the Rhineland, was a pupil of Ernst Moritz Arndt and Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, and headed the Bavarian government’s press section from 1854 onwards (as well as pursuing a parallel academic career which ultimately led to the rectorship of Munich University). According to Riehl’s diagnosis, the three-way division was deeply rooted, as he elaborated in his work, Land und Leute (‘Country and People’): ‘From the standpoint of nature, this three-way split was signalled from the very start, but it has only become politically relevant due to the collapse of the Old Empire and the growth of Austria and Prussia to independent great powers.’20 For Riehl, the national

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political challenge after 1848–49 consisted of learning to separate ‘wilful particularism from the natural peculiarities in tribe (Stamm) and state, as well as in civil society’.21 He considered the political unity of the German nation to be a long-term project, which would only be successful if it incorporated the diverse political mentalities that had evolved over the nation’s federal history. Hence, Riehl was convinced that it would take decades before the ‘historic distrust of other German peoples’ could be overcome, especially because the two largest states had nourished that mistrust via a long chain of political interventions.22 In summary, it was in no sense preordained that the idea of the German ‘cultural nation’ would take on a political dimension for (south) German liberalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. It would require a long-term change in orientation for the demand for a German national state to permeate the liberal ranks, and this was manifested for the first time in the revolutions of 1848–49. At the same time, the expectations of post-revolutionary society were by no means confined purely to the kleindeutsch option. In the period between the revolutions and 1870–71, political discourse about the nation instead showed that very different routes into the modern world were conceivable. This is especially true for the south of Germany, where local state patriotism and the bond with Austria were deeply engraved on political consciousness. The complexity of conceptions for Germany’s future national organisation becomes clear when one considers the spatial dimension alongside longstanding political mentalities. In the historical landscapes comprising southern Germany, the federal inheritance of the old Holy Roman Empire overlapped with the region’s territorial re-organisation under Napoleon, while the cultural legacy of the Habsburgs worked alongside the economic dynamism stemming from the Prussian-led Customs Union (Zollverein). In addition, there was a complicated confessional mixture, which cannot easily be translated into straightforward national political categories like kleindeutsch or großdeutsch. In asking how the south German public sphere reacted to the foundation of the kleindeutsch nation-state, one is thus confronted with a multiplicity of – often conflictual – political, confessional, regional and cultural ties, which only become comprehensible when placed in a broad central European context.23

National perspectives after the 1848–49 revolutions At the Frankfurt parliament, the majority of delegates were not in any doubt that Austria belonged to the German nation. However, the


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creation of anything approaching an ethnically homogeneous German nation-state would have implied the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, and could not therefore reckon with Vienna’s support.24 In addition, the proponents of the großdeutsch position had no clear idea as to what consequences a break-up of the multiethnic state would have for the European state system. The national assembly’s narrow vote in favour of a kleindeutsch solution under a Prussian hereditary emperor was thus a compromise, which took account of the restricted room for political manoeuvre, while the ‘Gagern Plan’ for ‘closer’ and ‘wider’ forms of union was an attempt to create a German nation-state without setting in stone Austria’s exclusion from the German nation. These were the crucial differences to the kleindeutsch programme of the 1860s.25 After the failure at Frankfurt, it soon became clear that the struggle for supremacy between the two leading powers would determine political conditions in Germany. Contemporaries saw with their own eyes that the linking of the German Question to Prussian-Austrian dualism even threatened to lead to war within Germany, as the conflict over Prussia’s policy of union – i.e. the ‘Erfurt Union’, an attempt by the Hohenzollern monarchy to set in motion the establishment of a kleindeutsch nation-state ‘from above’ – immediately demonstrated. When the crisis approached its climax in the late autumn of 1850, only a few observers assumed that the two powers would solve the conflict by political means. It only seemed a matter of time before war would bring about ‘the long desired release of tension in our social and political atmosphere’, as a leading Catholic newspaper put it.26 Public reactions to the 1850 crisis reflected these tensions. Faced with the threat of a ‘civil war’, the idea carefully nurtured in previous years of a national ‘community’ revealed itself to be an illusion. Instead, images of internal ‘discord’ stemming from the experience of the Thiry Years’ War did the rounds in the newspapers. Current events awake ‘the memory of previous mortifications’ was how the Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg summarised the general mood in November 1850. The Germans apparently hated each other more than they did ‘French, Italians and Slavs’; moreover, this was termed ‘patriotism – Austrian patriotism, Prussian patriotism, Bavarian patriotism!’27 This diagnosis did not correspond to the credo of the kleindeutsch national movement, but rather confirmed the enormous value still placed on regional identities in national political discourse in the post-revolutionary decade. The complex federal national structure became visible above all when one of the two most powerful states threatened the fragile political balance within Germany. For the above-mentioned folklorist

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Wilhelm Riehl, the reactions to the 1850 crisis reflected a typical political mentality among Germans, which he termed the ‘particularist instinct’.28 Leaving aside the disapproval implicit in such a characterisation, Riehl’s observations offer some plausible allusions regarding the finer psychological aspects of ‘particularist’ consciousness. ‘The people in the North will always feel uncomfortable’, he wrote, ‘when the great power in the German South starts to assert its power, and the same is true for the south Germans, when Prussia begins to stir. For, given the arbitrariness with which our state borders are made anyway, it would not in the end be so strange at all, if the old, random composition of the German states were to be changed once more through further chance events, and the small states be gobbled up by the large ones’.29 The ‘shots at Bronnzell’, which were fired on the borders of Electoral Hesse at the height of the November crisis, may not have turned out to be the opening volleys in a German ‘civil war’, but they stayed just as much in the public consciousness as the Convention of Olmütz, subsequently named the ‘Humiliation of Olmütz’ by liberals. Once the revolutionary attempt at founding a national state had failed, these two events symbolised the alternative courses of action available: cooperation by the two leading powers within the framework of the German Confederation on the one hand, or a war for mastery in Germany on the other. Around mid-century, Germany resembled a national-political laboratory for experiments in reform, but without disposing of the necessary equipment to carry them out properly. Thus, Prussia’s union policy was shattered not just by the opposition of Austria and the middle states (not to mention Russia’s role), but also by conservative opposition within its own ranks. The project hurriedly conceived by the Austrian Ministry of Commerce for an ‘Empire of 70 millions’ caused a great stir in the south German press, but in the last resort was never firmly pursued by the government in Vienna, not least out of consideration for Prussia. The trialist policy proffered by the mid-sized states aimed at a reorganisation of the German Confederation, with greater weight being accorded to the ‘Third Germany’, but support for such an undertaking was not to be expected from the two Great Powers. At the same time, circumstances were simply unfavourable for nationbuilding ‘from below’. While it is true that a national communicative space was gradually created by the supra-regional press, the Germans did not possess any common state-like institutions, aside from the German Confederation; nor was there a basic consensus in political, economic and cultural affairs. As part of its reactionary policy after 1848–49, the German Confederation developed an effective set of instruments against


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political opposition, especially that coming from the democratic left.30 As Wolfram Siemann maintains, the possibility of building political parties at this time was ‘completely strangled’,31 with the result that national initiatives of whatever hue had little chance of success and the 1850s became a decade of political paralysis. When the so-called ‘new era’ unfolded in Prussia at the end of the 1850s, and Austria’s war against Piedmont and France in Northern Italy enflamed national temperaments in 1859, the conflictual political constellation evident in 1850 had not lost any of its explosiveness. On the contrary, the catastrophic outcome of the 1859 war for the Habsbsurg Monarchy, Prussia’s commercial treaty with France in 1862 (what Heinrich Lutz has termed a ‘commercial Villafranca’ for Austria),32 and the failure of the Princes’ Conference at Frankfurt in 1863 – all narrowed down the room for political manoeuvre even further. The Schleswig-Holstein conflict brought Vienna and Berlin together again for a common purpose, yet it also created the pretext for the final parting of the ways between the two major German powers. What is noticeable in liberal and democratic responses to the SchleswigHolstein crisis is that war had long since become an accepted instrument of national policy. While the conservative press distanced itself from the ‘annexationist desires’ of the national movement, the liberal– democratic opposition scented a national-political opportunity in the coming war with Denmark. In the fight for the duchies, remarked the Allgemeine Zeitung in November 1863, there was a wish to participate, not with ‘words and proclamations’ but also with ‘iron and blood’, though supposedly ‘in a more noble sense’ than Bismarck (from whom the phrase of course originated).33 The latter’s scornful verdict on parliamentarism directly after his appointment as Prussian MinisterPresident had met with sharp criticism on the part of the opposition, yet he obviously struck a chord with those sections of liberal and democratic opinion that had come to a ‘realist’ assessment of the situation – independently of the contempt with which they still viewed Bismarck at that time.

The martial ideal of community in the encircled nation In view of the national political polarisation and the erosion of the system established by the Vienna settlement, war had returned to the fore as an instrument of state action, as had already been signalled during the course of the 1848–49 revolutions. As the German liberal Viennese paper, the Neue Freie Presse, was later to write, in May 1867, if ‘the atmosphere is overly full with electrical currents, then the charges

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are released in cleansing storms’.34 While international agreements had seemingly survived the revolutionary period unscathed, in reality ‘they had been stripped of their content in terms of political principles and reduced to the regulation of territorial borders’.35 That the crisis management embodied by the Vienna System no longer functioned had been demonstrated by the Crimean War, with the result that war had become the tool for creating the new European order. The liberal Ludwig August von Rochau (1820–73) had already voiced this insight in his 1853 work, Grundsätze der Realpolitik (‘Fundamentals of realist politics’). For followers of the ‘realist’ school of thought, war constituted an irreplaceable instrument for the assertion of national interests, and Rochau’s political credo sounded as follows: ‘Power only obeys a greater power. But power is only legitimised by success!’36 Because many observers actually considered the existing European order as the real cause of Germany’s miserable condition, war seemed to constitute a legitimate means of ending what was seen to be a profoundly unjust state of affairs. For, as one Catholic paper had commented at the start of the decade of reaction, ‘the English grocer can well speak of general peace, for that is what makes England fat and wellfed; but for the Germans, this is a peace which drives them to hunger and helotry’.37 The geopolitical concept of a ‘position in the middle’ lent a spatial dimension to this image of a threatened Germany: surrounded by Great Powers, the German nation seemed to be condemned to occupy a pariah status in European affairs, unless it moved on to the offensive. For the Beobachter, a leading democratic paper in Württemberg, it was clear by the time of the approaching war with Denmark, that ‘a struggle, most likely a hard struggle, stands before us’. Moreover, ‘all too soon Germany will perhaps know how many surrounding enemies are to be defeated if Germany’s honour and independence are to be saved, and if Germany is to fight for and secure the position in Europe which it in future deserves’.38 Threatening images of this kind were circulating in the German public sphere long before the so-called ‘wars of unification’. The Vienna-based liberal paper, the Ostdeutsche Post, which had been founded by Ignaz Kurunda, a publicist and member of the national assembly in Frankfurt, indicated that ‘the foreign discussion of vital German matters’ wounded the collective sense of honour. For such ‘a large people as the German one’, there could be ‘no worse insult, no profounder humiliation’ imaginable than ‘such foreign interference’.39 Many observers shared the paper’s viewpoint, and conspiracy theories had a heyday, especially if they appeared to be historically substantiated. Thus, the


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Historisch-politische Blätter informed its readers that the Peace of Tilsit in 1807 had already laid the foundations for ‘the division of mastery of the world between romanic and slav autocracy’. Since the Peace of Paris in 1856, this plan had been resumed through a ‘secret alliance’ between France and Russia (the paper was referring to the agreement of neutrality of 15 March, 1859), such that the very existence of Germany, hemmed in between ‘slavs’ and ‘romans’ (Romanen), was under threat.40 In the German south, such perceptions were additionally influenced by France’s geographical vicinity. Even the democrats in Württemberg, who had never denied their political sympathies for (revolutionary) France, interpreted Austria’s resort to arms in 1859 as a defensive national war against their neighbour on the other side of the Rhine. Certainly, the mobilisation of threatening images is not peculiar to Germany, for it is characteristic of all national discourses, especially in times of crisis.41 This is especially true for the formative phase of nationbuilding, when group cohesion is either still fragile or is limited by conflicting interests. The most important triggers in arming mentally for war include the foundation of new states, territorial conflicts, struggles for hegemony, declarations of war, and military collapses, because these provide reference points for those visions of ‘the enemy’ inherent in all national self-images and awaken the desire for collective solidarity. A comparative glance at nation-building processes in the nineteenth century makes it clear why national culture in Germany was so receptive to images of the enemy and notions of threat. Unlike older nationstates, such as France and Great Britain, ‘stateless’ nations like Germany and Italy possessed neither a political majority in favour of one form of future national organisation nor the necessary political institutions with which to anchor a national consensus in the collective consciousness. Moreover, as they had to assert themselves against already existing states in order to become nation-states themselves, war was virtually unavoidable. In this regard, the often made distinction between ‘cultural nations’ and ‘civic nations’ does not actually allow for any conclusions regarding a tendency towards the use of force, because historically almost all states have asserted their territorial claims through the use of force.42 The main difference here was that this process had largely been concluded in western Europe by the mid-nineteenth century, whereas a new territorial order was still to be created in central Europe. At a time when the transition to industrial society meant that a new kind of ‘aggregate historical situation had been reached’,43 the Germans had to approach a number of challenges simultaneously, ranging from the establishment of a capitalist, class-based society to constitutional

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modernisation and the German question. In such circumstances, there was no escape from societal conflicts. A martialised ideal of community could cover over some of the social contradictions within an ‘unfinished nation’ which was ultimately unable to reach agreement either over its political constitution or its territorial borders. As Dietmar Klenke has argued, this martial ideal of national community ‘grew out of the conviction that the Germans would not be able to assert themselves within the concert of European powers without a high degree of armed unity and a firmly led unitary state’.44 The French archenemy was at the root of this conviction, given that France had moved to the centre of foreign political attention since the war in upper Italy.45 Appeals for national solidarity on a martial basis were, however, profoundly ambivalent in their effects, because they were directed as much towards internal political rivals as towards military opponents. The demonisation of ‘inner Russianness’ (conservatives) or ‘inner Frenchness’ (democrats and liberals) shows that the fronts were hardening within German society beneath the surface of the national community.

Reactions to the defeat at Königgrätz The so-called Bruderkrieg between the two leading German powers detached Austria, the former holder of the German imperial title, from Germany’s subsequent development as a kleindeutsch nation-state. Scholars have offered different explanations for the astonishingly rapid decision by the Habsburg elite to withdraw from Germany after just one lost battle. Dieter Langewiesche has pointed out that, during the nineteenth century, Austria had uncoupled itself increasingly from constitutional, economic and socio-cultural developments in the rest of Germany. Austria succeeded in restricting the influence on its own territory of the nation-building forces evident in other parts of the German Confederation, but thereby weakened its position nationally.46 At the same time, German liberals in Austria found themselves in a contradictory situation: because they linked the German cultural nation to their claim to political leadership in the Austrian lands of the Habsburg Monarchy, they discredited their nominal self-image as a supranational, pro-constitution party, while losing political credibility with regard to the German Question.47 That had fatal consequences. From the standpoint of the other Habsburg nationalities, the German Austrians seemed to be pursuing only their national interests as ‘Germans’, while the kleindeutsch national movement viewed them as being outside the German nation because they were not prepared to forsake the Austrian state.48


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The political challenges facing the Habsburg leadership were just as complex. In this respect, Michael Derndarsky has indicated the strategic failures of Austrian policy towards the German Confederation, especially the changes of tack between Prussia and the Third Germany, and the lack of a convincing project for reform.49 The fact that Prussia succeeded in turning the Zollverein into a power political instrument against its Austrian rival was not just due to the economic interests of the middle states, but also owed much to contemporaries’ irritation with the Habsburg efforts at achieving a settlement with the major north German power. At the same time, the middle states lacked the necessary unity of purpose to act effectively vis-à-vis Austria and Prussia.50 Lastly, it was the Austrian government itself which after 1848 abandoned the Mitteleuropa plan developed by Bruck and Schwarzenberg, because it feared that this would unleash nationalism among its Slavic peoples.51 The Habsburg tight-rope between the German Question and the requirement of stability within the multinational state favoured a waiting policy. Such a course could scarcely be communicated either to its allies or to nationalised public opinion, but it best reflected Austria’s conflicting aims and restricted room for maneouvre. The kleindeutsch national movement presented the Bruderkrieg as a regrettable, but unavoidable step on the way to German unity, whereas its opponents failed to determine a common interpretation of the resort to arms in 1866. Even the conservative press in Vienna employed a martial turn of phrase, when invoking ‘the holy cause of the Fatherland’ and exhorting everyone to fight ‘to the last man and to the last farthing’,52 yet the chasm separating Austrian conservatives and German liberals could not be bridged in this way alone. Austrian conservatives firmly rejected the liberal hope that ‘the Roman Empire of the German nation would rise up again from the grave in 1867’,53 because enthusiasm for the großdeutsch cause was unmistakably bound up with constitutional and religious goals which were unacceptable to them. At the start of the liberal era in Austria, the conservatives had their backs to the wall: in view of the defeat at Königgrätz, their attention was focused on the political consolidation of the multinational state and on the security of the Habsburg possessions in northern Italy, and what remained of the Papal States.54 Where kleindeutsch opinion disputed the competence of the multinational Habsburg state in relation to the German Question, the großdeutsch press sought to unmask Prussia’s actions as the expression of a ‘particularist’ way of thinking. In the final analysis, Austria was not alone in its clash with Prussia, but had the majority of the German states

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behind it in the fight against ‘Greater Prussianism’.55 The pact between Prussia and Italy in 1866 made it appropriate to accuse Berlin of ‘a breach of the Confederation through foreign alliance’ – and hence betrayal of the nation.56 Nevertheless, the großdeutsch press still considered the option of a common national future to be open, because the conflict had apparently expressed, ‘nothing other than the national drive towards the unification of the sundered parts of the great fatherland, the yearning that Austrianness and Prussianness would merge into a higher third state, Germanness’.57 The Habsburg North Army’s defeat at Königgrätz came as a complete shock to the Austrian public. Initially, no one assumed that the war was already decided after this one lost battle, and Liberal papers reported that the population wanted to continue the war with all possible means.58 With a Prussian invasion in sight, Archbishop Joseph Othmar von Rauscher even called on the Viennese to engage in a popular war and announced that there are ‘no parties any more, only Austria’.59 The public readied itself for the defence of the borders and placed its hopes in the South Army, which had been withdrawn from northern Italy. Yet, the prospect of a relatively mild peace, without any territorial losses, made the war’s continuation questionable in the government’s eyes, the more so given that it was doubtful as to whether the Habsburg troops would succeed in stopping the Prussian march forward. These were the two key immediate motives for the decision to conclude the preliminary peace of Nikolsburg just three weeks after Königgrätz. The German liberal press in Austria was deeply bewildered by the renunciation of a military counter-blow. ‘At this terrible moment, where the population in town and country needs the encouragement, the goading, and the enthusiastic example of the government’, wrote the Ostdeutsche Post, ‘there is really hardly any link at all between the government and the people’.60 The German liberals considered Austria’s political exclusion from Germany to be totally unacceptable.61 Such an outcome was foreign to the seemingly true essence of the nation, and ‘had been realised against its express wishes’, as the liberal Neue Freie Presse admonished.62 By contrast to the situation in Austria, the defeat was digested in completely different circumstances in southern Germany. Since the final Peace of Prague, the south German states were bound to Prussia by military alliances, which did not necessarily prejudice their national political future, but did steer them in certain directions. In addition, Austria’s withdrawal from Germany meant the loss of their main political reference point. Under these circumstances, southern Germany’s entry into the North German Confederation was


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an obvious option – such, at least, was the argument put forward in an 1867 pamphlet by the bishop of Mainz, Wilhelm Emanuel von Ketteler, who was anything but a supporter of the kleindeutsch camp.63 The kleindeutsch nation-state did not just meet with rejection by Catholics, though. At that particular moment, the reform policies embarked upon by the Vienna government held out more hope for democratic circles than the situation in Prussia, where Bismarck had emerged as the victor in a long drawn-out constitutional conflict. Moreover, the mouthpiece of the Württemberg People’s Party could not imagine severing the tie with Austria: ‘Swabia will never send men to a German parliament, which – aside from the other Germans – contains only Prussians, and not Austrians’.64 Indeed, the elections to the Customs Parliament in 1868 prove that this attitude was shared by the majority in Württemberg, because the democrat and großdeutsch parties achieved an overwhelming victory, while the German Party, which had nailed its colours to the kleindeutsch mast, failed to return a single member of parliament.65 Even if few publicists went as far as the historian Onno Klopp, who in 1868 demanded a war against the Hohenzollern state,66 there is no question that the north German power remained as unpopular south of the Main river as the kleindeutsch unity for which it stood. Equally, German– Austrians were still considered to be part of the cultural nation after 1866, even if they remained excluded form the civic nation.

The war against France and the future of the großdeutsch nation No matter how profound this aversion towards the victorious Prussians, alternative national political proposals were unclear in proportionate measure. The idea put forward in democratic circles for a Southern Union, with Vienna as its centre of political gravity, failed to gain universal approval in their own ranks, let alone among the political elites in the southern German states and the Habsburg Monarchy.67 Likewise, there was a lack of clarity within the großdeutsch camp as to how to conduct relations between the North German Confederation and the southern German states. In addition, security concerns dominated public discourse after the battle of Königgrätz. The possible ‘encirclement’ of Germany, which had been the subject of speculation for a long time, now seemed to be an acute danger for southern Germany, whose territorial integrity no longer seemed to be guaranteed since ‘all legal redress had disappeared’ with the German Confederation, and ‘the whole European system had been placed at bayonet-point’.68

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It was uncertain both what kind of political order would emerge from any future wars and ‘who would thereby remain standing on the field as victor’.69 For the Historisch-politische Blätter, at the time one of Germany’s most influential Catholic journals, Germany stood before the unpleasant alternative of being at the mercy of either a Prussian or a foreign yoke.70 Seen from this viewpoint, it is no surprise that the war of 1870–71 raised as great hopes in the großdeutsch camp as it did in the kleindeutsch, albeit for different reasons. The campaign against the archenemy could not reverse the verdict of 1866, but it succoured desires for community and raised the prospect of a possible großdeutsch ‘brotherhood-in-arms’. The Historisch-politische Blätter might well state that there could be no question of speaking of a war between Germany and France, because ‘we have never stopped, and never will stop, thinking of the notion of a ‘Germany’ without Austria as incomprehensible’.71 Yet, the approaching conflict fostered the conviction that ‘over here and over there, the national war would in the true meaning of the word’ catch fire, and ‘all Germany would arrive on the scene’, by which above all Austria was intended.72 The campaign of 1870–71 thus acted as a catalyst for the nationalisation of collective consciousness. The heady rush occasioned by the national affirmation of belief in the military struggle against Germany’s neighbour blurred – temporarily, at least – the cultural divide of the ‘Main line’ and memories of the painful defeat in 1866. ‘Württemberg’, wrote the Deutsche Volksblatt in July 1870, ‘has now unanimously taken a stance against France. It enters into the defence of the fatherland with blood and sweat at Prussia’s side. The thought of the common fatherland has pushed all party differences into the background’.73 Public perceptions of the German-French war were accompanied by a proliferation of the images of the enemy, sense of threat, and dreams of mastery constructed in the preceding decades. For many observers, the French declaration of war in July 1870 constituted the culmination of a long-term Napoleonic programme of war, which could only be stymied by German predominance in Europe. The triumphal choruses that began after the French capitulation were by no means confined to the national liberal press, for the former großdeutsch camp joined in too. The selfconfidence of a nation that had been united on the battlefield was founded upon this newly earned military and power political prestige. From now on, Germany ‘may take a place of honour in the ranks of great nations’, which ‘not even the French’ could dispute, wrote one Catholic paper after the preliminary peace agreed at Versailles.74 Even the democratic Beobachter, which otherwise had tended to criticise the


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public enthusiasm for war, accorded the military successes against France a place in the glorious annals of national history.75 The power political sheen of the German Empire’s foundation drew large sections of the former großdeutsch camp permanently into its orbit. Even the German liberals in Austria celebrated the victory against the ‘arch-enemy’ as ‘a turning-point in the history of humanity’.76 Correspondingly, the subsequent diplomatic rapprochement between Vienna and Berlin resonated positively in both southern Germany and Austria.77 The still circulating topos of ‘a struggle between Germanness and Romanness’78 continued to refer to the German nation as a großdeutsch brotherhood-in-arms, despite its political division. In this seemingly national-racial view, the victory over France formed the counterpart to the ‘German cultural mission in the East’ which German liberals in Austria saw as their task within the modernising Habsburg Monarchy.79 For the Austrian liberals’ radical national wing, which formed under the leadership of Georg von Schönerer in 1878, the foundation of the kleindeutsch nation-state in no sense implied the end of großdeutsch visions of political organisation, although it must be recognised that this minority grouping was untypical in questioning the continued existence of the Habsburg state.80 In the south German press, similar ideas can be found relating to Austria’s ‘German task’. According to this view, the contribution of Austrian Germans to the protection of ‘Germanness’ consisted in the securing of the eastern borders: ‘may fragments of Slavdom to the west of this border be crushed too’, as the Frankfurter Zeitung exclaimed during the German-French war.81 The fact that the architects of the großdeutsch nation were at this point reflecting on the national mission and possible future conflicts underlines once again that the wars resulting from the German question extended in their implications beyond Germany’s borders and reflected a general crisis within the European system. The conflicts within and over Germany interacted with the processes of nation-building in central and southern/south-eastern Europe, whose ongoing dynamics would subsequently affect not just Austria and Germany, but the whole of Europe too.

Notes ∗

Translated from the German by Laurence Cole 1. P.A. Pfizer, ‘Ziel und Aufgabe des deutschen Liberalismus’, in: L. Gall and R. Koch (ed.), Der europäische Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert, Bd. 3: Texte zu seiner Entwicklung (Frankfurt a.M., 1981), pp. 67–94, here p. 70.

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2. On this point, see: D. Langewiesche, ‘Deutschland und Österreich: Nationswerdung und Staatsbildung in Mitteleuropa im 19. Jahrhundert’, in: id., Nation, Nationalismus, Nationalstaat in Deutschland und Europa (Munich, 2000), pp. 172–89. Prominent examples of kleindeutsch historical interpretations can be found in: H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 2: Von der Reformära bis zur industriellen und politischen ‘Deutschen Doppelrevolution’ 1815–1845/49 (3rd edn, Munich, 1996); T. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1800–1866: Bürgerwelt und starker Staat (5th edn, Munich, 1991); G.A. Craig, Europe Since 1815 (New York, 1974). The central European dimension to German nation-building has only attracted attention more recently: J.J. Sheehan, German History 1770–1866 (Oxford, 1993); W. Siemann, Vom Staatenbund zum Nationalstaat. Deutschland 1806–1871(Munich, 1995); J. Breuilly, The Formation of the First German Nation-State (London, 1996); H.-H. Brandt, Deutsche Geschichte 1850–1870: Entscheidung über die Nation (Stuttgart, 1999). 3. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, pp. 790–803, here p. 802. 4. National-Zeitung, No. 345, 25.7.1866. 5. W. Hardtwig, ‘Von Preußens Aufgabe in Deutschland zu Deutschlands Aufgabe in der Welt’, Historische Zeitschrift 231 (1980), 265–324. 6. N. Buschmann, ‘Niederlage als retrospektiver Sieg?: Die Entscheidung von 1866 aus Sicht der historischen Verlierer’, in: H. Carl et al. (eds), Kriegsniederlagen: Erfahrungen und Erinnerungen (Berlin, 2004), pp. 123–43. 7. J.J. Sheehan, ‘What Is German History?. Reflections on the Role of the Nation in German History and Historiography’, Journal of Modern History 53 (1981), 1–23. 8. For further discussion, see: N. Buschmann, Einkreisung und Waffenbruderschaft. Die öffentliche Deutung von Krieg und Nation in Deutschland 1850–1871 (Göttingen, 2003), pp. 309–35; C. Rak, Krieg, Nation und Konfession. Die Erfahrung des deutsch-französischen Krieges von 1870/71 (Paderborn, 2004); F. Becker, Bilder von Krieg und Nation. Die Einigungskriege in der bürgerlichen Öffentlichkeit Deutschlands 1864–1913 (Munich, 2001). 9. W. Schieder (ed.), Liberalismus in der Gesellschaft des deutschen Vormärz (Göttingen, 1983); D. Langewiesche, Liberalismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt a.M., 1988), pp. 12–38. 10. C. von Rotteck, ‘Vortrag über die von dem Abgeordneten Welcker 1831 in der zweiten Kammer erhobenen Motion auf Wiederherstellung der Pressfreiheit (1831)’, in: H. von Rotteck (ed.), Dr. Carl von Rotteck’s gesammelte und nachgelassene Schriften, Bd. 3: Landständische Vorträge über Verfassungsangelegenheiten, überhaupt über höhere oder allgemeinere, geistige und politische Interessen (Pforzheim, 1841), pp. 116–25. 11. W. Becker, Zeit der Revolution! – Revolution der Zeit? Zeiterfahrungen in Deutschland in der Ära der Revolutionen 1789–1848/49 (Göttingen, 1999), pp. 147–251, here pp. 175–6. 12. Langewiesche, ‘Deutschland und Österreich’, pp. 179–80. 13. Pfizer, ‘Ziel und Aufgabe des deutschen Liberalismus’, p. 84. 14. R. von Mohl, Politik, Bd. 1 (Tübingen, 1862), pp. 333–72, here pp. 333–5. 15. Ibid., p. 339. 16. L. Bamberger, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 5: Politische Schriften von 1879 bis 1892 (Berlin, 1897), pp. 205–25, here p. 209.


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17. Mohl, Politik, p. 355. 18. W. Real, Der deutsche Reformverein. Großdeutsche Stimmen und Kräfte zwischen Villafranca und Königgrätz (Lübeck, 1966). 19. See: S. Na’aman, Der deutsche Nationalverein: die politische Konstituierung des deutschen Bürgertums 1859–1867 (Düsseldorf, 1987); A. Biefang, Politisches Bürgertum in Deutschland 1857–1868. Nationale Organisationen und Eliten (Düsseldorf, 1994). 20. W. H. Riehl, Land und Leute (5th edn, Stuttgart, 1861), pp. 155–201, here p. 177. 21. Ibid., pp. 355–65, here p. 357. 22. Ibid., p. 365. 23. Compare: Langewiesche, ‘Deutschland und Österreich’; C. Applegate, A Nation of Provincials. The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990); A. Green, Fatherlands. State-Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 2001); L. Cole, ‘Für Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland’. Nationale Identität der deutschsprachigen Bevölkerung Tirols, 1860–1914 (Frankfurt a.M., 2000); T. Götz, Bürgertum und Liberalismus in Tirol 1840–1873. Zwischen Stadt und ‘Region’, Staat und Nation (Cologne, 2001). 24. T. Brechenmacher, ‘ “Österreich steht außer Deutschland, aber es gehört zu Deutschland”: Aspekte der Bewertung des Faktors Österreich in der deutschen Historiographie’, and M. Botzenhart, ‘Die österreichische Frage in der deutschen Nationalversammlung’, in: H.-H. Brandt et al. (eds), Ungleiche Partner?: Österreich und Deutschland in ihrer gegenseitigen Wahrnehmung: Historische Analysen und Vergleiche aus dem 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1996), pp. 31–53 and 115–34. 25. Compare: Biefang, Politisches Bürgertum; H-.A. Winkler, Preußischer Liberalismus und deutscher Nationalstaat: Studien zur Geschichte der deutschen Fortschrittspartei 1861–1866 (Tübingen, 1964); K.-G. Faber (ed.), Die nationalpolitische Publizistik in Deutschland von 1866 bis 1871: Eine kritische Bibliographie, 2 Vols (Düsseldorf, 1963). 26. Historisch–politische Blätter, Bd. 26, 1850, pp. 513–28, here p. 522. 27. (Augsburger) Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 320, 16.11.1850. 28. Riehl, Land und Leute, p. 355. 29. Ibid., p. 359. 30. Compare: C. Jansen, Einheit, Macht und Freiheit. Die Paulskirchenlinke und die deutsche Politik in der nachrevolutionären Epoche 1849–1867 (Düsseldorf, 2000). 31. Siemann, Vom Staatenbund zum Nationalstaat, pp. 389–425, here p. 401. 32. Lutz, Zwischen Habsburg und Preußen, pp. 385–474, here p. 431. 33. (Augsburger) Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 329, 25.11.1863 (Beilage). 34. Neue Freie Presse, No. 963, 7.5.1867 (Morgenausgabe). 35. A. Doering-Manteuffel, Die deutsche Frage und das europäische Staatensystem 1815–1871 (Munich, 1993), pp. 31–8. 36. Cited after: H.-U. Wehler, Krisenherde des Kaiserreiches (2nd edn, Göttingen, 1979), pp. 270–80, here p. 272. 37. Deutsches Volksblatt, No. 202, 27.8.1850. 38. Beobachter, No. 7, 10.1.1864. 39. Ostdeutsche Post, No. 210, 21.8.1859. 40. Historisch–politische Blätter, Bd.44, 1859, 59–96, here 68, 79, 70. 41. Essential reading on this: E. Lemberg, Nationalismus (Reinbek, 1964).

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42. D. Langewiesche, ‘Nationalismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert: zwischen Partizipation und Aggression’, in: id., Nation, Nationalismus, Nationalstaat, pp. 35–54, here p. 46. 43. H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, Bd. 3: Von der ‘Deutschen Doppelrevolution’ bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges 1849–1914 (Munich, 1995), pp. 449–91, here p. 449. 44. D. Klenke, ‘Nationalkriegerisches Gemeinschaftsideal als politische Religion. Zum Vereinsnationalismus der Sänger, Schützen und Turner am Vorabend der Einigungskriege’, Historische Zeitschrift, 260 (1995), 395–448. 45. See: M. Jeismann, Das Vaterland der Feinde. Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und Selbstverständnis in Deutschland und Frankreich 1792–1918 (Stuttgart, 1992). 46. Langewiesche, ‘Deutschland und Österreich’, p. 181. 47. See: H.-H. Brandt, ‘Liberalismus in Österreich zwischen Revolution und Großer Depression’, in: D. Langewiesche (ed.), Liberalismus im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich (Göttingen, 1988), pp. 136–60. 48. See: E. Bruckmüller, Nation Österreich. Kulturelles Bewusstsein und gesellschaftlich-politische Prozesse (2nd edn, Vienna, 1996). 49. M. Derndarsky, ‘Habsburg zwischen Preußen und Deutschland. Österreichs politisches und wirtschaftliches Interesse am Deutschen Bund’, in: H. Rumpler (ed.), Deutscher Bund und deutsche Frage 1815–1866. Europäische Ordnung, deutsche Politik und gesellschaftlicher Wandel im Zeitalter der bürgerlich-nationalen Emanzipation (Munich, 1990), pp. 292–313. 50. P. Burg, ‘Die Triaspolitik im Deutschen Bund. Das Problem einer partnerschaftlichen Mitwirkung und eigenständigen Entwicklung des Dritten Deutschland’, in: Rumpler, Deutscher Bund und deutsche Frage, pp. 136–61. 51. H. Rumpler, ‘ “Es ist ein Kampf auf Leben und Tod, der noch lange nicht aus ist”. Bismarcks Erfolgspolitik und das deutsch–österreichische Problem’, Mitteilungen des Instituts f ür Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 101 (1993), 37–67. 52. Oestereichischer Volksfreund, No. 152, 5.7.1866 53. Vaterland, No. 118, 25.5.1866. 54. Oesterreichischer Volksfreund, No. 165, 20.7.1866. 55. Neue Freie Presse, No. 652, 24.6.1866. 56. (Augsburger) Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 184, 3.7.1866. 57. Neue Freie Presse, No. 575, 7.4.1866. 58. Neue Freie Presse, No. 663, 5.7.1866. 59. Oestereichischer Volksfreund, No. 153, 6.7.1866. 60. Ostdeutsche Post, No. 194, 17.7.1866. 61. Neue Freie Presse, No. 957, 1.5.1867. 62. Neue Freie Presse, No. 706, 17.8.1866. 63. W.E. Ketteler, Deutschland nach dem Kriege von 1866 (Mainz, 1867). 64. Beobachter, No. 166, 20.7.1866. 65. A. Confino, ‘Konzepte von Heimat, Region, Nation und Staat in Württemberg von der Reichsgründungszeit bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg’, in: D. Langewiesche and G. Schmidt (eds), Föderative Nation: Deutschlandkonzepte von der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, 2000), pp. 345–59. 66. O. Klopp, Wer ist der wahre Erbfeind von Deutschland? (Munich, 1868), 45.


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67. H.-T. Michaelis, ‘Das III. Deutsche Bundesschießen 1868 in Wien als politisch-historisches Phänomen’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 104 (1996), 58–95. 68. (Augsburger) Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 204, 23.7.1866. 69. (Augsburger) Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 287, 14.10.1866. 70. Historisch–politische Blätter, Bd. 59, 1867, 196–211. 71. Historisch–politische Blätter, Bd. 66, 1870, 238–48, here 238. 72. Ibid., 247. 73. Deutsches Volksblatt, No. 168, 23.7.1870. 74. Deutsches Volksblatt, No. 50, 1.3.1871. 75. Beobachter, No. 194, 21.8.1870. 76. Neue Freie Presse, No. 2280, 1.1.1871. 77. Neue Freie Presse, No. 3287, 17.10.1873. 78. Neue Freie Presse, No. 2113, 17.7.1870. 79. Neue Freie Presse, No. 2148, 21.8.1870. 80. See: P.M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 (Ann Arbor, 1996). 81. Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt, No. 261, 20.9.1870.

9 Similar Paths, Different ‘Nations’? Ultramontanisation and the Old Catholic Movement in Upper Austria, 1870–71 Max Vögler

Ultramontanism – the belief in a stridently hierarchical Roman Catholic Church with that city’s bishop, the pope, as its infallible head – provided a renewed sense of religious purpose among Catholics at a time of immense political, ideological and structural change in Europe. Indeed, the period from roughly 1830 to 1870 – the same decades that saw a strong surge in nationalist fervour on the continent – corresponds to the time when Ultramontanism found its foothold within the Church. In these decades, an increasing number of prominent Catholic thinkers began to see the Church as a ‘healing tonic for mankind’,1 one that stood against the ‘base’ currents of nationalism. This was a vision perhaps illuminated most clearly in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum: ‘The Church does her utmost to teach and to train men, to educate them, and, through the mediation of her bishops and clergy, diffuses her salutary teachings far and wide. She strives to influence the mind and the heart so that all may willingly yield themselves to be formed and guided by the commandments of God.’2 Such a vision was built upon a strictly ultramontane conception of the Catholic Church: a homogeneous construct that necessitated a bureaucratic and ideological structure rigid enough to withstand the disintegrating pressures of modernization – democratization, industrialization, and the threat of secularization – and especially the growing legitimacy of the nation and nation-state as a polity’s central organizing principle. When religion has typically been discussed by historians of nationalism, it has been, on the one hand, to point out the quasi-‘religious’ role that nations came to play for their populations, and, on the 180

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other, to discuss the seemingly inevitable secularization that this process accompanied or provoked.3 It was the narrative structure that religion provided, which made it possible for the nation to itself become a quasisacred object.4 Through newly invented national rituals – often heavily ‘sacred’ in their narrative structure – the nation became a ‘secular religion,’ which ‘absorbed’ religious practices and forms.5 More recently, historians have also come to recognize that religion – or, more precisely, the activity of the various churches within a nationalizing space – was also an important building block within the proto-nationalist movements in the middle third of the nineteenth century.6 Religious beliefs and structures provided a crucial framework – of symbols (saints, historical events), rituals (commemorations, religious holidays) and activities (especially of local priests) – for the emerging nationalist ideologies.7 In this article, it will be argued that these coincidental developments – the formation of dense social networks and the realignment of the Catholic Church around Ultramontanism on the one side, the rise of nationalism and the nation-state on the other – were actually very similar processes. Ernest Gellner has written that nationalism was an important force for social homogenization within the transition to modernity.8 Seen in this light, ultramontanisation similarly represented an attempt to homogenize the ideological structures and theological currents of the Church. Eric Hobsbawm, meanwhile, has stressed the importance of creating traditions – around ceremonies, statues and figures – in creating the nation.9 From the ritualized display of the Vatican Council to the increasingly charismatic figure of the pope, the Catholic Church too participated in these efforts. Perhaps Benedict Anderson’s image of the nation as an ‘imagined community’ is best suited as a metaphor for explaining how ultramontanisation can also be seen as a form of ‘nation-building’. Though Anderson, like many social theorists, emphasizes the decline of religion as a precursor for the nation, he also presents an imposing picture of a modern society that came to ‘imagine’ itself around certain genres of ‘print-capitalism’ – newspapers, mass-novels and journals – which in turn came to create an image of the nation as ‘a sociological community moving along “homogeneous, empty time” ’.10 Ultramontanism, by ideologically and administratively placing the pope at the epicentre of the Church had the same effect: the figure of the pope, his now infallible manner of decision-making (‘liberated’ from history, since a decision reached in such a manner no longer needed to rely on ‘tradition’ or historical argument),11 the rituals (pilgrimages, etc.) at his court, the growth of a popular conservative Catholic

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press – these became something quasi-mystical in the nationalist sense, ‘moving along homogeneous, empty time’. Historians have thus far spent relatively little time seeking to tie these two strands of historiography together. At most, they have argued that liberal resentment of Catholicism served to bind together the often disparate strands of liberalism in a kind of ad hoc consensus, one that could – and did – serve nationalising purposes.12 Accordingly, this article will explore a twofold question: firstly, how did the liberal/national consensus imagine a Catholic Church that could comfortably fit within the framework of the nation-state? And, secondly, how did the threat of such a liberal vision motivate the Catholic Church to restructure itself in the manner of a ‘nation’ around Ultramontanism? In addressing these issues, the analysis will treat the quasi-nationalising forces of ultramontane Catholicism much in the same manner that other historians have commented on the quasi-religious forces of the nation. When speaking of Ultramontanism’s quasi-nationalising forces, the emphasis will not be on the role that religion played in helping populations become more, or less, nationalistic, nor on the issue of how far the presence of the Catholic Church helped or hindered states in consolidating ‘national’ populations within their borders. Rather, the aim is to investigate how the theoretical models usually applied to nationand state-building can help historians to understand the simultaneous contemporary phenomenon of Ultramontanism. The setting is the province of Upper Austria, located in the western part of the Habsburg Monarchy. The province, with Linz as its capital, is of particular interest for a number of reasons. First, Upper Austria was one of the Habsburg Monarchy’s Alpine provinces, where the Austrian ‘culture wars’ (Kulturkampf ) were at their most inflammatory.13 Second, the region saw the emergence of a liberal, anti-ultramontane (Old) Catholic protest movement – one of only three provinces in the Habsburg monarchy to do so – which questioned developments within the increasingly ultramontane Roman Church. In addition, the fact that Upper Austria was an entirely German-speaking province adds an intriguing national dimension, because religious issues interacted closely with the region’s relationship to the emerging German Empire. The article begins with an examination of why liberals in Upper Austria perceived papal infallibility to be such a grave problem and what steps they sought to take in order to ‘align’ the Church with liberalism and nationalism. Next, it will turn to the Catholic clergy in the same province, focusing on how Ultramontanism came to dominate the local clergy and on the means and methods the clergy employed in combating


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the Old Catholic movement. Finally, it will argue that, in seeking to build up a structure that could withstand or exist apart from the liberal (nation-)state, the Catholic Church itself began to take on the forms and conventions of a nation.

The Kulturkampf and Upper Austria The military defeat suffered by the Habsburg Monarchy against France at Solferino in 1859 severely weakened the power base of the neo-absolutist regime that had been in power since 1849.14 Over the course of the 1860s, liberals began systematically to take advantage of this weakness, asserting greater control at both provincial and state levels. The October Diploma of 1860 re-established the provincial Diets and allotted them much leeway in managing their own affairs. Although the February Patent of 1861 subsequently dampened these powers, the restoration of the Diets nevertheless gave liberals a powerful platform for articulating their views. A second military defeat to Prussia in 1866 led to the state structure that accompanied the empire until its demise after the First World War: Dualism. The dualist arrangement (Ausgleich) of 1867 created ‘Austrian’ and ‘Hungarian’ halves within the Monarchy, joined only by a common ruler, and common ministries of foreign affairs, war and finance. In Cisleithania, the Monarchy’s western half, liberals quickly assumed control of the government. More importantly, a new Austrian Basic Law (Grundgesetz) came into being that same year – also known as the December Constitution – which brought with it a constitutional monarchy with two parliamentary houses, an independent judiciary, and the equality of all citizens and recognized confessions before the law. For the Catholic Church, such measures had severe repercussions. Equality for all citizens and confessions meant that the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church was under attack. The new liberal government began to use its powers immediately, passing a series of anti-clerical laws in May of 1868 which explicitly sought to remove any remaining privileges of the Catholic Church. These socalled ‘May Laws’ removed elementary and secondary education from church control, placing both under state supervision; they reaffirmed the equality of all religious bodies, created the legal possibility of civil marriage, and regulated burial practices. The 1867 Basic Law and the 1868 May Laws quickly became objects of Catholic-Conservative scorn; the liberal government desired the Church’s ‘comprehensive humiliation’, commented the Catholic-Conservative Vaterland.15

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It is important to emphasize that the conflict between church and state in Austria was by no means unique; rather, it was part of a greater European reorientation in which both parties – the Roman Catholic Church and the liberal (nation-) state – sought to restructure the role of religion in society and the polity. Similar conflicts were well underway in Italy, Spain, France and parts of Germany, and these parallel developments gave both sides immense feelings of international solidarity.16 Liberals across Europe argued that countries began ‘to progress at an amazing rate as soon as they freed themselves from clerical tutelage, whereas in states where the clergy had until recently ruled, ‘the inhabitants are stuck fathoms deep in superstition, ignorance, sloth, and destitution.’17 Both the escalation of the Kulturkampf in Bismarck’s Germany after 1871 and the seizure of Rome by the Italian government in 1870, which left Pope Pius IX a ‘prisoner of the Vatican’, were closely followed events in Upper Austria, providing much of the ideological and verbal fodder for the Kulturkampf there. The image of Pius IX ‘trapped’ within the encroaching liberal Italian nation-state – the Church literally and symbolically held captive – served as a consolidating metaphor for a whole generation of conservative Catholics who saw the pope’s suffering as both a symbol and an extension of their own plight. This national and international constellation provided a propitious setting for the Kulturkampf’s localization between 1868 and 1872. In September 1868, the Bishop of Linz, Franz Joseph Rudigier, issued an explosive pastoral letter attacking the May Laws. The letter, immediately confiscated by the local authorities, led first to an indictment of Rudigier in the autumn of 1868 and then to a trial and, finally, his conviction to fourteen days in jail in July 1869 (the sentence was immediately commuted by Emperor Francis Joseph). The fact that the contents of the letter were not made public until after the trial only increased speculation as to its content.18 In the spring of 1869, the Upper Austrian Diet began discussing how to implement the 1868 May Laws on schools, marriages, and confessional equality in the province. Rudigier, as bishop, was an automatic member of that body, and as each new piece of legislation was submitted, the arguments between the bishop and liberal deputies grew more agitated, especially over the schools’ question. Around these arguments, two ‘sides’ began to crystallize in the community: on an elite level in the form of loose political clubs (‘parties’ would be as yet too strong a term with the Liberal–Politischer Verein and the Katholisch–Patriotisches Casino), both being formed in Linz in 1869–70; and on a broader level, with the emergence of the Catholic daily newspaper, the Linzer Volksblatt. Unlike in past years, when the Diet’s


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activities were only covered by the liberal Tages-Post (founded in 1865), conservative Catholics now had their own powerful voice with which to comment on proceedings. In the midst of this increasingly polarized political climate, Upper Austria experienced three elections to the provincial diet between July 1870 and December 1871. The first, held in July 1870, proved crucial for the impetus it gave to the formation of more recognisable political blocs, out of the different streams which had come together in, respectively, the liberal Verein and the conservative Casino. The liberal press attacked the provincial governor (Statthalter), Karl von Hohenwart, for his increasingly conservative views while the clericals were taunted as Ultramontane sheep in a papal flock. (The election took place just weeks prior to the final vote on infallibility in Rome).19 In their first ‘organized’ election, the Catholic-conservatives did well, gaining thirteen seats, mostly in rural communes, so that the Diet now had twenty Catholicconservatives sitting opposite thirty liberals.20 The second election, held in September 1871, came about as a result of political manoeuvering in Vienna. In February of that year, the more federalist Hohenwart, fresh from his tenure as Upper Austrian Statthalter, was asked to form a new government.21 Within the space of a few months, it dutifully dissolved provincial Diets with liberal majorities and called for new elections. In the midst of the resulting confusion, a well-organized Catholic– conservative faction took power from an unprepared liberal camp in the Upper Austrian Diet for the first time. When the Diet opened, twentynine clericals sat opposite twenty-one liberals. The latter, incensed, declared the election and its resulting Diet illegal.22 In November 1871, the government in Vienna changed hands for a second time – now headed by the more liberal Prince Adolph von Auersperg – and the liberals used the same tactics to dissolve Conservative-dominated Diets, including Upper Austria. In the new elections of December 1871, liberals regained control of the noble curia and thus of the Diet as a whole.

The liberal vision of the Catholic Church It was in the midst of these developments – the Rudigier trial, the debates on the implementation of the May Laws, the formation of distinct political camps and the run-up to the triptych of provincial elections – that the Vatican Council began in December 1869. It ran through to July of the following year, when it was permanently interrupted by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. The day before war was declared, the council passed Pastor Aeternus, the so-called ‘dogmatic constitution’,

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which famously declared the pope’s word to be infallible when he spoke on questions of Catholic dogma. To many Catholics, whether priestly or lay, conservative or liberal, such a definition set a dangerous standard, giving the ‘bishop of Rome’ a moral authority for all Catholics and preeminence within the Church that was unprecedented and ultimately harmful. In reaction to infallibility, some Catholics began to call for the return to a ‘true’ Catholicism, as it had existed prior to the Vatican Council; they refused the new dogma and called themselves ‘Old’ Catholics to make this distinction clear.23 The movement quickly evolved into a liberal vision of a ‘modern’ Catholic Church. Support for the Old Catholic movement in Upper Austria was slow at first; not until March 1871 did it receive a stimulus, when Ignaz von Döllinger, the well-known Church historian from Munich, was directly asked by that city’s Archbishop, Gregor von Scherr, to accept the new dogma or face excommunication.24 Döllinger replied in a long open letter, arguing, ‘as a Christian, as a theologian, as a student of history, as a citizen, I cannot accept this teaching.’25 The letter, reprinted widely in the liberal press in Upper Austria and the rest of German-speaking Europe, caused a sensation and the above sentence was repeated time and again as the guiding light of the new movement. Each angle – Christian, theological, historical and civic – is central to understanding the spectrum of liberal Catholic discontent and the form of its proposed solution. The first angle, the use of Christian rather than Catholic, represented an ecumenical and national argument.26 It pointed to the desire that Germany, at the very moment of unification, needed to bridge better the religious divide between Catholics and Protestants. Already in 1863, Döllinger had written that, ‘German unification is the unification of the confessions within Germany. The task of the German theologian is to bring these two confessions into a higher union.’27 Now, in 1871, the liberal Linzer Tages-Post echoed his words: ‘Germany has reached its political unification, the next task is to assure that the current confessional dualism in the [German] Empire does not suffer from a further split, but rather that unity is achieved.’28 Though liberal Catholics did not see a conversion to Protestantism as the answer to their religious qualms about Rome, they realized that an ardently ultramontane Church would only drive a further wedge between the two confessions in a newly national state. The second and third angles, those of theological and historical protest, need to be considered together, for they combine two arguments that largely stem from the same source. For liberal Catholics, the ‘model’


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Church was that of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, especially as seen at the Council of Constance (1414–18). This Council not only took place on ‘German’ soil but also represented a key moment when bishops, representatives of the ‘nations’ (delegates from the courts of England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy), and knowledgeable lay Christians caucused together, abdicating three existing rival Popes and electing a fourth, in order to end the Great Schism.29 Four and a half centuries later, liberal Catholics saw Constance as the right model for the Catholic Church in an era increasingly dominated by the nation-state.30 Such historical examples then tied into existing theological streams of thought, most notably those of the influential theologian Johann Adam Möhler.31 Möhler, a Catholic priest who studied in Protestant Berlin and taught in confessionally mixed Tübingen before joining the theological faculty in Munich in the 1830s, was very much a product of a conservative reaction against the French revolution. He argued that, in an era of increasingly secular societies and powerful states, only a strong and universal institution that stood above both could safeguard mankind. Möhler conceived of the Catholic Church as an organic whole; each parish, each diocese, and, ultimately, the Church as a whole under the pope, came together to form what he termed the ‘mystical body of Christ’.32 While many of his students were avowedly ultramontane, Möhler’s ideas of the Church as an organic community, built from the bottom up, strongly resonated among more liberal theologians.33 Now, a half-century later, Döllinger argued that infallibility destroyed ‘the wonderfully organic constitutional structure of the old Church’. As a fourth and final angle, there is Döllinger’s protest as a citizen. In the many public displays of support issued by liberal clubs for Döllinger and the Old Catholic movement, it was this issue – that infallibility made citizenship in a modern state impossible – which received the most attention. ‘The more freedoms a society grants itself, the more solid the pillars of its legal system must stand’, began an open letter from a lawyer and his wife in Linz, continuing: ‘a religion that wholly subjects its dogmas to the arbitrariness, the weaknesses, and the intentions of a single individual, thus subjects its laws to the capricious and imperfect elements within human nature. It thus can only serve to destroy civilization by destroying the very foundations of the state’.34 Unlike Möhler, liberals could not and did not want to conceive of an authority higher than the state and were shocked when increasingly ultramontane priests began to base their sermons on biblical passages such as Acts 5:29 – ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’35 In a democratic, modern and multi-confessional polity, the state was the sole

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institution capable of steering society away from the trappings of an outdated authoritarian order, one in which the Catholic Church itself had played no small role. Old Catholics effectively thus tried to ‘nationalize’ the Church – to alter its structures and practices in order to bring it into line with the ideals of political liberalism and nationalism. For Upper Austrian liberals, this process had a two-fold incentive, because the Vatican Council was immediately followed by the Franco-Prussian war. Over the shortest of time spans, Upper Austrian liberals were abandoned first by ‘their’ Catholic Church and then by ‘their’ German nation. Upper Austrian liberals saw themselves surrounded by a ‘black international’,36 of ultramontane Catholics. Rudigier’s policies in Upper Austria, they argued, were ‘a link in the chain, which goes from Rome through Vienna to Germany, from east to west, holding the German Reich and the German Nation captive.’37 Here, liberals were also implicitly picking up on their interpretation of the events of 1866, which had led to their exclusion from Germany. In the aftermath of Königgrätz, they had seen the defeat as stemming from the continuing power of the clergy and aristocracy and their unwillingness to embrace modern constitutionalism: ‘At this moment, we cannot allow ourselves to succumb to any delusion. That Austria today stands on the brink of ruin, that Austria these days has to take the advice to exit from Germany, not just from Prussia, but also from its middle-man, Napoleon III – all this misfortune is what we get from the unseemly adhesion to feudal, ultramontane traditions stemming from the Middle Ages.’38 By 1870, since there was little hope of ‘national’ salvation in a German or Italian fashion within the Habsburg Monarchy, liberals now turned on the Catholic Church, seeking to make it less Roman and ensuring that the state – under their leadership – was based on modern constitutional principles. In retrospect, of course, it is extremely difficult to gauge accurately the potential for reform within the Catholic Church around 1870. After the final vote on 18 July 1870, did liberals seriously think that the clock could be turned back, that the pope could somehow be made ‘fallible’ again? From the perspective of liberals in Upper Austria, such a hope was not utterly implausible. Firstly, well over half of the Habsburg Monarchy’s 58 bishops voted against infallibility in Rome during an initial vote on the matter on 13 July. Thus even the upper ranks of the Habsburg Catholic hierarchy seemed set against the extreme, hierarchical vision of ultramontanism espoused in Rome.39 Moreover, Cardinal Joseph Rauscher of Vienna, the de facto head of the Austrian Church, was one of the leaders of the so-called anti-infallibility ‘minority’ in Rome,


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while Bishop Josef Strossmayer of Djakovo in Croatia was the last bishop anywhere in the world publicly to submit to the new dogma, waiting until December 1872 to do so. Even conservative and traditionally ultramontane bishops, such as Joseph Fessler of Sankt Pölten, argued publicly for a moderate interpretation of the doctrine.40 Within Austria, it was thus not just the anti-clerical and liberal Catholic laity that seemed displeased at the outcome of the council, but also dominant currents within the Church hierarchy. Second, and perhaps even more important, the actions of the government in Vienna raised hopes that the state might actively support the fledgling Old Catholic movement in their endeavour. When the Reichsrat met on 18 July 1870 – the exact day of the final vote in Rome – it already began to discuss the question of infallibility. Within a few weeks, the government annulled the 1855 Concordat with the Vatican, citing the ‘changed legal parameters’ created by the new dogma.41 As Carl von Stremayr, the Minister for Education and Religion, argued in a speech he gave in August of 1870, Pastor Aeternus shifted the legal foundations of the Catholic Church, ‘replacing an old, historical and limited idea of authority with a new one, unrestrained and unrestrainable’.42 These issues especially came to a head in the Upper Austrian town of Ried, the one place in Upper Austria where the Old Catholic movement found a longer-term home.43 Due west of Linz and close to the Bavarian border, in 1870 Ried had a population of about 4,500 and was an important regional trading centre. Though it had little domestic industry to boast of, the town contained a large merchant and artisan population, and served as the capital of the Innviertel, one of the four administrative districts that made up Upper Austria.44 In Ried, liberals could count on strong municipal support in realizing their vision of an Old Catholic Church: one of the signatories of an initial 1870 petition protesting the new dogma was Josef Gyri, an apothecary and the town mayor.45 On 22 April 1871, just days after the liberal club met to decide on a long letter of support to Döllinger, the town council met and issued two proclamations: the first was a further declaration of support for Döllinger; the second an official petition to the Ministry for Education and Religion, demanding that it forbid the publication and teaching of Pastor Aeternus within the Monarchy, expel all Jesuits and similar orders, and prohibit the use of the pulpit for political purposes.46 While many town councils issued letters of support for Döllinger, no others seem to have actually used the opportunity to make specific demands to the central government in Vienna.

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Just as critical was the mayor’s support in providing the Old Catholics with a place of worship. Initially, the Old Catholic community tried to claim co-use of the town chapel and although such tactics had succeeded just across the border in Catholic Bavaria, they fell on deaf ears in Austria.47 Next, the Old Catholics petitioned the municipal council – most likely at Gyri’s suggestion – for use of the town theatre, which was a more fitting choice than one might think. The theatre had originally been the Church of the Holy Spirit, built in 1482 as part of a hospital. Under Joseph II, both church and hospital were secularized, and, during the French occupation in 1810, the church had become a theatre.48 On 1 February 1872 the town council decided to grant the Old Catholics use of the church and even subsidised the remodelling with money from the municipal coffers. In Ried, liberals thus had a successful model of what happened when the state participated: with the help of the mayor’s office, liberals had succeeded in creating a framework conducive to the establishment of an Old Catholic movement.

Reactions of a Catholic ‘nation’? Ultimately, the attempt at taming the Catholic Church for the ‘liberal’ nation did not succeed. All bishops and most governments eventually recognized the Pope’s new status and the Vatican’s revised constitution. Yet did ultramontane Catholicism now become a sort of pan-national ‘quasi’-nation? To answer this question, we can return to Bishop Rudigier and his priests. How did they react to the Vatican Council, and how did they perceive their liberal foes? When Rudigier returned to Upper Austria from Rome in late July 1870, he had no qualms of conscience about the proceedings in Rome. Indeed, the tenacity with which he articulated an extreme version of the Vatican Council’s message surprised even some of his most ardent supporters. He included the Council’s dogmatic constitution, Pastor Aeternus, in a July issue of the Linzer Diözesanblatt, months before Rauscher did the same in Vienna.49 Furthermore, Rudigier spoke of the Council and its decrees in almost every sermon and speech he gave for the rest of the year.50 One of his earliest and most radical speeches, held in early August at a meeting of the Upper Austrian Catholic association in Steyr, was extensively publicized, first in the Linzer Volksblatt and then as a pamphlet. Rudigier began his speech in a reassuring tone, explaining that Pastor Aeternus did not change the Church, nor did it seek for Catholics to be disobedient to the state. ‘Who has been most steadfast in opposing the forces of revolution and in encouraging believers to adhere to a state’s


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rightful laws if not the Holy Father?’ he began. As he continued, his tone changed: ‘I say “rightful” laws. When a state stipulates norms and passes laws that contradict the higher laws, those of God, then the holy father is entitled to declare those norms as non-binding and to declare to his believers: “not only are you not guilty if you do not follow these norms, but it would go against the highest law, if you did”.’ In essence, Rudigier thus argued that the Church was a higher moral authority than the state. In words much more explicit than those in his pastoral letter of 1868, he called for large-scale Catholic civil disobedience in the face of anti-clerical legislation. ‘[One should] not observe laws that [go] against the laws of God one must obey God more than any human authority’.51 Within his speech, Rudigier gave real life to the liberal fear of an ultramontane Catholicism after infallibility: if the pope, a bishop, a member of the clergy, or even a Catholic lay citizen considered a state law as unconscionable, he or she not only could ignore it, but should feel duty-bound to protest against its implementation. Rudigier was laying the ideological groundwork for an alternative mental geography which was fundamentally at odds with the liberal nation-state. Two short examples show what sorts of ramifications this had in practice. Like hundreds of other clergymen, Sebastian Freund, the local parish priest in Ried, was very concerned with the issue of religious education after the Vatican Council. In January 1872, four of the twentyfive students at the recently opened secondary school (Gymnasium) in Ried signed a petition declaring their allegiance to the Old Catholic Church. The headmaster, a liberal whose position opposing infallibility was well known, supported the boys. Two of the boys were below the age of consent (fourteen in Austria) and thus nonetheless had to continue attending Catholic instruction. For the remaining two, the situation was more complicated. Although after fourteen every child could choose his or her own religion, Old Catholicism was not a recognized confession by the state.52 The boys ceased taking part in the Catholic religious instruction in school but their status remained unclear. Were they now officially without a confession (konfessionslos) or still Catholic? Did they need to be reclassified as Protestants for the time being? No one was sure, although the boys seem to have dropped their case within a few weeks.53 The incident would be uninteresting if it were not for the larger ramifications it had for how religion would be taught in Upper Austrian schools: over the course of the following year, the liberal local school board, which Rudigier had barred priests from joining as a protest against the 1868 May Laws, began using lay Catholics as instructors in religious

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classes.54 These instructors were to give a more ‘balanced’ view of the Catholic religion than that provided by Freund, or his assistant, Johann Stritzinger.55 Together, Freund and Stritzinger appealed against the measure to the Ministry for Education and Religion, without success.56 Concurrent with the court proceedings and well aware that the Catholic Church would probably lose the case, the parish in Ried began a program of extra-curricular religious instruction, teaching religion outside the school system altogether. As Stritzinger proudly reported, ‘the verdict has hardly had an effect on us. Each week more and more children come to our religious instruction, which means we can safely file the case ad acta without worry. Only the children of ardent “newProtestants” have chosen to stay away; most of [infallibility’s] more gentle critics have joined us’.57 Instead of forcing greater oversight of how religion was taught within the public school system, the confrontation provoked the creation of a separate realm altogether, where neither the local administration nor the school board had any jurisdiction. Also instructive is a second incident that occurred early on in the confrontation between Old Catholics and Roman Catholics in Ried, namely between the parish priest, Freund, and a well-known liberal merchant, Engelbert Wetzelsberger. In the summer of 1871, Wetzelsberger lay dying and asked Freund to come and administer the last rites. Freund refused, citing Wetzelsberger’s signature on the Old Catholic petition, and, in a letter to Wetzelsberger’s mother, threatened to refuse her son a Catholic burial if he did not repent.58 Liberals were outraged. Wetzelsberger had not, after all, officially left the Catholic Church; he had merely signed a petition protesting against certain teachings of his legally recognized confession. In the eyes of the state, Old Catholics, since they had never legally left the Catholic Church, still remained members of that body. In his capacity as the local representative of that confession, Freund thus had no authority to withhold last rites and a proper burial. The town council petitioned the diocesenal administration in Linz, asking it to overrule Freund’s decision. Instead, the administration released a detailed directive mandating how Catholics should behave in the wake of Pastor Aeternus and under what conditions they could consider themselves Roman Catholics.59 While Wetzelsberger survived his illness and went on to live another 15 years, the damage was done and Wetzelsberger went on to become one of the lay leaders of the Old Catholic community in Ried. The Wetzelsberger incident brings to light the question of how priests confronted the issue of infallibility with their parishioners on a daily basis. Was Freund an anomaly among priests in Upper Austria?


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Freund gave the following answer when asked why he had treated Wetzelsberger the way he did: it was what he had been taught at a ‘pastoral conference’. Such conferences were local events where priests came together to discuss questions of politics and theology. Each deanship, of which there were 28 in the diocese, held its own conference; attendance was mandatory. The issues to be discussed were conceived by Rudigier in the form of questions posted in the local Diözesanblatt a few weeks before; participants were required to prepare short statements by way of an answer, which were then read aloud and debated in the group. In the spring of 1871, as the Old Catholic movement began gaining momentum within the diocese, the Old Catholic question was approached in the following way: ‘Assume someone is the member of a liberal club and has signed a petition supporting Döllinger. How should a priest treat such an individual?’ As we have seen, both Bishop Rudigier and Sebastian Freund in Ried took a more extreme position, treating the individual in question as a de facto non-Catholic. This was, however, not the only view, even within the diocese. In the pastoral conference held in Linz that year, participants took a much more moderate line. For example, one of the professors at the seminary, Josef Reiter, presented a more pragmatic response, arguing that unless it was an extreme case, priests should institute a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. If, however, the parishioner did confess to doubting infallibility, he was to be treated as a heretic and convinced of his wrong ways. Other priests attending the conference argued that even this interpretation was too strict.60 Infallibility and its implementation as an ideology was a methodical process – not without resistance even within Rudigier’s own diocese. Yet while Rudigier’s extreme interpretation of infallibility may not initially have been taught at the seminary, it was what was most widely covered in the popular press. And because it was so widely covered, Rudigier’s ideas were what parish priests inevitably had to defend on Sunday morning in their sermons. To return to Freund in Ried: it was in the context of the pastoral conference that priests learned and practiced Ultramontanism as an ideology. The implementation of such an ideological apparatus led to the continuing polarization of priest and liberal parishioner on the local level, making it increasingly difficult for priests (and conservative lay Catholics) to support alternative views and for liberal Catholics to find room for themselves in this new ideological construct: two imagined communities, with increasingly homogenized ideological structures, separate spheres of schooling, associational life and print media – two quasi-‘nations’, existing side-by-side, but apart.

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Conclusion A conundrum for historians has traditionally been to explain why liberals seemed so ‘upset’ by ultramontane Catholicism and the religious revivals of the 1850s–70s. Was, as many historians in the 1960s and 1970s argued, the nineteenth century a secular age, in which the Catholic Church as a powerful social and political institution had no place (with religious revival going against the grain of secularization)? Or was it the case, as historians have more recently suggested, that the Catholic religious revival and the rise of Ultramontanism helped to rally liberals around a common goal and thus acted in lieu of a guiding principle or ideology of the movement? In this light, it is interesting to revisit the Kulturkampf with respect to the speech Bishop Rudigier held shortly after his return from Rome in July 1870: ‘by declaring the pope infallible in matters of dogma,’ he said, ‘Catholic theology has reached its crowning achievement. We finally possess a perfected scientific system (ein vollendetes, wissenschaftliches System).’61 Yet, here was the pursuit of a ‘perfected scientific system’ at the very moment that the nation as a sovereign concept of territory was laying its finishing touches on the European order. Within a year of the final vote on infallibility, the German Reich unified and the Italian ‘March on Rome’ removed the last vestiges of papal temporal authority. Returning now to the idea of an ultramontane ‘nation’, the two camps – liberal/national, conservative/Catholic – can be seen as nationlike entities, both sides using the idea, rhetoric and narrative structure of ‘nation-building’ to consolidate its ranks and create a picture of the foreign ‘other’. Liberal Catholics, especially those that veered toward the Old Catholic movement, were repeatedly assailed as NeoPrussians (‘Neu-Preußen’), while Rudigier and his clergy referred to New Protestants (‘Neuprotestanten’) as a way of mocking their adherence to a ‘non-faith’. By better understanding the function of Ultramontanism in the nineteenth century not just within the ideological consolidation of the Catholic Church, but also the role it played in the liberal consolidation of the nation-state, we can better integrate religious history into the larger existing narratives of European nation and state building. Through Ultramontanism, the Catholic Church as a community of believers was re-imagined in order to make it more durable within a larger community of quasi-sacred nations. It sought to become a peer among the secular states.


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Notes 1. On the early Catholic restoration in the Metternich era, see: G. Mayer, Österreich als katholische Grossmacht: ein Traum zwischen Revolution und liberaler Ära (Vienna, 1989); F. Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, 3rd edn, 4 vols (Freiburg, 1955), Vol. 4, pp. 62–97. 2. Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum: Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Capital and Labor, ‘1891. The Vatican, 1891’, at: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en. html, accessed 25 January 2004. See also: M.N. Ebertz, ‘Die Bürokratisierung der katholischen “Priesterkirche”’, in: P. Hoffmann (ed.), Priesterkirche (Düsseldorf, 1987), p. 139. 3. The thesis that nationalism invariably leads to secularization is common to much of the literature. For example, a central tenet in Benedict Anderson’s work is that the breakdown of religious monopolies on ontological truths is an important precursor for nationalism. See: B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London–New York, rev. edn 1991), pp. 36–7. 4. D.L. Bergen, ‘Christianity and Germanness: Mutually Reinforcing, Reciprocally Undermining?’ in: M. Geyer and H. Lehmann (eds), Religion und Nation, Nation und Religion. Beiträge zu einer unbewältigten Geschichte (Göttingen, 2004), pp. 76–98. 5. G.L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York, 1977), pp. 4–6. 6. See, for example: E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (2nd edn, Cambridge-New York, 1992), pp. 67–73; G. Hübinger, ‘Sakralisierung der Nation und Formen des Nationalismus im deutschen Protestantismus’, in: H. Lehmann and G. Krumeich (eds), Säkularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa: Bilanzen und Perspektiven der Forschung (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 233–48; D. Langewiesche and H.G. Haupt, Nation und Religion in der deutschen Geschichte (Frankfurt, 2001); P. Walkenhorst, ‘Nationalismus als “politische Religion”. Zur religiösen Dimension nationalistischer Ideologie im Kaiserreich’, in: O. Blaschke (ed.), Religion im Kaiserreich. Milieus, Mentalitäten, Krisen (Gütersloh, 1996), pp. 503–29. 7. Robert E. Alvis, Religion and the Rise of Nationalism: A Profile of an East–Central European City (Syracuse, N.Y., 2005); Klaus Buchenau, ‘Katholizismus und Jugoslawismus. Zur Nationalisierung der Religion bei den Kroaten, 1918– 1945’, in: Geyer and Lehmann, Religion und Nation, pp. 225–54. 8. E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983), pp. 48–62. 9. E. Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914’, in: E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge– New York, 1984), pp. 263–307. 10. J. Hutchinson and A.D. Smith (eds), Nationalism (Oxford–New York, 1994), p. 48. 11. On this point, see, Y.H. Yerushalmi, Zakhor. Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle, 1996), pp. 105–17.

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12. For this argument in an Austrian context, see, K. Vocelka, Verfassung oder Konkordat?. Der publizistische und politische Kampf der österreichischen Liberalen um die Religionsgesetze des Jahres 1868 (Vienna, 1978). The argument is most skilfully made by: M.B. Gross, The War Against Catholicism: Liberalism and the anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor, 2004). 13. L. Cole, ‘The Counter-Reformation’s last stand: Austria’, in: C. Clark and W. Kaiser (eds), Culture Wars: Secular–Catholic Conflict in 19th -century Europe (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 285–312. 14. On the complex political strands involved in the neo-absolutist regime, see: H.-H. Brandt, Der österreichische Neoabsolutismus: Staatsfinanzen und Politik 1848–1860, 2 vols (Göttingen, 1978); J.T. Leigh, ‘Public Opinion, Public Order, and Press Policy in the Neoabsolutist State: Bohemia, 1849–52’, Austrian History Yearbook 35 (2004), 81–99. 15. Quoted in: R. Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1765–1918: From Enlightenment to Eclipse (London, 2001), p. 211. 16. On the links between the various ‘culture wars’ in late nineteenth-century Europe, see: C. Clark, ‘The New Catholicism and the European Culture Wars’, in: Clark and Kaiser, Culture Wars, pp. 11–46. 17. ‘Vor der Geschichte – und vor Gott’, Morgen-Post, 18 October 1867. Cited in: A.W. France, Kulturkampf in Austria: The Vaterland Circle and the Struggle over the Confessional Legislation of May, 1868 (PhD. Rice University, 1975), p. 48. 18. On the Rudigier trial and for further references, see: M.H. Vögler, Religion, Liberalism and the Social Question in the Habsburg Hinterland: The Catholic Church in Upper Austria, 1850–1914 (PhD. Columbia University, 2006), ch. 4, passim. 19. H. Slapnicka, Christlichsoziale in Oberösterreich: vom Katholikenverein 1848 bis zum Ende der Christlichsozialen 1934 (Linz, 1984), p. 37. 20. Until 1909, the Upper Austrian electorate was divided into four curia: rural (19 seats), urban (17 seats), chamber of commerce (3 seats), and noble landowners (10 seats), with one seat for the bishop. The clericals tended to win the rural seats, the liberals the urban seats and the chamber of commerce. Thus, all hinged on the nobility. See: H. Slapnicka, Oberösterreich unter Kaiser Franz Joseph (1861 bis 1918) (Linz, 1982), p. 78. 21. Hohenwart had been a leading figure in organizing the Upper Austrian landowners and was even elected to the Diet from that curia in the 1870 elections. See: H. Slapnicka, Oberösterreich, die politische Führungsschicht: 1861 bis 1918 (Linz, 1983), pp. 116–17. 22. Slapnicka, Oberösterreich unter Kaiser Franz Joseph, p. 158. 23. On the Old Catholic Church in general, see: A. Berlis, Frauen im Prozeß der Kirchwerdung. Eine historisch–theologische Studie zur Anfangsphase des deutschen Altkatholizismus (Berlin, 1998); U. Küry, Die Altkatholische Kirche. Ihre Geschichte, ihre Lehre, ihr Anliegen (Stuttgart, 1966); J.F. Ritter von Schulte, Der Altkatholicismus. Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, inneren Gestaltungen und rechtlichen Stellung in Deutschland (Giessen, 1887). For the Habsburg Monarchy, see: H.J. Demmel, Geschichte des Alt-Katholizismus in Oesterreich (Kempten, 1914); C. Halama, Altkatholiken in Österreich. Geschichte und Bestandsaufnahme (Vienna, 2004); Hans Hoyer, ‘Die Altkatholische Kirche’, in: A. Wandruszka and P. Urbanitsch (eds) Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918: Bd.IV Die Konfessionen (Vienna, 1985), pp. 616–32.


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24. Already a prominent figure among religious scholars and nationally minded German Catholics in the 1850s–60s, Döllinger had played an important public role in the run-up to the Council. In 1869, he wrote a series of anonymous letters under the name of Janus, which systematically criticized the existing ultramontane line and argued against the legality of any definition of papal infallibility. Now, two years later, his very public refusal to accept infallibility in the above open letter to the bishop of Munich made him a hero of liberal Catholics everywhere. 25. From Döllinger’s letter to the bishop of Munich, Gregor von Scherr, 28 March 1871. In the Linzer Tages-Post, the letter appeared on the front page in three parts, from 2–5 April 1871. 26. Anglican theologians made similar arguments before and after the Council. See: R. Fitzsimons, ‘The Church of England and the First Vatican Council’, Journal of Religious History 27 (2003), 29–46. 27. I. von Döllinger, ‘Die Vergangenheit und Gegenwart der katholischen Theologie’ (a speech held 28 September 1863, to open a scholars’ meeting in Munich). Printed in: L. Scheffczyk (ed.), Theologie in Aufbruch und Widerstreit. Die deutsche katholische Theologie im 19. Jahrhundert (Bremen, 1965), pp. 274–6. 28. Linzer Tages-Post, 4 June, 1871. 29. For an overview of the Council of Constance as a Catholic historiographical problem in the nineteenth century, see, T.M. Izbicki, ‘Papalist Reaction to the Council of Constance: Juan de Torquemada to the Present’, Church History 55 (1986), 7–20. 30. On the projection of ideas of nations and nationhood into the past, see: P.J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, 2002). 31. On Möhler, see R.W. Franklin, Nineteenth-Century Churches: The History of a New Catholicism in Württemberg, England, and France, (New York, 1987), esp. pp. 135–6 and 141–3; G.A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method, (New York, 1977), pp. 67–8; Schnabel, Deutsche Geschichte, Vol. 3, pp. 119–24, Vol. 4, pp. 165–174. 32. As R. William Franklin has argued, this made Möhler ‘the first Roman Catholic theologian for a thousand years to argue that the ground of the Church was not the clergy or the state, but the communal life of all believers’. Franklin, Nineteenth-Century Churches, p. 17. 33. On differing interpretations of Möhler in the second half of the nineteenth century, see: Franklin, Nineteenth-Century Churches, pp. 208–12. 34. Letter from Dr Heinrich Heyßler and Helene Heyßler, Linzer Tages-Post, 3 August, 1870. 35. Rudigier used this phrase in his pastoral letter against the May Laws in 1868, again in a speech on infallibility in Steyr, and also while debating the implementation of the May Laws in the Upper Austrian diet. See: K. Meindl, Leben und Wirken des Bischofes Franz Joseph Rudigier von Linz, 2 vols (Linz, 1891), Vol. 2, p. 41. 36. Demmel, Geschichte des Alt-Katholizismus, p. 22. 37. K. Wiser, Die Leistungen des hochw. Bischofes von Linz, Franz Josef Rudigier in Beziehung auf den Sekular- und Kloster-Klerus in Oberösterreich vom Juni 1853 bis Ende 1870 (Linz, 1872), p. 16.

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38. Tagespost, No. 160, 15 July, 1866. 39. Thirty-two Austro-Hungarian bishops voted either Non Placet (a straightforward rejection) or a Placet iuxta modum (yes, but only with significant alteration). The initial number of bishops who caucused with the minority was even higher. Only nine of the fifty-eight bishops from the Habsburg Monarchy came to the council expressly supporting the majority. See: K. Schatz, Vaticanum I. 1869–1870, 3 vols (Paderborn, 1992), Vol. 2, pp. 41–3, and 377–9. 40. O. Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 1830–1914 (Oxford-New York, 1998), p. 221. 41. P. Leisching, ‘Die Römisch-Katholische Kirche in Cisleithanien’, in: Wandruszka and Urbanitsch, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, pp. 1–247, here p. 55; E. Weinzierl-Fischer, Die österreichischen Konkordate von 1855 und 1933, (Vienna, 1960), p. 115–16. 42. Wiener Zeitung, 2 August, 1870. ‘An Stelle der alten, historischen, limitierten Kirchengewalt eine neue, unbeschränkte und unbeschränkbare getreten ist ’. Cited in an article by Johann Friedrich von Schulte, Linzer Tages-Post, 14 February, 1875. 43. Only two other towns in Cisleithania saw the creation of a successful Old Catholic movement: the capital city, Vienna, and the north bohemian textile town of Warnsdorf. For a more thorough treatment of the Old Catholic movement in Upper Austria, see: Vögler, Religion, Liberalism and the Social Question, ch. 7. 44. F. Berger, Ried im Innkreis. Geschichte des Marktes und der Stadt (Ried, 1948). 45. Gyri was a popular mayor, who served from 1870 to 1883 (Berger, Ried im Innkreis, p. 148). 46. Open letter, Rieder Wochenblatt, 9 May, 1871. Reprinted in F. Zierler, Ried im Innkreis und der Altkatholizismus (Theologische Diplomarbeit, Theologische Hochschule Linz, 1972), pp. 26–30. 47. In Simbach, just across the border from the Upper Austrian town of Braunau, Old Catholics had successfully managed to secure co-use of the parish church (Linzer Tages-Post, 3 March, 1872). In the Prussian Rhineland, this tactic, though successful in several towns, also backfired. Instead of sharing the churches, the Catholic Church pronounced them desecrated and stopped holding services. Moreover, in several towns riots broke out in which Catholic supporters looted the ‘already desecrated’ churches. See: J. Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, 1984), p. 235. 48. Meindl, Leben und Wirken, Vol. 2, p. 108; Slapnicka, Oberösterreich unter Kaiser Franz Joseph, pp. 285–6. 49. The speed with which bishops published papal pronouncements is usually seen as corresponding to the degree of sympathy with a given papal decision. Small variations in how papal decrees were published thus determined how much ideological leeway local Catholics had. See: Chadwick, History of the Popes, pp. 221–2; Schatz, Vaticanum I. 1869–1870, p. 265. 50. F.J. Rudigier, ‘Warum bisher kein Hirtenbrief über die Infallibilität des Papstes erschienen ist’, Linzer Diöcesan-Blatt, 15, 27, 1870. Reprinted in: F. Doppelbauer (ed.), Bischof Rudigier’s Kirchenpolitische Actenstücke (Linz, 1890), p. 47. 51. F.J. Rudigier, Über die Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes und die Liberalen (Linz, 1870).


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52. At fourteen, a child could declare a confessional affiliation of his or her own free will; below the age of seven, it was the parents who determined the confession, and between those ages no change was possible. See: L. Gumplowicz, Das österreichische Staatsrecht (Verfassungs- und Verwaltungsrecht), 2nd edn (Vienna, 1902), p. 230; W. Hauptmann, Die Entwicklung der Religionsmündigkeit im deutschen und im österreichischen Recht’, Österreichisches Archiv fur Kirchenrecht 19 (1968), 133–73. 53. Diözesanarchiv Linz (hereafter DAL), CA/4, Sch. 64, Fasz. 32/5, Joseph Kobler to Rudigier, 9 January 1872. 54. Meindl, Leben und Wirken, vol. II, pp. 25–63; F.J. Rudigier, Rede des hochwürdigsten Herrn Bischofes von Linz, Franz Joseph Rudigier, über das neue Schulaufsichtsgesetz, gehalten in der 19. Sitzung des oberösterreichischen Landtages, (Linz, 1869). 55. Even among Ultramontane priests, Stritzinger seems to have been an extreme case. Around this time, Freund complained that he would like a second Kooperator to balance the hot-headedness of Stritzinger (DAL CA/4, Sch. 64, Fasz. 32/5, Freund to Rudigier, 31 December, 1872). 56. The verdicts are attached to a letter from Stritzinger to Rudigier, 31 December, 1872 (DAL CA/4, Sch. 64, Fasz. 32/5). 57. DAL CA/4, Sch. 64, Fasz. 32/5, Stritzinger to Rudigier, 31 December, 1872. ‘New-Protestants’ was how Rudigier referred to Old Catholics, so it became the standard term in the correspondence. 58. From a letter from Freund to Wetzelsberger’s mother-in-law, which is cited in an open letter to Freund printed in the liberal Rieder Wochenblatt, 3 October 1871. Cited in: Zierler, Ried im Innkreis, pp. 32–3. 59. Zierler, Ried im Innkreis, p. 31–2. 60. DAL Seminararchiv A/1, Sch. 15, Fasz. VII, Protokoll über die 1te Pastoral-Konferenz pro 1871 des Nicht-Kurat-Klerus der Stadt Linz am 25: Juli im bischöfl, Alumnat. 61. Rudigier, Unfehlbarkeit.

10 Symbolic Representations of the Nation: Baden, Bavaria, and Saxony, c.1860–80 Erwin Fink

Imperial Germany (the Kaiserreich) was founded by the proclamation of 18 January 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, after a series of conflicts conventionally known as the ‘wars of unification’. The new state was created largely by Prussian military success and the ingenuity of Otto von Bismarck – or so the story has usually gone. Admittedly, such a summary does not do justice to recent master narratives of modern German history provided by the likes of James Sheehan, Thomas Nipperdey, or Hans-Ulrich Wehler. These authors have acknowledged both the importance of social and economic factors in leading to unification and the continuing diversity of the German territories afterward. Nevertheless, most historical accounts continue to suggest that the German nation was forged primarily in a ‘revolution from above.’ Even more significantly, having described pre-unification ‘Germany’ as a tapestry of regional diversity, historians grow less cautious once the threshold of 1871 is passed. Typically, they revert to generalizing statements about ‘German politics’, ‘German society’, and ‘German nationalism’ – all in the singular.1 Regional historians have been chipping away at this Prussocentric, uniform interpretation for some time now, by juxtaposing it to divergent developments in Germany’s federal states. In doing so, they have offered a major re-evaluation of German history.2 Arguably, however, their conclusions have yet to be fully assimilated by ‘mainstream’ German historiography.3 One of the major areas of current interest is to clarify how regional diversity, parochialism, and particularism evolved after 1871. Were these forces really swept away by the act of unification, as Heinrich von Treitschke and other nationalist historians argued? Recent research suggests otherwise. Here, historians – for the most part, at least – have side-stepped the trap of overcompensating in the opposite direction, 200

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whereby the predominant view of exclusive, integral nationalism is replaced with a reverse orthodoxy that only stresses irreconcilable differences and regional fragmentation. Instead, a more balanced perspective is already coming into focus. This view holds that it was not necessary to shed one’s local or regional identity in order to embrace the nation. Rather, the ‘ways of seeing’ that determined how Germans identified with region and nation were malleable. Moreover, if the very idea of ‘Germannness’ was problematic, shifting, and contested, the same was true of local and regional identities.4 By the late 1870s, the symbolic meaning of the Kaiserreich – as a new and unfamiliar political framework – still faced challenges. Politically, the German Empire had to function out of sheer necessity, but any collective consensus about the essence of the new nation-state remained elusive. Accordingly, the practice of representing the empire evoked intense debate and confrontation, as this article will show by comparing the contested symbolic space that ‘unified Germany’ occupied in three German states – Baden, Bavaria and Saxony. In an attempt to capture the dynamics of nation building and identity formation, the analysis will focus mainly on the 1870s and on three interrelated themes: 1. the controversial symbolic representation of unification and of the nationstate in the Sedan Day celebrations; 2. a Saxon model of accommodating parallel manifestations of regional and national symbolism; 3. the potentially integrative effect of the imperial cult.

Settings Before any discussion of commemorative national events, it is essential to examine developments in these three German states up to the late 1860s. In this respect, it can be argued that nation-building in Germany – the process of creating a nation based on common traditions, language, and political practices – had already reached a high point in the 1850s– 60s, and certainly did not end with unification in 1871, entering instead another, equally crucial phase. In the German territories, the particular state-building fostered by dynasts and political elites in Bavaria, Saxony, and Baden before 1871, which aimed at cementing a regional power base, continued into the imperial period. However, state-building now both competed with and also expanded into a broader national setting, above all through specific social and cultural practices such as festivals and commemorations. In public discourse, debate on German national unity, or the ‘German Question’, can be traced back at least to the wars of liberation against

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Napoleonic France in the early 1800s, if not earlier still.5 Only in the 1860s, however, as the Prusso-Austrian dualism escalated, did the situation reach a decisive denouement, after the period since 1848-49 had seen the German Question rise up the political agenda.6 The 1860s were thus also crucial for establishing attitudes about the future shape of a German nation. This formative phase saw the kleindeutsch and großdeutsch camps in Germany align in clear opposition, often reinforcing pre-existing divisions along confessional, social, and political lines. Despite their differences, all three regions under consideration spawned strong anti-Prussianism, based on confessional antipathies or previous political experiences. Turning first to Baden, it is important to appreciate that the overarching conflict here in the 1860s and 1870s was the Kulturkampf. This confrontation reflected old confessional divisions but also social and economic inequalities between the more affluent and better educated liberal Protestants and the relatively underprivileged Catholic majority. Even though (or perhaps precisely because) Baden was quick to liberalize after a short reactionary period post-1849, these latent discrepancies surfaced in the early 1860s when the struggle erupted over the Catholic Church’s role in society and vis-à-vis the liberal state. The conflict between reform-oriented Liberals and the ‘ultramontane’ traditionalists in the Catholic Church influenced, and was in turn fuelled by, the increasing urgency of the question of national unity after the Prussian victory in 1866. For Baden’s post-war government, the defeat at the side of Austria, which was now excluded from German affairs, had decided the problem in favour of a kleindeutsch solution. But the Catholic majority resisted the new Prussian hegemony. Tapping into similar popular resentment as the Bavarian Patriots, political Catholics formed the Katholische Volkspartei (KVP) in 1869. The KVP attacked the major projects of the liberal majority in the Landtag and the government (secularization of public affairs, including education, and Baden’s integration into the German Reich), and drew connections between the domestic threat to their Church and the external prospect of being forced into a Prussian-dominated, Protestant nation state. Accordingly, throughout the Kulturkampf in the 1870s, anti-Reich sentiments and defence of the Catholic Church formed the dual basis of opposition to the Berlin government. In Saxony, a state which in the era of the Thirty Years’ War had narrowly missed out on European great power status in the face of an expanding Prussia, an already strong anti-Hohenzollern reflex combined with renewed particularism after 1848 to diminish enthusiasm for


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a unified Germany. The occupation of Saxony by Prussian troops in 1866–67 marked yet another in a series of humiliations by its northern neighbour stretching back to the Seven Years’ War, and resentment climaxed accordingly.7 Once the discussions about Saxon integration into the Prussian-led North German Confederation began in earnest, the camps hardened: a strengthened anti-Prussian coalition consisting of Saxon Conservatives, left-liberal democrats, and großdeutsch Socialists (the Saxon People’s Party) aligned against the National Liberals and captured all seats in the elections to the North German parliament in February 1867.8 By contrast with Baden, however, confessional conflicts were insignificant here: Saxony experienced no Kulturkampf, as Catholics represented a small minority whose rights were largely protected by the Catholic king, head of a centuries-old dynasty, and by Conservative-dominated Saxon governments, who showed less zeal than their liberal counterparts in other states to battle ‘ultramontanism’. Nevertheless, in the light of the clear popular opposition in Saxony towards a Prussian-led Germany, it is all the more important to investigate how, after 1870, the transformation of ‘Saxons into Germans’ – as Siegfried Weichlein has put it – took place surprisingly quickly. In Bavaria, decades of latent church-state conflict had erupted in 1848, but the post-revolutionary period was characterized by relative calm on the religious front.9 By the late 1860s and early 1870s, however, the national question and the conflict over the dogma of papal infallibility energised opposition to the liberal Bavarian government. The Bavarian Patriots’ Party (Bayerische Patriotenpartei) emerged as the main voice of Catholics, who also opposed the liberal project of German unification under Prussian leadership. For the majority of Bavarians, the Prussian encroachments after 1866 on Bavarian traditions, religion, and political sovereignty constituted an unbearable imposition. Beginning with the elections to the Customs Parliament (the Zollparlament) in February 1868, the party successfully translated anti-Reich sentiments into election victories far beyond 1871.

Enthusiasm, exclusion, dissent: Sedan Day celebrations in Bavaria and Baden The celebrations for the decisive German victory against the French Army at Sedan on 2 September 1870 demonstrated how the commemorative process became dissociated from the original event and turned into a prolonged conflict over the meaning of national symbolism. Significantly, commemoration of the event differed increasingly from the

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immediate popular reception of the original victory, which had been greeted with patriotic enthusiasm across Germany.10 Although varying in degree and intent, Protestants, Jews, and Catholics, Liberals, Conservatives, Socialists, and ‘Ultramontanes’ had welcomed the triumph of the German armies. When, a few years after the battle, the anniversary was introduced as a day of celebration, that consent had already begun to dissipate. The original plan to create a national holiday in honour of Sedan became enmeshed from the very beginning in social and party conflicts.11 In the words of Alon Confino, ‘the holiday became an ongoing plebiscite about the content and form of the national community after 1871’.12 Here, Catholic resistance against Sedan Day will be the central focus of discussion, because it was tied to regionally varying attitudes toward the Reich and evolved earlier and on a broader scale than other types of opposition. By comparison, rejection of the Sedan Day celebrations by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) only began sporadically in cities like Berlin, Hamburg, and Eisenach, while some protests were also held in Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Dresden. Social Democratic opposition to Sedan Day should not be overlooked, however, not least for the fact that the themes attached by the SPD to their stance against Sedan Day – anti-militarism in the face of the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, and the continuation of the war against what was now the French Republic – also developed into concrete elements of party policy. For example, celebrations held on 18 March by Social Democrats from 1873 onwards commemorated not only the 1848 Revolution, the Paris Commune, and the international ideal of republicanism, but were also consciously intended as a counter-festival to Sedan Day, attracting large crowds and spreading rapidly to other German cities. In 1895, Social Democratic opposition was to reach a climax in a massive campaign against the equally extensive celebrations for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Sedan Day, and generated increased antipathy from the Kaiser and the political establishment.13 If such opposition was primarily ideologically and socially driven, the picture was more complex away from the main industrial centres. By 1873, many communities across Germany formally included the anniversary in their festival calendar, but the meaning of the event started to polarise public opinion.14 Both in Bavaria and Baden, Catholic clergy and newspapers reacted with reserve to the first celebrations in 1873 and eventually rejected them openly. While this new national celebration spread sufficiently over the long term, even in Bavaria, so that eventually the monarchy and church were forced to participate in


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municipal festivities, in rural areas without substantial liberal-bourgeois populations Sedan Day made little headway.15 Both the defeat of the Catholic cause in 1866 and the onset of Bismarck’s Kulturkampf increased Catholic hostility toward liberalism and resentment against a Prussian-led, Protestant-dominated nation-state.16 Already in 1873, it was clear that Bavarian Catholics would not offer whole-hearted support for empire and emperor, and the Catholic press gradually began to challenge openly the legitimacy of Sedan Day. Das Bayerische Vaterland, an ultra-Catholic and staunchly particularist newspaper, was among the first critical voices, running a scathing polemic on the occasion of the first full-blown celebrations, on 2 September 1873. The paper criticized the profiteers from the kleindeutsch Empire and denounced the celebrations in Berlin, suggesting that they mocked all those killed by the Prussians in 1866. For all the article’s author cared, the Reich with its inflation, militarism, servility, cowardice, waste, impoverishment, persecution of the church, and an abundance of Jews would soon fade away.17 By contrast, Catholic commentators in Baden were less militantly anti-Reich than their Bavarian counterparts. They focused more on the exclusionary nature of the celebrations themselves and the reasons why they were doomed to failure as a true national holiday. The Badischer Beobachter, the major Catholic publication in Baden, denied vigorously that the Sedan Day festivities constituted peace celebrations at all. Catholics resented the Liberals, who insulted clergy as ‘vaterlandslos’ (lacking a fatherland) for avoiding the Sedan Day celebrations. From this perspective, Sedan Day was aimed primarily at a fictitious internal enemy, which in this instance was identified with the ‘ultramontanes’, but as we know from sources such as Heinrich von Treitschke, could also refer to Social Democrats and – often named alongside the latter – Jews.18 The Beobachter accused the Liberals of actually scorning the idea of a national holiday tailored to the entire population. At the same time, the Catholic authors clearly savoured liberal disappointment at the sparse show of flags in Mannheim,19 even if the town was an exception in National-Liberal-run Baden, as celebrations in other cities showed throughout the 1870s. What prevented a sweeping success for the holiday was indeed the narrow orientation of organizers towards the military success of the Hohenzollern-led, Protestant German Empire at the expense of those who did not feel welcome in this state. In the face of internal friction, the image of the common French enemy – so effective in 1870–71 as a spur to collective action – failed to have the same impact when it came to a more profound integration of alienated minorities.

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By the end of the decade, in 1880, the liberal Breisgauer Zeitung was certainly describing widespread celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the battle of Sedan. For instance, even the bells of Freiburg Cathedral were tolled on 1 September – all the more remarkable, considering that the seat of the Catholic archbishopric had seen bitter controversy during Baden’s Kulturkampf. The day’s events suggest that the celebrations held considerable appeal as a popular holiday.20 Yet, the commentary in another local newspaper – also a liberal organ – undermines any notion that all of Freiburg’s largely Catholic inhabitants had suddenly become enthusiastic supporters of this national commemoration. Significantly, it was only the ‘patriotically oriented citizenry of Freiburg’ who showed any special interest in celebrating Sedan Day.21 The unequivocally proReich Liberals represented a minority in Freiburg: although they proved vocal in expressing their opinions, this still leaves open the question of the attitudes held by the silent majority. For example, the local Catholic Journal, the Freiburger Katholisches Kirchenblatt, did not even mention the event in its daily reportage. At the same time, disapproval was even more pronounced in overwhelmingly Catholic Bavaria. Juxtaposing the Sedan Day celebrations and the 700-year anniversary of the Wittelsbach dynasty in 1880 reveals the resilience of a well-exercised regional monarchical cult.22 Despite a decade in the new German Empire, popular allegiances to Bavaria remained remarkably constant, as enthusiastic displays of Bavarian patriotism testified.23 The national alternative offered by liberal festival culture, Sedan Day, remained a rather anaemic affair throughout Bavaria.24 Meagre attendance seemed to vindicate those Catholics who had denounced the Sedan Day celebrations as partisan events staged by the Liberals to exclude putative ‘enemies of the Reich’.25 Cultivating regional forms of commemoration, particularly with respect to the monarchies, did not preclude a gradual long-term shift among the population toward national-imperial allegiances. However, the important point is that Sedan Day, which recalled the specific events leading up to the foundation of the new state, was clearly not the most effective means of reaching the public, as the diminishing attention in all but the local media in the 1880s suggests.26 With its central focus on Francophobia, military success, and the Hohenzollern Empire, it appealed only to certain sections of the population, while excluding the large minorities of Social Democrats and Catholics. Thus, as Bismarck’s ‘war-in-sight’ election manoeuvres also showed, the notion of the external ‘other’ or ‘enemy figure’ contained limited resonance, because it failed to eliminate the implied marginalization of internal


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‘others’.27 In Baden and Bavaria at least, other acts of commemoration such as the birthdays of the leading imperial figures served the advance of the national idea better. Certainly, their meaning was controversial too, but they nonetheless reinforced dynastic loyalty on the national level and produced abundant material for historical myths.

Saxon peculiarities: preserving regional significance When compared to the southern German states, the integration of the Kingdom of Saxony into the commemorative culture – and also the political realities – of the new German Empire took place with remarkable ease. This was especially significant in light of the previously staunch anti-Prussian particularism displayed by the Wettin dynasty, the Conservative Party, and parts of the population at large. Admittedly, lack of a sizeable Catholic minority in Saxony meant that German unification did not exacerbate any pre-existing confessional conflict between großdeutsch Catholicism and (national) liberal Protestantism, or between church and state. Yet, if particularism in Saxony was neither provoked nor fuelled by the impetus of a religious minority in a defensive position, expressions of Saxon regional consciousness nonetheless appeared much stronger in the 1860s than in Baden and were comparable to Bavaria, even exceeding the latter in 1866–67 during the Prussian occupation.28 Considering these unfavourable circumstances, how could Saxony shift from cultivating a ‘reputation of fierce regionalism’ to ‘providing examples of radical German nationalism as early as 1878–79’?29 And how was the sentiment of bitter anti-Prussianism overcome so quickly?30 Scholars have often cited two pragmatic reasons for this transformation: on the one hand, the mediating effect of (early) participation in supra-regional political bodies such as the North German parliament, and, on the other hand, through integration into a common liberal–conservative front against the growing workers’ movement. Certainly, participatory legitimisation of national institutions – such as the Customs Parliament – was potentially one way of overcoming regionalist misgivings. However, the examples of Bavaria and Baden show that, in the presence of resistant confessional minorities, such means toward integration were only partially successful at best and only over the long term. That Saxony lacked such a minority facilitated the process, but cannot fully explain the substantial turnaround or the pace with which it proceeded. A starting point for an explanation of this phenomenon can be found in the fact that the symbolic meanings of being Saxon and German underwent fundamental changes in the Franco-German War of 1870–71.

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The transformation concerned both Saxon military pride and, closely connected to it, the self-image of the Wettin dynasty. The Saxon royal house continued to enjoy considerable popular support, as the dark days after the defeat in 1866 as Austria’s chief ally and the subsequent jubilant welcome of the returning King Johann had amply demonstrated.31 In Saxony, the war of 1870–71 marked the beginnings of a more sustained military-dynastic festival culture than Baden or Bavaria developed. More significantly, these celebrations brought the Saxon and Prussian traditions into line symbolically, as was to be evident in 1876 during the first imperial military review headed by Wilhelm I outside of Prussia, and in subsequent joint military exercises.32 Both the later King Albert and Prince Georg of Saxony were prominently involved in the French campaign, leading their Saxon troops successfully on the battlefield. These victories in the Franco-German War offered not only the dynasty but also Saxons themselves a welcome opportunity to compensate for the defeat at Königgrätz in 1866. Starting with the festive entry of Saxon troops into Dresden in 1871, a series of manoeuvres and army festivals kept reminding Saxons of their substantial military contribution to German unification.33 Saxony and its royal personalities were thus able to rehabilitate themselves in 1870–71 in a way that Bavaria, and especially its non-military, eccentric king, Ludwig II, could not. The entry of the victorious Saxon troops into Dresden at the end of the Franco-German War was indeed a memorable scene – the stuff that historicizing legends are made of. Following a warm reception in Leipzig several days beforehand, the troops, headed by Crown Prince Albert, entered the capital on 11 July 1871. Capturing the reception at the Neumarkt in downtown Dresden, Friedrich Wilhelm Heine’s huge historical painting of the event conjured up popular unity and explicitly depicted the closeness of the people with the ruling dynasty.34 The occasion precipitated widespread enthusiasm among the population, and the organizers in Dresden, who financed and implemented an elaborate festival programme featuring numerous patriotic poems and songs, clearly accomplished their aim of influencing public opinion.35 Subsequently, a regular flood of images, press reports, and new street names ensured that the event – in exactly this idealized form – remained anchored in the public consciousness.36 The entry of the troops was accompanied by other noteworthy aspects of symbolic representation not depicted in the painting. They included the self-glorification of the Saxon dynasty and state, the iconographic presentation of leading Saxon and German figures in the festival protocol, and a strong emphasis on the role Saxony played both


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in Imperial Germany and in the final military campaign essential to German unification. To reinforce this claim, King Johann transferred his commission from the Emperor onto his son, Albert, bestowing on him the title of general field marshal in a memorable state ceremony laden with historical references. Upon the Crown Prince’s entry into Dresden at the head of his army on 11 July, Johann solemnly handed him the legendary marshal’s baton supposedly awarded to the Polish King and supreme commander of the Christian troops, Jan Sobieski, for relieving the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683.37 The Saxon contribution to this turning point in the Turkish Wars of the seventeenth century was thus symbolically linked to the Saxon role in German unification, while skilfully connecting it back to ‘Greater German’ history. Saxony’s integral military role in the Empire was subsequently reinforced on many occasions but was also complemented by emphasis on Saxony’s industrial and commercial prowess.38 For the triumphal procession, large busts of the major German heroes were placed at the main festival grounds: Emperor Wilhelm I’s bust represented one central focus, flanked by Moltke and the Saxon Crown Prince Albert; busts of Bismarck and Saxon Prince Georg were also placed close to the emperor; facing the Emperor was a bust of the Saxon King.39 In fact, the festival organizers had moved so far along in their harmonious re-interpretation of previous dynastic hostility that King Johann and Emperor Wilhelm now appeared on a nearly equal footing. In the wake of victory, some artistic renditions of the war had concentrated almost exclusively on the German national theme, relegating the contribution of individual states to the background. One such example was a print commemorating the outbreak of war in July 1870 and the conclusion of peace in March 1871.40 The piece was entitled ‘Germany’s Oak Wreath’, in reference to the national symbol of the oak tree, and three aspects of it deserve special attention. First, despite the claim to commemorate the outbreak of war and the conclusion of peace, the images and inscriptions evoked almost exclusively martial themes; arguably, only a maid placed at the centre introduces an element of peacefulness into the ensemble. Second, the names of the German monarchs on the surrounding ribbons do not immediately capture the viewer’s attention; they merely constitute a part of the whole, interwoven into the larger ‘German oak wreath’, which is virtually ‘guarded’ by the prominent inscriptions of Bismarck and Moltke. Most importantly, the commemorative picture avoided any associations with the more painful aspects of immediate history, which distinguished it, for instance, from a victory column unveiled in Berlin on 2 September

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1873. This incorporated not only the Prussian flag and eagle, but, in commemorating the German victory in 1870–71, also made explicit reference to the Prussian victories at Düppel in 1864 and Königgrätz in 1866.41 However, even the more Saxon-specific aspects of memory culture reveal a remarkably prominent positioning of the German national theme. One example of the deliberate efforts at establishing the compatibility of regional and national allegiances is a song dedicated by the ‘Homeland to the Returning Victors’. The arrangement written by Fritz Ohnesorge for the troops returning in July 1871 utilized the melody of ‘Gott sei mit Dir, mein Sachsenland’ (‘God be with you, my land of Saxony’), while focusing on the German army, German borders, the Reich, and the annexed territories of Alsace and Lorraine. In the same festival programme for 11 July 1871, an article also informed readers of the industrious preparations of the past days, which had shown that ‘Dresden has recognized the greatness of its national responsibility’.42 Another article, in the Dresdner Journal, documented the street scenery, elaborate decorations and noteworthy occurrences surrounding ‘the victorious entry of the Royal Saxon Army’. The account further demonstrates the re-evaluation of the German national theme when compared to a few years previously. For example, the image of Germania figures prominently in both lyrical renditions and the decorative background for the celebrations. Poems and speeches celebrated the German warriors, praised their sacrifices for the German fatherland, and conjured up the unity of the German tribes. At the same time, the bestowal of the title of imperial general field marshal on Crown Prince Albert was perceived by the Dresdner Journal as a reward for the Wettin dynasty’s important services to German unification, as well as restoring goodwill between the Saxon and Prussian ruling houses after decades of poor Prussian–Saxon relations preceding unification.43 The entire article resounded with the newly acquired integrationist mode of Saxon politics, whereby Saxony was no longer a particularist counterforce thwarting German unification. Instead Saxons’ minds were directed toward the ‘honourable, friendly competition with the comrades in arms’, and the ‘joint effort with the armies of all of Germany’ with which they had crushed the ‘shameful wantonness’ of the ‘archenemy’, France.44 As well as these highly visible military aspects, it must also be remembered that Saxony’s highly developed industry, trade and transportation system predestined the region to profit from the economic potential offered by unification – in contrast to the less developed agricultural areas of Baden and, especially, Bavaria.


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Thus, a revision of the anti-national conservative politics pursued up to 1870 seemed logical to all but the most traditional landowners. Alongside the national themes, references to Saxony continued to remind the public of the role the immediate homeland played in the Reich. These included joint Saxon and imperial military manoeuvres, which involved the display of cordial relations between the Wettin and Hohenzollern dynasties. Glorification of the Saxon dynasty reached a new height during the 800-year anniversary of the ruling Wettin dynasty in June 1889, as well as during the imperial manoeuvres in September of that year. In contrast to the Wittelsbach anniversary held a decade earlier and other similar occasions in Bavaria, one does not find in the official reports a rhetoric of exclusion or the jealous observance of regional dynastic precedence.45 Whereas the highest representatives of Imperial Germany had not attended the Wittelsbach anniversary and the celebrations themselves had competed directly with Sedan Day, the Wettin monarchical cult in Saxony harmonized symbiotically with the new imperial cult. Among the invited guests at the reportedly successful celebrations were a number of other German monarchs and international dignitaries.46 Emperor Wilhelm II’s attendance at the accompanying ‘Army Festival’ underscored that mutually beneficial coexistence further still.47 Highlighting the increasingly pro-imperial disposition of the Saxon dynasty and population need not blind us to the less harmonious aspects of this relationship both before and after German unification.48 Equally, it would be quite mistaken to suggest that the Social Democratic constituency was included in Saxon imperial enthusiasm, given the escalating repression of the labour movement by both Saxon and Reich authorities. On balance, however, the evidence suggests that the increasingly friendly relations between the Saxon and Prussian royals contributed to the advance of a pro-Reich consensus among the population, excepting the Social Democrats and those aristocrats who remained locked in anti-Prussian attitudes.49

The Emperor as a figure of integration A similar kind of personification of the national idea was evident in the birthday celebrations held for Emperor Wilhelm I in the years after unification (and much the same was true in later decades for the figure of Otto von Bismarck).50 By the time Emperor Wilhelm I turned 90 years of age in 1887, celebrations to honour the imperial birthday on 22 March had become an integral part of national festival culture. What

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is more, this success contrasted markedly with the slow development of the Sedan Day festivities. Despite the war-induced national enthusiasm in 1870–71, it could not be taken for granted that the birthday of a Hohenzollern monarch would come to enjoy such widespread resonance among the German population outside of Prussia. Predating German unification, the celebrations of the royal birthday in Prussia and the connected homage to the king had been a long-standing tradition, which then served as a basis for celebrating the emperor’s birthdays in imperial Germany.51 Yet, other German states possessed similar dynastic rituals, so the introduction of the emperor’s birthday across Germany represented a novel item in the festival calendar at the regional level, and a potential source of irritation for local patriots.52 While both Saxony and Baden continued to celebrate their monarch’s birthdays, the emperor’s birthday met in practice with little official resistance in these states. In Bavaria, however, the imperial cult now challenged the previous monopoly enjoyed by the royal cult and triggered stubborn opposition. Part of this antagonism was connected to the fact that, under King Ludwig I (1825–48), Bavaria had much earlier than Prussia laid a claim to promote German unity in the aftermath of the ‘Wars of Liberation’ against Napoleon.53 Upon the deaths of the Emperors Wilhelm I and Friedrich III in 1888, however, Bavarian officials were less able to withstand the public’s willingness to participate in the respective funeral ceremonies, which extended the imperial cult substantially to Catholic regions as well, making more palpable the competition between it and the Bavarian monarchy.54 In all three states, reporting in the media revealed a strong popular resonance to the imperial birthdays, although the instinct of the ultraCatholic press was to disparage any special celebrations of the ‘Prussian’ emperor’s birthday, in a way comparable to their reactions against Sedan Day. Throughout most of the 1870s, for example, approval of the imperial birthday in Bavaria was clearly not overwhelming, even if liberal and pro-Reich groups organized annual festive banquets on 22 March.55 For Bavarian Catholics and patriots, the mere prospect of acceptance of the imperial idea was daunting enough. In Baden, the predominance of the National Liberals in government and the public sphere, as well as the pro-imperial stance of the Grand Duke Friedrich, provided a different basic setting when compared to Bavaria. As early as March 1872, the Grand Duke and the Badenese government actively promoted celebrations of the occasion. A specific decree determined that on the eve of the Emperor’s birthday, church


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bells would toll to announce the occasion. It stipulated further that on 22 March or the following Sunday, civil servants were to attend the festive church services held across the Grand Duchy.56 Accounts from the major Badenese cities in the early years of the Kaiserreich report lively participation in the celebrations.57 By 1873, the birthday celebrations in the state capital had developed into an elaborate event with large crowds, illuminated buildings, and public dancing.58 Nor did public resonance fade in subsequent years. In Freiburg, for instance, the emperor’s 80th birthday in 1877 witnessed festive illumination of the main victory monument and varied entertainment for the guests. Large crowds attended the celebrations and seemingly gave wholehearted approval to speeches which proclaimed the people’s love for the Emperor and stressed the need to put aside harmful bickering between the German tribes, so as to ensure a strong Germany. Public speakers also advised the Badenese to follow the lead of their Grand Duke, who had pursued the goal of national consolidation for over 25 years.59 General acceptance of the Grand Duke’s dual regional and national roles was reflected not only in the parallel toasts to Wilhelm and Friedrich, but also the latter’s honorary title of ‘father of the fatherland’ and ‘father of the people’.60 In the case of Saxony, it has already been suggested how the efforts at linking the military deeds of the Saxon and Prussian dynasties had helped to enhance substantially Emperor Wilhelm’s prestige in the region.61 The early 1870s already witnessed a number of festive activities across the state and the hanging out of flags to honour the Emperor on his birthday. Significant in this context were the military parades held to mark the occasion in every large garrison town.62 On the emperor’s 80th birthday, the print media impressed upon the Saxon public the significance of his accomplishments in military matters and nation-building by constructing a sweeping pre-history of the imperial lineage, going back to the medieval German emperor Friedrich Barbarossa and culminating in the resurrection of the German Empire in modern times.63 Thus, German unification was placed within a long-term historical framework, driven by the national yearning for a revived German Empire. Invoking a centuries-old tradition had the advantage of both endowing recent political developments with the legitimacy of continuity and fitting them into a predicted glorious future. It also had the added benefit of relativising the more confrontational episodes of the immediate German past that had pitted kleindeutsch against großdeutsch aspirations. Even so, Saxons remained acutely sensitive to the difficulty of moving from defensive particularism to participatory nationalism, and

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their attitudes towards the symbol of the emperor were by no means monolithic. On the one hand, Saxon receptivity to Wilhelm’s role as the unifier of Germany – despite his inflicting defeat on Saxony in 1866 – is documented by the warm welcomes accorded Wilhelm, such as when he visited Leipzig in March 1877.64 On the other hand, a different occasion celebrated only a few months earlier, the emperor’s anniversary of 70 years service in the army, revealed that strong regionalist loyalties might also come to the surface. Here, both the Emperor’s and the Crown Prince’s speeches caused serious offence, because they reiterated the Prussian role in German unification while neglecting to mention the essential contributions of the other German contingents in 1870–71. Commentators also criticized the choice of words, which emphasized the nation’s duties, by which was meant the call for military service, while failing to refer also to the nation’s rights.65 Ultimately, however, the episode highlights the contrast to the rather static Bavarian anti-Prussianism: Saxons in the post-1870 era reacted most vehemently to any deprecation of their re-modelled self-image as active participants in the national project. In other words, the process of participatory inclusion taking place in Saxony after 1871 did not rule out occasional irritations, but backward-looking self-exclusion from the process itself, based on pre-unification particularism, was clearly losing its momentum.

Conclusions: regional and national symbolism in transformation A major conclusion emerging from this discussion is that, after unification, Wilhelm I contributed more to mediating between the newly unified nation and the varied German regions than did the commemoration of Sedan Day. Despite the intention to instrumentalize memories of the event, the symbolic space that Sedan Day organizers attempted to occupy was rapidly filled with a plethora of political values such as militarism and anti-Catholicism, making the memory unpalatable to outsiders who did not fit comfortably into the ‘standard’ version of German unification. By contrast, Wilhelm I derived his symbolic effectiveness from his continued personal presence as a prime representative of German unification. As was the case with Bismarck, his prominent role in German public life largely defused the danger that his national deeds would fade from public memory; the imperial birthday furnished an undisputed date – though not wholly undisputed meanings – for collective expressions of enthusiasm and functioned as a symbolic node


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for the national idea, even in the regions where the supporters of Sedan Day made little headway. Far from advocating a personalized form of historiography or claiming that a uniform national identity was in place by the end of the Bismarckian era, this investigation suggests that the intensified social and cultural communication occurring in Germany after unification helped build a national public sphere, in the form of symbolic representations and a nationalized festival culture, from an array of fragmented territorial identities.66 Specifically, the social communication focusing on national symbols and memory helped reinforce the collective sense of a common heritage and future. The major ‘outgroups’ of the early Kaiserreich did not fit comfortably into this integrative scheme. Yet, despite their alienation from the national mainstream – clearly decreasing in the Catholic case, fuelled by other issues in the case of the Social Democrats – these forces increasingly participated in the daily business of politics and in the highly controversial business of interpreting the meaning of unification and victory in 1871.67 Their confrontational stance against the establishment involved them in the discourse taking place about the political culture of the Kaiserreich. In some ways, their inadvertent involvement in the system they viewed with scepticism resembled the experience made by regionalists, as national political bodies such as the Customs Parliament and the Reichstag increasingly pulled them into participation (even if the latter was critical in nature). In view of the regional fragmentation of Germany, this type of participation promoted national integration indirectly, despite the fact that the resultant discourse conjured up notions of division rather than harmony. Comparing the three regions in question, we can broadly discern a number of trends. Popular allegiances to a new symbolic combination of region and nation in Saxony underwent the most remarkable metamorphosis. In the period from 1866 to the mid-1870s, the dominant public discourse shifted from staunch anti-Prussian particularism to acceptance of the Reich and Saxony’s role in it. By comparison, Baden occupied a mid-way position, while the nationalization of Bavaria occurred more gradually, and the Sedan Day celebrations did not contribute to the integration of the Catholic milieu. Nevertheless, by the late 1880s and 1890s, popular responses to the celebrations surrounding Wilhelm I suggested that such a shift towards the coexistence of regional and national allegiances was underway across Bavaria too. In the final analysis, the iconography cultivated in association with the Emperor provided a more tangible and dense network of images and events

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than more abstract appeals to national unity. In this way, personalized forms of symbolic representation directly facilitated the accommodation and integration of regional allegiances into the framework of national identity.

Notes 1. Recent general accounts of on Imperial Germany include: T. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918, 2 vols (Munich, 1990-92); V. Berghahn, Imperial Germany, 1871–1914: Economy, Society, Culture, and Politics (Providence, 1994); H.-U. Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte Bd.3: Von der ‘Deutschen Doppelrevolution’ bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges, 1849–1914 (Munich, 1995); J.J. Sheehan, German History 1770–1866 (Oxford, 1989). See also: R. Chickering (ed.), Imperial Germany: A Historiographical Companion (Westport, 1996). For cultural approaches to nationalism, see among others: E. François et al.(eds), Nation und Emotion (Göttingen, 1995); H.-G. Haupt and C. Tacke, ‘Die Kultur des Nationalen’, in: W. Hardtwig and H.-U. Wehler (eds), Kulturgeschichte heute (Göttingen, 1996), pp. 257–85. 2. See, for example: J. Retallack (ed.), Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830–1933 (Ann Arbor, 2000). 3. J. Retallack, ‘Society and politics in Saxony in the nineteenth and twentieth Century: reflections on recent research’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 38 (1998), 396–457. 4. Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990); C. Tacke, Denkmal im sozialen Raum. Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im 19: Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1995); A. Confino, The Nation as Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, 1997). 5. See, for instance: M. Hughes, Nationalism and Society: Germany 1800–1945 (London, 1988); O. Dann, Nation und Nationalismus in Deutschland 1770–1990 (Munich, 1993). 6. J. Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848–1851 (Cambridge, 1994), esp. pp. 250 ff. 7. See: R. Dietrich, ‘Preußen als Besatzungsmacht im Königreich Sachsen, 1866–1868’, Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 5 (1956), 273–93; J. Retallack, ‘“Why can’t a Saxon be more like a Prussian?” Regional Identities and the Birth of Modern Political Culture in Germany, 1866–7’, Canadian Journal of History 32 (1997), 26–55. 8. S. Weichlein, ‘Saxons into Germans: The Progress of the National Idea in Saxony after 1866’, in: Retallack (ed.), Saxony in German History, pp. 16–79. 9. A. Kraus, Geschichte Bayerns. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1983), p. 562 ff. 10. N. Buschmann, Einkreisung und Waffenbruderschaft. Die öffentliche Deutung von Krieg und Nation in Deutschland, 1850–1871 (Göttingen, 2003). 11. W. Hardtwig, Geschichtskultur und Wissenschaft (Munich, 1990), p. 278. 12. Confino, Nation as Local Metaphor, p. 34.


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13. See: W. Conze and D. Groh, Die Arbeiterbewegung in der nationalen Bewegung (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 94 f., 110f.; Hardtwig, Geschichtskultur, p. 287 f.; F. Schellack, Nationalfeiertage in Deutschland von 1871 bis 1945 (Frankfurt a.M., 1990), pp. 86 f. For examples of Social Democratic activities against Sedan Day, compare: H. Müller, ‘Die deutsche Arbeiterklasse und die Sedanfeiern. Zum antimilitärischen Kampf der Sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterpartei in den ersten Jahren nach der Reichsgründung’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 17 (1969), 1554–64; G. Birk, ‘Der Tag von Sedan: Intentionen, Resonanz und Widerstand (1871–1895)’, Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte, 25 (1982), 95–110; A. Hall, Scandal, Sensation, and Social Democracy: The SPD Press and Wilhelmine Germany, 1890–1914 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 57. 14. Confino, Nation as Local Metaphor, p. 33; T. Schieder, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich von 1871 als Nationalstaat, (Cologne, 1961), p. 129. 15. W.K. Blessing, Staat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft. Institutionelle Autorität und mentaler Wandel in Bayern während des 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1982), pp. 181, 190. 16. Hardtwig, Geschichtskultur, p. 283. 17. Das Bayerische Vaterland, No. 203, 2 September 1873. 18. See: Heinrich von Treitschke, Ein Wort über unser Judenthum (Berlin, 1900); ibid., Zehn Jahre deutscher Kämpfe, 1865–1874: Schriften zur Tagespolitik , II, 3rd edn. (Berlin, 1897), esp. pp. 172 ff. 19. Badischer Beobachter, No. 207, 6 September 1873; No. 208, 7 September 1873. 20. Breisgauer Zeitung, No. 206, 3 September 1880. 21. Freiburger Zeitung, No. 206, 3 September 1880. 22. W.K. Blessing, ‘Der monarchische Kult, politische Loyalität und die Arbeiterbewegung im deutschen Kaiserreich’, in: G.A. Ritter (ed.), Arbeiterkultur (Königstein, 1979), pp. 185–208; Blessing, Staat und Kirche; A. Green, Fatherlands. State Building and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 307, 320, 334f. 23. Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Ministerium des Inneren (hereafter BayrHStA Minn) 38 978: Reports of the Interior Ministry to King Ludwig, 23 August, 1 and 13 September 1880; see also Germania, No. 195, 27 August 1880. For a National Liberal view, compare: Breisgauer Zeitung, No. 207, 4 September 1880. 24. For details on Sedan Days in Munich, see: N. Freytag, ‘Sedantage in München. Gemeindefeiern, Komiteefeste und Vereinsgedenken’, Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 61 (1998), 383–406. 25. See the criticism of Sedan Day in: ‘Zeitläufe. Rückblick auf die heutige Sedan-Feier’, Historisch–Politische Blätter, 74 (1874), p. 551 ff.; also Germania, No. 200, 2 September 1878. 26. See the lack of reporting in the pro-Reich: Europäischer Geschichtskalender, (21) 1890. 27. M. Jeismann, Das Vaterland der Feinde. Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und Selbstverständnis in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1792–1918 (Stuttgart, 1992). 28. Dietrich, ‘Preußen als Besatzungsmacht’; Retallack, ‘“Why Can’t a Saxon Be More Like a Prussian?’”. 29. Weichlein, ‘Saxons into Germans’, here pp. 171 f. 30. Dietrich, ‘Preußen als Besatzungsmacht’, here p. 293.

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31. H. Kretzschmar, ‘Das sächsische Königtum im 19. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift 170 (1950), 457–93, here p. 488. 32. B. Ulrich et al. (eds), Untertan in Uniform. Militär und Militarismus im Kaiserreich, 1871–1914: Quellen und Dokumente (Frankfurt a.M., 2001), p. 53. 33. Weichlein, Nation und Region, p. 346. 34. Stadtmuseum Dresden, Friedrich Wilhelm Heine, ‘Die feierliche Begrüßung Sr. Königlichen Hoheit des Kronprinzen Albert von Sachsen als Feldmarschall und Oberkommandeur der Maasarmee an der Spitze der Sächsischen Truppen durch den Rath der Stadt Dresden am 11. Juli 1871’ (1879). 35. H. Starke, ‘Der Empfang der sächsischen Truppen in Dresden am 11. Juli 1871. Ein Historiengemälde von Friedrich Wilhelm Heine aus dem Jahr 1879’, in J. Retallack (ed.), Sachsen in Deutschland. Politik, Kultur und Gesellschaft 1830–1918 (Bielefeld–Gütersloh, 2000), pp. 143–70. For details of the festival programme and itinerary, see Stadtarchiv Dresden (hereafter StadtA Dresden), 17.2.1, Kapsel A 5/VI. 36. Starke, ‘Der Empfang’, here p. 150 f. 37. StadtA Dresden 17.2.1, Kapsel A 5/VI, 7: ‘Der Sieges-Einzug der Königlich Sächsischen Armee in Dresden am 11. Juli 1871,’. Compare also: M. Dittrich, König Albert und seine Sachsen (Dresden, 1893), p. 107. 38. See, for instance: M. Dittrich, Das Armee-Fest in Dresden zur Feier des 800 jährigen Jubiläums des Hauses Wettin am 14. 16. und 18. Juni 1889 (Zwickau, 1899), pp. 9–16. 39. StadtA Dresden 17.2.1, Kapsel A5/VI : Fest-Zeitung. 40. StadtA Dresden 17.2.1, Kapsel A5/VI: ‘Deutschland’s Eichenkranz. Gedenkblatt’. 41. Landesarchiv Berlin (LaAB) F 240 Acc. 288 No. II/7. 42. StadtA Dresden 17.2.1, Kapsel A5/VI : Fest-Zeitung. 43. StadtA Dresden 17.2.1, Kapsel A5/VI : ‘Der Sieges-Einzug’, p. 14; see also M. Dittrich, König Albert und Prinz Georg von Sachsen, die ersten Generalfeldmarschälle aus dem Königshause Wettin (Minden, 1896), pp. 36 ff. 44. StadtA Dresden 17.2.1, Kapsel A5/VI : ‘Der Sieges-Einzug’, p. 5, 9, 13; see also Dittrich, König Albert und seine Sachsen, p. 53. On Saxon competition with other states regarding contributions to German unification, see also: Weichlein, ‘Saxons into Germans’, p. 177. Considering that the Saxon Crown Prince Albert had fought the Prussians only four years before, it was remarkable that the Saxon high command was very successful in the pursuit of military accolades. After his essential contribution to the German victory on 18 August 1870, Albert received the highest honour of commanding the newly formed Maas Army; Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.), Entscheidung 1870: Der deutsch-französische Krieg (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 84 f. 45. On the difficulty of imperial army inspections in Bavaria, see: Ulrich et al. (eds), Untertan in Uniform, pp. 53 ff. 46. Österreichisches Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv (hereafter, ÖHHStA), PA V. Sachsen (Dresden) 1848–1918, No. 45, Bl. 116–21: report by Count Chotek to Count Kalnoky, 21 June 1889; see also: Germania, No.139, 20 June 1889. 47. For further discussion, see: E. Fink, Region and Nation in Early Imperial Germany: Transformations of Popular Allegiances and Political Culture in the Period of Nation Building (PhD thesis, Toronto, 2004), esp. pp. 304–25.


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48. On some of the diplomatic infighting behind the scenes, see: H. Philippi, ‘Preußisch-sächsische Verstimmungen im Jahrzehnt nach der Reichsgründung. Ein Beitrag zu Bismarcks Verhältnis zu den Bundesstaaten’, Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 15 (1966), 225–68. 49. Philippi, ‘Preußisch-sächsische Verstimmungen’, here p. 230. 50. For more on the cult of Bismarck, see: Fink, Region and Nation, pp. 340–9. 51. Schellack, Nationalfeiertage, pp. 19–23. 52. Blessing, Staat und Kirche, pp. 178–81. 53. See: K.B. Murr, ‘“Treue bis in den Tod”’. Kriegsmythen in der bayerischen Geschichtspolitik im Vormärz’, in: N. Buschmann and D. Langewiesche (eds), Der Krieg in den Gründungsmythen europäischer Nationen und der USA (Frankfurt a.M.–New York, 2003), pp. 138–74. 54. Blessing, Staat und Kirche, pp. 179 ff. 55. Ibid., p. 341, fn.136. 56. Schellack, Nationalfeiertage, p. 24. 57. Karlsruher Zeitung, No. 70 and 71, 22 and 23 March 1872. 58. Karlsruher Zeitung, No. 71, 25 March 1873. 59. Breisgauer Zeitung, No. 69, 23 March 1877. 60. See: Geschichtskalender (22) 11 November. 1881, pp. 276 f.. 61. See, for instance: Dittrich, König Albert und Prinz Georg, pp. 17. ff. 62. See the reports in: Karlsruher Zeitung, No.72, 24 March 1872, and No. 72, supplement, 26 March 1873. 63. Illustrierte Zeitung, No.1760, 24 March 1877. 64. Breisgauer Zeitung, No.71, 25 March 1877. 65. ÖHHStA, PA V. Sachsen (Dresden) 1848–1918, No. 42: Franckenstein to Andrassy, Dresden, 6 January 1877. 66. K.W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (2nd edn, Cambridge, Mass., 1967), esp. pp. 96–100, views a ‘wide complementarity of social communication’ as an essential constitutive aspect of a nation. By social communication, Deutsch means the storage, recollection, transmission, recombination, and reapplication of memories, symbols, habits, and operating preferences by larger groups of people. 67. On this, see: M.L. Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 2000).

Conclusions: Performative Effects and ‘Deep Images’ in National Discourse∗ Alberto Mario Banti

In the early modern period, frontier territories were transit zones, meeting points, and places of longstanding ethnic and cultural mixing. Communities with different linguistic and religious traditions could live side by side, without the need to define themselves in terms of rigidly opposed national allegiances. The existing geopolitical structures were conceived in terms of a political vocabulary which – generally speaking – did not employ the idea of the nation. The monarchies and empires that had been formed since the late medieval period arose through the gradual assemblage of territories and corporative entities, which were united around a common loyalty towards the person of the sovereign. This relationship of loyalty might involve a great deal of variation as regards how subjects acted towards their lord, but only very rarely would this relationship be expressed in national terms. In certain regions, the plurality of identities could be particularly accentuated, and the central strip of the European continent, which was incredibly fragmented on the political map, was characterised in this way. While the social and political elites living in the lands along the axis that runs from the North and Baltic Seas at one end, to the plains of the Po at the other, showed a certain degree of cultural and denominational coherence across wide geographical areas, they found themselves attracted by a myriad of different political loyalties, which pulled them in varied directions. And in the territories of the Habsburg Empire, a single sovereign was confronted with a number of regional elites, who were distinguished in seemingly the most diverse way possible from the point of view of culture and religious confession. If one moves more deeply into the social structure, towards the popular classes in the towns and countryside of these lands, then the diversity of political affiliations, cultures and identities becomes even more intense. Indeed, 220

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scholars can well appreciate the giddy feelings evidenced in the writings of numerous ethnographers and ordinary travellers who, between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, tracked through territories from Lombardy to Tyrol, from Salzburg to Bohemia, and through Hungary to Galicia and Bukovina. Yet, the discursive order which allowed for such a variety of identities was placed in a situation of crisis around the end of the eighteenth and start of the nineteenth centuries, when – for a number of reasons – a new political vocabulary imposed itself, which turned the nation into a fundamental subject of politics. Ultimately, it is of secondary importance as to whether this subject was defined in a liberal–democratic direction (whereby the nation is the sole source of sovereignty) or in a monarchical–conservative sense (in which the nation provides a community of reference for the sovereign’s actions). The crucial point is that political space is no longer conceived of as a universe with an infinite number of dimensions, as in the early modern period, but as a universe with one dominant dimension, the nation. In some contexts, the passage from one kind of universe to the other proved simpler than in others. Benedict Anderson has noted how the great monarchies of the early modern period (e.g. Great Britain, France) formed institutional environments inside of which it was relatively unproblematic to insert the language of the nation.1 But where a more accentuated plurality of identities was confronted with the fundamentally monistic interpretation of community membership imposed by the logic of the language of nationality (the nation ‘one and indivisible’), the result was the emergence of oscillations, uncertainties, anxieties and sudden shocks. From this point of view, a significant result to emerge from this volume is the light shed on the widespread malleability of identities across the political communities in and around Central Europe in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The chapters collected here effectively demonstrate how difficult it was for individuals living in linguistically and confessionally mixed, not to say, socially and politically variegated areas to redefine their own language of identity according to the monolithic imperatives of the national idea. It is a sense of instability and changeability that dominates. The disconcerted declarations of individuals who do not know how to draw neat, homogeneous lines around their feelings of national belonging sound now like incongruous fragments from a past reality, such as when someone like Niccolò Tommaseo writes that, ‘no-one born in Dalmatia can call himself a pure Italian, and a large number of those who speak Slavic have Italian ancestors or living relatives’, or when he

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is echoed by Francesco Carrara, according to whom ‘determining the origin of our [Dalmatian] people is a subject of long and serious meditation, and, despite appearances to the contrary, difficult’.2 However, this state of affairs does not last long. The contributions in this volume coherently suggest that, between the 1850s and 1870s, the disorientation is gradually worked out and choices are made. Those who are not capable of doing so (or who might not want to) are regarded with genuine irritation, if not agression, such as when some members of the Casino Slavo in Trieste complain about it being ‘too cosmopolitan’,3 or when the Bohemian-German poet Alfred Meißner, referring to those Germans in Bohemia around mid-century who cannot decide in favour of a clear German affiliation, states: ‘We were surrounded by noisy men without any national consciousness. These anational hybrids, neither cold nor hot, neither fish nor fowl, were especially loathsome’.4 Even if not all individuals were ‘nationalised’, and identity could still be flexible (particularly with regard to the relationship to the state), this becomes a minority position and increasingly difficult to sustain at the level of society. What are the reasons for this drive towards rigidity and the stabilisation of clearly limited national identities? As the authors here show, the answers are manifold and vary according to context. Nevertheless, certain patterns emerge, with the most important developments being: the new institutional framework created by the turbulent phase in international politics opening in 1848 and concluding in 1871; the altered relationships between individual groups and these institutions; the changing position of the areas under consideration with respect to the government as a whole or in terms of economic trade; and the impulse given by the new reality of inter-ethnic tensions, which starts to take on its own logic. Obviously, any explanation must take account of each of these factors. In addition, however, it is essential to consider the re-modelling of community identities taking place from 1848 to 1871 as a consequence of the enormous performative power of national discourse. The crucial point here is that, in the course of the nineteenth century, identities are reconceived according to the rules of a linguistic system which defines political communities as national communities. This system relies on a rigid, internally coherent framework: descent, culture, language, and territory must correspond with geometrical exactitude, and cases of doubt are not permitted. It is also a system which imposes a need to choose sides: one belongs either in this camp, or in that one, and one cannot have a foot in both. Nor can one remain on the frontier between

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them, because the border now assumes a psychological dimension which separates between groups, no longer constituting a sign past which one can cross back and forth. Around the mid-nineteenth century, therefore, a new political language is learned, because - as the newspaper Il Lombardo–Veneto put it in 1850 – ‘the most noble and strong feeling of [the] age is Nationality’.5 This new language of nationality possesses a syntax whose rules conflict with those of early modern political languages. As is well known, national discourse is structured around the play on differences: ‘we are who we are, because we are different to you’. Being a member of a national community – be it German, Czech, Italian, south Slavic, or whatever – is placed in direct relationship to not belonging to the ‘others’. Held in this vice, communities with pluralist identities are not allowed, except at the cost of creating major tensions. More particularist identities (regional or other sub-national identities) prove more adaptable, although these too must abide by the new linguistic rules (e.g. by defining themselves nationally, as German or Italian regions). Generally speaking, the language of nationality operates like a system of inverted mirrors: the ‘double’ in front of ‘us’ rapidly assumes characteristics which testify to its otherness, and – because of that otherness – its threatening nature. Nevertheless, while this language creates divisions, differences, and discontinuities, and – in one sense – erects boundaries, what is particularly interesting is that, everywhere it always seems to obey the same syntactic rules, to possess the same vocabulary and to make recourse to the same repertoire of symbols and narratives. Certainly, the specific semantic fields may vary and, of course, it makes an enormous difference in practice if a region defines itself as German, Czech, Italian, and so on. Yet, the linguistic morphology through which these differences are expressed is essentially the same. There is not the space here for a detailed examination of this common linguistic structure, nor of its origins, but it is opportune to reflect on some of its structural elements, above all what we might call its ‘deep images’. What, in this context, are these ‘images’? They are pictures, allegorical systems, and narrative constellations incorporating a set of specific values. These are presented as fundamental elements which give meaning to the conceptual system being proposed. And why are they ‘deep’ images? They can be described in this way because they locate themselves in a discursive continuum which is centuries-old, in some cases more ancient still. From the space occupied by these deep images, figures and illustrations are recovered which are already of long

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duration, but are now re-elaborated in a way appropriate to a discourse that is basically innovative in function. And the value of these deep images rests precisely in the fact that they are positioned within such a continuum, for this is what makes the images easily recognisable, but at the same time, adaptable within new discursive contexts. The effectiveness of the discursive system incorporating these images will then depend on how successfully it functions in terms of its own internal coherence.6 What then are these ‘images’? Clearly, this is not the place to draw up an exhaustive list (even if such were possible), so let us concentrate on two central elements which deserve special attention. The first of these is the image of kinship. It is by means of such a straightforward and easily accessible image that one of the basic matrices of national discourse is formed. Imagining the nation as a system of kinship – that is to say, as a network of relationships which extends backwards to preceding generations, acts in the here and now for contemporary members of the community, and projects itself towards the future generations to come – means essentially two things. First, it implies imagining the nation as a ‘community of descent’, endowed with its own historicalness. Secondly, it involves presenting the biological link as a basic ‘fact’ – hence the recourse, initially ‘naive’ (if one can put it that way), to terms such as ‘race’ or ‘blood’ to denote the connections that bind individuals to the community. Nineteenth-century national discourse never ceases to return again and again to this matrix as a way of giving shape to the community. For example, the eminent German liberal, Carl von Rotteck, in 1831 ‘characterised the cultural nation as a form of “community of fate”’, ‘to which we are bound by nature itself, by blood, by language, by speech, by heaven and by so many other valuable ties to the past and the present’.7 Similarly, for the Germans in Bohemia – as for every other national group at the time – the ground which the national community inhabits is a ‘tribal land’ (Stammlande).8 In this respect, there is a vital point that is worth making more explicit, namely that this mode of conceiving of the nation does not pertain solely (or even, mainly) to the politics and culture of German-speaking Central Europe. Rather, these forms of discourse were employed widely and shared elsewhere in nineteenth-century Europe, rather than being specific to any supposed ‘western’ or ‘eastern’ type of nationalism.9 Naturally, it follows that an entire linguistic sub-system is bound up with the idea of the nation as a community of kinship: the territory is the ‘motherland/fatherland’; the founders of national movements or new

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nation-states are the ‘fathers of the nation’; the national ‘community’ is a ‘brotherhood’,10 and the image of brotherhood/sisterhood becomes an essential way of denoting the type of community that is to be maintained. Even where, due to particular circumstances, the nation is initially presented as a spiritual kinship, the image’s basic ambivalence seems ultimately to project the community towards a ‘biological’ future, rather than a contractual or purely spiritual one. Thus, when referring to the complex situation in Dalmatia, ‘Bartolomeo Prospero Bettera admitted that in areas where nations overlapped, “oppression” and “violence” were possible. To avoid these “misdeeds against the order desired by God”, the “Church of Christ” was the only force capable of “reconnecting the multitude of people in a unity consecrated to God, to cultivate between them a relationship of mutual brotherhood and to create in this way a great family of peoples”.’11 At the same time, the historicalness of nations acquires greater substance within the kinship framework through which the community is imagined, as the words spoken by Joseph Ritter Freiherr von Weiß in Salzburg suggested, when claiming that the people of Salzburg stood ‘in loyal, insoluble alliance with our German brothers, to whom we belong by dint of origin and over a thousand years of history’.12 Through this kind of conception, reflection on the history and ‘great men’ of the community (Dante, Schiller, Mozart, Goethe, Jahn, etc.) takes on its meaning: what links their works to the national present is as much an ‘imaginary conception of history’ as the fact that they belong ‘by nature’ to the community whose culture they have embellished.13 The second major image prevalent in national discourse is that of sacrifice. Its enormous importance resides in the fact that it provides the basis for national belonging as a sacred experience. This in turn gives the nation a religious dimenison, because it opens up a path – one that is incredibly full of resonance – towards the understanding and ennoblement of death. In an insightful article on ‘religion as a cultural system’, Clifford Geertz wrote that the purpose of a religious system is to try and provide an order for dealing with experiences and images which seem impossible to interpret using other, non-metaphysical conceptual tools: ‘Any chronic failure of one’s explanatory apparatus, the complex of received culture patterns (common sense, science, philosophical speculation, myth) one has for mapping the empirical world, to explain things which cry out for explanation tends to lead to a deep disquiet.’14 It is at this point that religion intervenes to give back a sense of order to things. Yet, it is not necessary to interpret religion as an instrument to sweeten the experiences of life. On the contrary, if one considers

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that two important aspects of life, illness and grief, are at the centre of religious attention in general, then it is also necessary to recognise that the means of dealing with these experiences are directed not so much at exorcising as including them in a system rendered full of meaning: ‘as a religious problem, the problem of suffering is paradoxically, not how to avoid suffering but how to suffer, how to make of physical pain, personal loss, worldly defeat, or the helpless contemplation of other’s agony something bearable, supportable – something, as we say, sufferable’.15 Both the discursive and ritual practices of European nationalism tend to conceive of the nation as a community of combatants, bound by a sacramental pact, and identical in name with a para-metaphysical entity – the nation/ fatherland. The essential, sanctifying factor – what renders it sacred and beyond any possible discussion, the object of faith alone – is the image of self-sacrifice or martyrdom. Extraordinarily important here is the primary nexus established with the figure of Christ and all the metaphorical declinations that derive from his image. It is this aspect which explains why the great majority of national heroes in nineteenth-century Europe are, in a certain sense, sad figures, destined to defeat, their lives framed by stories that do not – and cannot – have a ‘happy ending’. Hence, the series of national martyrs are everywhere represented by the same characteristics. Figures mentioned in this volume such as Jan Hus, Jan Žižka, and Andreas Hofer were all depicted as warriors who gave their lives for the cause of the nation. Seen in this light, it is also possible to understand the tremendous fascination exercised, far beyond the borders of Italy, by a man like Garibaldi (in honour of whom Jindˇrich Fügner chose the red shirt for the Czech Sokol): a handsome hero, courageous, noble, but politically always on the losing side (if not always militarily).16 It is from this basic nucleus that the nation is sacralised, as is clearly testified by the lexicon of national discourse, which speaks incessantly of ‘missions’, ‘regeneration’, ‘resurrection’, ‘revival’ (Risorgimento), ‘holy wars’ and ‘crusades’. This primary nucleus can then help give meaning to a series of connotations beyond the national discourse, which would otherwise remain rather enigmatic: the roots of the cult of the dead and the generally death-pervaded character of national discourse are to be found here, in this sacral contact with the experience of death.17 The presentation of death and the nation’s dead in the form of statues (statue-mania is a specifically nationalistic phenomenon) can be read as a form of choice. By means of mimetic representation, this act of choosing seeks to evoke the presence of the fatherland’s heroes, great

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men, ‘fathers of the nation’, and the dead, thereby bringing them permanently into the community of the living.18 In addition, these sacral systems offer an explanatory and ennobling framework not just for the experience of death itself, the loss of loved ones and members of the community, but also for the death of the ‘others’ (the ‘enemy’, the ‘foreigner’). These latter deaths are thereby rendered acceptable, given that they too are obtained in ‘sacrificial’ form for the good of the community.19 A similar kind of conceptual torsion is absolutely essential for national discourse, which always appears to be defined in terms of values relating to violence and war. Granted, for the advocates of the national cause, it is always a case of ‘just’ wars, fought in ‘defence’ of the fatherland or in pursuance of its legitimate interests. Nevertheless, this cannot disguise the fact that, everywhere in nineteenth-century Europe, there is an assertion of a ‘martial ideal of national community’, guided by leaders or sovereigns who are viewed primarily as the heads of a community of warriors.20 The bellicose nature of the national idea possesses a notable importance with regard to how images are declined in terms of gender – a key issue which is not explicitly articulated in the contributions here, but is nevertheless implicit in many of them. The male heroes had to be capable of defending the nation’s freedom and honour, arms in hand. In national master narratives, their contact with sacrifice (both their own and that of the enemy) occurred exclusively within a warlike context. Since the late eighteenth century, this aspect of national discourse, nourished by the rhetoric of the ‘nation-in-arms’ and the reality of compulsory military conscription (e.g. in the French revolutionary armies, in Prussia after 1813, and in other states from the late 1860s onwards), ensured that the warrior heroes of national mythology were no longer considered to be the expression of a restricted fighting elite, but were dreamt of as the quintessence of national masculinity. Conversely, the activities of female figures were limited to tasks of a different kind: charitable assistance, emergency aid, and psychological support for the nation’s men, who were ready to battle on their behalf. Needless to say, the framework sketched out here needs to be explored in greater depth, because a general overview obviously runs the risk of overlooking many important new developments in scholarly research.21 Recent studies suggest that, even more than in other areas, national discourse cannot be considered genderless. Moreover, the basic distinction between public/male and private/female spheres needs to be questioned, not least for the fact that the metaphor of the nation as a kinship community involved – on the part of the nineteenth-century

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protagonists – deep explorations into mechanisms of sexuality, reproduction of the community, defence of honour, differentiation between gender roles and the tensions deriving from them. These were themes which were not secondary in function, but decisive for the effective working of national discourse, touching on delicate matters relating to the structure of individual personalities. For those individuals who accepted the tenets of national discourse, these issues could stimulate emotive actions in the political field. This kind of emotional dimension relates to the entire discursive mechanism, and emerges from the elaboration of the ‘deep images’, which – as mentioned – are also connected to the past, kinship, death, the sacred, as well as the erotic-sexual, imaginary realm. As such, these intricate, but crucial aspects of the language of nationality evidently dig deep into collective consciousness and touch highly sensitive chords. Close attention to these specific dimensions of national discourse, for which the articles brought together here provide a range of interesting material, enables a better understanding of that discourse’s great performative force – a force that was capable, as elsewhere in Europe, of powerfully reconfiguring identities in the mid-nineteenth century communities lying between Germany, Italy and Austria.

Notes ∗

Translated from the Italian by Laurence Cole. 1. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: ‘Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev edn. (London, 1991), ch. 2. passim. 2. See above, pp. 21–2. 3. See above, p. 72 4. See above, p. 145. 5. See above, p. 133. 6. As Judith Butler has observed, quoting Jacques Derrida, when verifying the performative powers of a linguistic system, one can note that expressions assume power in proportion to the nature of the citations being made: ‘Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a “coded” or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula I pronounce in order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way as a “citation”? In such a typology, the category of intention will not disappear; it will have its place, but from that place it will no longer be able to govern the entire scene and system of utterance [l’énonciation]’. See: J. Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York/London, 1993), p. 13. With respect to this statement, it is nevertheless absolutely necessary to emphasize that national discourse does not deal simply in the conservation of original expressions, nor in the dreary steadiness of

Conclusions

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

229

reproducing citation after citation, but instead constantly elides and enriches its particular semantic field. See above, p. 160. See above, pp. 44, 151. Such, for example, was certainly the case in Great Britain, France, and Italy. On this point, see: A. M. Banti, L’onore della nazione: Identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo dal XVIII secolo alla Grande Guerra (Turin, 2005), ch. III, passim. As embodied in the ‘brotherhood’ of gymnasts present in Chapter 4, above. See above, p. 28. The emphasis here is mine. See above, p. 116. With regard to an ‘imaginary conception of history’, I am referring to Erich Auerbach, Studi su Dante (Milan, 1974), and id., Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Turin, 1973). For a fuller discussion of the arguments presented here, see: A.M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Turin, 2000), pp. 73 ff. C. Geertz, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in: id., The Interpretation of Cultures, orig. ed. 1973 (New York, 2000), here p. 100. Ibid., p. 104. D. Beales, ‘Garibaldi in England: The Politics of Italian Enthusiasm’, in: J. Davis and P. Ginsborg (eds), Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento: Essays in honour of Denis Mack Smith (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 184–216; M. Isnenghi, ‘Garibaldi’, in: id. (ed.), I luoghi della memoria: Personaggi e date dell’Italia unita (Rome–Bari, 1997), pp. 27–45; L. Riall, ‘Hero, saint or revolutionary? Nineteenth-century politics and the cult of Garibaldi’, Modern Italy 2 (1998), 191–204; id., ‘Storie d’amore, di libertà e d’avventura: la costruzione del mito garibaldino intorno al 1848-49’, in: A.M. Banti and R. Bizzocchi (eds), Immagini della nazione nell’Italia del Risorgimento (Rome, 2002), pp. 157– 174. G.L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York–Oxford, 1990). Some suggestive ideas on this point can be found in: C. Ginzburg, Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance (New York, 2001); T. Macho, ‘Morte e lutto nel confronto fra le culture’, in: J. Assmann (ed.), La morte come tema culturale: Immagini e riti mortuari nell’antico Egitto (Turin, 2002), pp. 69–95. R. Girard, La violenza e il sacro (Milan, 1997). See here, respectively, Chapters 8 and 10 above. On this, see: G.L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality: Respectable and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe (New York, 1985); id., The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York–Oxford, 1996); A. Parker et al. (eds), Nationalisms and Sexualities (New York–London, 1992); P. Herminghouse and M. Müller (eds), Gender and Germanness: Cultural Productions of Nation (Providence–Oxford, 1997); I. Blom, K. Hagemann and C. Hall (eds), Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford– New York, 2000); H. Collier Sy-Quia and S. Baackmann (eds), Conquering Women: Women and War in the German Cultural Imagination (Berkeley, 2000).

Index

and Salzburg, 102–3, 105–8, 110–11, 113, 115 and Trieste, 60–3, 65–75, 77–8 and Tyrol, 37–43, 45–55 and Venetia, 61–2, 122–32, 135–9 army, 76, 94, 113, 172 as ruler of Bohemia, 82–5, 87–9, 94, 144–5, 147, 149 Basic Law, 1867, 51, 153, 183 censorship, 86 concordat with Holy See, 1855, 47–9, 52, 71, 77, 131, 189 ethnography, 63, 144 German identity in, 5–6, 49–51, 53–5, 91, 109–10, 112–13, 115–17, 145–50, 152–4 historiography, 2–8, 38–9 imperial parliament (Reichsrat), 6, 22–3, 48–9, 52, 138, 147, 189 Italian identity in, 7–8, 52, 55, 62, 68, 75, 77, 139 Ministry for Education and Religion, 189, 192 Ministry of Commerce, 166 rail network, 41, 47, 61 regional identities in, 3, 101, 103, 107–9, 220 rules Dalmatia, 16, 19–21, 24, 29–32 Austria, Lower, 63, 95 Austria, Upper, 10, 102, 111, 116, 180–94 Austrian National Encyclopedia, 109 Austro-Prussian War (1866), 51, 94, 145, 150–3, 158, 172, 183, 202, 205, 210 Austro-Slavism, 148 l’Avvenire di Ragusa, 24

a Prato, Giovanni, 44–5, 48 Adriatic Sea, 2, 16, 18–19, 26, 30, 32, 60, 62, 64, 70, 73, 126, 133 agriculture, see also peasants, 19, 23, 26, 41, 43, 52, 72, 102–4, 107, 112, 136, 210 Albert, Crown Prince and King of Saxony, 208–10 Allgemeine Zeitung, 165, 167 Alps, Alpine region, 37, 41–2, 48, 56, 126, 182 Alsace and Lorraine, 204, 210 Anschluss, Austria with Germany, 4 Anschringer, Anton, 149 anti-Christ, 107 anti-militarism, 204 anti-Prussianism, 202–3, 207, 211, 214–15 anti-Semitism, 91, 114–15 Armistice of Villafranca (1859), 132, 137–9 Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 163 associations cultural, 104–6, 151 educational, 84–6 gymnastic, 76, 88–95, 113 national/ist, 67–8, 72, 76, 83, 109, 112, 114, 148, 163 political, 69–70, 75, 83, 184, 187, 189, 193 religious, 44, 84, 190 social, 67–8, 75 Auersperg, Prince Adolph von, 185 Auerstädt, Battle of, 88 Augsburg, 165 Ausgleich (Compromise) of 1867, 51, 94, 153–4, 183 Austria and German unity, 158–75, 202, 208 and religion, 49, 51–3, 84, 130–2, 184, 189

Baden, 5, 153, 158, 201–8, 210, 212–13, 215 Diet (Landtag), 159–61, 202 230

Index Badischer Beobachter, 205 Balkan Wars, 92 Balkans, 31 Baltic Sea, 220 Bamberger, Ludwig, 162 Bavaria, 5, 37, 39, 68, 85, 102–4, 113–14, 152–3, 158, 163, 168, 189–90, 200–15 Bayerische Patriotenpartei – Bavarian Patriots’ Party, 203 Das Bayerische Vaterland, 205 Belgium, 2 Beobachter, 168, 174 Berlin, 92–3, 152, 158, 187, 202, 204–5, 209 Bernat, Josef, 151 Bettera, Bartolomeo Prospero, 21, 28, 225 Beust, Baron, 153 Bismarck, Otto von, 158, 167, 173, 184, 200, 205–6, 209, 211, 214–15 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 25 Bohemia Czechs in, 145–6, 149, 151–3 Diet, 6, 83, 152–3 Germans in, 91–3, 95, 144–53, 222, 224 historiography, 84–5, 88, 91 Kingdom of, 84, 93 nobility, 87 people, 83–4, 86, 95, 110, 147–8, 151 territory, 5–6, 11, 42, 83–5, 89–91, 95, 107, 144–53, 221 ˇ Böhmisch Aicha/Ceský Dub, 152 ˇ Böhmisch Leipa/Ceská Lípa, 148 Borelli, Francesco, 22–3, 25–6, 28 Bosnia, 18, 22, 26, 29–30 bourgeoisie Austrian, 159, 161 Czech, 83, 88 Salzburg, 104–7, 109, 111–12, 115–16 Slovenian, 72 Triestine, 60, 65–78 Tyrolean, 44, 47–9 Venetian, 130, 139 Bozen, 41, 44, 46–7, 50

231

Bozner Zeitung, 51 Bratislava, 83 Breisgauer Zeitung, 206 Brenner Pass, 37, 41, 46 Britain, 3, 169, 221 Brixen, 37, 39 Brno, 85 Bronnzell, 166 Bruck, Karl Ludwig von, 171 Bruderkrieg, 158, 170–1 Brünn, see Brno, Budapest, 83 ˇ Budweis, see Ceské Budˇejovice Bukovina, 221 Burgundy, 40 Cannaregio (sestiere di Venezia), 129 capitalism, 26, 72, 90, 169, 181 Carinthia, 39, 63, 72, 103, 107, 111 Carlsbad/Karlovy Vary, 145 Carlsbad decrees, 1819, 161 Carniola, 63, 72 Carolina Augusta, Dowager Empress, 108 Carrara, Francesco, 22, 27, 222 Carso hills, 62 Castello (sestiere di Venezia), 129 Cathedral Music Association and Mozarteum, 106 Catholic Constitutional Association, Tyrol, 44 Catholics, Catholicism and Germany, 43, 203–5, 207, 212, 215 Church, 18, 27, 41–2, 47, 49, 52–3, 71, 77, 114, 131–2, 180–94, 202–3 clergy, 22, 182, 187, 190–1 conservatism, see also Ultramontanism, 49, 52–4, 181–5 dogma, 186, 194 in Baden, 202 in Czech lands, 84 in Dalmatia, 18, 24, 27 in Salzburg, 103, 106, 108, 114 in Venice, 131–2 Old (liberal) Catholics, 182–3, 186–94

232

Index

Catholics, Catholicism – continued political, 163 press, 165, 168, 174, 183–5, 205–6, 212 Tyrolean, 40–3, 49, 52, 54–5 Central Europe, 1–4, 10, 39–40, 53, 83, 92–3, 110, 114, 116, 221, 224 ˇ Ceské Budìjovice, 6, 83, 146, 149 choral societies, German, 76, 112–13 Cisleithania, 153, 183, 191 clubs, see associations. Congress of Italian scientists, IX (1847), 122, 124–5 Conservatives/conservatism Austrian, 47, 171 Bohemian, 87, 89 Catholic, 49, 52–4, 181, 183–7, 189, 193–4 German–Tyrolean, 41–4, 46, 49, 51–3 großdeutsch, 163 Italian-Tyrolean, 53 press, 167, 171 Prussian, 166 rural, 106–7 Salzburg, 104, 106–7 Saxon, 203–4, 207, 211 Triestine, 71, 75 Venetian, 128, 132, 137, 139–40 Constance, Council of (1414–18), 187 Constance, Lake, 126 Constantinople, 126 Constitutional Society, Leitmeritz, 149 Continental Blockade, 62, 64 Costantini, Raffaele, 73 counter-reformation, 40, 88 Crimean War, 168 Croatia, Croatians, 16–18, 22, 25–6, 29–31, 189 Customs Union, Zollverein, see also Parliament, Customs, 150, 164, 171 Czech/Czechs anti-Semitism, 91 awakening, 84–6, 88 historiography, 5–6, 82, 88, 146, 148 language, 83–7, 93, 149

nation, 82, 85–95, 116, 223 national movement, 83–95, 145, 147–9, 152–3 people, 5–6, 42, 82, 91, 95, 110–11, 116, 144, 146, 151, 153–4 Czoernig, Karl Freiherr von, 144 Dahlmann, Friedrich Christoph, 163 Dalmatia, 8, 11, 16–33, 221–2, 225 National Committee 1861, 23 Dante Alighieri, 25, 48, 50, 225 Danube, River, 19, 23 Darmstadt, 105 democracy, 83, 113, 123–4, 127, 147, 187 democratization, 40, 112, 180 democrats, 128, 139, 163, 167–70, 173–4, 203 Denmark, 1863 war with Prussia and Austria, 92, 167–8 Deutsche Volksblatt, 174 Diet (Landtag) Baden, 159–61, 202 Bohemian, 6, 148, 152–3 Hesse, 161 Salzburg, 102, 104 Stuttgart, 159, 161 Upper Austria, 183–5 Tyrol, 40, 44, 49 Dinaric mountains, 18 Djakovo, 189 Döllinger, Ignaz von, 186–7, 189, 193 Dolomites, 38 Dresden, 145, 204, 208–10 Dresdner Journal, 210 Dreßler, Wenzel, 94 dualism, Austro-Hungarian, see Ausgleich dualism, Prusso-Austrian, 165, 202 Dubrovnik, 18, 20–1, 23–4 Edinost (Trieste), 75 Eger/Cheb, 148–9 Eisenach, 204 Emperor, Habsburg, 50, 67, 70, 102, 105, 107–11, 115–16, 152, 184 Emperor, Holy Roman, 50 Emperor, Prussian/German, 165, 205, 209, 211–15

Index England, English people, in Venice, 64, 3, 116, 162, 187 Enlightenment, 23, 28, 30, 65, 84, 129 Erfurt Union, 165 l’Età presente, 132, 135–7 Etsch valley, 41 February Patent, 1861, 152, 183 Ferdinand I (of Habsburg), 67, 105 Ferdinando, Carlo, 71 Fessler, Joseph, 189 Florence, 48 folk culture, 26–7, 90, 138, 146 Fourier, Charles, 129 France, 17, 66, 116, 136, 159, 167, 169–70, 174–5, 183–4, 187, 202, 210, 221 and Germany, see also Franco-German War, 92, 165, 167, 170 and Venice, 122, 129–30 backs Piedmont, 48, 167 occupies Dalmatia, 19, 22 occupies Salzburg, 102 occupies Trieste, 65–6 occupies Tyrol, 37, 39, 103 occupies Upper Austria, 190 Second Republic, 129 Francis I, Austrian Emperor, 110, 123 Francis Joseph, 50, 52, 70, 108, 184 Franco-Austrian War of 1859, see also Italian War, 8, 48, 61, 87, 132, 137, 167, 169, 183 Franco-German (Franco-Prussian) War, 1870–71, 92, 159, 173–5, 185, 188, 200, 203–5, 208, 210 Franco-Russian Neutrality Agreement 1859, 169 Frankfurt Congress, 1863, 50, 167 Frankfurt parliament, 1848–49, see Parliament, Frankfurt. Frankfurter Zeitung, 175 Freemasonry, 65, 68 Freiburg im Breisgau, 160, 206, 213 Freiburger Katholisches Kirchenblatt, 206 Freund, Sebastian, 191–3 Friedrich Barbarossa, 213

233

Friedrich III, Kaiser, 213 Friedrich, Grand Duke of Baden, 212–13 Friuli, 63 Fügner, Jindrich, 89–90, 226 Gagern, Heinrich von, 160–1 ‘Gagern Plan’, 161, 165 Gaj, Ljudevit, 26 Galicia, 221 Garagnin, Gian Luca, 19, 21 Garibaldi, Guiseppe, 49, 129, 226 Garibaldians, 44–5, 49, 69, 75, 77, 90 Gazzetta Uf f iziale di Venezia, 132, 138 gender, 227–8 Genoa, 37, 73 Georg, Prince of Saxony, 208–9 German Artists’ Festival, 7th, 113 German Confederation, 4–5, 38, 43, 45, 50–1, 53, 70, 89, 110, 112–3, 145, 147, 149, 157, 160, 162, 166, 170–3, 203 German Empire (Reich), 2, 4–5, 7, 10, 55, 92, 153–4, 158–9, 182, 184, 186, 188, 194, 200–2, 205–15 German Party, Württemberg, 173 German Question, 5, 49, 52, 111, 113, 157–8, 165, 170–1, 175, 201–2 German/Germans and Catholicism, 43, 52, 54, 184, 202 culture(s), 4, 26, 37, 68, 76, 89, 91, 113, 159, 164–5, 170, 173, 200–1 identity, 6, 10, 37, 49, 76, 91–5, 101, 103, 112, 114–16, 146–51, 203, 207, 216 in Bohemia, 5, 82–95, 144–54, 222, 224 in Trieste, 64, 68, 75 language, 20, 64, 68, 74, 83, 85–6 Protestants, 49, 64, 103, 152, 159, 186, 202, 204–5, 207 speakers, 5, 38–43, 45, 56, 63, 78, 86, 90–5, 103, 105, 110–11, 116–17, 144–5, 149, 224 Tyroleans, 38–56

234

Index

Germany as concept, 37–8, 43, 50, 53–5, 93, 102, 109, 126, 151, 154, 157, 159, 163–5, 168–9, 172–4, 188, 228 Greater, 94, 111, 147–50, 158, 175, 209 historiography, 2–11, 38–9, 158, 200–1 unification, 1871, 153, 157, 159, 175, 186, 200, 207–15 Gesellschaft f ür Salzburger Landeskunde, 104 Gießen, University of, 160 Gioberti, Vincenzo, 21 Giorgi, Ignazio, 25 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 26, 92, 225 Gorizia, 63, 66, 72 Görres, Joseph von, 42 Gradisca, 66, 72 Graz, 105, 114 Great Schism, 187 Greece, 2, 68–9, 154 King and Queen of, 68 Greeks, 64–5, 67–9, 74 großdeutsch national aspiration, see also Germany, Greater, 4, 46, 111–13, 158, 161, 163–5, 171–5, 202–3, 207, 213 Gundulić, Ivan, 25 gymnastic clubs Czech, see also Sokol, 88–9, 91–5 German, see also Turnverein, 76, 89, 91–5, 113 socialist, 95 Gyri, Josef, 189–90 Habsburg Empire, see Austria Habsburg, House of, 21, 39–40, 50, 62, 78, 102, 115, 164 Habsburg, Rudolph von, 50 Hall, 50 Hallein, 114 Hallgarten, 160 Hamburg, 204 Hammerling, Robert, 75–6 Haydn, Joseph, 106 Heidelberg, 161

Heine, Friedrich Wilhelm, 208 Heine, Heinrich, 37, 39, 42 Hercegovina, 18, 30 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 26 Hermet, Francesco, 77 Hesse, 161, 166 Hilscher, Josef, 151 Historisch–politische Blätter, 169, 174 Hofer, Andreas, 53, 104, 226 Hohenwart, Karl von, 185 Hohenzollern, House of, 165, 173, 202, 205–6, 211–12 Holy Roman Empire, 7, 39, 43, 102, 109, 158, 162, 164 Huguenots, 64 Hungary, 18, 22, 51, 62, 86, 94, 152, 183, 221 Hus, Jan, 87–8, 226 Hussites, 84, 88, 91, 93, 145 identity Austrian, 38, 70, 107, 109–10, 115, 150 Czech, 83–4, 86, 89–90, 93, 146, 154 Dalmatian, 8, 25, 27 ethnic, 90, 95 German, 5, 38, 49, 53, 76, 91–3, 103, 109, 112, 114, 145–7, 151–2, 154 German–Austrian, 145–6, 152–4, 173 Italian, 55, 62, 73, 75, 124 national, 1–11, 38, 54, 61, 72–3, 100–1, 110, 115, 117, 132, 215–6 regional, 2–4, 6, 9, 17, 32, 42, 82, 102–4, 106, 115–17, 124, 201 Salzburg, 100–17 Slavic, 17, 25, 27, 84, 223 Triestine, 70, 78 Tyrolean, 46, 54 Venetian, 122, 124, 134 Illyria, Illyrians, 17, 25, 39, 65 industrialization, industrial development, 11, 26, 28, 41, 47, 51, 61, 64, 67, 73, 82–3, 169, 180, 210 inflation, 72, 205

Index Innsbruck, 37, 41–4, 47, 50–2 Innsbrucker Tagblatt, 52 Innviertel, 189 Istria, 30, 63, 66 Italian War for Independence (1859), 29, 31, 87, 137 Italian(s) and Catholicism, 52, 77, 131, 184 culture(s), 23–5, 43, 68, 70, 74–5 identity, 7, 17, 30, 37, 42, 53, 55–6, 62, 124, 129, 221, 223 in Dalmatia, 16–20, 22–4, 28 language, 18, 20, 22–5, 29, 64, 68 national movement, 17, 49, 69, 130 speakers, 6–7, 11, 18, 22, 38, 40, 42–5, 52, 62–3, 72–4, 77 Italian-Tyroleans. See also Trentino, 44–5, 53–5 Italy, 19, 23–5, 37, 39, 42, 48, 61, 69, 73, 78, 123–4, 127–30, 135–6, 169, 184, 187, 226, 228 historiography, 2–11, 38–9, 60–1 Kingdom of, 32, 39, 68, 73, 76–7, 132, 137–9, 154 legal system, 139–40 Northern, 5–9, 47, 65, 78, 90, 128, 132, 167, 171–2 takes Rome, 52, 184, 194 unification, 29, 31, 124, 139 Itzstein, Johann Adam von, 159–60 Iviˇcević, Stipan, 17, 23–5, 31 Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig, 88–9, 91–3, 225 Jena, Battle of, 88 Jena, University, 161 Jesuits, 37, 189 Jews, 53, 64–5, 67, 71, 73–4, 91, 95, 130, 204–5 Johann, King of Saxony, 208–9 Jungmann, Josef, 85–6 Kaˇcić-Miošié, Andrija, 25 Kamchatka, 26 Karadžić, Vuk Stefanović, 26–27 Katholische Volkspartei (KVP), 202 Katholisch–Patriotisches Casino, 184–5 Kaznažić, Ivan August, 24, 29, 31 Ketteler, Wilhelm Emanuel von, 173

235

Kiel, 92 kinship, 224–5, 227–8 Klebelsberg, Franz, Count, 85 kleindeutsch national aspiration, 4, 158, 163–5, 170–1, 173–5, 202, 205, 213 Klopp, Onno, 173 Koch, Matthias, 107 Koflern, Sigmund von, 105 Kollár, Ján, 26 Königgrätz, battle of, 1866, 50–1, 113–14, 170–3, 188, 208, 210 Kotor/Cattaro, 20 Kreglianovic Albinoni, Giovanni, 19, 21 Kryštof Harant, 87 Kufstein, 50 Kulturkampf, 48–9, 51–2, 182–4, 194, 202–3, 205–6 Kurunda, Ignaz, 168 labour movement, 207, 211 Ladin language, 38 landowners, 18, 29, 211 Leipzig, 150, 204, 208, 214 Leitmeritz/Litomˇeˇrice, 146, 148–9, 151 Leo XIII, Pope, 180 Liberal–Politischer Verein, 184–5 Liberals, liberalism Austrian, 51–2, 55, 75, 77, 146, 175, 182–94 Czech, 90, 95, 145, 148–9, 152 German, 91, 114, 145, 147–8, 157–64, 166–8, 170–2, 174, 202–7, 212, 224 German-Tyrolean, 44–7, 49–54 ideas, 41–2, 182, 184 in Venetia, 127–9, 139 Italian, 184 Italian-Tyrolean, 43, 48–9, 51–3, 55 Salzburg, 106, 109, 111 Triestine, 69, 71–2, 74, 76–7 Liedertafel, Salzburg, 112 Linz, 102, 182, 184, 187, 189, 192–3 Linzer Diozesenblatt, 190 Linzer Tagespost, 185–6 Linzer Volksblatt, 184, 190 Littoral (Austrian province), 66

236

Index

Ljubljana, 65 Il Lombardo-Veneto, 132–6, 223 Lombardy, 7, 48–9, 61–2, 78, 123, 132, 221 Lombardy-Venetia, Kingdom of, 8, 30, 39, 45, 55, 66, 70–1, 133–5 London, 27 Lower Inn valley, 41 Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, 212 Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, 208 Lungau, 114 Mácha, Karel Hynek, 151 Main, river, 2, 163, 173 Mainz, 173 Malamocco, 126 Manin, Daniele, 125, 127, 129–31 Mannheim, 205 Mantua, 131 Manzoni, Alessandro, 21 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 89 Mathy, Karl, 160 Matica srbska, 86 Matice ˇceská, 86–8 Maximilian Habsburg, 108 May Laws, 1868, 183–5, 191 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 129 Mazzinians, 77, 127, 129–30 Mediterranean, 22–3, 62 Meißner, Alfred, 144–5, 147, 222 Meran, 50 Metternich, Clemens Wenzel von, 157 Mexico, 108 Mickiewicz, Adam, 26–27 Milan, 27, 45, 69, 125, 218, 133–4 Military Patriotic Women’s Aid Association, Salzburg, 109 Mohl, Robert von, 161–3 Möhler, Johann Adam, 186 Moltke, Helmuth von, 209 Monico, Jacopo, 130–1 Montenegro, 30 Moravia, 6, 150 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 105–7, 112–13, 115–16, 225 Munich, University, 163 Munich, 37, 105, 186–7 Murray, John, 110

Museum Society, Prague, 83, 85–8, 95 Museum Society, Salzburg, 105 Napoleon I, 18, 64, 66, 126, 164, 212 Napoleon III, 174, 186 Napoleonic Wars, 2, 18–9, 30, 32, 39–40, 62, 64–6, 70, 89, 102–4, 123, 202, 212 National Association (Nationalverein), 163 National Liberal Party, 54, 74, 109, 163, 203, 205, 212 National Museum, Prague, 85–8 National Socialism, 4 ‘nationalisation’, 6, 32, 38, 45, 55, 132, 161, 171, 174, 182, 222 nationalism, see also identity, national, 1–2, 4, 9–10, 17, 31–3, 157, 159, 180–2, 188, 224, 226 Czech, 83–8, 90–1, 95, 148, 153–4 German, 85, 88–9, 95, 110, 112–15, 144, 149, 200–1, 207, 213 Italian, see also Risorgimento, 17, 60 linguistic, 83 Slavic, 16, 30, 171 national-liberalism, 48, 50, 55, 158, 174 National-Zeitung, 158 nation-building, 1, 6, 9, 53–4, 95, 116, 169–70, 175, 181, 194, 201, 213 Nˇemcová, Božena, 146 Netherlands, 116 Neue Freie Presse, 167, 172 Neumarkt, Dresden, 208 Niemes/Mimon, 148, 152 North German Confederation, 172–3, 203 North Sea, 220 November Crisis, 1850, 165–6 Nuremberg, 112, 204 Nürnberger Correspondent, 145 Obrovac/Obravazzo, 29 October Diploma, 1860, 183 Ohnesorge, Fritz, 210 Old Town Square, Prague, 87–8 Olmütz, Convention of, 166 Orthodoxy, Greek, 130 Orthodoxy, Serb, 24, 27–8

Index Ostdeutsche Post, 168, 172 Ottoman Empire, 18–9, 30, 209 Palacký, František, 86–8, 145 panduri, 18, 20 pan-Germanism, 145, 149, 153 pan-Slavism, 26 Papal States, 171 Paris, 27, 129, 156 Paris Commune, 204 Parliament see also Reichstag. Austrian, 6, 23, 46, 48–9, 52, 110, 138, 147 Customs (Zollparlament), 152, 162, 173, 203, 207, 215 Frankfurt, 1848–49, 43, 45, 70, 110–11, 147–50, 160–1, 163–5, 168 North German, 203, 207 Württemberg, 157 particularism, 5, 42–3, 49, 52, 54, 157, 163–4, 166, 171, 200, 202, 205, 207, 210, 213–5, 223 Pastor Aeternus, 185, 189–90, 192 patriotism Austrian, 106–9, 145 Bavarian, 202–3, 206, 212 Bohemian, 84–5, 88, 90–1 Czech, 84–5, 94–5 Dalmatian, 17, 19, 24 German, 89, 145, 204, 206 Italian, 139 local, 164–5 Salzburg, 104 Tyrolean, 53 Venetian, 131–3, 135 Peace of Nikolsburg, 172 Peace of Paris, 169 Peace of Prague, 172 Peace of Tilsit, 169 peasants Czech, 82, 84–5 Dalmatian, 23, 26–7, 29 German, 89, 107, 112, 136 Slovenian, 72 Tyrolean, 39, 43 Pfizer, Paul Achatius, 157, 161–2 physiocrats, 19, 21 Piedmont, law, 139–40

237

Piedmont, 25, 45, 48–9, 124, 127–8, 130, 132, 135–7, 139–40, 167 Pius IX, pope, 77, 131, 184 Po, River, 2, 126, 220 Pongau, 104 popes (general), 52, 180–1, 186–8, 190–1, 194 Poszony, see Bratislava, Prague, National Council, 148 Prague, 6, 82–95, 146–53 Castle, 87 University, 83, 90 Pressburg, see Bratislava, Pressburg, Treaty of (1805), 39 Pˇribyslav Field, 93 Protestants Czech, 84 English, 64 German, 152, 159, 186–7, 202, 204–5, 207 in Salzburg, 103 in Tyrol, 49, 53 Prussia and German unification, 161, 163–7, 171–3, 202–3, 205 and Saxony, 202–15 army, 94, 152, 203, 227 Commercial treaty with France, 167 in Napoleonic Wars, 88 Royal House. See also Hohenzollern., 202, 210–13 Prussians 150 Pštross, František, 94 Pyrker, Ladislaus, 105 railways, 27, 29, 41, 47, 51, 61, 73, 103, 112, 125 Rauscher, Joseph Othmar von, 172, 188, 190 Reform Association, Reformverein, 163 regionalism, 8, 17–8, 28–33, 207, 214–15 Reichenberg/Liberec, 146, 148–53 Reichenberger Wochen-Bericht, 149, 150 Reichenberger Zeitung, 150–3, 155 Reichstag, 161–2, 215 Reiter, Josef, 193

238

Index

religion (general), 18, 21, 25, 28, 42, 53, 127, 131, 180–2, 184, 187, 191–2, 203, 225 religious tolerance/freedom, 44, 52, 65, 69, 71, 127 Rerum Novarum, 180 Reutte, 50 Revolution of 1848–49, 2, 6 and German nationalism, 147–9, 158–61, 164–7, 202–4 and the clergy, 131–2 in Dalmatia, 16, 29 in Italy, 69 in Northern Bohemia, 144–9, 154 in Prague, 82, 85, 87, 89–90 in Salzburg, 102, 110–12 in Trieste, 70–3 in Tyrol, 42–6, 48–9 in Venice, 122–4, 126–32, 137–8 Reyer, Costantino de, 71 Rhine, river, 169 Rhineland, 163 Ried, Upper Austria, 189–93 Rieger, František, 152 Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich, 163–4, 166 Rijeka/Fiume, 30 Risorgimento, Italian, 7, 9, 16, 24–5, 38, 55, 61–2, 65, 123–4, 127, 226 Rochau, Ludwig August von, 168 Roman Catholic Church, see Catholics Rome, 52, 129, 184, 188–90, 194 Republic (1849), 127–9 Rosenheim, 41 Rotteck, Carl von, 160–1, 224 Rovereto, 43, 45, 47 Rudigier, Franz Joseph, 184–5, 188, 190–1, 193–4 Rupert, Saint, 104 Rupertigau, 102 Russia, 30, 166, 169 Šafaˇrik, Pavel, 86 Sagredo, Agostino, 124, 126 Saint Mark, Republic of, see also Venice, 18–9, 63, 122, 127 Saint Michael, 106 Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, 129

Salzburg, 5, 11, 41, 100–17, 221, 225 Savoy, House of, 128–9 Saxony, Saxons, 2, 5, 145, 150, 153, 200–3, 207–15 army, 208–10 Conservatives, People’s Party, 203 Scherr, Gregor von, 186 Schiller, Friedrich von, 76 Schillerverein, 105 Schilling, Julius, 167 Schleswig-Holstein, 50, 75–6, 92, 117, 225 Schönerer, Georg von, 175 Schubert, Franz, 106 Schwarzenberg, Cardinal Friedrich Johann, 106 Schwarzenberg, Prince Felix zu, 171 Schwarzenberg, Karl von, Count, 88 Scottish people, 2, 145 secularisation, 39, 102, 104, 180–1, 190, 194, 202 Sedan, 203, 206 Sedan Day, 201, 203–6, 211–12, 214–15 Serbs, 17, 29–31 language, 86 Serragli, Luigi, 23 Seven Years’ War, 203 Slavata, Vilem, 87 Slavic Congress, Prague (1848), 87 Slavs, 8, 10 culture, 8, 10, 24, 26–7 in Bohemia, 84, 86–7, 90–2 in Habsburg Empire, 148, 154, 171, 175 in Trieste, 72, 75 languages, 11, 17–8, 20, 22–7, 29, 221 nationalism, 16–17, 24–5, 27, 30–1, 61 people, 5, 16–17, 23–4, 26, 30, 113–14 religion, 24–5, 27–8 Slovenes, 116 in Trieste, 63–4, 72, 74–5, 77–8 Sobieski, Jan, (Polish King), 209 Social-Democrats, German, 204–6, 211, 215

Index socialists, 203–4 Society for Maintaining German Nationality in Bohemia and Preserving Constitutional Interests, 150 Society for the Preservation of the German Cause on the Eastern Borders, 150 Society of Germans of Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia to Maintain their Nationality, 150 Sokol, 88–95, 226 Solferino, 183 Southern Union, 173 Spain, 184, 187 St Pölten, 189 Staffler, Dr, 44 Sternberg, Kasper, Count, 85, 87 Steyr, 190 Streiter, Josef, 44 Strele, Anton Ritter von, 50 Stremayr, Carl von, 189 Stritzinger, Johann, 192 Strossmayer, Josef, 189 Struber, Josef, 104 Stuttgart, 161 Styria, 63, 72, 103, 105, 114 Sudetenland, 91, 146 Suez Canal, 61 Svˇetlá, Karolina, 151 Swabia, 173 Switzerland, 39, 162 Sybel, Heinrich von, 158 Taaffe, Eduard, Count, 94 Teplitz/Teplice, 145, 148, 150 textile industry, 147 Third Germany, 5, 163, 166, 171 Thirty Years’ War, 87, 165, 202 Tomasoni, Giovanni, 125–6 Tommaseo, Niccolo, 16–17, 21–4, 26–8, 221 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 158, 200, 205 Trentino, 8, 38, 42–9, 51–3, 55–6 Trento, 39–40, 42–3, 45, 47–8, 50, 52 Trieste, 8, 19, 30, 32, 60–78, 108, 134, 222 Casino Greco, 67–8

239

Casino Slavo, 72, 222 Casino Tedesco, 68, 76 Casino Vecchio, 67–8 Chamber of Commerce, 64, 74 City council, 71, 73–4, 77 Consiglio ferdinandiano, 67 Exchange Deputation, 64, 67, 73 Free port, 60, 62, 65–6 Greek Community, 64–5, 67–9, 74 Jewish community, 64–5, 67, 71, 73–4 libraries, 75 Magistracy, 66–7 municipal statute, 1850, 70–1 Patricians’ Council, 65 Slavic Assembly, 72 Società dei Triestini, 70–1, 73 Società del Progresso, 72 Società filarmonico-drammatica, 68 Stock Exchange, 65, 71 Tübingen, 162, 187 Tübingen university, 161 Turin, 126, 136 Turkish Wars, 209 Turks, 68 Turnverein, 76, 88–95 Tuscany, Tuscan, 25, 129 Tyrol, 5, 8, 37–56, 63, 102–4, 107, 110–11, 221 Landtag, 40–1, 43–4, 48–9, 55 Tyrol, Italian. See Trentino, Tyrolean rebellion, 1809, 37, 39, 53, 104 Tyrš, Miroslav, 89–91 Uhland, Ludwig, 161 Ultramontanism, see also Catholic Conservatism, 10, 44, 180–94, 202–5 Upper Austrian Catholic Association, 190 Vaterland, 183 Vaterlandsfreund, 149 Vatican, Council, 1869–70, 181, 185–6, 188, 190–1 Vatican, 184, 189–90

240

Index

Venetia. See also Lombardy-Venetia, 7, 16, 18, 20, 22, 30, 43, 45, 51, 61, 63, 73, 78, 122–40 Central Political Committee, 139 Venezia e le sue lagune, 122, 124–6, 138 Venice, 7–8, 11, 16, 18, 61, 64, 69, 73, 122–40 Arsenale, 134 Doge of, 126, 135 First Austrian domination, 122–3 Free port, 125, 130 French rule, 122 municipal government, 137–8 Patriarch, 130–1 Republic (1848–49), 128 revolution, 1848–49, 122, 124–30, 132, 137–8 Second Austrian domination, 123 Serenissima, 122, 124–7, 129, 134–5, 139 Terraferma, 124, 128 Third Austrian domination, 124, 130–8 Verona, 41 Versailles, 174, 200 Vico, Giambattista, 21 Vienna, 47–8, 60, 71, 73, 108, 110, 144, 147, 149–50, 152, 154, 158, 166, 168, 171, 173, 185, 188–90, 203 Congress/settlement of, 1815, 2, 20, 123, 159, 167–8 Siege of, 1683, 209 Villafranca armistice, 1859, 132, 137–9 Vilpian, 45

Vojnović, Konstantin, 25 völkisch (racial) ideology, 4, 95, 102, 144 Vormärz period, 41, 54, 105, 107, 109–10, 115, 145 Votive Church, Vienna, 108 Wallner, Anton, 104 Der Wegweiser, 149 Weiß, Joseph Ritter Freiherr von, 116, 225 Welcker, Carl Theodor, 159–61 Weller, Ferdinand, 46 Wenceslas Square, Prague, 87 Wettin dynasty, 207–8, 210–1 Wetzelsberger, Engelbert, 192–3 White Mountain, Battle of (1620), 84, 87, 145 Wilhelm I, Kaiser, 208–9, 211–15 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 211 Winter, Christian Friedrich, 159 Wittelsbach dynasty, 206, 211 workers, working class, 18, 26, 41, 45, 72, 75, 88, 134–5, 151, 153, 207 World War I, 60, 70, 73, 95, 103, 183 World War II, 4 Württemberg, 153, 157–8, 161, 168–9, 173–4 People’s Party, 173 Yugoslavia, Yugoslavs, 17, 30 Zadar, 22 Zillner, Franz Valentin, 104, 114 Žižka, Jan, 93, 145, 226 Zotti, Rafaele, 48

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